Rehab Sayings And Quotes

Last time I really got to know myself it turned out there was a whole gang of bitches in there to deal with. I felt like the receptionist at a rehab center. They all had nice tits though, I gotta say.

Right. Lack of opportunities," Daddy says. "Corporate America don't bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain't quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don't prepare us well enough. That's why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don't get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It's easier to find some crack that it is the find a good school around here. "Now, think 'bout this," he says. "How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking 'bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don't know anybody with a private jet. Do you?" "No." "Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they're destroying our community," he says. "You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can't get jobs unless they're clean, and they can't pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That's the hate they're giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That's Thug Life.

My daughter, Carly, has been in and out of drug treatment facilities since she was thirteen. Every time she goes away, I have a routine: I go through her room and search for drugs she may have left behind. We have a laugh these days because Carly says, “So you were lookingfor drugs I might have left behind? I’m a drug addict, Mother. We don’t leave drugs behind, especially if we’re going into treatment. We do all the drugs. We don’t save drugs back for later. If I have drugs, I do them. All of them. If I had my way, we would stop for more drugs on the way to rehab, and I would do them in the parking lot of the treatment center.

I told her that I didn't want to take any drugs. That I had come here not to take drugs. "Listen," she said, not unkindly, "up until now I would say that ninety-nine percent of all the narcotics you have taken in your life you bought from guys you didn't know, in bathrooms or on street corners, something like that. Correct?" I nodded. "Well these guys could have been selling you salt or strychnine. They didn't care. They wanted your money. I don't care about your money, and, unlike your previous suppliers, I went to college to study just the right drugs to give to people like you in order to help you get better. So, bearing all that in mind ... Take the fucking drugs!" I took the drugs.

My problem is I love sex. No joking I really love sex. Life without sex is unbearable for me. As a child my mum says I loved men and hated women. I use to smile at men when I was in the pram and offer them lollipops or sweeties. I guess it is in my genes, my little weakness. I can live without the Valium and Vodka but not my sex. To me my choice is simple men or Paradise and I love them both. I cannot make that choice. It is like there is some evil force driving me to flirt and sleep around. No one man has ever been enough for me and now I have to live like a nun in rehab. I am not bold I am just misunderstood. No, don’t laugh it is an illness and an exhausting one I am so tired, so very tired.

I'm not sad or embarrassed to be an alcoholic anymore. I get irritated when I hear parents use that jokey shorthand: God, I hope my kid doesn't end up in rehab. Or: God, I hope my kid doesn't end up in therapy. I understand the underlying wish -- I hope my kid grows up happy and safe. When we say things like that, though, we underscore the false belief that people who seek help are failures and people who don't seek help are a success. It's not true. Some of the healthiest, most accomplished people I know went to both rehab and therapy, and I've known some sick motherfuckers who managed to avoid both.

I open my arms wide and let the wind flow over me. I love the universe and the universe loves me. That’s the one-two punch right there, wanting to love and wanting to be loved. Everything else is pure idiocy—shiny fancy outfits, Geech-green Cadillacs, sixty-dollar haircuts, schlock radio, celebrity-rehab idiots, and most of all, the atomic vampires with their de-soul-inators, and flag-draped coffins. Goodbye to all that, I say. And goodbye to Mr. Asterhole and the Red Death of algebra and to the likes of Geech and Keeeevin. Goodbye to Mom’s rented tan and my sister’s chargecard boobs. Goodbye to Dad for the second and last time. Goodbye to black spells and jagged hangovers, divorces, and Fort Worth nightmares. To high school and Bob Lewis and once-upon-a-time Ricky. Goodbye to the future and the past and, most of all, to Aimee and Cassidy and all the other girls who came and went and came and went. Goodbye. Goodbye. I can’t feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic “weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now

My little brother is in rehab. My little brother is in rehab. I feel like these words are written on my arms whenever I push up my sleeves, written on my cheeks whenever they relax out of my fake smile. They want to come out of my mouth, all the time. When I am called upon in class, or when someone says, "Hey, what's up?" - that's what I want to answer. "My little brother's in rehab." But I never do.

And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would be too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends.

SIMONE: I was getting a lot of phone calls from Daisy at all hours of the day. I’d say, “Let me come get you.” And she’d refuse. I thought about trying to force her into rehab. But you can’t do that. You can’t control another person. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. You can’t love someone back to health and you can’t hate someone back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn’t mean they will change their mind. I used to rehearse speeches and interventions and consider flying to where she was and dragging her off that stage—as if, if I could just get the words right, I could convince her to get sober. You drive yourself crazy, trying to put words in some magical order that will unlock their sanity. And when it doesn’t work, you think, I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t talk to her clearly enough. But at some point, you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall and that’s all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or, maybe not that. Maybe it’s more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own, knowing they might well drown and you’ll have to watch.

When she walks in that first Monday, of course I am awake - I am always up these days - I decide to lay it down. “Look”, I say, “I snort Ritalin. That’s what I do. I snort it all day long. I crush up the pills and inhale them like cocaine. I’m up to about forty a day. I can’t stop. I am planning to get help, to check into rehab or something like that, as soon as this book is finished. In the meantime, I can’t stop, and I am not going to.” She looks at me impassively. “I don’t care what you think about it. So you have a choice. I can sit here and do it in front of you, or I can keep running into the bathroom so you don’t have to see. Either way, it’s going to happen, so it’s just about how bad it’s going to make you feel to watch.” She doesn’t seem to know what to say. She stares. I think she is going to cry. I think she wants to give me a hug, maybe, but there is an invisible cage, a delicate netting of glass, an ice sculpture surrounding me that no one can walk through. I’m cold. I’ve frozen into someone who just can’t be touched. I dare you to try.

There’s something else,” he said. “What?” “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I want you to understand why I have to do this.” “Jesus, Jolu, what?” “I hate to say it, but you’re white. I’m not. White people get caught with cocaine and do a little rehab time. Brown people get caught with crack and go to prison for twenty years. White people see cops on the street and feel safer. Brown people see cops on the street and wonder if they’re about to get searched. The way the DHS is treating you? The law in this country has always been like that for us.

Daisy says you spent your first tour cheating on your wife and dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction, possibly a heroin addiction. She says you’re in recovery now but that you missed the birth of your first daughter because you were in rehab.

A’ight, so what do you think it means?” “You don’t know?” I ask. “I know. I wanna hear what YOU think.” Here he goes. Picking my brain. “Khalil said it’s about what society feeds us as youth and how it comes back and bites them later,” I say. “I think it’s about more than youth though. I think it’s about us, period.” “Us who?” he asks. “Black people, minorities, poor people. Everybody at the bottom in society.” “The oppressed,” says Daddy. “Yeah. We’re the ones who get the short end of the stick, but we’re the ones they fear the most. That’s why the government targeted the Black Panthers, right? Because they were scared of the Panthers?” “Uh-huh,” Daddy says. “The Panthers educated and empowered the people. That tactic of empowering the oppressed goes even further back than the Panthers though. Name one.” Is he serious? He always makes me think. This one takes me a second. “The slave rebellion of 1831,” I say. “Nat Turner empowered and educated other slaves, and it led to one of the biggest slave revolts in history.” “A’ight, a’ight. You on it.” He gives me dap. “So, what’s the hate they’re giving the ‘little infants’ in today’s society?” “Racism?” “You gotta get a li’l more detailed than that. Think ’bout Khalil and his whole situation. Before he died.” “He was a drug dealer.” It hurts to say that. “And possibly a gang member.” “Why was he a drug dealer? Why are so many people in our neighborhood drug dealers?” I remember what Khalil said—he got tired of choosing between lights and food. “They need money,” I say. “And they don’t have a lot of other ways to get it.” “Right. Lack of opportunities,” Daddy says. “Corporate America don’t bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain’t quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don’t prepare us well enough. That’s why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don’t get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It’s easier to find some crack than it is to find a good school around here. “Now, think ’bout this,” he says. “How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking ’bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don’t know anybody with a private jet. Do you?” “No.” “Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community,” he says. “You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

You can’t show addicts a picture of a poo and say ‘You could crap like this if you join our rehab program.

I just think it's a cop out, going into rehab and walking out and saying 'Ah, I've been to rehab.

Still, I knew rehab was important. So I listened. I went to every class. I held hands with strangers. With suburban mummies who’d gotten addicted to prescription pills, and a preacher’s son who’d fallen into the arms of heroin, and a Russian oligarch’s daughter who, like me, had snorted pounds and pounds of cocaine to numb the feeling that the world was closing in on you from all angles. I wrote letters to my family and friends. Angry letters. Apologetic letters. Funny letters. Then I burned them all. I couldn’t write Stardust shite, though. Everything I had to say to her—every single groveling word—had to be said in person.

And believe me, I am the uncrowned queen of batshit. Last time I really got to know myself it turned out there was a whole gang of bitches in there to deal with. I felt like the receptionist at a rehab center. They all had nice tits, though, I gotta say. Anyway, forget that.

I'd often slip and fall on the ice after last call, which explained the ever-present welts. If I were with a woman, I'd usually execute a precautionary vomit in the men's room in an effort avoid any ugly incidents once I got her back to her place. And they say chivalry is dead.

On the TV screen in Harry's is The Patty Winters Show, which is now on in the afternoon and is up against Geraldo Rivera, Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. Today's topic is Does Economic Success Equal Happiness? The answer, in Harry's this afternoon, is a roar of resounding "Definitely," followed by much hooting, the guys all cheering together in a friendly way. On the screen now are scenes from President Bush's inauguration early this year, then a speech from former President Reagan, while Patty delivers a hard-to-hear commentary. Soon a tiresome debate forms over whether he's lying or not, even though we don't, can't, hear the words. The first and really only one to complain is Price, who, though I think he's bothered by something else, uses this opportunity to vent his frustration, looks inappropriately stunned, asks, "How can he lie like that? How can he pull that shit?" "Oh Christ," I moan. "What shit? Now where do we have reservations at? I mean I'm not really hungry but I would like to have reservations somewhere. How about 220?" An afterthought: "McDermott, how did that rate in the new Zagat's?" "No way," Farrell complains before Craig can answer. "The coke I scored there last time was cut with so much laxative I actually had to take a shit in M.K." "Yeah, yeah, life sucks and then you die." "Low point of the night," Farrell mutters. "Weren't you with Kyria the last time you were there?" Goodrich asks. "Wasn't that the low point?" "She caught me on call waiting. What could I do?" Farrell shrugs. "I apologize." "Caught him on call waiting." McDermott nudges me, dubious. "Shut up, McDermott," Farrell says, snapping Craig's suspenders. "Date a beggar." "You forgot something, Farrell," Preston mentions. "McDermott is a beggar." "How's Courtney?" Farrell asks Craig, leering. "Just say no." Someone laughs. Price looks away from the television screen, then at Craig, and he tries to hide his displeasure by asking me, waving at the TV, "I don't believe it. He looks so... normal. He seems so... out of it. So... un dangerous." "Bimbo, bimbo," someone says. "Bypass, bypass." "He is totally harmless, you geek. Was totally harmless. Just like you are totally harmless. But he did do all that shit and you have failed to get us into 150, so, you know, what can I say?" McDermott shrugs. "I just don't get how someone, anyone, can appear that way yet be involved in such total shit," Price says, ignoring Craig, averting his eyes from Farrell. He takes out a cigar and studies it sadly. To me it still looks like there's a smudge on Price's forehead. "Because Nancy was right behind him?" Farrell guesses, looking up from the Quotrek. "Because Nancy did it?" "How can you be so fucking, I don't know, cool about it?" Price, to whom something really eerie has obviously happened, sounds genuinely perplexed. Rumor has it that he was in rehab.

…On the wall of my room when I was in rehab was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off, autographed by every astronaut now at NASA. On top of the picture it says, “We found nothing is impossible.” That should be our motto. Not a Democratic motto, not a Republican motto, but an American motto. Because this is not something one party can do alone. It’s something we as a nation must do together. So many of our dreams at first seem impossible. Then they seem improbable. And then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.…

Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community,” he says. “You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

Now, think ’bout this,” he says. “How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking ’bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don’t know anybody with a private jet. Do you?” “No.” “Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community,” he says. “You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

Or when you keep a sex-addiction meeting under surveillance because they’re the best places to pick up chicks.” Serge looked around the room at suspicious eyes. “Okay, maybe that last one’s just me. But you should try it. They keep the men’s and women’s meetings separate for obvious reasons. And there are so many more opportunities today because the whole country’s wallowing in this whiny new sex-rehab craze after some golfer diddled every pancake waitress on the seaboard. That’s not a disease; that’s cheating. He should have been sent to confession or marriage counseling after his wife finished chasing him around Orlando with a pitching wedge. But today, the nation is into humiliation, tearing down a lifetime of achievement by labeling some guy a damaged little dick weasel. The upside is the meetings. So what you do is wait on the sidewalk for the women to get out, pretending like you’re loitering. And because of the nature of the sessions they just left, there’s no need for idle chatter or lame pickup lines. You get right to business: ‘What’s your hang-up?’ And she answers, and you say, ‘What a coincidence. Me, too.’ Then, hang on to your hat! It’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. Most people are aware of the obvious, like foot fetish or leather. But there are more than five hundred lesser-known but clinically documented paraphilia that make no sexual sense. Those are my favorites . . .” Serge began counting off on his fingers. “This one woman had Ursusagalmatophilia, which meant she got off on teddy bears—that was easily my weirdest three-way. And nasophilia, which meant she was completely into my nose, and she phoned a friend with mucophilia, which is mucus. The details on that one are a little disgusting. And formicophilia, which is being crawled on by insects, so the babe bought an ant farm. And symphorophilia—that’s staging car accidents, which means you have to time the air bags perfectly

KNEE SURGERY I’D FIRST HURT MY KNEES IN FALLUJAH WHEN THE WALL FELL on me. Cortisone shots helped for a while, but the pain kept coming back and getting worse. The docs told me I needed to have my legs operated on, but doing that would have meant I would have to take time off and miss the war. So I kept putting it off. I settled into a routine where I’d go to the doc, get a shot, go back to work. The time between shots became shorter and shorter. It got down to every two months, then every month. I made it through Ramadi, but just barely. My knees started locking and it was difficult to get down the stairs. I no longer had a choice, so, soon after I got home in 2007, I went under the knife. The surgeons cut my tendons to relieve pressure so my kneecaps would slide back over. They had to shave down my kneecaps because I had worn grooves in them. They injected synthetic cartilage material and shaved the meniscus. Somewhere along the way they also repaired an ACL. I was like a racing car, being repaired from the ground up. When they were done, they sent me to see Jason, a physical therapist who specializes in working with SEALs. He’d been a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After 9/11, he decided to devote himself to helping the country. He chose to do that by working with the military. He took a massive pay cut to help put us back together. I DIDN’T KNOW ALL THAT THE FIRST DAY WE MET. ALL I WANTED to hear was how long it was going to take to rehab. He gave me a pensive look. “This surgery—civilians need a year to get back,” he said finally. “Football players, they’re out eight months. SEALs—it’s hard to say. You hate being out of action and will punish yourselves to get back.” He finally predicted six months. I think we did it in five. But I thought I would surely die along the way. JASON PUT ME INTO A MACHINE THAT WOULD STRETCH MY knee. Every day I had to see how much further I could adjust it. I would sweat up a storm as it bent my knee. I finally got it to ninety degrees. “That’s outstanding,” he told me. “Now get more.” “More?” “More!” He also had a machine that sent a shock to my muscle through electrodes. Depending on the muscle, I would have to stretch and point my toes up and down. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is clearly a form of torture that should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, even for use on SEALs. Naturally, Jason kept upping the voltage. But the worst of all was the simplest: the exercise. I had to do more, more, more. I remember calling Taya many times and telling her I was sure I was going to puke if not die before the day was out. She seemed sympathetic but, come to think of it in retrospect, she and Jason may have been in on it together. There was a stretch where Jason had me doing crazy amounts of ab exercises and other things to my core muscles. “Do you understand it’s my knees that were operated on?” I asked him one day when I thought I’d reached my limit. He just laughed. He had a scientific explanation about how everything in the body depends on strong core muscles, but I think he just liked kicking my ass around the gym. I swear I heard a bullwhip crack over my head any time I started to slack. I always thought the best shape I was ever in was straight out of BUD/S. But I was in far better shape after spending five months with him. Not only were my knees okay, the rest of me was in top condition. When I came back to my platoon, they all asked if I had been taking steroids.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

My favorite of all my therapies is speech therapy. It’s the only one I really look forward to. My speech therapy sessions with Amy are usually held in my room. We sit by the window, me in my wheelchair, Amy in a regular chair, with a rolling table between us. Every day, we start our session with the same set of questions. “Where are we, Charly?” Amy asks me. “We’re in a rehab hospital,” I reply. Amy smiles. “Very good. And what’s the date?” “March sixth,” I say.

The seventies were crazy everywhere, but crazier in Los Angeles. It was the era of freewheeling drugs and sex, the rag end of the sixties. I refer to sprees, to strange couplings and triplings, to nights that started with beer and wine and ended with cocaine and capsules, to debaucheries too various to chronicle. In a sense, we were all Robert Mitchum, smoking rope in bed with two girls while the sun was still noon high. We thought it was normal. You would walk into a house for a pool party, and there, on the cocktail table in the center of the living room, as if it were nuts or cooked shrimp, would be a platter of cocaine. We did it because we were stupid, because we did not know the danger. When I talk about my drug years, I am talking about twenty-four months in the middle of the seventies. I was in the rock and roll world, which meant I was around the stuff all the time. Of course, it was more than mere proximity. I was fun when I was high, talkative and all-encompassing. I could go forever, never be done talking. To some extent, I was really self-medicating, using the drugs to skate over issues in my own life. The fact is, money and success had come so fast, while I was away doing something else, not paying attention, that, when I finally realized where I was and just what I had, I could not understand it. There was this voice in my head, saying, Who do you think you are? What do you think you did? You are a fraud! You don’t deserve any of this! I tortured myself, and let the anxiety well up, then beat back the anxiety with the drugs, on and on, until one day, I stood up and said, “Screw it. That’s over. I’m done.” No rehab, no counseling, nothing like that. Just a moment of clarity, in which I saw myself from the outside, the mess I was making, the waste. I was slipping, not working as hard as I used to. I started leaving the office early on Fridays, then skipping Fridays altogether. Then I started leaving early on Thursdays, then arriving late on Mondays. I was letting myself go. Then one day, I just decided, It has to stop. I threw away the pills and bottles, took a cold shower, had a barbershop shave, and stepped into the cool of Sunset Boulevard, and began fresh. Maybe it had to do with my family situation. I was a father again.

What kind of rehab is this? I can’t share a room with a man.” Jericho narrows his eyes at me but waves me off. “You signed off on it, Coldfox. We pair you up with a roommate ideal for your treatment plan. I know this seems odd, but our rehab has among the highest recovery rate. Like I mentioned before, we’re unorthodox. And didn’t you say you enjoyed sex earlier? Well, here you go. Liam Waters,” he says sarcastically.

With that, I follow my little chem partner out of the room and down the hall. “Stop following me,” she snaps, looking over her shoulder to check how many people are watching us walk down the hall together. As if I’m el diablo himself. “Wear long sleeves on Saturday night,” I tell her, knowing full well she’s reaching the end of her sanity rope. I usually don’t try to get under the skin of white chicks, but this one is fun to rattle. This one, the most popular and coveted one of all, actually cares. “It gets pretty cold on the back of my motorcycle.” “Listen, Alex,” she says, whipping herself around and tossing that sun-kissed hair over her shoulder. She faces me with clear eyes made of ice. “I don’t date guys in gangs, and I don’t use drugs.” “I don’t date guys in gangs, either,” I say, stepping closer to her. “And I’m no user.” “Yeah, right. I’m surprised you’re not in rehab or juvie boot camp.” “You think you know me?” “I know enough.” She folds her arms across her chest, but then looks down as if she realizes her stance makes her chichis stand out, and drops her hands to her sides. I’m doing my best not to focus on those chichis as I take a step forward. “Did you report me to Aguirre?” She takes a step back. “What if I did?” “Mujer, you’re afraid of me.” It’s not a question. I just want to hear from her own lips what her reason is. “Most people at this school are scared that if they look at you wrong, you’ll gun them down.” “Then my gun should be smokin’ by now, shouldn’t it? Why aren’t you runnin’ away from the badass Mexicano, huh?” “Give me half a chance, I will.” I’ve had enough of dancing around this little bitch. It’s time to fluff up those feathers to make sure I end up with the upper hand. I close the distance between us and whisper in her ear, “Face the facts. Your life is too perfect. You probably lie awake at night, fantasizing about spicin’ up all that lily whiteness you live in.” But damn it, I get a whiff of vanilla from her perfume or lotion. It reminds me of cookies. I love cookies, so this is not good at all. “Gettin’ near the fire, chica, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get burned.

Back in those days I was stoned almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The difference today is that there is nothing you or anyone else could say to persuade me to inhale enough even to fill a flea’s lung with cannabis. It’s actually impossible to measure how fantastic I feel.

Reaching out, he took her hand. “We’re going to be ready. Whether it’s tonight, tomorrow or the next day . . . we’ll be prepared. I won’t let anyone hurt you or the kids.” Relief flickered across her face. “This isn’t your fight. I feel guilty for making it seem like it is. But I’m also glad you’re here and that makes me feel guilty again, so . . . ” “Guilt’s a useless emotion.” He made peace with that much in rehab. It was useless to feel guilty that he’d made it home alive from Pakistan when some of his team mates hadn’t been so lucky. Equally worthless was his guilt over his sense of loss about his leg when Colton hadn’t come home at all. “You need the kind of help I can provide. And I don’t mind helping. I’ve always . . . ” Liked you, is what he meant to say. Maybe cared a little. But his throat stopped working and the words remained trapped in his brain. Which had become strangely disconnected with logic. Because instead of saying more, he leaned in slightly and kissed her.

A few weeks after my injury, when I was in the rehab center, I found someone willing to travel to the center to give me a massage. Partway through, she suggested trying something called Reiki. This is where instead of touching you, the masseuse waves their hands through the air over you to “adjust your energy fields.” You can probably tell by the way that I describe this that I think this is a bunch of BS. Does it work for some people? Of course it does. The placebo effect can work with any type of treatment or medication by providing someone with an improvement if and when they expect to get one. The nice doctor in the white lab coat gives you some pills and says, “Take two of these each morning, and your pain should feel much better.” The medication that the doctor gives you could be nothing more than sugar pills. Still, if you really believe that you’ll benefit from it, your brain finds a way to make at least some improvement come true. In double-blind studies, it’s been proven that the placebo effect can provide as much as a 32 percent improvement. Because of this, for new drugs to be approved in the US, they need to test at a level that’s higher than the 32 percent placebo level of improvement. So, if I’d believed in Reiki, then I may have experienced some benefit from it, but I don’t, so I didn’t get anything out of the treatment. That said, I think it’s interesting that when dealing with chronic pain, the temptation is to try almost anything, no matter how crazy it sounds. The hope is that maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to get some relief from your ongoing pain.

If we make sure the ROI we make on our money is higher than the interest rate we are paying to borrow the money, we come out on top. For example, let’s say we invest that $30,000 at the same return we received in the last deal (15 percent). A 15 percent return on $30,000 would be $375 a month. $30,000 x .15 = $4,500 $4,500 / 12 (# of months in a year) = $375

Now, the blond girl tilts her head at us. “We’ve heard all about you.” She stops there, but the tone of her voice says: And when I say all, I mean the one-night-stand father, the failed acting career, the jewelry store accident, the rehab. All of it. It’s kind of impressive, how much subtext she manages to pack into one tiny word. “I’m Katrin Nilsson. I guess you’ve met Brooke, and this is Viv.” She points to the red-haired girl on her left. I should have known. I’ve heard the Nilsson name constantly since I got to Echo Ridge, and this girl has town royalty written all over her. She’s not as pretty as Brooke, but somehow she’s much more striking, with crystal-blue eyes that remind me of a Siamese cat’s. We all murmur hellos, and it feels like some sort of uncomfortable audition. Probably because of the assessing look Katrin keeps giving Ezra and me, as though she’s weighing whether we’re worth her continued time and attention. Most of the hallway is only pretending to be busy with their lockers while they wait for her verdict. Then the bell rings, and she smiles. “Come find us at lunch. We sit at the back table next to the biggest window.” She turns away without waiting for an answer, blond hair sweeping across her shoulders. Ezra watches them leave with a bemused expression, then turns to me. “I have a really strong feeling that on Wednesdays, they wear pink.

Can there be any positives for an addicted child? It’s hard to believe that there could be. But there’s a lot to be learned from a drug addict or alcoholic. The experience of being a drug addict or alcoholic can definitely serve humankind. As it turns out, some of the only people qualified to call themselves authorities on the subject of substance abuse are former substance abusers themselves. Only the former addict can tell you how the mind of a drug addict works. That’s because he or she has been there. And we haven’t. Nor have many of the so-called expert psychologists and counselors. As in any trade, it’s best to have some degree of education. Former addicts got their education from the substances they abused. As the escalation of drug-use hits an all time high worldwide, there will be an increasing need for these former addicts who’ve actually been “in the field” and can counsel the steady flow of younger addicts. Counselors who have been addicts are usually better able to detect the manipulations or scams devised so cleverly by practicing addicts. As these counselors will testify, they probably know every move an addict is making or is planning to make. Didn’t they do the same? So perhaps there is a positive to your child being an addict. Perhaps your child is being trained to counsel others. Maybe the streets and the alleys are his or her classroom. On staff at practically every rehab in every city across this country, there will be at least several people who’ve gained an education living the life of a junkie or a drunk. These are invaluable personnel, people who’ve walked into the darkness and have walked out again. Could be this is where your addicted child is headed? How about you? Can you help others? There are many child-psychology experts out there making valuable contributions to our culture. But unless they’ve taken the same roller-coaster ride that the parent of an addict has taken, they can’t speak from experience on this topic. Experience doesn’t always count for everything. But once the parent of an addict has passed a certain stage, the “letting-go stage,” he or she can relate to other parents in trouble and offer help. After all, who knows better the pain and sorrow of seeing a child in such distress than the parent? It’s not that I don’t have the greatest respect for professionals or feel that there isn’t a huge need for them: It’s just that there’s a big difference in “living it” and “learning it.” Not long ago, I attended a three-hour seminar given by a noted child psychologist. His subject was how to deal with teenagers so that they wouldn’t fall into the clutches of drugs and alcohol. I was curious about his methods—which consist mainly of “talking” to young addicts and “talking’ to them some more. Then he mentioned that his own children were two and three years old. Listening to him, I wondered just how much his methods in dealing with young people would change over the years, especially after his children reached puberty. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say in a decade or two.

I’ve read his book. I know he says the problem’s me and professes to be bemused by my antipathy towards him, and it’s true that I came out of rehab without that safety valve of drink and drugs, no ‘off’ button. I was more assertive than before. But he was behaving like the life of a rock star was the worst kind of life there was, and in my opinion he was taking it out on the group, the management, the technicians, and now the audience, and there was one person – one, me – who wasn’t prepared to let him get away with it.

Daredevils aren't the answer; spinal rehab wards are full of daredevils. Fearlessness doesn't really help, either: when your car breaks down, you don't want the mechanic to say, 'I've never done this before, but I'm willing to die trying.' What you want to hear is 'Don't worry. This is right up my alley.' Heroism isn't some mysterious inner virtue, the Greeks believed; it's a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can become a Protector.

In constraint-induced movement therapy, stroke patients wear a sling on their good arm for approximately 90 percent of waking hours for fourteen straight days. On ten of those days, they receive six hours of therapy, using their seemingly useless arm: they eat lunch, throw a ball, play dominoes or cards or Chinese checkers, write, push a broom, and use standard rehab equipment called dexterity boards. “It is fairly contrary to what is typically done with stroke patients,” says Taub, “which is to do some rehabilitation with the affected arm and then, after three or four months, train the unaffected arm to do the work of both arms.” Instead, for an intense six hours daily, the patient works closely with therapists to master basic but crucial movements with the affected arm. Sitting across a pegboard from the rehab specialist, for instance, the patient grasps a peg and labors to put it into a hole. It is excruciating to watch, the patient struggling with an arm that seems deaf to the brain’s commands to extend far enough to pick up the peg; to hold it tightly enough to keep it from falling back; to retract toward the target hole; and to aim precisely enough to get the peg in. The therapist offers encouragement at every step, tailoring the task to make it more attainable if a patient is failing, then more challenging once the patient makes progress. The reward for inserting a peg is, of course, doing it again—and again and again. If the patient cannot perform a movement at first, the therapist literally takes him by the hand, guiding the arm to the peg, to the hole—and always offering verbal kudos and encouragement for the slightest achievement. Taub explicitly told the patients, all of whose strokes were a year or more in the past, that they had the capacity for much greater use of their arm than they thought. He moved it for them and told them over and over that they would soon do the same. In just two weeks of constraint-induced movement therapy with training of the affected arm, Taub reported in 1993, patients regained significant use of a limb they thought would forever hang uselessly at their side. The patients outperformed control patients on such motor tasks as donning a sweater, unscrewing a jar cap, and picking up a bean on a spoon and lifting it to the mouth. The number of daily-living activities they could carry out one month after the start of therapy soared 97 percent. That was encouraging enough. Even more tantalizing was that these were patients who had long passed the period when the conventional rehab wisdom held that maximal recovery takes place. That, in fact, was why Taub chose to work with chronic stroke patients in the first place. According to the textbooks, whatever function a patient has regained one year after stroke is all he ever will: his range of motion will not improve for the rest of his life.

Yes. Fell in love with JB Peterson. Fell in love. You know, that manly kind of love. Bromance. He kinda looks like Jeremy Irons. And he says he liked to drink a lot, at least a few decades ago. And he even says the right words, too. He says, tell the truth, listen to your conscience, face your fears. He says he HAS a conscience. But follow through? No. Not much follow through. He starts talking shit about Marxists, and then a real academic wants to debate him, and what does he do? What does Peterson do? He goes back to his fucking Pinocchio cartoons and talking shit about Marxists with some dumb cunt in Madrid instead of facing the dude (Wolff) in Idaho. My heart is broken. Another fucking coward. Reminds me of my daddy. And now this dumb cunt (Peterson) is in a Russian rehab. Hopefully they’ll talk some sense into him there. I could probably debate him in my sleep, and possibly drunk, simultaneously. Grow up, buddy. And stop doing drugs.

There is no addiction stronger than the addiction of a person... No rehab works...!

How are you feeling?' [Rae, rehab therapist] asks. … I tell her about how reading [my letter] in front of people upset me. That I'm realizing I don't like to feel things, don't want to feel pain or fear. … I tell her my most recent observation of rehab, in terms of how it works. How it sort of sneaks up on you. They way somebody will say some dumb affirmation and then later in group, somebody will say, 'I didn't buy that affirmation you said at all,' and there will be a heated argument and somebody will be reduced to tears. And how all of this will bring something up inside of you, wake something up. And you have some insight you wouldn't have had otherwise. It's very odd and nonlinear and organic. And yet it's real.

And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends. p 85

I  am  a  woman  who  can  say  I  am  enough  and  I  am worthy.  I  found  myself  by  helping  others  in  the  midst of  my  own  pain.  We  can  only  give  ourselves  over  to Him  without  borders,  and  without  holding  back,  just like  I  am  each  day  asking  Him  for  direction  and  for strength.  When  I  look  at  the  women  in  the  Bible, Tamar  seduced  her  husband’s  father  and  got pregnant  with  his  child,  Rehab  was  a  prostitute, Bathsheba  cheated  on  her  husband  and  had  a child  by  David  and  Mary  Magdalene  was  an adulterous  woman,  yet  Jesus  looked  into  their  souls and  gave  them  a  powerful  story,  that  still  today can  be  an  example  to  us  all.  

I fucking went to rehab for us,” he says, his voice shaking. “So I could love you right.

But Mom saw enough. She lived in fear of losing custody, and gave her all in rehab. I came out, Mom went in, and gave it a hundred percent. Gave and gave again over the years, getting to be an expert at rehab, like they say. Having done it so many times.

In the final image, he is sitting atop the horse. We have not witnessed a victory or a conquering, but a love scene, a man who knows innately how connection happens, how we traverse emotional distance, how we calm one another's fears. Similarly, toward the end of the film, Brady goes to visit Lane. He is wearing his cowboy hat, green rodeo shirt, jeans, and a bandanna tied around his neck as if he's ready to go riding. With the help of the nurses at the rehab facility, he dresses Lane in boots, jeans, and his old maroon-striped rodeo shirt. Brady puts Lane's cowboy hat atop his head: "We don't want you to get a sunburn," he says. With great difficulty, they ease Lane over a saddle propped up on parallel bars. Brady holds the reins as if he is the horse and takes Lane riding again. "You're loping off into the distance," he says as Lane struggles to stay upright. Lane's head falls and Brady cajoles it back up with the patience of a parent teaching a child to ride a bike. Together they are in a rehab facility loping, smiling, tilting, riding, Brady talking softly, lovingly. Brady's man talk soothes me. I have been the horse and I have been Lane, broken through a transition, learning to allow my body to feel pressure, to be cajoled to walk two steps forward, to trust someone enough to help me imagine what it would be like to lope along in my cowboy hat protecting me from sunburn, to learn what it means to talk like a man.

Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting. The marvel is only partly that somehow you lured them into your web twenty years ago, forty years ago, and they totally stuck with you. The more astonishing thing is that these people feel the same way about you -- horrible, grim, self-obsessed you. They say [...] that a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly things he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships.

Silkworth, a supporter of AA from its inception, was quoted [as saying], "We all know that the alcoholic has an urge to share his troubles. . . . But the psychoanalyst, being of human clay, is not often a big enough man for that job. The patient simply cannot generate enough confidence in him. But the patient can have enough confidence in God—once he has gone through the mystical experience of recognizing God. And upon that principle the Alcoholic Foundation rests. The medical profession, in general, accepts the principle as sound.

Human research tends to cleave into two major “kingdoms”: observational studies and controlled studies. Observational studies observe and compare groups of people. This research is conducted passively; in other words, without interventions or controls. Any significant differences that emerge between the populations studied—say, finding that people who drink more diet soda tend to have a higher incidence of depression than people who don’t—can’t prove anything but may be used to generate hypotheses about what is causing this difference. Yet people still assume the obvious when confronted with a correlation of this sort. In the diet soda study, which was actually run by the National Institute of Health and widely reported, many people jumped to the conclusion that depression must be caused by something in the soda. But a moment of creative consideration turns up several other plausible possibilities. What if the people who drink diet soda are simply more judgmental about their body appearance and generally more prone to self-criticism? What if, since drinking more diet soda correlates with a history of being overweight, the depression arises physiologically from the effects of obesity, or as a result of the cluster of health problems that go along with it, such as obstructive sleep apnea and diabetes? What if people who are depressed simply crave sweet things, as evidence suggests? And what of the fact that diet soda drinkers tend to cluster more in urban areas: is there something about this environment that promotes depression? Strong correlation is tantalizing, a just-so homily that satisfies our need for simple explanations. It feels definitive and self-apparent, especially given the huge number of subjects typically involved in such studies. The NIH study that produced the diet soda finding, for instance, had 260,000 subjects. Headlines are driven and public health advice administered whenever a major observational study unearths a provocative new correlation. But it turns out that the record of observational studies like these for generating accurate medical advice is, in a word, abysmal.

Why do large observational studies such as that of Fiorentine and Moos seem to suggest that AA is effective, while smaller controlled studies like those of the Brandsma, Walsh, and others included in the Cochrane Review do not? The likely explanation is simple: people stay in AA if they’re getting better and leave if they aren’t. This is understandable. If you are able to stop drinking, then continuing to attend AA is a comfortable and affirming choice. If you struggle with drinking and can’t make use of the AA approach, then you are less likely to keep attending. Over the long term, the people who remain in AA are, by definition, the success stories. But they represent a very small slice of the people who start there; as we will see shortly, the dropout rate from AA is extremely high. These facts—that AA works for the diehards and fails for the dropouts—are perennially misunderstood by the press and even by some researchers. Proponents of the program proudly point to the fact that people who stay in AA tend to be sober, ignoring the tautological nature of this claim. Reviewing this logic, Harvard biostatistics professor Richard Gelber said, “The main problem is the self-fulfilling prophesy: the longer people stick with AA the better they are, hence AA must be working. It is like saying the longer you live, the older you will be when you die.” As we will soon see, this fundamental error in logic undergirds nearly every claim of AA’s efficacy.

Disease is usually a binary system: either you’ve got it or you don’t. Pneumonia: got it or you don’t. HIV: got it or you don’t. Multiple sclerosis, polio, emphysema—all of these are yes-or-no propositions. But alcoholism is not, in fact, a disease: it is a behavior, or perhaps a collection of behaviors. And because nobody can say for sure whether a behavior has ever been eliminated for good without a crystal ball, we must first establish a baseline definition of what success looks like in the treatment of addiction. I’ll propose this simple definition: A treatment for alcoholism may be called successful if an individual no longer drinks in a way that is harmful in his or her life.

[Bill] Wilson himself said twenty years following his conversion that he “wanted every alcoholic to be able to say, as he could, that their belief in God was ‘no longer a question of faith’ but ‘the certainty of knowledge [gained] through evidence.

I remember once listening to Rayya counsel a friend whose younger brother was lost in heroin addiction. This woman kept trying to save her beloved sibling by paying for one rehab after another, by trying to get him jobs, by bailing him out of jail, by letting him borrow her car, sleep on her couch, exploit her financially, use her soft heart as a landing pad. She was wrung out by years of heartbreak. I remember Rayya reaching across the kitchen table for this exhausted woman’s hand and saying, “Listen, babe. Let me break it down for you—you don’t have a brother anymore. He’s already gone. You need to understand this. There is no more brother, okay? What you have now is a vampire. I know it’s confusing, because this guy looks like your brother, and he sounds like your brother, but it’s a vampire. And that vampire will drain you of every dime and possession you have, and then he will discard you once there’s nothing left to take. And trust me—that vampire doesn’t give a shit about you. So you better start giving a shit about you, or else you’re gonna wake up one morning and discover that everything in your life is gone, including him.” “But he could die if I cut him off!” the woman protested. “Your brother is already dead,” Rayya told her. “And you might need to grieve that. But the only question now is whether he will ever decide to come back to life. That’s a matter between him and God. It’s got nothing to do with you.” I also heard her tell somebody once, “You can love an active addict for sure—but they can’t love you back.

Archer’s gaze landed on his leg, which was propped up in its horrible cast. “And this?” he asked, his voice cracking. Mrs. Rainn and Mr. Jamison exchanged a glance. I wondered if they’d planned how they were going to tell him about all of this. “It seems like during the fall, you landed awkwardly on your leg, which caused a bad break,” Mrs. Rainn said gently. “It’s going to take some time to heal.” Archer’s hands trembled as he reached out to touch his cast, his fingers tracing the hard exterior as if trying to understand the reality of all of this. “The doctors say that with rest and rehab, you’ll get your strength back and be able to walk normally again,” his mom continued. Archer dropped back again, letting his arms fall to his sides and looked at his mom with wide eyes. “And hockey?” Mrs. Rainn bit her lip. “I’m not sure yet. We’ll have to see how it heals.” “But if I take the season off—” He broke off and shook his head. It was the closest I ever saw to him crying. “I only have a year left in high school. I can’t… ” “We’re going to get through this,” Mrs. Rainn said, her voice firm but comforting. “It’ll work out in the end, okay? You’ll see.” I had a feeling Archer wouldn’t want me to see him cry so as the tears started to flow down his face, I slipped quietly outside the room. Then, I walked to the bathroom as fast as I could and let the tears fall down my own face too. What’s a life without hockey? Archer had said to me once. Not one I want to live.