September 4: An Interview with Keith Howard conducted by his imaginary critics

Q: You usually begin your public talks by saying something stupid or inflammatory. What nonsense would you like to spew today?

A: Nothing nonsensical but perhaps inflammatory: If alcohol and drugs were my problem, I wouldn’t need recovery.

Q:  Wait a second! I thought you were the director of Hope Recovery. What the hell do you mean if drugs and alcohol were your problem? Aren’t drugs and alcohol the whole reason for recovery?

A: Not at all. For most of human history, most people have used whatever intoxicants were available, whether herbal, liquid or animal. If drugs and alcohol were the problem, ideas like Prohibition and America’s War on Drugs would have been effective. They weren’t. Substances aren’t the problem. My relationship to them is.

Q: What’s that supposed to mean?

A:  I’m not sure exactly, but I think drugs and alcohol have a different effect on me than they do on most people. My relationship has always been that of a seeker finding a new messiah with each new substance I tried. For example, like many folks, the first time I got drunk was at a party when I was 13. Within an hour, I was face down on a lawn in my own vomit. Because the other people at the party were all in high school, they called my dad, who had to come and pick up his dumbass son.

All that is not unusual. Many kids have that kind of experience, or so I’ve been told. I’ve also been told almost universally that first hangover led to next-morning regrets and oaths to never drink again, oaths that may have been broken but were sincere when made. I, on the other hand, woke up with a throbbing head, dry and vomit-flaked mouth, a stomach that needed to be drained again and—against all common sense—a sense I’d just discovered who I was. I couldn’t wait to do it again.

My relationship was the same with every other substance. For years I’d fall in love with each new high, certain I never wanted to not feel this way again.

Apparently, that’s not normal.

Q: Of course it’s not!

A: The magic would fade, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, but I thought, like married couples engaged in a death embrace, that I could somehow, some way find my way back to an enchanted beginning.

Q: But you never did. Why didn’t you just quit if drugs and alcohol weren’t working anymore?

A: Finding recovery, I know, is a strange concept. After all, if recovery is returning to health after a period of sickness, it seems like abstinence and time would be all the necessary ingredients. If I’m sick with a sunburn—overuse or abuse of the sun—I stay inside and in a couple days I’m better. If I’ve got a bellyache from too much apple pie, I avoid eating for a bit and give my digestive system a chance to clean itself. Moving from the physical to the emotional, if I’ve got a broken heart, staying away from my beloved for an extended period will get me right as rain. Why isn’t this true for drugs and alcohol?

For some people it is.  Lucky bastards. If it is for you, I wish you luck and good fortune. You may be fine folks, but you are not my people.

Q: So how did you finally quit?

A: Life had no friendly direction. I was drinking stolen mouthwash to keep away the DTs. I wanted to be dead and had a plan and means to do so.  In an act of grace from a heretofore silent universe, I was struck with the notion of going to the VA Medical Center in Manchester. When I got to the urgent care nurse, all I could say was, “My name’s Keith Howard. I’ve never been here before. I don’t want to be alive.”

Within 20 minutes, I was bound for White River Junction VA Hospital.

Q: So they detoxed you and you stopped.

A: If only. If only.

Abstinence and time were never enough. Like a sponge left to dry under a sink for days, weeks, months, something inside me always yearned to get just another taste, whether of dope or booze or meth or whatever. In fact, for people like me, abstinence without a program of recovery was worse than any drug or alcohol issues—or at least life was less livable. Between the ages of, let us say, 12 and 48, I had two periods where I was denied access to drugs or alcohol for an extended period of time. At the end of each of those times, I was actively suicidal. Really.

Q: But if your relationship with booze and drugs was the problem, why wouldn’t cutting them out lead to some kind of recovery?

A:  Again, I don’t exactly know. The drugs and booze filled some kind of hole inside me, and the reality of that void was even scarier when I wasn’t using. If abstinence were enough, I could have stopped drinking, should have stopped drinking, would have stopped drinking at either of those points. I didn’t. If you are my type of addict or alcoholic, you wouldn’t have either. Taking away booze and drugs does absolutely nothing to solve the problem of life. Those substances were so effective making life bearable.

Until they weren’t.

Q: This time you didn’t sound like such a crazy malcontent.

A: Thanks, I guess.

For the non-using addict or the non-drinking alcoholic, life demands some kind of solution.  There are a lot of them, and over the course of this month we’ll explore some of the major ones.

Q: Any final words?

A: You matter. I matter. We matter.