Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It (13 page)

The court mandated that I attend thirteen meetings. I made them all. Although the Alcoholics Anonymous program has seen millions of people like me, I was not one of their great success stories—at least not right away. But they definitely succeeded in turning on some lights where there had been only darkness before.

Finally, I began to acknowledge what I’d known for some time but had ignored—that alcohol is an addictive drug and a depressant, not a happiness potion, and certainly not a cure for all the insecurities and resentments I’d harbored since childhood. To be honest, I resisted much of what they said in the first AA meetings because like a lot of young people, I thought their material didn’t apply to me. I didn’t think I was an alcoholic. I just liked to party. I drank and got drunk, but I felt sure that I could shut it off at any time.

HE WAS TRYING TO DO FOR ME WHAT
I COULD NOT DO
FOR MYSELF.

The AA folks had heard all of that before. In fact, they’ve heard every lame excuse and seen every form of denial there is. They ignored my ignorance and did their best to save me from myself. They had a tough job though, because I still didn’t know what I did not know.

In those AA sessions, I at least learned about the science of alcohol and its impact on the body, mind and spirit. They also taught me about
windows of opportunities
, when we are given the chance to change the direction of our lives. Some people hit bottom and it still isn’t low enough for them. Don’t let that happen to you.

I kept pushing help away until I sunk even deeper into that black hole I keep mentioning, which was becoming an increasingly scary place.

After my DUI arrest, I blew the opportunity to pick up the pieces and move on. As a result, I made even bigger errors. I am very lucky to have survived.

I AM VERY LUCKY TO HAVE
SURVIVED
.

Still, after completing the AA course, I told everybody I was a changed man. I may have believed it for a while, but after a short time I went back into full party mode.

The one lesson that did resonate with me was that I shouldn’t drink and drive anymore, which was good, but not good enough.

PERSONAL NOTES

CHAPTER FIVE

THE NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES

I
FINALLY HIT
rock bottom one night in 2006. I was 26 years old and for nearly half my life I’d been tunneling my way deeper and deeper into denial’s dark crevice. The sad irony, of course, is that while I was self-destructing through my alcohol and drug abuse, I was also living my dream and the dream of countless others as a member of the Backstreet Boys. I had it all and damned near blew the whole deal.

My life plummeted to an all-time low on what I call my
night of the zombies
. My Hollywood crowd of friends was into binge drinking in a big way, which was common not just in our social circles but also across the country. Binge drinking is generally defined as having more than five alcoholic drinks during a three-hour period, resulting in acute impairment. Nearly all the young binge drinkers that I’ve known drink far more booze than that in a night. Many also up the ante and increase the health risks by taking drugs like cocaine, Ecstasy, methamphetamines or smoking pot too.

We’d chug beers and pound down shot after shot until we reached the semi-comatose state where the alcohol made us sleepy and lethargic. Then we’d do a bump of cocaine for an energy boost. A couple of cans of Red Bull would have been cheaper, legal, and not nearly as hazardous to our health, I know, but binge drinkers aren’t known for their common sense.

My crowd made partying an extreme sport. We repeated that binge and bump cycle night after night. After a few months we were hardly functioning. I felt as if I was nothing more than a shell wrapped around a hollow core.

More than once I thought:
I might as well be dead.
The bottom came on a night that started out like every other since I’d moved into a Santa Monica house with a friend. We hit the circuit, stopping first at a recording studio party, and then moving to some clubs before returning to the studio party to close out the night.

MORE THAN ONCE I THOUGHT: I MIGHT AS WELL
BE DEAD
.

We were the last to leave. I can’t tell you the exact time we walked out of there, but the sun was just coming up. All night and into the morning, we drank, snorted cocaine and took other drugs, maybe even some Ecstasy. I don’t remember much through the haze of intoxicants, narcotics and hallucinogens, but I do have a short mental video loop of a part of that night, which still haunts me to this day. I’m walking through clubs, the studio and on the streets of Hollywood. All the people I see have glazed looks on their faces. Their eyes are like glass. They seem soulless and mindless, like zombies. The scariest part of these running mental images is that I look just like them. I’d become a zombie too.

My housemate and I wanted to go home after leaving the studio, but there were no taxis to be found and we were in no shape to walk. Drunk and delirious, we stumbled from block to block for an hour or two, trying to find a cab. The only traffic seemed to be school buses loaded with clean-cut, laughing kids, which seemed all the more surreal given our wasted state and paranoid feelings.

Wading through the streams of boys and girls carrying their SpongeBob Square Pants book bags and Hello Kitty backpacks, we were like two stoners who’d wandered into Pleasantville. The kids looked at us with disdain and fear. I swear if they’d had parent-issued pepper-sprayers, they would’ve used them when they saw us coming.

I was just hoping they didn’t recognize me and scream, “It’s Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys!!” The thought of being spotted like that made my stomach turn. I didn’t feel worthy of our fans at that moment. I was disgusted with myself for being in that condition at an hour when normal, sane people were beginning their productive days. My self-loathing only worsened when we tried to board a city bus. The driver took one look at us two burnouts on the sidewalk and slammed the door in our faces.

THEY SEEM
SOULLESS
AND MINDLESS, LIKE ZOMBIES.

Too messed up to board the Metro bus? This was definitely a new low. Finally we found a cab and rode to our house in Hollywood. We’d only lived in this place for a week so there was barely any furniture or food. I tried to sleep, but my head was spinning and my stomach was churning. I freaked out and went to the kitchen in search of something to relieve my bellyache. Realizing I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, I found some cream of mushroom soup and tried to prepare it. Making something as simple as soup seemed more complicated in that state than making a five-course meal while sober.

My housemate stumbled into the kitchen. He couldn’t sleep either. He seemed to be feeling like old dirt too. We walked around each other without exchanging a word. We were so zoned out it was eerie. Later, he told me that he also felt sick to his stomach at the same time, as he was starving. We both had this sense that we desperately needed food just to make it through another minute.

I managed to heat up the soup and force it down my throat. My stomach felt better after I ate, but my head was pounding as if screaming “Code Blue, Code Blue!” It felt like some evil creature had invaded my body and was busy hammering on my brain. Blind with pain, I stumbled back to my bedroom, praying that I’d pass out before the clamor grew worse. I made the mistake of looking in a mirror on the way to bed. The guy I saw there was a very scary stranger.

My face looked bloated, the way it would appear in a carnival fun house mirror. My body was twice its normal width due to the 50 pounds I’d gained from hard drinking, overeating and lack of exercise. My skin was ashen gray trending toward translucent. My eyes were puffy and blood red. I’d aged a thousand years. I
did
look like a zombie—like my great-grandfather’s ghost.

The thought hit me:
I don’t know who I am anymore.
Then the panic set in.
This is not me. This is not who I am or who I want to be. I deserve better. I can be better than this.

I had never been in such frightening shape emotionally, mentally or physically. I was scared for my life. My body seemed to be crashing and my brain was close behind.

I found my cell phone and called my publicist.

“I need to check into rehab. Will you take me?”

BINGING TO OBLIVION

When you binge drink, it’s as if this thick cloud fills your head. I did things that I would never do in my right mind. I’d been on a long stretch of all-nighters and the body count of dead brain cells was racking up. I was doing crazy, spontaneous, impulsive things with no thought to the consequences. When friends or family members called me out, my pat response was “It is what it is” or “That’s just life.”

THE THOUGHT HIT ME:
I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.

I wasn’t facing my demons; I was dancing with them. No wonder the people who cared about me were throwing their hands up in the air.
Note to self
: When those who truly care about you and have your best interests at heart are waving red flags in your face, screaming “Stop!” and talking about an intervention, maybe, just maybe, you really are standing on the edge of the abyss.

The irony was that while I ignored or argued with people who were trying to help me avoid a total meltdown, I’d become totally paranoid about other perceived threats because of my chronic substance abuse. More than once I canceled airline flights at the last minute because I had visions of crashing. On a couple of occasions, I had already been on the plane when panic overcame me and I ran out before the attendants closed the cabin door, leaving my bags to make the trip without me. Everyone had some qualms about flying after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but my paranoia took me to the outer reaches of sanity. At one point, I actually looked into buying a remote lodge in Canada to hide out in, I was so sure that the world was headed for chaos.

I WASN’T
FACING MY DEMONS;
I WAS DANCING WITH THEM.

I’m certain that some people were amused by my erratic behavior, but it was a really serious matter. My therapist and I have talked about this period at length. I see now that the drugs and alcohol in my system had altered my brain chemistry so much that I wasn’t thinking or acting like myself. I truly was a stranger. My personality had been lost to all the toxins in my system. I wasn’t who I was meant to be.

I may have told myself and others that I was just making up for lost time because I’d worked so hard when I was younger, but the hard truth is that I’d used my
lost teen years
as an excuse to abandon all personal responsibility and self-control.

DISABLERS

I now take full responsibility for my behavior during this very ugly period of my life. One of the biggest mistakes I made at that time was surrounding myself with enablers, or, more accurately,
dis
-ablers. They may have been enablers in the sense that they were binge drinkers and drug users who partied around the clock and encouraged me to do the same, but they were also disablers because running with them only brought out the worst in me. Bear in mind that disablers are not to be blamed as
I
let all that happen, no doubt about it. Disablers are, however, to be avoided.

I realized after lots of reflection that I was afraid of being alone with my demons. Surrounding myself with other binge drinkers and drug users made me feel better about getting wasted night after night. I didn’t want to be alone or with people who questioned my self-destructive behavior. I was afraid of that, even though I knew in my heart that true friends want you to be at your best, not your worst. The people who really care about you will get in your face and tell you when you are headed for a crash and burn. True friends enable you by helping you build upon your strengths instead of encouraging you to give in to your weaknesses.

When I was in the binge-and-bump mode, I chose to ignore the warning signs I saw nearly every night, but those signs seared themselves into my brain as if my subconscious was persisting in its efforts to get the message through. I remember, night after night, going to the bars and clubs with my group of friends and seeing people who made me fear for the future if I didn’t change my ways.

TRUE FRIENDS ENABLE YOU BY HELPING YOU
BUILD UPON
YOUR STRENGTHS…

There was this crowd of
old zombies
in their fifties and sixties who had never given up the lifestyle of hard drinking and drugging. Some members of our crowd were friendly with them, as if they were members of the same club, but I was ambiguous.

More than once, I looked at them and thought,
That’s me. I’m going to be hanging in these same clubs thirty years from now and life is just going to pass me by.

Still, I didn’t turn and walk out when I had those thoughts. I was afraid to face the truth about myself as reflected in their faces and bodies so ravaged by alcoholism and drug abuse. Misery really does love company. I didn’t want to hang out with clean-living people because they would have made me feel guilty and stupid, but the disablers helped me convince myself that everyone was into drugs and binge drinking. We told ourselves we were party animals living the good life. It was all a lie. People who are doing drugs may claim they are having fun, but in their hearts they are anguished, dejected, sad human beings. They are lost and they don’t know how to find themselves.

If you are on that same track right now, please let me help you. Don’t wait for things to change. You have to change first. I am sharing stories to help you see the reality of your situation. I don’t want you to ever experience the horror yourself. I’m your best example of a bad example. Don’t follow me. Follow my warnings.

Sooner or later we all have to face our demons or they will destroy us. Looking into the mirror, I saw the depleted and tormented shell of the man I’d become and vowed to reclaim the man I wanted to be. I am still in that fight. Some days I win. Other days, I fall short.

YOU HAVE TO
CHANGE
FIRST.

It’s not easy, but every day that I’m fighting for my life is far better than the agony of spending another night amongst the zombies. You will feel the same, although I hope you never fall as far as I did.

Did I mention that I became a heavy smoker during this time too? We all know there is nothing better for a professional singer than cigarettes! Have you ever read the medical reports on the combined effects of heavy drinking and heavy smoking? Or binge drinking? Very scary stuff.

I hope it’s clear from my experience that there is nothing cool about this stuff. I’m not proud of any of it. I cringe when I write about it and find myself afraid to this day that I may have put my physical and mental health at risk. I did not deal with my demons for a long time and I’ve paid a price. But one of the scariest things is that I still don’t know what that full price may be because there can be severe long-term damage from all the things I did to my body.

During this time, I clearly let my many issues, fears and emotions drive my actions when I should have taken control. Even when I felt myself falling at full speed, and my friends and family were sounding the alarms, I still refused to face those demons head-on. I hid from them by drinking, doing drugs and smoking.

If you have similar demons, you might be more inclined to deal with them if you understand what binge drinking, illegal drug use, smoking and similar addictive and self-destructive behavior can actually do to you. A critical step in my own effort to create a better life was to commit to educating myself as much as possible. I stopped living as if I didn’t care about the future. Instead of ignoring or downplaying the warnings others raised, I began investigating them to see if there was any credence to them. What I learned helped scare me into looking for a better way. Maybe it will help you too.

‘TILL DEATH DO WE PARTY

When I think back to my binge drinking and drug-using days, I see a contradiction that never occurred to me then. I used to look at the old zombies in the bars and clubs as alcoholics and addicts. Yet the truth was that my friends and I were drinking much more and doing many more drugs than most of them. We didn’t think of ourselves as alcoholics or addicts. We thought we were just “partying.”