“None of these people are your friends,” whispered young Alex my first and only roommate at Seabrook House. “They’re low lifes: drug addicts, alcoholics, liars and cheaters….you’re not gonna be friends with any of these people, Brian.”

A boy of 20 not even old enough to drink, who had been in rehab and various institutions maybe 15 times or more, was giving me, the 49 year old newbie, the lay of the land.  He knew the ropes and who fought within them.  Many other patients knew him from “out there” in the South and Central Jersey drug using universe, jail or even previous rehab stints.  Everyone seemed to know him and realize what I realized: that Alex was incredibly smart. And special. For a drug addict.

He knew a lot about history, science and literature.  But he had an almost savant or encyclopedic knowledge of drugs: their makeup, ingredients, what was used to mix them…the history…who invented it…what it was intentionally originally used for…the side effects, addiction ramifications, etc.  It was astonishing. Some called him “the pharmacist”.  I called him “Roomie.”

We were a rather odd and rare pairing….straight (him) and gay (um…that would be me)…with a 30 year age difference. I was convinced the admitting nurses at detox where we stay the first few days did it intentionally. They gave us a room with three beds and left one empty. For our first four nights.  The place was at capacity with a waiting list!  Then when I was moved to the “big house” main mens dorm…he was moved in as my roommate there for my remainder. That never happens. Almost like God was our third roommate and wanted Alex to help me…or me help him. There are no coincidences in early sobriety — but plenty of spiritual awakenings and God-shots or what I like to call “Bernadette kisses”.

And it was no accident that Alex and I would swap stories of our life disasters, what we thought of the others in treatment and what they thought of us. “Do people make fun of me?  Do people like me?” he, one night, asked with a tinge of sad desperation that helped me form the answer he needed to hear.  We counseled each other, day and night. He was dual diagnosis and had some mental health issues and a host of horror stories: meds and straight jackets and rubber rooms.  As a teenager, he had somehow navigated through hospitals, institutions and rehabs with dexterity and success.  But success faded soon after every treatment.  As I learned more and more of Alex’s story, I could see why he was still using drugs and alcohol to salve and solve his life’s wounds.

But there was still some light left in Alex.  He adored his grandfather who gave him a book (“1984”) when he was 13 which introduced him to his first addictions: reading and learning.  In front of me, he would telephone him and keep him on speaker so that I could witness the love and admiration between them.  “Remember when you gave me that book when I was 13, Pop Pop?”  he’d once announced, pointing at the phone and eyes wide with glee.  He yearned that I see that. It was palpable. It was also beautiful. His mother seemed to have given up on him and I think everyone else in the world had too.  Except Pop Pop.  And me.

One night in lecture hall, in front of the girls and all us boys….he told his most anguishing story from his young but epicly disastrous life.  About the night he said goodbye to his father, who was succumbing to cancer.  Laying on his death bed, his father begged him to stop the heroin. “Alex, you gotta stop, please stop….”  were his last words to leave his dying body.  I wept every time Alex told me that story…and some of the men and women in our group gently sniffled and immediately fell in love with Alex.  Again.

Earlier on that sorrowful night in his life, Alex had been quizzed by the police after they were summoned because he was lighting fires in the kitchen.  The cops, who dealt with him often, for some reason for the very first time after dozens of arrests, decided not to take him to the jail this particular night.  So Alex would have that goodbye with his Dad. Or so Alex thought — as the first anniversary was approaching and he was in rehab with us.  That story was his wake up call, or so he said. 

Blown away by his life story and his fathers deathbed goodbye, I told him I wanted to write a movie and have Leo DiCaprio…or a young Leo DiCaprio to play him.  As those words left my lips, I immediately realized that it was a mistake.   I have had several such sober “pipe dreams” like that: a sitcom designed around an incredibly funny young woman named Alexa, a film about a rock n roll semi-star named Tommy who spoke at my outpatient group therapy back near home in Hollywood, …even perhaps a film about me, the addict and alcoholic among Seabrook’s motley but sober crew that rounded out with a smattering of drunks, pill poppers and the overwhelming majority and my personal near and dear: the heroin kids.  More on them later.

“Are you really gonna write that movie for Leo DiCaprio to play me?”, he implored several times later on.  I told him I would but I could never guarantee it would be made….and cast as such. I didn’t want to let him down.  That I would definitely include him in my book as I do now, is a promise kept.

We had some fun being roomies.  We loved each others soaps and shampoos. We each had a stash of contraband snacks, including the ever-prized Smuckers PB and J’s Uncrustables, which had replaced pot, coke, meth, Jack Daniels, Oxys, beer, heroin and other things for many an addict.   Occasionally, I would jokingly bellow at the top of my lungs “WHERE… HAVE… YOU… BEEN!?”  acting like an angry father when he came home late, as if he were my son. He would giggle like crazy over it, then mimic me in the hallway the next day.  We loved each other immensely as friends…as so many do in early recovery…despite that first night’s stern warning about making friends.

After treatment we kept in touch, but I de-friended him when he posted pictures on Facebook drinking with his buddies. I was afraid my de-friending him would hurt him.  But, since I now live by what I call the Phillip Seymour Hoffman “one drink” rule, I didn’t want to stay close to him and see his next demise.  I periodically texted with him and occasionally peeked, with baited breath,  at his Facebook feed which hauntingly, languished vacant for months.  Frozen in time from his last post.  I worried I couldn’t find dear Alex. He had disappeared and all I could think was that he was in jail or an institution.   Or worse.

In July of 2015 he re-appeared on Facebook, living in a parole halfway house, clean and sober (looking fantastic I might add).  The whole year I became sober..he did it the very hard way…with hard, lonely time in a New Jersey State Prison.  Drugs of course, had brought him back to jail.  Jails, institutions or death is how addiction always ends…so I often prayed that he hadn’t made it to that horrible third and final destination.

We spoke once on the phone and I read this very chapter you are reading over the phone to him and he loved it.   “My friend is writing a book and he’s reading a chapter about me,” he gushed, as he hushed a circle of others around the payphone.  Holding back tears, I told him I loved him and wanted him to make it.  “You’re so smart Alex. There are things still left for you to do in this life,” I reminded him.

Which brings me back to one more memory from that first night we met and lay awake until we fell asleep talking about life….in those wrenching sleepless early days of being clean and sober. Like a faint cry in the dark, he whispered softly, “Will you be my friend?”  “Of course”, was my answer.  “Will you keep in touch with me?,” he wondered.  “Promise?”  “Yes, Alex, I promise.” And off to sleep he went.