- Benjamin Lerner on the house his father built in VT
same way an aging businessman would see a trophy wife or
a BMW. I felt accepted.”
Although he was accepted to Frost School of Music for
piano and music business (double major), he did not take
school seriously. “I cared about smoking weed, rapping,
talking to girls, sniffing coke - because I started doing that
- and … I dropped out of school. … I got a day job selling
Christmas trees, and I was getting drunk and high every
night. … I blew through thousands of dollars, of money
that wasn’t mine, partying and driving around the country
trying to get drunk with kids.
Ultimately, Benjamin moved to San Francisco with the
goal of a fresh start. Soon after arrival, however, his
wisdom teeth all came-in, and they were impacted. He
had them removed under anesthesia, after which he was
given some pain medicine to take home.
“I was like, ‘No, I’m not a junkie. I’m gonna be okay. I don’t
need that.’ And then they looked at me, and they saw the
way I was dressed. I literally had a RAW Rolling Papers
t-shirt on. They were like, ‘You can’t smoke weed for two
weeks’. And I looked at them, because I wasn’t drinking,
but I had convinced myself that smoking weed was okay.
40 VERMONT
VERMONT
Magazine
44
magazine
FALL 2019
“My dad used to always bring me up here when I was a kid. He built a
house in Sandgate in the 70s. He came up after graduating school and
traveling around the world. He came back and he wanted to be part of
these kind of Post-Woodstock hippie farm communes. And my dad got
tired of it. He went and hung out with [his friend] up on a mountain,
and he said, ‘This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen’. The
guy eventually all but gave him the property at the top of the hill, with
the caveat, ‘You’re crazy if you want to live here’ … But with the help of
close friends up there, he turned this hilly windy place into his little sanc-
tuary … He would take me out of my urban reality and into this Stark
landscape. The first day in my life I ever really had to physically work
was when I turned 10. I had a bunch of stuff I was bringing up when we
went on our ski trip during the winter. You can’t get up the road. It’s like
half-a-mile with a really steep, 45 degree incline. And it was icy, and he’s
like, ‘I’m not taking your stuff.’ So, he makes me drag this 50, 60 pound
sled up this steep incline with a whiteout blizzard going on, and I hated
it. But I felt so satisfied when I got to the top of the hill. And that’s kind
of an analogy for how taking on this house has felt to me. Because when
I got clean, my dad decided to give the house to me. And so I started
coming up here after he deeded the house to me, and I was responsible
for the taxes and to check up on it. And it’s been a lot of work. And it
continues to be. But the peace that I feel on the top of that hill, knowing
that I’m carrying on the legacy of this hippie woodsman - who gave me
the gift of knowing the pride and satisfaction that can come from hard
work - is incredible.”
I looked at them like they just told me that I couldn’t
breathe for the next two hours, and I got scared. So, I
started taking these Percocets - and before I knew it, I
was addicted to them. When I ran out, I couldn’t sleep.
And it just so happened that down the hill in San Fran-
cisco, there’s this place called the Tenderloin, which is this
place where thousands of California’s homeless flock …
for the cheapest and most potent drugs. … I went down
there, and they didn’t sell percocets, so I started buying
oxycontin 30s. The first time I snorted an opiate was like
the feeling I got from drinking times 1000. I mean, it was
this lucid bliss. I, literally, felt like I was talking to God,
because not only did the voice in my head saying that I
wasn’t good enough go away, a new one came in - and
it was like, ‘everything is okay’. It was like the sky was
opening up for me … And then the consequences started
getting real. I went from partying too hard and getting
a DUI - to pawning everything I owned and going days
without eating anything but Ramen and water. … And
within a couple of months, I was sniffing heroin. I went
to rehab. The first time, I wasn’t ready. And then it just
sped up to me smoking oxys, smoking heroin, popping
Xanax and Klonopin every day. There was still one line I
wouldn’t cross, which was shooting heroin.