I’d really like a job offer from Current Media.
A fight breaks out in a slum after a heavy session of whisky, gambling and Ya Ba. The effects of this rather potent form of Methamphetamine are increased aggression, paranoia and then total melt down. Week after week Thai TV channels and the newspapers were showing pictures of drug crazed adults, often with a knife to someones throats. I one instance a man slashed a babies throat killing the child all on TV. Something needed doing until so the Thaksin Government declared a "War On Drugs". Then things got really nasty. (Ya Ba translates from Thai to English as Mad Medicine).
I hate confrontation, but I’m afraid I find myself in a position where I have to have one. With my boss.
My paycheck bounced.
I’m trying to save up some money so that I can declare bankruptcy and my paycheck is bouncing. I can’t stand it. My student loan and my car payments are due as is the bill for the attorney that kept me out of jail two years ago and my “Cost of Supervision” – the surtax I pay for being a dangerous criminal. It’s Christmas. And I’m barely getting by. And my paycheck bounced. I’m so mad I could spit.
This happened about this time last year, too.
You don’t bounce payroll. I mean it’s just not done. It’s probably time for me to be looking for a new job but with unemployment in my area at 3 times what it was 2 years ago, and not having graduated from college and being a felon, the chances of me getting another job at the wage I currently make are very slim. It might be a good time to think about going back to school, too, but it’s too late to get financial aid for the spring semester. Without financial aid it will be impossible for me to go to school. I already have $10K in student loan debt – what’s another 20 more, right? If I end up with a decent job that has health insurance? Seriously, I don’t think that will ever happen. I think I’m stuck where I am.
I’m stuck where I am and I have to talk to my boss about getting paid and worry about when this is going to happen again. I just hate that.
You know, the whole last year of my recovery I’ve been in the grips of the thought that I should be weller than this by now. I should be more comfortable in my own skin and the world should somehow be more manageable. Or if I’m feeling anxious or depressed or fearful or angry there ought to be something I can take to make it go away. The Big Book is rife with claims that as recovering people we should be happy and I guess the fact that I’m not, or that I haven’t been, makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong; that I am failing at the program. It doesn’t really register that life is sometimes difficult for everyone.
I’ve been reading an old Grapevine interview with Dr. Paul, the author of “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict” – the story that spawned the Cult of Page 449 (acceptance is the answer) and I really like what he has to say about overcoming stuff like this:
“I grew up thinking that I had to perfect my personality, then I got into AA, and AA said, no, that isn’t the way we do it: only G-d can remove our defects. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t be a better person simply by trying harder! Read the rest of this entry »
My sobriety anniversary is very important to me and it’s coming up here soon, but it doesn’t quite move me the same way December 13th does. December 13th, today, happens also to be my birthday, but my God, I’m 44 years old. My “birthday” is not really a big deal anymore. No, the anniversary I celebrate tonight, the reason this day is important to me, is that on this night, three years ago, I suddenly saw myself clearly and suddenly had a little hope that recovery would be possible.
The first two years were easy. This last one has been a bitch. There have been times recently when I have wished that I had died back in May. It would have been so much easier. I’ve even, at times, tried to tell myself that if that illness had killed me that I would be a hero. I would have died sober. I would have died doing the things that I was supposed to be doing. My family and friends would mourn me, sure, but there would be something happy underneath the sorrow; the knowledge that they had known me and that in my last years I had been sober.
Lately things have been much, much harder. I’ve had to return to being medicated to stop the insanity that has been going through my mind. The medicines are working, so that is good, but I still have a ton of stuff to face.
Somehow, in spite of everything, I have remained sober. In fact I’ve been sober longer now than I have ever been since I was 14 years old and I attribute it to that moment at the corner of 6th and Pueblo, under the street lamp, in the snow, when I finally understood that the pain I was in then was the very best that I could hope for, unless I got sober, and when I suddenly believed that it would be possible.
” God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always. Amen”
“I wish I was smarter. I wish I was stronger.” Patty Griffin
It brings me no comfort knowing I’m in a position I’ve been in before; hopeless, out of answers, hurting and not knowing why. And I am frightened to find that at nearly three years sober, the longest I have been sober since I was 14 years old, my brain is up to the same old tricks that have always ended every period of sobriety I’ve ever reached for in the past. I recognized that whatever was wrong was seriously wrong when I was sitting in the airport in Phoenix, coming home from another failed attempt to find love, and I found myself crying, listening to the Carpenters and googling “what’s the best way to kill yourself?“
I don’t need a reason to die, I thought. I need a reason to live. I have all the reasons to die I need. The recovery in me kept arguing, “this isn’t normal. You need help, kid. What about your family? What about your friends? Do you have any idea what this would do to them?”
“Yeah,” I replied inside my head. “They’ll get over it.” Read the rest of this entry »
I was thinking about an old post last night, Nothing You Can Find That Cannot Be Found, and about how lucky I was, that early in recovery, to have been protected from the worst of my temptations. A little space for a little while can be a good thing while you’re getting your sober legs. I was thinking about it because Daryl, who used to sell me drugs, and who has been in prison as much of his adult life as not, walked in to my home group last night. It alarmed me a little, I suppose. He’s not the nicest guy. I was just thinking though that if he or any number of other people had been around at the beginning or if for some reason I found myself with crystal meth sitting in front of me, how hard it would have been to stay sober.
When I came to work this morning I found a loaded glass pipe on the side of the building. I wonder at what point in my recovery the obsession and compulsion left me; at what point I became well enough to be confronted with a supply of crystal meth and to respond by throwing it in the trash.
“There’s nothing you can find that cannot be found,” goes the song. I’ve found crystal meth on the street now. I also found a way to not have to use it.
“Simply tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank, and open, we will be gratified with the result.”
I’ve never gone into any detail about this part of my life but to mention it once here. It isn’t something that I share, usually. It has just been too shameful and painful and personal.
And it is complicated enough being a gay man without having to explain your marriage to a woman. If I’ve left this detail out in the past it is part lie of omission, part simplifying an already complex story. But there it is. I was married once.
I met her in 1985. She was a friend of a boyfriend. I was leaving him and he was desperate that I shouldn’t completely disappear. I would come to my senses and come home. He was sure of it. He asked her if I couldn’t stay with her awhile; just till our relationship sorted itself out.
Well, that relationship never sorted itself out; probably because MS and I got along great. We had a perfectly great time together, liked each others company, each had something the other wanted, and we somehow ended up in bed together and were married in 1987.
It seemed like the perfect solution. If I was married to a woman I would obviously escape the plague that was killing the men in our neighborhood by the dozens. She had a little bit of money and a good paying job she had to go to for a day every three weeks or so, which freed me to do important things like learn to cook and paint the apartment. Of course I didn’t have any real skills; nothing marketable. I was 20 years old. I dropped out of high school and ran away from home three years earlier. Like all my other relationships of that period, she met the qualifications to be a rescuer, and I let her rescue me. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve always been a skinny person. Before my addiction to crystal meth the most I ever in my life weighed was 180 pounds. I’m also 6′4″ so while 180 isn’t exactly underweight it is only a 32″ waist. Call it narcissism but it’s an aesthetic I really like on me.
Post crystal meth addiction I gained weight like I never have before. When I got sober this time I came in at 170 lbs. and over the course of 90 days I put on 60 pounds. That finally leveled off and I lost 15 of it, and I could have been content to continue weighing 215 pounds. I would have rather that it was muscle weight and not all on my stomach, but 215 wasn’t terrible.
After my surgery I packed on a whole new batch of weight. I was all the way up to 245 at one point. I went from being moderately active to absolutely sedentary. I craved sugar all the time. I have no self control, obviously, so I denied myself nothing. I became so large that I couldn’t bend over to tie my shoes. I had to cross my legs to do it.
While I was visiting my dad I got on his bathroom scale – 240 pounds. I had one of those moments of clarity then that unless I did something about the problem it was only going to get worse. Well, we alcoholics and addicts are people who are given to extremes, or so the tell me, so I guess I can accept the fact that I may be going slightly overboard in my pursuit of a skinny me again.
I figured out how many net calories I can consume per day to lose 2 pounds a week. I track everything I eat. Everything! I have started exercising – walking mostly, but walking hard, for about an hour a day. Every day I have come in well below my goal and I’ve lost 5 pounds. I only need to lose 31 more pounds to no longer be classified as “overweight” – 35 or 40 to look cute in jeans again. Read the rest of this entry »
I can’t believe it. Day 1000 passed without my noticing it. I was in Las Vegas at the time visiting my mom and dad. I spent the day hanging out with them, my great-uncle and his new wife and daughter, my aunt and two of my cousins. Watched some football. Took a nap. I didn’t even notice that the un-official milestone had passed.
It’s so strange. In the first 90 days there wasn’t a day that passed without me knowing exactly how long it had been. Even as recently as day 500 I would as often as not be aware of the time. It is the addictive process in reverse. Being sober becomes your “normal.” Day by day another little piece of the old way of being falls away.
While I was in Las Vegas I went on one of the “thrill rides” at the top of the Stratosphere Hotel – the Big Shot. When you’re on the ride it seems longer than it really is. Much longer. Especially the falling part. For a good part of the time you are falling at the speed of gravity so you get this eerie weightless feeling; this amazing kind of ‘powerless.’
It’s probably not surprising that the first real using dream I’ve ever had in the last 1005 days was that night. That night and the next I actually had a hard time falling asleep. I couldn’t get past the part at the beginning of falling asleep that feels a little bit like falling. That all seems to have resolved itself though. Anyway – the ride is worth doing. Once. Take that off my bucket list now.
They’re out. They’re back in. They’re out. They’re back in.
It’s exhausting. I’m afraid I have a growing prejudice against those that seem to want it but aren’t willing to ride out the discomfort in order to achieve long term sobriety. Not that I can claim anything like long term sobriety for myself yet, but at 3 months shy of three years clean, I think I may be on the right track. I have definitely endured the first difficult days and not had to go back.
The Cheerleader went out the night I thought he was doing so well. He claims to be back in. I haven’t talked to him. This is the third time he’s done this and I don’t really know how much I want to keep being hopeful for someone, only to be let down. Again.
The Farmer’s Daughter did a tour through a psych hospital after a couple of rounds of vodka and an attempted suicide by insulin. She is now at the Betty Ford Center. Truth be told, I’m jealous. I’d love to go back to treatment for three months. In many ways the 28 days I spent in treatment were the happiest days of my life. You can do an amazing amount of growing in treatment that is very difficult to do when “worldly clamors” distract you from full time healing.
Dr. Silkworth is rightly points out in a Grapevine article from January, 1947, that, “There is nothing “screwy about it at all. The patient didn’t follow directions.” Which makes me wonder if they are the kind of patients that were unable to follow the directions, or did they simply refuse to. And does it matter.
I cannot claim to have followed the directions perfectly, myself, and yet I seem, more or less, to be fine; to have recovered from the hopeless condition I found myself in three years ago. I may have missed the mark, but I’ve come close enough to score, and I intend to keep doing that. We addicts are human beings, just like other human beings, and we can protect ourselves intelligently from relapse.
I am really feeling grateful for my life today. And I’m feeling especially grateful for the time that I spent with my sponsor up in Atlanta and everything that has followed.
Friday night I got to take one of my favorite people, Jill, the friend who let me detox at her house, out for dinner at my favorite restaurant, just to thank her for helping to save my life and get caught up. Dinner was amazing. Dessert was breathtaking. The company was as dear to me as life and I left feeling revived; body, mind and spirit.
Saturday a friend with only 14 days sober suggested we go to McCall for the day. Now, McCall is hardly a day trip so I called my parents and asked if we could use the cabin they have there. We headed up, drove an extra 30 miles or so to go to Bergdorf Hot Springs and enjoyed the waters. We headed back to the cabin, grilled a couple or rib eyes, went to an AA meeting, and talked recovery. We were having trouble finding the meeting location so I pulled into a grocery store and walked in and asked the bag boy where the Nazarene church on pine street was. He looked at me and asked, “Are you going to the 8 o’clock?” Then he told us that he had a year and 2 days sober that day; a little indication from HP that we were on the right track and we were meant to be where we were.
On the way home this morning we continued our conversation about how to do recovery, the barriers to recovering, the problems we encounter and the lies we tell ourselves that take us back out. We talked about the solution to those problems and about finding whatever formula works.
A few minutes ago another friend called to say that she is sponsor shopping and asked if I thought my own sponsor might take her on. A little twinge of pride set it. “What? I’m not good enough,” I thought to myself. But I shared some information and I passed along the phone number. We’ll see what happens.
I feel like I’m back in “the stream of life” again, finally.
I’m dedicating Patty Griffin’s very first love song to myself. I hope you enjoy it.
The Last Chance Texaco salutes . . .
Search the experience, strength and hope of over 150 recovery bloggers.
Custom Search
Back Seat Drivers