Brother Love: Has Phil Hit Bottom?

In the first of a four-part series, Phil says he wants to check into an alcohol-and-drug rehabilitation program.

It’s been five weeks since my last “Brother Love” column.

That was the third installment in my series about my brother Phil and our complex relationship. For most of his adult life, Phil has struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental health issues; those forces have often conspired to render him homeless for vast stretches of time.

Next up: the first of a four-part series (to be posted consecutively) on the 18 hours that led to his checking in to a substance abuse rehabilitation facility. Because the rehab program opened the door to Phil receiving a fully subsidized studio apartment in Chicago, this window of time in mid-April 2021 proved to be pivotal.

Back then, I hoped what loved ones commonly yearn for in these moments. I prayed that Phil had genuinely “hit bottom” and was ready, willing and able to lead a sober, drug-free life.

The reality: within hours of checking out of his rehab and moving into his apartment (see photo below), Phil had relapsed.

A few hours after he successfully wraps up rehab, Phil holds a few pints of Ben & Jerry’s, my gift to him as he moves into his new studio apartment.

To this day, his consumption of drugs (heroin, laced with fentanyl) and alcohol (vodka, mixed usually with Hawaiian punch) dominate his day-to-day existence.

However, a silver lining gloriously brightens that tyrannical treadmill: for these past 27 months, starting with his 30-day rehab stint, Phil has had a bed to sleep in and a roof over his head.

Relative to where Phil had been — sleeping on the train, in the woods, exposed constantly to the elements of Mother Nature and the perils of street life — these last few years have been a major upgrade.

So, reflecting on the memory of those events that formed this four-part series, I am grateful.

If you have not yet read the previous installments of Brother Love (all of which are linked immediately below), you might want to do so before reading Brother Love: Has Phil Hit Bottom?

Brother Love: The Other Side of the Tracks

Brother Love: April Fools, Night

Brother Love: ‘A Lot of Love Out Here’

Brother Love: Has Phil Hit Bottom?

After spending an impromptu half-hour together on Easter evening, near the highway ramp where he has been panhandling for months, Phil and I turn phone tag into an art form this past week.

Neither one of us is picking up when the other calls, and Phil twice punctuates the missed connections with invitations to dine: the first for strawberry milk shakes on Tuesday evening, the second on Thursday afternoon, a proposed sequel to the Chinese meal we shared the previous week.

The tone turns ominous and urgent later Thursday, as he texts shortly before 6 p.m., “I’m done with I need to go to the metro hospital would you please take me.”

Can’t, I text back, because of a school board meeting that is about to begin. The next day, I ask if he had gotten to a hospital. Four hours later, in the late afternoon, there is still no answer when I dial him up.

“Phone tag,” I text. “You’re It.”

Finally, at 11:07 a.m. Saturday, Phil tags me back.

“Hello brother love,” he begins. “I believe today is my last day with this phone. Not even sure that this message will go through.”

I confirm receipt a minute later and ask where he is. After that, the deluge:

“Life is becoming more difficult.”

“If that were even possible.”

“This mother******* phone I’m going to miss man it types in exactly what I say.”

“I’ve got a present for you.”

“It’s an Alexa speaker.”

“I’ve been meaning to use it but not much for use for it out here on the sidewalk.”

“And it will just get stolen.”

A few texts later, he includes a photo, a self-portrait peering into the camera. A hooded robe covers all but his face, tufts of hair peeking out from above and below his glasses. His eyes appear vacant, beleaguered.

“I found this wizard robe but I brought it to the laundry. But this is how the world sees me now.”

I confirm his location, but I am not yet ready to commit to visiting him. I don’t know what he’s looking for, and I am not sure how much stamina I have for getting enmeshed in his day. In truth, I am creating space for a simple, care-free Saturday. My selfish desires are being put to the test.

Next, Phil returns to his original point: his phone service is about to end, so he’s “trying to call everybody I know.”

He asks for our two siblings’ phone numbers; he reflects on the number of varsity athletic letters he attained during high school and college (12, maybe 13); he offers the latest in what has been a steady stream of apologies, for years now, over roughing me up regularly during our childhood:

“Hope you realize that I feel horrible for anything that I did to you. It wasn’t about you, I was just an angry child that needed a release.”

Phil’s class photo as a high school senior.

Meantime, I am oblivious to the communication onslaught, wrapped up in learning about the air-conditioning system at our new church. All the while, I am thinking, “Phil would really understand all of this technical stuff. I am in way over my head.”

Twenty minutes later, as morning gives way to afternoon, Phil follows up with specifics of his plan: he needs to get his heart pill prescription, and—here’s what really gets my attention—he wants to “go to Haymarket at 8 a.m.”

When I catch up on my texts a short while later, I see this as a bona fide opening—his desire to check into a detox center.

Granted, it is the umpteenth time he’s indicated such a feeling in recent months. Mostly, it has felt like lip service as he pours another vodka-laced concoction past his lips and down his gullet. As his heroin use has declined, then stopped over the past few months, his alcohol intake has seemed to increase in the same proportion.

This time, however, he has an immediate action plan in mind: The Haymarket program near downtown Chicago. He just needs to show up at their door Sunday morning, some eight miles and 18 hours away.

I coordinate to meet up with Phil near a Dunkin’ Donuts in Forest Park. Our first stop is for medication to treat his heart arrhythmia at a Walgreens in Maywood. En route, we pass the Way Back Inn, the drug-and-alcohol recovery house where Phil had spent the better part of a year starting in January 2017. That time, heroin had taken a firm grip of Phil’s life. Broken ribs from a bicycle crash led to a hospital stay, which paved the way to Way Back Inn.

He was released from the hospital on the day Donald Trump was inaugurated, and spent three agonizing, withdrawal-laden days in my office waiting for a spot at Way Back Inn to open.

“Look at WBI!” Phil says now, from the back seat. “I still owe them 300 dollars.”

A few moments later, we are parked at the Walgreens. His Wizard’s robe is as Wizardly as the photo suggests, and Phil strikes a sort of Obi-Wan Kenobi on the Ropes bearing as he moves slowly toward the door. His pace is due partly to the constraints of his battered, weary body. But there’s another motivation, and he names it: he wants to draw out our time together.

“I’ve got time, Phil,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about that.”

Of course, within five minutes, my daughter texts to ask when I will be back home so that she can borrow the van to meet with friends.

A short while later, meds in hand, Phil and I head to the Oak Park library. I leave him with a hug after pointing out an outlet in the lobby where he can charge his cell phone.

After returning home, an idea that has been traipsing on the edges of my mind takes center stage and won’t go away: why leave to chance that Phil navigates his way to The Haymarket? Earlier, I had suggested that I could drive him there the next morning, but he responds with a verbal stiff-arm (“I can take the blue line.”) and I drop the subject.

But I am not buying it.

Phil’s alcohol consumption has risen noticeably the last several times I have seen him. And he has been having a harder time getting from one spot to the next. He routinely falls asleep on the train, so exhausted from the toll inflicted by homelessness and drunkenness. That vulnerability has resulted in harassment, at least one beating that left his face bruised a few months ago, and the theft of cell phones, handyman work tools, and only God knows what other possessions.

Twice in the past half-year, he has fallen on railroad tracks—a harrowing, potentially fatal penchant that occurred most recently only a week ago. Both times, he wound up in the hospital…but he just as conceivably could have landed in the county morgue. In fact, last summer after not hearing from Phil for two months and unable to track him down at some of his usual haunts, I called the morgue.

I shared physical details about Phil, then was relieved to hear, “Nope, no white males fitting that description.”

These thoughts are nagging at me as I ponder the likelihood of Phil’s getting to the detox program on his own. I wouldn’t bank on it.

To Bridgett, I broach the idea of renting a hotel room, staying with Phil overnight, then driving him to The Haymarket. She is supportive. By this point, though, it has been an hour since I left Phil.

He could be anywhere, with a phone whose service is scheduled to expire at any moment. At most, I figure he has made his way to the highway ramp to panhandle.

I set out to try to find him.

Coming Saturday: Part II.