Addiction is a bitch! That’s the long of it, the short of it, the cliche, the joke and the cop-out. Addiction doesn’t come up, politely introduce itself and ask if you want to be friends. No, it just shows up unannounced and moves right in. It makes itself at home and starts running the show. Forget how you want things to be. Addiction has its own set of house rules, its own list of chores. And its damn hard to kick it out. Once its comfortable, addiction feels like its here to stay.
I always thought I was better and smarter than to get hooked on anything. Lesser people than me were doing it all the time, but I had a complete handle on it. Sure I was using almost every day, but that is because I wanted to, not because I needed to. What a joke! These little lies only work for so long. Denying the truth only sustains for a little while.
Walker died on my little sister’s 30th birthday. He too had just turned 30. He died of the very same drug that was soon going to kill me. I knew it. But he died first and he saved my life because of it. This is a fact that haunts me and inspires me every single day. It is like the end of Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” when Tom Hanks tells Private Ryan to live his life to the fullest as he [Tom Hanks] dies. What a powerful scene! What a huge thing to live with.
My best friend Jud was cleaning out his little brother Walker’s room after the funeral. It was surreal to see the whole family going through Walker’s things. Just yesterday- Father’s Day- we had buried him. Jud came across Walker’s old Grateful
Dead album, American Beauty and gave it to me. He didn’t really think about it. He just wanted me to have something of Walker’s.
Music has always been a huge part of my life. It has, at certain points, defined who I am. Stickers on my car, drugs in my pocket, hair down my back: I am hippy! Many of my decisions, be they right or wrong, have been music-induced. I can chart my past based on a very distinct and diverse soundtrack. And the songs that make up this soundtrack conjure up, to this very day, the most vivid and intense memories. I hear a song and its like I’m thrown back in time- back to when things were simple and easy. Prince’s “Purple Rain” throws me back into the 4th grade, with my Ghostbusters t-shirt and my parachute pants. Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” puts me kissing Alice Burruss, my first true love, for the first time. And to this day there are still a select few albums that I cherish like the first day I heard them. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only have one album, it would definitely be American Beauty.
Jud and I went to our first Dead Show together. His mom got us great tickets- 10th-row center. It was in Raleigh at Carter-Finley Stadium. Walker was there with us. Jud and I ate acid for the very first time. Wow, what a night! The Dead opened with “Jack Straw.” That was just one of my many memories of Dead shows, most of them with Jud at my side. And as my friendship with the Dead grew and strengthened, so did my love for American Beauty.
My Aunt Nan introduced me to the Grateful Dead at a young age. While my friends were bopping along to Duran Duran, I was grooving to American Beauty. It always amazed me how soft and mellow the album was. Side one starting with “Box of Rain” and ending with “Candyman.” Side 2 starting with “Ripple” and ending with “Trucking.” Jud and I wore that vinyl out. It was even something I could play in the car as I drove on my learner’s permit with my mom sitting shotgun and my friends in the back seat. Mom always said she loved the song “Ripple.”
I have thought about that album a lot through the years, in its context of life intertwined with music. The album ends with a song that says, “What a long strange trip it’s been.” Looking at the vinyl that used to be Walker’s, I think about where I’ve come from- my own long, strange trip. There was a day when it would make me “smile, smile, smile.[4]” Now I hold the album with a heavy heart. Now I hold the album with regret. It stands for too much now. It’s not just old memories and Dead Shows with my friends. It’s my dead friend’s album. It’s my life in shambles.
The day I heard Walker had died, I went to my iPod which was playing music for the restaurant and I played Velvet Underground’s “Ride into the Sun” back to back for almost half-an-hour. It burned like the shots of tequila I was pouring, one after the other. We had discovered that song together- Jud and I. I wondered how destroyed he must be at that very moment and I hoped that the good memories of that song would somehow find him and carry him to a better place, a better memory, as they were doing for me.
Waves of emotions pounded me that day like a violent hurricane hitting the coast. I thought about everything we’d been through- all the trouble, all the fun, all our lives. I remembered surf trips to Jud and Walker’s beach house at Holden Beach. I thought about smoking cigarette’s and drinking in their basement. I remembered the glorious night I lost my virginity to Alice Burruss in Walker’s bedroom. But mostly I thought about the last time I had seen Walker: at a “welcome home from Iraq” party for Jud four years ago (coincidentally, I had past out blind drunk at that party). I felt guilty. I felt lost and empty. I felt addicted.
I knew I had to change my life drastically or suffer the same fate. But could I? My journal was filled with empty promises. I could read countless entries where I was yelling from rock bottom. No matter how much I wanted to, I always ended up in the same place. I had to quit, and Walker had to help me.
All I had from him was his Grateful Dead album- that small, vinyl disc carrying the weight of my world. Could the album mean something good again? Could I live a good life, one that Tom Hanks would be proud of? I thought of Walker every day, not because I wanted to so much as I couldn’t not think of him. He had caused me to want to change and each day as I made my way on scared, wobbly legs, I told him I would do it. The look in his father’s eyes on the day of the funeral haunted me every time I thought of scoring drugs.
I poured myself into work. I picked up all the shifts I could. Fourteen-hour days became the norm. I figured if I was so busy and so tired then all I would want to do was go to bed. I pulled myself completely away from everyone. If I didn’t see you at work, I
didn’t see you at all. And the change was noticeable. Those that were close to me could tell I was pulling away. They could tell that I was cutting all ties to everything.
Pulling away was not the only change, though. I also became angry and hostile. I hated everyone who smiled. I hated everyone who laughed and had fun. If I couldn’t do it then to hell with everyone who could. No one was my friend. Everyone was my enemy. My tongue began to lash out at everyone I saw. Friendly was not an option. If
you crossed me, you paid. And if you reached out to me, you paid even more dearly. This was obviously not the right way to go, but it took many painful months to realize it.
Slowly the need to feed my addiction began to subside, as did my temper. Hatred faded into a deep and somber melancholy. The life that I had was dead, like my dear friend. The life I had now was filled with nothing. Work and books. And nothing to look forward to. It was then that music began to pull me back. I found American Beauty again, only this time it sounded familiar. This time it sounded like spring, like colors and beauty and warm sunshine on my face. I began to hear all that was beautiful again.
I still think about Walker every day. And I still think about my four years of serious addiction- my four years in hell. I think about my dear friend who saved my life. I am not better. I am not whole. I still feel the tug of addiction from time to time. I still drink. I try to do it responsibly, but I find that I fail almost every time. It hurts me and depresses me and makes me want to go back to the place where I hate everyone. But I don’t go there. I look ahead and smile at what might be. I think of my music and the
words that for so long have guided my way: “Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.”
Walker is my light. He did not mean to be, nor did I want him to be. I could just as easily have chalked him up as a terrible thing that happened, but instead I saw him for
what he was. I will forever fight for us both. He knows it as well as me. I will falter and I will fall behind. I know this. I am not as strong as I wish I was. But I will do it for
him. I owe him that much. He saved my life. And his brother Jud, my best friend, did as well when he gave me American Beauty. So like the first time I heard them and they inspired me to think and to feel and to live and to love, I look to the Grateful Dead’s words as a saving grace for both me and my dear friend Walker: “Once in awhile you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.”
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