Forty

FORTY

December 15, 1984

The audience was just leaving Studio 8H as the SNL show began closing down. The Honeydrippers were the musical guest that night. My friends Barnicus, Boudoire, and Mikey—all in the band—were packing up their gear, while our dearly beloved Hal and his merry men were slipping out of their little studio down the hall. Everyone was headed to the afterparty at the newly minted Hard Rock Cafe.

I’d had access to these halls since the late ’70s, but by then I was more ghost than guest, more dead than alive. The walls were closing in.

Drugs and music were the glue that held it together, and my entrée into the glamour, but I was there that particular night to talk to Mike who had gotten clean somehow. How the fuck did he do it? We walked through the snow, from the canyons of 30 Rock to the velvet rope at the Hard Rock and I cried. He walked me to the club but wouldn’t go in. Something about “people, places, and things.”

I couldn’t make it stop. The hurt was overwhelming.

February 12, 1985.

Beaten, battered, broken, hollow. Heroin had finally taken me down. It took a while. I spent the last six weeks on the freezing, abandoned streets of the Lower East Side. I guess I was young, stubborn, and stupid enough to last that long. If fentanyl had been around, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story.

I’ve mentioned Mike before—how he showed up when most people had given up. That was his way. No speeches. No spotlight. Just stepping in and doing what needed doing. Like the day he went to the Musicians Union and paid my back dues. I was broke and lost, but that last act—quiet and practical—opened the door for the union to help. That tiny crack of light turned into something much bigger: MusiCares was in its embryonic stage back then, and because of Mike, they found me a spot at a rehab center in Florida.

By then I was skit. The textbook definition of a walking disaster: paranoid, half-feral, clinging to some idea that I should go to the “fancy” rehab because Gregg Allman had been there. The intake counselor probably figured that anywhere with doors was better than leaving me to wander the streets another day, so they humored me and got me on a plane. Eastern Airlines. JFK. One-way ticket to The Palm Beach Institute. Right across the bridge from where Mar A Lago is today. Swank!

Turned out to be just a house with a pool in a middle-class burb. Still it felt like The Four Seasons compared to the burnt out buildings on 10th and D. The first few days of detox were rough, but on day five, it hit me: I didn’t know how to live without it. The drugs were leaving my system, but the obsession wasn’t. I still wanted to get high and I didn’t know how to stop wanting it.

That’s addiction: knowing the thing is killing you and still feeling like you can’t breathe without it.

But I wanted the pain to stop. All of it.

I was raised in a secular New York Jewish family. We didn’t pray. I believed in mystery, maybe—in the vastness of space, the wonder of music—but definitely not in some bearded guy upstairs in heaven who was keeping an eye on me, or an actual creator who had a master plan. Still, I found myself hiding in a broom closet so no one would see me break down. I got down on my knees, I closed my eyes, tried to imagine infinity, and whispered the only words I could find:

“Please make this stop.”

The next morning, when the nurse came by with my meds, I surprised us both.

“No, thanks,” I said.

It was like watching my mouth in slow motion. I'd never turned down a drug in my life—especially a free pharmaceutical opiate. But that day, I did.

That was February 18, 1985 and I haven’t gotten high since.

I don’t know why it happened like that. I don’t pretend to understand grace or the how miracles work. Life is a mystery. Addiction, too. Recovery most of all.

Forty years today. I’m grateful for every one of those days, even the hard ones. Especially the hard ones.

There are still plenty of challenges—like raising these two gorgeous kids, the loves of my life. Like navigating the anxious hum of our current world. But here’s what I know: when the words run out, try whispering what little you've got left. Sometimes, help finds you in the quiet.

Pass it on.

And be kind.

Lots of love,

GG