By Connor Catlett
Day 8, 8:00 AM
Eight days sober, I am on my way to 12 Keys Treatment Center. It’s my first day without any detox meds or alcohol. I feel so much better physically—waking up without a hangover is a wondrous thing. But I am beginning to feel my emotions. Today, I’m living in fear, as I’m back outside in the real world, albeit very briefly. The drive from detox to 12 Keys is about an hour. I tell the driver not to stop at any gas station. I don’t trust myself not to buy any beer.
I’m warmly greeted by upwards of five staff members in a cool, ornate building. I am told that I will meet my therapist later this afternoon, and that I will be able to move into my cabin this morning before lunch. In the meantime, I am plied with snacks and told to go to my first group in a room down the hall. I walk down the dark hall into the small room. There are eight people sitting in a circle of cushioned black chairs—some old, some young, some women, some men. The facilitator, an older man with silver-framed glasses, pauses the group to welcome me.
“Hello, there! Welcome! What’s your name?” He gestures toward the empty seat.
“Hey everybody. My name’s Liam, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Glad you’re here, Liam.” The nameless faces smile at me and nod.
“We’re just talking about the first step—how we knew we were powerless over our drug of choice and that our lives had become unmanageable. Feel free to jump in whenever or just listen,” the facilitator says.
“Julie. Alcoholic.” A woman in her late-fifties speaks up. She has long, gray hair, and looks like an older Alanis Morissette. Her hat is pulled down low over her face. She speaks with a resigned tone. “This is my second time at 12 Keys. I first came here exactly ten years ago yesterday. I stayed sober for five years, and now I’ve been back out for the past five years. I can’t control my drinking. I’m completely powerless when it comes to alcohol. Everything just turns to shit when I drink. Right before I came here, I totaled my brand new Camaro drunk. Oh, and now I’m just about bankrupt. I’ve blacked out more times than I could possibly remember. I’ve blacked out and woken up in a different state than I was in when I started drinking.” She keeps sharing unapologetically. “One time when I was drunk, I pushed an entire 20-gallon aquarium over onto my ex-husband.” The room roars with laughter. I am astounded, but I’m laughing myself. “Another time, I was fucked up at my friend’s wedding. I was smoking a cigarette and didn’t see an ashtray, so I decided to put it out right in their wedding cake.” An eruption of raucous laughter echoes all the way down the dark hallway.
“Damn, Julie, you’re a savage,” a young man to her left shouts above the laughter.
“Thanks for sharing, Julie,” the facilitator adds between laughs.
A sudden urge to share grips me. “My name’s Liam, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hey, Liam!”
“Kind of like Julie was sharing, I’m realizing that my drinking was not normal at all. It was never normal. One time, I was hammered in the back of my buddy’s truck. This is about to sound real redneck,” I chuckle to myself. “We were all drunk, and he started doing donuts in the field. The guy sitting next to me in the backseat handed me something and said it was a handle of vodka. He told me to take a pull. I was so fucked up that I didn’t realize he had handed me a gas can that was full of diesel fuel. I took a slug and swallowed it. All I remember from the rest of that night was making myself puke and the taste of gas in my mouth. It was still there the next morning. I’m just glad I didn’t light a cigarette after doing that.” Everybody laughs again, but it is more subdued, uncertain.
The meeting continues at this pace, and I hear a little bit of myself in everyone’s share. When we migrate to the porch in the hot Florida sun to smoke, I feel light on my feet. I realize that I haven’t laughed like that in years. It stays stuck on me like a sweaty cotton shirt.
After another group about anger management, all eight of us hop in a white van. Randy, the facilitator, drives us to where we sleep. He tells me that the place we are going used to be a pineapple farm. When we arrive in a gravel parking lot, the van kicking up dust, Randy leads me to my cabin in the woods. We climb a wooden flight of stairs and cross a deck to reach the cabin’s sliding glass door. My bags are lying neatly inside. He gives me privacy as I try to get my bearings. It is cool inside the cabin, contrasting with the suffocating humidity on the deck. The cabin feels secluded and private; I hope I won’t have much time to sit by myself in here and brood. After grabbing my notebook and copy of East of Eden, I head down to the communal building where the kitchen is. Everyone is hanging out and smoking on an enclosed screen porch. From there, you can see the water of the Intracoastal Waterway. It lies wrinkled, still, and shining under the bright sun.
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Day 10, 6:30 AM
“Rise and shine! Time to shit, shower, and shave!” Chaz’s voice booms into my cabin and scares the shit out of me. I’m awake, now, that’s for sure. Chaz is a buff Army veteran who did two tours in Iraq, and he has the loudest voice and most distinct laugh I’ve ever heard. He is also from East Tennessee, and we realize that he and my dad know someone in common. He has taken a liking to me for some reason, even though we have nothing in common besides our love of alcohol.
For the last two mornings, he has woken me up—very abruptly, I might add—at this time for the gym. We leave as the sun is rising over the ocean. I always make sure to smoke my first cigarette of the day before the van leaves. I haven’t been able to do much at the gym because I am so out of shape, but that doesn’t stop Chaz from barking orders at all of us. I said I would try CrossFit with him. I used to be a pretty good runner and basketball player, after all. I always leave drenched in sweat and with my mind clear.
Another man, a bit younger than Chaz, also joins us every morning to work out. His name is Worth, and he only has one leg. He wears a prosthetic, and I can always tell when his phantom pain is acting up—he gets quieter than usual. He is a criminal defense attorney from Eastern North Carolina. He is probably the most quick-witted person I have ever met. We make fun of each other all day. He reminds me of the best of my dad. His drugs of choice were GHB (which he would order off the dark web), Xanax, and cocaine. He was brought here after an overdose. He skips group often, only sharing to deploy his dry sense of humor. For example, when I played “Racing in the Street” during music therapy, he told me that the song made him “suicidal.” He also called me a socialist and said, “if you’re smart, you’ll become a Republican when you grow up.” He doesn’t share much about himself, though. Something tells me that doesn’t bode well for his recovery.
When he was in law school, he was helping an elderly couple change a tire on the side of the road when he was hit by a drunk driver. The car dragged him for a long while, his leg nearly completely taken off. Finally, the car stopped, and the woman got out and looked at what she had done. She drove off, leaving him there to suffer for hours before a trooper happened by and called an ambulance. He barely survived. Still, he defends people’s rights under the law. Still, he understands this disease of addiction that we all suffer from.
On the way back from the gym, I’m stuck way in the last row of the van next to big ole Chaz. His BO is potent. The ocean glistens in the sun as we cruise down the highway that runs parallel to the beach. Usually, I would be claustrophobic in the back of a van like this, but I’m beginning to realize that I feel safe here. I feel like I belong. These people in this van with me understand me more than people that have known me my whole life. And that is freeing. A peace blankets me in this van like a tight hug from a long-lost friend. I close my eyes—not to pass out, not to escape—to fall into a restful doze.
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Day 12, 9:32 AM
Today is Sunday, and this is my first weekend at 12 Keys. Worth had warned me about weekends in treatment, and he wasn’t wrong. There is far less going on, and the regular staff is not here. The boredom is killing me, and I’m beginning to feel incredibly restless; I want to run a thousand miles, smoke a thousand cigarettes, love a thousand women. I also want to drink a thousand beers. To help matters, we are about to begin our only group of the morning—a meditation followed by a spiritual discussion. This is not my wheelhouse. The guy leading the session is someone everyone calls “Spiritual Bob.” He looks like a washed-up hippie in his 70s, has braided gray hair, and wears three beaded necklaces that click together as he takes his seat at the top of the circle.
“Good morning, everyone,” he half-speaks and half whispers. “I see some new faces. Can we introduce ourselves if this is your first session with me?”
A young, tatted guy who looks a little older than me speaks up through the matted black hair that covers his face. “I’m Kory, and I’m an addict.”
“Glad you’re here, Kory.”
“My name’s Liam, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Welcome, Liam and Kory. So, I’ll briefly go over how we do this and then we’ll jump right in.” He fingers his beads. “We’ll start with a short, guided meditation. If this is your first time meditating, all you have to do is sit comfortably and follow the instructions. Then, after that, we’ll have an open discussion about the spiritual parts of the program because, as Bill W said, we only have ‘a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.’”
Here we go. There’s no way this works. Nevertheless, I close my eyes and actually try to meditate. I’m focusing on my breathing like the dude is telling me to do, but the thoughts continue to race, and they’re sticking. They’re not floating by. I try to focus on the sensation of my toes in my shoes, the feeling of my socks on my toes. I try to release the tension in my shoulders that I didn’t even realize was there, breathing in deep through my nose and blowing it out audibly through my mouth. There’s no way I’m doing this right.
When I open my eyes, though, I realize that I have completely lost track of time. The world doesn’t hit me all at once. It just reveals itself slowly and calmly. Spiritual Bob brings us back together after giving everyone a second to reacclimate. He then begins to drone on about finding a Higher Power. I have heard a lot about this already. I don’t believe in God, I’m not spiritual, and I think it’s messed up that this ‘inclusive’ program, of which the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, places such a premium on finding a ‘Higher Power.’
Torin, a staunch Christian, raises his hand to begin his daily sermon. Not only do I not want to hear it, I think it’s wrong that everyone has to hear it too. I like Torin. He’s a kind black man in his 60s, who is recovering from an addiction to crack. He is genuine and caring. But I cannot stand when he starts talking about God. I grind my teeth and start writing in my notebook. After the third consecutive minute, I can’t stay quiet anymore. I interrupt.
“If this program is all about choosing a God of your own understanding, then why do we always end up talking about the Christian God? I know I’m not the only person who’s not a Christian in here—well, maybe I am. It doesn’t matter. This is supposed to be a spiritual—not church.” My voice shakes with anger. Torin is caught off guard, his face wrinkling with confusion.
“That’s a great point,” another guy named Leif agrees. I cannot stand Leif. He carries his ukulele around everywhere, playing it whether people want to hear it or not. He’s always wearing these loose Hawaiian-type shirts or robes, and he does not shut up. It makes me so mad that some people seem to like him. They can’t see through his bullshit pseudo-science and mysticism-posturing. Dude is clearly a narcissist of the worst kind. I instantly tune out as he starts to talk, returning to my notebook. For some reason he starts talking about his GI issues. He says he needs to see a GI specialist. I turn to the guy next to me and say, “He has to see a GI specialist because he’s so full of shit.”
Finally, he finishes, and Bob takes back control of the group.
“Well, it’s very important to be open-minded.”
“You gotta be careful about open-mindedness, though. You can’t just go around believing what everyone tells you,” Torin says.
“So we’re not going to be open-minded about open-mindedness?” I reply, pleased with myself. I hear some stifled laughter.
“I know there’s some of us that struggle with the idea of a Higher Power,” Spiritual Bob says. “Something my sponsor told me that helped me at the beginning was that God can stand for Group of Drunks. The fellowship can be your Higher Power. Or Gift of Desperation. I know we all had that at one point. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.” Torin’s jaw drops again.
“That’s blasphemy!” he shouts. Bob doesn’t address him.
“Or he said, if that doesn’t work, you can think about it like this: do you believe that I believe? If you do, then that’s enough,” Bob continues. “If that still doesn’t work, he told me, go out into the ocean and try to stop a wave. If you can’t, there must be a Power greater than yourself.” I sit back in my chair and let the wheels in my head turn and turn. The engine revs, and the gas tank is full. We’re not racing in circles anymore; we’re flying towards a finish line.
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Day 15, 6:25 PM
I’m sitting on the porch of my cabin, the smoke curling in between the yellowed pages of East of Eden. I’m reading about the concept of timshel and thinking about all the wrong choices I’ve made in my life.
The palm trees are waving in the breeze, and the wooden steps of the cabin creak as I descend them. As I step into the grass of the old pineapple farm, I gasp. A snake with alternating red and yellow bands slithers away from me down the wall of the cabin. I came within an inch of stepping right on it. Still dazed, I step into the screened porch for tonight’s tenth step meeting. I tell Randy, our night-time counselor who has become a trusted confidant of mine, about the snake.
“Did it have red stripes next to black stripes? Or red stripes on yellow stripes?”
“I’m pretty sure it had red stripes on yellow stripes.”
“Oh, wow, you’re lucky then. That was a coral snake. There’s a saying down here: ‘red on black, you’re okay Jack. Red on yellow, you’re a dead fellow.’ The red on black is a kingsnake, which isn’t venomous, and red on yellow is a coral snake, which is highly venomous. We’re way out here, pretty far from a hospital. Good thing you didn’t get bit,” he laughs. I always learn something new from Randy. The other night, when I was almost having a panic attack, he told me something that I think I’ll always remember. He said to always look down at my feet—that will remind where I am and anchor me to the earth below me. It reminds me that I can only control what is happening right now, exactly where I stand. I’ve been looking at my feet a lot lately.
Randy kicks off the tenth step meeting as the sun falls in the sky. The tenth step of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous reads as follows: “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” As such, we have a tenth step meeting every night on the screened-in porch. It functions as a reflection on the day. We go around the circle, and we each individually review whether we had been resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid that day. We think about if we need to make any amends, and then we end by voicing something that we are grateful for.
I am trying my best to listen to what everyone is sharing, but my mind is mostly occupied with what I am going to say. I guess that could go in the selfish category. When it is my turn, I introduce myself again:
“My name’s Liam, and I’m an alcoholic.” I guess they have us do that to serve as a constant reminder that we can’t drink like other people. “Let’s see: have I been resentful today? No, I don’t think so. Not today. Selfish? Yes, I’m selfish every day. I see the world through my own two eyes and am thinking about myself far more often than I am thinking of others. I need to keep working on that. Dishonest? Nope. Fearful? Yes, absolutely. I am also fearful every day, especially at this time of day. It’s getting to be nighttime, and I’m so used to being drunk at this time every day. I’m so used to having that shield, that armor. Alcohol was my best friend. It protected me from my feelings. It tucked me in every night. It kept me entertained. But it wants to kill me. And it will kill me.” I pause and take a deep breath. I look at my feet. “I’m just so scared. I’m scared of my feelings. I’m scared of who I am without drinking. I’m scared of other people. So, yeah, that’s it.”
“Something you’re grateful for?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m grateful for this place and these people. Everybody except Chaz.”
Laughter erupts across the warm Florida night. “Nah, for real though, I feel welcome here and like I belong, and it’s because of y’all.”
Tonight, I fall asleep without the TV on and without any sleep medication—comfortable in the silence.
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Day 16, mid-morning:
This morning, I’m smoking outside group with the rest of the drug addicts when a baby bird smacks the sidewalk right at our feet. Ignoring shouts in protest, I pick it up and hold it in my hands. It is clicking its mouth open and closed, which is full of bright red blood. I try to let it go to fly, but it falls back down again before limping away. I hope it survives.
Worth mentions that he’s looking for a book to read because he’s bored out of his mind, so I go and retrieve East of Eden for him, completely forgetting that Adam Trask’s father also only had one leg. As I hand it to him, he thanks me and tells me that I remind him of a younger him. “Uh, thanks, I guess,” I reply, unsure if that was the right response. He begins to read it during our next group, Trigger Awareness, which, admittedly, is boring as hell. I ask him how he likes it so far as we walk to the van. He says he’s not sure yet.
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Day 16, early evening:
Erik is our group facilitator tonight. He’s probably my favorite group facilitator, but his groups are my least favorite because they consist of him purely riffing off the cuff. He does have some stories to tell, though. He is unapologetically honest and completely himself. Addicted since 8, IV user since 13, DOC of meth, gray beard down to his chest, septum piercing. He showed us his intake photo from 4 years ago (no beard, looked like “Lord Farquad,” his words). “Gotta chase your recovery,” he repeats over and over as one of his mantras. His other notable one that he uses to explain why he’ll never be able to even smoke weed: “Weed makes me thirsty. Bourbon gives me a hangover. Meth cures a hangover.” Good point.
Right on cue, he pulls out both sayings during tonight’s group. He is talking about the time he broke up a fight between two members of his “homeless family” under the bridge. One was wielding a meat cleaver; the other, a knife. His peace offering was the “almighty Newport.” As Erik recounts this, Kory, Julie, and I write our own variations of Erik’s saying.
Mine: “Life makes me thirsty. Beer doesn’t quench it. Whiskey makes me pass out. Cocaine wakes me up. But then I’m thirsty again.”
Kory’s: “Weed makes me thirsty. 100 proof Vodka gives me the shakes. Ativan cures the shakes.”
Julie’s addition: “And tequila makes my clothes fall off.”
I interrupt Erik’s monologue to tell him about what happened with the baby bird, asking if he attaches any spiritual significance to events like that. He told me that he saw a hawk swoop down and eat the bird.
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Day 18, night
Sleep is something I still haven’t figured out in sobriety. Something about slipping away into the night is terrifying. Tonight, I’ve spent hours tossing and turning, so I walk out to the boardwalk. The air shimmers with an electric intensity, and there is a full moon shining over the water. The porch is empty. Everyone is back in their cabins. Rather than stride at my typical pace, I let gravity guide my feet to the earth, gliding through the wet air. It is so quiet out on the boardwalk, the water underneath absorbing and muting the noise and the chaos. Across the Intracoastal, the city lights wink at me—so many lives lived in harmony and in dissonance. I reach the end of the boardwalk and listen to the water lap against the wood. I stick both of my arms out to my sides, letting the wind blow against me. The night covers me. I feel a power surge. It comes from deep within me. I clench my jaw and smile—there’s no way I could ever stop a wave.
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Day 25, 8:43 PM
Game seven of a first round NBA series is on tonight, and Worth and Mark, another young alcoholic here, are excited to watch it. I bet Mark $100 that the Pacers would win. They’re a ten-point underdog.
The game tips off in about fifteen minutes, and everyone is huddled inside the small room with the TV in it. There are never enough seats in here, and the two landlines in each corner of the room are always in use. Whoever is using them doesn’t even try to whisper anymore. This room is so small that it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. We’ve all learned to ignore the “I love yous” and the “I miss yous,” though I’ll still listen in when I start to hear an argument brewing or hear some pain in someone’s voice. Tonight, everyone’s trying to get their calls in before the game starts, so there is a line to call loved ones. We only get our cell phone once a week, so these landlines become very popular during the other days. I don’t want to call anyone.
In the cabinet above the sink, there is a stash of snacks for us—chocolate pudding, peanut butter crackers, etc. I don’t eat any of the food, really, but there are also these powdered electrolyte packets that we can put into our water bottles. I drink at least five of these every day. In preparation for the game, I look into the basket to find that there are none left. When I had looked earlier today, it looked like there were a hundred in there.
“Yo, where did all the electrolyte packets go?”
“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Worth asks.
“Hear what?”
“Leif took all of them and gave them to the girls so they could dye their hair.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Wish I was, buddy. Yeah, keep an eye out for girls walking around with red and blue hair. They literally look like fucking Harley Quinn.”
“How the hell?”
“Apparently he dumped all the packets into a bucket of water, so they could stick their heads in it.”
“Wow, what the fuck.”
The game is now about to start, and Worth takes his seat in the recliner next to me. He turns to me with a mischievous grin.
“Hey, Liam, guess what I got for the game tonight.”
“What?” I ask through a chuckle. “A fifth of whiskey?” He glances around and then reaches into his pocket. He then holds out his hand and opens it, revealing five little pills in his palm.
“How the fuck? And what are those?”
“I’ve been cheeking my muscle relaxers.”
“How?”
“I just crush the top of the paper cup and act like I’m taking them. Then, I slip the crushed cup in my pocket. Easy.”
“That is some addict behavior,” I say, beginning to laugh.
“We’re gonna see what happens,” he says with excitement. “I’ve only taken two at a time before.” I start to laugh the kind of laugh that feels impossible to stop. He disappears to his room, in rehab, to snort the muscle relaxers.
He seems normal when he comes back.
Twenty minutes later, I get up to go to the bathroom during a commercial break. Worth hasn’t moved. When I’m almost out of the room, I hear him call to me.
“Liam!”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Get me a snack, will ya?”
“You can’t get your lazy ass up and get it?”
“No, Liam. I literally cannot move.” My body heaving with laughter, I throw a cup of pudding at him. It hits him in the chest and rolls down into his lap.
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Day 27, early evening:
We’re having a cookout and bonfire tonight, despite the fact that it’s at least eighty-five degrees at 6 PM. It’ll be nice to eat something that we cooked ourselves, though. I fill up the coolers with three bags of ice each and then load in an absurd amount of Diet Coke cans. The flames of the grill warble the air above them, and the smell of hamburger meat wafts all the way out to the shore.
After finishing my job of filling up the coolers, I retreat to the shade and pull out my notebook. I should be excited for this cookout, but I’m not. I’m honestly ready to go to bed, for this day to be over, and to start over again tomorrow. The pit in my stomach that alcohol so easily masked is noticeable for the first time in a couple days. I need to find something inside me to fill it, instead of looking to the two things I have in the past, the two things that my mind is trained on right now: alcohol and girls, girls and alcohol, pussy and beer.
I get up and walk to the grill, where Leif and Torin are tending to the burgers. Kory and I migrate over to the electric fire pit, turn it on, and start to retrieve little pebbles from the fire. We start throwing them back and forth like hot potatoes. One hits the side of my neck and leaves a mark. We quit playing after that and go to the porch where Worth sits reading.
“What the hell happened to your neck? Did Julie give you a hickey?” Julie perks up, takes her flip flop off, and throws it at Worth.
“I could be his grandmother, you pervert!”
I’m having fun again. I swear I have more fun in rehab than I do in real life. Kory, Julie, and I walk over to get our food together. The sun is setting now, and the string lights have flickered on.
“Y’know this is the first time I’ve had a burger without a beer in…well, I can’t remember.”
“Yeah, I’d usually be sneaking off to take puffs of my crack pipe during our family cookouts.”
I look around me at this group of people that sit with me. They are made up of all races, creeds, and experiences. They are doctors and lawyers, convicts and cops, rednecks and burn-outs, Democrats, Republicans, assholes, empaths. We have a little family here of alcoholics, addicts, misfits, and outcasts. That is what unites us. Genuine laughter rings out into the night sky, past the string lights, and all the way to the moon. These people are me, and they’re the closest I’ll ever get to God.
Connor Catlett is a former English teacher, a Teach for America alum, and a Winston Public Interest Law Fellow at the University of Tennessee.
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