For Thursday, January 8, 1998 Drummer column, Gibbs, 718 words

Turning leaves

I spent the last week with a childhood friend I haven't seen in 20 years. He's healthy and alive. This is good because as a teen-ager he had a major problem with drugs and alcohol.

I was so happy to see him, I will refer to him, today only, as Mr. Happy.

Today, Mr. Happy is married, clean and sober for 18 years, a vegetarian, chronic jogger and bicyclist. He's also a high school English teacher in Florida. He's fit and strong and full of stories on what went wrong and right in his life.

Hap and his wife, Mrs. Cynthia Happy, spent several days with Susan and me at our Lake Tahoe cabin. We had a lot of fireside chats. He told surprising stories about my hometown. He told me how he turned his life around.

As a teen, Hap was an indulgent wild man. He took everything to the extreme, including a rainbow of pills and gallons of juice. As he put it, "I never knew what it was like to enjoy a fine glass of wine or a premium beer. I was never interested in savoring a light buzz. I was interested only in getting completely hammered."

I watched Hap go, in a few short years, from a normal, highly intelligent, high-spirited young man to a ghost who couldn't focus on my face or complete a sentence. My last memory of him was sitting under a bridge in Ridgway before I left for California. He talked to me for an hour and never completed a thought. I remember thinking, "This boy is wasted long term. Rambling talk like this doesn't come from a one-day stupor."

When he called me from Florida two weeks ago and said he was coming for a visit, he reminded me, "You know, Gibbo, I'm lucky to be alive. You moved away before I hit rock bottom."

"I remember you were pretty close to bottom when I left."

He laughed. Apparently, I had no idea. It took eight more years of drugs and drinking before he completely unraveled.

The turning point came when his mother forced him into a de-tox clinic. Being of age, he sobered up and signed himself out. She sent him in again. Again he signed himself out. The last time, she threatened to do all she could to have him committed to a psychiatric asylum if he didn't finish the 28-day de-tox program.

Reluctantly, he agreed. Then began a series of grand mal seizures and horrible withdrawal pains. When he felt well enough to attend therapy sessions, Hap met a therapist who influenced him deeply. The therapist showed empathy and understanding of Hap's addictive personality. He helped Hap see the dangerous traits that drove him to addiction, and showed him how to combat them. Hap took an absolute decision at that point to come clean, for good.

He spent the next several years attending NA and AA meetings. At first he went every day, then every week, then monthly. "I quit going altogether when most of the people at my center became addicted to God. It wasn't their faith that chased me out," said Hap, "but their anger at me for not sharing in it."

In the meantime, Hap got first a Bachelors Degree, then his Masters in English. He became a lover of Steinbeck and Native American history. He bought me a book called "Rabbit Boss" about the Washo Indians.

As a kid I remember that Hap was part of a clique who took a lot of drugs. They would sneak off to their own special parties most every night. I asked Hap, just last week, where he got all those drugs back in the early '70s. His answer surprised me.

"From doctors," he said. "We all got prescriptions. My doctor gave me diet pills." Hap was a beanpole. "Another friend got narcotics for a football injury. Someone's mom had tranquilizers and sleeping pills. We had doctors in several towns writing 'scripts.'" The news stunned me like a scene cut from the movie "Blue Velvet." It offered a disturbing new glimpse at the underbelly of my little town.

Then our time was up. We said good-bye to Hap, grizzled as a war veteran, insightful as a Buddha, happy as a man.