Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [95]
“What?” I feel suddenly dropped into a moment of surreality. He’s lying, I think. He’s sober a week longer than me and I almost have six months. “That doesn’t even make sense,” I say, feeling myself start to panic. “How is that possible?”
“Well, I smoked pot last week, had a couple beers a few nights ago, and the night before last, stayed up all night with this guy I met at Marix, doing blow until sunrise.” He says all this completely casually, like he’s explaining the errands he ran at lunchtime yesterday. Where the hell are his emotions?
“Why would you do that?” I ask, and even though I can hear my accusatory tone and know it’s not the right one to have, I can’t seem to stop it.
“Why? Fuck if I know. Maybe because I’m an addict.”
“How did it happen?” I ask.
“Well,” Justin looks down, sadly. “I moved back in with Jason and everything was amazing at first. Turns out I must have been the one instigating all the fights before because with all my new rehab knowledge, we were suddenly one of those sickeningly perfect couples planning picnics at the Hollywood Bowl, going antiquing on the weekends and all that.”
“And then…?” Something has kicked in, some almost maternal instinct that makes it seem like the only thing in the world that matters is making sure Justin is okay. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze.
“Nothing monumental—Jesus, I wish it had been,” he says. “We just started hanging out with other couples, going to Dragstrip, house parties, dinners, whatever. And they all drank—wine with dinner, beer at house parties, nothing big…I mean, none of them drank alcoholically.”
I nod. I’d noticed the same thing when I went out to dinner with some publicists—one of them ordered a glass of wine and nursed that same glass the entire night, and the other had a gin and tonic. A single gin and tonic. And I’d sat there, silently marveling over what would make someone want to drink just one drink when all one ever did to me was make me achy, tired, and coke-hungry. Tommy would tell us that when a normal person drinks and starts to feel a little buzzed, he’ll see a figurative red light and know that it’s his cue to stop drinking. When an alcoholic or addict gets to that same place, however, all he sees is a green light.
“And then last week it occurred to me that smoking pot wouldn’t really be such a bad thing—that it didn’t really count,” Justin says. “I didn’t tell my sponsor or anyone and nothing bad happened when I did it. So then I had a couple of drinks with Jason. He doesn’t know shit about recovery—just what I tell him, really—and when I explained that drinking would be cool as long as I only had a few, he basically bought it. Cut to a couple nights later—me coked out of my gourd at this total stranger’s house.”
“Was it horrible?” I ask, and my whole body clenches in anticipation of his answer. I picture Justin, teeth grinding, paranoid as hell, getting creeped out by this weird guy and tearfully calling his sponsor.
Instead he says, “I wish I could say it was, but it was fun as hell. I don’t know why people say that a head full of recovery and a body full of chemicals is a bad combination, because I felt amazing. It was nice to just get out of my head for once, you know?”
That’s when I feel horribly betrayed. Why is he acting like this? I wonder. Why isn’t he horrified and crying, begging everyone in here to understand, the way other people who slip do? Even when I remind myself that this could be Justin’s “disease” talking, I resent him for casually embracing a way of thinking that’s different from the one we’ve shared since we met. And I feel something else: jealous. I want to be able to get out of my head, to have coke rush up my nose and through my veins, and not feel guilty about it. But then I remind myself that that’s my disease, and that I know for a fact that even allowing my thoughts to go here is wrong.
So I say what I know I’m supposed to. “You should call your sponsor,” I tell him gently, “and raise your hand in meetings.” When you relapse and have