It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [132]
As we climbed out of the car, I noticed stairs ascending a huge grassy mound. There, at the back of a deck, a glass door was set into the mound. The house appeared to be underground. My jaw dropped. Scott must have been shitting his pants at this point. When Joseph had first tossed out the idea of us staying with him, he had mentioned something about his home being an “earth berm” house, but having no idea what that meant, I hadn’t given it a second thought. Now, as we climbed the stairs to the deck in front of the mound, that conversation came back to me. From the outside, his place looked way too small for five adults and a large dog, and I thought I had made a mistake committing sight unseen to stay here. When we entered the house, though, I could see I was completely wrong about the size. It was amazing inside. Flat-screen TV, fireplace, phone, full kitchen, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms.
As we unpacked the groceries, I made a mental checklist of the meals that would hopefully help to cleanse Scott’s drug-ravaged bloodstream of its nasty toxins. Fresh fish and free-range chicken. Lots of green vegetables and corn on the cob. Irish steel-cut oatmeal. Pineapples, bananas, melons, and apples. Tons of espresso roast coffee. And my trade secret, baked beans. I’m not really sure whether beans have any cleansing properties, but they sure do get out a lot of hot air.
I put Scott on the diet that had done me so well during my first year of sobriety: fruit for breakfast, grilled fish over greens for lunch, and barbecued chicken with corn and beans for dinner. I added oatmeal to Scott’s diet because I supposed with all the exercise we’d be doing, he could use the extra carbs. He did not have fifty pounds of booze weight to lose—he was a rail. The larder was filled to the brim and there was nothing left to do now except what lay directly in front of us: getting Scott detoxed and keeping his body too exhausted and confused to do anything more than sleep.
At this point, I should have taken a step back and assessed the situation. Never before had I felt I had so many people depending on me. I was now juggling being a good father and husband with trying to get a guy sober so that he could do the same. But I was also doing this because I saw real possibilities for this new band with Scott as our singer. Other people recognized the potential there, too, and I was fielding phone call after phone call saying I had to make this happen. The Hulk had come out, and even though the movie did only so-so, it seemed like every rock radio station in America had picked up “Set Me Free.” With the national exposure there was a lot of interest in Velvet Revolver. Of course, everything hinged on the band actually existing. For the first time ever, I was mixing the spiritual healing of martial arts with commerce.
Seeing Scott nodding and jonesing up there reminded me of some not-so-pleasant memories. In hindsight I see this was the moment I swerved away from the path I’d been on, a path that shielded me from the dark parts of my past. Each of us makes a handful of decisions in life that can have a drastic impact on subsequent events. By getting involved with Scott, I had made one of those potentially life-altering decisions. We did start to have some fun up there after about a week, though. Scott had gotten through the worst of his withdrawal by that point and could start to do some of the physical stuff.
A typical day up there:
Breakfast
Meditate outdoors
Jump rope
Stretch
Work the punching bags
Train on technique
Lunch
Run and lift weights
Work on the wooden dummies
Practice tai chi
Write
Dinner
Talk with Sefu Joseph and write more
Read
Bed
This rigid regime we dubbed “Man Camp.” The idea was not only to test physical strength and endurance, but, through the talks and writing, to foster honesty and responsibility. Once in a while Sefu Joseph brought in someone from the community