The context and trigger for this story I've told in Losing Jacob posted March 27. For all of us who went through Jacob's wrenching departure, there were profound ripples that, now looking back, we each seemed to need to face on our own. Jacob's magnetism and creative initiative-taking, suddenly gone, left us reeling.
While it certainly helps me to draw positive lessons from this scary experience by going deeply into the root causes of my slide into addiction, all the reasons in the world can't alter the baseline reality that, for a period of many months, I was lost to myself and wearing a mask, even with those I was closest to.
We had begun so happily in the year preceding Jacob's death, we five explorers -- Jacob, Peter, Jurgen, Isaac and I -- meeting up on a regular basis and taking turns leading the group in a theatrical experiment, either in my studio or out in nature for all this far out exploration of time and space. We documented our activities and compositions with photography and video. And because we regularly laced each four-hour gathering with lines of cocaine, we tended to agree that what we were coming up with was fascinating and worthy of lengthy conversations (or were they five simultaneous monologues?).
This period marked my first use of this expensive white powder. What youthful hubris. Early '80's Amsterdam saw a lot of cocaine use among the young and seemingly hip in their night lives. The idea, at least in my head, though I knew next to nothing about the dangers of the drug, was that my use, our use was purposeful and limited. I have mostly good memories.
Jacob's dramatic and wholly unsettling suicide knocked us apart, like bowling pins. And now I can see how fear and pride led me into isolation and self-destruction.
For those of you, my dear readers, who've not tried cocaine, I say wholeheartedly, it's not worth the price, to your pocket and to your soul. Under the influence, one tends to feel a bright, inflated sense of one's own abilities. Though your mind races with a kaleidoscope of ideas and "insights," your peace dissolves as if that powder were Drano. A drug that usually is powerfully psychologically addictive is a drug that rapidly has one actually believing that one is brilliantly creative and witty and in charge.
It wasn't long before I made a classic step toward an addict's life by ceasing to sniff coke in social settings and started to use it alone and at night. At the same time, my deluded sense of pride had me investing as much in deceiving my colleagues and friends as I paid out to my friendly neighborhood dealers. I mean, I had to carry on working as many places as I could to support my sad habit.
And what was I really doing, or trying to do? Confronted by my friend's choice to end his life, I felt utterly torn between trying to, if not understand, then at least accept that Jacob had made a valid choice, while also feeling utterly deserted, betrayed and afraid. I didn't want to disregard his confidence in me to help others come to terms with his choice. And yet, I felt impotent to reconcile my deeply contradictory feelings.
For me nightfall bringing sleep meant giving way to death. So I held off the night, in my head, by staying up until dawn, going nowhere, creating nothing. For nearly a year I put myself through this hell and didn't talk with a soul about it. Work and money became polluted topics. The people I worked with and for began to become concerned, but I held everyone at arm's length. I lost all sense of the joy of simply being alive.
At long last, I hit bottom. Six in the morning, after another disembodied night, feeling wretched and so alone, I found myself weeping and sobbing on the floor. I felt like an old cantaloupe with all the sweet fruit scooped out, empty and desolate. Asking for help was at last all I could do. I called my heart friend Bob at the crack of dawn and he listened with love and compassion.
Bless the sensible Dutch. That very day I walked into the free clinic and gave up the mask. After a thorough interview with my assigned social worker, I peed in a cup. And I returned every single day for three months to pee again. The first weeks were rough. When I thought I couldn't be humbled any more deeply, I'd come up against another incarnation of my boogy man and have to use all my slowly returning positive energy to stay strong.
With much emotional and practical help, especially from Bob and from Pamela -- tough love, to be sure -- I managed to stay clean and sober ever since. Though I feel no inclination whatsoever to use cocaine again, I can never change the reality that I was and am a junkie, an addict. I have learned to be suspicious of habit in my life. I have learned to be careful. And I think I can say, after three decades of living with this reality, I've learned to forgive myself.
Many rivers to cross. Darkness is a good time, to sleep and then to rise again. And now the sun beckons, so off I go. Take care, dear reader. Whatever your Achilles' heel may be, you are not alone. Let us revel in our humanity.