Kitchen Cupboards & Electrodes by T.S. Hand 

On my eleventh birthday, I wanted to become a man. Feeling bold, I asked my sleepover-party friends if they’d like a drink. They looked aghast. I stood atop a chair to reach the liquor cabinet. My first sips of scotch were revolting, so I mixed it with a peach juice-box.

I awake in a hospital bed, stuck with tubes and electrodes. The last thing I remember is finishing a water bottle full of vodka in the back of sophomore physics class. My mom sits in the corner sobbing in choked bursts. “My son, the drunk!” she spurts.

Drivers-ed class was showing an instructional video. My then girlfriend, sitting in front of me, discreetly reached behind her desk and up my short’s leg. After my erection subsided, I sauntered to the bathroom to peel off my boxers. I naively hoped the DMV would be this exciting.

I awake in a urine-soaked and vomit-encrusted mess on my bedroom floor. My mom stands over my naked body; she’s obviously been crying. “Why can’t you just stop?” she pleads. It’s Tuesday, so I shower, dress and go to my junior-year homeroom.

People say you’re addicted to heroin the first time you try it. I was a science major, so it was only a lab experiment to me. Six hours later I vomited in my dorm bed and writhed in agony. I knew just one more hit would make everything alright.

The girl sleeping with her back to me is my girlfriend. Awakening, I re-piece the previous night. The last thing I remember is discovering her infidelity, and walking towards her with clenched fists. I lay in bed, too scared to wake her and see the horror. My dry, shaking sobs finally stirred her.

After detox, some friends advised me to say “I love you” to the people I had hurt most. The first person’s usually the same for every recovering addict. In a Thai restaurant’s dimly-lighted bathroom I took a deep breath and said three words into the mirror.

____________________________

The sign on the door urges, “This Is a Safe Place.” I walk in behind my father, who has himself strung together four months of sobriety at the age of 62. We enter the nondescript church rectory and take seats next to the other five inhabitants from middle-America retirement communities. Just a teenager, I am the only participant under fifty years old. As I descend torturously into my stiff-backed folding chair, seven hits of ecstasy beckon, connive in my billfold ID sleeve, as an emergency curative. After some initial readings and collective grunts, “Hello, my name is Tommy, and I’m an alcoholic…”

After forty minutes, however, I sense peace and contentment for the first time since I reached into the high oak cupboard that held 15-year-old single-malt scotch. Neuronal appendages split and reattach. I cry, unforced and unashamed. I forgive myself for the sick I was.

When I cross the doorway threshold to the sun-baked O.C. parking lot, the sign still reads, “This Is a Safe Place.”