Chapter 11: The Abyss and the Plow Horse: A Descent into Darkness and a Search for Truth

Chapter 11: The Abyss and the Plow Horse: A Descent into Darkness and a Search for Truth

This chapter tells the story of a descent I once hoped I’d never live long enough to describe—a plunge into my own personal hell, where I became a broken down horse destined for the glue factory. Yet, it’s also a story of redemption, of someone who stepped into my darkness to try to pull me back, much like Harry deLeyer did for the horse named Snowman in the 1950’s.

It’s no mystery to me why many of us have chosen our culture’s wayward conditioning, addictions, or suicide over healing.  Unconscious influences and unhealthy attitudes, coupled with traumatic wounding and its often-Invisible wounds are the hardest to mend and the easiest to ignore.

We can see the effects of poor adaptation by citizens to our culture, its history, and supporting religions through the rise of addictions, alcoholism, loneliness, depression, mental illness, racism, sexism, and fear of immigrants that are now troubling our land.  We have to treat our pain somehow, and, believe me, this country’s citizens are quite good at self-medication at the expense of self-healing. 

Addiction feels like a twisting maze, built slowly over time, long before you realize you’re lost. I began self-medicating early and often, and when it became a way of life, every path seemed to end in a dead stop. My struggles started in my earliest years, grounded in loneliness and a complicated kind of love. In a world where anxiety feels normal, it’s no wonder so many remain trapped in those dark, tangled corridors.

The effects of toxic masculinity and its branches—whether in religion, politics, or capitalism—are stitched into the fabric of our culture, creating imbalances, suppressing the divine, and demeaning the feminine. It’s not hard to see the madness around us: the commodification of life, mass killings, early deaths, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, abuse of women and children, species extinction, and ecological destruction—all pointing toward a bleak future unless American society awakens and pushes back against the dark norms of a dying world

The Poem of the Lost

THE FOOLS (Poem written in Care Unit, May 1984)

You know who we are, there is no need for our names

We may be outwardly different, but inside are the same

Whether vacationing on chemical trips, or playing strange mind games

We must continue to strive for success, and its most dubious fame

We remain graceless souls blended into life’s darkest mass.

Affirming our uniqueness, though we remain stuck in the same class,

As those parading around like winners, but appearing just like an ass .

Steering clear of self-awareness, Oh our transparency of glass!

Spewing words of wisdom, but with only another dog’s bark.

Seeking to make a good life, but on life’s script leaving a shit mark.

We may eventually see the light, but now life is always so dark.

Needing more purifying inner flames, while snuffing every divine spark

Hoping to someday blossom, yet we will never possess Love’s flower,

While swimming in intoxicating sweetness, and then drowning in the sour.

Never realizing that, over life, we don’t hold any real lasting power.

We avoid the dark reality of our lives, by living in a chemical tower.

We bring up life’s rear, though we think that we should be first.

We want all of the best, somebody else deserves the worst!  

Our life should be more blessed, why on earth do we feel cursed?

Trauma creates human toxic gas bubbles, just waiting to be burst!

The Labyrinth of Unseen Wounds

I am a lover of horses.  It is in my blood, it is in my bones.  My late aunt Hazel Ray (mother to the famous singer Johnny Ray) raised horses at their Salem, Oregon ranch, some of which were used for racing.  My mother rode a retired racehorse to school in the 1930’s, and I have admired, mostly from afar, the equine species for much of my life, though I spent several years in in the 1970’s and 1980’s handicapping the horses at Portland Meadows at Delta Park, Lone Oak Racetrack in Salem, Oregon, and Longacres Racetrack in Renton, Washington.

In the lore of equestrian miracles, there is the story of Harry deLeyer and a horse named Snowman. In 1956, deLeyer arrived at an auction late, looking for a cheap horse. The only ones left were the “rejects,” destined for the glue factory. He saw an old, grey plow horse, already loaded onto the slaughter truck, eyes dulled by labor and neglect. Yet, something in the animal’s eyes spoke to him—a spark buried under layers of defeat. For eighty dollars, Harry bought him. He saw value where the world saw waste.

He saw a champion where others saw a corpse.

My journey from 1986 through 1987 was the vessel for my own descent into the furthest reaches of hell, where I became that plow horse on the truck. I was broken, destined for the slaughterhouse of my own making. But just as Harry deLeyer stepped in to pull Snowman off the truck, a figure named Steve stepped into my underworld. Steve became my Harry deLeyer. Unknown to me initially, he saw a soul worth saving when I only saw the end of days. But before the rescue, it is essential to retrace the path I created that led to the slaughterhouse.

I entered this world as a source of distress in November of 1955, amidst nearly two feet of snow in Portland. A “crying baby” who refused to be soothed, I disrupted the sleep of a father working two jobs to keep us afloat. My parents, desperate for rest before Dad’s first job, a 2:30 AM paper route, would bundle me in blankets and leave me in the car in the garage. There, in the dark silence, I learned my first lesson: my calls for love resulted in isolation. My voice had no value.  Love was not to be available when I needed it the most, thus trauma’s impact began very early for me.

My father was a man of immense intellectual curiosity—a student of Theology, Psychology, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Mind at the University of Portland. He sought to understand the human condition, yet the demands of a hyper-busy work and family life forced him to abandon his academic pursuit of truth after over four years of study. Ironically, I would later pick up his mantle, rebelling against spiritual authorities just as he might have, to finish the job he started. But as a child, I did not know him as a philosopher; I knew him as a force of nature, often physically distant, always exuberant, yet sometimes terrifying.

My mother, my “great protector,” returned to work mere weeks after my birth to help pay off debts. Consequently, I was passed between babysitters, some of whom were cruel. One, Jo Stanley, allowed her teenage son to terrorize me, and, at age five, threaten me with sexual abuse. My mother, sensing my misery, pushed for me to start first grade at age five just to escape that childcare hell.

But the escape only led to a new form of struggle.

The Architecture of Pain

School felt like a battlefield I wasn’t ready for. I was physically and emotionally behind my classmates and had only started speaking about eight months before starting school. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, saw my habit of talking to myself as a “problem” and often stuck me under the dunce cap in the corner. There was a family conference initiated by the principal, Mr. Hill, as something had to be done with me. The adults’ answer was chemical—a methedrine prescription for “hyperactivity” that was really just sugar pills in a methedrine bottle, an idea spawned from my mother. Mrs. Tozier personally handed me a pill every morning, thinking it was speed.  To the teacher, I seemed to improve, maybe because she believed she’d “fixed” me. That fake methedrine was a problem dodged as a kid but one I later faced head-on as an adult.

My sister Pam and I grew up in a world that felt both magical and dangerous.  We had vast areas to explore and play near our home, and there was never a shortage of trees to climb or islands to explore. Yet the inner world was where the real danger existed. I remember waking from nightmares—dark, terrifying visions that came almost every night until I was eight years old. 

My parents would sometimes leave home to visit friends on weekend evenings after putting us to bed. I remember climbing onto my rocking horse to peer out the window into our garage when I needed comfort after yet another night terror. And I remember our parents’ car being gone, and the panic that would set in. The fear of abandonment always lingered at the edges of my mind. Even when they were home, nights were thick with anxiety. I’d lie awake replaying the day, dissecting every moment to see where I could have been “better,” hoping that being good in the daylight might buy me peace in my dreams. I wet the bed almost every night until an apocalyptic dream in 1964, and then the night terrors dramatically subsided.

Violence within our home was familiar to me, as I was beat often by my father.  But violence from others was a new language I learned abruptly in third grade. A bullying incident initiated by my sister’s boyfriend left me beaten and humiliated by a younger boy. But as he pulled my hair and ears, a surge of primal energy took over. I fought back, mimicking his violence until I won. I learned then that the world was often unsafe, some boys were untrustworthy, and vulnerability could be dangerous. I retreated to the company of girls until I was in 5th grade, seeking safety in their non-violent games, unconsciously seeking the maternal protection I associated with my mother.

And oh, how I needed protection. My father’s discipline was swift and severe. The image of my mother crying hysterically as my father raised his belt against me remains a “marker memory” of my trauma. I was always guilty, always wrong. If I denied it, I was lying; if I admitted it, I was punished. There was no mercy. One Christmas, when I was 13 years old, I dismantled a broken toy gun to understand how it worked—a metaphor for my future life’s work of deconstructing the human experience—only to be whipped in front of Ann Cook, a daughter of some friends for “destroying” it. The shame I felt was a familiar companion.

Yet, I loved him. He instilled in me a deep love for play, nature, hard work, camping, and dogs, creatures that became my steadfast friends when humans failed me. My first dog Nina, killed by a car when I was 7, and later Heidi, a beautiful Samoyed, taught me the miraculous power of unconditional love. But even that love was fraught with loss.

I grew up feeling like a “sinner” who didn’t fit the mold. Sunday school stories of Jesus dying for my sins felt irrelevant and harsh. I rejected their vague promises, just as I rejected the competitive nature of school where love felt conditional on grades, and the whim of the curve that we were graded upon. I stole from my father’s wallet to buy candy, acting out in a desperate bid for attention, negative or otherwise. I became a bully at times, oppressing shy or awkward girls with ridicule, projecting my own shame onto them—a cycle of trauma I would only recognize and apologize for later in my life.

Shadows of the Past: Randy and Donelle

We moved to a new neighborhood just before I started fifth grade, and that’s when I met Randy Olson—a man who would have a huge impact on my life. He lived about three-quarters of a mile down Oatfield Road from us. Randy was an incredibly outgoing guy with a great sense of humor, though he had grown up a bit awkward, shooting up so quickly in seventh grade that he earned the nickname “Lurch.” We spent countless hours playing pickup basketball, football, and baseball in every season, and shared plenty of sleepovers and camping trips. Randy was a constant in my life, a brother in every way but blood.

Through Randy, I met Donelle.

It was 1971. Randy had a girlfriend named Terri-Lynn Barr, who had a stepsister named Donelle. One day, Randy drove Donelle down to Portland, and I had my first chance to meet her. When I first laid eyes on Donelle, I was hooked. She was gorgeous beyond description, intelligent, and sensitive. I had a sense that I had witnessed my future. But I was sixteen, without a driver’s license, and plagued by low self-esteem. I let her slip away initially, believing I couldn’t compete for her affections.

But persistence is a strange bedfellow to insecurity. Eventually, I commandeered my father’s Honda 50CC motorcycle—a bike intended for fishing trips he never took—and drove that silly little machine up I-205 to Vancouver to see her. We became sweethearts. We were both virgins, but our intimacy was shadowed by her past. Donelle had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Bud Barr. The trauma of that abuse rendered our physical relationship difficult, a harsh disappointment that mirrored the emotional disconnect we struggled to bridge.

Donelle’s life was a tragedy of toxic male energy. Her mother, Marlene, had neglected her children, leaving them vulnerable to predators like Bud. Donelle carried the weight of this abuse, and it manifested in severe mental illness. She suffered her first nervous breakdown late in her senior year, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. I watched the woman I loved crumble.

I had secured a full-ride scholarship from the US Air Force in 1973, joining the ROTC with dreams, since I was nine years old, of becoming a pilot and astronaut. My addiction and relationship to a wounded woman derailed those aspirations. Donelle Mae Flick Paullin, the most beautiful woman I had ever met, would continue to suffer from mental illness her entire life. Our life together was a rollercoaster of her breakdowns, temporary resurrections, and my co-occurring addiction. I went from being a potential astronaut to a guilt-ridden caregiver, and eventually, a broken man who walked away to save his own sanity, only to find he had none left.

We decided not to have children. I worried about Donelle’s unhealed traumatic wounding and recurring mental health struggles and my ability to be a good father while still carrying the dysfunction born from my past trauma. Both Donelle and I held onto our wounded inner child while having no idea how to heal them.

Today, we see in the public sphere—most starkly in deeply corrupt figures like Donald Trump—the devastating result of a society that refuses to mend its wounded inner children. It’s a grim display of unresolved pain projected onto the masses. Trump faces no limits as he inflicts harm on a nation and the world. Unlike him, my trauma-filled childhood ended with me; it would not be passed on to another innocent soul, let alone an entire democracy.

I gave up on my dreams, and committed to support Donelle and myself, taking a swing-shift job with the US Postal Service in 1975. It was supposed to be a temporary gig to help me get by while attending school during the day, but it turned into a decade-long grind after I dropped out of school in 1976, and again in 1983. I had enough credits for two degrees, but my low self-esteem turned those missed opportunities into a spiral of depression and self-destructive habits.

We married in September 1979. Donelle had stabilized, studying to be a Sous Chef. But the stability was a mirage. By July 1980, less than a year into our marriage, she collapsed again. The voices returned. She heard screams from the basement of the police department; she was terrorized by her own mind. She would often exclaim

“I am controlled, I am controlled”,

yet she would not be able to tell me who or what the interior jailer looked like.

I committed her to Dammasch State Hospital. The guilt was crushing. But Donelle was extremely sick.  The mental health support team had no idea how long Donelle would be held, so I filed for a legal separation, in preparation for an eventual divorce if she did not experience recovery.  She was to be released five months into her hospital stay, and we got back together early in 1981.

Our relationship was a cycle of hope and despair. In 1981, during one of her next breakdowns when I moved across the street to another apartment to save myself, my best friend Dan Dietz raped her while she was incapacitated by alcohol. When I confronted him, he claimed no memory, but I broke my hand on the door he stood in. I never saw him alive again.

The violence of the world seemed inescapable.

I finally walked away from the marriage in 1983, forcing her out of our apartment. It was an act of self-preservation that felt like betrayal.  Donelle lived on the streets of Portland for nearly a year afterward, often visiting with me to ask for money and other assistance at the main US Postal Service cafeteria at 3:00 am many mornings when I was on lunch break from my graveyard shift.

The Postal Service Purgatory

My career at the US Postal Service was a backdrop to this personal unraveling. I started as a floor clerk, then a letter sorting machine operator, a maintenance electrician and mechanic, and then an electronic technician trainee. I worked with damaged souls—Vietnam veterans like Larry, who told stories of fragging officers, and conspiracy theorists like Greg, who actually predicted a Donald Trump style presidency. I befriended Bill Y, a black Vietnam veteran, during training in Oklahoma. One night, in a segregated bar in Oklahoma City, Bill waved a gun to protect me because I was the only white guy in a club that I was not welcome in, teaching me a lesson in brotherhood and protection I had never before experienced.

Despite my intelligence and education—I had aced advanced math and science courses at the University of Portland, plus stockpiled innumerable engineering credits—I was stuck blowing dust off equipment. My attempts to finish my engineering degree were thwarted two times by my recurring addiction. I was functioning outwardly, but inwardly, I was eroding.

The Descent into Addiction

My decline wasn’t abrupt; it was a gradual slide. It started at age five with small sips of beer. By 11, I was stealing full bottles, having at least one each week. In 1971, Randy introduced me to marijuana, and by 1973, I was using both alcohol and marijuana almost every day. I kept up this pattern for the next twelve years, with only brief breaks here and there.

In 1984, after my divorce, I moved into the Panorama Towers in northwest Portland with Randy. We were party monsters, using chaos to delay dealing with our issues. It was here that I was reintroduced to Di Di (Diane) McCloud, a beautiful woman who I had admired two years before when she was a steady of another friend. We fell deeply in love.  I wrote my first poem and gave it to her. The relationship was only to last for two weeks, when she had to leave for Las Vegas to take care of family matters. 

Poem Written for Di Di, in 1984.

Though hibernating for oh so long, 

And hiding from the deep pain of winters’ chill, 

Love reawakens to sing its special song, 

So for how much longer can we be still?

With eyes that melt winters’ deepest snow.  

A tender touch that always seem to say, 

That all we will ever need to know, 

Will be learned along Love’s way.

Two minds that were brought together.

Two hearts that seek to share, 

Two bodies that need no tether, 

Two become one, though still a pair.

Heavenly nights and rapturous mornings, 

Love promises through all of our years, 

The sweet, stirring music of love sings, 

For two souls who now have the ears to hear.

True love can be the source of dreams, 

For two hearts continuing to awaken.

I pray that we are all each other seems,

And share in Love’s next journey taken

In April 1984, I checked myself into the Lovejoy Care Unit for alcoholism to save my job. There, I met Claire, a counselor who told me my father was trying to live his life through me. I sobered up, but my spiritual foundation was still rotten. I understood that my father had negatively impacted my life, but that knowledge had no healing capacity at that time.

That June, at the Postal Service training center in Norman, Oklahoma, I missed a crucial test by five points—just enough to lose out on a better position in the maintenance department. The disappointment hit me like a punch. Right then, I decided to relapse. On my way home, with a layover at the Denver airport, I found myself on the same flight as my Care Unit counselor, Claire, who was headed back to Portland. I kept out of sight, already planning my next drink while avoiding what might have been my chance at redemption.

By the summer of 1984, Randy and I moved to Beaverton.  While at a local bar I met Alcindia. She was a cute younger woman, about six years younger than me. I brought her home, and we hooked up. But my life was messy. As I was living with Randy, there was the additional complexities of the relationships he had, such as a girlfriend named Claudia. In a moment of weakness and confusion, after coming home from my graveyard shift, I jumped into bed, but his girlfriend appeared shortly afterward, naked and ready for attention. So I slept with Claudia while Randy was at work. Alcindia later found out through a voice activated recorder she had left under my bed.

Yet, we moved in together, and eventually her mentally ill mother Carol came to live with us, which really compounded the confusion in our lives.

PAIN (written in Cedar Hills Hospital, January, 1985)

Growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,

Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.

No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,

How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?

Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,

With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.

Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,

Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.

Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,

Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.

Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,

Slowly rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.

Pain,

Why?

Alcindia and I became long term lovers and drug-using friends. I knew that I was “slumming” with her, but hey, I was lonely, and needy. Her best friend Baby was usually with us, and sometimes a member from a local motorcycle gang who supplied some hard drugs like crystal methedrine to us.

I wrote a poem to capture some of my feelings around these kinds of hookups:

Oh, those ephemeral loves, I wish we had never started,

Just vacant wayside stops in life, from which I soon departed.

Standing alone, though seemingly surrounded by others,

Desiring just one, wondering who would be my next lover.

Searching for that one, to share in a new life’s dream,

Disgusted by the many, who were not quite what they seemed.

Needing attention, and wanting to share love,

That’s what all of my dreams seemed to be made of.

My life has become quite empty with only darkness looming ahead

Without an inner change of heart, quite soon I will be dead.

Running on life’s mysterious road, one final journey to start,

With no maps to follow, save those presented by my empty heart.

I realized our lifestyle was killing me. I entered Cedar Hills Hospital in January of 1985, staying three nights to sober up and get a new medication plan addressing my depression.  Dr. Beavers prescribed me some amazing anti-depressants that almost instantaneously righted my listing ship.  I was discharged and lived the best six months of my life up to that point, clean and sober, and actually believing in myself.

On a Fourth of July camping trip in Bend with Alcindia I stumbled upon a half smoked joint, and a crazy thought came into my mind.  I could use the joint to be normal, or I could continue on the medication.  Without discussion with anyone, I took a couple drags off of the marijuana joint, and severe mental illness overtook me.  I called in sick to my job and never returned to work because of the shame I felt at being such a loser.

My frustration and anger with myself for being such an idiot wore on my relationship with Alcindia, who I blamed for sabotaging my sobriety. I broke it off in a rather spectacular fashion in November 1985 and moved to Randy’s new apartment in Beaverton.

January 28, 1986, was to become the turning point in my life. I woke up on Randy’s couch to his screams:

“Bruce, wake up! The Challenger just exploded!”

Watching the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrate in a plume of white and gray smoke, I realized it was not just a national tragedy; it was the external manifestation of my internal reality. I had joined with the ROTC with the thought of fulfilling childhood dreams. My potential had been vast, but now I had no potential, with no will to live. Watching that disaster, I realized my life was also over. My dreams had disintegrated.

I was 30 years old. I had made a pact with myself at age 15: if I couldn’t shake my addiction by 30, I would end my life. The “conspiracy of silence” I participated in kept my struggles hidden, but the pain was screaming.

PAIN REVISITED (written January, 1986)

Though the dark cloud looms on the horizon, it is also hidden within me.

It hovers in the distance, just beyond my reach, as it patiently waits my most vulnerable moment.

I then feel the initial mist from its clouds; I know that I am its target.

A piercing wind picks up, hugging me with its frozen arms, and I vainly look for protection

As the torrential downpour begins, I feel my tenuous sense of peace and safety eroding beneath my feet.

As it strips back, layer, upon layer, upon layer, upon layer, of my consciousness, exposing a bedrock bereft of sanity and hope.

Exposing long forgotten mental relics, threatening old, unhealed memories, and dangerous old habits,

Stinging, piercing, hurting me at my core, obscuring visions of glorious, yet impossibly distant futures,

Washing away all tenuously held possessions of sanity, and hope.

Uprooting the feeble foundation of a life desperately, but futilely, attempting to, yet again, reconstruct itself,

Carrying a powerless, helpless, desperate soul back into toxic chemical valleys, amid a dark, swirling depression,

Ravaging,

drowning,

then decaying.

Pain,

Why?

I went to the pharmacist with prescriptions for antidepressants and Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication from Dr. Dan Beavers. I intended to swallow them all. I was standing in line when I ran into Alcindia’s sister’s friend, Mike. I tried to share the smallest part of my story, but he shut me down, stating he had no time for other people’s problems. It reaffirmed my belief in the indifference of the world and served as a reminder that I would not be missed too much when I exited this life.

The pharmacist refused to fill the prescriptions. He told me I needed to see the doctor again. Undeterred, I scheduled an emergency visit with Dr. Beavers. He sensed I was in crisis and elicited a promise that I would not kill myself—he was grieving another patient, Scott, who had done just that. I gave him my empty promise that I would do no harm to myself.

I was left with an intense desire to end it all and a proven method to accomplish my erasure, yet the universe conspired to prevent me from taking final action that day.

A revolutionary idea popped into my head:

Now I must begin a search for Truth.

But a search does not begin with answers; it begins with a descent.

While driving along Beaverton Hillsdale Highway, I spotted my friend Di Di McCloud, walking on the sidewalk. I had known her since 1981 and had lost touch with her when she had left me in 1984 to visit her family. 

We planned a trip to the beach. I picked her up that next weekend and drove her to the beach, intending to spend the weekend with her there.  She met up with others while down at a Seaside bar.  They had a lot of cocaine, which I had no interest in using, in addition to being generally repulsive people. I announced my decision to leave immediately, leaving Di Di to fend for herself, which she was more than capable of doing.

I drove home that evening, in a blackout drunk condition. I crashed my 1974 Dodge Dart near the Elderberry Inn, nearly going over a cliff. I rear-ended another car at freeway speeds in North Plains, but a $471 check written to the other driver prevented a police intervention. I limped the car to a repair shop where I then abandoned it.

I was careening out of control, a hazard to myself and everyone around me. My retirement money from the Postal Service, cashed out in desperation, then fueled my descent into the city’s dark underbelly. I connected with all manners of damaged and dangerous people, seeking a truth I couldn’t name in places it might never be found.

My search for truth, distorted by chemicals and despair, led me into the darkest corners of Portland. I called my old friend Sean Tucker, who was in the US Air Force stationed in Spain, telling him I had a fatal brain tumor—a lie to cover the truth of my suicidal intent. Sean offered his home for me to live in for a while, so I secured a passport, but the cost to relocate was too high for my limited budget, and the lure of the underworld kept me local.

I purchased a used Datsun 310 car for $1000 cash at a local dealership.  I filed for bankruptcy in March of 1986. It became official, coincidentally, on my 31st birthday, November 20, 1986. I was severing financial ties just as I planned to sever my mortal ones.

Randy found another girlfriend, and could no longer house me, so my 1977 Datsun 310 became my home by March of 1986.  It was my sanctuary, my bedroom, and my prison. I occasionally squatted in unoccupied homes, distanced myself from my family, and let the current of addiction pull me into its desperate undercurrents.

The Underworld and The Search for Truth

My search for truth led me into Portland’s underworld. Despite my circumstances, I clung to the spiritual principles of AA, even while avoiding abstinence. I realized I needed to avoid sex and new relationships, and eventually, to quit smoking pot as it dulled the intellect I needed for survival. I committed to befriending those I once judged against—society’s undesirables. I was a dead man walking, a fellow traveler in darkness.

Vignettes of the Damned

Ralph:

I frequented the Punjab, a tavern on Foster Road. There, I met Ralph, a man from Scappoose who was to be a central figure in the local underworld. Through him, I was introduced to a cast of characters that seemed pulled from a noir nightmare: drug chemists, undercover officers, hitmen, homeless people, and prostitutes.

I was an anomaly in their world—I was too healthy, too educated. I was once nearly beaten for using the word “magnanimous.” A patron told me to use a nickel word whenever I was tempted to use a quarter word. My vocabulary was a liability here. I eventually descended to levels that were acceptable to others, and,  it was not a good look for me.

I grew to love Ralph, who became my friend and protector.  I became his primary driver for many of his “exchanges”.  Once, I had all four tires of my car slashed while parked overnight for a party with Ralph and his minions. Ralph put the word out on the streets that this was unacceptable behavior, and whoever did the deed would answer to him personally, and to lay off my car. I felt strangely safe, and protected, while with Ralph, even though there were continued threats against my safety and well-being.

While jacking up my car for tire replacements, I had to use my AA book to help with extra elevation, which attracted some strange looks from those who already thought that I was a stranger in this strange land. Hey, I had finally found a constructive use for the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I actually felt a little pleased with myself. Ralph told me to “ditch that evil book”, and I kept it hidden from all sight from that point on, though to this day, I still own that very same book.

Sarah and Jake:

Sarah was Ralph’s long-term girlfriend.  They had an open relationship, and Ralph said that it was OK to be with her any way that felt OK.  She became a woman I shared many adventures with, though I kept our connection strictly platonic to avoid emotional entanglement. We often visited friends in jail together, and it was on a trip to see our friend Jake that my reality fractured. After snorting designer meth, Sarah casually revealed that the “kind” man we were visiting was actually a hitman for a motorcycle gang.

The cognitive dissonance of this revelation, combined with the drugs, caused me to have a stroke-like episode where I lost the ability to speak. Meeting Jake at the jail, I could only produce animalistic grunts and squawks. It was a terrifying manifestation of the “conspiracy of silence” that ruled our lives—my voice literally stolen by the horror and the chemicals I had consumed.

Steve:

Steve was the big brother I never had, a well-dressed man of mystery who navigated the treacherous landscape of the underworld with an intelligence that matched my own. He often played the role of mentor, criticizing the rate of my drug abuse while often using with me, though he used much less and always seemed to maintain a composure I lacked. He constantly “tested” my resolve by exposing me to desperate situations and broken people, perhaps to see if I would crumble or find the “truth” he urged me to search for.

Through Steve, I was introduced to the darker corners of the city, including the tragic circumstances of runaways like Georgette. He was a guide who didn’t pull me out of the mud but chose to walk into it with me. It was a complex friendship built on shared vices and intellectual sparring, even as he watched me deteriorate into a paranoid, emaciated shadow of myself.  

I was to learn later, much later, that Steve was part of an undercover operation investigating reported corruption within the Portland Police Department, specifically cocaine distribution by an unnamed officer, and several potential accomplices to Steven Kessler, a notorious criminal who had killed a prison guard in 1982, escaped, and broke into the DEA Portland office to steal documents about past and present investigations, among other criminal actions while on the loose.

In a potentially damning connection, I was roommates with Tom Craven at the Care Unit in 1984. Tom was a co-conspirator with Steven in the 1966 Oregon State Prison riots. I also grew up with Wayne Harsh, a neighbor of mine until 1973 and a former Clackamas County Police man who supplied the getaway car to Steven Kessler after he escape from prison after the death of the guard.

Hal:

Hal was a lanky, chain-smoking intellectual who served as my alternate driver when Ralph wasn’t around. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in forestry and possessing a strong work ethic, he had been reduced by mental instability to peddling speed at local strip bars to survive. We spent hours fueled by stimulants, dissecting religion and philosophy; he carried a deep-seated Catholic guilt, often claiming that heaven and hell were not afterlives, but states of existence right here on earth.

He possessed a tragic cynicism, believing that the damage in the world mirrored the damage in his own mind. While I felt oppressed by life, Hal felt oppressed by God and the Church, arguing that he had to sort through layers of hell just to find a piece of heaven. Our conversations never ended on a hopeful note, a fact cemented when he was eventually arrested for drug distribution after being betrayed by an acquaintance, becoming yet another casualty of the game, we were playing.

Barbara:

Barbara was an emotionally unavailable whirlwind who entered my life in the late summer, interested only in a running mate who had no expectations of her. She was petite, outgoing, and treated me like an accessory for her escapades, discarding me whenever the night ended or her mood shifted. Despite her demeaning nature, I felt a strange, fleeting safety with her, perhaps because her loneliness and nihilism matched my own so perfectly.

Our relationship peaked on Halloween, when we roamed downtown Portland costumed as a pimp and his prostitutes. For a few hours, the leather and velvet disguise covered my emaciated frame, earning me the only compliment on my appearance I’d received in years. But true to form, she abandoned me at 2:30 AM, leaving me to realize that we were just two damaged souls crashing into each other in the dark.

Robert:

One challenging night at the Punjab, Robert slid next to me. He was a convicted armed robber who had killed a man in 1975. He was looking for old friends. I bought him a drink and we got on really well for about 20 minutes. When his connection arrived, they went to the bathroom. Robert returned, eyes dull, and he slumped off his chair.

He overdosed on heroin right there in the tavern, though it was not fatal. When I asked the bartender if we should help, I was told,

“Robert is waiting for a better day. Until it arrives, he is right where he wants to be.”

He had me move Robert into a booth where he would be less conspicuous. It was a chilling lesson in the apathy of the underworld—Robert had sought oblivion to get over the hump of a bad stretch of days, and the heroin had simply granted his wish.

Dorothy:

Dorothy was a young mother and heroin user who lived in terror of her incarcerated ex-lover, Jakob, believing he could astrally project from his cell to control her. During a visit to her home, I watched her scrape resin from spoons, desperate for a fix, while she delivered a flat, cynical sermon on human nature. She told me that “good people” didn’t exist—only messed-up people who occasionally made helpful choices for selfish reasons.

Her worldview was bleak, mirroring the darkness I felt closing in on me. She offered to share her incoming supply of heroin with me, a temptation to finally numb the pain completely. Disturbed by the palpable darkness in her home and not yet ready to surrender to that final oblivion, I fled, leaving her to her ghosts and her needle. I never saw Dorothy again.

Georgette:

Then there was Georgette, who Steve first introduced me to. She was a 15-year-old runaway being groomed by thieves and a handler named Greg. Seeing her innocence broke my heart. I used some of my retirement money to whisk her away, driving her to Outside In for help. I stuffed cash in her pocket and told her never to return to Greg. In protecting her, I was unconsciously learning how to save the child within myself.

Paranoia followed this act of grace. A tape recording of my private conversation with Georgette appeared at the Punjab tavern. I had never been more fearful in my life.  Some of the things I said about two people were very unflattering. And those two people were familiar with the arts of intimidation and violence.

The underworld was watching.

Greg:

Greg was a young man who had been on the streets for years, acting as a handler for runaways and a fence for stolen goods. He was intrigued by my vocabulary and my disinterest in women, mistaking my celibacy for a shared kinship. He attempted to recruit me as a partner, bringing me to a safe house on Duke Avenue to show off his operation—a basement stockpiled with stolen weaponry and appliances, and a hidden meth lab.

He couldn’t understand my cryptic talk of death or my refusal to join his enterprise. Standing in that basement, surrounded by the machinery of crime, I declined his offer of partnership and his offer of a joint, needing to keep my head clear for my own descent. He eventually lost interest in me, and as time passed, I watched him physically deteriorate, a mirror reflecting my own disease back at me. 

Martha:

Martha was the matron of the safe house on Duke Avenue, a woman of unkempt appearance who presided over a basement that looked like a department store of stolen dreams. She managed the logistics of Greg’s operation, hoarding everything from chainsaws to automatic weapons while overseeing a chemist named Dieter who cooked meth behind a closed door. She seemed almost reverential about the lab, eager to show off the beakers and chemical progress.

She offered me a joint to celebrate our “good fortune,” which I declined in favor of a line of crystal to keep my edge. I stayed in her orbit for a sleepless week of manic conversation and chemical fumes before moving on. I never saw her again, but she remained in my memory as a strange, domestic figure in a house built entirely on theft and addiction.

The Wild Card

I continued an incredible downward spiral into addiction, and Steve commented to me, in November, how I looked like I could be the “Aids Poster Boy” because I had become so slight of figure, and so unhealthy looking. I had started “hearing voices”, and paranoia plagued me. Yet, I did not let on to others that I had become so disfigured internally, though the signs had appeared. I “heard” that there was a major undercover operation active in Portland, and that dozens of criminal indictments were immanent. In reality, that was partially the truth, yet I should not have known that, let alone warn a few others of those “facts”.

Steve wanted to know how I knew of these indictments, and I would not tell him. I noted that people were tailing me almost all of the time and I had been overtly warned through my Georgette experience that some of my conversations were being recorded in my car. One day I tore my car apart, searching for the transmitter, or the recorder. I had two different people stop by, and try to interrupt me from the search, which only added to my own paranoia. I did not locate the transmitter, but I really began to fuck with any listeners’ mind, by talking dark shit, and renaming myself “the Wild Card”. I let my world know, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer aligned with anyone, and I was on my way to death.

The Rescue

By March 2, 1987, at a massive party organized by a dealer named Frank, I was ready for my final assignment. I agreed to try a “witches brew” of speed and heroin.

Why not?

I had nothing to lose.

As I followed Frank upstairs to begin a new addiction cycle—and perhaps to die—I spotted Steve. He was talking to a woman who used his real name, and it wasn’t Steve. The masquerade was over.

Steve pulled me aside. I told him that his secret was safe with me, that I had known all along that he was an undercover agent.  Even in my mental illness and paranoia, I had known.  Steve then stated:

“Bruce, I can no longer keep you protected. It is time to make a decision for yourself.”

I told him I was going upstairs to finish it. To die, perhaps today, perhaps next week. But Steve didn’t let me go.

Steve stated:

“Your search for truth has ended within my world. Now your real search for truth must begin. Your father is the starting point for what must come next. You deserve so much better of a life than you have given to yourself.”

He acted.

He grabbed my arm and led me outdoors.

He drove me to my father’s house—the house of the man who had traumatized me, but whose love I still sought.

He dropped me off.

Later, he returned my car.

The suicide pills were gone from under the seat.

Steve was my Harry deLeyer. He saw the champion in the plow horse. He unhitched me from the wagon of death just as the ramp to the slaughterhouse was lowering.

The Awakening

My parents were in Arizona until the end of March, so I broke in. 

I was in such bad shape, I was shaking, my skin was broke out all over my body, I was hallucinating, and I heard voices appearing to be the thoughts of others, so I was in no condition to seek out help again from my psychiatrist.  He would have committed me to a hospital,, for sure.

I invited Randy over, and we drank until around 10:00 PM, then he left. Shortly after, I blacked out.

In that blackout, I grabbed my father’s rifle and drove to a drug chemist’s home in Milwaukie. I accidentally shot a hole in his front door. The chemist, Brock, unperturbed, injected me with speed to sober me up. We talked for hours. He injected me again.

And then, something unexpected happened. Clarity struck. I saw the insanity. I looked at Brock and yelled, “We are nuts!” I walked out of his home with five dollars to my name and a choice: buy beer/gas to die, or gas to get to family.

I chose family.

My grandparents—the safe harbor of my childhood—nursed me through five days of detox.

A week later, my childhood friend Craig Salter invited me to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and I decided to go. My first official day of sobriety began March 21, 1987.  Since God played a big role in AA and I was searching for truth, I thought there might be a connection. I revisited the Twelve Steps of AA and ended up attending 270 meetings in 90 days. With no job at the time, recovery became a compelling new focus for me.

The Revised Twelve Steps

Practicing the Twelve Steps is about knowing oneself.  Living the Twelve Steps is  the realization that we are spiritual beings hypnotized by our human experience..  What might a man performing a self-examination through internal probing discover about his self?

To uncover the treasure, we first have to dig through the dirt, and believe me, it can be a toxic waste site., This requires patience, time, experience, and humility, but eventually insight is developed whereby we, as men, can see the forces of corruption within our own heart and soul, and through the seeing, we also facilitate the healing, as well.

In the rooms of AA, and through the teachings of Jack Boland, I began to rewrite the script of my life. I realized that my “Search for Truth” had to evolve into a “Scholarship of the Spirit.”

Based on my journey through the abyss, I revised the Twelve Steps to reflect my spiritual understanding.

12 Steps Revised To Reflect My Spiritual Experience

1. Through our own extended suffering, we finally found the desire to want it to end. We admitted that when we become self-destructively habituated to any substance, situation, or perception, or judgement and/or lack of forgiveness in our relationships with others, we lose our freedom of choice, bring unnecessary trauma into our lives, and into the lives of others, and, thus, fail to achieve any lasting sense of inner peace and joy. We finally realize that our lives have been lived unconsciously, and have become unmanageable as a result of that neglect.

2. With our new found hope and openness for change, came the desire to begin to awaken to higher possibilities for our lives. We realized that, in our essence, we have an interior, though neglected, power that will heal us and restore us to balance, if we pursue it in earnest. We now realize that we have not been living up to our full potential as human beings.

3. We made a decision to turn our will, and our lives, over to the care of our higher interior power. We become open to the possibility of embracing a new Truth for our lives. We want to access the power to continuously evolve, and we want to cultivate our heart to be more loving to ourselves and to others. We decide to let go of ANYTHING that impedes our progress towards happiness, healing and wholeness. We realize that without the deepest of desires, and intentions, to change our behavior, we will not be transformed.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We have lived a life without a high sense of self-esteem, and we have made unfortunate choices because of the scarcity consciousness that has resulted from it. We realize that when we find the blocks to our evolution, and become willing to remove them, our new found insight will guide our paths with precision to the Truth of our existence. This is our entrance onto the path of mindfulness and higher consciousness.

5. We admitted that we were not being truthful with ourselves and with others, and by talking with another who we may trust, yet not be beholden to, about our errors in judgement and in actions towards our self and others, we can better deal with the shame and self-judgement that so often arises from the deadly secrets that we once felt that we must keep. Just by honestly talking with someone else, our burdens can be lifted. Our secrets need no longer keep us imprisoned, and mentally ill. When two or more people come together in the spirit of truth and honesty, mutual compassion and empathy also become part of the gathering.

6. We became entirely willing to let go of our attachments to unhealthy attitudes, behavior, and people. We wish to see clearly, without the limitations of our past, of our family history, and of our cultural conditioning, with all of their embedded trauma.

7. We open our hearts through humility and the willingness to change to embrace a new possibility for our life. Our new found sense of connection with our higher interior power inspires us to become more grateful for the gifts that we now have, and we are now spiritually preparing to finally give back to the world in a meaningful, positive way. We want to finally let go of all of the emotional charged memories which keep us trapped in a dead past. Rejoice, for the old demons are being transformed into the new angels!

8. While we were unconscious to our higher potential as human beings, we brought emotional, spiritual and perhaps even physical harm to other innocent beings, and we want to try bring healing and peace to those who have suffered from the effects of our ignorance. We realize that through the mirror of all of our relationships, dysfunctional or otherwise, we are granted a view into how we truly see ourselves. We want to see through the eyes of Truth, and not through the pain and suffering that unfulfilled relationships may have brought to us.

9. We made direct amends wherever possible to all people we may have brought harm to, except when to do so would bring further injury to them or to others. Our guilt will not be assuaged at the expense of others. We make full application of our new found wisdom, and our renewed desire to bring no harm to any sentient being. We want our world, and our own personal sense of self, to feel safe from further attacks from us, and our honest disclosure of our mistakes to those impacted by our errors in judgement will continue to support that intention.

10. We continued to take personal inventory, and, when wrong, promptly admit it. We have become honest with ourselves. We practice mindfulness, and continue to develop our capacity for insight into ourselves. We now know ourselves, and we now know many of the potential impediments to experiencing and expressing the Truth of our being. We no longer solely abide in old modes of thought, and now we are more focused on the beauty of the present moment.

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Truth of our being, praying only for knowledge of Truth, and the willingness to live within its infinite domain. We now understand that this whole process of recovery is a meditation on life, and that the evolving, healing life that we are now experiencing is our living prayer. Each time we drink from the deep interior waters revealed to us by meditation, more of our painful dreams are dissolved. We finally realize that the capacity to change, to evolve, to grow in our infinite spirit is the whole point of our human existence. We are now traveling upon new paths of consciousness.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we attempted to carry our message of recovery to our world, while continuing to practice these principles in all our affairs. We have finally become whole, and are now conscious, caring human beings. We have accepted full personal responsibility for our lives, including healing our past, and keeping our present balanced and harmonious, and we no longer blame others for who we are now. We are now experiencing prosperity on many levels, and have witnessed the healing of ourselves. We have saved the world—from ourselves. Our life is now our truest teacher. We realize that we have no power to bring salvation to others, yet, it is our responsibility to point to the way of healing for others who may still be suffering, and who may finally become interested in overcoming their own limitations.

The Plow Horse Soars

Harry deLeyer took Snowman, the eighty-dollar plow horse, and washed him, fed him, and loved him. Two years later, Snowman won the Triple Crown of show jumping. He cleared obstacles no one thought possible. He became a legend not because of his pedigree, but because someone saw the truth inside him when he couldn’t see it himself.

Steve saw the truth in me when I was blind with darkness. He removed the suicide pills. He steered me away from the final overdose. He returned me to the place where I could begin to heal. The search for truth didn’t end in the underworld; and it continued in earnest when I walked out of it.

Sandman, the plow horse was never just a plow horse. He was a creature of flight, waiting for the weight to be lifted so he could finally soar.  And I was like Sandman, soaring into a fantastic future I could never have anticipated.

Steve called me one year later to check on me.  I thanked him profusely.  I felt love and appreciation for him. I was awakening to a new, wonderful life.  I can’t help but think that Steve, through his connections, helped secure an apprenticeship for me with the IBEW Local 48 electrician’s union.

To truly transcend the abyss, I had to become more than the passive recipient of rescue. I had to become my own Harry deLeyer. I needed to look past the accumulated grime of my own history, gaze into the mirror of my soul, and recognize the champion hidden beneath the scars. I had to finally see myself as worthy of investing love and life force, transforming from a broken plow horse into a being capable of its own salvation.  I had a story to tell.

My whole life I had believed that I had nothing to say, and that became an essential part of my life story.  In March of 2017 I begged and beseeched my wife, Sharon, to please tell my story for me, as she had already written a great book, and had that capacity.  She compassionately, and authoritatively, reminded me that my story was my own to develop, and to tell, and it will die with me, unless I find the courage, and the willingness to share it. 

I started revisiting my childhood experiences and piecing together the story of my life. I studied some of the family writings and started recalling family stories about the grandparents on my father’s side I never really knew.  And while I was writing and thinking and making sense of it, I was struck with a profound realization. I saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father.

I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents. This can be particularly difficult for men. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in poor collaborative intentions, and dominating, or being dominated, by others while engaging in passive/aggressive coping strategies. Philosophies of oppression and the monetization of reality often emerge from deep wounds. Women, children, and those with gentle or non-confrontational natures are frequently victimized.

We often downplay our inner stories, doubting there’s anything worth telling, or hiding them out of shame. But the truth is, our stories deserve to be told. Make peace with your story, develop your own timeline, develop your own personal story, and be the hero of your own journey. Do whatever it takes. Find and cherish your story no matter how difficult it is initially because as you heal and grow, that story starts to take on significance until it becomes part of the grand story.  It should no longer be “his story”, or “her story”, but instead, the unitive “our story”.

When I recently rewrote this section on my search for truth, a period of time following my 1986 suicide attempt, I was to reenter the consciousness, and the emotional experience, of those most troubling times.  I did not expect or anticipate this, and I reexperienced many of the dark emotions that characterized this most turbulent and disordered time in my life.  I finished the work, and felt sad, and disconnected.  I took my Miata for a long drive, which typically lifts my spirits, no matter what may be going on in my life. 

This time, however, it did not work.  I drove for 65 minutes away from home, and I found no relief.  When I began to slow down, to turn around and come home, a dove flew over my car and seemed to lead me for over twenty seconds to a place to park, and to turn around.  I then remembered what the dove symbolized in my mind, the reassurance that my guiding spirit HAD NOT ABANDONED ME and was continuing to lead me to my own promised land.  Suddenly, a torrent of tears erupted from me, and a huge release of energy overwhelmed my being.  I then felt an amazing forgiveness, love, and compassion for the past version of myself, a form of self-forgiveness that I had never experience before.

Can there be a greater gift to give oneself in this life?

Are you tired of your own suffering, or the needless suffering of others?

Are you tired of being the silent stick figure in the dreams of others who would control and manipulate you like a mindless puppet, and turn you into unholy versions of yourself?

Are you tired of your past wounds controlling your perceptions, and guiding you onto diseased and despairing paths of unconsciousness?

What is your story?

Where is your story hidden?

The world needs to hear it.

Let the healing begin in earnest.

Start looking for the authentic you.

This is the real, eternal search for Truth.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Welcome to your entry onto the Universe’s unlimited bandwidth of life, love, and death.

We have been waiting for you.

note 1: I received a call from Di Di in 1988, and she requested a copy of a poem I had written for her in 1984.  I delivered it to her.  We hugged and cried together.  Di Di died later that year in a drunken driving car accident in Lake Oswego, where she was the unfortunate passenger.

Note 2:  Randy died June 3, 2013 at the age of 58.  We attended his funeral.

Note 3:  Donelle Mae Flick Paullin died on my birthday, November 20, 2022.

Note 4:  I saw Barbara at a restaurant when she was our waitress in 1990.  I was eating with my present wife Sharon and Sharon’s daughter Hayley.  Barbara recognized me and apologized profusely for the way she treated me in 1986.  I accepted her apologies and wished her well for her new clean and sober life.

Note 5:  Steven Kessler died in prison recently, shortly after seeking to be released on probation.  He was regarded by the Feds as the most dangerous criminal Oregon had ever produced.

Note 6:  I had several long stretches of sobriety since 1987, some as long as nineteen years.  I relapsed late in 2006, when I broke my leg training for a road race, and became addicted to pain pills. I now practice a program of conscious sobriety, where I can have an alcohol-based drink.  This mindfulness-based behavior is often referred to as rational recovery, but is frowned upon in AA circles, where complete abstinence is strongly advised.