Six Years After

Yesterday was my sixth anniversary of sobriety and I forgot to celebrate it. I did take the day off from work, but that was to go to DMV  in order to  get my driver's license renewed. It really wasn't that bad of an experience, I enjoy watching people too much to get bored easily and when I finally did get to the counter my vanity got a huge boost. After handing her my license,the matronly attendant did a quick double-take, she looked down at my old photo, then up at the new me, then back and forth again.

"You've lost weight since this was taken", she observed.

"Yep. About sixty pounds", I boasted.

"I...do you mind if I ask you how you did it?"

"Sure", I replied easily, "I quit drinking."

And for me, it is an easy reply. I'm not ashamed to be an alcoholic, I was born that way and there really isn't anything that I can do to change my genetics- but I can take responsibility for my behavior, hence the sobriety. Plus I'm afraid of dying.

Six years and two days ago, I left work early because I didn't feel very good. I'd been nauseous for weeks and it had been  impossible for me to keep my beer down long enough to get drunk the previous night. I was too sick to drink but I really, really wanted a drink.

So I drove myself home and found a couple of Natural Ice cans in the 'fridge. I gulped one down, felt a  sharp stabbing inside of me, then threw up into the kitchen sink. I looked down at the foamy, bloody mess in the sink and decided that I'd drink the second beer a little slower...at some point, I wandered upstairs and posted the following dreadful poem on this blog:

So much pain.
Barely holding it together.
Not alone.
Not MY pain.
Let's ignore it and hope it goes away.
That'll work.

*snip*

Forget that.
I know I can.
If it's not too late.
Return to maybe.
Return to blender.

Fuck it all.

I don't remember writing that. I do remember that a couple of my friends had recently died of their bad habits and that my Uncle had killed himself, so I have a feeling of where the morbidity was coming from. It has been a long time since I've been able to go back and re-read any of my writing from those days, it is the work of a dying man embracing his own ruinous suicide and being too fucked-up to care about it.

In retrospect, it was pretty clear that I knew I was in trouble but I was having a hard time figuring out what to do about it, so I waited until I was a few minutes from losing the ability to make a decision before I finally made one.

In the end, I  decided to pick myself up off the floor and drive myself to a hospital. I'm not up to the task of describing what happened there, suffice it to say that I woke up after a three-day coma and was told that the docs were somewhat surprised that I'd regained consciousness. They expected me to die within 24 hours. I was only 38 years old and I'd done myself in, which kinda sucked. I had expected more, somehow.

Except that I didn't die. After a day or two of not-dying, I was evaluated by some shrinks and pronounced 'sane' enough to be released, albeit against medical advice. I was strongly urged to check myself into a rehab center or at least join Alcoholics Anonymous...I didn't take any of their advice. I had plenty of time to make up my mind while I was in ICU, I knew I wasn't going to drink again and listening to their dire predictions about my relapses and demise only pissed me off.  

I'll keep myself sober just so those bastards don't get the last laugh, I thought.

Maybe that was their intent. All I know is that it worked- for me, anyway.

I don't have a secret method or gimmick that miraculously cures alcoholism; I swear to Godzilla that I wish I did have one. If I did, I would share it with my friends and my family and sell it to celebrities-  I'd never have to work another goddamned day in my life if I could cure drunks of drinking. Of course, I'd probably be assassinated by agents of the the Liquor Lobby, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

.

Drunk In The Past

                                                                     
This is me in the winter of 2000. My grandmother had requested a formal portrait for her Xmas present, so I squirmed into my suit and went to the J.C. Penny Gallery. I'm pretty sure I was drunk at the time. I was always drunk back then, but I functioned well on the surface, held a job and even did some real-life dating, although the alcohol made me pretty worthless in that respect.

Five years after this was taken I would be in intensive care, suffering seizures, surgeries and the joy of alcoholic withdrawal.

This is me five years  after I was released from intensive care, taken on a work trip to Florida, 2010, right around my 44th birthday.  I'm nearly sixty pounds lighter than I was in 2005 and my once-dismal prospects are looking up.

I'm in good health, I'm doing music again, I am moving up at work and I feel like I'm 21 yrs old in certain ways.

2010

I'm not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, nor have I ever been in any sort of rehab or treatment ; I can't knock those who take that route, but I personally refuse to admit that I'm powerless over alcohol and that I  need assistance from some Higher Power just to do something as utterly simple as not drinking. Alcohol is a vampire and it can't hurt me unless I let it in. So I don't let it in and it remains powerless over me. Sobriety doesn't prevent me from doing anything except collecting DUIs.

As soon as I typed that last paragraph, I realize the falseness of it. Alcohol is hurting me now because it is hurting people that are close to me, my family and friends. There is no use enumerating their stories here, suffice it to say I've recently talked to three different drunks in three different places about three different things and they all gave eerily similar excuses for being in bed in the afternoon and having pretty much forgotten or blown off what it was they needed to do with  me and/or talk  to me about in the first place.

Listening to them reminded me of how I used to sound. No one believed me then, which was fair since I was usually lying. But I'm sure they are different, in fact all three reminded me that I was the one who had the serious drinking problem, not them. They said they feel "misunderstood" but they aren't. I do understand. That is the problem.

After I quit drinking, I found it surprisingly difficult to stop making excuses for things that I didn't need to make excuses for. If I was five minutes late to a meeting or forgot a minor detail, I'd find myself wracking my brain for an excuse for what I did, giving unneeded information about what happened...there was this old lady crossing the street and she made me miss the green light and then someone took my parking space, blah, blah...

After a while I realized that nobody really gives a shit about why you are five minutes late. Usually it is of no consequence at all and would be unnoticed unless remarked upon by the offending party.

Of course, as I type this, my father has been AWOL for over a week. He is actually at the point where he no longer even tries to makes excuses, he has moments of lucidity when he is aware of what he has done, but his self-realization is an uncomfortable thing and he drinks to blot out the mess he is in, which makes it worse. But he knows better than to lie about what he does with his huge surfeit of spare time.

He is a huge problem for my brother and I.  Dad can't live with either of us, neither of us has time for his alcoholic bullshit and  since he never held much in the way of a job,  his Social Security is minimal and he has no savings. At 65, he is too broken-down to do much of anything except drink while sitting n place. A good night for him is one where he doesn't fall down and hurt himself more than once. He has been living this  way for years,  he must really enjoy the smell of his own piss by now.

Drinking can be a problem even if you don't drink.

I once hit it off with a really intelligent and attractive woman who had a long history of drinking,  she had been sober for months when we met and that made us closer. I wanted to take it to the committed relationship level, but by that time she had started drinking again and cited my harsh attitude toward alcoholics as a major reason why  we couldn't live together. That was incredibly painful to hear, but I refused to give an inch, it being life or death to me. So that was that.

My take is this: Normal people can drink responsibly and probably benefit from it to some extent. Alcoholics are not normal and should never drink, under any circumstance, ever. It never helps them.  I would wager that the only person who would argue otherwise is either  an alcoholic who is rationalizing his drinking or the enabler who allows the self-destruction; I mean, if you aren't an alcoholic or an enabler, why would my take on alcoholism offend you?

Is that harsh?

Drink Yourself To Death

 An open letter to  the Amalgamated Alcoholics in my past, present and future:

Have another drink.

I wish you would simply put a gun in your mouth, swallow poison or jump off a fucking bridge instead , because that would be a much quicker and cleaner way to kill yourself and it would save the rest of us a lot of trouble. I've seen the results of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head and it isn't pretty but at least the carnage is limited to one room, nothing a new rug , some spackle and a coat of paint can't fix.

On the other hand, it might take years or even decades to drink yourself to death and you can cause an amazing amount of harm and damage in that time. You can try to minimize the harm by   increasing the odds of an early demise;  adding drugs to the mix and driving around completely fucked-up out of your mind or picking fights with cops, dealers and bouncers, but these things tend to have extremely negative consequences for you and  the people around you.

Ever know somebody who got killed by a drunk driver? Perhaps you were at the wheel. After all, you aren't really sure where those dents came from. That might be paint. Or not.

But so what? Other people have stopped meaning anything to you. You have found what you need and what you need is oblivion and anyone who tries to keep you from vanishing into the void is just a problem to you. Everybody is against you and nobody cares and after all they are the ones with the problem, not you. You say it isn't your fault, you are the victim of something or someone else.

Boo the fuck hoo.

Seriously.

You can't possibly expect me to believe any of your evasive and contradictory bullshit, can you?

I wrote the fucking book of drunken lies and excuses and I know what you are saying and what you are saying is bullshit. Baffling deadly bullshit.

I once worked really hard at getting to the place where you are going and guess what? I got there. Alcohol ate a hole in my body and gutted my soul until there was nothing left but a fat, filthy thing stuffed with tubes and kept alive by a machine.

I survived,  but I wasn't expected to and I sure as hell wouldn't count on being so lucky if I were you. That acid reflux is just the beginning, you know. You won't feel most of the damage until all of those tiny perforations and ulcers finally become one giant open wound and you start vomiting little pieces of yourself. That's when it really starts to hurt. The worst part is when they shove the stomach pump up your nose. The best part is when you sink into a coma , because that makes the pain stop. It is sort of like a blackout- if you wake up you won't know where you are or how you got there. If you wake up, that is.

Most of the people who reach the place where I went never come back. Sometimes they survive but usually death occurs within a day or two. And it hurts a lot. It  hurts more than anything you have ever felt and all they will give you is a tiny IV driplet of Valium, which doesn't even register on your brain because years of abusing prescription medicine have left you with an incredibly high tolerance to most drugs. But you can't really tell the doctors that, can you?

You dumb bastard. You did this to yourself.

In a little while someone is going to come in and roll you over so they can wipe your ass for you because you haven't regained control of your bowels yet. It can be embarrassing. A drink sure would put you at ease but they don't serve cocktails in Intensive Care so you'll just have to lay there and listen to the sound of your skin crawling and turning itself inside out, over and over again. The worst thing about that sound is that no one else can hear it and when you mention it to the nurse she sends a counselor in to talk to you and you wind up dodging questions about suicidal thoughts. Asking someone who just woke up from a coma brought on by alcoholic withdrawal and blood loss  if 'they have ever been depressed' is a really stupid fucking question, so make sure you give a stupid answer, namely "no, of course not. My chronic drinking was a daily life-affirming celebration of all that's good."

If you can lie really well (and what drunk can't?) they won't lock you up in the psychiatric  ward. So lie. I did.

I know what it feels like to be alone. I know how it feels to have something you desperately want to share, to make known, to be heard , held, loved and finding no one that seems to care; how it feels to face the loneliness caused by indifference and misunderstanding, real or imagined. Some of both, maybe.

I know how it feels to need someone right here, right now and finding no one, no thing there to comfort you and waiting for something, anything to fill all of those minutes become hours become days. The immediate future can be a crushing source of anxiety and dread, every simple responsibility becomes an impossible Sisyphean task and you just wish that someone or something would come along and make all the noise in your head stop. Really, I do. I feel some of that every day. Lots of people feel some of that.

Loneliness is no small thing, it is not something that can be cured by Netflix, puppies and the 'Like' button. It is serious shit that can hurt you and leave permanent scars. Not a fun way to choose to live, isolated and unloved and drinking the hole deeper each day

But nothing compares to how bad it feels to be strapped to a table while you listen to surgeons discuss your dim prospects of survival. They had to strap you down because you kept having seizures on the operating table which made it impossible for them to sew up your shredded guts and the blood transfusions aren't coming fast enough. Hopefully they will notice that you have woken up and will administer more anesthetic, because this is a real low point in life for you and you'd rather not be awake for it. In any case, the doctors will give you all the details when you wake up. If you wake up.  They'll tell you about the straps and seizures and the time your heart stopped and they thought you were dead.

And you think you have it bad because you're alone on Friday night. It could be worse, much worse.


Why not do your dishes now? Learn to play an instrument or practice one you already play. Read a  book. Bake pies.Write a letter to a friend. Blog. Pet the cat. Walk the dog. Sew. Change your oil. Build a ship in a bottle. Play a video game. Watch birds. Paint. Call me. Listen to the radio. Pray. Take a walk. Mop the floor. Masturbate. Do something that isn't drinking. That leaves a lot of options, you know.

In fact, the only thing you can't do while you are sober is get drunk. Other than that, there are endless possibilities open to you. Or there would be if you weren't too drunk to leave the house.

But that is your choice. You made your gutter, now you sleep in it.

Goodnight.