Success Stor
How the power of love, determination and the will to live
turned one man's life around.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR
C
igarette smoke drifts like
waves around Mickey
Bakst. The smoke is con-
stant: thick at the bottom,
then slowly dissipating as it peaks
and disappears into the stiffing
summer air.
Marlboros, Mr. Bakst says, are
his one remaining vice.
It wasn't long ago that Mickey
Bakst was a very different man.
He was an addict —"My drugs of
choice were cocaine and vodka,
100-proof Stolichnaya, though lat-
er it didn't matter if it was mouth-
wash or cologne," he says casually
— a free spirit who hitchhiked
around the country, had no ties,
always managed to get hold of
plenty of money.
Then he ended up in a hospi-
tal bed, where the physician told
him to quit the drugs or die.
Today, Mr. Bakst tells an un-
usual story of abuse and excess,
of high living and Hollywood
celebrities, of the power to change,
of insecurity, of how a habit starts
and then develops into an addic-
tion. It's like a tornado, fast and
furious at the beginning and
seemingly under control. But be-
fore you know it, it's wild, des-
perate and murderous.
Ultimately, though, Mickey
Bakst's story is a tale of love and
forgiveness, of how one man sur-
vived thanks to a strong family,
support groups, friends and busi-
ness associates, and his own de-
termination to live.
It's also a story of success: in
November, Mr. Bakst will be hon-
ored by the St. Vincent De Paul
Society for his work helping re-
build the organizations's collec-
tion of charitable goods, destroyed
earlier this year in a fire.
The story begins in Ohio.
M
ickey Bakst was born in
Cleveland, but he didn't
live there more than six
months before deliver-
ing an ultimatum:
" Tither take me out of here or
I'm taking a hike,' that's what I
told my parents," he says, laugh-
ing.
The family moved to Detroit,
then Southfield, where young
Mickey spent many hours "riding
my bike along 10 Mile
Road when it was nothing."
turned to Michigan. He attended
Oakland County College and
Eastern Michigan University,
where he studied marketing. "I
did fairly well in college, even
though I was still a bum," he says.
After school, he moved to New-
port Beach, Calif., taking a job
with an advertising firm. Life
there was "very, very fast," Mr.
Bakst says. He began using
"everything from pot and alcohol
and acid to heroin and barbitu-
rates."
Getting drugs was not a prob-
lem. They were accessible and in-
expensive, and they made Mickey
feel great.
'When you're on drugs, you're
invulnerable," he says. "I was a
skinny kid; drugs gave me
courage."
His parents experienced "noth-
ing but pain" because of their
son's drug use. That's where Mr.
Bakst's greatest agony lies. "My
only true regret is the pain I
caused them," he says.
Others began to notice his
His mother was a "gregarious two friends with whom he start-
woman," a homemaker who loved ed smoking pot were doing few-
caring for her family and doing er), and spent a lot of time
volunteer work for Jewish caus- arguing with his parents. He de-
es. His father, a quiet man, was cided to leave home.
For several years, Mickey
a podiatrist who believed in the
power of a good education, whose Bakst traveled around the coun-
concern "first and foremost was try. He hitchhiked, "wandering
from Florida to Alaska and every-
his wife and children."
On Friday nights, Mickey was where in between. It was a dif-
at home having Shabbat dinner ferent world back then," he says
with his parents and siblings, all wistfully. "You never thought
of whom remain close and sup- about somebody mugging you."
Ultimately, Mr. Bakst re-
portive, none of whom went
through drugs and alco-
hol like their brother.
He spent Saturday
mornings at Congrega-
tion Shaarey Zedek,
where his grandfather,
Jacob Sonenklar, was
cantor. That's pretty
much where his Ju-
daism begins and ends.
"I never had any
strong religious feel-
ings," Mr. Bakst says. "I
have no shame that Pm
a Jew, but I don't cele-
brate a single Jewish —
or American, for that
matter — holiday. To
me, they're all just days
of the week."
By the time he was
14, Mickey was in trou-
ble.
"Three of us were
friends; they were smok-
ing pot and my choice
was to join in or be alien-
ated," he says. He decid-
ed on the former.
"It was natural (in the
1960s)," he says. "We
were all from upper-mid-
dle-class Jewish homes,
and we had virtually
anything we wanted."
What they wanted was
drugs.
At 16, Mickey "got
kicked out of high school
for organizing a student
walk-out to protest the
lack of academic free-
dom. I went back, but
then I got in a fist fight
with a teacher. I don't re-
member what it was
about."
He dropped out of
school, began taking
more drugs (even as the Mickey Bakst at Tribute, where "what you see is what I am."
abuse. In 1972, a friend re-
marked, "Don't you think you
have a problem?" It took another
10 years before Mr. Bakst would
say, "Yes."
After Mr. Bakst left the ad-
vertising firm, he became part-
ner in a field that continues to be
his passion to this day: the restau-
rant business. He made a lot of
money, and began hobnobbing
with the rich and famous, many
of whom were, like Mr. Bakst,
swimming in a dying sea of dol-
lars and drugs.
"Everyone was doing cocaine,"
he says, and there was no room
for anyone not interested in get-
ting high. "(When you're a drug
addict), anybody of any quality
will say to you, 'Don't you think
you should stop?' Your response
is, Did you forget where the door
is?' "
The storm hit in 1982.
Initially, Mr. Bakst says, his
use of drugs and alcohol was an
easy hobby. In fact, "It was a lot
of fun. You met people and you
dropped acid together. It
was a ball." But before he
knew it, it had become a
delicious poison he could
not resist.
"One day you wake up
and instead of wanting it,
you need it," he says. "And
then you hate it and all
you want to do is die, but
you're afraid to pull the
trigger. You see everything
around you start to crum-
ble, but no matter how
much you want to you
can't give it up because
nothing, nothing is more
important that the bottle
or the drug. It's the only
friend you have.
`Then I found I couldn't
sign my name or light a
cigarette without my hand
shaking," he says. "Quite
frankly, I was dying."
He wound up in the hos-
pital, where a doctor told
him, "If you drink again,
you will die." That kept
him sober for three weeks.
`Then I drank again. You
just have no control over it
— until you learn how."
This time, though,
everything would be dif-
ferent. The two people to
whom Mr. Bakst had giv-
en unending grief were
about to step in.
Mickey Bakst had been
missing for three days, off
in a drunken stupor in
some hotel. His business
partner didn't know where
he was; nobody did. Some-
body called Mr. Bakst's fa-
ther and told him his son
had vanished. The senior
Mr. Bakst came directly to
California.