You Can Get There From Here: Part 11

Editor’s Note:

When we last saw Barry he had severed his final connection with UCLA tennis where he had once set record for winning consecutive matches. The next chapters in the book chronicle his horrifying, heartbreaking slide into more and more drugs, psychiatry, psychiatric drugs, and near death experiences—all too gruesome even for Tennisplayer. (Get the book if you want to know.) But as the title says You Can Get There From Here, so let’s pick up his story with the tale of redemption and 10 years of sobriety that eventually followed.

It’s March 9, 2022, late in the evening. My house is dark. I sit alone at my desk typing you these words. Tomorrow will be ten years since a fateful night when I attended a concert with Trey Anastasio and the LA Philharmonic. I was overcome with emotion that evening seeing my rock and roll idol performing clean and sober upon the stage, sparking a long-dormant flame within me that maybe I could try sobriety one more time. Sobriety and I, two ships who’d long since passed in the night. Yet, when I finish typing these final words and lay my head to bed to end this day,…