David Franks: What It's Really Like to be a Drunk and in Detox..."More Slugs from Big Gulp" / Part 2

In the spring of 1991 several of us decided to bring back the Baltimore underground paper "HARRY' which had been the hippie paper of record until it ceased publication in 1972. 
Let's just say it was an artistic success. One reason for that was writer/poet/musician/
performance artist David Franks.
He wrote four stories for us, stories that could have run in the New Yorker.
This was the third story he wrote for us, the first being on a job he had as a phone psychic. The second was part 1 of this story. Find it here.
This is from the July 1991 issue, Issue #3.
All of the capitalization and punctuation and spacing are David's.
That incarnation of HARRY lasted only 6 memorable months. David died at age 61 in 2010 in his Fell's Point apartment. He was working on several projects at the time.
I was the Editor-in-Chief of HARRY at the time he wrote these. This is the first of four, meant to be read in order. I'm very happy to bring these back to life. I wish I could do the same for David.
                                                                                                -----Tom D'Antoni

By DAVID FRANKS //

I tell stories & some of them are true.

If God looked into my head, he would not find himself there.

What I wanted was to be alive & dead at the same time.

BEREFT OF SPIRIT, I was of course full of spirits--D.O.A.--Drunk on Arrival. Blood pressure zooming toward stroke & pinning/ Dangerously dehydrated. Feet bloody & bandaged courtesy of E.R. at Church Home--Poe died there man! Ever dramatic, it is Christmas Eve & of course I am wearing my best formal pinstripe suit--handmade for me in New Orleans. There I am keeping up appearances in the face of the Psychiatric Hospital of Absolute Reality.Against all odds I have very nearly dressed myself for my own funeral & even this little wisp of gloomy humor is lost on me.

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME & the drunk lying out int he street last winter was Blue Cross Blue Shield.

THE BLUES SWEPT ME FROM THE STEETS & the dizzying eights of local "spindry" (a 3 day detox center). From there I was able to check into a full-fledged dual diagnosis psychiatric hospital--the same one frequented by Zelda & F. ("in American literature there are no second acts") Scott Fitzgerald.

I SELECTED SHAPPARD PRATT solely on the basis of its literary reputation. I thought nothing. I thought nothing of the fact that it was a dual diagnostic center. I mean like F. Scott, I was a social drinker--"So shall," I thought.

I THOUGHT NOTHING. Shit--it was my gerneration that took drugs out of the hands of junkies & musicians & brought them into the living rooms of America! Mix with legalized alcohol & T.V. & whatya got--bibbbity, bobbity, boo!

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DUAL DIAGNOSIS & dual addiction was lost on me. Dual addiction means the an Earthling is addicted to any combination of alcohol, heroin, cocaine, or prescription drugs. The unlettered children of boomers like myself are starting to throw in a few wrinkles of their own. Having never heard of Leary or having read Ginsberg, they are doing what no man said could ever be done--they are getting addicted to Acid & Pot! Drop dead. Tune in. Turn to the kid's page.

(Editor's note: HARRY had a "Kid's Page" or two in every issue. That's what David was referring to.)

DURING THE DAYS TO COME dual diagnosis was to become my familiar. In a very real sense it was to become whatever I am today which I'm afraid, dear reader, is up for grabs.

AT FIRST I THOUGHT that it simply meant that two diagnoses would be made--one for alcoholism & one for drug addiction--then off fo "90 in 90" in A.A. or N.A. But after I had detoxed & deteed, I came to believe that even the saving grace of health insurance is not without its contagious irony.

IT WAS NOT ENOUGH TO BE A GARDEN variety Alki like myself, nor would any amount of narcotic cross-pollinating have served to keep me in the bin. With a genuine mental illness of my very own my days of A.A., N.A., group therapy, spiritual counseling, educational lectures, films, ping pong & amnesia would soon be nothing but pleasant nostalgia. The psychiatrists & staff had about 10 days to come up with a new identity for me--at least one acceptable method of treatment. Otherwise the hospital wouldn't be paid by the Blues (approximately $20,000 for 28 days). No matter the severity of the addiction or the prognosis of the patient.

I AM SECRETLY COHERENT & this is a true story: this alone should be worth the price of this newspaper.

ALTHOUGH IT DEFIES MY IMAGINATION as we zoom toward 2000, it occurs that there still may be a reader out there who has not seen a psychiatrist. Therefore, I must tell you that the term "50 minute hour" refers to the standard time period an appointment with a psychiatrist lasts. It gives them time at the end of the appointment to stop you with the phrase, "I'm sorry, we're running out of over now" & be late for their next patient. Here's the story of it origins:

ACCORDING TO MY RESUME, late last year I was teaching at Illinois State University. One evening, I stopped by Brokaw Hospital to pick up a nurse I had been seeing. While I was waiting, I moseyed around the lobby and found an incredibly interesting collection of cross-cultural artifacts on the practice of Phrenology. In our country, phrenology was the direct precursor of psychiatry. Only the economy of a Nation & a visit to the Brothels of Paris by Sigmund Freud stood in the way.
Phrenologists studied the confirmation of the skull in the belief that its shape revealed our mental faculties & characters. Here then were medicinal hacksaws & boring devices for lobotomies & such. Phrenology also played an active part in our criminal justice system & our laws of immigration well into this century in the form of Lombroso theory. It held that certain Earthlings are born criminals & can be identified as such by certain physical characteristics such as the shape of the skull. But of course this gets more complicated as does everything else it seems.--to to make a long story longer & possibly unbearable for you this is what I found in a display case while waiting for Florence Nightengale:

WHAT SEEMED LIKE A BOX OF WOODEN MATCHES was in fact a box of small candles that Freud had found in a Bordello in Paris. The Parisian whores provided the market for these diminutive candles. They burned for 50 minutes which they found ideal to time their tricks. Freud than had found in a bordello the "50 minute hour" & brought it lock, stock, & box back to Austria & then into the psychiatric offices of Western civilization. Having dispensed with these candles in favor of Rolexes, modern psychiatrists nevertheless continue in the path of Parisian whores.

BROKAW HOSPITAL IS IN NORMAL, Illinois. Shepard Pratt is in Baltimore, Maryland. Whew!

OUR RADIOS & ELECTRIC RAZORS were checked by hospital electricians for explosives. Our use of razors for shaving was carefully monitored to prevent suicide. Our use of our genitalia for urinating was carefully monitored to prevent drug use. As far as possible all of the apertures to our dual diagnosis unit were closed and locked.

LOCKED WINDOWS were bullet & presumably head-proof. A few spaces were kept open like the doors to the bedrooms to maintain observation & presumably good health.

THIS I THOUGHT IS WHAT IS DONE with Nightingales to make them sing & with Parrots to teach them to talk.

LIKE A PARROT, at least, I was beginning to talk: "May I speak to Doctor!" "May I speak to Doctor!" -- Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!

MY EXPERIENCE IS LIMITED. Your experience is limited. Heisenberg discovered America not Christopher Columbus. I did not die for your sins -- Having said that let me tell you the truth:

THERE WERE THREE PSYCHIATRISTS assigned to my unit. On a given day there was usually about a 15 patient census depending on the vagaries of the insurance companies & the vicissitudes of  marketing. Only the most difficult of us -- Willie Lee, Michelle, Tim & Walter made the Doctor's job easy:

WILLIE LEE WAS BIG, BLACK & BIBLICAL When Willie smiled it was as if God wrapped the world in Peace. When Willie Lee looked into my eyes & saw the devil I thought I was gone: Throazine, Haldol. Et al. Psycotic. Easy.

MICHELLE WAS A TRIAL ATTORNEY fresh from both Hazeldons & a veteran of Betty Ford. One day I was reading to the group from a book of daily meditations, "Keep It Simple," during our morning meeting. "An ass is beautiful to an ass & a pig to a pig" read the proverb. It is intended to illustrate that often only another addict might be able to see who is out of control. But when I looked up whle reading & my eye by chance met Michelle's she charged me from across the room: "PIG!," "ASS!," ASS," "PIG!":

IT TOOK THREE HEALTH WORKERS to pry Michelle's fingers from my throat and at lest that many shots of thorazine to get her down: Willie Lee was smiling. Paranoid schizophrenic. Easy.

TIM WAS OCB (OBSESSIVE COMPUSIVE) & returning over and over to see the same thing -- a good soldier, sweet man, problematic husband, heavy duty clonidine addict. Easy.

WALTER WAS STRAIGHT M.R. Although his thinking seemed somewhat glacial, I never thought so, but there were tests to prove it conclusively. Trouble is Walter never learned to read! Again easy.

OTHERS SUCH AS MYSELF were more problematic. Despite years of Woody Allen-like phases & 5 years of straight analysis I had no history of mental illness. Neurotically whacko to be sure, but nuts no. Severe addiction. Severe anxiety & depressive. Absolutely. Not easy.

SHOW ME AN ADDICT OF AN ALCOHOLIC who isn't severely anxious & depressed when their source is taken away! But mentally ill or retarded like Willie Lee, Michelle, even Tim or Walter -- not hardly.

I WAS IN TREATMENT CHRISTMAS, NEW YEARS & my birthday. One of the saddest days however was another one:

MY PARENTS CAME TO MEET WITH ME, my attending psychiatrist, addiction counselor, & social worker. It was at this meeting that my psychiatrist would announce my condition, the treatment, & prognosis for the first time -- the one that had been sent to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The social worker passed out copies of a form & the psychiatrist read & stayed after briefly to answer questions:

Primary Diagnosis:

BIPOLAR DISORDER, MANIC 20 YEARS

MIXED PERSONALITY DISORDER, LIFETIME

ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE, 10 PLUS YEARS

TREATMENT:

Tegretol 400 mg BID -- Bipolar d/o

Antabuse 250 mgs -- Alcohol dep

Therapy, halfway house, AA

PROGNOSIS: from your diagnosis of the

patient's condition, please check the 

appropriate level of his/her work capacity

___ Full Work Capacity.

             If work capacity is limited,

             please check one of the following:

___ Sedentary work

___ Light Work

___ Moderate Work

___ No work capacity

Is patient's condition

___ Permanent or

___ Temporary

MY FATHER, a product of self-described polypharmacy with more than his own share of emotional problems, left the room. Drained. Heartbroken really. Silent in that terrible way men get when it is important to talk.

MY MOTHER STAYED BRIEFLY & looked at me fully with her tearful mother's eyes. Finally she hugged me & said, "Sometimes, Davey, I just don't know what's right anymore."

MY MOTHER WAS RIGHT.

I SAT THERE ALONE IN THE ROOM waiting for a mental health worker to bring me back to the unit. I had never heard the words "Bi-Polar" before -- perhaps I was a gay Eskimo. That was funny.

MY DENIAL WAS ONCE SO POWERFUL that it had brought me near death several times. Death was not tasty and dangerous, like making love in wet grass. Near death was dull & quiet & out of control.

I FINALLY ACCEPTED THE FACT that I was an alcoholic, but now I was being asked to believe that I possessed two mental disorders so debilitating in the view of one of the best Mad-houses in the country that I might never be fit to work again. That was not funny.

PERHAPS THE REASON PSYCHIATRISTS are so vilified is that most of us really do think they can determine what is wrong & make it better. We give them the power & then when they use it in unsettling way we feel violated.

I FELT ABSOLUTELY ALONE with whatever private sense of myself was left to me. I felt violated. Dull & quiet & out of control:

"May I speak to Doctor!," "May I speak to Doctor!," "May I speak to Doctor!"

Squawk!

Squawk!

Squawk!

David Franks: Slugs from 20 years in Big Gulp - excerpts from part 1 of part 1

In the spring of 1991 several of us decided to bring back the Baltimore underground paper "HARRY' which had been the hippie paper of record until it ceased publication in 1972. 
Let's just say it was an artistic success. One reason for that was writer/poet/musician/
performance artist David Franks.
He wrote four stories for us, stories that could have run in the New Yorker.
This was the second story he wrote for us, the first being on a job he had as a phone psychic. That's what he refers to in the open. I'll put that up also, after these first three. 
This is from the June 1991 issue, Issue #2.
All of the capitalization and punctuation and spacing are David's.
That incarnation of HARRY lasted only 6 memorable months. David died at age 61 in 2010 in his Fell's Point apartment. He was working on several projects at the time.
I was the Editor-in-Chief of HARRY at the time he wrote these. This is the first of four, meant to be read in order. I'm very happy to bring these back to life. I wish I could do the same for David.
                                                                                                -----Tom D'Antoni

By DAVID FRANKS //

*What I am doing here is abandoning the straight-ahead pyramid journalistic style of "Confessions of a 900-Number Psychic" in favor of what I call the "Big Gulp" techinique. It is an attempt to invade my own privacy; it is a way of talking about the self, of capturing what's gets lost in the story. D.F.

I tell stories & some of them are true:

What I wanted was to be alive & dead at the same time:

Though it is his Church, his Temple, his place of obeisance, ablution, genuflection, & prayer -- the average bathroom was never designed for the alcoholic:

The daily ritual:

TO GET UP, EVENTUALLY, & VOMIT into the toilet bowl is easily accomplished. The flesh is willing & the receptacle is waiting. But to vomit and urinate in said bowl simultaneously defies gender in a most egalitarian & comical fashion. The man must clutch penis, bend to bowl, vomit, straighten up, guide penis, release, hold, bend, vomit ad nauseum. Woman must sit, release, urinate, rise, turn, bend to bowl, vomit, gulp, repeat ad nauseum.
What is missing in this circle game of binary dysfunction? Any true Alki worth his gestalt is no mere circle-er but rather a full-fledged dervish & his higher power is involuntary -- diarrhea!
To VOMIT, URINATE, & then to simultaneously accommodate this unruly river of shit into one's morning toilette is Nature's garet HA! HA! HA!
DO I HEAR STRAINS OF BACH from outside the bathroom door? Forget it:
MOST WESTERN EARTHLINGS share at least the memory of such rigors. So much so that it is regarded as a Rite of Passage.
UNLIKE THE ALKI, most earthlings go on to do incredible like learn from past behavior: THE STOP!
RECENTLY RICHIE HAVENS recorded a song, "I Want to Live for My Country." I wrote the lyric to this song & in one of the chorus's I wrote, "...We learn out geography through terror/we live our history on T.V.".
TODAY I WAS READING EMERSON'S "LIFE" & I noticed a similar perception. Emerson observes, "We learn our geology the morning after the earthquake on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains."
A RECOVERING ALKI LIKE ME can look at 10 or 20 years of their own lives & view the wreckage & start naming the victims as if they were strangers, as he had no part in his own life.
I WAS A BOMBED BABY BOOMER & 'whilst boogie boarding on a sea of booze, I began to lose balance somewhere along the asphalt. My experiences were becoming truly modern -- like sub-atomic particles they became recognizable only by their residue: women who deeply loved me became baffled, blaming & terrified. Books, songs & performances that were pushed by believing publishers, agents, etc. were left in abeyance. Positions that could have easily grown in duration & scope were lost or stunted in politesse.
BESIDES DRINKIN' N' DRUGGIN' I was always in a mad, mad pursuit of Romance:
MY IDEAL ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP was a person who was not too drunk, who had no last name, who would do unspeakable things until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and then turn into a pizza:
THERE WERE MANY MORNINGS when I looked over & I thought that's exactly what they had done -- you know those mornings when you wake up & you find yourself lying next to "IT":
& you don't know who "IT" is,
or what "IT" is,
or what you've done with "IT,"
or what you've promised "IT,"
& this is mind-boggling at 6 or 7 in the morning with a Celestial hangover when birdsong is totally hideous & "real people" are on their way to work & you don't know whether you're at your place or not but that you have to leave without waking "IT" up,
& then one morning you wake up,
& "ITS" awake,
& "ITs" looking at you
& suddenly you realize that you've just become "ITS" "IT"
IF YOU ARE NOT A PRACTICING ALKI, or don't know one, the insanity of the Alki is comical -- a real rip snorter. Who else would get sick & fuck up their lives (& those of the people closest to them) day after day, & then respond by getting sicker and more fucked up day after day?
MANY, INCLUDING ALKIS themselves believe this is some sort of dramatic perverse willfulness. The point is though -- this is a disease that strengthens the will & it does so with a slow lover's hand.
PRACTICING ALKIS ARE AS DISHONEST with each other as they are with themselves, so much so that they think they are unique in the most diminishing ways.
FOR YEARS I THOUGHT I was the only one who hid bottles so no one would know the extent of my drinking. Once I went so far as to hide lime gimlets in the window washer under the hood of my
Porsche Spider, as if anyone who was not deranged would think to look there in the first place. Furthermore, I didn't even like lime gimlets, but didn't they look exactly like window washer fluid? Once at a meeting, I spoke to a blind Alki who hid liquor bottles from his wife in the toilet bowls, closets, & other secretive places around the house -- his wife was also blind!

"WHY ARE YOU DRINKING?" demanded the little prince/
"So that I may forget," replied the tippler.
"Forget what?" inquired the little prince who was already feeling sorry for him.
"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince who wanted to help him.
"Ashamed of drinking!" The tippler brought his speech to an end and shut himself up in impregnable silence.
                                                                          ---Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

MY FATHER & I had gotten along miserably since he was as old as I am now. One year my father went into the hospital for a risky operation & my brother called me & told me that I had better come home.
I FLEW HOME TO MIRAKESH to tell my father that I loved him & that I always loved him & I knew he loved me too in some simple passionate way that had become as equally grotesque & impossible for him as it had for me.
THE FACT THAT MY FATHER'S LOVE was not up to my standards was none of my fucking business, but I didn't know that then. My father loved me to the best of his ability--the best he could.

Two thinks happened:

FIRST, I GOT DRUNK ON THE PLANE, arrived at the hospital drunk & stayed drunk. Second, my father did not die & we have not spoken one civil word to this day.

IN PRE-DWI 1980, I moved to an undisputedly sexy city in the sunny South, took a prestigious position at a University, & began dressing in marvelously appointed garments
JAMBALAYA, CRAWFISH PIE, FILET GUMBO --- ah New Orleans! Mardi Gras, the French Quarters, the House of the Rising Sun--ah the drugs! When I first moved there you could get the same stuff that killed Bruce Lee for $50 a bag--ah New Orleans!
IN NEW ORLEANS IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE  to gauge my drinking. It was pre-DWI, the bars were open 24 hours a day, there was no way to conspicuously close them down.
THE STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY complained if the cafeteria only carried three kinds of beer for lunch. The faculty had institutionalized its drinking to the point of an imprimatur. Classes were closed for two weeks during Mardi Gras. All the super-markets served drinks, so it was commonplace to walk down the aisles with a grocery cart--drink in hand.. Ah New Orelans! It is the city that invites people from all over the planet to behave as they would never dare to at home--& alcohol is the elixir. After sometime I felt something was odd & that maybe it was me--I went to my first AA meeting.
YOU COULD TELL IT WAS MY FIRST AA meeting by the look in my eyes, an expression that could only be described as that of a lost dog trapped in traffic. Three things happened, & nothing did & my life was changed forever although I was the last to know.

1) a student of mine called out my name: "Professor Franks"
2) someone at the meeting mentioned "God"
3) after the meeting, the man who was leading it gave me some information to read, & a Michigan Test to take to see if I thought I might be an alcoholic. He told me not to drink for a few days & talk to him if I felt like it. I thanked him for his concern, left, went home and got drunk, & did not go back to an AA meeting for 5 years.

I CARRIED ON IN MY HEAD. "They" had broken my anonymity by calling out my name--as if this really mattered to a room full of people who did not know my name in the first place.
AS FOR THE "GOD" PART: I figured they were going to preach to me. Try to convert me. Shit--I wasn't Christian in the first place. If I'd stuck around "they" would have set me real straight. Religion has no part in AA, & the spirituality that is at its center is absolutely of your own choosing.

My higher power is a trans-sexual Mau Mau.

IT WASN'T UNTIL YEARS LATER that I realized what had happened that night: the man had simply asked me not to drink for a few days and to come back & talk to him if I felt like it.
IF I HAD BEEN CAPABLE OF SIMPLE HONESTY, that night I would have clearly realized that at that point in my life I loved drinking more than any woman on this Earth, than any friend on this Earth, than any parent on this Earth, than any child on this Earth--& talk about loving yourself--shit--I was falling off the planet like a pillar of dust!
20 YEARS LATER & IT'S CHRISTMAS EVE & in no symbolic gesture my feet are cut and bleeding. Dumb & walking on the cut glass of broken bottles; dramatic & walking, bleeding in the street in the snow:
& IT'S OVER HALF MY LIFE & it's 20 years & the poet's not writing, the professor's gagging, the lover's not lovable, the son can give nothing back but misery:
WHAT I WANTED WAS TO BE ALIVE AND DEAD AT THE SAME TIME--right up to the door that locked behind me, where time froze, where before any sanity became possible I was forced to face insanity (my own) beyond my wildest dreams.