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- [00:00]
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Apple Representative
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- [01:31]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. Many times stories are about taking the long way. They're about what happens when we make the difficult decision that we knew would be good for us and we made it, even though it was too tough. But what about the times when we don't exactly rise to the challenge? This week, two stories about taking shortcuts. First up, we have Lawrence Wood live at the Moth Story Slam in Chicago, where the theme of the night was gangs, cliques and crowds.
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Lawrence Wood
Here's Lawrence When I was a teenager, I read only what I had to for school, and there were rare exceptions. In ninth grade, my English teacher took me aside after class one day and she gave me a book called the Learning Tree by Gordon Parks, who's best remembered now as the director of the 1971 movie Shaft. And it's a good movie. It was a good book. And the Learning Tree is his autobiographical account of growing up black in the Deep south in the 1930s. And it was banned in in my school because of a brief sex scene at the beginning that was not nearly explicit enough for my taste. But I liked the book. But still, it didn't trigger a love of reading that my teacher hoped it would. I still only read what I had to but that finally changed my senior year when I took an English class from a teacher who at first I really didn't like at all. She had had us read and write a book report on Jane Eyre. And the night before the report was due, I banged out a first draft and I typed Jane Eyre on the title page because that's what the paper was about, and handed it in. And a week later, she holds my paper up in the air and she says, this is not Jane Eyre. This is a very poorly written analysis of Jane Eyre. And then she said, d and she gave me the paperback. But then she started assigning books by more contemporary authors that I really loved. And I finally understood for the first time why people read for pleasure. And from that point on, I read constantly. And many years later, I joined a book group. And this book group had some academics in it, English professors, people who took literature very seriously. And one of them was a woman named Laura who taught English at Northwestern University. And she got to assign our book two months in a row. And the first book she assigned was the Secret History by Donna Tartt, which is about this group of pretentious college students who kill one of their own. And I just hated it. And when I looked at the author photo, I thought, oh, this is why she recommended it. The author looked just like her, and it was long and boring, and only one of the characters died, and I wanted them all to d. And the next month, she made us read, or she told us to read Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. And I didn't read it, partly because it reminded me of the 19th century Novels like Jane Eyre that I hated in high school, and partly because I was still so annoyed about having to read the Secret History. And so I knew I'd have to miss the discussion. But on the night this discussion was scheduled to take place, I stopped off at Tower Records, and there I saw a whole rack full of those yellow and black study guides called CliffsNotes. And I saw one for Lord Jim, and I thought, maybe I can go to the discussion. So I went and I offered as my own insight something that I had read in the Cliffs Notes. And Laura said, well, that's really interesting. And then she asked me more about the comment I'd made. And so I repeated what I could remember from the study guide. And we went back and forth like this. Really dominated the discussion for the whole evening. And at the end of the night, everybody agreed that the discussion had been a success. And even though I should have just been relieved and kept my mouth shut, I confess to reading the cliffs Notes. And everybody just stared at me. And Laura looked like I had kicked her in the gut. And when I got home and told my wife what happened, she said, what were you thinking? And she had been in a book group for many years, another book group, and she knew that these things were just not done. And the next morning, a guy from the group called me and he said, look, after you left last night, a few of us were talking about what happened, and we, we decided it would be better if you didn't return. And I said, you're kicking me out? And he said, yes. And I said, of a book group? And he said, yes. And I said, because I read the cliffs notes? And he said, yes, because you read the cliffs Notes, Larry, you cheated. And I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had never heard of anybody getting expelled from a book group before, and neither had my wife. And when I gave her the news, she said, well, you know, that I didn't expect. And she sounded sympathetic. So I said, well, can I join your book group? And she said, absolutely not. Thank you.
- [07:09]
Dan Kennedy
That was Lawrence Wood. Lawrence is an attorney, a moth story slam regular, and a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago, where he teaches a seminar on poverty law. Lawrence has also won the New Yorker cartoon caption contest, a record setting seven times. If you want to check out some of his entries into the contest, you can see those cartoons on our site, themoth.org up next, Amanda Egge. And a quick heads up to our listeners. This story deals with drug use and addiction. So we just wanted to give you a quick note about that. Amanda shared this story at a moth grand slam in Los Angeles. The theme of the night was the deep end.
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Amanda Egge
I knew we had to quit heroin because we were running out of money. And honestly, being a junkie was not part of my life plan at the time. I was 23, living in New York with my college boyfriend Dominic, our three cats, and $120 a day heroin habit. Dominic and I had tried quitting on our own, but we could never make it past the third day of withdrawal. For those of you who've never kicked heroin before, it's like the worst flu you've ever had times a million. But the hardest part is not the severe cramping, anxiety, diarrhea, vomiting, or cold sweats. It's knowing that the instant cure to your misery. It's just a subway ride away in Bushwick. Still, going to rehab seemed like too drastic a move. I mean, yes, I was addicted to heroin and I couldn't go more than a couple of hours without using or I'd start to feel sick. And heroin makes it impossible to orgasm. So I hadn't come in a year and a half, and I was so constipated that I found myself digging rock hard poop out of my butt with latex gloves. But I was also in the number one PhD program for philosophy, and there was no way I could miss my metaphysics seminar. So I found an outpatient program that would prescribe you Darvon, Klonopin and Klonidine to help step you down off opiates. And we did that a couple of times, but we kept relapsing for stupid reasons. Like one day I was looking around the apartment and it was a mess. And so I wrote Dominic a note about it. And when I got home, he was sitting on the couch smoking heroin. And I was like, what are you doing? And he said in your note you said to pick up. And I said I meant the apartment, but there he was, smoking heroin. So I did too. One day, after another relapse, I started having a panic attack. And for some reason, in that moment, I picked up the phone to call my mom. I said, mom, you have to come to New York. There's something I want to tell you. That's all, I said. She didn't ask what it was, she just got on a plane. But the truth is, she already knew. She just didn't know it was heroin. My mom met with me and my therapist, and my therapist said, you need to go to rehab. And I said, no, I just need to go to Hawaii or something. And he said, no, you need to go to rehab. There's one in Arizona, it's called Sierra Tucson. And I said, let me think about it. So that night I went home and I googled Sierra Tucson. And I saw on their website that they have horses. And growing up, I'd always loved going horseback riding. So I decided that I could go to rehab because they had horses. Not to get off horse, but for the horses. I went in the next day and I told my therapist, okay, yes, I'll go to Sierra Tucson. And he said, you can't now. Your boyfriend is going there. And I said, fuck you, that's my rehab. And I stormed out of the room. My mom convinced me to come back in, and my therapist said, it's okay, there are other rehabs. There's one in Malibu. And I said, does it have horses? And he said, no, but it has celebrities. By the time I arrived in rehab, I was already 24 hours into heroin withdrawal. They gave me some stuff to help through the first couple days of detox, but I still felt like shit, and I couldn't really sleep for the first month. Heroin makes you super relaxed, and when your body gets used to that and you take it away, what you're left with is edginess and adrenaline. At night, the rehab would take us to these outside drug and alcohol meetings. And there was these two guys from another rehab that I would always hang out with at the meetings because they were cute, but also because they were celebrities. One night, one of them said to me, hey, we huffed hair mousse today. How? I asked. I'd been sitting in the rehab bathroom staring at a huffing warning label on a bottle of air freshener for weeks, trying to figure out how to do it. They told me. And that night, I went back to the rehab and I went through all the other patients stuff, and I stole every bottle of hair mousse that I could find, which was two, and I hid them. And then whenever I felt like I needed to get high, I would go in the bathroom and take a huff. Huffing made rehab really manageable. Then I ran out of the hair mousse, and I started requesting it, along with my weekly carton of cigarettes. But for some reason, the rehab never brought me any. And then one day, this local Malibu girl came and picked me up to take me to a meeting. And I was riding with her in her car, and I knew we were about to pass by a beauty supply store, and I thought I should just ask her to stop so that I can get some hair mousse. And then my next thought was, oh, my God, am I just going to be a hair mousse addict for the rest of my life? That was the moment I realized that drugs were over for me. In rehab, they tell you that you have to hit bottom in order to get clean. But hitting bottom isn't like touching the floor of a pool. It's murkier than that because no matter where your bottom is, you could always go lower. Dominic found his bottom when he used heroin one last time after he left Sierra Tucson. But for me, it wasn't the heroin that convinced me I was a drug addict. It was the ha.
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Dan Kennedy
That was Amanda Egy. Amanda lived through tragedy, comedy, and heroin addiction in her teens and early 20s, but turned her life around at the age of 23. She's now married with two kids and runs a popular home bakery specializing in decorated sugar cookies. Amanda told this story at the Moth about six years ago, so we followed up with her to see how she's doing now, and she says, I haven't used hare mousse or or heroin since I Left rehab in 2001. I live a pretty normal life now. That looks nothing like it did when I was in my early 20s. And I did finally get that trip to Hawaii when my husband and I went on our honeymoon. Unfortunately, I didn't get to ride horses then either. Lastly, if you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration's national hotline, 1-800-662-help. You can also find additional resources on our website@themost.org in the extras for this episode. That's gonna do it this time around, but we'll be back again soon with some more stories. And until then, from all of us here at the Moth, have a story worthy week.
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Amanda Egge
Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser.
- [14:40]
Intuit Sponsor
Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller.
- [14:45]
Dan Kennedy
With the Moth Podcast, production by Julia Purcell and Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.