The End of My Addiction

me with the other alcoholics, whether they are janitors or generals.”
    The counselor explaining the situation said, “You medical professionals have similar issues.”
    “Alcohol? Addiction? That’s similar with everyone else here, it seems to me.”
    “Yes, but physicians, pharmacists, and nurses have licensing issues in common.”
    “Nobody’s going to talk about that, I’ll bet, because it is too embarrassing,” I said. Marworth wasn’t about to change its rules for me, however, and so I joined its medical addicts rehab club, only physicians, nurses, and pharmacists allowed. The membership averaged about a dozen people while I was there.
    Creating a class system within rehab made no sense to me, and I am sure that it hurt some other patients’ feelings. I never saw it at any other rehab, and one of the things I love and respect in AA is that everyone is equal. I resented being stuck with the medical professionals in the organized activities at Marworth, and I spent a lot of free time with patients from different walks of life. I formed some good relationships in both groups.
    My roommate was a delightful guy named Peter. In rehab lingo, Peter and I were “dinosaurs.” That is, we were pure and simple alcoholics, whereas most addicts today use more than one substance, a phenomenon known as cross-addiction or polyaddiction. In AA and at NA meetings in rehab, I often heard people talking about balancing out a “downer” like alcohol, heroin, or barbiturates with an “upper” like cocaine or methamphetamine. Most of the other medical professionals in rehab at Marworth were primarily addicted to prescription painkillers like codeine and anesthetics like fentanyl, with alcohol or some other drug as their secondary addiction.
    Practically all alcoholics and addicts are also addicted to nicotine. When I met people in AA and rehab, they were shocked that I didn’t smoke. But the addiction treatment community does not consider smoking a cross-addiction, and it is the one addictive behavior that twelve-step programs and rehabs don’t prohibit. The smokers at Marworth—again, almost everybody but me—regularly gathered to puff away together.
    I certainly had a precedent for becoming a smoker—the only drug used regularly in our household was nicotine. My father began smoking in the forced labor camp to blunt hunger, as he told us, and my mother picked up smoking from him. When I was a little boy, they each smoked two packs or more a day. My father quit when I was six or seven years old. He picked up the habit again when I was eighteen, but after about a year he quit again for good. My mother continued to smoke heavily until her death. My brother, Jean-Claude, and my sister, Eva, began smoking as teenagers at summer camp. Eva quit several years ago, and Jean-Claude still smokes.
    One of the clichés of smoking is that it calms the nerves. In fact, this is one of its best-documented features. It can also elevate mood slightly. Studies have shown that smokers modulate their moods subtly throughout the day with nicotine. My mother regularly reached for a cigarette in an anxious or nervous moment.
    I stayed away from cigarettes because I took to heart my father’s repeated warnings not to start, because it was so hard to quit. He never said anything about drinking, because no one in the family had a drinking problem. When I started drinking, I assumed that this somehow meant I was protected against alcohol dependence.
    If my father had warned me against alcohol, I would certainly have tried to steer clear of it, and I doubt I would ever have tried to soothe my anxiety with it. There is no way of knowing what would have happened to me then, but there is also no doubt that my anxiety, which failed to respond to any medication I was prescribed, would have had a devastating effect. It could well have driven me crazy, I believe, or caused me to commit suicide as a way out.
     
    What struck me as ironic was how people who are addicted to one thing often look down on people who are addicted to something else. The heroin addicts think they are at the top of the hierarchy. The cocaine addicts think the same. And they both look down on alcoholics. In the detox ward of a hospital in New York City, a pretty girl who was a street singer told me, “You should try heroin, Olivier. It’s so much easier on your body than alcohol. With heroin you fly.”
    A woman I met in AA spoke wistfully of how nice heroin was. When I