The Desperates

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There were only three Desperates at the facility that week. G. arrived a day later than expected because a flight attendant had seen him bump into a wall at Nashville International Airport while waiting for his Tuesday flight, and banned him from getting on the plane. So he got a new ticket and joined the other two Desperates the next day, on a Wednesday, in an unidentifiable part of Arizona.

At first it was hard for the Desperates to tell each other apart from the staff of the facility. Everyone was wearing scrubs, including the Desperates, but of course, unlike with the staff, all of the Desperates’ belongings had been removed from them, even the medications they took to make themselves less desperate. No medications, no phones, no lip balm, no nail clippers, no Alka Seltzer, no books. Certainly, a laptop was out of the question.

G. and N. were smokers, and every day at set hours, they would beg the staff for a cigarette (G.'s and N.'s own personal, confiscated cigarettes, mind you) and a lighter, and go outside to the designated smoking area and make niceties at each other, but peer in a desperate way at the world—at least as desperately as they could muster, as pumped-full of Ativan, gabapentin, and Seroquel as they were. Could they even be said to be depressed anymore?

(The third Desperate was so boring he could only be described as “Z.”)

Every day, an alarming amount of attendants gave the Desperates pills, took their vitals, laid hands on them in more indeterminate ways, woke them up in the middle of the night two times to take their vitals again, and took their mental health and substance abuse histories. These two categories broke down into many subcategories—family mental health history, mental health and hospitalization history, history of attitudes towards religion, eating disorder stats, stats of suicide attempts, history of treatment, and the rest. All three Desperates were repelled by these queries into their pasts, which they had hoped so much to escape, and N. developed a suspiciously rapid-onset case of pneumonia, and lay on the couch during Group, covered completely with a blanket.

Group involved a very boring, young (possibly 24), and mildly attractive counselor named Juan, who came in at least once a day to lead a “group” of the three of them. Juan discussed things like the emotional mind and the rational mind, and how the two minds might be synthesized into a third, “wise,” mind. Long prior, G. had longed to have a crazy life, which of course requires one to make crazy choices. But now, in this facility, if you were to put a gun to G.’s head and threaten to pull the trigger, he might eventually and after much soul-searching admit that he wished that his life were a little less crazy. During Group, N. lay still with her head covered with the blanket, and could be of no aid to anyone present. At one point, G. and Z. were instructed by Juan to write a letter to their disease. G.’s letter discussed how sorry he was that his disease had led him to this Wednesday evening, in an unidentifiable part of Arizona, with no phone, no lip balm, no nail clipper, no Alka Seltzer, and no books. As he read it aloud to the Group, he began to weep softly against his will. The counselor got really excited and praised his tears, and at that point, G. tried to hold his head up high, in the face of the praise.

When there was no Group, there was nothing to do at the facility but take pills and watch tv and wait to be prodded by a murkily qualified attendant, so often during the day the Desperates would congregate in the common area, where everyone but G. would discuss sports. Everyone had an opinion about college basketball. St. John’s, Duke, Vanderbilt, et al. After those discussions, Z. would then begin to give his own opinions on the way that alcohol—that great, blazing set of wings made of fire—had taken him away from everyone, especially a young niece of his named Emily, whom he affectionately called “Little Miss.” The blazing wings had brought him closer to his own life, but then cruelly took him away from everything. It was his hope that the facility would extinguish the wings and restore him to sanity and his family’s embrace. “I’m sorry, Little Miss,” he said helplessly. At times, after Group, the 24-year-old counselor would take Z. aside and attempt to explain to him some of the basic precepts of living, such as: what a sponsor is; how to find an AA meeting; how to look for a job; when to make an amend; how to ignore whatever G. had said during that day’s Group; how to be.

G. had no interest in AA or the 12 steps. He had tried all of that too many times. He was full of a medication called Campral, which dulled his cravings for alcohol. His plan for when he was back in Nashville was to clean his apartment and then attend the outpatient rehab he had selected. He would also look into Narcotics Anonymous meetings, which he was sure would be cooler than AA meetings, which were full of people who were no fun because they had already had too much fun. He would also practice Transcendental Meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy; he would go to the gym and do yoga. He would find a therapist he could trust, and he would drive for Postmates. He chose not to vocalize these plans to the Group, for fear that their potential reactions would trigger a response from his "emotional mind" that would boggle their "rational minds." G., at times, had no chill. 

***

Two days later, graduated from detox and with his own clothes on, G. made his way to the gate of the plane that would take him back to Nashville. He didn’t know it, but back at the facility, N. was dedicating her meditation practice for the day to him. “May G. never embarrass anyone, ever again,” she breathed as a mantra. “Especially not himself.” At the gate in the airport, a flight attendant greeted G., took his ticket, and introduced herself as Susan. “I’m Gregory,” he responded shakily. He noticed that, as soon as she heard his voice, Susan’s gaze narrowed and seemed to bisect, somehow. Half of her gaze sized him up physically, as though wondering how much force it would take for her to throw him out of the fuselage in the unlikely event of an ocean crash landing (with survivors). The other half seemed to attempt to size him up morally, assessing the likelihood that his clothing concealed an explosive. Both halves of her gaze had their own judgements and ugly connotations, of course, he thought as he walked down the jet bridge and boarded the plane—but neither was without its own kindness.