you know, it doesn’t cost anything extra,” at which point he gave me a knowing wink.
As his sense of present-centered joy washed over me, for a few brief seconds that felt much longer, it was as if everything else faded away, and in that moment, I knew everything that I would ever truly need to know—though I would quickly forget it. It would only occur to me years later, viewed through the perspective of twelve-step recovery and an enhanced sense of spirituality that this effervescent generosity of spirit stood on a foundation of love—simple, abundant, and pure.
As perfect as that moment was, of course it couldn’t last. Perfection only visits us every once in a great while, and it never stays very long. Such transcendent experiences are always temporary. Whenever I try to keep them as if they are possessions, I invariably set myself up for disappointment. The most healthy and spiritual thing I can do is to recognize and appreciate these moments for what they are as opposed to focusing on what they are not and can never be.
Mick and I drove to the trail head for our initial eight-mile hike into the wilderness. It was a magnificent autumn afternoon in the High Sierra. The air was cool and crisp at our elevation of slightly over 7,400 feet, but it was sunny and very comfortable. Although it was mid-Autumn with its emerging potential for storms, there was no hint in the forecast that this glorious weather pattern wouldn’t continue.
We set up camp at the edge of one of the smaller lakes south of Tahoe in the Desolation Wilderness. The collective spirit of nature and the universe seemed to be smiling amidst the majestic panorama of color and geology. We enjoyed a sumptuous supper centered around our rib-eye and Cabernet that merged seamlessly and sensuously on our palettes to create the synergy known by red wine aficionados in select circles as “chewy wine.” Satiated by our meal, my close encounter with the Buddha at Safeway, and the serenity of the scenery, as well as a substantial stash of smack-down sinsemilla (high-end marijuana to the uninitiated), we slept soundly that night.
We awoke to the roof of our tent concaving in on us to within inches of our faces. Instinctively pushing the fabric up and outward, we displaced what in silhouette seemed to be a shitload of snow. Suddenly very awake, Mick and I looked at one another with the same thought, “No fucking way!” Upon unzipping the tent entrance we were greeted with more than two feet of fresh snow, all of which had fallen silently during the night, blanketing everything.
We were totally unprepared for anything like this. My heaviest clothing consisted of a sweater and an insulated sweatshirt. There was immediate wordless recognition that this was a serious and potentially dangerous situation. We knew without having to confer that the focus of our adventure had instantly shifted to simply finding our way back to the ranger station and our car safely.
To get to our campsite we had followed a well-delineated trail, the last part of which was a fairly steep downhill climb to the level topography around the lake. The depth and virginity of the snow made it a bitch just to identify where to pick up the trail to head back uphill. After an anxiety-provoking half hour of searching, assessing, and guessing where the hell the trail was and becoming increasingly cold and wet, I was starting to get scared. Fortunately, shortly thereafter, we were able to find what appeared to be the trail, though we were far from certain.
Apprehensively we ascended, making tediously slow progress until it became clear that we were on the right path. The mood on the trail back was 180 degrees from the easy-going, laugh-out-loud good time that defined our hike in. There were few words exchanged as we conserved our energy, concentrating intently on making forward progress, simply and steadily putting one foot in front of the other. As the sun rose higher, we found ourselves trudging through melting snow that became ankle-deep freezing water, negotiating the trail with the kind of intense determination achieved through practiced perseverance and tunnel-vision focus.
A sort of grim staying-in-each-moment intensity kicked in. The immediacy of our challenges crowded out all other considerations with one nagging exception: a gnawing feeling of anxiety—that lower-grade fear and worry of—what if? What if we can’t make it back to the car due to any one of a half-dozen possibilities that could further bite us in the ass? Fear is almost always related to the unknown, to the uncertainty of the future and what it may have in store for us. But, as natural as such doubts were to the situation at hand, there was too much at stake to ruminate on them. Like the frigid water taking up more and more of the trail, these doubts could swirl around each step we took yet not penetrate . . . much . . . or so I needed to believe.
By the time we made it to the safe haven of the ranger station we were half-frozen, with hypothermia in close pursuit. Our feet were soaking wet and in bad and getting-worse-by-the-step condition, even though we were both equipped with high-quality hiking boots. As we immersed ourselves in the warm cocoon of the roaring fire, I exhaled a Yankee Stadium-sized sigh of relief while puzzling in amazement at how quickly and completely everything can change.
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Most drugs of abuse produce intense initial sensations of pleasure. These sensations vary tremendously across different types of substances. In contrast to the relaxed calm that co-occurs with the immersive floating euphoria of opiates/opioids including heroin, cocaine produces a high characterized by a massive boost in energy, followed by feelings of power and grandiose self-confidence. When injected or smoked in its free-base form, coke produces an instantaneous rush that feels like a rocket blasting off, leaving Earth’s gravity at break-neck speed—a massive high like the most ground-shaking orgasm multiplied by an exponent. I’ve heard some people describe it as feeling as though they are god. I was never that grandiose—for me it merely felt like caressing the face of god, as dopamine, the neurotransmitter most directly linked to the experience of pleasure, was released from the neurons in my brain in unnaturally occurring quantities, flooding every single synapse, where its reverberations thundered. In those moments of rapture, it felt like forever, but it only ever lasted a few short minutes at most.
For me, coming down from that exhilarating height was always as bad as the take off was good. As soon as the rush reached its apex and began to subside, withdrawal started to set in, followed by feelings of despondency and despair driven by the diminution in my brain’s stash of dopamine. It was my own personal version of the space shuttle breaking up into pieces and slamming back to Earth. It is the simultaneous drives to recreate the ecstasy of the monumental rush and to escape the emotional death grip of the crash that churns the obsessive-compulsive need to continue to use coke. And it’s a Sisyphean cluster-fuck. With each successive hit during a using session, the high gets a little lower and the low gets a little higher, as the brain’s available inventory of dopamine is progressively depleted, until all that’s left is depression.
Not having a clearer sense of what to do with the rest of my life, I figured that law school was a reasonable option and registered to take the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). The night before the exam I decided that I could inject coke one time—after all, it was only 7:30 p.m. By the time I quit for the night, it was 5:00 a.m. the following morning. Shockingly, I didn’t do very well on the test. But I did use the experience as a learning opportunity of another sort.
I would never again shoot coke unless I had heroin or some other opiate/opioid or a benzodiazepine such as Valium as a neurochemical parachute, allowing me to float gently back to earth rather than crashing face first. Shortly thereafter, I transitioned to preferring heroin alone, though I remained open to the occasional speedball. For a year and a half, I lived like a vampire, using till the sun came up, confined to long-sleeve shirts in public even in summer. My senior thesis, and with it my Planning and Public Policy degree, went unfinished.
When I was first introduced to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in graduate school, the DSM was in its third edition. I was dumbfounded to learn that unlike multiple other drugs—opiates, alcohol, barbiturates, tranquillizers, etc.—there was no category for substance dependence (the then DSM equivalent of
