The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I met my friend Byron in 1994 when we went to music school together in Princeton, NJ. He was one of the most charismatic, charming people I had ever met. He charmed you into anything with his smile. He had been pretty sheltered till college and the first week of school he had his first alcoholic drink and that night he ended up in the hospital that night for alcohol poisoning. His drug experimentation began and he got kicked out of school at the end of that first year, he had been on a tull tuition scholarship like me, and then he went back home to Wisconsin for six months. When he came back to Princeton, he wrote me a letter saying how important my friendship was to him. We decided to live together and he introduced me to ecstasy and my first rave. After nine months of living that lifestyle, I had my first panic attack which convinced me to leave that environment.
Well, I kept an emotional distance from him every since 1996 when I left Princeton and stopped doing drugs. I visited once and saw him a few years later and then when he moved out to San Diego we connected again and would see each other or talk every few months. Eventually he moved to Los Angeles and became friends with my exhusbands group of friends who were dj's. Though I still went dancing occasionally, I wasn't part of that lifestyle anymore. In fact, he was the MC at my wedding to my ex.
Byron still was Byron. He didn't really respect other people's boundaries and he had a passion for food, women and anything that would intoxicate him. He had mellowed out some in personality but hadn't really evolved. He turned a lot of people off with his intensity. Like I said, we kept in touch, but at a distance. I moved to Boston for a few years and only saw him when i was home. Then I moved back to California and the last time I saw him I was pregnant. I've been married again for a couple years. I knew through the years that at the end of being with our friend Carrie in Princeton he was snorting heroin, how his friend Colin had OD'd in his apartment and how that hadn't stopped him from doing drugs. I knew that he had occasionally shot speed and when I saw a needle once in my apt. in LA I freaked out. I made it totally clear to him that I didn't want drugs EVER brought into my home.
He had a back injury a few years back that did legitimately limit his function physically, but he also used the pain and the medications as an excuse to continue his addictions. This gave him total accessability. His fiance Gretchen was a friend of one of my LA friends and was awesome. She eventually left him because after 6 months of him falling asleep randomly out at places, she saw a needle left in the bathroom and figured out that he was shooting up his time release pain medication for his back: oxycontin. He was still on disability at this time and had had back surgery and when Gretchen left him he was barely making it on disability checks with help from his friend Balsam. He always had women trying to help or save him. I never tried to be that person after leaving in 96, I was more like an old acquaintance.
I didn't know that he moved back to Wisconsin for many months because I had just had a baby and I found out by trying to track him down through Balsam and then I spoke to him in early June. We talked mostly about his friendship with Balsam and things that had happened between them. By tracking down people that have some of his writing, I've learned a great deal about his life in Wisconsin for the last year. He was living the life of a complete junkie, shooting up the fentanyl gel from his time release pain patches. He would shoot up 8 times a day and be sick at the end of the month when his medication got low. He hung out with a 17 year old most of the time and exposed her to his sickness. He also hung out with a few other young girls and had them all thinking they had such unique relationships with him. It was so disturbing to talk to them. Gretchen (his ex fiance) and I talked a long time last night about how disgusted we are by what he was doing. He actually shot up the 17 year old days before he died. He filmed himself shooting up and took a picture of himself shooting up. He was a shell of the charming, talented, intelligent guy I once knew. I'm glad I wasn't around for all of that. His parents didn't do anything but watch him exist like that, I'm not sure why they didn't send him to rehab, however, it only would have bought him months or years.
The autopsy showed that he OD'd, meaning that his body couldn't handle the drugs anymore, not that he intentionally killed himself. It showed that all of his major organs were enlarged from drug use and that his heart could no longer pump enough blood for his body, so the blood was backing up into his lungs. All the problems weren't congenital, meaning they were ALL caused by drug use. I really did care about Byron and at some point was probably in love with him. But I am so angry right now for what he did to his body. He never hit bottom partially because he was so good and rationalizing his behavior to himself, appearing somewhat functional and he had women enabling him everywhere he went. It's very sad. I knew him for 13 years and he always had that sparkle in his eyes and that smile. He was a great writer and surrounded himself with people far inferior to himself intellectually. I will miss him but I can't say I was totally shocked by the email from Gretchen telling me to call her a week and a half ago. I had been waiting for it for the last five years. I've learned more details than I probably wanted to know in helping his sister track down his writing. These young girls in WI thought he was their teacher. It makes me sick. Did I give you all the info. you wanted? Byron kept the paintings I did back in Princeton and every letter and gift from the people he loved. He really did care about people, but he couldn't overcome his demons and pulled down a lot of others with him. The fact that he was living that way makes it easier for me to accept his death and he has bought a lot of my friends back together again.
I thought I could use a way to vent to people in Al Anon who have been through similar things. here is his website: http://byron-york.memory-of.com/
Any support or insight would help. I've been going through this for two weeks. I switch between sadness and anger/disgust. I've been helping his sister track down his poetry/writing and as that search is coming to an end, I realize I'm going to have to really face saying goodbye.
Aloha Tigerlilli. Welcome. You are not alone. There are many others here who understand what you have gone thru and are going thru now. Many of us have been there also and can empathize with your rolling anger, your deep stifling sadness, the death of your hope and expectations which bring on the soul wrenching disgust. We have been thru it also and this is a place to bring yours.
What you describe of Bryron makes him the poster boy of addiction in my mind and then he would be only one of millions who are and were qualified. How it has affected you made me hold my breath because ofthe realness of my own relationship with the alcoholics I loved and who died in spite of being loved. My wife and I were talking about Tim the other day. We loved him dearly and his period of time in recovery endeared him to a whole crowd of people. He helped others get clean and sober and the compulsion to shoot heroin was over powering in his third year of being chemical free and because he had been chemical free for 3 years his body could not take him going back to using from where he left off. Its been years since he has died and only yesterday. We miss his recovering self. We have lost others too while many others have continued on in recovery including ourselves.
You have come to the place were we all hold on to each other and support the hell out of each other in order to both understand and accept the tragety of Bryon and help each other get thru it.
Be angry...that's a normal human emotion and alternate with acceptance of the fact of Bryon. Be sad because that is what is normal also when we lose or are deprived of what we want and need and alternate that with gratitude for the good stuff because surely there was good stuff also? Feel disgusted with the seemingly willful loss and your powerlessness to help him and alternate that with the opportunity to turn him, others and yourself over to a Higher Power and an awareness that you didn't cause it, can't control it and can't cure it.
You can keep coming here with an open mind and you will find help and understanding. You are not alone.
I'm new here, too, but have found incredible comfort in these pages already. I read and read for hours last night when I was awake and in pain. Just know there are others thinking of you and sending prayers and support. I hope you find some of the comfort and support you are seeking at this very difficult time. Saying goodbye and letting go can be two of the hardest things we do. Peace to you.
You have given all of us the truest sense of what friendship with an alcoholic/drug user is like. But even more so, you have reminded me of the love that we have for them that so many times gets crossed with haterd of the disease. You have shared not only some of your story with us but the story of Bryon's disease too, and yet knowing the agony of what eventually killed him the sense of grieving who he truly was under the disease is what stands out the most. You have been a great friend to him, loving him, yet not enabling him.
I pray you will be able to let go in time, and with time heal from the pain this disease has caused you.
I think your post so eleoquently sums up how a disease can destroy someone. I think one of my real heartaches in dealing with any A is the loss of their potential. Most of all it is I think for me at least the loss of my potential relationship with them. There are times when I can forgive certain people for their actions. That is very very very new for me. I am, of course, not there by any means yet with the A I live with, the damage is so great.
I am so so glad for you that you have people to talk to, other people who loved him and cared for him that you can share your grief with. I am also glad that you are willing to talk and grieve and let it all out so that you can heal. I think it is hard to share the gnarly details of the 17 year old photos of shooting up and more. At the same time the details are important. Clearly his disease took him and his charm and his intelligence were no match for it. That is some of what I find so difficult they are talented people, they are intelligent but so so powerless over their obsessions.
