Flamingo Swimming in the Nile

"Living in Denial" is more like it!

Drunk on Dunk? Fool on Mule?

I don't know, but be sure to have "Show Me the Way to Go Home"

playing in the background to my dead drunk deaf ears.

Eight ball in the right hand pocket.

Bad call. Make that a Pocket Shot.

New brands and products abound.

Not even a remote temptation, but

it would have been, for sure!!!

Make a game of it.

Watch other players get decimated until only you are left.

Eventually your whole family gets to play.

Are 7 lines too many?

Is one line ever enough?

Is there a genetic component to alcoholism?

MY LIPS ARE SEALED!

On the importance of "People, Places and Things":

In A.A. you will hear: "If you sit in a barbershop long enough, eventually you will get a haircut."

An average, normal guy, like me:

With my head in the oven and my feet in a bucket of ice, my average temperature is

98.6 degrees.

This is normal.

If you put the same effort into remaining sober that you once put into getting drunk, then...

Sobriety Will Be Recovery.

Loafing around, getting toasted, just cost too much bread.

There are many euphemisms for a drunk like me, but I can't afford euphoric recall today.

My name is Jim and I am an alcoholic.

Because I Wore the Lampshade...

...I couldn't see the light.

 

So how old does that make me in dog years?

Give me an "Arf" estimate.

How did I live before the internet?

How could I think I could not survive without a drink?

What I eventually said to my best friend, Alcohol:

If Pigs Could Swim, then...

... I can remain afloat.

Dance the Light Fantastic

3 things wrong with the expression "Dance the Light Fantastic" for drunks like me:

1) 'Dance' was more like 'Stumble'

2) 'Light' was the on-coming headlight of the alcoholic train about to run me over, and

3) 'Fantastic' became less and less frequently the result.

"Dance the Light Fantastic"? Only the "the" part holds water. 

I am powerless over alcohol and...

...my hair has become unmanageable.

A Day, A Week, A Lifetime...

... For me, my drinking always got worse. Never better. In recovery, as one A.A. member puts it "Your life may not get better, but you will get better."

Recovery Tree

"Recovery Tree"- that's the first thing I thought of, nearly instinctually, I guess, when I first saw this photograph. A life starting over, clipped short by addiction, but far from dead. New growth, unimaginable new paths. A life changed, fresh, vibrant.

This could be my Recovery Tree.

Denial's most elemental origin.

I used to say:

But now I say, "One is too many and a thousand are never enough."

12% Alcohol by volume, 24 Proof (in this photo, anyway)

"You can't handle the proof."

The Court of Public Opinion will convict me.

"You can't handle the proof."

The Masquerade of Time will dispel Recovery's urgency.

"You can't handle the proof."

I'm addicted to self, a lifetime of self.

"You can't handle the proof."

My disease trails me like a slug praying to catch up.

"You can't handle the proof."

What is my disease and what do I have left?

"You can't handle the proof."

Sobriety is, finally, an act of love.

I can almost handle the truth.

 

from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal (Rough Draft, Chapter 82)

Garden Variety Drunk

Easter, circa 1960

   My Grandmother sits counting her rosary beads. I am ten years old. She whispers a prayer in Latin as each bead slowly moves on.

   She appears calm in my memory. The light appears to pour out of her as easily as it falls upon her. Her breath is quiet. Her voice is low and calm. There is a unison of sensations going on. Sight is sound is smell is touch. The pause between her inhaling and exhaling lies in some state of eternal evaporation.

   Watching her calms me.

   She could not translate into English a single sound of Latin that she had memorized. The sounds took her out of her self.

 

from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal (Rough Draft, Chapter 85)

   

The Way the Cookie Crumbled.

The Way the Bubble Burst.

Hitting bottom took 30 years, just like that.

A whole new meaning for "Here's Looking Atcha!"

Dammit! Vodka in the old eye socket... again!

A.A. warns us about "People, Places and Things"

OMG: The THINGS!!!

What has changed: below. What has not changed: below below.

I am still an alcoholic.

better name for 'functioning alcoholic':

not yet totally dysfunctional alcoholic

Discord strikes a cord in this bohemian rhapsody...

"How you doin'?"