Little is as sobering as death. This morning a friend, which is not to say I knew him well, only that I knew him, hung himself in the stairwell of the parking structure of the club we frequent. He hung himself with a chain, wrapped five times around his neck over his hooded sweatshirt. He hung himself from a water pipe. The pieces of link chain from where he was cut down remain. I held them in my hands. Clean, sharp edges. He leaves behind lovers, friends, family and most tragically, children; one, a three month old son. I saw him yesterday. I talked to him yesterday. Today he’s dead.
I met him a couple years back at the club’s old location. This is a club where 12 Step meetings are held, not a dance club. He lived in his car in the parking lot, and though a regular at the club, he rarely, if ever, attended meetings. We spoke irregularly. He, on occasion, called me. Every time, he had little or no interest in doing things differently. No interest in meetings. No interest in reading. No interest in praying. No interest in sponsorship. In short, no interest in recovery. Two weeks ago, I saw him in the Salvation Army Men’s Treatment facility. For all the pain he had been in, I thought finally he had been given the gift of desperation. He hadn’t. I saw him the next day at the club. He said he couldn’t live with the rules. As it turns out, he couldn’t live without them. I commented to him that he had the greatest tolerance for pain of any man I had ever met. He looked at me puzzled and said he had no tolerance for pain. I told him that is not what I saw. He flatly refused the help often offered to him by me and countless others. Just last week, outside a meeting, he loudly declared he had no interest in our 12 Step groups. They were not for him, he said.
He’s not the first friend of mine to die of my disease, just the most recent. There will be more. Guaranteed. It’s happened for centuries and continues to. When I am in pain, I have three options available to me and only three. I can talk about my pain and if I don’t talk I will either drink or kill myself. There is no other option. Two years ago a man of 38 years sober killed himself in his garage of my disease because he would not talk about his pain and would not drink. Two weeks ago, a friend of a friend checked himself into a local treatment center. He publicly announced he’s there to rest his foot. Apparently, he doesn’t want to talk about his pain either. This morning, a man hung himself from a water pipe because he would not talk about his pain. I’m reminded of something a friend said many years ago of a man who killed himself in his living room trying to get sober, “He could not, or would not, see our way of life.”
There’s a lesson here for me. I am no different from him. He thinks like me. He feels like me. He acts like me and he drinks like me (past tense). This is what waits for me if I stop talking about my pain.
