Crying

You know when things are getting strong when your eyes crinkle at the sides and you feel you could almost start crying?

I have had that feeling a few times lately - at the most inappropriate times I can be reflecting on where I am and where I am headed and it makes me want to cry.

Like how amazingly simple and clear life is when I am sober. Like how slippery and steep the slope is when I drink - or even start the spiral of "just having a drink."

Like seeing friends who are struggling with the credit card of drinking - the take it all upfront and having to repay a sorry lonely hangover debt the day after.

Like being able to wake up early and get things done - really tick off the list and see some meaningful progress by the days end.

Like being around for my children and being present and calm and taking the little steps to make our interactions worthy of their blossoming minds.

Like being free of the daily chore of buying booze, of hiding it, of pretending not to be too drunk, of making the impression on the phone that I am not drinking at lunchtime on Tuesday.

 Like being fitter, happier and healthier and free to power through the afternoon - instead of craving sleep and rest so I can climb back on the rollercoaster.

What has made me want to cry has been how simple it really is for me.

And how I have been fooling myself most of all that drinking is a friend and treasure to worship. It isn't.

And even that makes me want to cry. That drinking is gone - forever. And I am getting known amongst my circles as a non drinker. Which is all part of who I am now.

Happy New Year, thanks for sharing my story, and take some time to reflect on your drinking or sobriety and most of all, be gentle on yourself.

Not a Bad Person

If we don't change our direction, we're likely to end up where we are headed.

Axolotl - Can breed and live its entire life in its juvenile state

I'm not a bad person, and I am an alcoholic. 

For too long, I knew I was alcoholic and I believed it was a part of who I am, and it made me a bad person.  So I would get drunk and terrible shameful things would happen and I would almost excuse myself because I was a bad alcoholic person, and it was normal.

But being alcoholic is different from being a bad person.  Being alcoholic is being lost to myself and my family and the world.  And in this state, bad things just happen to anyone.

I would wake up with intense anxiety about the night before and realize it was because I was drunk and, um because I was a bad person.  So being alcoholic reinforced my bad person-ness and the two became closer and almost indistinguishable.  So as I drifted further along the alcoholic spectrum, of course I became badder and badder - it was just was happened.

And the shame...  And the hopelessness...

I remember being so strung out I would use "aimlessness" in every essay and report I submitted, whether it was for financial accounting or reformation history.  The word aimlessness was somehow inserted in context and I would half smirk that I had insulted the whole process and got in my keyword.

Now I am sober, I am still a bad person at times.  I recognize that and am accountable for it.  It is part of the human condition.  But badness is not one and the same as alcoholic. 

"The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.”  Joseph Conrad wrote.  We all know the cure is abstinence and avoidance and acceptance.  But the struggle is how to live without it in a world neon with alcohol and with drinking within arms reach everyday.

Think of the Mexican Walking Fish - the Axolotl. The larvae of this species fails to undergo metamorphosis, so the adults remain aquatic and gilled.  Just like alcoholics, who also fail to undergo metamorphosis and remain in a drunken boy/man state of never quite seeing the quiet calm of adulthood and sobriety.

I am leaving the moist confines of alcoholism and shedding my gills to walk the land as a salamander, not an eternal sub-adult hiding at the bottom of the pond.  And yes it's true, sometimes I am a bad person, but always I am an alcoholic.

Grey Corkscrews

"Grey corkscrews'" he said, as if it was obvious, "They're coming out of your body all over the place."

*

This morning I was sitting in the public gallery at local court waiting for my case to be called. 

It is a noisy, smelly place like a Dickensian Zoo - with people from across the social spectrum huddled in uncomfortable chairs waiting to be called to account by the magistrate.  I scoped the room and chose a seat immediately opposite the entrance, so I could take stock if my defendant entered, and just keep an eye on things.  It is so important to find any shred of power in situations like this where you are exposed with the masses and seating position is a small advantage.

The man next to me had long hair and quite clearly had not dressed up for court - or even maybe had a shower.  On the other side was a nervous sparrow of a woman fingering her phone.

We sat silently for twenty minutes or so, until I realised my right leg had gone to sleep.  I couldn't move it at all, it was numb, so I stood up to stretch and rotate the ankle to get the blood flowing.

The man with the long hair looked at me and spoke.

"Grey corkscrews'" he said, as if it was obvious, "They're coming out of your body all over the place."

It completely disarmed me.  Here I was meditating on my rehearsal for in front of the court and this guy was talking grey corkscrews.

He told me he was a psychic healer and kinergetics master, and that he could use angels to draw the pain out of my body.  The pain was the grey corkscrews.  I didn't interrupt him as he told me about how he had left the real world behind years ago, and now he was a carer for a blind woman - and how the blind woman's neighbor had threatened him and then punched him and he was seeking a personal protection order.

He gave me his card and he lives not far from me.

"You look like you have been in pain for a long time."  Is not a very flattering way to address me, not when I'm cleanshaven and court-ready.  But he had touched on something and I started to explain how I am an alcoholic and how I am making progress changing my life by being accountable and grateful.

Then, he gave me his business card and he was called to face the court.  And I felt blessed for ignoring his appearance and his unusual approach, and for making a connection and actually listening to what he had to say. 

The Quiet Days

The Quiet Days

Being alcoholic is not a thing you can easily quantify and compartmentalize and put over there so you can get on with your life.  Being alcoholic colours every waking moment of your life – you have a demonstrated history, you have a clear Achilles heel and you have to manage some sort of life going forward knowing this.

For me, this image speaks immeasurably about being alcoholic.  The dry, clean skull with the imposing tusks propped delicately on a display stand in the unvisited bowels of the museum.  The stark honesty of pencil lines and simple architectural composition betrays no emotion, no feeling - just dusty silence.  The awesome  presence of the dead mammoth is still, unobserved and for all the museum visitors know, doesn’t even exist.

The power and might of the mammoth lies dormant, like so much furniture or something merely to be handled and packed.  And once you see the skull you gasp at the sheer size and wonder how fear-inspiring it would have been alive, thundering towards you.  But right here, right now, it is a relic amongst the shadows, a symbol of history and not so much something to be feared and flee from, but to quietly observe and reflect that it’s time has passed.

Being a sober alcoholic, you have that enormous skull sitting silently, away from the noise and bustle of the crowds, but ever present and just below the surface.  It is impressive and steeped in history, but today, and tomorrow and a day at a time, it is not for display.

Gotta Be More

There's gotta be more.  It's a simple truth in my life that there's gotta be more.  Gotta be more to life than simply the bittersweet symphony of being "a slave to money and then you die."  Gotta to be more things, people, places, intensity, passion, sex, love, adulation, distractions, stuff - the list is endless - as there has even gotta be more of "gotta be more".

This insatiable quest in chasing a kind of satisfaction that is forever out of reach. 

It led me to anxiety that I would never actually satisfy any need or want, then frustration that I was powerless to manage this feeling of chasing and striving and endlessly seeking, onto anger that I was failing at so many things and not quite getting just where I wanted to be or performing at just under what I felt was my optimum level.  And finally, exhausted, I will swirl into a hopeless spiral of depression and bitter defeat resigned to the realization I was broken and inadequate.

So, still seeking a "gotta be more" to it than this shit, I retreated into what soon became the religious experience of drinking.  Drinking was the holy magic that lifted me from the mundane and elevated everyday life into an almost instant "gotta be more" situation.

When I was blinking back gulps of tepid wine, I felt I was arriving at that "gotta be more" apex, where life is more than the humdrum mediocrity of details and meaningless routine.  Drunk, I was indeed getting more out of each moment as I was embraced by the warmth and intensity of being thoroughly in my own private universe.

And so it was for a long long time.  Each day I would endure the what I saw as the trite nonsense and endless trivial details of the real world only to rush home and gently escape to my drunken nirvana.  It was my way of answering the nagging existential dilemma of "but surely there's gotta be more?" when faced with the dreary drudgery of day to day.

But in the meantime, life was happening in the background - we were married and my career was evolving and opportunities were taken and missed, my daughters were born, houses bought and sold - the orchestra of life was playing loudly and dramatically as ever.  But I was only present in half of my life, otherwise I was furiously drinking myself to believe "there's gotta be more."