Free The Harder They Fall by Gary Stromberg Page B

the
Good Housekeeping
seal of approval that I’m well and can now be normal. I’m not normal, I’m an alcoholic. And I’ve got to deal with my alcoholism every single day of my life so I don’t take that next drink.
    Whether you’re a successful writer, great athlete, or wonderful First Lady—I think of Mrs. Ford in the photograph on the wall there with her husband, who have become dear friends of mine—this is an equal opportunitydisease. It doesn’t matter your socioeconomic status or your position. We’re all in this together. I like all my groups, but my favorite meets at the House of Charity in Minneapolis. About half the members are in the long-term treatment center there for indigent people, most of whom are off the street. A lot come from other cities. That’s really their last chance between this world and the grave. I’ve made many friends over the years going to that Thursday night group with those men who are really down on their luck. But there for the grace of God go I.
    I can’t think of any group I frequent where there haven’t been relapses, and that’s important to see. One of my groups had a guy with forty-two years of sobriety who got in a big fight with his wife and went out and was dead in three months. Because of the progressive nature of the disease, that could be me. So my point is that addiction is an equal opportunity disease, and I just love the people in recovery. I’m just so grateful for every one of them because they help me stay sober. They’re the most wonderful people in the world. I just wish this place, I wish Congress could become like a recovery group where people say what they mean and mean what they say. You know this would be a lot better institution. We could make a lot better public policy, a lot better laws, if it weren’t about spin but about honesty. If it were a requirement that Congress adopt a program of recovery—like the Twelve Steps—we would all benefit. Certainly the American people would benefit.
    Nobody can really measure the indirect cost of alcoholism. All the absenteeism in the workplace, the lost productivity and injuries, and of course the 100,000 people who died from alcohol and addiction last year. That doesn’t measure how many lives failed and how many people died of liver failure because of alcohol, or how many died of heart disease. That’s just those that we know the direct cause was chemical addiction. Eighty-two percent of people in our jails, according to a Columbia University study, are there because of drugs and/or alcohol. So I just wish this place would turn into a big recovery group. Then I know we could get a good treatment parity bill passed. But all we can do is carry the message in our lives. I feel very blessed and fortunate to be a recovering alcoholic. There is no way I could be anything else—a good uncle, son, or partner forKathryn, a good friend, let alone a member of Congress if I hadn’t been able to treat my alcoholism. That’s who I am fundamentally. It’s so basic. I’m first and foremost a grateful recovering alcoholic.



A lot of people my age are dead at the present time.
    —Casey Stengel
Dock Ellis
    (baseball player)
----
    L IKE D OCK E LLIS , I’ VE LOVED the game of baseball for as long as I can remember. It was almost as important to me as the procurement of drugs, at the zenith of my years of addiction. The choice between watching a Dodgers game live or even on TV versus scoring the next batch of whatever I was going to smoke, drink, or snort was difficult to make. Intoxication would win out, but not before I’d think long and hard about the game I might miss. Ideally I would score, get high, and then melt into my sporting pleasure.
    I remember fantastic sun-drenched afternoons at Dodger Stadium watching my beloved “Bums” while high as Tommy Davis’s batting average. Smoking a couple of joints on the way to the game, washing down a few beers to keep the buzz at the proper level, and