Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [77]
Linda Lederer, the occupational therapist who worked directly with me at Beverly Manor, was tremendously patient with me, and wonderfully encouraging, but she could also be firm when necessary. When I had several cases of my books sent in to the hospital and was signing them for my fellow patients, Linda balked. “Buzz, you can’t do that. We’re trying to maintain your anonymity here, not to promote your book!” Linda also recognized the issue of pride as a major part of my denial. She wanted me to drop the façade that everything was okay with me. “You don’t have to be anybody special here, Buzz. Just be you. That’s special enough.”
Linda directed group sessions on assertive communication, time management, therapeutic exercise, teambuilding sessions, and even crafts workshops. Beverly Manor offered crafts of all sorts, everything from knitting to macramé, ceramics, needlepoint, and leather work. The idea was to have a hobby, but the activities also fostered camaraderie. I chose to make a pair of leather moccasins, but I had trouble with the instructions. I could land a spacecraft on the moon, but I had difficulty deciding which loop of rawhide to stitch through various parts of the leather. I eventually completed the moccasins and wore them for the remainder of my stay at the hospital.
On one of my better days, while still at Beverly Manor, I received word that I had a visitor. The actor Cliff Robertson had stopped by to talk with me about the script for the television movie based on my book, Return to Earth. The movie was being produced by Alan King, a man better known as a comedian, but who also had a desire to present dramatic works. He would be assisted by his partner, Rupert Hitzig, who had worked out the deal with me originally when I was still married to Joan and living at Hidden Hills.
Cliff Robertson was to play me in the movie, so he wanted to get to know me. I enjoyed talking with Cliff and discovered that he was an airplane enthusiast himself, and a pilot with more than 1,500 hours in the cockpit. He owned several vintage airplanes, including a British Spitfire and a German ME-108 trainer, and he flew them all. We quickly struck up a lasting friendship, and when I was released from Beverly Manor, he took me flying in one of his biplanes.
Cliff had been doing mostly feature films, but he seemed fascinated with my story. “I realize that this is an important story,” he told me, “and one that might do some good.” Cliff had a close relative who had battled alcoholism, so although the story touched only briefly on alcohol, Cliff understood that my depression had to be closely linked to my drinking. We talked further about the idea that with all of NASA’s technology, one element still could not be totally programmed—the astronaut. “I want people to see you as a real human being,” Cliff said. The movie was scheduled to air on the ABC network on May 14, 1976.
When I left Beverly Manor, to help control my depression and my craving for alcohol, the doctors admonished me about possibly destructive behaviors. Dr. Schneider explained that it could take five years or more to get the effects of alcohol fully out of the human system. Even going to a hospital and being put under anesthesia could send my body into a tailspin. Most addiction experts believed that ninety days was the minimum time necessary to make headway against the disease. I had been sober for only twenty-eight days.
They also prescribed a lithium compound drug intended to help control my mood shifts. Drug treatments rarely seemed to help me deal with depression. Maybe they’d have been more effective