The Need of a Drink, for a Drink, by a Drink...

Cookie cutter lives. As a ten year old, the big, big moves, the giant moves, were in my mind. Like the snow fort we built in the back yard during the blizzard of 1960. 

I was an Eskimo living on whale blubber and resented being asked to take out the garbage.

Cookie cutter lives, the cookie cutter leaves buried in snow.

The giant moves were in my mind. Are in my mind. In my mind. In my mind and under the influence.

(Vatchi): "Cookie cutter lives," Jim says. Sotto, listen to him. He casts his net wide. By land, by sea, by air. He casts his net wide to catch whatever attention he can. He seems desparate to fit in, the part of the cookie dough the cookie cutter couldn't cut. He thinks of himself as substandard somehow. Thirty years in the meat grinder called alcoholism didn't change that. He's still a misfit. To us and to himself.

Only from a distance could one be amused, Sotto. Even when he sometimes comes off as attempting humor, he struggles with his needs. Sotto, Jim is needy.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 11)

In short- snort, snort!

I salivated like Pavlov's dogs all the way to Mexico because I knew I could purchase over the counter drugs there that could only be obtained through a prescription in the States. I broke as few laws as possible, thereby increasing my chances of not getting arrested. That was part of the original lure of alcohol for me. When I turned twenty-one alcohol became my legal drug, nearly state-sanctioned.

Call me Dr. Jim. I knew what I wanted and where to get it on either side of the border. It's just that sometimes I was so high that I couldn't read my own prescription.

Snort laughter. Snort cocaine.

In short- snort, snort!

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 10)

Packing Peanuts

    My Uncle Walter golfed at Saucon Valley Country Club when I was ten. That was in 1960. In February of 1961 my Uncle used red golf balls so that they would not so easily be lost in the patches of melting snow. Sand traps and snow drifts mistook each other.

    My Uncle used red golf balls in 1961 and in 2010 my Father died.

    Red golf balls.

    That is all. Really. Red golf balls. Dead.

(Vatchi): Christ, Sotto, quit complaining about "another endless Jim Story." I see your ears pricked up like a German Shepherd's. You can't deny that you're listening. Complaining is contagious and whatever you're selling, I ain't buying.

    Jim's not buying or selling redemption. He's moved to sobriety and he's still unpacking. Cardboard boxes filled with consolidated memories. And his blackouts, you might ask?

    They're his packing peanuts.

    Packing peanuts.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 9)

A Memory of Dazed

    Shortly after graduating from college, my housemate, Gene and I would catalog our discussions on the relative merits of various wines, domestic vs. imported, Spain vs. Chile, the similarities and differences between Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc, all this and more, until we would have the inevitable ‘after-dinner drinks’ and discussion of this glass and that glass and this corkscrew type vs. that corkscrew type, until in an eventual drunken stupor, I would blackout, pass out and suffer through my next day hangover. Hangover preventions. Hangover cures. The ins and outs of drinking. How to become a really, really, really good drinker. 

    Alcohol was taking over my life in each and every form and I didn’t even know it. I had learned more and more about scotch and wine and beer and cocktail recipes and this glass and that glass, boiler-makers and hot toddies and which garnish goes with which drink and on and on. More and more knowledge about alcohol and no real knowledge of alcoholism. Generally speaking, as I got more and more entrenched in alcoholic behavior, the more I felt sophisticated, the less sophisticated I must have appeared. Who could see the forest? All I saw were trees.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 8)

"The Zen of Drinking"

Short Book. No Words. How'd You Like It?

Some things seem the same sober or drunk.

But
The
Way
Is
Different
In
Each
Case.
So
Too
The
Results.

What I wanted and what I got:

   I wanted alcohol and serenity.

  What I got was blackout and pass out.

from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal(Rough Draft, Chapter 7)



Everything is as it seems. I could not find my dream.

   When I drank, it was not self-sabotage, I thought. The drink did that for me. But what was underneath each drink is slowly coming through in my sobriety. There are flakes of sabotage and the unpeeling of emotions. Much to unlearn. I have much to learn and much to unlearn.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 6)


Eventually the hangovers stopped.

(Vatchi): Sotto, I don't think Jim realizes that he was still drunk before his first drink that day. He was already delirious, fading in and out of his blackout like house lights flickering in a thunderstorm.The delirium tremens would come later. Years later. The level of alcohol in his bloodstream never got low enough for serious shakes to start. He maintained. Maintenance drinking. For years, apparently. "What is a life when the blackout precedes the first drink?"

from All Drinking Aside:The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal (Rough Draft, Chapter 5)

Unintended Consequences

   Like certain herbs, rosemary enhancing the flavor of lamb, for example, I thought alcohol and drugs would enhance and enrich my life. I did not suspect that they would become the main course, and thus, malnourished, my life would go rancid, distorted, dying on the vine.

from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal (Rough Draft, Chapter 4)

Occupy Wall Street

Beats Occupy Barstool!

One Hamburger is Too Many

And A Thousand Are Never Enough!

What Drunk Dreams Are Never Like:

Except maybe the turbulent part.

And the part that drinking was killing me.

And the part where I'm still one sick pup.

But other than that....

There are no Rools in Istanbool.

My younger self is old.
My current self is new.
Tomorrow's self fell off the shelf.
Now, I am broke in two.
So what am I to do?
Social Glue and Paper Clips
Could not stop the last eclipse.
Thank God! There are no Rools in Istanbool.
'Cept One:
Do not talk in circles,
Talk in One Circle.
Like the train track under the Christmas tree.
Or the pie crust on a pie you trust.
Talk in One Circle,
Like a rainbow 'round the moon.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 88)

I'm taking a 27 hour bus ride in early June.

There. I'm packed.

(Not in this lifetime, as in from this day forward lifetime.)

Love Played Second Fiddle to Liquor.

Liquor played second to none.

They says it's not where you start but where you finish,

but once I started, I was done.

The Tools of Recovery are no mere Child's Play.

A child plays. An alcoholic drinks. A person in recovery accepts the responsibility of recovery, whatever it takes,

by

any

means

necessary.

"Imitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery." Or...

Imitation was my Slippery Slope to Addiction.

"When you change the way you look at things...

...the things you look at change."

"Stinkin' Thinkin'"...

... can taste so sweet.

When Anonymous is Faceless

Empathy is Impossible

(almost).

More Than I Can Handle...

More than I can handle now, not more than I could handle then.

Someone Stole My Idea for...

A Drinking Man's Guide to Bar Exercise
(unfinished, as my ass got welded to the barstool)

Scotch Breakfast

   Who I aspired to be,
what I aspired to do,
did not, could not fit into
the hand I was playing
when I drank. That hand
was always reaching for
the next drink.

from All Drinking Aside
(Rough Draft, Chapter 3)

Frying Pans of the United States

My brain is similarly fried.

Vague and dreadful fear...



   Vague and dreadful fear hung over me like a dark cloud, more alcohol induced than I could admit because alcohol was my friend.
(Sotto): He's trying to make us like him, Vatchi, and I don't like that already. What's he doing? Playing the pity card? What is so adorable about portraying yourself as a victim? Pity the victim. Pity this victim. Pity me. No, Vatchi. No....

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter Two)

"I now pronounce you Man and Drink"

I was married to alcohol.

She took me to the cleaners.

I had a million excuses to drink,

But not one good reason (an old A.A. adage).

What Drinking Became

   Drinking became an electrical storm in my brain. Alcohol cut off the electrical flow and memories could not be formed. Right now, this very instant, I'm in a dream in a library where bottles without labels line the shelves instead of books. The bottles are illuminated from within, each a different color, different shape.
   And now, and now, and now I am awake...

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

I've completed the Rough Draft of my book,

Which means "I've only just begun."



One is too many....

And 10, 482 is never enough!