Sandy Wells: Innerviews

'I FEEL I'VE BEEN REBORN'

He was the quintessential golden boy. Prominent family. Idyllic childhood.
All-American teenager. Blond. Handsome. Popular. A tennis star.

Behind the poster boy façade was a drug-addicted alcoholic.

Today, classmates probably wouldn't know him. Booze and drugs damaged him.

At 54, sober and drug-free, Chick Maddox reflects ruefully on squandered
possibilities, a bright future blighted by addiction.

He tells his story to students at area schools. Maybe he can keep just one
from making the same mistakes.

"Dad was a dentist. They built a house across from what was to be the new
Holz Elementary School on Loudon Heights Road. I started playing tennis
when I was about 8 or 10. I won the Charleston city tournament for the
16-and-under division.

"Everything was fine. I didn't anticipate anything going wrong. But from
the minute I took that first hit off that joint or that first drink off
that bottle of beer, I was doomed.

"For a while, nobody noticed anything unusual. I was in the top quarter of
my class at GW. I had more girlfriends than anybody, and the fellows liked
me, too. And my teachers and coaches.

"Behind their backs, I was drinking and drugging. They didn't catch up to
me until I got to college. Then my classmates didn't want much to do with
me because I acted funny, different from people who didn't take drugs or
drink liquor. They didn't know how to take me.

"I was about 15 when it started. When there was a dance, I would take a
bottle. I had seen my father take a flask. All my crowd was doing it. I
just didn't know when to say 'when.' When everybody else went away to
school and got serious about wanting to do something with their lives, they
gave it up. My friends are all doctors and lawyers and architects and stuff.

"I remember saying how much fun we had, but I don't remember having any
fun. The next day, after I'd wrecked the car and finished throwing up,
'Wasn't that fun?' we'd say.

"I had lots of car wrecks, bad wrecks where I went through the windshield
and totaled the car, drunk on liquor. You could drive around on marijuana
and get away with it as long as the cops didn't catch you. But liquor was
different. I went through the windshield about every time. Nobody ever got
hurt, not even me. My parents would ground me, but after being without the
car for a couple of weeks, I would go back to drinking and driving too fast.

"Occasionally, I would see my mother walk through the commons area at GW
toward the principal's office. I would hear about it that night at dinner:
'I've talked to the principal. You're going to have to straighten up. You
can do better than this.'

"I went to Hampden-Sydney my freshman year in college. I was drinking beer
and fell off a roof and broke all the bones in my heels. I ended up in a
wheelchair for six months. I had to learn to walk again.

"I moved to Morris Harvey [University of Charleston] the next year. I
studied hard. Then on weekends, I let it all hang out. Everybody did. We
were college students. It just so happens that the things I did affected me
differently than a lot of them. I had problems understanding things and had
to work extra hard at my studies.

"My tennis was very important. I had to practice twice as hard to be as
good as I wanted to be. It all paid off. I won the conference championship
for my division when I was a senior.

"The Malibu in Kanawha City had all the beer you could drink for $2. I got
drunk and got in my little hummingbird yellow Opal GT and took off down
MacCorkle Avenue. I didn't make the curve at 39th Street. I knocked the
lamppost out of the ground, went through the windshield and totaled the car.

"The police took us to jail. I spent the night in the drunk tank. The next
morning, I went to dad's office and said, 'Dad, I'm sorry, but I totaled
the car last night, and we're going to have to get a new car.' He said,
'Don't you have a tennis match this morning? Get your tennis clothes on and
get your mom's car.' That's what I mean by enabling. So I got my mom's car
and went over and won the conference championship.

"I spent every bit I had. When I started smoking grass, it was $15 for a
lid. Now it's $250 for a lid. Somebody would score some LSD or mescaline or
something, and whenever it hit, I was on top of it. They knew who to come
to. I was eager to buy.

"Hallucinogens. Psychedelics. Uppers. Downers. Speed. Barbiturates.
Marijuana. I would take a bottle to a dance and drink the whole bottle. I
was doing it all for a while. Then I realized if I was going to do anything
with my life, I was going to have to start right then.

"I gave up the drugs, but I still drank. My friends wouldn't leave me
alone. They'd say, 'C'mon, let's go have a beer.' Or, 'We're getting
together down at the forest with a keg. You're not going to miss out on
that, are you?' Peer pressure. I couldn't give it up.

"My parents were in denial. 'He couldn't be an alcoholic. Look who we are.'
A doctor friend of my dad's told him about a doctor in behavioral medicine
and psychiatry at [CAMC] General. I was one of the first patients to go
through that program. I visited that place 13 times in 10 years about
something bizarre I had done. I think I threatened my mother a couple of
times. My little sister was just a child, and she didn't feel safe. I felt
terrible when I had these episodes.

"The alcohol and drugs affected my brain and caused me to act the way I
did. They put me on some medicine. I still take it. I haven't been back to
the hospital or had any episodes for 20 years. They said I had a chemical
imbalance in my brain. Since I have this chemical imbalance, when I take a
drink or take drugs, I want more, like morphine.

"The reason I didn't get well when I kept going for treatment is, I kept
drinking. So I kept pouring gasoline on the fire. I had to quit so I
wouldn't stimulate that chemical in the brain.

"I'm not healthy. I have arthritis and glaucoma and emphysema. That's a
terminal disease. I smoked for 30 or 40 years. But I feel safe. I feel
serene. I feel at peace. I wouldn't hurt a fly.

"I don't touch alcohol, not a drop. The least bit will cause me to be
intoxicated. I worked the 12 steps and got sponsored. From what I was to
what I am now, I feel I've been reborn.

"I'm a certified dental technician. I've worked in several labs. I've
worked at Shawnee Hills. I've worked at the Red Cross in blood services for
three or four years. I do volunteer work at the church.

"About three years ago, I decided I had a story to tell. I had to give back
what I had learned to keep others from having to go through what I went
through. I wrote to the Kanawha County Board of Education asking to let me
do this program. I have a partner, Paul Frampton, a lawyer. He runs the
PowerPoint presentation, and we have a question-and-answer period.

"We've been to about every high school in the county. I think the kids are
listening. I see it in their faces. A couple of schools have decided their
kids don't have drug or alcohol problems. I feel sorry for them. They just
don't know what's going on.

"My dad died in 1974 of cancer. My mother is my best advocate. My stepdad
is Bob Silverstein, a county commissioner and city councilman for many
years. They're both 100 percent behind me.

"If I had entered the medical doctor dentistry program over in Pennsylvania
like my dad, if I had come back here and taken over my dad's practice and
joined Edgewood Country Club, I don't know if I would have been any happier
than I am right now, having overcome such a seemingly hopeless state of
mind and body. That means all the world to me."