Chris Lemig's Articles on Lions Roar

Even at twelve, Chris Lemig knew he was gay -- he just didn't want to believe it. Spurred on by intolerance, ignorance, and fear, he took his first steps into the closet, and so began twenty-three years of drinking, drugs, and attempted suicides. Finally, after being victimized in a hate crime, Chris knew it was time to make a change. He came out, and in part thanks to his study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, got -- and has stayed -- clean. Chris tells his story in his brave and harrowing new book, The Narrow Way: A Memoir of Coming Out, Getting Clean, and Finding Buddha. Here, in an online exclusive, is "Rebirth," a crucial chapter from it, shared here in its entirety: Time passes unhindered. When we make mistakes, we cannot turn back and try again. All we can do is use the present well. -- H.H. The XIV Dalai Lama Up, up, up I climb. Up into Rocky Mountain foothills; up into the heart of my fears and limitations. The whoosh of the highway is now far in the distance as the still air becomes thin and clear. Cool rivers of sweat pour from my temples running fast down my neck and back. Today, six months before heading off to India, I am alive! I walk a furious pace, over the craggy landscape, through awakening sage and scrub oak, bound and determined to conquer these seven miles that have turned me back a dozen times. But five months without cigarettes or liquor now and my lungs feel like new. I breathe in deep at the two-mile mark, the start of the long loop trail, and pause. I will not turn back this time. I will not give up. I have come too far, too fast. Five months old now. A newborn and delighted at the rush of senses only just discovered. I think back, remembering that first day, the day of my rebirth. I can see myself coming home from the short vacation I took just after coming out. I thought I should celebrate. But now, standing outside the airport waiting for my ride, I look long and hard at the crumpled pack of Camels in my hand. My eyes follow down, down as they fall away into the trash and I dive in after them in my mind, trembling at the thought of walking the path ahead without my dear old crutch. But then a shout from my cousin’s husband in the pick up lane and I hop into the truck. "Whoa, you smell like booze!” he says. "One last bender,” I say. One last desperate grasp at the old way. One last bout with the hammer over my head. But then I imagined my new life out of the closet, stained by the same old tired songs of abuse and shuddered. "Just one drag, just one drink and it will all go away,” say the voices of old demons still squatting in a back room in my mind. I remember the vow. Never again. I do not speak it out loud. I keep it close and secret, afraid that the power of it will evaporate like a wisp of cloud in the wind. And so we drive home where I will live with my cousin and my aunt and the hope of one last chance. Four days later without a drink or a cigarette and the cravings come in powerful waves that threaten to bowl me over. "Just one drag, just one drink and it will all go away,” say the voices of old demons still squatting in a back room in my mind. "Stay quit, stay quit, stay quit,” says another voice, a voice that I am just learning to trust, a voice that I’m beginning to recognize as my own. I chant the mantra to myself when the bargaining and the drafting of new promises begin and the demons withdraw. Stay quit, stay quit, stay quit. ••• I am in the doctor’s office cold and half naked as the skin of my thighs sticks to black vinyl. My heart beats a furious rat-tat-tat as the nurse takes blood pressure and pulse. Did he just whistle faintly through his teeth? Is he amazed that I am still alive? I am. In fact, I am certain that I am dying. Two weeks sober and in the clarity memories flood back from two decades of abuse. No one could have come out of that unscathed. So I toss and turn for long nights, searching for lumps and tumors in my throat. I am certain that the numbness in my fingertips, the aches in my chest, the bulging veins I never noticed before, the muscle spasms near my left shoulder blade and above my right eye are all signs of an imminent end. ”Three-twenty-four,” a bright voice says. The doctor has appeared out of nowhere to read the mysterious number from his laptop chart. "What?” I snap out of morbid fantasies of my funeral that I watch, disembodied from above. "Cholesterol. Your bloodwork came back. Your cholesterol. It’s three-twenty-four." I am gay. I have just come out. I am two weeks sober. I am living with family and I’m trying to stay clean on my own. I feel faint, woozy as I feel my blood pumping hard and fast through narrowing veins. It sounds bad. ”Is that bad?” I ask. "It will be if you don’t do something about it.” He is stern but kind and soon I find myself pouring my heart out to him. I tell him my story in fifty words or less. I am gay. I have just come out. I am two weeks sober. I am living with family and I’m trying to stay clean on my own. He doesn’t blink or roll his eyes. He doesn’t shift uncomfortably in his swivel seat. He is used to this sort of honesty, like a priest taking confession. He listens with all his attention then after the calm of gathering thoughts he gives me a prescription. He tells me about Twelve Steps. He tells me about medication. He tells me about vitamins and eating better and exercise. He tells me I can do it, but not alone. I take it all in, open now to advice and wisdom that only a few months ago I would have shooed away like a moth flapping by my ear. But now I have promised myself I will try anything. So I do. In a week I get up the courage to go to an AA meeting. There is warmth there, and love and support but there is something missing, like there is something else calling to me from just around the corner. I read through the Blue Book. I tear out big fat strips of fearless moral inventory, making amends and taking ownership. I toss them all into a crock-pot and cook up my own nourishing stew of recovery. Body. Mind. Soul. Spirit. These I have neglected and now they call out to me in unison. They call out for attention and healing. First I declare war on the enemies of my body. They have been hiding in the tree line, camouflaged and disguised as license, reward, and freedom. But now I flush them out like spies and traitors, hunting down and driving out all their agents and co-conspirators. Sugar, caffeine, fast food, French fries, bacon, cheese, butter and grease, I rout them all out, send them retreating to the hills. I don’t give in to their cries for mercy. Instead, I eat good food, fresh food, green food from the good earth. I listen to my body and let it tell me what it needs. It knows, it has always known. Every morning, I reach down to touch my toes. At first, the pain is unbearable, muscles flabby and unused for years. But I take it slow. Stretch, do not strain. Sit-ups then push-ups. An easy workout. Ten minutes a day. I hate it. I love it. I do it no matter what. In two weeks my blood is tested again. Just like that I am back to normal. No drugs, no treatment, no pharmaceutical courtship. It’s a tiny victory, proof that I can change. I am still scared. I am on new ground that shifts and sometimes even crumbles under my feet. I do not even know how to stand, how to walk, how to run. But I put one foot out anyway, hoping it will touch solid earth. I read old journals, my diaries of confusion and despair, filled with drunken ramblings and cheap shots at a self that cries out for love. The repression so obvious now, a life filled with so much turmoil and fear. But here and there, clues and glimmers of hope. I want to explore Tibetan Buddhism, I wrote in big, sloppy letters across the top of one page. I remember it now, The Calling, clear and ringing out of the fog of fifteen beers, cocaine, and a cloud of smoke. I just wasn’t ready to hear it. But I answer the call now. I stride into the little bookshop that I have passed a hundred times, with purpose and certainty. I march down the aisle to the three shelves marked Buddhism, breathe in the aroma of old musty books stacked haphazardly on floor and shelves. I let my fingers caress their spines, close my eyes and read the titles like Braille, absorbing their essence through my skin. I find the one. My breath quickens. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. It jumps into my hands from the shelf up above. I flip to a random page and read. Yes, this is the one. I cradle it in loving arms all the way home, down the stairs and into my room. I am giddy as I read. The words resonate in my mind like a melody forgotten or a poem I once knew by heart. With each turn of the page, each soaring Ah—ha, certainty grows. The ideas and concepts seem so familiar. I can’t explain why or claim to understand it at all, but they ring in a high, clear note that shatters years of doubt. Impermanence, suffering, devotion, discipline, concentration, meditation, liberation. This is what Buddhism is all about and it is so much more than I ever imagined. I close the cover and all I want is more, more, more. The book is filled with stories of Tibet and they take me to the high places there. Tears run down my cheeks as I read the words of the Rinpoches, Buddhas in the flesh, who teach compassion with every breath. Impermanence, suffering, devotion, discipline, concentration, meditation, liberation. This is what Buddhism is all about and it is so much more than I ever imagined. I close the cover and all I want is more, more, more. So I read. I read like I've never read before. In five years I’ve choked down two airport horror novels. Now I read two books a week. Life after death, quantum physics, Vedanta. I read the life stories of the Buddha and the Dalai Lama. I read the story of a western Zen student who spent six months in a monastery in Japan and was changed forever. I read Robert Thurman, Shunryu Suzuki, Milarepa, Somerset Maugham, Jack Kornfield, Alexandria David-Neel, Peter...

Rebirth – An excerpt from Chris Lemig’s The Narrow Way: A Memoir of Coming Out, Getting Clean and Finding Buddha

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