Palm Trees

Surfing to Stay Sober

The first time Darryl Virostko surfed waves as tall as three-story buildings at Mavericks, the legendary surf spot 50 miles north of Santa Cruz, California, he was high on acid. While winning the Mavericks competition three times in a row, he was also becoming an alcoholic and methamphetamine addict.

“With meth, you’re moving a million miles a minute,” said Virostko, 37, whose nickname is Flea. “You’re psyched to catch any wave you can.”

Malia Wollan of the New York Times writes that by 2005, during a peak in methamphetamine use in Santa Cruz County, more than half of the drug-related arrests by the sheriff’s office involved meth. In a survey of 500 counties across the country completed in 2005, 87 percent reported increases in meth-related arrests in the previous three years. California counties reported a 100 percent increase.

“Meth was gigantic,” said Josh Pomer, 36, a surf filmmaker from Santa Cruz who has known Virostko since elementary school. “Everybody had sores all over their faces.”
Virostko has been sober for a year, and this month he started a program called FleaHab in collaboration with a local drug rehabilitation center. He will teach surfing and other sports to patients undergoing supervised alcohol and drug rehabilitation.

Virostko hopes that through FleaHab, addicts will replace the high of drugs with the endorphin rush of strenuous physical activity. He recently took a group surfing to try his hand at teaching. “It’s like I’m learning to surf again,” he said. “Seeing them so excited reminds me of when I first started.”

Virostko checked into a drug rehabilitation center in August 2008 after an intervention. Months before, he fell 60 feet down a cliff while inebriated. “Once you start using meth it’s not something you can stop doing overnight,” he said.

After getting clean, Virostko gained 30 pounds that he is now working to shed before surfing this winter. “Life sober is hard,” he said. He said that he is nearly broke and that he fills in on construction jobs “just to be able to eat.”

Still, his sober life is better than the fate that befell some of his fellow surfers.
When methamphetamines hit Santa Cruz, many local surfers disappeared from the water at famous surf breaks like Steamer’s Lane. “It was a zombie land,” Pomer said, describing the hollow-eyed, pockmarked surfers. “By 2005 the place was practically deserted. Everyone was inside their houses doing meth.”

In late 2007, a big-wave surfer, Peter Davi, 45, drowned in 30-foot waves in Monterey County. Methamphetamine was found in his body, according to a toxicology report.

Though Virostko broke free from his addiction, for years he was in the middle of Santa Cruz’s drug culture. His house was a “meth den” that reeked of methamphetamine—an odor “like burnt carburetor,” said Pomer, who is making a documentary about the Westsiders, a group of Santa Cruz surfers known for their surfing ability and territorial attitudes.

After winning the Mavericks “Men Who Ride Mountains” contest in 1999, Virostko said he rented a suite of rooms at a Santa Cruz hotel and held a multiday blowout featuring booze, drugs, and women. He and his friends threw the suite’s furniture out a window and down to the beach below.

“I spent money left and right,” said Virostko, who earned more than $12,000 a month in sponsorships from surfboard and apparel companies.

He said his heaviest drug use followed a 2004 injury from falling down the face of a 40-foot wave at Waimea Bay in Hawaii. After that, he said, he took hard to methamphetamine and was drinking up to a half-gallon of vodka a day.

This winter, Virostko will be one of 24 big-wave surfers to compete in the Mavericks competition. In an El Niño year like this one, the waves are predicted to be unusually large. The winner will take home $150,000.

This will be the first time Virostko competes sober. “Every time I’ve surfed Mavericks, I’ve gone under a wave and I’ve said, ‘Please just let me come up,’ ” Mr. Virostko said. “I’ve been talking to the ocean my whole life. It’s bigger and way more powerful than me.”