“See you later, you beautiful stallion,”
Those were some of the last words I ever heard leave the mouth of Keenan.
He was an Arabian warhorse of a man. And he was my cousin. He was a firefighter and valedictorian of his medical school program. He was the sort of man Irish folk ballads are written about. He fought. He loved. Too much of both on his best and worst days.
And the mere tone of his voice made a room erupt into laughter. His ink-covered biceps masking his statuesque figure slid under his Lululemon V-neck tee. Hardly satisfied with simply being the smartest of our bloodline, he was also the fittest. He was the muse of every rich widow in Paradise Valley.
I am sure people still use his photos to catfish on Tinder years later. In his firefighting garb, he looked fit for “Rescue me”. In his white doctor’s coat, however, he would likely make a “Grey’s Anatomy” star count carbs.
It’s hard to imagine where the shackles and weight grab onto his figure under his clothes. But behind that ivory smile lies a weight.
16.8% of Americans above the age of 12 suffered from a substance abuse disorder in 2024.
Addicts are treated quite differently than other sick people. It has, in most cases, fallen quite out of fashion to treat an illness through incarceration and isolation. Addicts are simply not so lucky.
There are many ways to wind up talking to a cop about your problem well before your general practitioner. Most often without consent. They are way harsher about it too.
It is not like that for everyone, mind you. Some people are lucky or touched by the devil — depending entirely on who’s telling the story — to seek help without the long arm of the law.
For those lucky souls, you usually need to mess up real bad. Not some low-tier mess-up either. It just leaves you thinking “oh my god… what have I done…”.
I won’t tell my story here. I reserve that for third dates, psychological professionals and meetings with my closest confidants in recovery. I sincerely do not even think my father knows the story.
I will lay on the record that I have a scar fit for a Marilyn Manson tattoo on my left side from it. The dumbest thing I have ever done, no doubt.
I have spent an unbelievable amount of time since that moment under a scalding hot shower head to rinse off a stain that never comes off.
My savior that day was Keenan. The chains of substance abuse might be physical, but in that moment it was very literal for me.
I was bound to a hospital bed. Throughout the night, I had been howling mad.
I have read in Ireland my clan had a banshee; I am not entirely sure I believe that old haggis and hogwash — but on that day I think I was one. After menacing myself into something resembling a slumber, a nurse shook me.
“I’m undoing your right arm and right leg,” she scowled.
She was not my biggest fan.
“You have a call; if you don’t mess it up, you can keep your arm and leg,” she continued.
On the other line, he spoke with the clarity of a sage.
He told me to go to where he went when he found himself in a similar spot ten years ago.
The stories of 19-year-old Keenan on the streets of Milwaukee are iconic, almost infamous. Perhaps almost as legendary as his impact on the Arizona State community through his medical program.
A sleepy three-quarter house set up in the mountains of Arizona. It’s the kind of property only really suited to that or starting a cult. If they could save him, they could save me — or so he said. I didn’t believe it yet.
I got on that plane still smelling like booze, I was hungover.
Now I wear sunglasses all the time to appear ambivalent and edgy. I wore it back then because I loathed the light, almost like I was afraid of garlic and crosses.
When I landed, I found fellowship, a brotherhood I had never had.
This house was full of 14 men — most of whom had a criminal record — became more my family.
We lived together, we laughed together.
We did not love together. Talking to girls who were not in our sister program or your workplace got you kicked out faster than you could say, “but my friends and my family are two hours away in Phoenix.”
We had the most epic bonfires roasting each other. To avoid incriminating the sometimes actually guilty, I will use aliases.
Rusty was a scoundrel. He looked like a cross of Dan Avidan, Kurt Kobain and the guy who gets drinks for underage kids at 7-Eleven in the most handsome possible way. Before his time at our summer camp for misfit toys, he made his living mostly by playing with the hearts and bank accounts of trust fund girlies from Minnetonka to Vegas. But he was the funniest dude. Even though he gossiped about everyone like he worked at a hair salon and smelled like a music convention, you had to love him.
Golem was an ugly gentleman. Had the best heart of everyone there, even though he looked like Smeagle. His rap sheet was nasty. He actually killed a couple of dudes. But he did it protecting his sister’s honor on some real street justice. If he lived in a different time in a different place, he would probably be a hero. You can see the purity in his smile, even with the missing teeth.
(Also, if you read this, I am sorry I called you that buddy. You are sincerely one of my favorites there, and the one I would trust with my life. But c’mon dude. It’s free.)
The one I hope to meet again was the mountain man.
He claimed to have been childhood neighbors with Charles Manson. Based on how much he knew about Manson, the Occult, The Beach Boys and Dennis Wilson, I believe him.
The mountain man once found a bizarre totem in my bedroom after I had awful night terrors a few nights in a row, saying it was witchcraft. After that, the dreams stopped.
He also had a daughter. This 6-foot-4 hill of a man spent about a decade homeless before he had her.
She was a sweet little girl. The mountain man was scary enough that we 14 low lives always treated her like a real Disney princess.
Chef was the group dad. He was a chef who wound up with us by some bad choices. I still cook for my girlfriend, and I have many of the dishes he taught me. He was the man who taught me how to eat a cat tail, and that they were even edible. He had a beautiful black Mercedes-Benz M-Class. It was out of place though, like a stubbed toe.
One of the local addicts (not from our house) thought so too. He stole it. We found it one day, about a week later, out of gas at the local Walmart and covered in black spray paint.
My favorite memories with the boys was the trip we took to Sedona. We went to a Buddhist shrine. A conversation I had with a monk there embarked me upon the most spiritual season of my life. One I think has yet to stop.
The other was a hiking trip we took in the Prescott National Forest, which was basically our backyard. We found this cave connected to an old lumber elevator. It looked like the vampire’s cave from “The Lost Boys”.
There were no flamboyant vampires in the cave and not a single leather jacket. But I can only tell you that because my fellow villains and I spelunked it.
It is a really tricky thing to find substance abuse disorder statistic deaths. Relapses tend to walk hand-in-hand with lack of medical adherence.
It is like when trees fall in the forest and no one is there to hear it.
What I can tell you is that of my brothers and me looking for a new freedom, I know that five of them are dead. After that, I stopped paying as much attention. It just got too depressing. Maybe more are, but hopefully not.
I had a role model out there also named Andrew. A tattoo artist and substance abuse counselor. In between smoking American Spirit cigarettes, listening to me complain and encouraging me to take the route of substance abuse counseling work, he gave me the most important advice I have ever received.
“If you are around this too much, you will wear a lot of black,” he said.
And my god do I.
Summer turned to autumn. The desert nights became longer and colder. The prickly pear just stopped being good.
I went down the valley to Phoenix and lived with my hero, Keenan. I spent a month living with him, his brother,and his brother’s girlfriend. In stark contrast to the three-quarter house, this place was grand.
My uncle is pretty successful and made his kids feel like the Fresh Prince of Paradise Valley.
We lived in the sort of house young people would live in together on a Nickelodeon or Disney Channel sitcom. I had no idea then. Those days, spent cruising downtown in Keenan’s sick jeep, going to a Phish Concert with Keven and his now-wife and eating Korean barbecue by the Japanese Friendship Garden – all of it.
That scorching autumn was the last glowing Summer moment of my youth. That whole spirit walk in Arizona, the world behind the fog slowly became clearer to me.
My hero was getting tired.
Behind his humor brewed a velvet darkness. His jokes got darker like the chilling breeze down the mountains.
One day we were sitting out in the courtyard, in an ethereal state between the pool and the cacti.
He told me advice that I have not since been able to allow to escape from my mind.
“Always live a life you can tell everyone about. When you don’t, well you feel terrible. Alright stallion?” he said.
He called everyone that. His friends from med school, the new freedom boys, even his dad.
The breeze blew colder.
I caught a flight back to Michigan with the intent of packing my things and moving down to Arizona forever.
But then a phone call reminded me that summer was a short season.
Keenan had been found in his Jeep, in the middle of the desert.
Of all the corpses I have seen in funerals, he looked the least true to life.
He was much too orange and his cheeks were too puffy. He didn’t have his dog, which he was known for taking everywhere on its skateboard on account of his three legs.
He wasn’t Keenan, I thought.
I am old enough to tell you now that much of that was simply the cold venom of watching a hero die.
The priest gave a moving speech about how for Keenan, heaven is now something like Montana.
His dad has a property there. It has been in our family for generations and he loved it. He loved hunting, fishing and especially the horses.
It was the busiest funeral I have ever attended. Everyone wept. But we at least believed the priest.
Keenan’s father invited those closest to him to get a tattoo, donning his stallion catchphrase.
My fear of needles has stopped me so far – but on the first morning of year five of my sober journey, I hope it’s the year.
And to you, Keenan, I hope to ask you one day why you left me the greatest burden of them all.
Your sick sense of humor, which burdened me with the hardest task.
The storyteller.
I hope not to ask you that this year. That one will have to be much later, you stallion.