San Francisco, 1978. I had lost one of my shoes somewhere in the city, a lens from my only pair of glasses had been missing, and my wallet had been stolen a long time ago.
Compared with my fears of the coming day, these discomforts were minor. The few functioning cells in my brain struggled to focus on a solution to my immediate dilemma, the magnitude of which I dared not contemplate. There seemed to be none; those with whom I had once been friendly no longer recognized me. No more rescuers! I had been abandoned.
From my vantage point under the Harrison Street on-ramp to Highway 101 South, I watched the cars speeding toward me, their headlights long gleaming streaks on the wet street. Stopping briefly at the traffic lights as though to tempt me from my lair, they then headed southward up the ramp and over my head: crmp-crmp-crmp-crmp, like a disembodied heartbeat as their tires contacted the tarred joints in the concrete pavement.
I had lived north of the Golden Gate Bridge for the past ten years, slowly being engulfed in the quagmire of alcoholism. My professional life eventually became pantomimic; I was the laughing-stock of the water-front. Disinclined to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous because I still thought I was not one of them, I reluctantly took in one or two meetings when I realized that my drinking was out of control.
In March 1978, avoiding arrest by the county sheriff for failure to appear in court, I fled to San Francisco where I knew I would find friends to rescue me and perhaps help me start a new life. Refusing to give me any alcohol, they cruelly took me to a detox on Howard Street and asked the counselor to kindly take care of me.
I left the detox after a couple of hours and wandered the alleys off Market Street searching for a drink. Befriended by a couple of San Francisco’s professional homeless, I eagerly swallowed some of their Thunderbird and followed them “home” - a collection of cardboard boxes under the freeway.
Pulling my jacket closer about me I watched the darkest, coldest hour of the morning arrive, and heard the rumble of traffic as the city began to awake. A motorcycle cop shifted the focus of my nightmare. Using his baton on the soles of my feet, he reminded me that I had no right to any space in any part of the city.
The same counselor who had tried to persuade me to stay allowed me back into the detox. Mickey told me that everything would be okay. “Stick it out,” she said, “and things will get better.”
Her words of encouragement fell on deaf ears as she found me a bed and thoughtfully removed my only valuable, a wrist watch.
Curled up as though in my mother’s womb, I came to on the second day after numerous fitful awakenings. The atmosphere reminded me of the familiar confines of the Marin County Jail - the hideous din of men trying to reconcile their todays with their tomorrows. Dare I ask someone what would happen to me now? What was required of me? Or would I simply let authority direct me where it would?
Mickey told me that I could stay five days. “Then what?” I asked, anticipating a response that would force me back under the Harrison Street on-ramp. Embarrassed and shamed, but forced into a rare moment of honesty, I told her about my homelessness and the sheriff’s arrest warrant. My counselor wrote something on a piece of paper and then looked up, smiling as though I had paid her a compliment. “You’re in the right place, Peter. Welcome! Let me see what I can do.” In a space of five heartbeats my spirits soared. I had been granted a reprieve, from what I knew not, but the seed of hope had been planted. A week later Mickey placed me in a twenty-eight day program in Redwood City, a mandatory requirement before admittance to a halfway house. Before I left the detox, she allowed me one telephone call to let my wife know where I was and to talk to my children.
“Hi, Dad, where are you?” A simple question, but one I didn’t know how to answer.
“I’m in the city, sweetheart. I’ve a lot of things to do. I won’t be able to see you for some time.”
“How long will that be, Dad?”
I could hear her talking to her four-year-old sister.
“It’s Dad; he’s in San Francisco. No, you can’t see him - not for some time.”
I pictured them at home waiting for me, just as they had always waited for me - and had always been disappointed. I started to cry. I could hear her quick breathing as she waited for me to say something.
“Okay Dad, maybe you could write or something,” she said. I thought I heard a flatness in her voice.
“Okay, Lovey,” I managed to say, choking back the sobs, “I’ll write soon.”
She hung up leaving me fraught with anxiety and worthless with shame.
John and Kitty McD. managed the twenty-eight day program. I liked them immediately, and put my entire trust in them. “Apart from not appearing in court, what else are you hiding from us, Peter?” John’s question caught me off guard and rekindled my fear of the law. I thought that if I kept quiet about it, the sheriff would eventually drop the charges.
“Nothing,” I said in a humbled voice. “Do I have to do something about it?”
John looked pityingly at me just as the captain of my first ship had done when I stepped on board.
“Yep!” he said with finality. “You can’t start a sober life with a record. I’ll make arrangements with the court, and we’ll go and take care of it.”
The following week, I stood in the courtroom with a defender and twenty or so prisoners in orange jumpsuits. I became aware of a feeling of composure - of doing something right at last, and I knew that I was in good hands.
“Three years’ probation, confinement to a halfway house for two years, and weekly attendances at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
With those words I began a fractious honeymoon with my newfound, sober life.
As I settled into my new life at the halfway house, my days became more peaceful, my chronic anxiety less intrusive. The children fitted into a part of my soul I had made especially for them. Not perfect, but still part of me. I still yearned to be free again, but patience had become one of the rewards of sobriety. The urge to drink no longer plagued me. The seed had been deeply sown and it was now up to me to keep it nourished. Could I do it or would I fail again like I had so many times before?
It is twenty-six years ago almost to the day that I tottered into that San Francisco detox helpless and hopeless - but all at once, no longer homeless. It was there that I came to know the real meaning of true love - one drunk looking after another drunk. It was there that I learned that if I took certain simple steps, my life would improve in ways that I could not then envisage. I visit my family in England regularly and a loving understanding is our bond, laughter is our antidote to past sadness. My two American daughters live close by and we are once again a family.
These promises have become my reality.
I take note of a curious characteristic about the manner in which sobriety makes itself manifest in my spirit. It is as though I have been given the chance to relive part of my life again. Only in retrospect does each year become gentler than the year before and the change is as inconspicuous as the beating of my heart.
Peter Wright