The Drug Counselor by Paul Shread

I'd been a real mess since my bad trip, approaching something like drug-induced psychosis. The world turned slanted more often than not when I got stoned, and the few times the world kindly remained upright I felt no relief from my torment. I started hearing messages in songs that I was sure were directed at me personally. I was convinced that Neil Young's “Are You Ready for the Country?” was telling me I didn't have much time left before I went insane or died, never stopping to think that Neil probably hadn't written a song six or seven years earlier with a future me in mind. I wasn't Manson-crazy, mind you, but I was a stone's throw from becoming one of those loonies who played records backwards to hear hidden messages. So when Brother Augustine ordered me to see a drug counselor after I showed up to religion class tripping balls, I didn't put up much of a fight. Even I thought there might be a better way at that point.

When the day of my first appointment came, I slipped out of bio class quietly, hoping no one would wonder where I was headed. Dani knew and thought it was a good idea. You know you’re in bad shape when your partying friends don’t feel threatened when you get help.

The drug counselor’s office was on a narrow side street full of clapboard row houses in downtown Pawtucket. A few kids were playing in the street and a woman came out to shake out a rug. They looked Latino, their features more indigenous than European, part of the diversity of the area that always surprised me after the monochromatic hues of Barrington.

A white guy in his early thirties stood up like he'd been waiting for me. He was bearded and solid and he had these beady dark eyes behind thick glasses. No receptionist or anything. His whole office was just a couple of chairs and a bathroom. Saint Anthony’s clearly hadn’t sent me to a high-end place.

He shook my hand. “You must be Bill. Call me Bruce.” He was unsmiling yet seemed nice enough, an impression he changed almost as soon as I sat down.

“I’m not going to hold your hand or coddle you,” he said. “Everyone else, all the nuns and the brothers and the guidance counselors, can do that. I practice what is called reality therapy. I tell it like it is, and if you want help, great. If not,” he shrugged, “no skin off my back.”

            I pretty much hated him before we got started.

            “I’ve been where you are,” he said. “Ten years ago I was a junkie. I got myself straightened out, and so can you, if you want.”

            I didn't think of myself as an addict, at least compared to a needle-in-the-arm dude, so I puzzled over that.

            “So what have you taken?” he asked.

“I don't know, pot, acid, mesc, 'shrooms, coke, valium, uppers, downers, speed,” I shrugged. “Whatever's floating around.” I don’t know why I was so quick to volunteer information. Perhaps I figured my admission wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at that point, and maybe I said all that with a bit of pride, letting him know what a badass I was.

            “No smack, no needles?”

“I snorted heroin once. Didn't really do anything for me.”

He raised his eyebrows like he didn't believe me. That was pretty funny, because the only time I tried heroin I got a heavy, uncomfortable feeling in my chest and no high. I didn't want to be numb, I wanted a mental thrill ride, and psychedelics were the only thing that had really worked. I saw myself as a hippie, all mind-expanding stuff, even though psychoactives had stopped working for me and I’d been gravitating toward pills more than I cared to admit. I’m aware of promising results with micro-doses of psychedelics in cases of major depression and PTSD, but I can’t claim the therapeutic high road. I wanted to get high and see shit. The only thing randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled about my experiments was I often wasn’t exactly sure what I was taking, and neither was the guy who sold it to me.

            “I just want to expand my mind and live differently from the way I see everybody else living,” I said.

            “Tell me about your parents,” he said, rather perceptively interpreting “everybody else” as my parents.

            “My dad's kind of a nervous wreck. All he does is come home after work and drink and take tranquilizers and hide behind the newspaper.”

            “What was his life like?”

            “Jesus, pretty fucked up. His dad died young, so I think his mom whored. The war messed him up pretty good too.”

            “Where did he fight?”

            “South Pacific. Okinawa and one other battle, I don't remember the name.”

            “World War Two then.”

            “Yeah, they're a little older.”

            “The South Pacific was rough, a lot of hand-to-hand combat, no rules. Was he wounded?”

            “He gets a disability check. I know he got shot in the leg, and he's covered in coral scars.”

            “Might be a psychiatric disability," Bruce said. "Tell me about your mom.”

            “She's pretty checked out too. Her dad drank himself to death. They were pretty poor too.”

            “They've had a lot to deal with. Any violence at home?”

            “Belts, paddles, the usual.”

            He seemed surprised that my father wasn’t some skid row bum who punched the shit out of me. “Any changes in the last year or so?”

            “My mom had a messed-up hysterectomy, so she's pretty crazy, lots of screaming and crying and throwing shit. Pretty nuts, actually.”

            “I'm sorry to hear that.”

            That was the only sympathy I was going to get. He wasn't in the sympathy business and I didn't expect him to be.

“They've done a hell of a lot more with their lives than you have with yours,” he said. “And they seem to care a lot about you, sending you to Saint Anthony's and trying to get you help. They could have just washed their hands of you.”

            Reality therapy seemed like a license to be a total asshole.

            “So what do you hope to get out of this?” he asked. “Where are you headed?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll stop at some point.”

“What point is that?”

I shrugged, uncomfortable at how easily he punctured the flimsy balloon of my rationalizations. “I don’t know. I assume I’ll eventually feel like I’ve had enough.”

“Why not stop now? Only gets harder with time.”

Where I’d run out of excuses, he still had plenty to say.

“You want to know what your problem is? Low self-esteem. You take all this shit because you don’t feel you’re worth anything, and that’s the whole story. Nothing romantic going on here. No great big statement or rebellion or expand-your-mind adventure. You’re just a common, ordinary drug addict.”

He let me sit and absorb that for a moment, then asked, “So do you want to do something about it?”

“I don't know, maybe.”

He shrugged. “Up to you,” he said. “You can keep going the way you are. You could go on like this for years, or you could die tomorrow. No skin off my back either way.”

I sure felt grim when I left that place. The only person I told was Dani, and she agreed with Bruce.

            “You're a mess,” she said. “You're gonna die if you don't stop this shit.”

            And then she did what only Dani could do. She got me up to speed in biology with a two-minute explanation of genetics that was probably better than Miss Dufresne had given in an hour, delivered with an enthusiasm that made me appreciate how seriously she took that stuff.

            “You should become a teacher,” I said.

            “And deal with assholes like you? No thanks.” She smiled that wry crooked smile.

            As we snuffed out our cigarettes and turned back toward the old brick school building, she stopped and looked at me. “Bill, please take this seriously. I’m really starting to worry about you.”

            Dani was very much one of the guys, not one to show emotion, so her rare display of sincerity might have done more to reach me than an hour-long verbal assault from Bruce.

            I couldn't think of anything to say to that and felt like a smartass comment would have just pissed her off, so I nodded to let her know I heard her.