I Am the Only One Who Can Really Help

Old friends, overstepping, rescuing others in an attempt to redeem yourself, and . . . Tom Cruise

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It feels good to help. To extend a hand, offer a shoulder, share a burden. The impulse is a generous one! Here I am, doing okay. And there you are, struggling. Let me carry you, for a moment. But what if the person doesn’t want to be carried? It’s an old trope, in therapy as well as in recovery: You can’t make someone who doesn’t want to change, change. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

In today’s essay, first published back in 2021, A.J. considers his own attempts to help one person in particular. Were his efforts to help more about his own self-conception as a helper than they were about what his friend needed?

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Tom Cruise

Originally published April 21, 2021

I had an old friend from high school named [REDACTED] but, for the purposes of this essay, I'll call him “Ray.” He’s someone I’ve known and loved for almost 30 years, but we haven’t spoken recently.

I know I should not say he’s a bad drunk, but he’s a bad drunk — the kind of drunk who goes out to happy hour at Applebee’s, then 12 hours later ends up passed out in a train station without his wallet or shoes.

But since I’ve gotten sober, Ray’s also made multiple efforts to control his drinking. He tried switching from beer to wine, then back to beer on weekends only, then back to weekdays only, and so on. He tried and tried and tried, but nothing stuck. He even took the Vivitrol shot, but it made him nauseous and angry because he drank while he was on it. Then he’d try drinking “normally” again, but he’d end up with the same results: shoeless somewhere else.

We haven’t seen much of each other in the last decade because I basically abandoned him as I did most of my closest, oldest high school friends. Those friendships fell apart because I was more ambitious than everyone I grew up with. Most of them played it safe and stayed back in the Philly suburbs while I packed my guts and moved to New York. After that, they never came to visit, and I barely went home — end of story.

This is just a lie I tell myself.

Still, Ray routinely tried to connect mainly through text messages, mostly when he was drunk.

They were always funny texts — he’s one of the funniest people on earth — and arrived usually between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Most were sentimental and sweet, but some got crazy:

yuo never CALL.

Dumb bitch.

Fuck you ass.

One time he left a voicemail message that ran three minutes long, and throughout most of it, he tried to sing “Feliz Navidad” even though it was April. It also sounded like he was walking through a cornfield.

He’d text the next day and apologize.

“All good,” I’d text him back. “Miss you, man.” Because I did miss him.

And then I’d also add, “Let me know if I can help,” because I wanted to help him so badly.

*****

“Look for the helpers,” said Mr. Rogers’s mom.

You’ll see that hokey story whenever terrible things happen — mass shootings, police shootings, Category 2 hurricanes, insurrections. But if your Instagram feed is full of Mr. Rogers and Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” poem, it’s probably too late to help.

In 12-step — or, life, really — one of the healthiest, sanest things to do is ask for help. And around my second year of AA, soon after completing the steps, I decided I was now ready to help everyone.

I’d never had a desire to help people until AA. Because most of my life, I was not a helper. I couldn’t help you with your taxes or jumpstarting your car or hanging your new picture frame or removing a virus from your computer. I was useless.

The most useless I’ve ever felt was about 15 years ago when I watched someone die. I was at a restaurant near the suburban Philly neighborhood I grew up and had just eaten with many people I’d gone to high school with. I walked out with leftovers in a styrofoam container, and there was a woman lying on the ground in the parking lot. Her head was slumped against the curb, and there were — I don’t know, two, three, five? — other people on their phones calling for help. I got close and saw she had blood in her eyes, and she was choking on blood, and there was blood coming out of her ears.

I put my leftovers down, took off my coat, and kneeled beside her. I may have held her hand, or I may have just kneeled there and tried not to make eye contact with anyone else standing around. I wasn’t sure if anyone knew what to do, but I was 100% certain I didn’t know. I got up and backed away.

Finally, the EMTs arrived. I went in to get a closer look, this time as a true bystander at a safe distance, not someone who was scared and in the way.

As they loaded her in the ambulance, my chicken parm was still scattered in the parking lot.

The next day, the local news gave a sketchy report about what had happened: She fought with her boyfriend in the restaurant, and it trickled outside. They were both drunk and then the boyfriend got into his SUV and sped away. She tried to climb onto his SUV and got thrown off. She landed on her head and fractured her skull, and died on the way to the hospital.

One of the cops who interviewed me afterward assured me no one could have helped her. I still don’t believe him.

*****

In the summer of 2020, Ray had a run of bad nights. I got many late-night calls and many early-morning apology texts. Texts like this at 10:02 PST:

Fighting the scotch.

Miss you buddy.

I put a spell on you by Nina Simone.

His wounded apology arrived at 5:12 a.m.

I told him I wasn’t judging and was there to help with whatever he needed.

Honestly, I wasn’t that concerned. This was how Ray lived, and it was none of my business. He’d gone on for this long without killing anyone or himself, so that’s a blessing. However, it was bound to catch up with him. I wanted to help, but I didn’t want to overstep.

In October of that year, Ray left a voicemail message and said he had started AA and wanted to catch up and ask for my guidance. I was thrilled — for him, obviously, but also for me. I’m a helper, after all.

When I talked to him on the phone, wow, it was like — you know what it’s like: it was like he’d come out of a coma.

I couldn’t contain my excitement. “I’m so happy for you, man!” Ray had a sponsor. He had a 30-day chip. He was making crude jokes about the 3rd Step Prayer. We were going to be okay.

*****

In my third year of sobriety, the more I went to meetings, the more invested I became in helping others. I clapped loudly for newcomers. I took on many service positions. I wasn’t a Big Book thumper, but I was definitely energized, spiritually speaking, by The Program. And some of my shares were, in my opinion, extraordinary: Poignant. Brave. Humorous. Stick to me, folks, because there’s a real winner in town.

When I am in this zone, I think of that Tom Cruise Scientology video where he laughs like a devil and tells the world what a privilege it is to call himself a Scientologist.

In the 9-minute video available on YouTube, he used the word “help” (or “helping”) eight times. This is the part that I found the most deranged:

Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anyone else. As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it because you know you’re the only one that can really help.

But you know what? I started to believe I shared a similar, if not the same, purpose and superpower possessed by Tom Cruise, a real-life maniac.

So I constantly overstepped — especially with people whose early sobriety intersected with some sort of public shaming — because, honestly, come on: I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN REALLY HELP.

This is a lie I tell myself. But I have muscled my way into some people’s lives who may not want me lodged in there so closely.

Thankfully, I’ve studied my new brain enough to know that, despite how it sounds, I am genuinely coming from what most would conclude is a good place. I believe this to be true, but this unhealthier version of me still wants to rescue people because I am convinced this is the only way to rescue myself or find absolution. Or — and this is even more perverse — if I don’t help someone, I will hurt someone else really badly because that's how the Lord drew me. It's all fucked up.

*****

One time, when we were barely adults, Ray called me on a muggy August Wednesday morning and asked me to pick him up at his mother’s house because he had to leave her 1992 Crown Vic parked overnight on the side of the road a couple of miles away from where she lived. He left it there because he was too drunk to drive, so he walked home instead.

When we finally got to the car, it was an upsetting scene. A dry creekbed was the only thing that stopped the car from smashing through a house and into someone’s dining room. There were horrifying scratches on the bottom of the driver’s side door. Plus, the rearview mirror was broken, hanging lifelessly by wires, and the fender was dented. Either a velociraptor had attacked the car, or Ray had hit something.

“What the fuck, Ray?”

He just shook his head and quickly inspected the damage to make sure it was still driveable, and it was.

We waited all week for the cops to call, but they never did.

*****

In December 2020, I checked back in with Ray to see how he was doing. Unlike the previous weeks, when he responded almost instantly, there was a lag. A day later, he sent me a short text message and said he was busy with work and that his sponsor had gone AWOL–he was okay, though.

I knew that wasn’t true, and right around midnight, I got another text:

46 Days

Drunk

He texted again around 5:30 a.m. and apologized.

I wrote him back: “That's okay! Come back when you’re ready.”

Then, because I had almost four years of sobriety — what I considered a double black belt in my sobriety — and had devoted my life to service and helping (I am a helper now!), I was sure it was time for me to intervene.

So the next day, I called another friend of ours — Charlie, we’ll call him — and gave him an update on the dire situation with our friend Ray.

Charlie was his closest friend, and he had rescued Ray from countless absurd situations caused by his drinking.

“Charlie, I hang around a lot of dirtbags, but our friend is the worst alcoholic I have ever seen. I think he needs to go to rehab.”

I gave Charlie a list of options and names of people I knew who could get Ray a scholarship to high-end facilities in exotic locales where he could pet wolves, sweat in saunas, and play beach volleyball. He could stay for as long as it took to get himself fixed.

Charlie was baffled by my overeagerness to put our friend in a faraway rehab for two months. That sort of life disruption was unimaginable to him.

“How would that work? He’d just leave his wife and kids for two months?”

I told him it’s better to have two months away than bury him next week.

“You think he's going to die?” Charlie asked, shocked by my assessment.

“Yeah, man. Dead or in jail.”

Charlie said, “Okay, buddy. Thanks for letting me know.”

He sounded annoyed—like he’d just wasted time talking on the phone with a crazy person.

I immediately called Ray and left a message.

“Hey, man. I want to let you know that I talked to Charlie, and maybe he’ll tell you what we talked about, but I didn’t want you to think I was going behind your back or anything. I love you. Let me know what you decide and how I can help with whatever is next.”

The surge of usefulness shot through me like sunlight. I couldn’t wait to hear back.

I will save my friend.

That is what I do now.

I’m a helper.

*****

Two years later, I still haven’t heard from Ray. I always check my phone every few days to see if I have missed a text, but no, it’s always the same:

46 Days

Drunk

*****

I know I overstepped. It’s frustrating, and I know — I know — he’s only a text message away, and 17 months is a long enough time to forget everything, but I’m so afraid he won’t text me back.

These sorts of friendship breakups are both middle-aged problems and sober problems. Yes, some of my friendships have rejuvenated in sobriety, the same way a wilting plant gets happy when it moves into a room with better access to natural light. And others have dissolved very fast. I have had many meetups with old cohorts that were more like exit interviews than reunions.

Growing up in the outer suburbs of Philadelphia, I had a core group of guys from when I was 12 until about 25. They would all call me “Age,” and if someone new in my life calls me that, I get goosebumps.

In some of my recent dreams, Ray, Charlie, and many other friends I’d grown up with appear. Sometimes, they’re 8 feet tall, but I can feel the regenerative force of their friendship buzzing inside me. And that’s what is so wonderful about these dreams:

What’s up, Age?

And then, I will apologize for being a lousy friend and take responsibility for falling out of everyone’s lives.

I wake up from those dreams with wet eyes and gray-haired, soft-bellied loneliness and realize that I haven’t had friendships like that in so long and will most likely never have them again.

“I was so insecure. You were all working at real jobs and playing golf on the weekends, and I was waiting tables.”

I say this to my vanished friends while I’m in the shower, reorienting to their absence, my voice echoing through the steam.

******

Ray and Charlie are not real names. Ray and I were supposed to speak two Thanksgivings ago, but we never reconnected. I’m planning to try again soon.

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ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN

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MORE ATTEMPTS TO HELP:

*****

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*****

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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:

Distance

by Theodosia Garrison

A hundred miles between us
Could never part us more
Than that one step you took from me
What time my need was sore.

A hundred years between us
Might hold us less apart
Than that one dragging moment
Wherein I knew your heart.

Now what farewell is needed
To all I held most dear,
So far and far you are from me
I doubt if you could hear.

*****

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