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Featuring new essays and a revised introduction
Addicted
Notes from the Belly of the Beast
edited by Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane
vancouver /berkeley
To our companions in recovery
Collection, preface, introduction, and afterword
copyright © 2001, 2006, 2016 by Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane
Essays copyright © 2001, 2006, 2016 by the authors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from
The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright).
For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca
or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Greystone Books Ltd.
www.greystonebooks.com
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
isbn 978-1-77164-186-9 (pbk.)
isbn 978-1-77164-187-6 (pdf)
Editing by Barbara Pulling (first edition and third edition)
and Jan Walter (second edition)
Cover design by Peter Cocking
Text design and typesetting by Julie Cochrane,
Naomi MacDougall and Nayeli Jimenez
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council
for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia
through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
Contents
�
Introduction / vii
Counting the Bones patrick lane / 1
My Father, Myself marnie woodrow / 17
Grand Thefts tom bissell / 35
Junkie Grows Up molly jong-fast / 55
An Open Letter to Laura lois simmie / 67
How to Quit Smoking in Fifty Years or Less
peter gzowski / 79
More and More evelyn lau / 103
Breathing under Ice lorna crozier / 117
The Edge of Doom susan cheever / 137
Lost in a Cosmic Smoke Show elianna lev / 149
Drinking david adams richards / 169
Blackout sheri-d wilson / 187
Molested Child, So-Called Sexual Savage lesLIE / 209
Not Swimming, But Drowning john newlove / 223
One More Last Chance rick whitaker / 241
Junkie stephen reid / 255
Afterword / 277
About the Contributors / 281
introduction
�
O ver the past twenty-five years, I’ve sat in many a
smoky kitchen with friends, all of us telling stories of
parties, conferences, festivals and other events where we’d
gathered as writers. There was always a bottle of wine in
the middle of the table, a case of beer in the fridge, and a
twentysix of whisky on the counter next to the sink. Funny
and outrageous, our stories circled around booze and drugs,
though the words alcoholism and addiction were never men-
tioned.
I don’t regret the experiences we shared, but things are
different now. The bottles may still be on kitchen tables and
counters somewhere, but where I’ve been sitting for some
time now, the spectre of addiction has added a cautionary
note to our behaviour and our tales.
Some of Canada’s most revered and influential writers—
Margaret Laurence, Alden Nowlan, Gwendolyn MacEwen,
viii / Introduction
John Thompson, Marian Engel, Al Purdy, to name a few—
were close companions of the bottle. In the United States,
names like William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Raymond Carver
and Dorothy Parker immediately come to mind. Sometimes
you catch glimpses of this affinity in their fiction or poetry,
but none of them left us with an autobiographical account.
As I pondered the role alcohol has played in my own life, I
couldn’t help but wonder what these glorious writers would
have said about the topic and what a difference their words
might have made to those who read them.
Out of such ruminations came the idea for this book.
The first name of my own generation that came to mind was
David Adams Richards. David is not only a gifted writer but
also a great raconteur. Some of the stories I’ve heard him tell
in his rich New Brunswick lilt have been about his drink-
ing days. Full of humour, self-deprecation and an incredible,
charming honesty, they hold listeners enthralled. If he agreed
to put his words on paper, I thought, I’d take it as a sign to
approach others. I hesitated to phone him. Talking around
the table and writing things down for the whole world to see
are very different propositions. But David’s response to my
request was an immediate “Great idea.” He said that though
he’d written about alcoholism in his novels, he’d never done
so in a more personal account, and it was “about time” he did.
David’s “about time” confirmed my sense that this was
the right moment for such a book. After he accepted, I asked
my companion, Patrick Lane, to share the task of editing and
introduction / ix
to write an essay. For twenty years, we’d been living with his
struggles to get sober. Our mutual breaking of the silence
around alcoholism became an act of faith. If we were going
to ask others to find words for their demons, we needed to do
it ourselves.
There are more than two hundred types of twelve-step
groups in North America. Though the addictions they
address vary from alcohol to food to emotional crises, all
emphasize the necessity of anonymity. When you walk into
that church basement or community centre, you are guaran-
teed that what you say and who you are will remain behind
closed doors. The writers who accepted our invitation to
compose an original piece for Addicted broke this first rule.
They stepped out, gave their full names, and put their lives
on the line. I can’t emphasize enough the courage of this act.
�
those who know little about substance abuse see it as
something unsavoury and shameful. Why don’t the drunks,
the junkies, the smokers, the bulimics just smarten up?
Pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Get some willpow-
er. Stop. There’s also a touch of the romantic about the
wild, self-destructive painter or poet who shatters conven-
tions and taboos. Counteracting these simplistic attitudes
toward addiction, the contributors to this collection give
us the bare bones of their reality. Several said that writing
about this part of their lives gave them new insights into
x / Introduction
where they had been and what they had become. That was
an advantage none of us had predicted. Most had agreed
to take the risk in the hope that their stories would help
someone else. That, indeed, has happened. In the years
since the first publication of Addicted: Notes from the Belly of
the Beast in 2001, we’ve become aware of a growing number
of readers who have been helped by the honesty and poignan-
cy of these stories.
We’ve received hundreds of emails and letters from peo-
ple in recovery and from family members who walk a parallel
path in that journey. Often the book was a gift, an antidote to
despair, from mothers and fathers, from sisters and husbands.
It was passed from hand to hand at treatment centres. A uni-
versity criminologist told us he uses Addicted in his classes to
bring to light the personal side of addiction, one that gets
lost in statistics and academic texts. A nurse who approached
us on a ferry said she bought copies for several young peo-
ple she knows, including her son, who are struggling with a
combination of drug abuse and mental illness. We heard the
story of a Toronto visual artist who, to escape the censure of
his girlfriend, packed himself and four bottles of vodka off to
a lakeside cabin for the weekend. At the kitchen table, glass
in hand, he turned the radio on and listened to an interview
by Shelagh Rogers on the cbc. Peter Gzowski was the guest
this time rather than the host, along with Patrick, Marnie
Woodrow and me. We were talking about the book. At the
end of the interview, the artist phoned his girlfriend, told her
introduction / xi
where he was and what he was doing and asked her to pick
him up. He wrote Patrick in care of the publisher to tell him
that Patrick’s story had changed his life. One day at a time he
was getting sober.
That kind of response and the selling out of the ini-
tial printing made us publish a second edition of Addicted:
Notes from the Belly of the Beast with three additional essays
in 2006. And now we’re doing it again. At the demand of
readers and with the support of the publisher, we’re not only
keeping the book alive but enriching it once again by includ-
ing three essays. LesLIE, Elianna Lev and Tom Bissell have
added bracing new material that affirms the importance of
candid, front-of-the-line writing about the dangers and
afflictions that can crush a life. This expanded version marks
the fifteenth anniversary of the first edition. We think that’s
something to celebrate.
The books that readers cherish make them feel less alone.
No one is lonelier than addicts and those who love them. The
majority of the writers here share an addiction to alcohol; in
our culture that remains the common drug of choice.
It is, after all, legal and easy to get. The other con-
tributors write about smoking, cocaine, heroin, marijuana,
gambling, gaming, sexual addiction and an obsession with
food and pharmaceuticals. But whatever their demons, these
writers offer a view of a world rarely seen in our literature.
Because they were brave enough to speak openly about their
experiences, without self-pity or false justifications, their
xii / Introduction
words break through the isolation and loneliness that addic-
tion creates. Sometimes what they have to say is harrowing,
disturbing, but each story is a gift, offering the possibility of
healing and hope.
lorna crozier
Addicted
Counting
the Bones
Patr ick L a ne
