A Brown Bag

October 2022

I shuffled down the hallway under the florescent lights and smell of disinfectant carrying a brown bag with a few days’ worth of clothes. No belts, no shoes with laces, no bathroom products.  Nothing I could kill myself with was the idea.  I had voluntarily checked myself into a mental hospital outside Phoenix.  It felt like I had no choice.  It was either be left in a parking lot with $40 on my Cashapp card 35 miles from my Jeep or check myself into this place.  I had given up my apartment on the way over and my stuff was being packed up and moved into storage. The hospital is conveniently located 1 mile from the rehab facility I just tried to check into and It feels like a set up. I was meant to end up in the mental hospital.  At the rehab place I wanted to know about the surveillance cameras and the organizational chart of companies under the LLC. I was too much for the behavior health tech doing my intake to handle. I wouldn’t sign the forms required to check in, so she brought in the business development manager to answer my questions and to put me at ease.  She didn’t. When she couldn’t calm me down, they brought in a therapist.  His inability to answer simple questions about the facility made me spiral more and more out of control. They already knew everything about me as I believed all my exploits over the past few months had been secretly filmed and they were in on it. It didn’t help that we parked in front of a private detective business 30 minutes prior. My brother came back into the room and told me that they would no longer accept me in the mental condition I am in and that I had a choice.  Hence, the brown bag I am carrying.

I’m told I’m in a meth psychosis. I haven’t smoked in 4 days. It’s true, I don’t know what is real and I had just spent the past 5 months sitting on my couch smoking crystal meth all day every day.  I slept 5 hours every 4 days and lived on ham sandwiches, frozen pizza and Skittles. I’ve lost 90 pounds. I think I am in an elaborate movie set. I should be feeling more at ease, but something feels off.  The big smile the receptionist gave me, the LGBT sign in the lobby, the unlimited snacks and drinks in the waiting area are to perfect and on point.  It seems all of the props are in place and I’m just waiting for the cast of characters to be introduced.  I was not disappointed.  Upon arriving on the ward, I am met by the bubbly new nurse.  She started today I am told. She reminds me of Zoe from the show Nurse Jackie.  The seasoned nurse “Jackie” comes behind her and tells me the rules and then asks me to follow her.  She tells me I am going to be strip searched and asks if I want a male nurse to be present.  I tell her, “I don’t care, does it even matter.” I am taken to a back room near the nurse’s station and as I pass through the doors I look to the left and see a bed with straps on it.  I’m told that if I try to hurt myself or someone else, that’s where I will end up.  I did hear screaming coming from that room on my third night. I never saw her.  I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t just a speaker with a woman wailing to continue the charade. I am asked to remove my clothes and I’m inspected for any wounds on my body and my clothing is searched. I’ve lost any bit of dignity I had left.

“There I go, I tell myself. If I don’t stop, I’ll end up in a mental ward walking around with shit-stained pants.”

I am given a tour of the ward. First stop the TV lounge. I look in and see some Halloween movie on the screen and what appear to be zombies sitting in the dark staring at the screen. My room is next.  There are two twin beds with wooden frames and a 2” foam mattress.  My bed is closest to the bathroom. There is no door on the bathroom, but a 4-foot high beige gymnastics mat with velcro on one end attached to the door frame that swings shut. It provides no privacy and no place to escape .  I set my brown bag on the one desk between the beds and begin to unpack.  I put my 3 pairs of underwear, two shirts and two pair of shorts on the bookcase shelf. I am wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip flops. It is freezing.  I am trying to find some sense of normalcy by unpacking, like this is just a vacation.  Cameras are everywhere and I need to calm myself down or I’ll never get out of this place.

My roommate enters the room.  He looks like he is 65 but tells me he is 50.  He greets me with a fist bump and a smile showing off his one front tooth. He is mostly bald and overweight.  He has the nicest disposition, but I can tell his brain has been fried by drugs. He turns to leave and head back to the TV room, and I see his blue scrubs have a brown stain down the back. There I go, I tell myself. This is the lesson I’m here to learn. If I don’t stop, I’ll end up in a mental ward walking around with shit-stained pants. I wasn’t far from it. Everything that has happened or decision I made over the past 18 months has led me to this point.

April 2021

In April of 2021 I was 13 years California sober. I had smoked weed 1 time and tried an edible 2 years ago, so I guess I had a solid 11 years of sobriety before the weed incident.  I had just sold my home in central Phoenix and most of my belongings.  What I didn’t sell went into storage.  I had my new matching 3-piece luggage packed and I was moving to Brazil, to be with my boyfriend.  We had been together long distance for the past 18 months.  We met online in October of 2019 one year after I had come out at the age of 46.  At first, I thought it was a scam.  He is beautiful, with tan skin, dark eyes, a big smile, a muscular athletic build and a tight ass.  He is highly intelligent, speaks 6 languages, traveled the world, driven, successful, a conspiracy theorist, and believes he is not from earth, but he is Brazilian. I did overlook a few things; my judgement was questionable.  I know it, but I needed to get out of Phoenix, and I told myself we were going to be together forever.  He had visited me in Phoenix in January of 2020 for 3 weeks.  We had an amazing time traveling around the southwest.  He was planning on coming back in March.  Covid hit and our plans went to hell as did the rest of the world.  I went to visit him in August of 2020 when Brazil opened up their borders to air travel.  I stayed 3 weeks.  It was hot, humid and amazing.  The food, the city, the culture, the scenery, the people and the sex were all perfect.  I flew back to Phoenix and he headed back to London, to his husband.

When we first started chatting online, he told me he was married, but it was over. The husband just didn’t know it.  It was a sexless marriage, more enemies than friends. He spoke of infidelity by his husband, the trips his husband took to Spain with rent boys, drugs, arguments and a lack of love.  He felt lost and alone in the UK.  He was looking for a new love and I was looking for my first love.  I am a hopeless romantic and he believes in love at first sight. We were perfect for each other. Over the next several months we continued video chatting on WhatsApp daily.  The lock downs in the UK, became harsher and he became more and more unsettled by it.  In late November of 2020 his husband went through his phone and read our messages and professions of love for each other.  Our relationship was finally out in the open at least on that side of the pond. I am not sure of the full discussions the two of them had, but my boyfriend told me he was leaving the UK permanently and moving back to Brazil.  He signed paperwork of a formal separation he told me, giving up money and property in London I later learned. He left for Brazil in December.  At the same time the housing market was exploding in Phoenix.  My home was in a great location, newly remodeled and had a pool. I was $80,000 in debt, driving for Uber and delivering groceries for Instacart and barely holding it together.  I had a way out.  Sell my home, pay off my debt, move to Brazil and be with my boyfriend.  A chance to see if what we had was real.  I did love him and I believed he loved me, as much as one can when living in separate countries.  I priced my home high. I would make enough to pay off my debt and have plenty left over.  It took 3 months to sell.  Over those three months he was setting up our new home in a beautiful city in the north central of the country. He was a designer of everything and was making a show house, bringing his international flair and ideas to the city.  He had dreams of being a world-famous designer.  I had no doubt that he would become one.  At one point in February of 2021 his behavior changed.  He started talking of his death, that he was sick and I shouldn’t come.  My home was on the market I had offers on it, I needed the money, I needed to get out of Phoenix.  There was nothing here for me. No one knew about him here except for my family and close friends and no one knew he was married, except my best friend. I was spinning a story that I was going on an adventure. While technically I was out, I wasn’t Facebook out and my boyfriend didn’t know.  I never posted a picture of him or spoke about him.  My previous trip to Brazil was just a vacation to the outside world. I mean he was married, and I knew everyone would tell me I am crazy, but I had the debt and I was miserable and in love.  I was unhappy, uncomfortably overweight, depressed and I wanted a new life. So, when my boyfriend told me had an STD , but did not cheat on me, I told him I believed him.  I didn’t, but the plan was in motion, and I was getting out of Phoenix. He was waving red flags at me, but I didn’t care.  I was living in a fantasy and looking for a fairytale ending to this chapter in my life.

November 2021

I ended up spending 4 nights in the mental hospital. Even now 40 days sober I am not sure exactly if all the events over the past year were entirely my doing.  Logic tells me that I imagined all of it, but the remnants of the psychosis tell me it’s all true.  However, my gut tells me that the truth lies somewhere in the middle and there was some outside influence helping guide me in some sort of crash to the bottom.  It sounds insane, I know. I am not talking about God, but someone who loves me and saw I needed help long ago. Recognized I wasn’t well and influenced events and people around me. I know that I felt loved and that even though my behavior was dangerous and erratic I felt I was never in any real danger, maybe it was God. I said many times to friends that it felt like I was living in the movie The Game, but instead of jumping off a building at the end I am going to walk out of rehab in a year mentally, physically and spiritually well for the first time in my life. I think I’ll have the answer then. I am writing this blog to help me sort through the chaos of the meth psychos and plethora of bad decisions and at the same time reflecting on what I am learning about myself and my past.  I am responsible for where I am.  I am going to tell my story and my transformation honestly and raw.  I like to hide in my secrets.  That is where I feel most comfortable keeping the world at arm’s length.  I must be vulnerable and let my shame go by letting it out. I realized I had become the same addict I was 15 years ago right before I entered rehab.  I thought getting kicked out of the seminary for buying crack in 2007 was bad, turns out meth is not the younger brother of crack, but the older brother that kicks your ass and destroys your mind. I know that is not who I am, but it is who I become when I drink and use drugs.  I have no ability to control myself after I take the first drink, but I am learning new ways to handle my emotions.  I decided to take a drink in March of 2022 after 14 and half years, I picked up the meth pipe 2 months later, had sex with more men than you or I could count, contracted Monkey Pox, hired escorts, traveled the world, sold drugs, lied and manipulated my friends and family, painted a picture of happiness and adventure all the while not working and blowing through my $55,000 in cash and putting myself into an additional $90,000 of debt. Most don’t make it into recovery and very few make it back.  I am lucky.  I can work through the damage I’ve left in my wake because I am alive and safe.

I am writing about these two stories because they are bookends to the last 18 months.  I had thought I would write a section comparing the two situations.  Writing about what I am learning about myself and my past.  I wanted to share with you growth and understanding.  I am realizing that it is much more difficult than what I had anticipated.  It was easy to write up to this point.  The words flowed.  I think it is because I am just recapping to you what had happened, what I was feeling and thinking.  It didn’t require any self reflection, any true understanding of the events. I think about the two bags I carried, what they mean to me and what they represent to the outside world.   One was fancy luggage, one was a brown paper bag, but both contained everything I needed at that moment.  The fancy luggage is who I presented to the outside world.  Hard, even tempered, put together, a few scuff marks, but will always survive and make it to your destination.  The paper bag on the other hand, is synonymous with a drunkard hiding his liquor bottle from the world, but in reality it is in plain sight for everyone to see. Its useful, adaptable for many occasions, but if not handled carefully it can rip and can no longer be used as bag, no longer hide your secrets.  What is interesting about the paper bag is that it can then be used for something else.  It transforms into something new.  I remember when I was younger cutting a bag up and making a cover for my school books to protect them.  I would doodle, write notes, friends names and all sort of fun memories that I would carry with me for the year for everyone to see.  An open book.  At some point, I out grew this and the book was closed.  When the bag was ripped, I discarded it. Its use was done. I know I am damaged, unwell and I have been long before my relapse, but I am tough.  I’ve been through a lot over the years and the story of this brown bag is not at an end, but the transformation is happening and the book is being opened.

“I must be vulnerable and let my shame go by letting it out”

— me