In Memory of Henry Laszlo Ecker-Racz

It is with great sadness that we just learned of the death of Henry Laszlo Ecker-Racz, who was a member of our Newport Writers for Recovery group. Just 27, Laszlo was an incredible athlete, an avid hunter and fisherman, and a voracious reader of all subjects who could invigorate any discussion with his intellect and good spirit. He was a wonderful writer as well. Please keep him and his family in your thoughts as you read his work "Here is Why I'm Not Giving Up."

Here is Why I’m Not Giving Up

by Laszlo Ecker-Racz

Before I ever encountered the blissful surrender of substances, I was confronted with the terrible weight of knowledge. The overthought effects of my actions, the sheer terror of the realities of this world, gross and imagined. The death, wars, starvation, abuse. I felt childlike; there is a universal solution that lies within each individual. There is a way to relinquish something, that assuages all the cascading effects of negativity, anger, selfishness.

Then came drugs. After the Zen-like release of exercise to oblivion, which always left something more in the tank. (I was dubbed the masochist by all my high school athletic teams as I would push until I couldn’t any longer then push more—often running 100-200 miles a week, not including calisthenics.) After the dreamy Sutric trance of sex, which always left an egotistical self-evaluation which was left wanton then came the drugs. The complete release of any desire to do better, to change anything. The understanding that all is as it is, and can be enjoyed, in oblivion with the complete surrender of self.

But there was never enough oblivion. The endless nothingness seemed never to last. Interesting the infinite expanses of suchness when time does not exist in human terms, goes by instantly. A forever within seconds.

And so I am confronted by another problem to which the solution lies within myself. It appears to be a perpetual pattern, geometric, physical, biological, from which I cannot escape by turning away. So I have to exceed it, embrace it, use it ‘til it runs out.

Now I am the proud father of two children who will soon be intellectually facing the same philosophical conundrum of growing up, living. It is now more than just within myself that I seek the solution. To see the light within myself and my children and all those around me. To change the perspective from self-loathing, deprecatory analysis to peaceful, graceful, loving acceptance, understanding. The answer is within each of us but the light lives for me lives within my children, and for them because they are I, and I will never give up.