1

Shit. It was 7:00 Monday morning and I needed wine. In two hours I’d have to be at work, which meant that I was going to have to steady my shaking hands. I inched out of bed and walked naked toward the kitchen. After just a few steps, my stomach lurched with the undeniable rumble of rising vomit, and I dashed to the bathroom with my hand pressed against my mouth. I vomited violently and then sprawled out across the cold tile floor and lay there like a deer that had just been hit by a car. After a few minutes I began to lift my head upright, slowly, gradually, as if sneaking up on something. When I had finally reached eye level with the toilet, I saw blood in the bowl.

Finally steady enough, I went to the kitchen and filled a dirty glass with wine from an open bottle. Looking down the long counter at the spoon rest I’d bought in Italy, my fancy tea kettle, and the slotted spoons in a ceramic pitcher, I could almost convince myself that a normal person lived here, maybe even the successful, thirty-eight-year-old lawyer people saw when they looked at me. But for that perspective I’d have to hold my hands up like a photographer framing a shot so I could crop out all the empty wine bottles, the dirty glasses, and the overflowing ashtrays.

My immaculate coffeemaker looked at me in judgment. This would be just another day that I ignored it in favor of the wine bottle. It was a good time for a cigarette.

Still naked, I shuffled to the living room and on hands and knees slapped around under the couch looking for my lighter. All I came up with was a handful of dust and seventeen cents. But there were always matches to be found somewhere in my dark den. I reached into a hand-painted box that sat on my end table and found a plain, white matchbook amid the rolling papers, razor blades, and rolled up dollar bills. I flopped down on the couch and lit a Marlboro Light.

With the cigarette clamped between two fingers, I rested my elbow on my knee and dropped my head. My hair hung over my face like dirty curtains, but the sunlight streaming into the room still stung my eyes. I got up and opened the window to let in the fresh air of early spring. It was in April 2004 and the sounds of rumbling trucks and honking horns on East 20th Street flooded my apartment. Everybody shut up, I thought.

I took a few more slugs of wine and went back into the bedroom where I examined the small baggie of cocaine in my nightstand drawer. Thank God there was still some left. Dumping the remains on the top of my antique dresser, I crushed it into a fine powder with the back of a spoon. Careful not to lose any as I moved my hand across the white streaks in the marble top, I cut a few thick lines with a razor blade. There wasn’t nearly enough to get me through the workday. Fuck.

Save it for later, I thought. You’re definitely going to need it. But in four quick snorts through a rolled up dollar bill, the coke disappeared, leaving only a burning in my nose and a chemical-tasting drip down the back of my throat that managed to be both disgusting and delicious. My relief was countered by familiar feelings of dread about not having more—the untenable reality of an addict.

Just go—move, move, I thought. I lumbered toward the shower. Catching a glimpse of my bloated face in the bathroom mirror, I let the bath towel drop and rested both of my hands on the bathroom sink. It was hard to hold my head up. I looked like a haggard witch at least twice my age. What had I done to myself? And fuck, how was I going to get through today?

I gulped another big glass of wine as I dug through my closet for a suit. My work wardrobe was ratty. All of my suits, like most of my clothes, were black because black hid the wine stains and cigarette ash. Black also matched my general outlook and helped me disappear in a crowd.

After my obsessive ritual of brushing my teeth and gargling with Listerine at least three times before chomping Orbit gum, I began to feel more like my version of normal—steady enough to get through my workday without people seeing me violently shake or stumble and just barely confident that no one near me would smell the wine that pulsed through my veins.

I slid my laptop into its case. I had spent most of the weekend working on a business proposal that my law firm was submitting to a major power company. The prospective client represented millions of dollars in new business. Nonstop drinking and dozens of lines of coke had fueled my efforts from Friday evening through 3:00 Monday morning. No question that my work was better when I was high than when I was hungover. After drinking I was a three-toed sloth; on cocaine I was a stallion.

With my bag, phone, laptop, and keys together, I looked in the mirror, checking my nose for blood and stray coke and my teeth for smeared lipstick. Then I stepped out into the hallway and locked the door behind me.

But something felt wrong, unusually wrong. Anxiety seized me. I felt sicker than usual. My head was heavier and murkier. The shakes were deeper. I could feel them in my guts and in my bones. I even seemed to hate myself more than usual.

Was this it? Was this the end? Was it possible that my body could take no more and I might just drop dead right there? One of the senior citizens on my floor heading to the diner for breakfast would find me in the hall, dead on my back, my eyes and mouth gaping, one hand gripping my laptop and the other holding the New York Times. When the police insisted it was an overdose, the horrified old lady would whisper to my parents, “But she seemed like such a nice girl.” The thought made me sicker. I’m going to die, I thought. I’ve killed myself.

Standing in front of the elevator, I stared at the “down” button. My heart was thumping like an angry bass drum, and my neck, back, and chest were seeping a strange, cold sweat. A voice in my brain screamed, “GET HELP!”

Get help? Help for what, I thought. For this anxiety attack (or is it a heart attack)? For the addiction that I’d known about but had dismissed for the past ten years? I wasn’t clear about what I needed, but somehow I knew that “it” was over, that something had to change. Without knowing what to do next, I turned away from the elevator.

Back in my apartment, I poured another glass of cabernet.

I called Mark, my ex-boyfriend. Two weeks earlier, he had chosen to go back to being just my “downstairs neighbor.” When he had insisted that I get treatment for my alcohol and cocaine addiction I told him to get the fuck out of my apartment.

Before he could say “hello,” I choked out the words, “I need help.”

Mark was the only person who had any idea that I drank in the mornings and used coke regularly. For years, I had managed to hide it from my family and friends by lying my ass off, being extremely attentive to details, and staying away from the people who mattered most. Mark’s finding out was a testament to my spiraling sloppiness.

“I’ll be right there,” he said and hung up. Two minutes later he was at my door, and when I told him, “I think I need help with addiction,” his brown eyes gaped.

“You really mean it? You’re finally going to do something?” He looked like a bobblehead, bouncing up and down in his blue Puma sneakers, his shoulder-length curls of brown hair flopping back and forth.

“I have to. As in, today or I won’t do it.” He smiled. I looked at him with the focus of a military sniper. “Do not say ‘I told you so,’ or I’ll throw you out of this apartment. I mean it.” He bounced over to the couch and sat obediently.

A strange sense of relief began to warm me. Maybe I was actually going to do something about the horror my life had become. Did I really want to stop drinking? Stop using drugs? It was unimaginable—seeming simultaneously too good to be true and my worst nightmare. Even if I wanted to quit, I seriously doubted I could go five hours without booze or coke. I had resigned myself to being an alcoholic and cocaine addict who would eventually drown in a puddle of vomit. Or maybe on a foggy night I’d stumble into the path of a speeding cab. In any case, it was clear that mine wasn’t going to be a graceful death. But on that morning, for the first time ever, I wanted to do something to save my life.

“I’m going to call my doctor,” I told Mark. I wiped the smeared mascara from under my eyes with the back of my hand. Strange, I didn’t remember crying.

“Hi, Dr. Merkin,” I said when my internist picked up on the first ring. “It’s Lisa Smith. How are you?” I heard my voice crack.

“I’m fine, Lisa. How can I help you?” Cut the small talk.

I blurted it out. “I need to go to detox or rehab for alcohol or something, but I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

“I doubt you need that. We took your blood just a couple months ago. You’re fine.”

“Um, no. I’m not fine. I’m drinking all the time. I have to drink to get out of bed in the morning. I’m puking blood and I also see it—uh—when—you know . . . when I go to the bathroom.” I must have sounded like a child.

“Oh.” He sounded confused and paused before saying, “Yes, yes. Then you’re right. If that’s true, you need to get help, right away. Inpatient help. Do you want to go away somewhere in particular?”

“I can’t go away to some big, long rehab place. I can’t tell my office. I just need to go somewhere to sort of detox me, or whatever they do, for a few days, just so I’m not so sick all the time. I just feel really, really sick.”

“OK. Is your insurance still Oxford?” he asked. I could hear papers shuffling on his end of the phone.

“Yes. I lit a cigarette, but pulled the phone away when I exhaled.

“There are two hospitals that will take your insurance for detoxification treatment in Manhattan. St. Luke’s in Hell’s Kitchen?” he asked.

“No way,” I said. “I’m not going to a hospital in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Okay. There’s Gracie Square Hospital on the Upper East Side, on 76th Street,” he said.

“That one,” I said. “I’ll go to Gracie Square.” It had to be good, I thought. Gracie Mansion was where the mayor lived. Also, it was only a few blocks from Lenox Hill Hospital where Dr. Merkin saw patients, in an expensive Manhattan neighborhood. Maybe it would have a better class of addict. “Who do I call?”

“Just call the main number, and tell them what’s happening to you. If you need a referral, tell them to call me.”

“Thank you, Dr. Merkin. I’ll call right now,” I said.

“Let me know what happens. Good luck, Lisa.”

Gracie Square made reserving a bed less complicated than booking a hotel room. They took my insurance and said I could arrive any time until eleven that evening. I felt a pang of excitement at the thought of doing something that might relieve my addiction, and also a pang of dread of putting down the bottle. It reminded me of what people said about the most difficult partners at law firms: “He may be an asshole, but he’s our asshole.” Addiction was my asshole and the devil I knew. After ten years of drinking like a full-blown drunk, I couldn’t imagine life without it.

“What’d they say?” Mark asked. I saw that he had poured himself a glass of wine. I always felt better when I wasn’t the only one drinking, particularly before 9:00 a.m.

“They’ll have a bed for me. They’ll give me medicine, something called Librium, for withdrawal.” Then I waved him away. “Let me deal with my office now, before anyone gets there.”

Mark sat in my overstuffed club chair staring at me as I pulled my laptop out of its case. His knees were bouncing up and down which made me anxious, so I gave him an errand. “Hey, they said ‘no cell phones’ at this place. But there’s a pay phone. Can you go get me a phone card? I think they have them at the bodega on the corner of 18th.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Mark said. “I’ll pick up an egg sandwich while I’m out. Do you want one?”

“No, I definitely do not want an egg sandwich.” I said.

I lit another cigarette, logged onto my computer, and sent an email to my boss and several partners. I claimed I had come down with a “stomach-related illness,” that required “a procedure” in the hospital. Not to worry, I’d be back “in fine shape” next week, but this week I’d be “out of touch.” As I passed off my immediate projects for coworkers to handle, I thanked God for the privacy laws that prevented the firm from questioning me about my health.

I could never let them know what was happening. It wasn’t just because I was ashamed, which I was, it was also because of the stigma attached to substance abuse by lawyers. If they found out, overnight I’d go from being viewed as hardworking and smart to weak, defective, and untrustworthy. This was the attitude of the entire industry.

But my parents needed to know. They lived in New Jersey and we had always had a close relationship. Still, as far as they knew, I was doing great. I had told them countless happy lies and called only when sober enough to have a normal conversation. But the bubble of deceit now had one breath too many blown into it, and this phone call would draw a clear line dividing line between “before Mom and Dad knew that I had lied to them for years” and “after Mom and Dad knew that I had lied to them for years.” The fact that I was an alcoholic would be less upsetting than the fact that I had been a fraud in our relationship. They believed they knew me well. They didn’t. The phone felt like a fifty-pound weight.

“Good morning,” my mother said. I pictured her sitting at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee and trying to spot birds outside the picture window. It was her favorite time of the day, and she was probably wearing one of her cotton pajama sets with a soft robe and socks. She was a petite, beautiful woman, a mix of Eastern European Jew and Irish Catholic with deep brown eyes, short and perfectly coiffed reddish-brown hair, a delicate nose, and a smattering of freckles.

“Everything OK?” she asked. I didn’t normally call this early. I tugged at my hair and felt sweat break out across my face and chest. There was still time to lie, but I was too tired and sick of it all. I took a swig of wine and spoke.

“Not exactly. Are you sitting down? I have to tell you something.” I’d always thought that, “are you sitting down?” was the kind of line that belonged in soap operas and black-and-white movies. But I genuinely wanted her to hear this sitting down.

“Ok. I’m sitting.” Then very quickly, “What is it? Are you sick?”

“Um, I’m just going to say it. I’m having a problem with alcohol.” I decided to leave out the coke, at least for now. “It’s a big problem. I’m going to check myself into a detox today.” She was quiet, so I kept talking. “It’s OK, though. I’m going to be OK. I just need help.”

When she did speak it was in a voice slightly higher than normal. “What? What do you mean check yourself into a detox? What does that mean?”

“I’m going to go to a hospital, here in the city, just for a few days. They monitor you while you detox from alcohol. They give you medicine for withdrawal.”

“Withdrawal? What are you talking about? How bad is this? You drink too much sometimes, but is it so bad that you have to be hospitalized? Couldn’t you just stop drinking for a while?” I could picture her face contorting in confusion. She was in that early phase, when you still think you can fix the situation with words. Tears began to stream down my cheeks.

“No. No, I can’t just stop drinking for a while,” I sniffed. “I would if I could, but I have to drink all the time just to function. I’m sick all the time, my hands shake, my head throbs. I can’t concentrate. Drinking is the only thing that makes me feel normal. It sounds backwards, but it’s true. It’s bad and I need to go somewhere to make me stop. I just have to.” It was becoming difficult to keep talking through my tears, and I gasped for breath.

“All right, all right, it’s OK,” she said, in the same voice she used when I was eight years old. By now I was sobbing. She continued, “It’s OK. If you need help, you’ve got to get help. I’ll go get dressed. I pictured Mom dumping the rest of her coffee down the drain and pacing in front of the wall phone, eager to hang up so she could start taking action. “Daddy and I will get to your apartment in about an hour. We’ll figure this out.”

“No!” I half screamed. “No, really. You don’t need to come in to the city. I talked to Dr. Merkin and he gave me the name of a place that takes my insurance, and they’re already expecting me. It’s called Gracie Square.” Before she could respond, I tried to comfort her by blurting, “It’s on the Upper East Side!” I got off the couch and began pacing back and forth across the living room with my head still down.

“Wait. If you really need this, shouldn’t we look at a few places? Peggy’s husband went somewhere nice in Connecticut for a month. I’ll call her now.”

“No. I have to go today or I’ll lose my nerve. Plus, I can’t go away to one of those one or two-month-long places. I’m going back to work next week. This is detox, just a treatment so I can feel better.” The pitch of my voice was rising. “I don’t need to go anywhere that long. I’ll be fine. I just feel really sick right now and this will fix it.” I slumped back onto the couch. Then I was quiet.

“Alright, OK,” she took another long pause. “Talk to your father.”

There was a mumbling, scraping sound as she covered the phone receiver and then yelled, “HARVEY!” She must have been standing at the bottom of the stairs shouting up to the second floor. Both of my parents had weak hearing, so shouting was the norm in their house. I could hear bits of their back and forth as she relayed what I had told her. “Alcohol.” “That’s right.” “She said ‘no.’” “I don’t know. I don’t know!” Eventually, my dad got on the phone.

“Yessss,” he said drawing out the word in his standard greeting. “We’ve got a little problem, huh?” Dad had never been one to discuss the intimate, emotional details of my life. A brilliant judge who had graduated from high school at sixteen and college at nineteen and had passed the Bar by twenty-two, he was much more comfortable in the intellectual realm. Whenever there was drama at home, Dad would joke that he wanted a t-shirt that read, “Leave Me Alone” on the front and “Buzz Off” on the back. Only once did I ever see him cry, after his best friend, Angelo, died from a brain tumor. My father’s face looked bizarrely different to me that day—changed by contortions and grimaces that scared me.

“Yeah, we do. I need to go to detox for booze. It’s a problem.”

“Alright, OK, so that’s what you’ll do,” he said. Dad was seventy-five, but he looked like a man in his early sixties. He had a semicircle of hair around his head and was tall and trim thanks to his routine of yoga and a diet dominated by fish and vegetables. When I was two years old, I’d wake up when Dad did, so early that just about the only thing on television was a show called Yoga for Life. Decades later I would come downstairs at my parents’ house in the early mornings to find him standing on his head, balanced against the laundry room door.

My father never doubted my ability to deal with things. When I was five and terrified of having the training wheels taken off my bike, he quietly removed them in our garage, told me to climb on, and gave me a push. But he didn’t chase me to make sure that I didn’t fall. He said he wasn’t worried. When I made the Law Review after my first year of law school, he said, “Of course you did,” with a giant smile.

“What are you going to tell your office?” he asked. I knew that he’d be concerned about that.

“It’s already done. I emailed everyone to tell them I have a medical issue that came up over the weekend. If they ask me about it, I’ll lie. But they’re not supposed to ask about medical things. And I’ll be back on Monday.”

“OK. Good, good. They don’t need to know this. Mom said you don’t want us to come in. Keep us posted, though. We’ll come if you want . . . at any hour . . .”

“Thanks, Dad. I appreciate that.” I started crying hard again.

“Hey, hey, don’t cry. This is the right thing you’re doing. You’ve got a problem and you’re going to take care of it. It’s OK.”

After we hung up, I took a deep breath and tried to get my composure back. Why hadn’t I saved some coke last night?

My friends were next. My inner circle was tight, and we spent a lot of our time together with drinks in hand, but I’d made sure that they had no idea how much booze and coke I pumped into my system when they weren’t around. Now that I was doing something as extreme as going to detox, I had to tell them. They were my city family, my urban tribe. I could never just disappear on them. And I wanted to tell them. I didn’t want to do this without them.

I flopped on my bed and called Russell first. I had met Russell almost fifteen years earlier through his wife, Jessica, my closest friend from my first law firm. Russell had been my confidant the few times I decided to talk about having gone too far, like when I’d stayed up all night doing coke at my place with a guy I barely knew. “Ro, it was really fucked up. We were just hanging out watching Goodfellas, and when the coke was gone, he wouldn’t leave. I went over to the door, like, ‘Let’s go, you’ve got to go,’ and he actually shoved me up against the wall. I almost called the cops. He was like a drug psycho.”

“That’s not right, Pumpkin,” Russell had said. “You have to be more careful.”

As my using escalated, I had told him I was thinking about stopping, without elaborating. “That could be really cool,” was his response, without elaborating.

Russell picked up his office phone on the first ring. “Hey, Li,” he said.

“Hey Ro. Listen, I’m feeling really messed up. Like way worse than usual. I’m going to check into a detox today. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Wait, what happened? Are you OK?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think. But you know, I’m not normal anymore. I’m not drinking like a normal person. It’s too much now. I have to change.”

“OK,” he said. “You sure?” I imagined him looking out the window of his office at an investment bank in Midtown at the normal people on the street below. Russell looked like a young John Malkovich with titanium-framed glasses and he carried himself with Malkovich’s kind of confidence. He never spoke loudly, but whatever he said was firm and usually not open to challenge. Part of his discipline came from his karate practice. He was working toward his black belt and rarely traveled anywhere without the gym bag containing his gi.

“Yeah, definitely. Bad. My doctor gave me a place to go on the Upper East Side. I just have to show up there by eleven o’clock tonight.”

“OK, let me just clear one thing off my desk and I’ll come over. I’ll call Jessica, but she’s probably going to be stuck home with the kids.” Russell and Jessica had two boys, aged six and three. “Just hang in. OK, Pumpkin?” he said. The uncharacteristic urgency in his voice made me realize that I must have sounded scared or strung out, or both. I hadn’t planned on his coming over, but it made perfect sense. None of our crew would let any of the others go through something this serious alone.

My next call was to Jerry. He was a banker who had been a drunken pick-up in an East Side bar one night during my second year of law school. Then we started dating. He was handsome in a smart-ass, mischievous, Jewish kid kind of way. With slicked back dark hair that curled at the bottom and a constant smirk, Jerry always looked like trouble, which he was. After I suggested that instead of calling me at three o’clock on Friday afternoon for a Friday night date, maybe he could ask me out on Tuesday or Wednesday, he didn’t ask me out again. Then about a year later I randomly ran into him, and he offered to take me to a Grateful Dead show. I couldn’t pass that up, and from that point on we become tight friends, just friends. Drinking was our favorite pastime.

“Yo!” Like Russell, Jerry was at his desk early.

“Listen, I’ve got some news.”

“Yeah? You OK?”

“Not really. I’m in bad shape. I’m checking into the tank,” I said.

“The drunk tank? Nah! Get out!”

“No, I’m serious,” I grabbed an ashtray off my dresser and lit a cigarette. From the next room came the sound of television news and the faint smell of fried egg and bacon. Mark had returned. Jerry inhaled and then pushed out a deep, loud breath. “OK. OK. What tank do you even go to? Harper’s friend went to that place in Minnesota. I think I’d go to Betty Ford. Food’s supposed to be good.”

“No, no, I’m not doing a big thing like that. I’m just going for five or so days to this place on the Upper East Side to detox. Gracie Square. I got the referral from my doctor. I can get there any time before eleven o’clock tonight.”

“Yo! This is going down today? Today? Whoa.”

“Yeah, yeah. Russell’s coming over here to help me get my shit together and take me over.”

“He’s coming over? Are you drinking?” Jerry asked. “You better drink now before this whole thing goes down!”

“Oh, trust me, I’m drinking.”

“I’ll be right there. See you in a few.” He hung up and I pictured him scrambling around his office getting ready to run out. He might have had to bail out of a big work meeting to come over, but it wouldn’t matter to Jerry. He was that kind of friend. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt if alcohol were being served. We were known to open the Dublin House on West 79th Street at 8:00 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea for us to finish off any alcohol in the apartment before I left. I had a feeling I’d need to keep booze out of my place after detox, at least for a while.

At last I took off my work clothes and slipped into old jeans and an oversized cotton sweater. I was clammy with sweat and my insides felt like pea soup puree, churning around and around in a slow blender.

Was I really doing this or would the presence of my friends make me realize that I’d never give up my drinking and drugs? The situation was so surreal, I couldn’t be sure. It was as if I were hovering over the scene, watching some actress who looked like me telling her friends that she was just hours away from redefining their friendship forever. Wasn’t that true? Didn’t the decision to dry out threaten to change every relationship I had? Forever? Not the least of which would be the relationship with myself. Jesus, what would I do with myself sober all day? Fuck. This couldn’t possibly stick.

Jerry was at my door in minutes. “DOG!” He hugged me hard and I spilled into him. Then he helped himself to a glass of wine and headed into the living room to light a cigarette. “What’s up, dude?” he politely asked Mark who was sitting on the club chair. Mark and I spent most of our time together in my apartment, and I usually saw my friends separately, so they barely knew who he was. When they were around, he tended to hang back, maybe because being with us was like being at someone else’s family dinner—you’d definitely been invited and they tried to make you feel welcome, but you really weren’t part of the family.

“Hey!” Jerry said when Russell knocked shortly after. “Big day, huh? You believe this?” I hugged Russell in the doorway. Jerry sat with his jacket off and tie loosened, his right arm slung across the back of the living room couch. “She’s going to the drunk tank!”

“Yeah, I know,” said Russell. Then looked at me. “You OK?” I hugged him again and nodded into his chest. “Jess is with the kids,” he said. “No babysitter.”

“Sure, yeah,” I said. “I’m OK.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

Russell grabbed a glass of wine and sat on the couch next to Jerry, dropping the bag with his Karate gi on the floor. Sitting cross-legged opposite them, I leaned back against my heavy wooden bookcase.

“So, what’s up with this?” Jerry asked me. “What happened, baby? You really think you need this?”

“I have to drink to get out of bed. I’m puking blood. I’m shitting blood. It’s really, really bad.”

Jerry’s eyes popped. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you say anything? I had no idea!”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Russell said. “We’ll get her in today and she’ll get better.”

I rocked forward and hung my head over my legs. It didn’t seem real for me to be telling everyone the things I’d been so carefully hiding for so long. I felt sick and relieved at the same time.

“Shit. Did you call Devon?” Jerry asked.

Devon, a marketing executive at a financial firm, arrived shortly thereafter and was already crying before she hugged me. She was the kind of woman whose mascara didn’t run when she cried. Devon actually looked great in a bikini—from every angle. And she could eat roast beef sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise and never gain a pound. My news had shaken her up, but not one hair in her expertly highlighted blonde bob was out of place. We had met in a shared beach house on Fire Island almost fifteen years earlier and had spent the first night bonding hugely over vodka sodas. Now she was here in my apartment, on a workday, getting ready to send me to detox.

Were it not for me in the crummy clothes I had changed into and Mark in his holey jeans, the room could have passed for a Wall Street happy hour.

“Hey, you guys! What did you know about this?” Devon asked Russell and Jerry, pointing a well-manicured finger in their direction.

Russell was looking at his phone. Jerry spoke up. “We didn’t know anything, Dev! What the fuck? Why don’t you get some wine and relax?” Jerry knew that Devon hated being called “Dev” and being told to relax.

“Clowns,” she said, shaking her head. “Where’s the wine?” I pointed to the kitchen. “Here, I got this for you,” she said. She tossed me a little white stuffed tiger with black stripes that she had picked up on her way over. It roared three times when you squeezed its middle. “Just in case you need protection.” My eyes teared. I never would have thought to do that for anyone.

The same question kept coming up in various forms: “Why didn’t you tell us things were so bad?” What was the right answer? The lies had become so free-flowing that I hesitated to say the simple truth, which was, “There’s something wrong with me, with the way I think. I’ve always known it. I’m not like you guys. I’m chasing a happy life, but I don’t think I deserve it. I’ll never be good enough. Every day I still feel like the fat kid in fifth grade. The only way I can stop that script in my head is by drinking and using coke. But now drinking and using coke have become all I think about, all I care about.”

I listened to the chatter that always sounded like family bickering among my friends, mixing in with the Talking Heads CD that played in the background. My mind zipped through the repercussions of what I was about to do. If I detox the booze out of my body, does that mean I never get to put any more in? What if I couldn’t sit around and drink with these guys anymore? Would I have to just sit there and watch them drink? It was unthinkable. Sure, I was vomiting blood, but how do you live without drinking?

Suddenly I remembered all of us on Fire Island when we rented the beach house for the summer of 1992. The weekends when we could all leave the city for the beach were precious, and this had been a particularly good one, a perfect, clear bluesky Fourth of July.

We had all congregated on the wooden deck in the back, sitting in a circle of beach chairs around the grill. It was a Saturday, and we had invited some other friends to join us. The sun was setting and the air had that magic twilight quality that emerges right at the beginning edge of a summer night. Most of us had just showered after a long day of laughing and sleeping on the beach. We walked around barefoot, letting our just-cleaned hair dry however the ocean air willed.

Jerry was hovering over the grill watching fresh clams open one by one and bopping along to the Grateful Dead’s “Bertha,” that played out of the house speakers. As the clams opened, he plucked them off the grill with oversized tongs and dropped them into a large bowl. “Dude. These are amazing!” he kept saying, to no one in particular.

The salty sea air mixed with the smell of garlic powder melting into drawn butter. I could hear the whir of the blender inside as Russell yelled, “Frozen margaritas—two minutes!” Jessica, Devon, and I giggled and cackled as we remembered listening to a bunch of day-tripping teenagers on the beach talking about their evening plans. “We’re totally getting into the Albatross tonight. It’s gonna be awesome,” we heard one of them say. Our cigarette smoke trails crossed and we shook with laughter as we joked about a bunch of seventeen-year-olds with fake IDs trying to use pouty lips and cleavage to get past Bobby, the bar’s grumpy, gay bouncer.

That’s how it always was when we got together—it was comfortable. It was funny. It was easy. We were happy. And we were usually smoking and drinking. Now I was afraid I’d never fit in with my friends again. I was going off the rails and ruining everything. Another reason to hate myself.

Snapping back, I realized it was close to lunchtime. “Hey, you guys hungry? Should we order Chinese?” I asked. “Maybe we should eat and I’ll take a nap before we go.” I was trying to slow the clock.

“Yeah, get a bunch of food.” Jerry said. “Don’t know when you’re going to get a decent meal again!”

After a full plate of spring rolls, sweet and sour shrimp, and broccoli with garlic sauce, I needed sleep. “You guys, I’m going down for a nap,” I said, staggering into the bedroom.

When I awoke several hours later, it was dark outside. For a moment I forgot the gravity of my situation, but as my eyes began to adjust to the light of my bedside lamp, my mind caught up on current events. I was about to slide back under the covers when Devon padded into the room, having long ago kicked off her Gucci shoes.

“I packed your bag,” she said. “You never know who’s going to be in rehab, so I put some nice stuff in, too: good bras, a couple of short skirts, high heels. . . There could be rock stars there.”

“I doubt it’s that kind of place,” I said.

Devon shook her head and rolled her eyes. “It’s entirely possible, so you and your nice panties will be ready.”

I washed my face, brushed my teeth and walked back out into the living room where my support team remained gathered, still sipping red wine from large glasses. It was time to leave. All I had to say was “Let’s go,” but instead, I flopped my still exhausted body down onto one of the club chairs. My friends stood up and began to put their coats on. They talked about who should share a cab, and I panicked.

“You know what, you guys? I’m feeling way better. Maybe I should just get more sleep and go tomorrow instead.” My leg was draped over the oversized arm of the chair, and I avoided eye contact with everyone.

Devon whipped around toward me. She was holding a little bag with my toiletries and pointed a tube of toothpaste at me. “Oh, no, you don’t!” she said. “After what we went through today? And what you told us you’ve been doing? You’re going to detox, and you’re going right now.” I looked to the guys for help, but all three of them were nodding in agreement.

Russell turned to me as we were walking out. “Why don’t you give me a set of keys? I’ll come back here with Devon and we’ll make sure there’s nothing lying around when you get back.” Russell was always two steps ahead of a situation. It was part of what made him so successful in law and in banking.

“OK, yeah, good idea,” I said, watching him drop my spare set of keys into his jacket pocket. Then I said, “Oh wait, you know what else? Take down all the sweaters on the shelves in the walk-in closet. Shake them to see if any stray bags of coke fall out,” I paused, thinking through my other stashes. “Oh yeah, and the boxes in the linen closet? You know, like where I keep Band-Aids and hotel shampoos? Better check those, too.” His expression didn’t change as he nodded slowly, but I swore I could see him start to process the fact that I hid bags of coke between my sweaters and in Band-Aid boxes. “Oh yeah, and there’s some really good pot in the box with the votive candles on my bookshelf,” I said, as if I had left something off a shopping list. “Give it to Jerry.”

There was nothing but support in my friends’ eyes, but I felt as if I’d just told them I’d been selling crack to sixth graders.

We took two taxis to Gracie Square. I sat between Russell and Devon, my head resting on Russell’s shoulder. I felt so tired and sick that there was no room left for fear or dread.

The front of the hospital was like none I’d ever seen. No bright lighting, no circular driveway for drop-offs and pick-ups, no fleet of idling ambulances waiting for their next 911 call. In fact, the building looked like the dreary corporate offices of a company that time had forgotten. Russell, Devon, and I exchanged curious looks but no one spoke.

Jerry and Mark arrived in their own cab. “Yo, smoke ’em while you got ’em,” Jerry said, handing me a cigarette. “What the fuck is this place? Doesn’t look like a hospital.”

“No idea. Give me your lighter,” I said, grabbing it with a shaking hand.

After stomping out my cigarette, I swung open one of the big glass doors and headed toward the receptionist who sat in a booth behind a panel of protective glass. A young, tired-looking security guard in a blue uniform sat at a wooden desk a little farther back in the lobby. Was he armed? We all looked at each other as if to acknowledge that whatever this place was, it was no New York-Presbyterian.

Devon raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. “I don’t like this place,” she said. I shrugged back at her, and she offered, “Why don’t you let me call Silver Hill? It’s a place up in Connecticut and is supposed to be nice. I think Billy Joel went there.”

Starting over didn’t sound like a good idea at that point. I shut my eyes and said, “Let me just try it here. If it’s terrible, I’ll leave.”

The receptionist directed us to a large waiting area with hard plastic, burgundy chairs that were linked up in sets. After a few minutes, a tall, middle-aged man in khakis and a faded blue button-down shirt walked into the reception area, looked around, and approached our group. He had thinning brown hair, and he walked with the casual lope of someone unlikely to be surprised by whatever happened next.

“Hi. I’m Brad,” he said, clasping his hands together, perhaps an attempt at enthusiasm. “I’m here for Lisa.” I gave him a half wave from where I was slouched in a chair and leaning on Russell.

“Hi Lisa. I’m going to get you admitted and up to the detox floor. We need to go to the intake area. Are you folks Lisa’s friends or family?” he asked the group.

“We’re her friends,” Russell said before anyone else could speak. “We’d like to hear what’s going to happen.” He was using the voice he probably adopted when closing corporate mergers. I nodded at Brad, and he pulled up a chair so that everyone could hear.

“OK, I’m going to explain a few things,” Brad said. “Lisa, I understand that you’re here because you have an alcohol problem and are seeking a medicated detoxification. If you choose to do that here, you need to understand that this is a locked-down psychiatric facility, not a hospital where you can come and go.” I kept my eyes on Brad, afraid to look at anyone else. “If you agree to be treated, you must sign a consent that requires us to keep you here for at least 72 hours. You cannot leave before that, unless a written request is granted.”

He seemed like a kind man, but there was no mistaking the seriousness in his tone. “From here, I’ll take you to the detox unit where you will be treated with the rest of the detox patients. Now I want you to be prepared: you might see and hear some things you’re not used to, but the patients there are all dealing with the same thing you are. They’re just getting help, like you. The floor is coed and you’ll share a room with another female patient. You will share a bathroom with the patients in the next room. Also, you should know that there are no locks on any of the doors because the staff needs unrestricted access to patients at all times. Do you understand all of this?”

I nodded and tried to keep a calm face but my insides were shouting at me, Why didn’t you research this more thoroughly? Why did you just pick this place? Christ, you give more thought to changing your lip color. Devon seemed to share my thoughts. Her expression seemed to say, “I’m not leaving you here with Jack Nicholson in his creepy ass hotel!” But I was so tired, and it had taken so much to come this far—I just wanted to give whatever signatures would let me fall into a bed, any bed. Brad held out a clipboard with a stack of papers, and I started signing with my right hand while Russell held my left hand. Then it was done. I was officially a mental patient.

“OK, Lisa, you won’t meet the staff psychiatrist until tomorrow morning. I’m taking you to the night physician now. He’ll take some blood so he can run the necessary tests and get you started on Librium.”

Hot tears built up in my eyes and I struggled to hold them back as I hugged my friends goodbye. They looked more frightened than I was, but then again, they hadn’t made a practice of snorting coke for breakfast followed by vomiting blood. They called out, “We’ll visit” and “You’ll be OK” as they walked out into the world I couldn’t rejoin for 72 hours. I wondered if they were comforting themselves or me.

Then it occurred to me that they were probably going for a drink. My mouth watered at the idea. They’d certainly earned a drink, and surely there would be a download discussion. A big part of me wanted to run after them, but a bigger part was grateful that I’d signed away the option.