Big Love. Scott Stabile
was around were necessary. And clearly not enough.
Months after my parents died, my siblings and I spent a weekend at our cottage in northern Michigan. Ricky and I stood beside the lake talking. I was fourteen at the time; he was thirty-two and had already lived nearly half his life addicted to drugs. He told me how disappointed he was that our parents died without seeing him get clean, that more than anything he wished he could take back all the agony he had caused them. He said he would try to stay straight as a tribute to them. Even as he said these words, I think we both knew they would never become reality. I realized that my brother’s efforts to get clean had more to do with loving my parents than himself, and that with my parents gone, he would likely never break free of dope. I don’t believe he cared enough about himself to do so. He didn’t know how.
Ricky wasn’t around too much during my high school years, which usually meant he was deep into his addiction. If we weren’t seeing him, he was definitely seeing the needle. My resentment and anger had started to shift, however, and continued to do so once I went away to college. I learned more about addiction and embraced the understanding of it as a disease. I believed that Ricky truly didn’t have control over his behavior, that he in fact didn’t have a choice in his actions. He was a victim to the drug. This belief helped me find forgiveness for the pain he caused our family. I found compassion, too, instead of only judgment.
On September 14, 1994, I came home to my apartment in San Francisco to two messages from my sister Rose. Without revealing any details, she told me to call her right away. Her voice sounded shaky, sad. I knew Ricky was dead. I had known for years I’d be receiving a call someday with news of my brother’s death. It was only a matter of time. And time had run out for Ricky. Rose told me that Ricky had died early that morning from an overdose. His body had been discovered in a bathroom stall in a McDonald’s somewhere in Detroit. Like the vision of my brother shackled in our basement, I knew this image would stay with me forever. And it has.
I was relieved, though, that Ricky had died. Relieved he was no longer shooting up in smack houses and fast-food joint bathrooms, or spending nights in jail. Relieved he no longer had to feel guilty and ashamed or work so hard to escape reality. I’d watched him suffer horribly my entire life, and I didn’t believe he’d find a way out for himself, aside from death. The drug was too powerful, or so I thought. Now he was finally free. He had finally found peace.
My attitude about my brother, and about addiction, shifted again in the years after his death. I’ve had — and have — many recovering addicts for friends and recognize one critical component to a successful life in recovery, a component that wouldn’t have the same power if addiction were, in fact, only an incurable disease: choice. Without choice, sobriety is impossible. And it’s a constant choice, again and again, not to use. Ricky made that choice throughout his life, every single time he went to an AA meeting or checked himself into rehab or made it through a day clean. He just always chose to shoot up again. I don’t know what it was about his life he couldn’t find the courage to face. Even though I was his brother, I didn’t know what was causing him so much pain.
I used to think heroin was more powerful than my brother, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I don’t believe any drug — any addiction — is stronger than the person using, or we’d never see addicted users stop. I think Ricky was too unhappy to deal with the reality of our world as it was. He needed to create a different reality for himself, and he found a way to do it. He made his choice. Again and again. Ricky was lost but not powerless. No addict is. No person is. We all have the power to choose. Do we use, or do we abstain? If there is no choice in the habits that lead to addiction, then how can so many people choose to go beyond it? Every day, all over the world, people are moving beyond their addictions. They are choosing to free themselves.
That’s not to say sobriety is an easy choice, or that alcohol and drugs aren’t addictive. Of course they can be. And I don’t want to in any way suggest that addicts are somehow flawed human beings if they don’t get sober. Whether or not we believe those with addiction have an incurable disease or are consciously making unhealthy choices shouldn’t matter in the way we talk about and treat them. Stigmatizing people who struggle with addiction certainly won’t help them heal. I spent too many years looking down on my brother because of his drug problem, seeing him as broken and less than. As only a junkie. He, like all who battle addiction, was no less deserving of kindness and compassion, whatever the reason for his addiction and his inability to break free of it. There is no greater than or less than where people are concerned. We’re all equal, all worthy of the same love. And aren’t we all addicts to some degree? Don’t we all make unhealthy choices, more often than we’d like, with the sole purpose of escaping discomfort and pain?
I’ve numbed myself with alcohol and drugs and sugar and sex and television and social media, all of them in excess, for periods in my life. I’ve never felt completely out of control in my habits (save social media), but I’ve certainly tasted addiction. I wasted many days chasing after empty sex online, knowing it wouldn’t fulfill me but being unwilling to stop seeking it. I’ve downed countless pints of ice cream, as well as every dessert in existence, in failed attempts to ease my sadness. I smoked pot so regularly that I felt uneasy going to sleep without it. Addiction tempts us all. How many of us spend hours upon hours glazed over as we check our social media accounts or binge-watch TV at unhealthy levels, just to keep from having to face our real lives?
All these escapes reflect nothing more than some missing piece of happiness and connection in our lives, a deeper peace of mind that so often isn’t there. It’s easy to see, in this world with such anger, violence, and pain, how so many of us feel safer losing ourselves than we do finding ourselves. Escaping, rather than working to heal our realities.
I still escape sometimes, but much less often than I used to, because I always return to the same place I left behind. Don’t you? And it usually feels even worse than when I left it. Whatever it is we’re running from doesn’t go anywhere. It may not chase us every second, but it won’t disappear, either. The truth remains. Which is why drug addicts and alcoholics — and frankly, many of us — don’t like to be sober, consciously aware of ourselves and the planet. The whole truth lives in sobriety, and the whole truth is never pretty for any of us. It can, however, be tolerable. It can become something we’re able to live with, even accept and honor, without needing to numb ourselves to do so. With our willingness, and with support.
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