Residential Program

The Longest Journey

 

Fourth in a series of life stories of Serenity House graduates.

May/June 2004

 

In the five years after William R. left Serenity House in 1997, he lived by three guidelines: When things are going well, I can handle using drugs. When things are going badly, I need to use drugs. When in doubt, buy a ticket to somewhere else.

 

Will used heroin or cocaine to change his state; he hopped a plane or train to change his country. His pattern of escape led him to London, Prague, Bangkok and Bombay. He found his grandmother's girlhood home in Hungary, taught English in Istanbul, surfed in Indonesia, explored the Himalayas, picked plums in Australia and studied chess under a grandmaster in Russia. These are a few of the countries where he was (relatively) sober. He left each country because of boredom, loneliness or depression and went to another.

 

Amsterdam was his undoing and he returned there at least four times. In Amsterdam, he had a thriving business brokering tourist accommodations until the lure of drugs pulled him off course. His business finally became a front for drug deals. He robbed people in alleys, smuggled contraband into England and passed counterfeit bills-all to feed a deep addiction. This is a dangerous lifestyle, and Will himself was beaten and robbed. Ultimately he was arrested.

 

Occasionally he came home to Atlanta, cleaned up and lived with his mother. In a few short weeks, he was using again. On one such occasion, he recalls pensively, "I stole my mother's car and sold it for crack. When I woke up the next morning in a stupor, I said to myself, 'I stole my mother's car and sold it for crack!' I felt as bad as I ever had in my life. Really bad. Something had to change. I needed help."

 

It was then that Anne Ambrose founded the Alumni Relapse Prevention Program (ARPP) on the spot, without counting the cost. Another alumnus soon joined him, and several more followed. Anne is committed to her guys, even when years have passed since their stay at Serenity House. She believed in Will. His sobriety at Serenity House had shown her he could do it. "I'd gotten the kernel of sober living there. It just took a long time to grow," Will says.

 

ARPP gave Will another chance. He was clean for six months at ARPP. Then the siren song of Amsterdam called, and against all advice Will was gone again "to rebuild his business." The same sad story repeated itself: mainlining, smoking crack, bad company, a tire iron, a split knee and more trouble.

 

Will came home and asked for help again, only when desperate, homeless, beaten and robbed, crippled with gangrene, too sick to steal any more, too weak to work. He overdosed on the plane coming home. When he found himself coming off the elevator at the Atlanta airport, dirty, long-haired and haggard, his mother's searching eyes showed no recognition. His voice was breathless from the deep hollowness of his soul, and he could not call to her. He reached up from his wheelchair and tugged at her skirt until she recognized him as her son.

 

That was the bottom, the rock bottom some have to reach before the kernel of sobriety fights off the weeds and grows strong. Will returned to ARPP. Anne gave him still another chance. He has not used since.

 

Today Will attends classes at Georgia State, keeps a watchful eye on clients at Serenity House for wages, goes to

12-Step meetings several times a week, and talks to his sponsor. He pays the rent on his Buckhead apartment and makes donations to ARPP in gratitude for all the time he spent there and for others who may follow behind him.

 

What fills his emptiness, assuages his tendency to flee, gives him the thrills he so clearly needs?

 

Certainly, memories of desperation and the brink of death give him pause, Will acknowledges. Mainly, what sustains his sobriety is his connection with people like Anne and his sponsors, who serve as models for him to follow. "Anne gives to other people, that's what she does all the time."

 

He used to ask himself "Am I bored? Am I dissatisfied? Am I lonely? Is there a drug I haven't tried?" And the answer was always yes.

 

"I was always thinking about myself. But now I think about other people and help them, like the guys I supervise at Serenity House." He wants to be a good brother now to his younger sister and his little brother John Frank, and a good son to his parrents, he says.

 

He's getting all A's at Georgia State now, he says. ("I don't want to hex myself," he adds, "I've got a high B in English now.") He has hopes of an MBA after the undergraduate degree he's working on. Then a business, maybe international business, he says.

 

Is it possible that someday Will's sojourn in Amsterdam will serve as experience for legitimate enterprise? Will this be Will's junior year abroad? Will we look back and say, he studied all over the world, he graduated cum laude, and now he's an international business tycoon? Could be.

 

Letitia Sweitzer