SantaCon

As we emerged from William’s memorial service in Midtown Manhattan exactly a year ago, Saturday, December 15^th, we were embraced by a swarm of drunken Santas.  The irony of leaving the memorial for someone who died due to a substance use disorder, only to encounter the obscenity of a mob of drunken Santas, reindeer, and elves was not lost on us.  SantaCon was in full swing. 

Fortunately the New York Times has spared me having to reflect on this event.  I’m happy to say that Lee Seinfeld, the owner of my local watering hole, wants nothing to do with the event. 

Here is an op-ed piece that captures my feelings nicely.  http://nyti.ms/1ftAsCr  Thank you Jason Gilbert.

You can also go here to find Times reportage on the event:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/nyregion/when-santacon-comes-to-town-cheer-mixes-with-dread.html

Or, for that matter, try the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-santacon-divides-new-york-city-20131213,0,836946.story#axzz2nT2PdOTd

December 2nd, 2013

A year ago on this day William breathed his last in our arms, the conclusion of a twenty-one hour vigil after he’d been removed from a respirator.  We’d played music and sung to him during the six weeks he was hospitalized, especially his favorite, Stevie Ray Vaughn, over and over.  On a trip back to Chicago Elizabeth recorded “I Say A Little Prayer”, by Burt Bacharach, with her roommate, Emily Casey.  When William died, she immediately played their beautiful rendition of the song for him one last time.  I don’t have it here.  Perhaps Elizabeth does and can post it.  She also sang it at Will’s memorial service.    

She then played another song I’d never heard, by an artist I’d never known.  It was Antony and the Johnsons singing “Thank You For Your Love”.   In the days that followed I played it incessantly.  It was a source of comfort and, I think in retrospect, a way of not quite letting go of William and that concluding moment in the hospital.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Xdm5yS6PY

As time went by I began to listen to other songs sung by Antony.  That led me to this Leonard Cohen song.   I’d listen to various artists sing the song, but eventually returned over and over to Mr. Cohen himself singing “If It Be Your Will.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4nNIAfs4DE

In short order I began to listen to Cohen and many, many other artists sing, “Hallelujah”.  My favorite, the one I listen to now as I write, is KD Lang’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE

It is hard to describe the comfort these songs provided between the time of Will’s death and his memorial service, and beyond.  I’d lie down, computer balanced on my chest, listen, remember, cry and think.  Certainly some of that thinking was given over to our pledge to William.  We renew it again here today.  Thanks to everyone who has helped us make progress.  We will prevail.

“We promise to do everything in our power to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease.  We ask you all, as witnesses, to give us the same kind of strength and support you have so lovingly offered over the last several weeks, as we strive to honor our word.  Action is eloquence.”

 

Thanksgiving 2013

Right after Thanksgiving a year ago our daughter, Elizabeth Hope, flew back home from Chicago – her third such trip during a month her brother, William, was hospitalized. He’d suffered cardiac arrest after an accidental heroin overdose.  All that month family and friends took turns at his bedside, talking to him, massaging him, playing music for him, looking for any signs of possible recovery.  Hospital staff were remarkable in their tender care and consideration.  “Mr. Williams, we’re going to bathe you now.”  “Mr. Williams, we’re going to change your sheets.”  “Mr. Williams, we’re going to shampoo your hair now.”  There was no lack of respect or dignity, however precarious William’s condition.

I remember the nurses on duty Thanksgiving Day taking turns in a staff room eating their meal from what appeared to be a combination take-out and pot-luck Thanksgiving. Lots of plastic, paper plates, and aluminum foil while they shared  food, time and good will with one another – ever alert to the needs of their patients  nearby. 

William’s Thanksgiving meal consisted of the canned nutrient he’d been given ever since his arrival, now administered through a feeding tube directly to his stomach.  IV drips supplied his fluid intake along with various medications depending upon fevers, infection, and necessary sedation.  Breathing depended upon another tube, running directly to the tracheostomy in his throat.  Survival, and hence our hope, depended upon this umbilical triumvirate.

Shortly after Elizabeth’s return we were to learn that even the best of care was not sufficient to restore William.  We gathered in his room, his mother, sister and I.  I remember sitting at the side of his bed, holding his hand and arm, tears cascading, while a neurologist told us the results of a recent brain scan.  The analogy she used was freshly cut flowers.  Upon entering the hospital his brain was like a bouquet that had just been cut and put in water.  Hence our hope.  The lack of oxygen he’d suffered from cardiac arrest, however, meant that over time the “flowers”, his brain, had wilted and decayed.  William would spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state.  Hope shriveled to grief, then to resolution.

 

In the days that followed we were presented the option of removing William from the ventilator.  The alternative was to spend the rest of his days, uncomprehending, reliant upon tubes, machines, and the kindness of caretakers.  It was an offer of a life that was not a life.

We determined instead to see if William could become an organ donor.  Donorship was possible, though success was not a given.  For a successful donation William would have to succumb within an hour after being removed from all life support in order for his organs to be fresh and vital.  After several days of delay, we convened in an operating room, prepared to say good-bye to our dear boy.  The tube from the respirator came out of the hole in his throat and he breathed on his own.  He’d done this before, on good days, when there was still hope of recovery.  The clock ticked, he survived the hour, and we returned as a family to his hospital room.  He continued breathing on his own for another twenty hours.  Cardiac arrest or no, his heart and spirit were strong until the end.

This year, almost exactly to the day, I drove again to the airport and picked up  Elizabeth for the first time in a year.  Not just Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, our grandchild-to-be, and Johnny Anderes, a father-to-be.  A year later we’re waiting again.  This time until early March.  Like a Russian nesting doll, there is hope inside our Elizabeth Hope.  A proper umbilical cord connects mother to infant, an infant growing toward first breath, first steps, first words.  There’s already a strong heartbeat.  We’ve much to be thankful for.

And Thanksgiving today, like many holidays to come, will also be filled with the remembrance of an uncle this child will never know, but for the stories we'll tell.  Uncle William we miss you.       

  

Hidden In The Hills

I wrote the following as a Letter to the Editor to The Bernardsville News.  Some or all of our family lived in the town for 57 years, until, as I write, my mother's death two years ago at 94.  

To the Editor:

I grew up in Bernardsville.  My parents were longtime residents, my mother dying at age 94 just two years ago.  I have many pleasant boyhood memories from my early life there. From time to time I  visit.  Most recently, I picked up your Thursday, November 14^th issue.  Why?  Because a friend alerted me to the drug related deaths of several young people in the “New Jersey Hills”.  Why would I care?  Almost a year ago  our 24-year-old son and brother, William, died of an accidental heroin overdose.  At his memorial service we made a pledge to William: “We promise to do everything in our power to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease.”

I fear addiction is hiding in The Hills.  The reality is that drug abuse is an epidemic in our country, and especially in New Jersey.  Because of William’s untimely death, I’ve met a number of families in New Jersey who have also lost children or are working night and day at the recovery of family members. 

I do not know the cause of death of either of the two young men whose obituaries appeared in your recent issue. It is, perhaps, unfair to speculate.  It is no speculation to say that there will be more obituaries of young people in your paper. Their deaths will be due to the silent epidemic in the communities you serve.  I urge The Bernardsville News to do everything you can to bring news about drug abuse to the forefront of your coverage. It is not just a national issue.  It is a local issue that cannot and must not be denied.  You can help remove the stigma attached to the disease, so that families can use their tragedies to help avoid further tragedies amongst their friends and neighbors.

Here are links to two essays I have had published in my current “hometown” paper, The New York Times, on the topic of addiction: http://nyti.ms/18eVkto, http://nyti.ms/1g8ih7W.   I regret that my boyhood home suffers from this affliction.  Sadly, I am not surprised.  I do not honor our family’s pledge to my son if I do not confront addiction anywhere and everywhere I come across it, however veiled, unwanted, and uncomfortable a topic it may be.      

Bill Williams

Life Imitates Art

When the legendary acting teacher, Lee Strasberg, died, another famous acting teacher, Stella Adler, came into her class and said, “I’d like a minute of silence.  A man of the theater died today.”  Following the silence Adler added: “And it will take a hundred years to undo the damage that that man has done to the theater.”  What brought about such bitterness?  Strasberg and Adler had been part of The Group Theatre.  You can read all about The Group Theatre in Harold Clurman’s memoir, The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties.

Begun in 1931, The Group sought to transform American theater from light entertainment to work that was a serious dramatization of the times they lived in.  For ten years they did just that, emphasizing strong ensemble work.  Their work together was based on the techniques of the Russian man of the theater, Constantin Stanislovsky.  The names of Group members and their contributions to American theater are legendary, among them:  Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, Luther Adler, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, Harry Morgan, Stella Adler, Robert Lewis, John Garfield, Franchot Tone, Will Geer, Howard Da Silva. Michael Gordon, Paul Green, Paul Strand, Morris Carnovsky, Sanford Meisner, Marc Blitzstein, Anna Sokolow, Lee J. Cobb, and many others.

 By the late 1930’s the cohesiveness of the collective began to come apart. Finances, the beckoning of Hollywood, and bitter disagreement over interpretations of Stanislovsky’s work led to fractures that still exist today.  Various members began to emphasize the aspects of Stanislovsky that were of particular interest to them.  Today actors still study the interpretations of Meisner, Strasberg, Stella Adler, and other teachers, all stemming from the Group’s work.  For example, students at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts are assigned to different studios.  They include: The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, The Meisner Studio, and The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.  As time has passed, the work of these teachers has been handed on to various acolytes.  Too often the acolytes and the students who train under them are dogmatic and cult like, unable to agree about what they share in common. 

Why, you may ask, do I write about theater on a website devoted to addiction?  First, I have spent my life teaching and directing actors.  Thankfully much of my training was with teachers who took a broader, more eclectic approach, including Larry Moss, whose book on acting, The Intent to Live, could easily be a title for a book on recovery.  Indeed, much of his advice to actors could certainly prove useful to those in recovery.

Since the death of my son, William, nearly a year ago, as I’ve puzzled with the question of how I, personally, might be most effective in advancing the common cause of battling addiction, I’ve had the benefit of two very wise leaders in the field, both exceedingly generous with their time, Tom Hedrick and Robert Lindsey.  They each suggested I could make beneficial use of my background as an acting teacher and director – that working directly with recovering addicts using skills and talent I already possess, to use my art to help enable recovery, might be the most positive thing I could do.

 

I’ve taken this advice to heart.  I’m heading down the path of finding ways to use storytelling, theater games, and acting to help those in recovery find or regain a truer sense of themselves.

My concern is that the world of addiction education, prevention, and treatment seems to me to be every bit as fractured, divided, dogmatic, and cultish as the world of training and nurturing theater artists.  In my short exposure to the world of addiction I’ve seen too many eyebrows raised about the way “someone else does it.”  There seems to be too much interest in defending turf and not enough questioning of practices that may need refinement or are just plain out of date. The people least served by this state of affairs are the teenagers, people using dangerously, and the full blown addicts, all of whom need our full attention now. The world of addiction has too much to do to enlighten and battle the outside world without fighting itself. 

In his book, Larry Moss writes:  “Not long after Strasberg’s death, Stella Adler called Anna Strasberg, his widow, and said, ‘We should have talked. . . we should have talked.’  Later she wrote Anna a note, ‘In history there are battles that now end in love.’”

We do not have the luxury of saying “We should have talked.”  We cannot wait to see if the battle ends in love.  Our battle must be to find the common ground, to agree there is more than one path up the mountain, and to be willing to blaze new trails with urgency and purpose.  We cannot become shatterproof while the shards of old bitterness lie at our feet.       

             

ONE YEAR

A year ago today our son and brother, William Williams, was denied inpatient detox treatment by his insurer.  He arrived at the hospital with his bag packed, ready to begin treatment.  He was turned away, although he had benzos and opioids in his system.  He wanted help and was told "NO."  A year later the insurer has still not provided us with the complete records documenting or justifying their denial of service, despite repeated requests.  Four days later he accidentally overdosed, leading to cardiac arrest, six weeks in the hospital, and his eventual death. Support Shatterproof, Partnership at Drug Free, NCADD, or the Where There's A Will Fund, or any other fund of your choice,  but please join us in our promise  "to do everything in our power to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease."  This is our pledge to William. Thank you all as we continue to strive to honor it.

The Kitson-Lichtenberg Effect

     I read a column in the New York Times yesterday where Paul Krugman mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect.  I’d never heard of it before.  Mr. Krugman defines it as follows, “the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence.”  In other words, or better – in Mr. Krugman’s words -  why a Congress hijacked by Republican radicals is at an impasse.  Like most of America I’m frustrated by fools leading us nowhere, or worse, toward crisis. 

     I’ve worked with people suffering from Dunning-Kruger, even been “managed” by them.  My attempts to advise them of their disorder failed, miserably.  In fact,  in one instance it cost me a job.  As a wise friend reminded after I’d lost my job, “You can’t fix stupid.”

     I think this condition has a mutant cousin.  I call it the Kitson-Lichtenberg effect. I define it as “the truly offensive and greedy are oblivious to their vulgarity and money-grubbing.”  Brian Lichtenberg is a designer who came up with a series of shirts designed to look like athletic jerseys, each with a number.  However, where a player’s name might ordinarily go, he’s placed Xanax, or Adderall, or Vicodin.  You can go here to see what these shirts look like and to get a sense of the reaction of the pharmaceutical companies that produced these drugs:  http://www.tmz.com/2013/08/29/xanax-adderall-vicodin-trademark-lawsuit-kitson-drug-t-shirt/

     You can go here to see what the The Partnership at Drugfree has to say:  http://www.drugfree.org/newsroom/letter-to-the-ceo-of-kitson-la-remove-shirts-that-promote-prescription-drug-abuse

     I wrote to Kitson today.  Here’s what I had to say:

“You fools don't get it. Promising copies of Kristen Johnston's brave book, "Guts", for free with a purchase of your obscene drug jerseys is hideous. While you're at it, make one for heroin and put the number 24 on it. That's how old my son was when he died from an overdose. Of course, no one knows who my son is. Who would want a William Williams jersey, right? So maybe you could make your heroin jersey number 31. That's how old Cory Monteith was when he died. That's probably a better marketing strategy. You'll make more money. A word of advice. Don't use up all the low numbers. Some family member of someone in your company will die from abuse of the very drugs you profit from. You'll surely want a memorial jersey with their drug and number on it. Maybe something like Vicodin 19.”

     So I’m crabby today.  Why?  Because I live in a country where people afflicted with the Duning-Kruger effect can take money from pharmaceutical companies to overlook the damage prescriptions drugs are doing to our nation, while people afflicted with the Kitson-Lichtenberg effect can make a joke about drug abuse and line their pockets. 

     How about some of that money going to The Partnership at Drugfree?  Anybody want to buy a jersey that says Will 24?  We’ll put the proceeds in the Where There’s A Will Fund:  https://www.facebook.com/WhereTheresAWillFund  Maybe my friend is wrong.  Maybe it’s time to fix stupid.