Been busy working, writing, etc... But just wanted to pop in and share something. Things are good, totally cool with being the sober guy. Eating a lot of cookies and milk, reading a ton. Going to meetings, etc... Haven't got a sponsor yet because I'm being my usual remedial self, but am working on that one. I found him- I just haven't asked him. I know- total dork times six= me.
Anyhow- gotta go feed the kid. Aloha- Toby.
PS:
I’ve been an alcoholic as long as I can remember. The first time I drank, I drank it all. I drank until I blacked out. I was around eleven at the time, and I couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, so I guess that was probably about two beers.
My mom’s boyfriend- he was kind of a loose cannon- I guess he thought he’d teach me a lesson and so he let me drink some of his home brewed beer. I remember it was a light amber and a little bitter, but I drank a bottle sitting there with him. I might have drank two bottles- I don’t really remember but it seems like I vaguely recall three being the end. I got up and was dizzy and light headed and I felt like running around, felt really good. Then I felt sick and I threw up all over the bathroom toilet and passed out. I suppose being young I probably woke up pretty OK.
Anyhow- the next day the genius boyfriend thought I’d learned my lesson and thought he’d rub it in or prove a point or something, and he asked me if I was ready for some more beer. I remember this as clear as if it were yesterday. I just looked over at him and smiled and said “sure.” He didn’t give me the beer, and was probably having his doubts about my sanity and future well being already. I stole a couple beers later that night after he and my mom were asleep and drank them in the dark in my room.
My sisters and I pretty much grew up raising each other. We lived with Mom and mom worked so we were the quintessential latch key kids. I think I started smoking weed about the same time my two older sisters did. They were all over my shit when I came home at like ten years old all bleary eyed and reeking of weed. They covered for me and mom didn’t seem to notice.
Sixth grade came and went and one sister moved out the day she graduated. We moved to the coast, my mom hoping it’d be a better environment for me to stay out of trouble. My sister was in high school playing field hockey and studying for college, I was behind the rec center smoking weed in the alley. In seventh grade art class we’d buy hits of acid and bags of mushrooms from a girl we knew, and we’d eat them at lunch and then go ride our bikes on the boardwalk down along the ocean and try to make the sand breath.
My sister was my best friend. Mom was drunk a lot on wine and wasn’t really “there” a lot of the time. She wasn’t really a full-blown drunk- she just drank a lot of wine. I dunno. I don’t judge her too harshly on that one. She did the best she could and taking into consideration that most everyone in our family at least entertains thoughts of alcohol troubles, she probably overcame a lot of odds to do what she did. My sister and I would hop on her moped and go catch a movie on a Sunday afternoon. We grew apart but still she was kind of there for me helping me face life in this “united front” rather than all alone. When she went to school it was just me, a big empty house and mom.
After my sister went away to school I snuck out more, and we’d inevitably smoke weed and steal beer. I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t drink it all and didn’t drink until I blacked out. One time I had to wake up early and go on a sailboat with my mom. Here I was 14 and she knew I’d been drunk the night before and she made me go. I tried to get out of it but she thought she’d teach me a lesson. She still talks about how she taught me a lesson. I went and puked off the back of the boat and then felt a little better and had some Danish and whatever- business as usual. Set the tone for a good portion of my life. I don’t recall how long it was to the next time I drank, but I’m absolutely certain it was just until the next opportunity.
The eighties were fraught with speed, the new vintage wine of the young and upwardly mobile set. We were young and poor and so skipped snorting coke and went straight to shooting crank. Meth was convenient because it was cheap and the high lasted a long time. My ears still ring every time I see a needle. One time a nurse was having trouble finding my vein and I just took the needle from her and did it in one easy try. She gave me the fishy eye the rest of the visit and they never left me alone the whole time. I shot speed and drank Robitussin and did acid and managed to stay away from heroin until I was seventeen. After I turned seventeen I only shot speed like maybe ten times. I did acid and shrooms until my 18th birthday when I had a pretty scary trip, and I decided that maybe I’d outgrown the stuff and just didn’t have any imagination for it anymore. You really need to be able to roll with stuff to handle that stuff for any length of time.
From eighteen to twenty-one I worked. I learned carpentry and didn’t go to punk concerts too much anymore, I drank and surfed and surfed and drank. I lost a lot of friends around 18 to drugs and alcohol and violent crime. At twenty-two I quit drinking on my own, on the pretense of needing to quit smoking (I always wanted a smoke when I drank, the two went hand in hand.) I drank all told maybe a case from 1988 until 2001. No drugs except the occasional bong hit here and there- and I mean like a year between. Every time I drank a beer though- it ached me to not drink them all- every time, no exception. It used to really eat at me when I’d drink a beer or two and I’d want another one so bad it hurt. But I was young and strong and I managed to weather that storm pretty efficiently.
I was married and had a daughter, I was a carpenter then a contractor, a city councilman and a surfer, I made paddles and raced canoes in Hawaii and tied flies and fished trout in Wyoming. I wrote tomes of poetry and fiction that never got finished and I shot thousands of photographs, I was a kickboxer and a jiu jitsu instructor and an athlete. I was the guy that fixed things, the calm head in the midst of a crisis. I was a pretty neat guy and pretty happy and then at some point I ceased caring.*
In May of 2002 I got divorced. Nothing to do directly with drinking, though probably indirectly- yeah- but I guess I couldn’t really figure that out without having the introspection that comes with having to get sober so I suppose it’s all related anyhow.
The first night I was out on my own- the first time since I was seventeen that I was alone- I drank a five beers out of a six-pack and cried myself to sleep. I think back now and figure I didn’t even know what I was crying about. I had some ideas, but it was all deceiving and vague. Over the next 5 years or so I cried a lot. I drank and blacked out and cried and fought and drank some more. I crashed a truck and was banned from a couple venues and every day that passed I’d look in the mirror and see a little less of “me” and see a little more deterioration and erosion until there was only a shadow of the old me left, some memories to hang on to of the guy I used to be.
On December 18 of 2006 I got sober again, another try in a number of failed attempts. It was never difficult to not drink- I hate to say that because I know some people have the hardest time with that and I always feel so much empathy for them, but it was easy to not drink. It is impossible for me to drink just one or two. Not possible in any even remote chance. Not a chance.
And the thing I need to learn to do is to care about my own well being again. I’ve been working on that one.
PS my life and the events thereign seem to be a total testimonial to wierd science and genetics. Alcoholism seemed to have skipped my dad and he dies of cancer of the liver. I do tons of drugs between 15 and 21 and manage to walk away relatively unscathed and then get hammered by this seemingly pedestrian beverage. Go figure.
Well thank you Phil. And there's nary a thing in it to make the politically correct and socially prudent break out their eleven foot poles. I don't think it was as good as the one Ryan posted a while back. I just never was that hardcore and therefore am resigned to being a ho-hum garden variety beer swilling philistine. Oh terrible non sequitur there, wasn't that? Well hopefully you get the idea. I seem to hurl myself again and again off topic and away from whatever point I originally thought I had.
Has the polar ice cap melted yet or are you still huddled in your igloo snuggling penguins in your muk-luks?
Hi Toby, I very much appreciated reading your story. Thank-you for that. I'm not sure why this is, but I never had a problem with quiting either. That was one reason that I stayed in denial about being an alcoholic for so long.
For me I started drinking in college, I joined a sorority, the greek life was laced in alcohol which seemed very appealing/somewhat familiar to me. I wanted to drink because I knew it would free me of my inhibitions. I wanted to say things without feeling embarrased or unimportant. It was like when I drank this alter-ego appeared. Like I could say or do anything, without the feelings associated, when I drank I felt comfortable in my skin. Granted....that came at a price. I started doing things that I would never imagine doing while sober. Breaking in to people's apartment's, kicking people out of the sorority house (ok, so possibly getting a little violent), wanting to jump in rivers (for no apparent reason), I mean you get the drift, but crazy stuff. Then along came a cute boy who I wanted to date. So I called him up and asked him out. I had absoutely no idea how to have a healthy relationship with anyone and it started out extremely rocky. Things moved very fast, I was very insecure. One night he wanted to drink with me, I agreed because I felt like I could cope better. Well, I thought I was being very funny and likable, however apparently he nor any of the other's there agreed and we ended the evening early. The next day he declared me an alcoholic and informed me that I shouldn't drink again. Now I'm not sure why, but typically if someone were to tell me that I shouldn't do something ever again, I would go out and do it just to prove to them that they don't control me. But due to the circumstances I agreed and I stopped drinking. That pretty much concludes my drinking days. A few drinks here and there afterward, but it fizzled out.
But now I still had this very weak self-esteem issue going on that I couldn't escape from through alcohol. Therefore I tried to suck the energy out of everyone I was around, like they had to be there for me, no one else, I was extremely jealous, violently jealous. I craved attention and had a hard time because I didn't feel comfortable with who I was so I ended up stuffing feelings. I acted out of fear and re-acted out of anger. I would intentionally start fights (emotional) because I didn't feel whole and the person I married (my husband) wasn't completing me like I felt he should.
After a very low (emotional) rock bottom my husband and I were going to seperate. We just had our second child and had moved to another state. I felt very alone and abandoned. We moved next door to a couple who seemed nice, but I did not like the wife, there was something that bugged me about her. Well needless to say her and I ended up talking due to the fact that our husbands be-friended each other. I found out she attended al-anon meetings. I was so desperate to try anything that I asked her if I could get a meeting schedule. (Her and I are now very good friends now.) My father was a non-active alcoholic from the day I was born, until I was eight. Then my mom left him, his parent's both died within a few years, he lost his farm, he hit bottom, drank heavily, ended up moving to arizona, we would visit for the summers, he would be at the bars, then he was killed in a car accident around Christmas, passenger but blood alcohol 2.58(or somewhere around there). So after that we lived our lives and I was never around active alcholism until college. I had no idea how much the disease affected me, until I found al-anon. Then low and behold after I do some evaluating and reading, I started to really identify with the alcoholic! Hence here I am. Realizing that I have a disease and wanting to be completely honest with myself.
Go figure.
I don't think it was as good as the one Ryan posted a while back. I just never was that hardcore and therefore am resigned to being a ho-hum garden variety beer swilling philistine. Oh terrible non sequitur there, wasn't that? Well hopefully you get the idea. I seem to hurl myself again and again off topic and away from whatever point I originally thought I had. 