The End of My Addiction

the hospital outpatient program, and with addicts of all sorts in rehab, told me that they did not take an addictive substance only to indulge themselves in wild pleasures but also to quiet emotional pain that long preceded their addiction.
    Unfortunately, the effectiveness of alcohol or any other addictive substance as a remedy for emotional “dis-ease” (to echo AA) sooner or later fails through excess. Tolerance is unstable, and there is no way to calibrate a dose that will remain effective as there is with medications for hypertension, diabetes, or a host of other illnesses. To start a drinking binge was therefore to embark on a roller coaster ride with some level stretches, a few exhilarating moments, and an inevitable, scary crash into hangovers, stupors, gastrointestinal distress, blackouts, and worse.
    Over the July 4 holiday, I was in the middle of that process, glumly drinking to keep my anxiety and panic at bay. On Sunday, July 5, a woman named Claudia, a friend but not a girlfriend, brought me some soup, and a little later Joan stopped by. We had been chatting for about an hour when an acquaintance named Tom, a public relations guy I met through mutual friends, joined us.
    I was glad to have their company until Tom asked, “When do you plan on stopping drinking?”
    Drink in hand, I said, “Look, guys, I intend to stop at some point soon and go to rehab again or do something else to quit for good. I don’t know when or what that will be, but it is not today. And if there is one thing AA and rehab and my doctors all agree on, it is that the decision to stop can only come from the alcoholic. You have to be psychologically ready. It’s like deciding to stop smoking. You can’t impose it from outside. That’s not going to work.”
    Tom said, “I think you should be hospitalized.”
    I said, “What is the point? I’ve been hospitalized before and it accomplishes nothing except to make me uncomfortable. Perhaps I will go to the hospital in a few days, or perhaps I will detox myself here at home.”
    Tom said, “But look at you. You’re drinking and you’re in a terrible state.”
    “Drinking is not against the Constitution. It’s something that every citizen has a right to do in his own home. I’m not bothering anybody, and you’re welcome not to stay if you don’t like it.”
    He said, “I think you should go to the hospital.”
    Joan said, “Well, maybe not.”
    Tom pushed Joan into the other room. I was appalled at that and said, “Please leave. If you want me to call the police, I’ll do that. I need to rest.”
    Tom called EMS, and when they arrived he told them that I needed to be hospitalized for my own protection. I insisted that this was not so, but I had alcohol on my breath and they believed him instead of me. They took me to the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital. It was the usual uncomfortable, noisy scene, and in the midst of that I passed out.
    Some time later I woke up with an IV in my arm and a security guard sitting watching me. I asked him when the doctors would come, and in a Haitian accent he said, “Not yet. Just rest.”
    I rested. After a few hours I said, “Okay. My alcohol level has to be back to zero by now, and I’m ready to leave.”
    “You can’t.”
    “Why not?” I asked.
    “Because this is a closed service.”
    “What? Why am I here?”
    “I can’t tell you.”
     
    I was in the hospital’s locked psych ward. Had I done something terrible? When an orderly and a nurse came to check on me, I asked if I could make a phone call. No. No telephone calls during the first few days in the ward.
    I was assigned to share a room with an enormous man who in the middle of the night began hallucinating. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” he screamed. I did not sleep a wink the rest of the night for fear of being attacked in my sleep.
    I asked if someone from AA could visit me. No visitors were allowed during the first few days. Trying to make the best of things, I cooperated with the routine and spent the time chatting with other patients. A nice Park Avenue lady wanted my phone number so she could set me up with her daughter. “You’re quite a catch, even if you are having a rough time right now.”
    After three days, two residents came to see me and said, “You have a problem.”
    “I know I have a problem. I am an alcoholic. I know.”
    “There is another problem. We want to protect your license.”
    “There is nothing wrong with my