The End of My Addiction

knowing what he was talking about. But I figured I could not afford to go to rehab, and I did not want to reveal that money was a concern. Then I decided there was no need to feel embarrassed talking with a fellow alcoholic, and I asked, “Is it expensive?”
    He named a figure less than a third of what Clear Spring cost, and I realized that I could afford to try rehab at High Watch Farm. The director of evaluation and services for St. Luke’s–Roosevelt’s alcoholism program, John Bellamy Taylor, also knew High Watch Farm and gave it a great recommendation. I decided to go there after I finished detoxing in the hospital.
    Unlike Clear Spring, with its glitzy patient roster of wealthy people and celebrities, High Watch Farm served a middle-class and working-class population, with a number of Medicaid patients, including ex-cons who were trying to get over heroin addiction. And as at every other rehab I went to except Clear Spring, at High Watch Farm no one had a private room. I was assigned to a room with a young black man named Charles, who was there for cocaine addiction.
    I did not know what to make of Charlie at first, but he turned out to be a great guy. He was from a poor neighborhood in New Haven, and he was very devoted to his mother and his church. We had lots of good conversations in the evenings.
    In general the spirit of High Watch Farm was as friendly and restful as Andrew said, and I felt much more at home there than at Clear Spring. The first time I heard the song “Amazing Grace” was in High Watch Farm’s chapel, and its words of hope, and even more its serene and haunting melody, moved me to tears. It echoed in my mind as I walked outside into the Connecticut countryside and saw an early spring snow shower dusting the trees.
    The basic routine was much the same at High Watch Farm as it had been at Clear Spring. There were AA meetings, classes on coping skills such as refusing a drink without embarrassment, lectures, and therapy sessions. The major difference, apart from the lack of rich people, celebrities, and private rooms, was that we all did a few chores every day. I didn’t mind that at all. It was a pleasure to do simple, necessary things with the other patients.
    As commonly happens for patients with addiction, I experienced no craving in rehab, thanks to a calm, highly structured routine with no triggers for emotional stress and no cues for drinking. I began to feel good, but a fragile good, and I accordingly prolonged my stay twice to a total of three and a half weeks, until spring arrived in earnest and the flowers began to bloom.
    On April 9 I received a telephone call from one of my dearest friends, Maurice Blin, president of the French-American Chamber of Commerce in New York. “Congratulations, Olivier!” he said. “I am holding Le Figaro , which reports the Easter list of recipients of the Legion of Honor, including you.”
    “You are kidding,” I said. That President Jacques Chirac had signed a decree naming me a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor seemed absurd. “If he could only see me,” I thought.
    The thought stayed with me long after I left High Watch Farm, gaining extra force when I received a letter informing me that President Chirac was awarding me the Legion of Honor from his personal reserve of crosses.
    At first I did not tell anyone at High Watch Farm about the award. Eventually I told one person in confidence, and of course word spread quickly among the other patients and staff. Their congratulations warmed my heart but also dispirited me, because I felt I didn’t deserve the award. The whole thing seemed crazy.
     
    A few days after Maurice’s call, Joan came to pick me up and drive me back to New York. I was overwhelmed with emotions, positive and negative. The High Watch Farm staff sent me off saying I should be the mayor of the facility because of all the friends I had made and the insightful support I had given people in group therapy. They said they were sure I was going to stay sober. I felt like a total fraud.
    I decided that there was no reason to call my new sponsor that day to say I was home from rehab. I could call him the next day to say that I had just come back, and he would be none the wiser. In the meantime I could celebrate completing rehab with one double vodka tonic. I deserved a drink.
    That is how the alcoholic mind works. I had one double vodka tonic, and then another and another and another. Within hours of leaving High Watch Farm,