Chapter 14 - Dead Dogs

Feelings check. People are happy.
“I’m great”
“I'm grateful”
“I'd like to thank Christy for the pudding”

Everyone claps.

Stan's turn. There's tension. Who would cop another beautifully delivered line from his holy book of swear words? I have a terrible feeling I was going to learn a few swear words or at least a new configuration of swear words before his was finished.

“Today” he says “All my efforts to recover and get better were ignored. I feel emotionally oppressed. I feel abandoned. I feel like I did when I was abandoned by my parents as a little boy in the bush. I'm leaving Logan House, goodbye”

I go back to the villa and Stan sits on a chair fidgeting. Ned Flanders is still waiting for the Khmer Rouge. I sit next to him.

"How ya feeling, Stanley?" I ask
“I'm going to tell Mummy on you” he said
“Why is that?'
“Cause I heard that ur going to be a heterosexual”
“Oh Michael, I think ur trying to be funny which is a good thing”
“yeah well, either way, I'm getting out of this fucking shithole”
“Michael u dont always feel like this, and u cooked a good cake today”
“It would have been nice if u hadn’t fucked up the icing”
“I did fuck up the icing Michael and I apologise. Why dont I go and get it out of the fridge and we'll eat the rest of it”
I go and grab it and we sit and we eat it mostly in silence. Occasionally, he looks up at me and says “U really fucked up the icing”

It was Ned on Crack versus Luke on Zyprexa and for some reason his outbursts just didn’t bother me.

Stan turns to me and says “I think I'm going to stay, even if it is a shithole, I am going to stay”.

"Well that was unexpected, but I that is good news for u I think Stan".

Meanwhile, Sam has started showing signs of his sociopathic personality disorder. This morning, he turned on the vacuum cleaner at 6am. The girls put in a complaint.

Sociopaths have no real capacity for empathy. They favor gratification over empathy. Sam wanted attention so he acted in an impulsive and selfish way to get it. I like him, but I was annoyed at being woken up so early. I ask him why.

“it was going to be seven o'clock soon”

“We dont have to get up early on weekends Sam and now I'm going to be tired all day”

“Yeah well, Ive been up since 5” he says walking off laughing

“Well who am I to argue with some remarkable reasoning power?'' I say, feeling annoyed for the first since I started taking the Zyprexa. I think my Zyprexa force field is being gradually ground down by the madness of this place.

Saturday morning and again Stan isn't well. He calls me a cunt for not mopping the floor. He walks around the villa calling out 'cunt' again and again.

Zyprexa.

I start to think that maybe Michael needs psychiatric care. I go to the Dick Smith counselor and suggest to him that perhaps psych services and not rehab (with its under qualified staff) would be the best way to go for Stan. I tell the counselor about his swearing and abuse. Dick Smith says

“Uve got enough smarts to realise the kind of headspace Stan is in. Everyone here is at a different stage of their recovery. Use this as a lesson in tolerance. If people do bad stuff to you on the outside then its the same thing – dont take it on board”

“Stan is our problem. He is getting progressively worse, he needs psychiatric help”

“Give him time, Luke”

I walk off. I mow the lawns. I hope I was genuinely worried about Stan and not trying to get him kicked out. I think if it was going to be honest, I was probably trying to do a bit of both.

At lunch Dick Smith presents Stan with a cake for getting thru to the next phase of rehab.

Stan seems happy with that. He stops swearing.

“I'm glad your staying” I say to him while secretly thinking if they dont take him to a psych ward please take to the dentist and do something about those 18th century convict teeth

Saturday night and I decide to take a chance and not take my Zyprexa. I am awake until 6am again. I get up in the middle of the night. I throw mushrooms all over the kitchen and throw bread on the floor. I am angry at having to put up with everyone else's insanity when I am trying to sort out my own shit.

I am angry and miss my Zyprexa. I decide not to miss another Zyprexa again.

Boring Sunday and people get angry with Mel once again. Apparently she dobbed Richard in for something or another.
She was once again the topic of conversation, anything to stop us from talking about our own problems I suppose.

Renee said Mel was constantly “having a pity party”

Sam, Renee and I came up with an idea of holding our pity party – bored – bored rehab style – we came up with a guest list, party games and party list for the rehab pity party.

PARTY GAMES
Pass the blame
Apathy in the dark
Poison Gossip
Self-Mutilate off
Spin the Bullshit
Come dressed as someone who abused u
How's ur depression Mel? (what’s the time Mr. wolf?)

PARTY CLOWN TRICKS
Confuse people about ur gender
Pull an irrelevant remark out of the hat
Much melodramatic fake emotions disappear and reappear like magic
Make the smell of piss appear from nowhere

PARTY BAG
Rope
Blunt Knife
A piece of shit
Lollies
A used condom
A vibrating anus
A drunk, incompetent hairdresser
Hair gel
Piss

PARTY FOOD
Poo on a stick
Sour grapes
Grog vomit
Lemons
Hot Dogs
Used nappies
Rohypnol
Sour cream

It's cruel, but its also because Mel is a genuine pain in the arse. And yes, once again she was the reliable scapegoat.

Stan overhears our conversation and assumes it was about him.

“I can hear you talking about me sometimes' he says.

I shake my head and walk off. Enough of the insanity already.


I graduate from phase one of the program “The Awareness Phase”. I am now in “Transformation Phase”. Apparently this is the phase when u get into the deep underlying issues behind substance abuse. I am looking forward to it. I knew the bullying wasn't everything. I knew there was still stuff that happened in my life that I hadn't deal with. I knew if I had drugs in front of me I would probably still take them.

In the first Transformation class we talk about role models and then anger and aggression. We talk about anger as something that can be a good thing if expressed properly. If its expressed badly it can turn into rage and violence. If not expressed at all people, as in like addicts, will turn the anger on themselves – like abusing substances and self-harming.

Christy looks perplexed by the link “My daughter self-harms. She has been cutting herself for years. I thought she'd stopped, but actually she has just been cutting her legs instead”

I go up to Leanne after class and ask about her daughter. I give her the cult spin on it all. I tell her self-harming is a maladaptive way of dealing with anxiety and that her daughter could learn better coping mechanisms than that.

Christy hugged me with a nice non-Mel like hug and tells me she wants me to meet her daughter.

It's a little overwhelming. I don't want to be a gay role model to her fucked-up self-harming lesbian daughter.

New day and more classes. We learn more about aggression and violence. The counselor talks about the anger-guilt-depression cycle.

Jason the BB talks about beating the shit out of three guys with a chair.

“I can see how anger leads to depression” I say to the class “I dont want to fight so I flight and I hibernate, but guilt I’m not really sure about”

I'm asking cause I know my mother was over-possessive and without a doubt I would have had a bit of a guilt complex. But how would guilt lead to depression, self-harm and drug use? I am intrigued and a bit scared to find out all at the same time.

Another night in the meds room. I sit with Christy and Sam.

“Today's class was interesting” I say “Confronting though”
“Yeah” Sam says he's eyes lighting up like a sociopath in an electric chair “The guilt stuff made me think about all the awful stuff I'd done....I've done some terrible shit, man, Ive near on fucking well murdered people”
“Really? But ur such a nice sociopath Sam”
“Yeah well there was this one guy who owed me thousands of dollars when I was a drug dealer. So we kidnapped him and tied him up. We beat the shit out of him, I cut the bottom of his feet open with a knife so he couldn’t walk and then dropped him off in the middle of nowhere”
“My word Sam uve got it all worked out, haven’t u?”
He laughs.
“A couple of months later it was playing on my mind when I was acid and I wanted to know what it would have felt for him. So I tattooed the bottom of my feet” He showed me random squiggly lines on his feet
He laughs again.

Christy sits with her customary rye, frustrated, tired grin. He her hands are crossed over her big stomach. While Sam's story had shocked me, Christy was almost bored by it -she had seen it all before.

“How ya going Christy?” I say patting her leg.
“I had to go to court today, I had my kids taken off me a couple of years ago”
“Why?”
“I befriended this girl in prison. I never usually let people stay at my house but when we both go out she needed somewhere to stay so I let her stay. We took speed together one night and she gave me a hotshot”
“What’s a hotshot?”
“A hot shot is a shot in a needle with battery acid in it. Do u understand....she was trying to kill me. I took the shot, I didn’t know, I was knocked unconscious and got taken off in an ambulance. When I got back from hospital child protection were there and they had taken my kids. So I got out my gun, pointed it to my head and very politely asked them to give me my kids”
“No offence Leanne, but if u wanted to get ur kids back that’s really bad PR”
Leanne starts giggling.
“Its like look at me Mr. Child Protection I’m so good to my kids that I'd shoot u for them” I add
“Yeah well darl I did get my kids back 3 days later and now they have offered to wave the charges in exchange for information. I told them to get fucked”

Christy stared out into the distance, lips pursed, looking tired from seeing the shit-side of life.

I get called into the meds room. It's Zyprexa time. It's time to give my brain a rest.

Going through Transformation I try extra hard to get well. I am a bit pumped to go back to work and I don't just want to be a functional again, I want to be better than I had ever been before. Instead of sitting up at night making of fun people I start writing lists. I write lists about things I am angry about, lists on positive ways to express anger, lists on causes of my low self-esteem, reasons why I may fear rejection, things Ive achieved, people I love, qualities I look for in people, things I'm scared of, things I love about myself and goals for the future.

I fully subscribe to the cult of rehab. I want to be healed by the messiah – psychobabble. I feel like I am losing any affinity with the real world. I don't care if I was out of the loop – the cult of me matters the most. I am happy to be brainwashed by rehab buzz words 'caregiver', self-affirmation', 'thought stopping' – I have fresh new neural pathways and I am loving it.

In some ways though it doesn't seem enough, was it a way of resolving things just to name something? I won't really know until I tested it out in the real world. And were these things really my issues or was I just submitting to my counselor’s point-of-view?

I have my first phone call I ring my Mum.
She asks me how rehab is going. She tells me she’s worried about Dad.
"I know""He's a mess. He lays in bed all day""He's depressed Luke. There is nothing I can do about it" she says "when u were back in Melbourne he started acting a bit strange""That's not like Dad" I adds sarcastically."I worry about that man sometimes. I wish he'd get rid of that gun"She takes a deep breath."The other day he nabbed by a copper in Gin Gin for not having his seatbelt on. He was so angry he said he was going to go down to the station, ask for the officer and then shoot him right in the face""Jesus Mum. Do u really think he would do that though?""Um. I dont know. He gets so irrational I think he could do just about anything. He gets so caught up in his bullshit, he doesnt seem to. To, um, care about the consequences""mmmm. God""And I’ll tell u something, please dont repeat this. Not even to Tanya. One day he went for a walk. I noticed his gun was missing. He was in a weird mood when he left. Y'know all doom and gloom - the whole world is terrible. He was missing for 3 hours. I thought, yep, he's finally done it. He's gone to shoot himself in the bush""Let me guess. He's still alive" I add being a smart arse."Your horrible Luke. He came back in a really happy mood. Happy as Larry. I asked him why he took the gun and he said he didnt know""Maybe he was looking for those wild dogs that keep attacking livestock.""mmmm. maybe. I think that his most likely cause of death is suicide. He gets so bloody irrational""Oh did I tell u the girl who lives around the corner, Mary, her horse got mauled by feral dogs the other day. The poor thing ran straight into a barbed-wire fence. When they found the horse she was on the ground. She lost so much blood she nearly died""Poor thing, is she ok?""Yeah, we think so"
Jarrod comes up to me as I am on the phone.

“The radio keeps attacking me”
“What?”
“The radio keeps attacking me, the radio is yelling at me”

“Hey Mum, I better go, Jarrod seems to be having an episode”

Before I have a chance to say anything to Jarrod he walks off.

I ring a friend from work, I tell her how much better I feel. She doesn't really say much. She sounded even, cynical. It makes me feel awful. I ring a counselor after-hours and tell how shit it made me feel. She tells me I am looking for validation and needed to find it within myself. I need unconditional self-acceptance she says. I say I often looked for reasons to jeopardise my success.

“Why do u think u might do that” she asked me
“I'm not sure”
I think about the guilt-anger-depression cycle.
“Um I think it might be because of my Mum”
“Ah-ha”
“I think that I felt guilty for being independent and for being separate to her. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah”
“And that maybe I was never encouraged to have a separate identity to my mother and so anything I did was adult brought a lot of guilt”
I can't believe the rehab speak that was coming out of my mouth.
“I never got validation growing up for being successful because I think maybe my mother took it unconsciously as a rejection of our relationship”
“What about ur father?”
“My Dad has had severe depression all his life, so I don't blame, but he never, um, showed much interest. He didn’t know how to be a Dad. And my Mum came from an alcoholic home, so I think perhaps I was the unconditional love she never had and she was scared of losing it”
“It sounds like ur working this out for urself Luke, my advice at this point would be – listen to yourself. Don't go looking to other people for approval – believe in urself”

And yes she is right, and yes it feels amazing. I fitted in the missing link in the Guilt-Anger-Depression cycle. I am an angry person because I always felt too guilty to express myself for fear of hurting other people. The anger built-up inside until I turned it on myself thru self-harm and substance abuse. Bingo. Rehab Bingo. Legs 11. Jackpot. Hooray!

I tell myself that my success is ok, my success doesn’t jeopardise anyone else's, I know if I am violated by someone I am entitled to them its not my problem how that makes them feel – but I can do it nicely. Anger is a good thing, it protects me. I need to use it in the right way, to stop me from getting hurt and unjustly treated – I promised never to turn my anger on myself ever again.