Paradigm Magazine
PROCTOR HOSPITAL Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery
Published: Winter 2008 Issue Vol 14 No.1
http://www.addictionrecov.org/paradigm/P_PR_W09/paradigmW09.pdf
By Chuck Negron
"I Swear, I Promise"
My son is me and I was my son.
One more time my son is calling me from jail crying, sick from heroin withdrawal and facing parole violation. He is making promises, swearing off all that cripples him and his family. Making commitments a sick man is unable to fulfill. His addicted body and mind now manifesting itself in fear of his future and getting even sicker is begging to be freed. He is screaming for a moment's relief from the insanity running through his head. He would put his own child in harms way to be freed, so his pleas for help and redemption are coming from the worst part of him. If you believe in the devil then this is who is speaking through my son while he is sick.
My heart is sick with the pain of a father. For now, I am beaten down, emptied of my faith, and heading toward depression. My mental health and well-being are in jeopardy for I have seen and lived with what this does to me, and more importantly to him and our family.
The miracle of recovery has eluded my son, and his son is left without a father just as my son was years ago. The cycle of drug addiction and abandoned children continues. Do I bail him out or leave him to face court on Monday and the probability of a parole hold instated? He will be sent back to prison to complete his term and face new charges. Do I aid in his release in hopes he can be re-instated in California's Prop 36 program and receive drug counseling and stay out of prison? Do I intervene again not letting God's will be done? Is it God's will that I intervene and protect my son, or am I just an enabler? Why is this not clear to me when I would know what to do with someone else's child? Why am I so soul sick, broken, and so angry to be completely powerless? Why can't I stop this and love my son back to health?
When does a parent leave his son in jail to face many years in prison? When does a parent give up or simply surrender to the fact that they are powerless to help their child? I have done that in the past. I have been facing this decision and making different choices for over a decade now. I have cut him off. I have let him live on the streets. I have not bailed him out. I have bailed him out. I have not visited him in prison; I have visited him in prison. I have cried and wanted to die. I have fought the good fight to keep him in rehab and watched him put some clean and sober time together. I have seen him be a good father and then not see his son for months or visit him when he was sick. These are all pathetic memories of what happened to him when he was his son's age. This is the dilemma I face every time he needs my help. My son is me and I was my son. The only difference is I was blessed with recovery almost 17 years ago and he continues to die a fix at a time.
My heart says, "If I can recover then my son can be saved." How do I not let my shame guide me? How do I step outside of being his father, who turned his back on his child, and turn my back on him now? At times my health dictates what I can and will do. A dark depression has come over me in the past when facing this scenario with my son. I have become a prisoner in my own home for I cannot get out of bed or be of assistance to anyone including myself. But for now I am looking for answers and I am not surrendering to anything, but tomorrow is a new day. My phone will not stop ringing tonight for hours because my son cannot stop himself from calling me from jail, even though he knows I just got home from Pittsburgh and I am tired. Furthermore, he knows how this hurts me. One day he was in the game of life and the next he was facing prison. One day I am with my son and making plans and then he was gone and in a dark scary place where I could not protect him. Will this ever change for him and for me?
Art Aragon was a colorful fighter in the 1950's as a lightweight and a middleweight contender. Art was handsome, colorful, and a successful boxer and crowd pleaser bringing out many celebrities to his fights. In fact, he became a celebrity himself by courting the most famous actress of her time, Marilyn Monroe. When he retired from the ring he started a "Bail Bonds" business, which has also been a big success. His son Brad was kind enough to speak with me Sunday night concerning my son Chuckie's incarceration and possible release on bail.
I am folding right in front of myself concerning the tough love regiment of turning it over to God, surrendering to my powerlessness of my son's choices, and handing him over to God with love! At this point I am as smart as a mud fence in the rainy season. Its foundation is similar to my resolve to let him just pay the piper and do his time. It is evaporating with each phone ring and recording of, "This is a call from a correctional institution."
My father lived in the hell I live in now when he watched me dying almost two decades ago. The difference between my father and I was he had no frame of reference concerning drug addiction. The Negron's are a sober normal family with no drama in the addiction area. He never gave up on me but he did not, nor would ever understand how his son could be a heroin addict. It was beyond his comprehension that his son, being the lead singer in one of the biggest Rock & Roll bands ever having 21 consecutive top 40 hits in a row, would throw it all away in favor of slowly dying by his addiction and complications of hepatitis A, B, and C, and emphysema. His son, who made his family proud by his success in Three Dog Night, would leave his family and become homeless. His son would lie and steal from the people who loved him most. My father lived with the chill I now get when the phone rings fearing my son might be dead. I now cry for my father as I'm crying for my son and myself.
My father took me in at his home many times in spite of my condition. He was in his seventies and also suffering from emphysema. He faced seeing his son in withdrawals from heroin. He came face-to-face with the anger and hate of a sick junky that only wants one thing in life "one more fix! My father saw me lose control of my body and not be able to walk or grab a breath of air. I put my father through all of that without a thought of his well-being. I had become a predator and a prevailer of pain and fear" an animal. On one such occasion my father could not bear another minute of my pain, which I believe he shared physically with me, so he folded and gave in like I would give in to my son many years later. He offered any help he could give me including helping me obtain drugs. You have to understand that my father hated drugs and what they were doing to him and me. He would have rather done anything else to help me, and he did it anyway for he was now sick and insane because that is what drugs do to a family.
My father and I drove for hours before I would find someone who would sell me drugs. Being far from his house I went into an abandoned building to shoot the heroin into my veins. I overdosed and two homeless men who were in the building carried me to my father's car. I came to face the tears and fear only a father can feel after helping his son try to die!
My name is Chuck Negron and my life has been some ride. I would not change anything about what happened to me because it brought me to this moment in time today -- a free, sober, responsible, caring man. What I would change is the affect my life had on my older children and my family. If shame would serve them or me I would be riddled with it!
As a child I was shy, lonely and alone in my world, and I just wanted someone to notice I was alive. Some of the boys at school would sing on the street corners and I would quietly join in. Three-part harmony was my first love affair and it gave me a reason to feel good about myself.
I recorded my first record at age 15 and performed at the world famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem New York at age 16 with "The Rondells" vocal group. I made several records during my teens and was signed to Columbia Records at age 22. In less than ten years from the day I started recording, I would be a founding member of Three Dog Night who would go on to sell 90,000,000 records. You might remember my voice blasting out the 1972 record of the year "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog," or "ONE, is the Loneliest Number," "An Old Fashion Love Song," "Easy to be Hard" just a few of our number 1 million sellers. I was blessed, and I blew it! Drugs stole my life by one bad choice I made to do drugs once.
With all the time in the world, more money than God, and a voracious appetite for self-destruction, I forged a new career for myself as a hard-core drug user, a pursuit that dragged me down to a depth of existence few of us ever encounter.
However, no amount of humiliation or rehabilitation programs (37 in all) could steer me away from drugs, the love of my rapidly deteriorating life. After sleeping in abandoned buildings, suffering from emphysema, my addiction transformed a 6'1" 185 pounds rock idol into a cadaverous 126 pounds by 1991.
Just when it seemed everyone had given up on me, my sister-in-law took me to my 37th and final rehabilitation clinic. I only went because it was either rehab or jail. I chose rehab. But it was at a long-term drug rehabilitation facility, where I had an epiphany. It happened one afternoon when, for a few hours, I slept peacefully and awoke with no desire for a fix. Suddenly it dawned on me that if I was so willing to die, why not be willing to live?
I admit that my rise and fall story is a cliche worthy of the Rock n Roll Hall of Shame, but my nine-month stay at rehab was a come-from behind victory, a buzzer beater, which changed my life profoundly and presented me with a new realization. There was now something I craved to do more than drugs. The one thing, since I was a kid, that had always made me feel good inside. I wanted to make music again.
I would have nothing without the people who cared for me and helped me find my way. As a result, I remain active with the Musicians Assistance Program (MAP), and MusiCares, which aim to keep drugs out of the music industry. I also spend time helping other addicts find liberty from the burden of addiction. I have been clean and sober over 17 years and my life is blessed from the bondage of addiction.
Chuck
Chuck Negron a music legend and bestselling author of Three Dog Nightmare and Three Dog Nightmare: The Continuing Chuck Negron Story, which chronicles his personal life and death struggle with addiction and the miracle that saved his life on September 17, 1991. Additional information is available at http://www.chucknegron.com.
Paradigm - Winter 2009