Don't Panic

(and don't forget to look back)

In the second winter of the pandemic, my brother’s roommates kicked him out for using drugs.

He asked me if he could stay with me. It was bitterly cold in Montreal and in Ottawa. And, of course, it was lockdown. 

I knew by then that my taking him in would not help him stay sober.  But people were dying in the streets. People were dying of Fentanyl overdoses. The emergency rooms were… well, you know.

I sat at my kitchen table, frozen. 

By that time, there had been years of waking up and checking Facebook messenger to see the last time he was online and reassure myself, for a few minutes, that he was still alive. I had begged him, pleaded with him, intervened. I had driven him to get the bus to rehab. All the things you’re not supposed to do.

There's a lot of talk in recovery about looking back at how far you've come. Maybe that's because some of us are ever so slightly negative-biased, but also, after you start recovery, you learn that there really isn’t a forward to look at, because there’s no finish line. They don’t tell you that at the beginning. 

It’s exhausting.

It’s amazing. 

As I work what is now my third program, ACA, I continue to learn that there’s always a new layer to peel away. A new thing to notice. And more access to happiness and peace. But still I forget to look back. 

I wrote this story just over two years ago. In less than two months from now, god willing, my dad will send his monthly text on our shared chat. But this time, it’ll be celebrating years. Phoof’s 3 years of sobriety. (Yeah, we call him Phoof. Read on for that story.)

And I’ll send a text echoing my dad’s text, with a bunch of emojis. 

And Phoof will respond, “Thanks guys. That means a lot to me.” And he’ll add something about one day at a time.

Right now, he’s on his annual visit to Fethiye. Today, we’ll go to the beach. I’ll watch out of the corner of my eye as he walks into the water and tilts his face towards the sun, with the smallest hint of the purest of smiles, the same exact one he had when he was little. 

If you’d told me once upon a time that one day we’d be here, I would have fallen flat on my face in gratitude.

So I’ll do that today, with you. 

Phoof, The Universe, and Everything

I thought about introducing my brother by telling you about the time, in January of 2020, when I drove through a snowstorm to drive him from St. Sauveur, Quebec, to Ottawa and put him on a bus to North Bay so he could go to rehab for his drug addiction. For the third time.

He hadn’t answered his phone that morning. I knew then that he’d gone on a bender the day before. So many people do before they start rehab. Terrified he was dead or dying, I perched on the side of my couch, calling him over and over. I was on the verge of calling the police when a saintly friend of his went over to his apartment, woke him up, phoned to tell me he was alive, and got him packed and dressed and on a train to St. Sauveur to return another friend’s laptop he’d been too busy shooting drugs into his arm to return previously. This is exactly the kind of thing you are not supposed to do for an addict.

I didn’t know that back then.

He finished rehab, and started using again almost right away.

I thought about telling you about what he was like when he was little. How kind and sensitive he was, how excited he got about dogs and cats and computers, how enthusiastically he would bash a drum set, and how none of these things have changed. When he was a toddler he got the nickname “Phoof”. My uncle made a crack at Christmas about how he’d still have this nickname as an adult. We all laughed like that would never happen.

I drove Phoof to rehab the first time he went, too. He was 26. It was just over a month before my wedding.

He got into my car with a towel around his neck, clutching a small duffel bag of belongings.

“I think they have towels,” I said, confused.

“I know,” he said. “But… Hitchhiker’s Guide.”

We’d listened to and watched the Hitchhiker’s Guide BBC series as kids. We’d read the books, and quoted from them all the time to each other.

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“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

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I held back tears when he told me that in the car that day. I dropped him off, at an idyllic stone house in the eastern townships of Quebec, watching his skinny arm wave as I drove away, then turned the corner and started sobbing so hard I could barely see. I pulled into a chip stop and consumed a giant paper bag of fries, thanking god that he was going to be safe and looked after for the next 30 days. He was a different person when he came out. Brighter. So enthusiastic. So present, and at least 8 kg heavier. People still talk about the speech he gave at my wedding.

He told me later that he’d smoked a joint before the reception began.

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I couldn’t tell you how many times over the last decade I have checked Facebook messenger before going bed, and again when I woke up, to see the last time my brother was online and give myself some reassurance that he was still alive. How often I would hear overdose stats and fentanyl stories on the news and go into full body panic. How many times I lectured him, berated him, yelled at him, refused to talk to him, pleaded with him—in cars, on the phone, after family dinners, at our respective apartments on the same street in Montreal. During the second winter of the pandemic, his roommates had kicked him out for using. He asked me if he could stay at my place. I spoke to a family addictions counsellor, because I knew it was a bad idea, but where the hell was he supposed to go?

“Him moving in with you is not going to guarantee his safety any more than him not moving in with you,” she said.

I told him no. It felt like punching myself in the stomach.

Since then, I’ve learned about addiction as a family disease. How my parents and I enabled him to act out. How we—humans in general I mean—have absolutely zero control over the behaviour of our loved ones, no matter how scared we are for their safety and how idiotically we perceive them to be behaving.

I’ve learned, too, to take responsibility for my own side of the street.

To detach with love. That I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it. I’ve come to understand how and why I’ve always been attracted to addicts. (Answer: because I am one.) And how, very slowly, to try to change this.

Last August, I moved from Canada to Turkey. I’d spent the previous 4 months disassembling my house, putting some of it into storage and selling most of the rest of it and putting what remained into two suitcases. We made arrangements that I’d stay with him in Montreal before I flew out. He’d been clean a few months by then, but I knew it was a risk.

He called the night before.

“I slipped yesterday,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I could not remember feeling more stressed, sad and scared at the same time.

I made arrangements to stay with a friend, who knew our story. Phoof stayed clean. We went for breakfast and for dog walks. He came with me and Django to the airport, helping me balance my luggage/dog carrier/freak-out levels while I sweated my way to security.

And then I did one of the the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I said goodbye.

Because I had a plane ticket. Because there was absolutely zero ways I could help him by doing anything else.

pre-Turkey departure hour

He hasn’t used drugs or alcohol since. He’s worked his program, much more diligently than ever before. He’s immersed himself into the recovery community. He has a full time job. His colleagues love him.

None of this is a guarantee of anything.

All of it is a miracle.

Last Monday night, he landed in Turkey to spend two weeks with us.

I’ve showed him around town and introduced him to some of my friends. We’ve gone out to a bar to listen to a band, something we haven’t done together since he was 19—and never sober. We talk endlessly about addiction and recovery. He’s done two in-person meetings, and more by zoom.

I keep poking him and saying, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Yesterday, with my dad and my dad’s partner and my dad’s dog and my dog, we took a boat trip to a nearby peninsula, where you can dock and eat at the one restaurant, surrounded by forest. Phoof and I hiked to a lookout point, and sat in silence under the shade of a giant pine tree, taking in the view of the sea and the round horizon. We swam, even though it was freezing cold, him threatening to push me in, as brothers do.

man of the mountains

There was a sign by the marina there that said, in Turkish, “No panic.”

On the way back this morning, a school of dolphins swam alongside the boat.

Phoof saw the whole thing.

I was still in the cabin, fast asleep.