Tim, the Success

I discussed my experiences that led to my breakdown with Tim, as well as with Sue. I explained my confusion about what had caused me to break down--and about how I had recovered much faster than my therapists had usually experienced with patients having the kinds of symptoms I seemed to be having. They said it was an "acute" episode, rather than a "chronic" one.

I told Tim about the dream and the people around my bed, and I said I didn't know quite what to make of it. Over the next few years, he bought several books on "odd phenomena" and would share them with me whenever he saw me.

He loved the song, "Dream Weaver," by Gary Wright, and he told me that he thought of me often when he heard that song. He said I was often his "dream weaver" and that I gave him ideas he'd never thought about before. I felt very complimented, and I told him I thought he was doing a lot better than me at "coping with the real world."

After I'd described my symptoms to him, and speculated a bit on all the "phenomena" we had experienced, I told him what I thought the best solution was for me.

"So you think you're gonna move to Houston, then?" He seemed almost surprised.

"Yes, I think so. I just want out of this whole area. I just need to forget. Since I can't remember--I just need to forget everything. I need to make better money--and be more like you. You're just doing great--and I need to be more like you."

"Well, Max, I think that's great." But he didn't really smile, he didn't really act overjoyed, just bland. It was as if he didn't know what to say. This is the image I have of that day--and it troubles me, but I confess, he didn't say enough, one way or the other, that day, for me to be able to tell much about how he really felt.

He lived across the way from me in an apartment complex at the time that I moved to Houston. He had a good career in the furniture business, and had even gotten a couple of pieces of used furniture for me, at a super discount price.

He seemed to be doing fine: I didn't know until after I moved to Houston that the heavy drinking his wife Marcia had mentioned to me was to become the major crisis and problem of his life that it would.

Only a year later, they'd divorced and his drinking had cost him three good positions and driven him to be an abusive husband. Yet, he'd been so sweet and kind to wife and baby, Brandi, the year that I had moved to Houston.

Now, when I reflect back on this period, more of those questions come up.

Did I cause Tim to drink, by leaving him in Little Rock in order to move to Houston? Was he just too "tough" to admit this to me? Had I not done a good enough job in being a feminist, in encouraging him to give up his "tough guy" routine?

In the years that followed, Tim and I saw relatively little of each other. After he became an alcoholic, he was divorced from Marcia, then married again a few years later to another woman, Debbie, by whom he fathered a little boy.

In the meantime, I remained in Houston until 1984, only occasionally hearing from Tim (usually in a letter) or seeing him in person. When I returned to Little Rock in 1984, from Houston, however, Tim was there waiting for me--along with my dad. It was a dreary night, and had been a long night in my old, beat-up little red 1974 Mustang.

Over the past 7 years, I'd lost a lot in Houston--most of my possessions, in fact-- and was definitely ready to return to Little Rock. I'd had that "change of scene," though--the one I'd needed to recover completely from my breakdown. And I'd probably become a more assertive person in a lot of ways in Houston, if for no other reason than I'd had to, in order to cope with Houston's greater size.

But now that I was back in Little Rock, Tim helped me--and I him. He helped me find a job, while he struggled to find and keep one, at which he failed. But I let him stay with me on Markham for a few weeks. To relieve any stress level for him, I told him he could continue to stay with me as long as he needed or wanted to--there would be no pressure for him to leave--no need for him to be out on the street again.

But he disappeared again--as he was wont to do--and we didn't see or hear from him for some time. This time, in fact, he was gone for about 5 years before we saw him again. During that time, he'd ridden trains, hitched rides, and worked at odd jobs, while constantly maintaining the wretched lifestyle of the "alcoholic." He'd lived in the desert southwest, usually in the areas around Phoenix or Las Vegas.

Tim's last "roommate" told me that Tim had taken to drinking "cheap wine"--an especially deadly concoction available in Arizona that can cause rapid health deterioration and even rapid onset of blindness.

I recalled that, in a conversation with me around 1985 or 1987, Tim had described to me the "alcoholic patterns" he had supposedly learned about from therapists in AA groups. He said that there were several different types of drinking problem: "heavy drinkers," who don't always become alcoholics, and only drink under extreme stress: these have a reasonable "handle" on drinking most of the time, Tim said.

Another group, the regular "alcoholic" we were familiar with. This supposedly was what Tim was--although I am now painfully recalling that Tim didn't specifically refer to himself as that, that day.

The other group, Tim said, was the worst--the person who "felt they had nothing to live for." This person, he said, was "basically suicidal." This was the "wino," who "only drank in order to end their life as soon as possible." The wino, Tim explained, would begin drinking strong, cheap wine, and would essentially continue to do this, over a period of only a few months, until it killed them. In other words, Tim said, the wino was merely a suicidal person using wine as their way of killing themselves, with no effort at work or functioning, as with an alcoholic. Many times, Tim said, alcoholics become winos, when they feel they can't go on any longer.

I don't know that these are "official" divisions of the "alcoholic community"--but I do know that, in the last couple of years of his life, Tim seemed to give up. He'd pulled himself out of the alcoholic gutter over and over again--after having ruined his life and good career. He'd seen his families and marriages crash in flames--and his life, after all his hard work and planning, was desperately poor, with no real hope of improvement by his forties, he seemed to have come to feel.

In any case, one insight I gained from his last roommate's description of his behavior--that of the "wino" that Tim had described to me several years before--indicates to me that what he had even then been planning to commit suicide by drinking cheap wine until he died. In the end, that's exactly what he did. If I could only have realized his little story--his little parable.

Maybe that is a good way to recall it, too--a parable. His full name was Mark Timothy Standridge: a Biblical name and a beautiful one. Tim became a very spiritual person during those last years of struggle with himself--and although he couldn't win the physical battle against alcohol in the flesh, I believe, now, that it may be that he was able to triumph over it in the spirit.

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