Update post # 3 of “The Recovery Road Trip of a Lifetime”
Dateline – Kerrville, TX, Thurs. July 1, 6 pm CST

Jaywalker Lodge clients and staff have been bus trekking for 24 full hours now as our intrepid drive Kelly takes us through Kerrville, TX … just 70 miles north of San Antonio.

Kelly - Our Intrepid Bus Driver

Miraculously, tropical storm Alex appears to have dissipated into something considerably less menacing, as a light summer mist speckles our Campus Coach windshield. Spirits in the bus have lifted with the improved weather forecast and the sense that we are all finally closing in our destination. The men are all looking forward to checking into the Staybridge Suites, replete with full length beds and running hot and cold water.

Plans for tonight include checking in to the hotel, grabbing some pizza, and checking out the Party in Hemisphere Park later on. In the morning, we will be heading out to San Pedro Park for a friendly softball tilt between Jaywalker Lodge and Gaston House (a Dallas based men’s program operated by Chico W.)

Other highlights will include tomorrow night’s opening ceremonies at the Alamo Dome; a field trip with Gaston House to Schlitterbahn Water Park; and lots of meetings, meetings, meetings!

Update post # 2 from the “Jaywalker Lodge Recovery Road Trip of a Lifetime.” Dateline: Lubbock, TX July 1, 10:15 am CST

Well, about 8 hours into our drive, just as we crossed the Texas state line, the air conditioning in the bus gave out. We drove for about four more hours (from 5 until 9 am) in search of a repair shop that would fix our bus. Meanwhile, the men at Jaywalker hung tough as the temperatures in the back of the bus hovered in the middle 80′s.

Bryan the Mechanic Saves the Day

Our driver, Kelly, very resourcefully located an RV repair shop in Lubbock, TX called Sexton Automotive, and we pulled in two hours ago, hot, tired and anxious about our prospects for a successful repair.

Well, about half an hour ago, a cheer went up from the men as Bryan, our steadfast mechanic, fired up the jury-rigged and partially rewired air conditioning system. Cool breeze coming the vents… oh yeah.

“Everybody back on the bus!” hollered the irrepressibly optimistic Mike “Moons” M. The delay has cost us two unplanned stops and nearly four hours in delays, but Jaywalker Lodge is now gearing up to get back on the road. With about 400 miles – and the anticipated landfall of Hurricane Alex – still ahead of us, we are hoping to arrive in San Antonio by around dinner time.

Now… HERE’S THE KICKER: The owner of the repair shop, Don, had swung by to check on our progress with the repairs, even though today is his official first day of retirement. It was quite a fortuitous coincidence, as it turned out, because Don himself chatted up the men about his 27 years as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous!!!

Cannot make this stuff up… Let’s roll!

At 5 pm on Wednesday afternoon June 30th, our charter Campus Coach rolled out of the parking lot of Jaywalker Lodge. On board, 26 clients, nine staff and three alumni volunteers. Destination: San Antonio, TX for the AA International.

All in all, we are looking at a drive of about 900 miles, or approximately 19 hours by passenger bus. One-third of the way there, spirits on the bus are still upbeat, but everyone’s eager to take a break and stretch our legs by the time we roll into Trinidad, CO.

Prior to our departure, our group gathered at the Lodge for a home-cooked feast of shredded pork carnitas prepared by Chef Brian Trom. To pass the early hours of our marathon bus ride, the DVD lineup so far has featured Year One, Talledaga Nights, Anger Management, and Zoolander.

The men of Jaywalker Lodge invite you to tag along with us on our five-day trek to the World Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous. We will post periodic updates and pictures from our expedition here on this blog as our journey unfolds!

And so it is…

Over the past three years, comedian Robin Williams has survived two near-death experiences. In 2006, following decades of abstinence from drugs and alcohol, Williams checked himself into rehab after his 26-year old son and other family members had grown increasingly alarmed about his relapse into drinking. And in March, Williams halted his “Weapons of Self Destruction” stand up comedy tour and underwent open-heart surgery to replace a ruptured aortic valve.

Nowadays, Robin Williams is rested up and he’s back on the road doing stand-up comedy again. The story of Williams’ struggles with cardiac surgery and alcoholism – and the new insights he shares in his stand up routines – are all beautifully chronicled in a profile about the comedian which appeared Nov. 19 in the New York Times. (Click here for the article.)

To me, the most touching part about Williams’ journey is not that he is talking about his heart following heart surgery. Rather it is that he is using stand-up comedy as his way of speaking from his heart about his relapse in addiction, and about his outlook on life and on recovery.

Williams’ rapid-fire and free associating delivery surely features the clever snippets of wisdom we have come to expect… “An alcoholic is someone who can violate his standards faster than he can lower them.” But this time around, the comic is getting real about the dark side of addiction, too. “There’s nothing romantic about it. This idea that as an artist you have to push yourself and explore the dark side? I went there. You can do a lot more interesting stuff when you’re not” messed up.

Perhaps Robin Williams’ greatest legacy will be his ability to perform stand-up comedy, while at the same time speaking the language of the heart to live audiences in a concert venue. The recent New York Times profile recalls a poignant moment during Williams’ performance last week at the Fox Theater in Atlanta.

During a bit “that hinges on multiple definitions of a popular swear word — when (Williams) recalls his bottoming out as an alcoholic, telling everyone in his life to, in effect, get lost, only to realize that he is utterly alone. When he performed this scene in Atlanta, the crowd did not laugh at all, and instead fell silent. This was, evidently, the reaction that Mr. Williams was striving for. “I went, that’s the moment,” he said.

No matter how far down the scale we have gone, it seems, we will see how our experience can benefit others. To me, that’s the essence of being a stand-up guy.

Dr. Al Gordon, my college advisor, was something of a stickler for words and their meanings. A tragedy, he would say, is not an event in which many people are killed unexpectedly. Earthquakes and airplane crashes are disasters of epic proportions, according to Dr. Gordon, but they are NOT tragic.

The American Heritage dictionary defines tragedy as a drama in which the hero “…is brought to ruin as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable or overwhelming circumstances.”

On August 28, Adam Goldstein, a celebrity disc jockey and a recovering drug addict, was discovered dead in his New York City apartment. The medical examiner determined that DJ AM, the star of an MTV reality series on addiction and recovery, had died of an accidental overdose of crack cocaine and prescription drugs. The series, entitled Gone Too Far, had been set for an October 5 premier – and immediately following Goldstein’s death, the network decided to pull the show from its lineup.

But shortly afterwards, the network has changed its mind; and on October 12, MTV went ahead and aired the first of seven hour-long episodes of Gone Too Far. MTV’s airing prompted this response from The New York Times: “Is MTV exploiting the attention the tragedy received in order to chase ratings? … And did Mr. Goldstein’s role in the production, which exposed him to the chaos of active addiction, contribute to his relapse?”

Gone Too Far seems an apt title, not only for an ill-conceived and exploitive reality television show; but also for the network’s decision to air the series following the overdose of its main character. Shortly afterwards, I spoke with a colleague who knew Adam Goldstein well, and who loved and respected him immensely. She left me with no doubt he was deeply passionate about recovery; and that his motives were sincere. But addiction is more than a compelling story line, it’s a chronic, progressive, and fatal disease. No matter how eloquent our rationale, if we align ourselves with TV shows which depict active addicts smoking crack and shooting heroin, we have simply forgotten who we are and what we are dealing with. No matter how heroic our intentions, there is no match for the cunning, the patience, and the irrevocable harm of underestimating this disease.

Friendship 101. Here is one way to look at addiction and recovery: We drank to fit in, and at the end of the day, our drinking turned us into outcasts. It’s not about alcohol, it is about us. Drugs and alcohol are not the problem, we are the problem. Our sense of isolation is our disease. Abstinence is all about NOT drinking or NOT using… But sobriety, the real solution, is about discovering some genuine connection to others. A very different kind of contact than the chemical connections which we shot through our miserable existence. Welcome to the Jaywalker school of genuine friendships. Wanna find a power greater than ourselves? Clean your room and then ask your roommate how HE’s feeling today? The road to recovery begins when we become willing to examine what it means to HAVE a friend, what it means to BE a friend, and when we consciously attempt to show up AS a friend to someone else. Powerful, powerful, powerful.

Friends at the Summit