Page 21 of All the Way to the River

“You can tell me anything,” I responded—because it was true, she really could.

That night over sushi, Rayya launched into the most incredible of tales. She told me that the last time she was home in Detroit, some of her friends and family members had staged a “reverse intervention,” gathering together to tell her that they really, really wanted her to start drinking wine.

Apparently Rayya’s loved ones back in Detroit had claimed that they longed to be able to share a nice bottle of wine with her sometimes—just as they shared wine with everyone else.

Why should she miss out on a glass of wine, they said, especially in a sophisticated or celebratory setting?

Especially because she was such a foodie, who appreciated delicious things!

They’d also apparently reported that they hated seeing her trapped forever in the disgraceful old label of “addict” when she had not used drugs for so long and was clearly cured of her addiction!

At what point would it end —this shameful burden of always having to call oneself an addict?

It was as if Rayya were being forced to wear a scarlet letter!

She was a completely different person now than she had been twenty years ago!

Why must she continue to be exiled from the pleasant experience of adult beverages, like some kind of child?

Why must she remain an outsider? If anything, it made them feel uncomfortable when she didn’t drink.

“Come, now,” had said these loving—and curiously unnamed—people. “Just have one drink of wine with us! Try it! It won’t do you any harm!”

“So I did have just one glass of wine,” confessed Rayya.

“And it was really nice! And it didn’t do me any harm.

So what I want to tell you is this, even though it terrifies me to say it: I would like to start having a glass of wine with you sometimes at dinner.

But I’m so afraid to bring it up, because I’m afraid you’ll condemn me for it, and I’ll lose you! ”

“You could never lose me, honey!” I said. “Never in life!”

And then, because I’ve always been a sucker for grand gestures of loyalty, I said, “In fact, let’s order you a glass of wine right now!” and I immediately called over the waiter.

“Oh my God, your reaction is such a relief,” said Rayya, wiping her eyes.

“I was really scared of what you would say. And I’m terrified of what my sober friends will say, because they’re all a bunch of fundamentalist Big Book thumpers.

You know what a cult twelve-step can be, right?

Everything is so black-and-white with those rigid bitches.

So we don’t need to tell them about this, okay?

They’ll just freak out, and I don’t need that.

But what I really need you to understand, babe, is what a big deal this isn’t .

You know that alcohol was never part of my addiction story, right?

Have you ever heard me talk about drinking?

I always hated getting drunk. I hate the taste of it, I hate the feeling of it.

Alcohol couldn’t get me nearly to where I needed to go, to get as fucked up and erased as I needed to be back then.

Only heroin and cocaine could ever get me to that level.

And you know how it is—by the time you get knocked out on alcohol, you’re puking and sick, and next thing you know you’re in the hospital getting your stomach pumped.

Fuck that shit. Too messy. I can never have more than one glass of wine, anyway, without feeling a little sick.

I actually kind of hate alcohol. So there isn’t any danger in this. ”

Now, listen.

I don’t know whether that conversation ever really happened back in Detroit—wherein Rayya’s loved ones formally “gathered together” to beg her to start drinking wine.

But I do know that if I had not been so blind with infatuation, or if I were an entirely different sort of person altogether, I might have asked a few pointed follow-up questions here.

Perhaps starting with “Wait—a reverse intervention? What? ”

And perhaps ending with “Wait, tell me again why you want to drink wine even though you hate alcohol?”

Certainly, somewhere in the middle of her story, I might have interrupted and asked, “Wait—can you explain to me why you want to hide this information from your recovery friends? Aren’t you the one who taught me that we’re only as sick as our secrets?”

But my mind didn’t go in any of those directions.

Instead, this is literally what I thought: Rayya is so much cooler than other people! The rules really don’t apply to her!

And so it came to pass that, over the next few years, I watched as Rayya made a habit of drinking wine with her friends at dinner every night.

Just one glass. Or maybe sometimes two glasses.

Or maybe a beer and then a glass of wine.

Or maybe a beer and a few glasses of wine and a cocktail and then some scotch and an aperitif.

And I certainly watched her drink an ocean of Angostura bitters at every meal, and sometimes randomly during the day when her stomach was really bothering her.

But I never saw her get sloppy drunk or out of control.

Maybe a little loud sometimes, but not messy .

Except maybe that one time at a friend’s birthday party when she seemed to have a lot to drink and I thought perhaps she shouldn’t have been driving.

But I didn’t say anything about it, because Rayya was a really good driver, and I always felt safe with her at the wheel.

And then there was that one night when she got so drunk and loud and disorderly at a San Francisco restaurant that I was filled with embarrassment for her, for myself, for everyone involved.

Walking back to our hotel, Rayya passed out on the sidewalk, and our friend had to help me drag her semiconscious body down the street, through the lobby of the hotel, and back up to our room.

“It’s just because her liver is so compromised,” I said to the startled doorman. “She’s not normally like this. She doesn’t have a drinking problem or anything.”

Nothing to see here, folks!

Rayya was so sick and dehydrated the next day that I called in one of those hangover-remedy companies that will come to your house and administer an IV filled with electrolytes and vitamins.

That was some top-tier enabling behavior on my part, but what I remember most about the moment is this: While I watched in exhaustion—having been up all night helping my friend while she vomited and suffered—Rayya joked with the nurse about how much she loved needles and drugs.

She even said, “Hey, maybe you can let me shoot myself up with whatever you’ve got hidden in that black bag. ”

Yes, indeed—nothing to see here.

Anyway, alcohol played such a big role in my own existence back then that I never really questioned whether it was good or bad, healthy or harmful.

Drinking is a huge part of my family’s history and it had been a huge part of my married life, as well—in both of my marriages.

(I met both my husbands in bars, just for starters.) Wine, especially, was such a familiar presence in my home—the fancy and loquacious guest who was always welcome at the table.

So I was more than happy to be able to share wine with my favorite person.

Rayya was fun to drink with, because Rayya was fun to do anything with.

It turned out, though, that Rayya had every reason to be afraid that her recovery community would freak out when they heard she was drinking. Because soon enough they did hear about it. And indeed, they freaked out.

Some freaked out more than others—depending upon the closeness of their relationship to Rayya or how much work they had done on their own codependency issues—but all of them pretty much freaked out.

Some of them cried, some of them raged, some of them argued with her, some of them cut her out of their lives completely, saying they couldn’t be around this kind of behavior because it jeopardized their own sobriety.

And some of them fought back with fire, saying things like:

“I am not cosigning this fucking bullshit, Rayya.”

Or “I’m not going to sit here watching my friend lie to herself about not being an addict and pretend it’s cool.”

Or “Why are you even opening the door of using anything again? Setting aside the fact that you’re an addict, you have fucking hepatitis C, dude! You’re honestly gonna go out there and drink on a hepatitis liver? This is gonna kill you!”

But Rayya stuck to her position that alcohol was not a problem for her, that her doctor had said it was okay, and that she wasn’t an addict anymore.

Moreover, all these sobriety zealots really needed to chill the fuck out and mind their own goddamn business—and, by the way, maybe some of them wanted to take a look at why they were still so miserable after nearly twenty years of recovery!

If working a program was so fucking great, then why were they still bitching and moaning in meetings every week about the same neurotic shit?

Didn’t they ever get sick of listening to their own voices? Bunch of victims!

Basically, Rayya pushed away all her sober friends after that—or accused them of abandoning her. She was hurt that they didn’t trust her, but she didn’t want to live by their code anymore. They were always so negative and depressing, anyhow, she said, so fuck them.

Looking back at this story now, with the benefit of hindsight, I must be very careful.

I must be careful of how I judge Rayya—and I must be careful, as well, of how I judge my younger self for what she could not or would not see about the dangers of this situation.

Without the mitigating pres ence of mercy, hindsight can make me into something like a cruel deity, fiercely condemning these ignorant mortals for what they did not know: How could you have been so stupid and reckless?