ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter Ten: We Addicts

When he was in his thirties, before I met him, Ernie attended A.A. meetings for five straight years, but he and I never explored the underlying insecurity and pain still bottled inside him.

I thought he drank because his father drank, that he’d inherited a certain gene that made alcohol toxic to him. I thought that, once he stopped drinking, the problem was solved. But I’m finding out that any addiction is only a symptom. It’s what people in pain turn to, to numb themselves or to cover up the pain.

Ernie stopped drinking, but he didn’t stop using.

I remember what Ernie said to a nurse, in one of his last hospital stays: “Pain is an old companion of mine.” He ended his published memoir at the point of his high-school graduation, although he wrote a Part Two and a Part Three. “So painful to write,” he said of those chapters. “Too painful to read.”

I’m an addict, too. What I used was Ernie. I go to my Twelve-Step meetings to get help from other Twelve-Steppers, who share their experience, strength, and hope. Most of them have been on the Recovery path far longer than I have. I’m a newcomer. I’ve only just realized my life is unmanageable. Eventually, they promise, I will get to the Land of Serenity, even the Land of Joy. They promise me that.

I don’t believe them.