I’ve been asked so many times, “What inspired me to write Spiraling?” and I’ve always replied by telling people that we all know someone who has struggled with drugs or alcohol. I’ve also mentioned my former husband to a few people. So, today, I wanted to share my inspiration for Spiraling. This is quite a long post.
On January 7, 2014, I separated from my husband, Lawrence Anthony Caito. Lawrence was drinking, and I didn’t want to have that around my kids, or in my home. He was not a social drinker. He drank after work in the evenings, heavily, and alone. He tried to hide it from me, but when the slurring and angry rants about his life start, well, you can’t hide that.
So, on January 7, 2014, Lawrence and I (and my kids) said a very sad and tearful goodbye at the bus station, and he went back to live with his family in the Saint Louis area. Separating didn’t mean we didn’t love him. It just meant that his actions and lifestyle would not be tolerated in our home.
We talked every day, although we were separated. I suppose some foolish part of my heart wanted to believe that he would somehow wake up and stop drinking and would just be the amazing guy that he was when sober. That did not happen.
Lawrence had so much anger, as well as feelings of guilt, over his 3-year-old daughter, Mia’s death. She was fatally beaten in January 2012 by her moms new boyfriend. Lawrence had so much inner guilt from that because he blamed himself for not being there to save her. He also blamed God. He would mock me or put me down when I would tell him I was praying for him. He would tell me that if there was a God, he hated him because he let his daughter be murdered.
No matter how many times I tried to tell him that it was not God who chose what happened to Mia, he would not change that opinion.
He couldn’t accept that the only one responsible for what happened to her, was the monster who beat her. So, he drank every night to keep the monsters away and to forget what happened. That’s what he told me, so many times. He also always told me that he hoped he wouldn’t wake up the next day because he couldn’t stand the pain anymore.
He started taking OxyContin a few months after he moved back to live with his family. He lied to someone and told them he had been in a car wreck and hurt his knees. He had not. He admitted that to me. He also had severe hip pain from a previous injury. So, he was prescribed OxyContin for the pain. He failed to tell the doctor he was an alcoholic. Eventually, the prescriptions ran out and he started getting the pills from the streets.
When you’re 600+ miles away, no one wants to listen to you when you try to tell them that someone needs help for drinking and taking pills. Since he only drank and popped pills at night after work, people only saw the good side of him, and that side was kind, amazing, hardworking, and very convincing that he was sober.
I always loved to hear him laugh. He had the best laugh, and his eyes shined so brightly when he smiled.
A couple months later, he added heroin into his drug induced ritual. Alcohol, pain pills, and heroin. He got the heroin from a relative who was using it. He told me all about it. I tried to get his family to do something. I again was told that I was wrong and that they would know if he was doing something like that. Users are often good at hiding their addictions, at least for a little while.
No amount of begging him to go to rehab would work. He did try, once, but he didn’t have insurance, and he didn’t have the money to go.
On January 7, 2015, one year exactly from the date that Lawrence got on a bus and went back to live with his family, he called me one last time. The beginning of the call was as it had been every night for the past year. He has happy and talked about wanting to move back to where my kids and I lived. He even talked about how he wanted to remodel my basement.
Did I mention Lawrence was an incredible carpenter? He could design and build anything that he wanted to build. After an hour on the phone, the typical slurred voice started. I told him I was finished with the call because he was obviously getting messed up and I didn’t want to go through another call listening to an hour or more of his angry drunk rants.
We still talked for another half hour until his voice trailed off after yet another angry rant about how he hated God, and hoped he wouldn’t wake up in the morning. He cried so hard that night, as usual, and said he couldn’t handle the pain.
That was our last call. The call ended at 10:40 PM that night. The next morning, his sister called me to tell me what I had tried to prepare myself to hear for almost daily for the last year, that he had passed away in his sleep. It was a call that I had unfortunately expected. It still hit hard when that day came.
I contacted the coroner a couple weeks later, and I have the death certificate. He passed away from a combination of Fentanyl, OxyContin, heroin, and alcohol. The coroner said all four had been in his system at the time of death. When I talked to the coroner, he told me that even with the amounts of everything combined, it was most likely the Fentanyl that caused him to pass away.
I doubt that Lawrence knew he was taking Fentanyl. Either way, he knew he was getting messed up. He knew he had a problem. He knew he was an alcoholic and addicted to pain pills. He knew he needed help. He knew how dangerous what he was doing could be.
Unfortunately, for Lawrence, everything spiraled out of control before he could get the help that he needed.
I wish it could have ended differently, but for Lawrence, it’s too late.
If you, or someone you love, has an addiction to drugs or alcohol, PLEASE reach out for help. As long as you’re alive, it is not too late to change your path! There are people who love you, even if you don’t believe that. Life is short. Love big. Work hard to get better. Just live. Take things one day at a time. Life is not a marathon and it isn’t a competition. You are not the mistakes that you’ve made. God is always there for you. Please, ask for help. Don’t let your life spiral out of control. YOU ARE WORTH IT!!
The song in the video is “Drive By” by Train. It was a song that Lawrence always played (and sang!) to tell me he would be with me forever.
Kind regards~
Angela Caito
Writer and Director
Spiraling