The End of My Addiction

meeting, I had heard a man qualifying who said, “You know how, when you’re shaving, you try to avoid looking at your eyes in the mirror?” People with addiction don’t like themselves, they think they are worthless losers, and they avoid looking in the mirror as much as possible.
    A counselor at Marworth spoke about this issue and told us, “Look at yourself in the mirror. Look, and like yourself. Do as they say in AA, ‘Fake it till you make it.’ You hate what you see in the mirror, but fake that you like it. Smile at yourself and say, ‘I’m an attractive person.’”
    The counselor looked like Albert Einstein on a bad hair day with no sleep. When he said, “I look at myself in the mirror and I love what I see,” we all laughed. But I took his advice, and even though I thought I was ugly, I wound up liking what I saw in the mirror.
    Marworth’s life lessons also included writing daily gratitude and next-day planning lists. The gratitude list was everything good that happened during the day. The idea was to appreciate simple things that people normally take for granted, like being alive and breathing, eating good food and having a roof over your head, seeing something beautiful in nature, having a pleasant conversation with someone, and so on.
    Whereas the longer the gratitude list the better, the planning list was supposed to be short and sweet—and readily achievable. That way we could derive satisfaction from meeting our goals without becoming frustrated and disappointed in ourselves and the world. Anything that got accomplished without being on the list was a bonus.
    I loved doing the gratitude and planning lists. My goals for the next day were things like go to an AA meeting, eat three good meals, take a walk, and have a good conversation with a friend. I knew my mother’s reaction to this would be, “If that’s your ambition, my son, good for you. But it’s not very impressive.” That was okay. Trying to impress people was no longer a goal.
    The counselors at Marworth also tried to get me to do a list of my achievements. They said, “You are wonderful at supporting others and giving them credit for what they have accomplished. You would make a great counselor here. But you need to do that for yourself, too. You don’t accept your achievements. They aren’t part of you. Ordinarily we don’t ask for lists of achievements, because it puffs people up. But you are too humble. We would also like you to talk more about yourself during meetings.”
    It took me three weeks to begin opening up a little about myself in group sessions. But I could never bring myself to write a list of my achievements when I was ill with alcoholism. I could not believe that anything I had done really deserved to be called an achievement.
    While I was at Marworth, I learned that I would have to vacate my apartment on East 63rd Street, where I had lived for ten years. New York Hospital owned the building and wanted to put someone new into the apartment. I said I was sick and couldn’t move right away, but the response was that I had to move out of the apartment by the beginning of September.
    I told the staff at Marworth that I had to leave rehab for a few days to take care of this problem and then would return. They said, “We don’t think you’re ready.”
    “If I don’t move out of the apartment, I’ll be in deep legal trouble.”
    “If you leave now, you will be in deep trouble. Because you will drink and you will die.”
    “When will I be ready to leave? Is it going to be six months or a year from now?”
    “It takes as long as it takes. We’ll tell you when we think you’re ready to go.”
    An old Irish guy on the staff, an ex-alcoholic with many years of sobriety, told me, “Things will fall into place.”
    My first reaction to that was, “Keep dreaming.” Finally I said to myself, “Olivier, it’s out of your hands. You can worry or not worry.” I managed not to worry about it obsessively, and things indeed fell into place. Marworth sent a medical certificate to New York Hospital, which bought me a couple of extra weeks. And I asked Joan, who had a large apartment, “Do you think I could stay with you for a while?”
    “Only with a ring,” she said.
    “Are you serious? Do you want me to marry you under duress? I’m in rehab, and I’m not going to marry anyone now.”
    Joan was only half joking. She had put up with a lot from me. But before I landed in the Lenox Hill Hospital psych