BOOZE AND DRUGS - A RISK WORTH TAKING -

A DESPONDENT YOUTH WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD - OR SO I THOUGHT

I drank beer on a school trip. I was dating two girls at once. I sucked back two large cans of beer when word came down there was going to be a room check. I stuck the crushed cans behind the dresser. And I stayed real close to the bathroom for two reasons. The upchuck and the fact I’d consumed enough liquid to require an almost non-stop urination. No, I didn’t get caught. Close but as they say, that only counts in horseshoes.

When I hear stories today about teenagers getting wasted at parties or while on school trips, I might blurt something like, “What the hell’s wrong with those kids anyway,” and become holier than thou, until my conscience rears-up and reminds me, I was one of those misbehaving teens myself. A babe in each arm, a cigar in my clenched teeth, and a bottle of rye within easy reach. What a life. I wasn’t hippy but I was tuned-in, turned-on and tuned-out before I was twenty.

It was that stupid period of adventure-seeking that most youngsters stretch to the outer reaches of the ridiculous. I can remember going on a canoe trip, into Algonquin Park, with enough booze to meet the needs of a battalion. There was only four of us. We were hammered by the 2nd portage. I came over one of the hills, only to find a canoe on the ground. We couldn’t find our mate anywhere. He was a six footer so he’d have made a hungry bear very contented. If he’d fallen into the lake, with the snoot-full of beer, how were we going to explain that to his parents. Jesus, we were at our first conundrum with booze, and it was only the second portage. It wasn’t until we decided to haul the canoe over the rest of the portage, and heard the muffled yelling from below, we realized the lost canoeist had been found. Seems he had momentarily passed out after falling into a muddy hole. Up to his waist, and being happily pissed, just kind of nodded off in the shade of his own canoe. It only got worse after this. So here we were in the middle of beautiful Algonquin Park, during spectacular weather, with great food in tow, and hated all of it because we were hungover by early afternoon. Why did we self-contaminate. We thought it was an act of liberation. A way to get the camper babes we’d find out on the Big Misty (Lake) campsites. Never happened by the way.

I was on a hockey trip once, as a teenager, and had to travel home in the back of a pick-up truck. Guess what we found in the back, beneath all the hockey gear. Well, by time we got back home, most of the brewskies were gone, and so was the hockey equipment. It seems we started chucking it out the back from about Powassan heading south. I didn’t do it, but I know who did. Needless to say the coach wasn’t impressed to find his beer had been emptied and his skates and stick were somewhere between Novar and Huntsville. The worst part was, I’d forgotten that my girlfriend Linda, was going to be at the Junior hockey game that night, and seeing as we got back before it was over......and the fact she didn’t think I drank anything more potent than sarsparilla, I was in shock when I saw her at the front of the rink. She was a wonderful girl and her OPP father was so pleased I didn’t imbibe.....as I had confessed before my first date with Linda. So here she was, and so was I, and when we hugged.....I was busted. Like Ricky Ricardo asking Lucy, I had a “lot of splaining to do.” I hated when she got teary eyed, thinking of me as her drunken boyfriend.

One night, three of us young lads, decided to go to a hockey game in Sundridge. We were so drunk to start with, and avoiding cops by taking the backroads north, we didn’t catch on to the fact we had taken a wrong turn, winding up on this treeless barrens with only these strange little huts along the trail. I remember thinking through the fog of alcohol, that, unless we had landed in Lilliput, these little houses looked an awful lot like fish shacks. Christ, we were out on the ice road, down from Wilson’s Lodge on Skeleton Lake. I don’t think the driver had any idea how to make a pursuit turn but did one anyway, and in only seconds, we were back on the main road thanking God for sparing our lives. So what does a drunken jerk do next. Well, that’s easy. I chucked a beer bottle out of the car. Not behind, but ahead. It hit the ice covered snowbank and rolled down in time for the front tire to run it over. So then, having survived the lake misadventure, we now had a flat tire in the blackness of a country night. To make it more interesting, the tire had been replaced a short time before, and nuts put on with an air wrench. We had the smallest tire wrench in the world. It took more than an hour to change that tire. No gloves. No flashlight. But lots of booze.

I’ve got stories about booze excesses that would have made Paul Rimstead wince. And if you ever read his adventures in the Toronto Sun, many years back, you’d realize that it would have taken a lot to find someone with more legendary antics than his. In later years, Rimmer’s column was my daily source of motivation. As a young writer, he was my mentor. I lived out his lifestyle the best I could. The difference being, I survived and he didn’t. I credit my survival to Suzanne and her kind badgering about the health risks I was creating for myself, and economic woes I was causing the family.

I realized that I didn’t drink alone. The biggest incentive to booze-it-up was the group precedent. I’d belonged to the sports regimen from childhood. Baseball and hockey associations were my downfall, especially in my elder years because they were based on the culture of......beer and lots of it! When the local lads went golfing, we had more booze in our bags than that trip I took to Algonquin.......the one I wrote about earlier. We were absolutely tanked by the ninth hole. It wasn’t until I gave up all of these sporting activities, on the recreation scale.....that I could see that a life without booze was possible. At work, a few of us staff writers had got into the habit of having whisky in the morning, for noon and afternoon coffees. I started to need it at home, and Suzanne, having to budget for our growing family, didn’t want to upset her writer-husband by asking me to spend less on booze.

After a Sunday morning hockey game, and five or six beers before the noon hour, I drove home, begged Suzanne to bring along Andrew, for a wee drive in the countryside. I remember so clearly today, the moment I came to my senses. I had taken them to a small log church on the Fraserburg Road, known as Rocksborough. My parents had taken me there, as a youngster, to sit in the pews of this historic Muskoka church. Here I was, doing what my parents had done....for my wife and young son. But my dad didn’t arrive here drunk. That was a big difference. I stood looking in the window, and all of a sudden, as if my Guardian Angel slapped me in the head with a wing tip, I saw my reflection. It wasn’t a pretty sight. At that moment, I knew over-indulgence would hurt our family. I asked Suzanne, standing beside me with Andrew in her arms, how we got to the church. I had apparently blacked out you see, and had no recall whatsoever, other than her word, how we had arrived, by car, with me driving. I had risked my family’s life by driving. The worst part was, I had intimidated my good wife from being honest with me, and refusing to get in the car. We had many arguments, and I think she felt it was better to go along, and avoid anything that would offend me. Whether I knew it or not, I had offended everyone I cared about. I stopped drinking that day.

For the next ten years I wouldn’t touch a drink. I quit hockey and baseball and sold my golf clubs at a yard sale. I moved away from the newspaper office, to work full time from my home, where I looked after our son as a committed Mr. Mom. I did the same with second son Rob, and lived booze free.....and flourished.

I won’t tell you I don’t drink today. I do. I enjoy seasonal and birthday treats of world (exotic) beer, and the occasional glass of wine with a nice dinner. I do not purchase any of it. And I have no interest in doing so.

At the end of his life, Rimstead wrote in his column, that he had asked his doctor how long he would live if he gave up booze altogether. With the damage he had caused himself to that point, I think it was a case of maybe eight more years without a taste of alcohol. When he asked how long he’d have drinking daily, the doc said only a few years. It was Rimmer’s viewpoint that he much preferred a couple of carousing years as a drinker, than eight years of boredom. I think he felt bad about admitting this but as his fans cherished his honesty, we knew his problems were all mortal......such that we could only abide by his rules, and read his work until the end.......and be satisfied he knew what he was doing. I was a non-drinker by this point, and it crushed me that my favorite writer was gone.......the result of excesses. I became a writer because of Rimstead. Stuck with it through hundreds of rough patches, when I hated my employers, my assignments, and even my readers at times. It was Rimmer’s columns that gave me the reason to sit back down at that Underwood, and commit to freedom of the press. So when he died, geez, I felt totally abandoned, and the booze that help kill him, once again seemed so alluring. I got over it. You know, I’ve still got a copy of Rimmer’s “Cocktales and Jockstraps,” on the shelf beside me......and every now and again, when I get the urge to binge, for old times sake, I just read a couple of chapters and I’m good.

When I hear and read about young people having problems with booze and drugs, I can certainly become outspoken.......until that is, Suzanne reminds me about an incident at a church, and a reflection I didn’t like. I do understand how excess can ruin a life. I know the huge need to feel a part of the action, and not be stuck as a discontent watcher. I wanted to be able to talk to girls without feeling like a nerd, and booze was the great liberator. At one time in my young life I had two girlfriends at the same time, and a really big ego, and a few years later, I had three girlfriends on the go, and everything was related to alcohol consumption and parties. Just as it had been at teenage parties when I cheated on my girlfriend(s) as a matter of necessity. I wasn’t at all pleased when it went the opposite direction, and I’d find my best mate with my best girl. I can’t tell you how many parties ended the same way. A wrestling match over matters of the heart, fought on the front lawn. All because of booze.

I have written about my exploits in the past, pretty much as a needed confessional, to acknowledge a great imperfection of character in my days of yore. But today it is painful to watch as so many people, injure themselves and their families, in order to be popular and the life of the party. I cheated death a thousand times. I wonder how lucky these people will be. Luck, you see, doesn’t enter into it. My luck, wasn’t to find Suzanne, it was my salvation. She eased me gently away from a crappy existence. I wonder if these drinkers and drug addicts will ever have the saving grace of a caring partner.....to help them out of the dark place of addiction. If I’d carried on, the way I was drinking at the time of our marriage in 1983, I would be as dead as Rimstead.....just not as well known.

When I get up on this soap box of mine, and talk or write about my past association with “the drink,” I will always see that snowy churchyard......on the Fraserburg Road, and the footprints in the snow I couldn’t remember making. And then see a contented life with a wonderful family, in the only reflection I care about today.

We need to help our friends in denial about their excesses. We need to be friends and good parents, who by love and compassion, wish to stop the Reaper in his tracks.