praying and in pain. I had always believed in a God, so I prayed to be released, not even sure from what or to where. My hands shook as I folded them to pray, the way I had been taught. Yet now, kneeling on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, my devotion seemed destroyed. Fear and despair were all I knew.
I sat there and reflected back almost twenty years earlier, on the memory of my first day of school, when the feelings of isolation and separation began. I was four-and-a-half years old. We lived in a small rented house on about an acre of land in Mar Vista, California, which was only a few miles from the house in Venice. Mom packed my lunchbox and loaded my sister in the baby carriage, and we walked about ten minutes up our alley to the school.
Our dog, Dane, followed closely behind. I looked around at the familiar surroundings, but everything appeared strange. It seemed like my life was changing, and I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling. I wanted to say, “No, Mom, I can’t do this. I can’t leave you, Cindy, and Dane. Mom, I’m too little to do this.” But my mouth didn’t form these words. On the short walk, I seemingly slipped through a portal into a world that may have looked the same, but where I did not belong.
As we walked into the schoolyard, kids were running around having fun, and they all seemed to know each other. I knew immediately I was different and hid behind Mom’s floral skirt as we walked into the classroom. I looked down and studied the checkered tile floor. Desks were lined up in perfect order, and a blackboard took up most of one wall. All kinds of paper decorations and colored objects hung on the other walls. As kids rushed in and happily sat at their desks, I felt overwhelmed by feelings of sheer terror I had never experienced. All I could do was beg my mom not to leave.
Of course, she had to go, and I was left alone in this perplexing new world with peculiar people. As the teacher wrote on the blackboard, the other students nodded their heads in understanding, writing down our daily activities. But I was frozen, paralyzed within, to the extent of hearing the sound coming out of the teacher’s mouth—but the words were in a language I could not understand. The disease of addiction—which is rooted in separation—had started in little Tommy’s life. This was the moment in which I clearly remember encountering my first feelings of separation and not fitting in, feelings I later discovered are nearly universal for addicts. Little did I know these unpleasant feelings would intensify and cause me and others great pain as I grew older.
Along with the LSD movement happening in the sixties, eastern philosophy had become popular in the U.S. While living in Southern California I would go to the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), an organization that taught meditation. It had a meditation chapel and bookstore where you could purchase all sorts of books about the spiritual life. SRF was about a mile up Sunset Boulevard from Coast Highway 1. The sprawling grounds were home to a lake, with beautiful gardens dotting the hillsides that sloped down to the path surrounding it. People visited to walk the garden paths and to find a sanctuary in the middle of the busy city. It became my place for a psychedelic experience, taking LSD as I strolled amongst the devotees.
SRF was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of Autobiography of a Yogi. I read this book in 1966. That was my first experience with eastern philosophy, and I was strongly drawn to the book and its spiritual teachings. Yogananda describes growing up in India, traveling in the Himalaya mountains, and the many gurus he encountered on his journeys.
This philosophy seemed to dovetail with the LSD movement, including the belief that the love and light that exist within everyone lead to being one with God. It didn’t include a concept of hell or the devil. Instead, it focused on the importance of karma—the idea that whatever you put out, you will get back. My heart was immediately attracted to these beliefs. My soul was craving to find its way home.
SRF offered meditation lessons through the mail, so I readily subscribed. After shooting methedrine or taking any variety of assorted drugs, I would try to meditate, but with 70,000 drug-induced thoughts a minute rushing through my head, I was unable to find the way to the one breath the lessons described. From the time I started using drugs, I experimented with many different chemicals. LSD, pot, hashish, and mescaline were all used by our generation for spiritual reasons; at least that is what I told myself.
Despite my best intentions, I inevitably returned to the destructive cycle of shooting drugs and taking mind-altering pills. Today it’s clear to me that although I was constantly searching for a spiritual solution, drugs failed to lessen my emotional pain. But as an addict, I was unable to stop using drugs and rely solely on meditation and the teachings of popular gurus. Drugs had become part of my solution, and it was impossible to see that these mind-numbing, painkilling agents were actually hindering my ability to connect with the spirit. I was unable to hear the words “You have a drug problem.” This was the 1960s. The only “problem” was that not everyone used drugs. My using had brought on the rationalization that was pulling me to the bottom spiritually, physically, and emotionally.
The Venice Canals were made up of waterways that ran parallel to each other, like the actual Venice canals in Italy. In the 1920s this was considered a high-end place to live, but by the 1960s it was more or less run down. Lots of so-called hippies were living in the houses lining each canal. Today this area has been renovated to its previous high-dollar real estate status. The entrance of our small, stucco house faced a waterway. The only way to approach the front of the house was via a small boat. An alley ran behind the house so that it could be approached by car. I was constantly strung out and sleeping very little because I was shooting so much speed. Nevertheless, I continued to study my SRF lessons. A line in one of the lessons read: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When I read this, it was as if a neon sign flashed those words in my mind, and in the months to come I never forgot that statement.
Using speed and not sleeping, I felt more and more hopeless. I peered, bleary-eyed, out the windows all night, watching shadow people moving through the streets and bouncing off the sides of houses. Were they warning me? Protecting me? Or after me? I believed my house was being watched and my phone was tapped. Sometimes I rowed my small boat up and down the canals all night, the water reflecting the moonlight as I glided across the glassy surface, with only the sound of the oars as they splashed in the water. It was a romantic scene. The key problem was that my wife was asleep, leaving only me and my German shepherd dogs in the rowboat to guard against nefarious forces unknown. As I floated by, the darkened shoreline houses appeared almost peaceful, a feeling I had long ago lost. When I drifted by a house with muted light shining through a window, I wondered, “Are they like me? What is running through their veins?” The drugs and sleep deprivation made me feel completely paranoid, although some of my paranoia was probably well-founded.
One day some friends were over, and we were using drugs. While looking out the window, I saw a nondescript black sedan that looked like a narc’s car slowing down near our house. My intuition turned to alarm, and I yelled for everyone to clear out. Everyone dove out the front windows and ran down the canals. I ran out into the alley with my two dogs and watched, calmly, as the narcs got out of their car and began walking up to my house. Without forethought, I suddenly jumped directly in their faces, which curtailed their surprise attack. They just stood there, stunned, before returning to their car and driving away.
Shaken by the incident, I knew things were getting out of hand on the canals. Even with my shattered emotions, I was able to hear an inner voice. It told me I could no longer keep running in place. I had to move. I went to my friend Wes’s house and told him I thought we should leave town. Wes was strung out also, so we packed up a bunch of drugs (not speed, because I had vowed to stop using it) and determined the best plan to get out of town quickly. I turned to my parents, who knew what was going on in my life. I had encouraged their denial of my condition, but my behavior and the circumstances of my life soon broke through the façade that I was okay. They had found drugs in my dresser drawers when I was living at home, and a syringe had dropped out of my dirty clothes once when I went to use their washer. So in their own desperation to help me, and not knowing what else to do, my parents gave Wes and me money to fly back
