From homeless, to jail, to......worse?

“Can I stop talking now?”

Yes, Ron was told. You can stop talking.

“Can I hang up?”

Yes, Ron. Go ahead.

So Ron Troche got off the telephone, and went back to his “pod,” a big cell at the Bergen County Jail with no bars. He would go back to the bunk beds that were packed closely together, and sharing space with guys who, he said, “don’t play with a full deck.”

He’d go back to reading some book he’d enjoy - Tom Clancy, Stephen King. But in jail, there weren’t enough of them. So he’d play cards. Or maybe some television, and some boring program.

Or he’d eat. If he wasn’t hungry, he’d pace. He’d go to his closet, and arrange his clothes.

Then the lights would dim, and he’d got to his bunk. The other inmates would sleep, and even snore. Ron? He’d just sit there, in the near-dark, for hours, fussing and fidgeting. When he got anxious, he’d scrape his bottom lip against his teeth.

“My bed is right under the light,” said the 40-year-old, back in October. “And I have to get up in the middle of the night for my medication.”

Sitting there, he could feel his blood pressure rise, and his mind race. Other people called it “demons.” But Ron didn’t think they were “bad” - he thought everybody had them.

But they didn’t. Even the people in his “pod” - the so-called mental health unit at the jail - thought he was weird. Other inmates would poke fun at him, even though they had the same issues.

Ron was an easy target. He’s a short guy - about 5 foot 4. In jail, he was sort of quiet, and often looking scared and nervous. He was always asking for permission to do things.

“They don’t understand,” he said. That made Ron feel lonely.

“I read again and again … my eyes get tired. I read a chapter or two a night,” Ron, who suffers from bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders, said in October. “That’s the only way I go to sleep.”

But every night was the same. Eat, drink, get anxious. All because he tried to steal tools from a Jeep. He’d get these feelings that made him sad. He missed the heroin that made him feel “normal.”

And then, by the grace of God, Ron got news that “shocked” him: He was getting out.

And the other inmates heard this, and watched him pack, in amazement. This was a guy who paced and fussed, a lot. This was a guy who talked about how he felt like crying, but had to stop himself.

How did he do it?

Ron’s ticket was “jail diversion,” a program that provides alternatives to jail for inmates with mental illness. With few community resources available to them, the goal is to steer non-violent offenders away from a life of crime, and repeated stints in county jail or state prison.

Under the program, they may get a lighter sentence. They may even get an early release, and transfer to a treatment program. The bottom line, however, is they get something that’s rarely available in a steel-and-concrete prison cell: Help.

“We need to stop the bleeding,” said John Molinelli, Bergen County prosecutor, who spearheaded the creation of the local program. “It’s just a constant revolving process.”

Years ago, the state awarded a two-year $250,000 grant to Bergen County officials and a mental health care agency, Care Plus NJ of Paramus, to establish jail diversion, manage the program, and provide guidance to inmates deemed fit to enter it.

And Ron became one of the 1-year-old program’s model prisoners, agreeing to treatment and doing what’s necessary to adjust to life on the outside.

“I’m very anxious. I’ve been here nine to 10 months,” Ron said, in October. “I’ve done everything I possibly can. I’m ready to leave.”

But not everybody can be Ron. The rules for entering the program are strict. Funding is limited, and with few other resources available, the program turns away many more people than it helps.

Bergen County, N.J. officials, however, see progress. Sure, it may be slow. But they have a simple philosophy: If you can’t save everybody right away, then save one person at a time.

“I think this is something that is going to work,” Molinelli said.

Left: Ron Troche

Nationally, mental health experts - as well as law enforcement - say jail diversion is becoming a more effective and humane way of treating inmates with mental illness than locking them away in jail.

About 16 percent of the nation’s jail population suffers from a severe mental illness, according to the federal Justice Department. But that number is growing.

Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, pointed to surveys that show as many as 30 percent of the nation’s jails hold people with mental illness who have not been charged with a crime. The reason, he said, is there is no place else to put them.

“The folks who are, by and large, served by the jail diversion programs - they’ve committed low level crimes,” Honberg said. “These are, by and large, not hardened criminals. These are people who attract the attention of the police for whatever reason.”

With judicial systems burdened by heavy caseloads, law enforcement is desperately searching for ways to reduce the population of prison inmates with mental illness.

Hundreds of jail diversion programs, as a result, are popping up across the United States. Law enforcement boasts it as a way to reduce overcrowding in the courts, probation offices, and prisons that are over capacity.

In San Antonio, Florida, and Atlanta, public officials, judges, and police officers are bragging about the success of programs that have steered hundreds of people into treatment programs and other services.

Some critics deride such programs as “get-out-of-jail-free cards” that don’t effectively deter crime. But jail diversion advocates say they’re limiting - and, in some regions, reducing - the number of repeat offenders returning to prison. The main goal, they say, is to treat people before they do something worse.

“The point of jail diversion is to stop the cycle of having them return to jail,” said Michelle Naples, whose organization, the TAPA Center for Jail Division, coordinates jail-related mental health services across the country. “There are lots of people with mental illness in jail who don’t need to be in jail, and they need a program that allows them to link with the right services in the community.”

When he served as chairman of Care Plus’ Board of Trustees several years ago, Molinelli said, he became sensitive to the plight of prisoners with mental illness. He heard stories from people who struggled to survive in lock-ups that lack the counseling, medical, and rehabilitation services of the outside.

As prosecutor, he has had no interest in “locking up” people with mental illness if they can be treated elsewhere, he said.

In 2002, Molinelli formed a task force that consists of local representatives of the judicial, law enforcement, and criminal defense fields. Their brainchild was jail diversion, even though Molinelli knew it came with some risk.

As prosecutor, Molinelli’s sworn duty is to prosecute criminals and punish them for their crimes. But his support was critical, he said. Without the backing of law enforcement, the program wouldn’t work.

Besides reducing the caseload for law enforcement, Molinelli views it something that’s simply the right thing to do.

“My ass is on the line if we make the wrong decision,” Molinelli said. “If one of those people in the program pushes somebody into a railroad train, then that’s the last you’ll hear of me. I’m done.”

Right now, it’s a pilot program, receiving about 10 percent of the funding that San Antonio and other regions have received. The state grant, which expires in July, also helps pay for mental-health awareness training for probation officers and judiciary officials.

Next year, Molinelli hopes to obtain a federal grant - perhaps as much as a $1 million - to expand the program. Until the county gets more money, however, the program will be small, progress will be slow, and the rules for entering will be strict.

“We just took a baby step,” Molinelli said. “I will never see the benefits of this program. This is 10- to 20-year program. I’d like to think by then it [jail diversion] will be the norm.”

Other jail diversion programs serve hundreds of inmates at a time; Care Plus, on the other hand, had about 17 active cases by the end of December. Many more inquire about the program, but they fail to qualify.

Only non-violent offenders can participate, and they must be Bergen County residents. While other programs assist inmates at the point of their arrest, Care Plus intervenes when they’re within a few months of their release.

Since the Bergen County Jail is a temporary holding cell for prisoners before they’re sentenced, the program helps some inmates steer clear of a stiffer penalty - such as a transfer to state prison. The goal is readjusting to society, and avoiding a return to jail.

“Our goal was to provide a level of service,” said Gary Dock, manager of the Care Plus program. “It is a level of service that’s effective so they don’t end up back in jail.”

Mostly, Care Plus provides an “infrastructure” to inmates with mental illness that’s not normally available to them, Dock said. Case managers drive them to the doctor, help pay their fines, accompany them to court, and serve as a liaison to their families and lawyers.

They talk to counseling programs and search for space for inmates with a history of substance abuse. They reinstate their benefits that they received on the outside. They make sure they have housing, and that they can pay the rent.

They meet with the inmates on a weekly basis - at a minimum - and learn early who’s ready for the program, and who isn’t.

Every Tuesday, members of Care Plus’ jail diversion staff - which consists of a supervisor, two case managers and an intern - sit in a small, pale room at the jail’s mental health unit, and chat with the prisoners. They’re particularly anxious to talk to Mike Lang, a case manager, and worry when he shows up late.

“The jail has been extremely accommodating,” Dock said. “I have done suicide-awareness seminars at the jail and they [corrections officers] have been extremely receptive.”

Inside the small meeting room, Lang and the inmates set up chairs. A television sits there, turned off. Stacks of books are packed into case, untouched.

As the inmates walk in, Lang assesses who has an interest in helping themselves. If they’re up to it - and they satisfy the rigid conditions - he signs them up.

If they don’t qualify, they’re politely turned away. Inmates with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder get frustrated - even angry - when they hear of the program, but discover that it’s not for them.

Right: Don Cardinali

Take Don Cardinali, a 53-year-old inmate with bipolar disorder. He was arrested after he threatened to rob a Ridgefield bank last July. He also was witnessed using inhalant outside.

In the jail, however, he followed the rules, and attended the weekly group meetings with Care Plus representatives. Initially, he displayed a genuine interest in helping himself. But when Care Plus offered to help get him into a treatment program, Don balked.

Don stayed in jail. Weeks later, he got in a yelling match that landed him in “lockdown,” separating him from his unit. Don said he was “stripped naked” and put in a sleeveless outfit that looks like a blue pleated blanket. He calls it “a chicken suit.”

“I’m in a chicken suit, freezing my ass off,” Don said in December, “and I’m being punished for sticking up for myself.”

For Ron and Don, the process began - in earnest - in the summer and early fall. Ron was arrested in January 2004; Don in July. But every week, they had to sit in the same, small room with 10 other inmates in the Bergen County jail’s mental health unit, and share their troubles.

Others would walk by, wearing orange jumpsuits, and sandals or high-tops with Velcro straps. They’d walk by the tables with the painted checkerboards that were never used.

They’d quickly glance through the big picture window outside the room where Lang and his group met. Then they would keep walking.

“How are you today?” Lang would say. And then he, and his partner, Jennifer Stratton, would sit and listen.

Usually, Lang and Stratton would only speak when they were asked a question. In some cases, Lang - a former probation officer - knew the answer before he was even asked. The inmates would be impressed.

“I have my ways,” he once quipped.

When the meetings began, the inmates would slouch in their chairs, and fold their arms. A moment of uneasy silence would quickly pass. When the time was right, they would unload - big time.

It usually came in rants and rapid-fire outbursts - usually about the food, their fellow inmates, and their strong desire to get out.

Their lawyers weren’t calling them back, they’d say. They’d call others - including family members - collect. But they wouldn’t accept the charges. They’d complain about not getting their medications - or getting too much.

They’d hear talk that they were heading to a psychiatric facility, when they thought they’d be released. They were being “screwed,” they’d say. They’d get so frustrated, some would talk about how they wanted to “hurt” somebody.

“I had all this anger,” Sherod Mair, 37, an inmate accused of assaulting a cop, told the group in August. “Marijuana was my thing. But right now, I don’t want to put anything in my body.”

They would ask Lang for help. They wanted to get back on their feet. They wanted to avoid a state prison sentence. Most had been there, they said. They didn’t want to return to the place with the “roaches and the rapists,” they said. They’d rather be in the county jail, the “country club.”

Lang would offer suggestions. Keep trying, he’d say. If you have a complaint, file it. But they wanted more: They’d ask to be a part of the diversion program.

If they were qualified, Lang would offer to do an intake, and ask a list of questions that addresses their readiness.

Most of the time, however, they weren’t ready. But Lang would politely listen to them, anyway.

During an August meeting, Don sat, looking frustrated and glum. He was clutching his arm, and slouching in his chair. His blonde hair was long, and needed a comb. He was in a room with 10 other guys, but he looked cold and alone.

For Don, it was the same old story. For some time, he wasn’t hearing from his lawyer, or anybody else he could reach on the outside. That week, somebody threw his underwear behind the washing machine. He was frustrated, angry, confused. He was rambling.

He carried his honeybuns in a pillow sack because an inmate picked on him, and tried to steal his food. He would keep his coffee grounds in a plastic bag, roll it up, and stick it in his sock.

“I lost my job. I lost everything,” Don, a self-described musician who worked in radio and recording studios, told Lang. “I appreciate you coming here, but I feel like I hit a brick wall on a motorcycle going 100 mph … No wonder I’m mentally ill, because I feel like I’ve been beaten to a pulp.”

Then he went silent, and waited for the others to finish. He had to wait a long time. He would raise his head, or his hand, and get ready to speak. But somebody would butt right in. They had similar issues, but they rarely felt compelled to include him.

The others spoke about how they had everything, too. They were ex-stockbrokers who lost money in the 1987 crash, they said. Or they lived in nice houses “near golf courses,” they claimed, and didn’t belong in jail. They wanted out.

“I knew what I was doing when I did it,” said Phillip DeMarco, 44, who was accused of threatening a state Superior Court judge. “I don’t like to take medications, second. I don’t like to be around people with mental health issues.”

Many of them - but not Don - had a history of violent offenses. Or they were non-Bergen County residents, and had other issues that disqualified them from the diversion program.

Most thought there was nothing wrong with them. They were framed. They were innocent. It was a conspiracy. In that August meeting, they went on and on about it. For two hours, Lang politely listened. Besides offering some advice, that was about all he could do.

“We can’t physically case manage them,” Dock said. “But it’s [the meeting] our opportunity to guide them through the system.”

By the time Don finally got to speak, again, he was tired. He kept apologizing for what he was saying, or what he was about to say. He didn’t want to keep Lang there too long. But it was his only opportunity, he said. He just wanted some attention.

“I just screamed out loud from the other end of the room,” said Don, complaining about the underwear incident. “I just scared the hell out of everybody.”

Then he went silent, again. Five minutes later, he left. Just minutes later, Lang did, too.

Every week, Lang came back. And every week, he got the same crowd. Nevermind that most of them didn’t qualify for jail diversion. They still attended the meetings, and they were still hopeful they could find a way in.

By mid-September, however, some hurt their chances of ever getting any kind of help. They were arguing with the other inmates. They got into fights, and found themselves in “lockdown.”

When Lang visited on Sept. 14, one inmate stood outside his cell door, pulled his “chicken suit” down to his waist, and waved through the meeting room window. Few were amused by the gesture, and most ignored him.

Inside the meeting room, there was tension. Phil was complaining about how everybody - his attorney, his family - was stealing his money. He was bitter, paranoid. There was nothing wrong with him, he said. Yeah, he used cocaine before. But he was fine. Everybody else was crazy.

“I don’t have any compassion for people going around robbing people,” he said.

Phil was talking quickly, and loudly. Others struggled to get a word in, but Phil would raise his voice, and drown them out.

Bill Lillo, another inmate, told him not to monopolize the time. But Phil kept going, leaning forward in his chair, staring at Lang, gesturing with his hands, and ranting and raving about his sorry life.

“My life has been sh-t,” he said. “I’m sitting here in jail, and it’s not fun. … I really try to write letters on my behalf, but it’s getting nowhere.”

Even Lang had had it. Normally, he let people talk. But he got tired of Phil and his rambling. “Where are we going with this, Phillip?” he said. “Because it’s not going anywhere.”

Phil finally quieted. Then he acknowledged something obvious: His mouth always got him into trouble.

Within minutes, the tension abated. The give-and-take got better. Some inmates even joked. A few started to smile. Phil just sat there, quiet.

Some asked Lang if they could meet with him later. One of them was Bill. He had a laundry list of issues. When the meeting ended, Lang gave him the benefit of his time.

Bill told him everything: He was busted for drugs. He had been in a car accident, and he was still suffering from the lingering effects. His pain felt like a “toothache in my eyeballs. That’s why I started smoking marijuana,” he said.

The 51-year-old had been in therapy with a psychologist. But why would his eyes swell up whenever he stood near a vacuum? Maybe he wasn’t getting the right medicine.

“My body is in atrophy. I’m curling in up into a ball,” he said. “It’s unfair. It’s unfair treatment.”

He and Lang shook hands, and Bill left. Afterward, Lang was asked if he could help him. He shook his head, no. He wasn’t a county resident.

Weeks later, Don was getting ready to leave. The Care Plus people were ready to help him, and spoke of getting him into a treatment program.

Don just wanted out. He still hadn’t heard much from his lawyer. He had fines of more than $4,000. What if he got out, and he couldn’t find a job? He’d go crazy.

Maybe Lang could help him with that. He and others from Care Plus met with him, and talked to him about his options. Don listened politely, but didn’t agree to anything. But to Care Plus, he seemed receptive.

Care Plus offered promise - certainly more than any other program. No other program talked about release. That’s all Don cared about. He didn’t want to consider anything else.

Don looked forward to a new life, even if he didn’t know what it was going to be like. For once, he felt good enough to laugh, and joke a little.

“I’m just praying that everything takes shape,” Don said.

He was to be sentenced on Oct. 12. Prior to that, Care Plus helped him get everything in order. The organization would provide him the safe landing, help him pay his bills, and possibly get him in touch with his family.

His attorney, Diane D’Alessandro, was working on a plea deal: The charge of fourth-degree possession of methadone would be dropped. Fourth-degree public alarm would stick. Maybe he’d get probation, and no additional jail time.

On Oct. 12, around 9 a.m., in Superior Court Judge Eugene Austin’s courtroom, his name was read aloud. Only Don wasn’t there.

There was a snag: The assistant prosecutor, Susan O’Donnell-Voorman, wanted him in treatment, and she needed an answer immediately. Without an agreement, he would stay in jail until the matter was resolved.

Care Plus hadn’t nailed down that end of the bargain yet. In the courtroom, Stratton sat in the audience, talked to D’Alessandro, and tried to work something out. The attorney asked: What about partial hospitalization?

“We could get him into a program, but this may not be what he wants,” Stratton said. “We have to get him somewhere.”

Later that day, Care Plus dispatched Brad Storey, an intern in the program, to talk to Don in jail. He discussed his options. This time, Don didn’t like any of them.

Don had gone through several rehabilitation stints over the past two decades. Forgive him, he said, for being skeptical.

“It’s like - what is it? - checkmate,” Don said later.

After Storey left, Don went back to sleep. Hours later, he rose from his bunk, and looked straight ahead. His stare was blank, and empty. He was angry. He was frustrated.

Seventy-six days in jail, he said. Another 30, 60, 90 in rehab. Hell no. He had it. He wanted out.

“I had my expectations high. They’re dashed … That’s a curveball,” he said, later. “You know what that means? Another institution. I don’t really need to do that again … I’ll go find some dive hotel for $40 a night.

“Right now, I’m 76 days clean. I don’t need to go back to these street drugs,” he said. “We’ve gotten beyond the point of fairness. I can’t allow this to keep going on.”

On Tuesday, Oct. 18, it was raining hard. The sky was dark and gloomy. Inside the meeting room, the mood was worse.

No basketball today at the court with the barbed-wire fence. No sunshine coming through the window. Just darkness and depression.

On this morning, the inmates were peculiarly quiet. This time, they had to be prodded to talk.

“Every one looks so gloomy,” Stratton said.

“It’s a gloomy day outside,” Perry Jackson, an inmate, said.

Don was there, too. But he showed up very late. At first, he quietly waited for everybody else to talk. But when he spoke, he didn’t stop. This time, he didn’t roll over.

Right off the bat, he kept pointing at his stomach, saying it “it hurts. It hurts!” He didn’t know why. He was still angry, and a bit manic. He felt like he was “screwed,” he said.

He hoped to be on the outside, he said, taking care of his sick mother. Now he’s feeling sick, he complained. He was convinced that he was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“They tell me, ‘In three weeks you’re going home.’ Then they say ‘three more weeks, you’re going home,’ and then ‘three more weeks your going home,’Ÿ” he told Lang. “I don’t believe it’s fair. I believe I’ve served my time here … If I have to go to a funeral in a jumpsuit, then that’s going to be a very bad thing.”

Lang said he’d try to help, but he didn’t offer much else. Don thanked him, and then apologized. Then he went silent again.

Later, Sherod Mair spoke. He asked if he was qualified for the program, or a related program. But Mair had a violent offense on his record. This time, Lang didn’t mince words. He looked a little weary himself.

“No,” he said. So Sherod left.

Ron was there, too. He was the one guy who was alert and ready. His eyes were wide open. He sat straight up in his chair, and fiddled with his fingers.

Ron was entering the jail diversion program. His focus was on leaving the jail, and what he planned to do on the outside.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He pushed a guy out of the way while he was robbing a car in Carlstadt. He faced a five-year state prison sentence for his offense.

But Ron has a 21-year-old son, and a mother who was worried sick about him. If that meant he had to swallow his pride, and comply with the terms of jail diversion, so be it.

He admitted he had a problem. While in jail, he didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t complain about the food, or getting beat up. If he kept doing everything right, he was told, he’d get out.

“I’m ready to leave,” said Ron. “I can’t sleep on top of that.”

For Troche, Lang agreed to do an “intake.” On Nov. 3, the day after Election Day, he arrived, holding a stack of papers. This time, no one - other than Ron - would meet with Lang.

Ron sat there, his tattooed arms resting on his thighs. His leg was shaking. Occasionally, he glanced through the window. But mostly, he stared straight ahead, and waited for Lang to guide him along.

Lang handed him one form after the other. Ron glanced briefly at each, and signed what he could.

“If you had some goals,” Lang asked, “what would they be?”

“To get my license back,” Troche said. “My father’s got no tombstone on his grave. I want to put that on.”

They put together a plan that would help map out the next few months of Ron’s life. They talked about treatment programs. They talked about jobs.

If it was agreeable - and for Ron, it usually was -he simply nodded “yes,” signed the form, and moved on.

On the other side of the meeting room window, the other inmates grabbed their food. Don was one. He was carrying his pillow sack, and later, a food tray.

At one point, Don slowed up a little, and made a quick glance through the window. He saw Ron and Lang. His eyes were sad-looking, and he was frowning. Then he picked up his pace and, carrying his tray, disappeared from sight.

Lang kept asking questions. He asked who won the presidential election the day before. “Bush, right?” Ron said.

Lang asked him whether he felt somebody was following him. Ron said he’d heard voices before, but not lately.

Lang then quickly glanced through the windows. Ron kept looking out there, so Lang was curious.

“Are they holding a tray for you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ron said. “I hope.”

“Eating OK?” Lang asked.

“I’m not even hungry,” Ron said.

Lang went back to writing. Finally, Ron stopped shaking his leg, and looked right at Lang. His stiff look loosened.

“My mother - I don’t know if she’s helping me,” Ron said. “You’re the only one who is.”

“I’m trying,” Lang said.

Just saying no to ... Coke? What?

I was driving my 8-year-old son to his Little League practice yesterday, and I passed a bottle of Coke back to him.

That's Coke with a capital C, just in case ya missed it.

So, you'd think that'd be a simple, sweet gesture, right?

Not in Jonathan's world. His response made me feel like the ultimate "Bad Dad."

"No thanks!" he shouted. "I don't need that!"

I went from feeling like Mean Joe Greene from those 70s commercials, tossing his jersey to the little Mikey cereal kid, saying, "Thanks, Mean Joe!" to the guy who pushed steroids on Mark McGuire.

Say it ain't so!

Now, I'm not saying that a bottle of the Real Thing is like drinking a bottle of Wild Thing. But it's an interesting metaphor for life, isn't it? I mean, how many of us would turn down a bottle filled with liquid sugar, salt and caffeine, especially when we've got to do some heavy lifting at 6 p.m. in the evening?

I look at my kid universe and, so far, I've been pretty damn lucky. All my kids, as well as my nieces and nephews, have displayed the kind of resolve and self-confidence that, hopefully, won't lead them down the road of Britney Spears.

These aren't kids who need phony platitudes like "Just say No" to steer them away from heroin. So far, at least, they seem to know that they "don't need that." They make their own decisions and care about the consequences.

Of course, it's way too early to tell. They range in age from 15 to 3, and I've seen and known kids turn into the homeless and hopeless overnight.

I've seen kids who started drinking after a teenage life of sobriety - something that I certainly couldn't attest to. Just months later, I'd see them sticking a needle into the fat part of their arm, and watch their eyes roll back.

I know what the statistics say, too. More than a quarter of youth aged 12-20 drank alcohol in the past month, according to a survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Alcohol is the most widely used so-called "substance of abuse" among America’s youth. Alcohol contributes to the three leading causes of death among 12-20-year-olds (unintentional injury, homicide and suicide).

There have been lots of arguments that alcohol is OK because it's the legalized drug of choice, even though marijuana has been known to aid in the care of cancer patients. People scoff at the connections between drinking and harder drugs.

But research also shows that those who start drinking before age 15 are six times more likely to have alcohol problems, and potentially more serious substance abuse issues, as adults than those who start drinking at age 21 or older.

I'm not temperate; neither am I a member of the clean police that's calling for a second prohibition. Yes, I despise champagne and dislike most wines. I'm also known to drink half of a beer and leave the rest for the bus boy or bartender to clean up.

It's just that, at 43, the whole idea of sucking down half a case of beer at a bbq just ain't so fun. I don't know if that makes me good or bad, better or indifferent.

If anything, I think it's part of my stubborn streak that I see in my kids, the same pickiness that compels me to order only steamed Chinese Food and to prefer tea over coffee. That stubbornness fueled my survival when I was younger, when the temptation to carry it too far was always great.

That stubbornness stopped a succession of substance abuse that was rooted in every generation of my family dating back to the Civil War.

I'm not "just saying no." To each his own, right? I just "don't need that."

Blown away

I resisted the temptation of writing about Corey Haim, the child star whose career - and, ultimately, his life - ended before he got old, even if he was old in spirit.

To a writer, however, Hollywood and its actors are, in some cases, part of a a tragedy right out of Hamlet, and even King Lear. Unfortunately, their dying breaths seem to always come after appearing on a reality T.V. show, like "Celebrity Rehab" and "The Two Coreys," turning their once-promising careers that would be fit for a front-page obituary into a punchline that's panel talk on "Larry King Live."

As Shakespeare said, the world is a stage; all the people are merely players. Hollywood, in turn, is the world's most enduring circus.

Looking back, Haim's story was as old as any tragic child star's. He looked like another player in the circus. He looked like another addict who couldn't even survive in a reality T.V. show, even one with his name, because his addiction to drugs was too strong.

But as with any case involving drugs, mental illness or anything else that leads to an end that's tragic, the whole story never really gets told. Instead, it's blinded by the popping flashbulbs and large-type headlines that offer few lessons but plenty of gossip.

Judging by the tributes coming from those who know and understand film, Haim had a gift that was unique. He had the skills that should have put him on the stage of the Academy Awards on Sunday, and not have made him the subject of TMZ gossip fodder on Wednesday. As we've seen time and again, the skills are no match for the addiction. The Betty Ford Clinic is no alternative to the circus.

And the circus merely feeds the beast, over and over, destroying our most talented people. Hollywood has never come clean with its addictions; instead, it seems to aid and abett until it destroys.

The only movie of Haim's that I can remember was "Blown Away," a straight-to-HBO flick from 1992 that is known more for the beauty of Baywatch star Nicole Eggert than anything else (one of my most vivid memories as a 25-year-old bachelor was watching her, in this movie, over and over again as it lingered through the HBO repeat cycle, catering to an audience of early-to-mid-twentysomethings who had nothing better to do than ... well ... watch her).

All these tributes (tributes?) that came from Larry King and the like seemed like hungry ratings grabbers - probably the best ratings Haim ever had or ever would have seen. The story is so cliche now, the former child star gone bad whose life ends tragically.

Larry King and Nancy Grace are always ready to pounce on a story like this like they're televised undertakers. They give them the same recycled eulogy that they gave for the "lost" stars of "Different Strokes" and "Lost Boys" (Haim's most well-known flick), and invite the same people on their show who probably did little to nothing to head their friends off from disaster.

But there was one tribute out there that I came across that was actually old, but it struck me as profound, if not a bit strange. It was a 23-year-old review from Roger Ebert that was mentioned in a Washington Post online slideshow. Ebert said Haim, after watching his performance in "Lucas," was destined for stardom as long as he didn't follow the path of so many other child stars, and screw up his life.

He said that Haim had a complexity to his character, and to his acting, that he hadn't seen in years. Ebert seemed to suggest that he could have been as big as Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr., Sean Penn or any of the gifted actors - maybe even bigger - who survived the 1980s and lived to have an enduring career.

Haim never realized that potential, and his life was more complicated than complex. He turned to crack and pills and a host of many other drugs that made him look like he was 50 when he was 35 years old. He turned a complex acting skill and a promising career into a Dana Plato cliche.

And, yet, maybe Ebert was right, because I still remember him from that movie, "Blown Away," just as much as I remember Eggert. I remember thinking that, hey, here was a guy around my age who had a presence. He did have complexity, because he had diversity in emotions. He did have range, because he was able to play roles that were good and bad, in films that were quality and schlock.

He was a guy you could identify with, because he didn't have Brad Pitt looks. He looked like the "everyman," and he was able to lift "Blown Away" (there was a lot of room for improvement) into something more than eye candy.

The dialogue was horrible. The plot - Haim and Eggert played two lovers who conspired to kill Eggert's father, with Eggert being the chief plotter - was as ridiculous as any of the forgettable movies that cycle through HBO at 1 a.m.

But you've got to respect an actor who can do his best in a bad situation. Even in this cheesy movie, he had the foundation of a promising career that Ebert talked about. Yet, he was another artist with a crutch. He was yet another example of a profession that requires emotional depth and range of its workers. Many can't meet that demand because of their own personal instability and insecurities.

All they have left is a daily dosage of 85 pills - Haim's daily intake - and a career in tatters with no highwire safety net from the Hollywood circus to save them.

Something about John

John Clear walked out of a jail two years ago, declared that he found religion and went home, to Point Pleasant, N.J., where he thought he could find a new life in an old place.

Maybe he could patch things up with his father, he thought, even though the two of them never really got along.

Maybe he could find old friends, the ones he left behind long ago, because the drugs got too big even for them.

Maybe he could find a job, and hold it for longer than a month this time. Maybe that brain power that was locked up long ago, the same smarts that made him the funniest guy I ever knew, could be put to good use for once.

John tried. But, like everything with John, it didn't last. Forty-two years old now, the funniest guy I ever knew can only sustain a life as a purse snatcher and drug addict.

At 42, the only thing that's long is his rap sheet. The only thing that's consistent is his drug use, usually heroin.

The only thing that's funny is that there were some of us who thought he could clean himself up this time, after trying many times. Now we play the fools.

You've heard this story before. Smart kid gets into drugs, and finds himself going through the revolving, recidivism door of jail.

For me, however, the old people from the old life never get old. I told his father the other day that no one inspired my sense of humor more than him. When I hear of this kind of thing, I feel like I could be looking at myself.

If I stuck with him, I could have followed the same path. I had a mother who was an alcoholic, too. I had a need to make others like me, too. I had a need to make others laugh. I got into trouble, too. I had the same issues of need, attention and gratification.

I asked his father if he was mentally ill. He paused for a few seconds. "He now says he's bipolar," his father said. "I don't know what to think."

Maybe we need to know that, I told him. Because that could explain everything.

Maybe I'm the fool, again, but maybe it could be the one thing that's needed to get him the right care.

Maybe it's the one thing that can turn him in the right direction, because his future looks far from the kind of life he knew growing up at the Jersey Shore.

Unless he gets a plea bargain, his life before he turns 60 will be concrete walls and bars, the same life that did little for him before, other than teach him how to become a 42-year-old man who snatches purses from people at children's stores.

John faces 10 to 15 years, possibly, in state prison. Last month, he grabbed a pocketbook from a baby carriage in the parking lot of Babies R Us on Route 36 in Eatontown, N.J., according to The Asbury Park Press.

As the woman put her child in her vehicle, John grabbed her pocketbook from her carriage. She began to struggle with him, and the handle of the purse broke. John escaped with the pocketbook, and left in a four-door Saturn, driven by his girlfriend.

By the time the woman managed to cancel her credit cards, John and his girlfriend - his father called her "the wheel" - had charged cartons of cigarettes and gift card purchases at Rite-Aids in nearby Neptune and Asbury Park, police said. Then they tried to buy the same items at a Walgreens in Neptune, but were denied.

The next day, in Wall Township, N.J., the girlfriend grabbed an 84-year-old woman's pocketbook from her shopping cart inside a Foodtown, police said. Some witnesses stopped her and managed to retrieve the victim's purse, but the girlfriend ran from the supermarket and got into a four-door Saturn driven by John.

Police said they sent out an alert to surrounding communities, and Bradley Beach police stopped the vehicle. After their arrest, police found the hold-up note. Now he's in jail, with bail set at more than $100,000.

This time, no one is rushing to get him out.

Two years ago, I got a call from John. We talked about how he wanted everything the way it was, sitting in my house, watching the Mets on T.V. , just like we did in seventh grade.

Or maybe we could watch the Mets at a bar, he said, and talk about running wild in music class, getting Miss Mason upset and getting tossed out in the middle of a square dance.

Two years ago, John was just out of jail, and he was on the phone, talking to me. He didn't want to get off. He wanted to stay on, his deep, husky voice bellowing through the speaker so much that I had to turn down the volume.

He wanted to meet face-to-face. But the more we talked, the more I realized: He needed more than talk. He needed something. He needed help.

He wanted his kids back. He wanted his ex-wife out of his life. The more he talked, the louder he got. By the time we signed off, I had the volume on the cell turned down to nothing.

This was John excited. maybe even manic. This was a man going through an extreme high, or at least acting like it, who had just lived a life of many downs and, apparently, was heading toward an even bigger fall.

This was a man with mental illness, I thought, because many people with mental illness just don't straighten out. Many people with mental illness lie to themselves, and to others. If they find a way to heal themselves, they realize they're never cured. They just find a way to manage.

And if they ever do find peace, they find it through honesty and truth, not deception, false hopes and lies.

But this was John, talking a good game, saying he wanted to straighten his life out. This was John, trying to get people to forget the state prison mugshot that's still on the Internet, a dark, fading picture that adds 15 years to his age.

John wanted me to write about his life, and everything that was wrong with it. He wanted me to write about it all. In the ensuing weeks, he sent me the letters he sent to the Ocean County Prosecutors Office, demanding a hearing that would address his desire to see his kids.

He didn't do this to himself, he said. He wanted me to blow the lid on the judicial system, and bring down all the people who, he believed, did this to him.

He wanted me to do it so badly that he tried to get others involved, getting one of them to send me a large envelope filled with documents that was a paper trail of the guy's criminal history.

"Let me see what I can do," I kept telling him, though I knew I couldn't do much.

I thought of things I could do. I thought of things I could write. Little came to mind, however. Work, school and family life always seemed to get in the way, of course.

But those excuses were easy. There was something else, something more that bothered me. It wasn't the drugs or his shattered family life. It was the jail or the mugshot.

What I wanted to tell him was, geez, John, I don't remember sitting down in my house, watching the Mets.

I don't remember John ever sitting down.

Whenever we did anything, it was usually a prank or something that 12 or 13-year-old kids shouldn't do in department stores.

It involved water balloons going "splat" against somebody's car windshield, with my hands covering my face in embarrassment. "Oh, no, we're going to get into trouble!" I'd say, and John would just laugh.

Back then, John didn't care. He didn't need to impress. He joked, and he joked often. But he didn't really lie.

Now the John Clear I know tells stories. He's in jail after telling his family and friends the same thing, over and over. I'm going to get it right, he'd say. I'm not going to do any more drugs.

He told another friend he had Hepatitis C. He had to be driven up to Asbury Park at 5 a.m. every day to get a shot.

The friend obliged, and this went on for weeks. But after a while, the friend caught on. Nobody gets shots at 5 a.m. for Hepatitis C. Nobody has to wait in the parking lot and wait for them to come out to get a shot.

"It was probably methadone," the friend said, the drug heroin users take as a cleaner substitute.

This was the same time as our phone conversation, when he told me he was done with drugs, that they were just some short, stupid phase of his life.

There's just something about John.

Bruce Springsteen — Nebraska lyrics

I saw her standin on her front lawn just twirlin her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died

From the town of lincoln nebraska with a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of wyoming I killed everything in my path

I can't say that Im sorry for the things that we done
At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor neck back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin right there on my lap

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my sould
Be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

An autopsy that raised more questions than answers

Did she have a mini-stroke before she crashed? Or did she have a hidden drinking and drug problem?

The autopsy of Diane Schuler, whose car crash on the Taconic Parkwaay recently killed eight, seems to point to the latter. But these "T.I.A.s" may not come up in an autopsy report, so what happened before she smashed into another car is still unknown.

Many people - including people who read this blog - have leapt to her defense, saying she didn't drink, she didn't drug. If anything, it was a T.I.A. or some other undetected medical problem.

If we can hope for anything out of this, it's the idea that her 5-year-old son, who survived the crsh, can grow up knowing that her mother didn't self-inflict this wound.

And we can also hope that she didn't have friends and family living in denial over what could have been an undetected mental and substance abuse issue. We can hope that they are simply right.

From The New York Daily News:

You wouldn't look twice at Daniel Schuler if you saw him at the gas pump, on the loading dock or in the park he polices at night as a security guard.

Yet cameras surrounded this chunky guy in rumpled khakis and a black shirt Thursday in Garden City, L.I., their long lenses pointed toward him like gun barrels, and he stared them down.

I don't know how he did it.

Here was a guy who lost his wife and daughter; his wife was being portrayed as Cruella De Vil behind the wheel, and he's being tarred as practically an accessory to murder.

Still he tried to defend his wife, Diane Schuler, who killed four children, three men and herself when she drove the wrong way on the Taconic on July 26, drunk and stoned.

And he wanted to defend himself.

"I never saw her drunk since the day I met her," Schuler said, pronouncing her as "huh," in middle Long Island fashion.

He lives just one town over in Floral Park, where things were happy once, as they can never fully be again.

"She was the perfect wife," he went on. "I'd marry her again tomorrow."

Schuler looked exhausted. Since the accident that killed his wife, their 2-year-old daughter, Erin, three nieces and three strangers, he has traveled upstate every day to the bedside of his son Bryan, 5, the only survivor.

Schuler desperately wanted to tell us, this woman you are describing, this was not my wife. You don't understand her.

There's a lot about this many of us don't understand.

Medical examiners tell us she had a 0.19 alcohol level and pot in her blood, with 6 grams of alcohol still in her stomach. Schuler tells us his wife rarely drank.

Cops tell us 911 callers reported that on Routes 17 and 87 she tailgated, angrily beeped and passed them on the shoulder before taking a wrong turn up the exit of the Taconic.

Schuler tells us she was such a devoted mother and aunt that she wanted to take all the kids in her vehicle, because she drove so slowly and carefully. She wanted to get them breakfast at McDonald's, he said.

Schuler believes so strongly that something else happened, something medical, that he's ready to take his wife's body out of the ground and have doctors look again, to try to solve the central mystery of this case.

He wants desperately to believe his wife is not to blame.

His will be a lonely fight because the evidence is against him, public opinion is against him and too many unanswered questions still swirl in the wake of one of the worst highway tragedies in the metropolitan area.

Yet, he stood there, his world in ashes around him, trying desperately to try to make sense of it.

I don't know how he did it.

No mystery in tragedy - wrong-way crash driver was drunk

Once again, there is no real mystery in tragedy. Instead, the only unanswered question is not how a mother of two drank twice the legal limit of alcohol, smoked a lot of pot and crashed her minivan on the Taconic Parkway in New York, killing eight people, including herself and her child.

The question is: Why did she do it?

Was this a family secret? Or was it her secret? Or was there some mental illness behind the facade of normality that she projected to her friends and family? Was there some undetected issue that was ignored, and shouldn't have been ignored, but played against her type?

Here, we have somebody playing against type: No reported history of mental illness, self-medication or dual diagnosis. But something caused Diane Schuler to drive erratically as she did, call up her brother and complain about how she felt, and then drive head-on into another car.

Why were drinking and drugs never raised as an issue? Why did we just discount what wasn't so obvious, that some people can put up the facade of living a "normal" life, but they're really all that normal?

Before we demonize her, perhaps we need to start peeling away at the face of tragedy and see what true cause lies beneath.

As reported by The New York Daily News:

Death driver Diane Schuler was drunk and high on marijuana when her wrong-way crash killed eight people on the Taconic State Parkway, sources told the Daily News on Tuesday.

Schuler's blood alcohol level was .19 - about two-and-a-half times the legal limit, investigators confirmed Tuesday.

State Police first learned the toxicology results last Friday, but decided not to reveal the information until the victims were buried.

Police have given the findings to Schuler's family and relatives of the three other victims of the July 26 crash, which killed 36-year-old Schuler, her 4-year-old daughter, and her three nieces, ages 9, 7 and 5. Her 5-year-old son survived.

Also killed were the three Yonkers men inside the SUV Schuler hit - Guy Bastardi, 49, his father Michael Bastardi, 81 and family friend Daniel Longo, 74.

"We're beside ourselves," said Robert Guzzo. His wife, Roseann Bastardi, is the sister and daughter of the victims.

"Nothing's going to bring them back," he said. I can't say it helps to know what happened."

"In the beginning I was as puzzled as everyone else, but now it makes sense," Guzzo said. "I'm very angry... but it's a tragedy on both sides. I feel for those kids."

Westchester's chief medical examiner, Dr. Millard Hyland, told the Journal News the case has been ruled a homicide and referred to the district attorney.

Investigators revealed Monday that Schuler had been driving erratically for nearly 60 miles before the fiery crash and stopped at a Liberty, N.Y., McDonald's on the drive home from a camping trip in Sullivan County.

Her husband, Daniel Schuler, told police they left the campground around 9:30 a.m. and his wife was fine.

Around 1 p.m., Schuler called her brother - whose daughters were in the car - and said she was sick and needed help driving.

The brother, Warren Hance, called State Police in Tarrytown to say Schuler needed help. Troopers searched for the red minivan she was driving, but didn't find her in time.

Around 1:30 p.m., Schuler entered the north-bound Taconic via an exit ramp in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County.

She drove for 1.7 miles before plowing into the Bastardis' Chevy SUV.

"I don't even want to think about if the brother knew what she was doing and let those kids get in the car," Guzzo said.

The Bastardis and Longo were on their way to Guzzo's house for dinner. They were going to discuss an upcoming family vacation to Wildwood, N.J., an annual tradition.

"We can't bear to go this year," Guzzo said. "I don't know if we'll ever go again."

My great uncle, the wallpaper hanger

I first learned I had a great uncle named Frederick when I visited my family's Hillside, N.J. cemetery plot last November. His tombstone had been pulled from the ground and tossed to the side. The family headstone had fallen on the ground, and was laying on its face.

It was like standing outside an abandoned restaurant and trying to figure out what was on the lunch menu. I had little hope that I could draw anything from this decrepit scene.

But a visit to the graveyard office, and a death certificate from California gave that ugly scene some meaning. In fact, it was downright symbolic.

At the graveyard office, I learned that Frederick died of gas asphyxiation with his mother, Lydia, on Oct. 4, 1928. Their deaths weren't ruled a suicide, though the circumstances seemed strange and suspicious. Five years later, Frederick's brother, Edward, died the same way.

I later learned that Frederick led a rather undistinguished life, working for his Civil War veteran father as a "wallpaper hanger" and as a clerk for his brother, Edward, who was my great-grandfather.

Then, three weeks ago, the death certificate for Frederick's oldest son, Clarence, arrived in the mail - three months after I asked for it. The informant was his son, Donald. We talked, and the flood gates opened.

I learned that Frederick was married. I learned that his wife, Matilda, up and left in 1915, taking the three children to California and leaving Frederick behind, alone.

I talked to Frederick's great-granddaughter, Sharon Winans Pearson. In that conversation, I learned what I long suspected. Frederick, most likely, was another symbol of the long history of mental illness in my family.

Sharon did a great job in filling in the holes in Frederick's life that came as no surprise. Here is what she wrote:

Matilda married Frederick Winans on June 29, 1892. Frederick's father was of English-Dutch origin and his name may have been Winant. Unfortunately, Frederick was not home very much. Rumors tell us he had an alcohol problem. Therefore Matilda was on her own to raise the three children:

1. Mabel, born 1893,
2. Clarence, born 1899, and
3. Merrill, born 1907.

To support the family, Matilda ran a two-story boarding house in Elizabeth, N.J. Although Matilda may not have visited church on a regular basis, she did attend certain events. Merrill remembers his older sister helping him get dressed and ready for these special occasions. Family documents show Matilda was baptized and married at Christ Church (Episcopal), in Elizabeth.

In the early 1900's it was customary for wealthy women to have a seamstress come to their home for a period of time, and live with the family. Matilda, who was an excellent seamstress, was able to secure jobs of this type and would stay with families for extended periods. Young Merrill, who was probably under the age of eight at this time, accompanied his mother. Many of these homes had beautiful gardens and Merrill would often be sent outside to play. As he wandered along the pathways he began to develop an interest in planting his own garden. Later in life Merrill would excel as a landscape architect.

It was not uncommon for young boys to be at the train station (see above picture). One could find out the latest news, pick up the family mail, and watch travelers from far away places bustle back and forth across the streets. One day Clarence pulled Merrill in a wagon along the busy street, when suddenly he stopped and pointed toward a man in the distance.

"Merrill," Clarence said, "That is your father."

This is Merrill's only recollection of his father.

Where are the enablers?

Their best friend was gone, laying in a casket at a star-studded funeral, but Liz Taylor and Diana Ross were nowhere to be found.

Funny. When Michael Jackson was deep in the throes of drug addiction, these two members of the Hollywood elite were always close behind, suffering from their own personal woes of pill-dependency and drinking.

They hung onto him like bugs at a picnic table, supposedly providing him comfort and care while Jackson mired himself in plastic surgery disasters, and began to display increasingly erratic behavior.

Face it: Michael Jackson had mental illness, and displayed symptoms of anorexia and obsessive compulsive disorder. In his interviews, he displayed the symptoms of a dope addict, talking as though he had just undergone a lobotomy and failing repeatedly to utter full, coherent sentences.

But he did little to help himself, falling victim to self-medication. Like a typical drug addict, he hung around with a rough crowd. Judging by their own well-documented behavior, these are the kind of people who do more to feed a habit than to end one.

And when the moment to pay a public tribute came - just as the police were searching for clues as to why Jackson died so suddenly - Liz and Diana failed to show at the memorial service and hid behind their public statements.

Liz's problems with drug addiction are legendary. Diana Ross has been accused of drunk driving.

Throw in Macaulay Culkin, who has had his own problems, and you have what they call in hockey a "hat trick" of people who didn't provide the kind of role modeling that could have inspired Jackson to live a healthy life.

Culkin, Ross and Taylor have said little to nothing since Jackson's death, even though Jackson did what he could to provide comfort and care to these people when they suffered through their own person traumas.

Its too bad that Janet Jackson took such an image hit with her "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl a few years ago. Save for that episode, she's led a relatively stable life for someone in show business.

By all accounts, she did as much as she could to steer her brother the right way, and even helped lead an intervention - something that probably didn't sit well with Jackson if he, indeed, was as much of drug addict as reports indicate.

What happened? Janet was written out of the will. Diana Ross is second in line to get the kids.

In the end, Jackson stuck with the people who may have enabled him, not the people who wanted to help him. But, in the very end, Liz and Diana did what enablers do when the heat is on: They were no-shows.

"Dirty Diana" lyrics, by Michael Jackson

You'll never make me stay
So take your weight off of me
I know your every move
So won't you just let me be
I've been here times before
But I was to blind to see
That you seduce every man
This time you won't seduce me

She's saying that's ok
Hey baby do what you please
I have the stuff the you want
I am the thing that you need
She looked me deep in the eyes
She's touchin' me so to start
She says there's no turnin' back
She trapped me in her heart

Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, no
Dirty Diana
Let me be!

Oh no...
Oh no...
Oh no...

She likes the boys in the band
She knows when they come to town
Every musician's fan after the
curtain comes down
She waits at backstage doors
For those who have prestige
Who promise fortune and fame
A life that's so carefree

She's says that's ok
Hey baby do what you want
I'll be your night lovin' thing
I'll be the freak you can taunt
And I don't care what you say
I want to go too far
I'll be your everything
If you make me a star

Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, no
Dirty Diana...
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, no
Dirty Diana...
Diana!
Diana!
Dirty Diana!
It's Dia...aa...aa...ana!

She said I have to go home
'Cause I'me real tired you see
But I hate sleppin' alone
Why don't you come with me
I said my baby's at home
She's problably worried tonight
I didn't call on the phone to
Say that I'm alright

Diana walked up to me,
She said I'm all yours tonight
At that I ran to the phone
Sayin' baby I'm alright
I said but unlock the door.
Because I forgot the key.
She said he's not coming back
Because he's slepping with me

Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, no

In the end, the only one who could help Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson

"To you, Michael is an icon," ... "To us, Michael is family and he will forever live in all of our hearts...."

These were Janet Jackson's words, spoken this past weekend at the BET awards. Well-timed as they were, they were also about saving face in the wake of tragedy.

But actions speak louder the words. Did anyone ever act to save Michael Jackson?

A family with a boatload of money couldn't rehabilitate a man who was 50 years old, weighed 112 pounds and, according to reports, had nothing but undigested pills in his stomach when he was found dead?

If he did have anorexia, as his symptoms suggested, then Michael Jackson may have lived the same destiny that has doomed millions of others with mental illness. He was helplessly helpless, and he ultimately endured the same kind of existence as that of a homeless person who self medicates away their personal demons.

The only differences between Michael Jackson and the man on the street, frankly, is money, and access.

Like a homeless person, he ultimately confronted a society and a system that does more to enable, and less to assist those who can't come to grips with their own fragility.

Indeed, media reports say that, yes, the family did act. Fox News reported that exactly the same scenario almost played out in 2004 in Jackson's rented mansion. Jackson’s brother Randy found him unconscious in his home and immediately called a paramedic friend who lived very close by and who rushed to the house.

Fox News also reported that Jackson’s family started having premonitions of his premature death in 2001 around the time of his New York "30th Anniversary" concert series and were forced to intervene. A family meeting was held and, basically, Jackson was begged to seek help. His mother started asking a lot of questions about how Elvis Presley died.

But Jackson ultimately went his merry way, because that's what many people with severe mental illness do. He further destroyed his reputation, bankrupted his finances and ruined his credibility. He seemed to further isolate himself, and when he did show his face in public, he created embarrassing tabloid fodder that inspired the "Wacko Jacko" headlines.

He was like many of the lost souls I've seen, and interviewed, on the streets of New York City and Philadelphia, each of them with family members who show up every now and then to show they care. They give them money, they talk to them and they shake their hands. But the family gets ignored, and the money gets spent on booze and heroin.

Jackson didn't need his family's money. He had his own, and he had his drugs. Injecting Demerol into yourself, frankly, is like shooting legalized heroin and having the insurance companies pay for it. If the media reports are true, then Jackson was basically a legal junkie with health coverage.

Now the focus and the blame has shifted to his doctor, Conrad Murray. References to Elvis abound: Did the doctor enable him by prescribing the medications that may very well have killed him? Why wasn't he stopped?

Or maybe Jackson was, in the words of David Crosby, too far gone. Instead of blaming the doctor, maybe we need to look at ourselves, and how society treats mental illness. Maybe we need to look at how society creates Michael Jacksons, Elvis Presleys and Marilyn Monroes, only to watch their fragile statues crumble.

In the end, Jackson was helpless to the point of being hopeless. Not a doctor or a psychiatrist in the world could have transformed a man who had nothing left to give.

Neil Young/Helpless

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked
and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless.

The good life, in Florida (the story of my grandfather, part III)

At 63, Dick Winans finally got the fraternity party he always wanted.

Away from the office at Greystone Psychiatric Hospital, free from a troubled marriage just months after his wife's 1975 death, he let it go.

Instead of wearing his ever-present necktie and suit, the same he kind his father made him wear when he attended an exclusive private high school in Hightstown, N.J., Dick spent much of the Florida trip he took with us wearing black swimming trunks and showing his hairy chest.

Normally lean, he started to show a belly that hung over the waist band of the trunks.

He dated, and the more he dated, the more he drank. He missed Dorothy, his wife, and he cried at the mention of her name.

But in another breath, he'd call her "bitch" and moan that she left him nothing in inheritance.

We took him on this April 1976 as an act of mercy. We were afraid that, if we left him home, he'd get smashed, hop in the car again, drive the hour drive from Morristown to Asbury Park, N.J. and drink some more.

Just a few years before, he disappeared for a whole day, until he was found in his car in Ocean Grove, plastered.

Another time, he drank all morning before he and Dorothy went out for a drive. They ended up in Asbury Park, where Dick pulled out his camera, and snapped beautiful women.

My sister and I fretted. "What if he goes blind?" we thought. What we should have worried about was Dick pitching back Budweisers and getting behind the wheel.

On a warm day in April, Dick arrived at our house, in Point Pleasant, N.J., wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a bag packed with a storefull of underwear, socks and Vick's VapoRub that he rubbed on the lining of his nose to clear his aching sinuses.

I talked to him at night as he slept on a mattress on the floor of our living room. He tickled me and laughed, and traded knock-knock jokes with me.

I remember feeling surprised. I had heard about him, and always saw him as a straight arrows. I saw him in the photos with the thick eyebrows, and thin grin.

But then I also saw him in photos with my mother, pulling on her pigtails, and smiling. He was devoting the kind of attention that my mother used to give me. In Point Pleasant, I saw that man that I had heard about, but thought was a legend.

We borrowed a station wagon from one of my father’s friends, just so we could fit him. My brother and I switched sitting in the wagon, while my grandfather and Carolyn sat in the back seat.

The man who tickled me at home fell silent. He struggled to engage in even simple chit-chat. When he did try to join in on conversations between my parents, he often got a stare, if not a leer from my mother.

One time she got so upset by his interjection that she pulled off her sunglasses and slammed them in between the seats. Dick leaned back, and returned to saying nothing.

Much like the California trips, the ride was too long. Interstate 95 wasn’t fully built yet, so we found ourselves taking alternate routes in North Carolina and Georgia. Signs for steakhouses would get my mother going. “Please, dear, can we go out to eat?” “Please?”

At every stop, my grandfather drank, sucking down beer after beer. By the end of the meal, he’d be sloshed, and his breath would smell like rubbing alcohol.

Then he would want dessert, so he’d take his knife and bang an empty glass like a bell. “Waitress!” he’d shout. We all wanted to slump in our seats and disappear.

At first, he was like a walking comedy act, quite the reverse of what we once thought about him. By the time we reached Miami Beach, however, he was draining us.

We also knew all the words to the song. Arriving at the LaGorce hotel, finally, we had the same thoughts we had in Los Angeles the previous year. Should we turn back?

Once there, Dick put on a display, unleashing and revealing himself in a way that even surprised his daughter. He traded in his well-pressed-suit look for that of a 63-year-old man trying to reliving his frat-boy years.

He drank all day, and into the night, and by the time we ate with him at dinner, he was sloshed, banging glasses and angrily demanding waitress service.

At night, he’d disappear again; one time, he was supposed to babysit me in his room. He didn’t show up until 2 a.m., slumping into his room where he confront my mother, who was sitting on the bed next to me, waiting, “Where have you been?” she said. “I was out on a date,” he said.

Another night, he recaptured the Greystone look, wearing a jacket and tie. Only he decided to go for a jog – with the suit on.

I remember my brother and I going to a neighboring park to look for him, looking behind the trees that were spread out in a grassy field near the beach. He was found, but I’m not sure how.

Several days later, we went to pick him up for dinner and, again, couldn’t find him. We sat in the car while my mother went in to investigate. She walked out of the lobby, looking steamed. “He was passed out on the couch!” she said. “He woke up and he said, ‘Where am I?’”

When he walked out to the parking lot, he looked like he could barely stand, and his shirt was pulled out of his pants.

The afternoon before we left, he drank nearly a case of beer while babysitting my brother and me. He gave us a watch to look at while he made repeated trips into the kitchen. Every 15 minutes or so, he reached into the refrigerator and pulled out cans of “Ale.” With each can, he chugged the contents down his throat and then slammed the empties into the trash can.

By the end of the trip, my parents had had it with him. My mother confronted him one day about his behavior. “I’m 62 and you’re 38 but that doesn’t give you the right to talk to me that way,” he said.

My mother stormed away from him, cursing and yelling out loud to my father. She never looked so angry.

The next day, we went home, and the car was largely silent the whole way. Occasionally, Dick would launch into his “Off we go” song, but his look was pained as we hustled back to New Jersey, only stopping once along the way.

I said a few things to him, but he mumbled back. The boyish enthusiasm was gone. I wanted to reignite the spark we had at the beginning of the trip, but Dick seemed to be intimidated by my mother, and too embarrassed about his behavior to respond.

Dick never went on another trip with the whole family again.

In search of John Clear

About a year ago, I got a call from a man with a deep, husky voice.

"Tom!" he said. "This is John Clear!"

I thought it was a joke, but not a fake joke. I thought it was John just being funny again.

"Everything's different for me now," he said. "I'm turning things around."

I remembered this small kid with beach-blonde hair whose speech didn't match this trucker voice. I remembered this kid who couldn't utter a sentence without telling a joke - and every time, he was funny.

I remembered a kid whose voice was like his name - clear, not the throaty kind you get when spend a lot of time gaining street cred in a state prison cell block.

I remembered him as the funniest person I knew. I think everything I learned about being funny, I learned from John Clear. At dinner with the family, I'd repeat things he said or did, and even my straight-as-an-arrow father would laugh. "I think John Clear is my kind of guy," he'd say.

It wasn't always what he said that was funny. It was the goofy context. "Hey Tom, did you ever shave your face with a lawnmower?"

I would laugh; he wouldn't. He said it as a straight, serious statement, even if it was utterly ridiculous. If he laughed at it, he'd cheapen it, as if he was trying too sell it, and beg for affirmation. He was too smart to ruin it.

John never had to beg for affection. It came naturally. But life has ironies: Of all the people from my 1985 graduating class at Point Pleasant Borough High School in New Jersey, few have had it harder.

He fell into a world of drugs and hardship that can destroy a life, and destroy the soul. In that world, the person you knew long ago often disappears. The person who was always funny was now a straight man on the street talking about recovery but showing his pain.

The man who called me last year was, in a way, begging. He was as desperate as he was hopeful. He wanted me to write about him, and tell his story about how he was trying to win custody of his kids. He wanted me to write about people who spent time in state prison with him, and how they were getting screwed and mistreated by the state.

I wanted to do what he wanted. But I got busy, and I let it go. I'm sorry, John.

I'm finally writing about him now, but not because of what happened to him. He just seems to have disappeared, at least from my life. I called his cell; it was disconnected. I called his dad - no answer, no reply. I emailed; it bounced back.

Hopefully, somebody who knows where he is can see this, and can let me know how he's doing.

I want to write about John because he could have been any one of us. And, because of hardships in my own family, I could have been him. If possible, I want to help him find the person he was. He doesn't have to be funny. I'd just like to see him return to being the kind of guy who made everybody who knew him better.

John had fallen into heroin addiction. He was nailed for impersonating a police officer, or something like that. He was in state prison, and he was photographed. His mug was on the Internet; the big white smile with the small fangs was gone. The blonde hair was reduced to a receding hairline and stubble. His look was dark, and his frown was deep.

John had married right out of school, and had kids. Family strife, drugs and God knows what else brought the marriage down, and him with it.

A support system, one rooted in family, didn't exist: His mother died; his father long was estranged from him.

After graduation, he called me a few times, and actually wanted to hang out. But his drug-addled life was too hardcore for me.

I roomed with him and another buddy, Ken Winne, on the senior trip. That's when I first noticed the funny guy I knew slipping away. John was more interested in scoring something than he was entertaining others.

I used to hang out with these guys, and do stupid but small stuff for kicks. There was no Wii, not even Atari at the time, so you had to make your own fun.

I was with John the day the Jamesway department store opened in Point Pleasant in the spring of 1980 (it closed in 1995). John was pulling Hot Wheels cars out of their packages and running them under the clothing racks. I was his nerdy alter-ego, so my nervous reaction was probably funnier than his.

I kept trying to stop them with my feet, but John had me beat. He unwrapped nearly ever car that was hanging in the racks, each packaged neatly. Then he turned the floor into LeMans, and turned me into a dancing monkey.

One car made it all the way to the cash register. I leaned down, picked up the car and looked up. My Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Gilbert, was standing there, glaring at me and shaking her head. "Oh, shit!" I said, right in front of her. Then I took off and hid in the clothing racks, peeping through a rack of blouses until she walked away.

At school, we drove Miss Mason crazy, the Point Pleasant Boro employee posing as a music teacher. We always had some quick answer for her erratic behavior. It was a coming-out moment for me, compelled by John's humor and his daring to make you go over the edge.

Once, he and I pretended to be John Travolta when we were supposed to be square-dancing. "Stay-in alive! Stay-in alive!" we sang while Miss Mason played country-western. She got so fed up, she grabbed my hair and threw me out in the hallway. I turned quickly toward John, who flashed his white-as-nails smile.

That was back when John was good at getting out of trouble. After he left high school, his support system was gone, and so was John.

On that day, in January 2008, hearing him was the surprise. Hearing from him was not. John had been trying to reach me for years. He heard I was visiting prisons, and writing about people who do drugs to self-medicate from mental illness. I was trying to explore the history of my family, and how mental illness was pervasive with every generation.

He knew my mother, because my mother sold Avon to his mother. He knew my mother died after she was overwhelmed by the effects of obsessive compulsive disorder.

In 2005, he was in state prison. At the time, I was writing stories on the prison system, and I knew my way around. I sent him a picture of our 20-year class reunion in 1985, as well as a story I wrote on my mother. "That made my year," John told me over the telephone.

When he returned to life after his prison stint more than a year ago, he called me to reminisce about the Mets, about being a Republican (my card-carrying membership for that party expired about 1992). He then sent me court documents related to custody cases with his children.

John was taking responsibility for himself. I felt good. Maybe what I sent him in prison helped bring him back. If you give a man rope, 10 times out of 10, he's going to grab it.

Now I'm trying again.