Now you’re scared. This is the toughest thing you’ve ever dealt with. You decide to try the geographical cure: you quit your job, pull up stakes, relocate to a new city where no one knows you. You’ll start afresh.
But within days, booze comes calling in the middle of the night. Like all loan sharks, he’s one step ahead of you and he means business.
This is how it happens.
This is addiction.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and the least recognized need of the human soul.
—SIMONE WEIL
For me, it happened this way: I took a geographic cure to fix what I thought was wrong with my life, and the cure failed.
Much later, I would learn the truth: geographic cures always fail, especially when they’re designed to correct problematic drinking.
Of course, that wasn’t how I saw it at the time. In the winter of 2006, when I pulled up stakes and moved to Montreal, I was full of hope. Hope that my fabulous new career would blossom. Hope that my long-distance sweetheart and I would flourish in this new city. Sitting by candlelight at my farewell dinner, these were the dreams I shared with my closest friends.
The third hope I kept to myself: that with this move, my increasingly troubling drinking habits would miraculously disappear. That my nightly craving for a glass of wine—or three—would go poof.
I was full of new resolve. I had made a New Year’s resolution never to drink alone. I had made that promise to my sweetheart, and I intended to keep my word.
It was an icy blue February afternoon when I first dragged my suitcase up the marble stairs of Sam Bronfman’s faux castle on Montreal’s Peel Street, a Disneyesque confection that had been headquarters to the world’s largest distillery for many decades. Donated to McGill University in 2002, Seagram House had taken on new life as Martlet House, named for the small red bird on the university’s crest, believed to be blessed—or was it cursed?—with constant flight.
A martlet never rests. I chose to see this as a happy omen. I was looking for signs that I had made the right decision in accepting the big job of vice principal of McGill, in charge of development, alumni, and university relations. I had left my beloved home in Toronto and a successful career in journalism. I took this Martlet business seriously.
As vice principal, I was ushered into Bronfman’s large second-floor office, the very same place where the booze baron had hosted Joe Kennedy and Al Capone during Prohibition—or so the story goes. It was here that I would sit, at his massive hand-carved desk, ensconced at one end of an airless chamber, walled with recessed curved bookcases and ornate oak paneling. The history was impressive. Once upon a time, the office had been, too. But when I arrived, stained green carpet, broken overhead fixtures, and the lack of natural light made the room oppressive. Still, it had loads of potential. I was optimistic.
In honor of my arrival, a fellow vice principal had placed hot pink gerbera daisies in a jaunty citrine vase. There were welcoming bouquets from the principal and others, and a vast array of notes and cards—a happy distraction on my first day. My gut was speaking to me, but I chose not to listen.
Over time, I grew to dread that behemoth of a desk, and all it represented. But on the first day, its novelty was a distraction. My effervescent blond assistant, only two years out of university herself, perched opposite me, pulling out the secretary’s table to write on. She introduced me to a fat binder and handed over a pile of documents for my signature. Most of all, she was interested in securing a date for my welcoming reception. Her top choice was St. Patrick’s Day—or St. Patio Day, as she liked to call it, the booziest day on the Montreal calendar, and her personal favorite. (She was single and anxious to change that status.)
Five weeks later, she made it happen: the majority of my new staff—there were more than 180 in all—crowded into the ground-floor boardroom of Martlet House for coffee and croissants as the principal welcomed me to McGill. I was in charge of mobilizing this group to launch the largest campaign in the university’s history, a $500 million fund-raising effort that would change the face of McGill, boost research, help students. The principal was a woman I deeply admired. My heart was full. My geographical cure was going to work.
For the first months, I spent many nights behind that big Bronfman desk. Sometime around six in the evening, as the last of my staff headed home to husbands and wives, children and friends, I would walk half a block to the small café on the corner, order a takeout salad, and chat to the owner in broken French, getting ready for another evening at work. Occasionally, I’d stay past midnight, and return on the weekend. I was used to long hours. I had no real friends in the city and my learning curve was steep. The previous vice principal, recruited from Stanford, had left before her tenure was up. Most credited her with professionalizing the fund-raising machine of McGill, and it was my job to continue the process.
I dug in hard. Senate documents, issues of governance, fat background packages on donors: these were the easy files. What was confounding was the management challenge, picking up where the Stanford woman had left off. At bedtime, I’d close the day with a few emails, place my BlackBerry on the pillow beside me, and struggle through a few pages of The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, a farewell gift from a seasoned manager back home.
Shutting off the light, I’d review my day in terms of the “monkey rule,” advice I’d received from a renowned university president. “There is only one way you can fail at your new job,” he had warned. “Your key reports will come into your office with monkeys on their shoulders. When they leave, make sure their monkeys are on their shoulders, not yours.” Great advice; tough to follow. I’d fall asleep, visions of monkeys dancing in my head.
By spring, the light of Montreal was transformed. Patio season had arrived, and my assistant’s agenda was full. Each morning, she’d bring me a fresh installment of romance along with my coffee and documents. As she rushed out each evening, glowing with possibility, I would crank open the latches of the leaded glass windows behind the Bronfman desk and let the sounds waft up from the back alley. The popular Peel Pub, a rowdy favorite with undergrads and their out-of-town visitors, was only doors away. So too was Alexandre, a cozy local. In the morning, my assistant would frown at the open windows: “Why on earth would you want to look at a brick wall?” How could I explain that I found the nighttime sounds strangely comforting? The staccato chatter of busboys on their smoking breaks, hauling buckets of empties to gray bins, grabbing a quick smoke before they headed back to work; the occasional burst of laughter; furtive snatches of a melody, a bit of bass.
It reminded me of what a friend once said of sex on antidepressants: “I can manage an orgasm, but it seems to be happening to someone down the hall.” Life, once removed.
My sweetheart Jake—a writer living thousands of miles away—had just proposed to me. One week before my move, we had escaped to a remote island in the Bahamas. There, on a deserted beach at sunset, he had asked me to marry him. I had said yes.
Over the years, Jake and I had had many honeymoons. For a decade, we had spent as much time together as possible, summering at Jake’s octagonal wooden houseboat in the wilds of northern Ontario, wintering in each other’s homes. In between, we traveled: Paris, London, Mexico. We each had one child: a daughter, Caitlin, for him; a son, Nicholas, for me. Born six months apart, they had been eleven when we met. We had raised them with dedication and