The search for truth becomes the joy of living when one sees their position on the collective grid of life, and stops being just another of its marionettes.
The Search for Truth: A Descent into the Underworld
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 1950s.
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 Labyrinth of Unseen Wounds
My Grandparents’ world famous nephew, and my cousin, Johnny Ray
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 1930s, and I have admired, mostly from afar, the equine species for much of my life, though I spent several years in the 1970s and 1980s 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.
Our grandparents’ front porch, me on the right
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.
1945 Navy Photographs of my Father.
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’s 1947 Roosevelt graduation photograph
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.
Sept 17, 1979
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 and the Descent
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.
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.
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!
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.
1985 Bruce, Alcindia standing, Baby sitting
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 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.
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?
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.
The Challenger Moment
Challenger Explosion January 28, 1986-The day I attempted suicide, and began my Search For Truth
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.
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.
The Descent into the Underworld
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.
Death takes a photograph of itself
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.
A relatively recent photograph of Sean and I in 2012, near his home in Colorado
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.
1977 Datsun 310 motor home and chariot of the godless in 1986-1987
Vignettes of the Damned
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.
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.
Robert
One night at the Punjab Tavern, I met Robert, a man recently released from prison for a 1975 robbery where he had killed a man. We talked amicably until his contact arrived. Robert went to the restroom and returned moments later, eyes dull. He slumped forward, falling off his chair.
“Bartender, should we call an ambulance?” I asked, panicked.
Jack, the owner, shook his head. “No, Bruce. Some people are just waiting for a better day. Today is not that day for Robert. He is right where he wants to be.”
The heroin had shut him down. It was a chilling lesson in the utility of oblivion.
Dorothy
Dorothy was a young mother and heroin user living in fear of her incarcerated boyfriend, Jakob. She believed Jakob could astrally project from prison to torment her. While she scraped resin from spoons for a fix, she lectured me on the non-existence of “good people.”
“There is only darkness, Bruce,” she said. “Good people do not really exist, just fucked-up people who occasionally make helpful choices for themselves.”
She offered me heroin. I declined, fleeing the tangible darkness of her home. I never saw her again.
Georgette
Steve, my mysterious friend, introduced me to Georgette, a 15-year-old runaway being groomed by a handler named Greg. Seeing her innocence broke my heart. In a rare act of agency, I used my remaining money to whisk her away to a youth shelter, giving her cash and telling her never to return to the streets.
Days later, a cassette tape recording of my private conversation with Georgette appeared at the tavern. The underworld was watching. Paranoia seized me. I realized my “wild card” status was dangerous.
Greg and Martha
Greg, Georgette’s handler, tried to recruit me. He was intrigued by my vocabulary and disinterest in women. He took me to a safe house on Duke Avenue, presided over by a woman named Martha. The basement was a department store of stolen goods—chainsaws, guns, appliances—and housed a meth lab behind a closed door.
Martha offered me a joint to celebrate. I declined, opting for crystal to keep my edge. I stayed for a week of sleepless insanity before moving on. The house was a monument to theft and addiction, yet Martha tended it with a strange, domestic pride.
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.
The Wild Card and the Final Descent
By November, Steve commented that I looked like an “AIDS Poster Boy.” I had lost seventy pounds, weighing a mere 136 pounds. My face was broken out; I heard voices; I was paranoid. I tore my car apart looking for transmitters. I renamed myself “The Wild Card,” letting the streets know I was aligned with no one and headed for death.
I began shooting drugs intravenously, introduced to the needle by a man named Doctor Dave. The rush was incredible, a hastened path to the end.
In early March 1987, a dealer named Frank organized a massive party. I was ready for my swan song. Frank was mixing a “witches brew” of speed and heroin. I agreed to join him upstairs to partake. I had nothing to lose.
As I headed up, I spotted Steve. He was talking to a woman who called him by his real name. It wasn’t Steve.
The masquerade was over. I confronted him, telling him I knew he was undercover. I told him I was going upstairs to finish myself off, and if I survived, I would take the pills under my car seat.
Steve grabbed my arm. “Bruce,” he said, “I can no longer keep you protected. Your search for truth has ended within my world. Now your real search for truth must begin, and a great place to start would be with your father. You deserve a better life.”
He walked me out of the party. He drove me to my father’s house. Later, he returned my car. The suicide pills were gone.
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.
When Steve dropped me off at my father’s empty house in March of 1987, I was a shell. I was physically shattered, my skin erupted in sores, my body shaking with the tremors of withdrawal and malnutrition. My mind was a cacophony of hallucinations and voices that sounded like the thoughts of others intruding upon my own consciousness. I was in no condition to seek professional help; the psychiatrist would have committed me instantly; a fate I feared more than death.
My parents were still “snow birding” in Arizona, leaving the house a silent, hollow sanctuary. But silence, for an addict, is not peaceful; it is loud. To drown it out, I invited Randy Olson over. We drank until the late hours, consuming my father’s liquor with the desperation of men trying to extinguish a fire with gasoline. Randy left around 10:00 PM, and I slipped into the black void of unconsciousness.
It was in that blackout—a state of existence where the soul disconnects from the controls—that I grabbed my father’s rifle. Driven by some autopilot of self-destruction, I drove drunk to the home of Brock, a drug chemist in Milwaukie. I have no memory of the drive, no memory of the intent. I awoke only when the gun in my lap discharged, blasting a hole through his front door.
Fate, it seems, has a morbid sense of humor. Inside that apartment were sleeping children and a wife. The bullet struck nothing but wood and silence. Brock, unperturbed by the violence that was commonplace in our world, did not call the police. Instead, he pulled out a hypodermic needle and injected me with speed to sober me up.
We talked for twenty-four hours. He injected me again. And then, in the haze of stimulants and exhaustion, a sudden, piercing clarity struck me. It was not a gentle dawn; it was a lightning strike. I looked at Brock, surrounded by the paraphernalia of our mutual demise, and I yelled, “We are nuts!”
I saw the utter insanity of it all. The loop, the cage, the self-imposed prison. I stood up, walked out of his front door, and sat in my car. I had exactly five dollars to my name. It was a binary choice, a final crossroads: I could buy beer and cigarettes to fuel the death spiral, or I could buy gasoline to get to family.
I bought the gas.
My grandparents are the center two people
I drove to my grandparents’ house in North Portland. They were the safe harbor of my childhood, the lighthouse in the storm. They took me in, despite my horrific appearance, masking their fear with love. My grandmother nursed me through five days of hellish detox—withdrawals from alcohol, cigarettes, and methamphetamines all at once. I claimed it was the flu, but I suspect they knew. They fed me, they watched over me, and for the first time in years, I was safe.
The Turn
A week later, the phone rang. It was Craig Salter, a childhood friend I hadn’t spoken to in three years—the very friend I had led into drunkenness in high school. He had been court-ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous for a DUI. He asked if I wanted to go.
I said yes.
My first official day of sobriety was March 21, 1987. I walked into the rooms of AA not because I was sold on the program, but because I was still on my “Search for Truth.” I reasoned that since God played a central role in AA, and I was hunting for the ultimate reality, there might be a connection worth investigating.
I attended 270 meetings in 90 days. I had no job, no money, and no life left to ruin. Recovery became my new obsession. I threw myself into the literature, initially falling into the trap of religious dogma at a local Baptist church, thinking Truth was hidden in pews and baptismals. But I soon realized that spiritual freedom has never been about religion, guns, or money. It is an internal alchemy.
Then, I discovered the teachings of Jack Boland. A co-worker at the Fred Meyer warehouse handed me a set of his tapes on recovery and spirituality. I listened to them obsessively over Memorial Day weekend in 1987. Boland spoke of the Twelve Steps not as a rigid set of rules for behavior modification, but as a spiritual technology—a method for deconstructing the ego and accessing a higher state of consciousness.
Something miraculous happened. The obsession to destroy myself lifted. My “Search for Truth,” which had dragged me through the sewers of the Portland underworld, began to evolve into a “Scholarship of the Spirit.” I realized that to uncover the treasure of the self, one must first dig through the dirt. And believe me, my internal landscape was a toxic waste site.
The Revised Twelve Steps: A Personal Manifesto
As I deepened my understanding, I found that the traditional language of the Twelve Steps, while powerful, needed to be reframed to match my specific journey through the abyss. I needed to internalize them, to strip away the archaic and reveal the metaphysical.
Here is how I rewrote the script of my life, translating the steps into the language of my own spiritual experience:
Step 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, perception, or lack of forgiveness, we lose our freedom of choice. We realized that our lives had been lived unconsciously and had become unmanageable as a result of that neglect.
Step 2: With our newfound hope came the desire to awaken to higher possibilities. 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 admitted we had not been living up to our full potential as human beings.
Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our higher interior power. We became open to embracing a new Truth. We decided to let go of anything that impedes our progress toward happiness, healing, and wholeness. We realized that without the deepest of desires and intentions to change, we would not be transformed.
Step 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We acknowledged we had lived without high self-esteem and made unfortunate choices based on scarcity consciousness. We realized that finding the blocks to our evolution is the entrance onto the path of mindfulness.
Step 5: We admitted that we were not being truthful. By talking with another human being about our errors in judgment, we lifted the burden of shame. We realized that secrets need no longer keep us imprisoned and mentally ill.
Step 6: We became entirely willing to let go of our attachments to unhealthy attitudes, behavior, and people. We wished to see clearly, without the limitations of our past, our family history, or our cultural conditioning.
Step 7: We opened our hearts through humility. We prepared to give back to the world in a meaningful way. We rejoiced, for the old demons were being transformed into new angels.
Step 8: We acknowledged the harm we brought to innocent beings while we were unconscious. We realized that through the mirror of our relationships, we are granted a view into how we truly see ourselves. We wanted to see through the eyes of Truth, not through the lens of pain.
Step 9: We made direct amends, ensuring our guilt was not assuaged at the expense of others. We applied our newfound wisdom to bring no harm to any sentient being.
Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory. We practiced mindfulness, refusing to abide solely in old modes of thought, focusing instead on the beauty of the present moment.
Step 11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Truth of our being. We understood that recovery is a meditation on life, and our evolving life is our living prayer.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening, we accepted full personal responsibility for our lives. We realized we have no power to bring salvation to others, yet it is our responsibility to point the way for those who may still be suffering. We have saved the world—from ourselves.
The Mirror of the Father
The intellect can revise steps, but the heart must do the heavy lifting. The prison guard holding one of the primary keys to my spiritual release was my unhealed relationship with my father.
My father was a man of immense intellectual curiosity, a student of theology and metaphysics, yet he was also the source of my earliest terrors. He was the man who beat me, who abandoned his own pursuit of truth for the grind of survival, who projected his shadows onto me.
But as I cleaned the lens of my perception through sobriety, I began to see him differently. I started revisiting family stories, digging into the history of my grandparents, Grandma Elsie and Grandpa Beryl. I learned that my father had threatened to kill Grandpa Beryl if he ever hit Grandma Elsie again upon returning from WWII. I learned that Grandpa Beryl was a violent, demeaning man when drunk.
I saw the lineage of pain. I saw the “wounding process” that I shared with my father. He was not just the monster of my childhood; he was a broken child of broken parents, passing down the only coping strategies he knew—dominance, control, and suppression.
I felt an incredible, washing wave of compassion, love, and acceptance for him. This is the hardest work for men. We typically inflict our wounding on everyone else, acting out passive-aggressive strategies or seeking dominance to quiet our own internal fear. But in seeing my father’s wounds, I healed my own. I picked up the mantle he had dropped—the philosophical inquiry into the human condition—and I finished the job he started. I moved from “his story” and “my story” to the unitive “our story.”
The Fate of the Lost
As I ascended, I looked back at the underworld I had inhabited. The search for truth takes many paths, and not all lead out of the maze.
Randy, my brother in chaos, died on June 3, 2013, at the age of 58. Sobriety was not for him. We attended his funeral, closing a chapter of brotherhood defined by mutual love and a shared dysfunction.
Donelle, my first love, the beautiful, tragic woman crushed by the weight of toxic masculinity and mental illness, struggled her entire life. She passed away on my birthday, November 20, 2022.
Di Di McCloud, who I had loved and left in Seaside, called me in 1988. I gave her a copy of the poem I had written for her. We hugged and cried. She died later that year in a drunk driving accident.
Barbara, the emotionally unavailable whirlwind who treated me like an accessory, served me dinner as our table’s waitress at a restaurant in 1990. She apologized profusely for how she had treated me. I accepted, wishing her well in her new sobriety.
Steven Kessler, the notorious criminal whose shadow touched the edges of my life, died in prison in 2019.
And Steve… my Harry deLeyer. He called me a year after the rescue to check on me. When I told him I was clean, that I was alive, that I was awakening, I wept with gratitude. He was the best friend I never knew I had. I suspect he helped secure my apprenticeship with the IBEW Local 48 electrician’s union, quietly guiding me toward stability from the shadows.
The Plow Horse Soars
Harry deLeyer took Snowman, the eighty-dollar plow horse bound for the glue factory, 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 pills. He steered me away from the overdose. He unhitched me from the wagon of death just as the ramp was lowering.
But 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 history, gaze into the mirror of my soul, and recognize the champion hidden beneath the scars. I had to invest my life force into transforming from a broken animal into a being capable of its own salvation.
I had a story to tell.
For most of my life, I believed I had nothing to say. Silence was my safety. But my wife, Sharon, reminded me that my story was mine to develop, and it would die with me unless I found the courage to share it.
Recently, while rewriting the section on my search for truth—that dark period following the 1986 suicide attempt—I re-entered the emotional experience of those times. I did not anticipate the weight of it. I felt the old despair, the disconnection. I finished the work feeling sad and hollow.
I took my Miata for a long drive, a ritual that usually lifts my spirits. I drove for an hour, finding no relief. As I slowed down to turn around and head home, a dove flew over my car. It seemed to lead me, hovering ahead for twenty seconds, guiding me to a place to park.
I remembered what the dove symbolized to me: the reassurance that my guiding spirit had not abandoned me. That I was still being led to my own promised land.
Suddenly, a torrent of tears erupted. A massive release of energy overwhelmed me. In that roadside silence, I felt an amazing forgiveness—love and compassion for the past version of myself, for the broken man in the Datsun 310, for the boy in the garage. It was a form of self-forgiveness I had never experienced before.
Can there be a greater gift to give oneself in this life?
Are you tired of your own suffering? Are you tired of being the silent stick figure in the dreams of others, manipulated like a mindless puppet? Are you tired of your past wounds guiding you onto diseased paths of unconsciousness?
What is your story?
Where is it 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.
Welcome to your entry onto the Universe’s unlimited bandwidth of life, love, and death.
We have been waiting for you.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
