The Book of Drugs (32 page)

I spoke. I talked about this misguided hole-filling excursion. I talked about how amazing it was that wherever I was in the world, I could find it—Bangkok, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Detroit, Des Moines—
something
would happen to me in a meeting, something
in me would settle. I talked about how the god thing had baffled me, how Homer Simpson was my spirit-animal, how, even now, in a life buttressed by prayer, I was truly ambivalent about god: I believe as much as I disbelieve. It's considered tactless to address someone directly in a meeting—the term is
crosstalk—
so I tried to say it from my heart, not to aim it at her.

The gee-whiz lady spoke. Eleven months ago, she woke up, bruised and cut, outside a bus station, not knowing what happened. She was more orthodox twelve-step than me—I guess that's more common to people relatively new to recovery—and was into slogans:
Keep coming back, Progress not perfection, One day at a time!

And that terrible cliché:
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

But you know what? Hell yes it is.

We turned, hesitantly, to the new girl. “OK,” she said. Tears came to her eyes. She'd woken up rough that morning, in an inexplicable place, had to walk home—in Los Angeles, where walking is either an eccentricity or humiliation. Her sister forced her to come to the meeting. She was flying to ________soon, how could she do that without drinking? She was a keen atheist. She had to tell her dad about something terrible—she didn't say what—something she wrecked or negated.

After the meeting, I talked to her in the elevator. I imagine this is strange to hear, I said, but you've helped me so much today—you don't even know. I heard myself in you, and I remembered. If you want to get into this, go out and find people you identify with; find people who make you feel that you
want what they have.
I found freaky art people whose lives and hearts and minds I wanted. Maybe you're looking for someone exactly like you, or somebody unlike you, I don't know, but there's as much variety in the rooms as there is in the world,
keep looking.
I have a dozen friends who got
sober at your age—or younger!—there's a meeting in New York called
Never Had a Legal Drink.
You don't have to believe in god, the rooms are full of atheists—I
am
one sometimes—I heard about a meeting in San Francisco called the
Fuck God, No Readings
group.

Good luck, I said as the elevator doors opened. A ludicrous thing to say. There's no luck involved in this.

“Good luck to you, too,” she said.

She walked out of the elevator and into the rest of her life.

Copyright © 2012 by Mike Doughty

 

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Set in 11.5 point Dante MT by the Perseus Books Group

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Doughty, Mike.

The book of drugs : a memoir / Mike Doughty.—1st Da Capo Press ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-306-82050-2

ML420.D737A3 2012
782.42166092—dc23
[B]

2011020815

 

First Da Capo Press edition 2012

 

Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
www.dacapopress.com

 

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