The cage door was always open....

   I cling tenaciously to my sobriety, like a true bonsai in nature might cling to an outcropping of rocks, a life in miniature.

   Emotions eroded by the flow of alcohol through my veins stunted my maturing process. Much, if not most, of sobriety has been simply learning to grow up no longer under the influence. Addictions' lies appearing bigger than the truths they obscured. Fragile, unverifiable, contaminated, directionless, I was delivered to the doors of the rooms of recovery powerless over my addictions, frightened, a pathological and tragic figure at best. The cage door of addiction was always open and I was afraid of freedom from addiction because it was incomprehensible and seemed impossible.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 47)

The Culture of Addiction

People, places and things. Not only am I an alcoholic, but I am also part and parcel of the culture of addiction. More than alcohol would have to go were I ever to stay sober. Part of who I was lived in the thoughts of those around me. Some people can remain sober when their spouse still lives in their addiction. Some, other alcoholics in recovery, can tend bar in sobriety. I did it for one year and it was the culture of addiction I was surrounded by which was my downfall finally. One day a drink found its way into my hands and I drank it without thought. That was that and several years went by, drinking, drinking, progressing, and progressing, backwards, downwards and out.

So much for people, places and things for me. So much more time lost, tossed, apple-sauced.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 46)

Uncontrollable Spillway

(Sotto): Isn't it ironic? Perhaps not exactly so, but this listing thing here, this listing of memories here, as Jim is doing it, once again, seems very much like him trying to gain some measure of control over his past (over his alcoholism?). Lists seem to do that. Some sense of tidy order made out of disorder. Powerless over his past, he feebly attempts to make a list, to regain some illusion of control, taking back some power now that he's sober. Maybe it's not ironic. Maybe it's just sad.

Here's a list for you, Vatchi: every bar in Atlantic City Jim went to, every liquor store he got thrown out of, every job he got fired from, every apartment he got evicted from, every roommate he ever had. Every spill, from one hospital to the next, one rehab to the next. Spill, detox, spill, detox, spill, spill, spill, spill, spill to the last cascade.

Read that list, Vatchi. Feel that power, Jim.

At least his sobriety is a better illusion than the content of his lists.

Isn't that ironic, Vatchi?


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 45)

Up In Smoke

   So much is known and so much unknown about addiction and recovery. But I do know this much: If my very first rehab had not allowed me to continue my addiction to smoking as I tried to remain sober, I most likely would have bolted out of there, no fourteen day stay. I would have left, I would have smoked, I would have drunk, and I may have died.
   Trial and error is frightening when you confront the fact that one small error can change the entire course of your life. Today, not drinking and not smoking are mutually reinforcing. Lose one and I would most certainly lose both.

   I did not smoke or drink today.



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 44)

"One for the Road"

   The battle with my brain. Thinking that I could win the battle with the alcoholic part of my brain. Never realizing, or admitting, or being in denial about this one basic fact: There is no one part of my brain that is alcoholic. My entire brain, my entire being, my entire life is one of alcoholism. I’m either living in my disease or I’m living in recovery.

   I cannot win the battle against alcoholism alone. Alone, despite an abundance of knowledge and experience, my brain seems to take me like a rat through a maze to that first drink. That first drug.

   And after that first, there is no other. Continuous craze at the end of that maze. One and done.   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 43)  




The Monster that is Alcoholism

 

  　　


   Addiction is godless, headless, insane. It rejects faith, reason, feelings. Addiction is heartless, the blackest night. No light. No sun. No stars. In its nothingness, we feel nothing and accept that nothingness is acceptable and true. “Cunning. Baffling. Powerful.”


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 42)


 

Proper Dosage: Zero

　　 I was always a little afraid of pills. Taking one Quaalude and waiting an impatient hour for the effects had, in the past, led me to take a second Quaalude, only to regret it later, after the first one took effect.　

　　 Administering the proper dosage of alcohol to achieve the desired effect seemed more tolerable. Not strong enough? Switch from scotch and water to scotch on the rocks. Not fast enough? Use less ice. I felt more in control with my alcohol (italicized, because alcohol was my little baby: she never left me down).

　　 Right before my last relapse, after having just gotten out of the hospital for an operation for stomach hernias, I played Doctor with my prescribed pain medications. I took more than the prescribed dosage because I wanted quick relief. I was in pain. Then I didn’t wait long enough for the next prescribed dosage time. Before you know it, I was immobile on the sidewalk, crazed, and an ambulance was summoned by a passing stranger (apparently). Back to the hospital I went, having been just released a few short hours earlier.

　　 If it takes eight pills to kill you, I used to feel safe taking six, and then two hours later I'd start wondering if it was safe to take another one or two. Never was it a case of wanting to commit suicide. I just wanted to get as high as possible as safely (crazy) as possible.

　　 After the first drink, there is no other.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 41)

Fortune Teller

    When I reached a certain level of intoxication, I was at my peak. Not before. Not after. And my duration of peak performance diminished as my disease progressed. I was a lousy pool player until I had enough drinks in me. I needed so many drinks to function at my physical best. At some point, the new normal was drunk and it was a necessity.　

　1955- Rosa Parks boards a bus. I'm five years old. Alcohol sits next to me, waiting patiently for me to pick up my first drink.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 40)　


Paradise Unobtainable

　　 I swear I used to have some kind of sense when I was drinking that some limousine door of my mind would open for me and an attendant would say, "Mr. Anders, you have arrived."

　　 Trouble was, as the saying goes,　I was always "a few fries short of a Happy Meal."

　　 The illusion that alcohol could take me to some paradise of fulfillment unobtainable in the real world was always just one sip beyond my lips. Under the influence, I was always just this much short of being 'there'.
(Vatchi): Half-truths, half-lies, half lives. The intersection of anticipation and dread. The excitement of readying for a trip and the discovery that it is　a trip to nowhere. And the mixing in of other drugs: valium, speed, Quaaludes, whatever. Insanity squared.

　
　　 When you've got it, you've got it.　

　　 Bad.
　

　　 He shot an arrow in the air and where he landed, he knew not where.
　

　　 Bad.
　

　　 The unintended consequence? Nothingness  from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 39)

One Too Many

　　 I don't need you anymore, Alcohol. Slowly, I am outgrowing you, slowly, like I learned to hate you slowly. And when I am growing, there is no need for you. Let me level with you, Alcohol. I don't need a certain level of addiction. Never did. You deceived. I bit your bait, drank your drink, and believed your promises.
　　 I lived your life. Past tense. Adios. Adieu. Good-bye. You are dead Alcohol. I have survived you. Go fuck yourself, Alcohol. I'm through.
from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 38)

Simply Sober

   It's alright to be empty, feel empty. It's alright to draw a blank. It's alright to feel this and not to feel that. It's alright to feel... nothing. There is this nothing sober and there is that nothing drunk. I will be okay. I will be okay. I am sober today.


   This Chapter is empty. My mind is now empty. And I will allow myself. I am simply, simply sober today.


   And that is that.



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 37)

My Reptilian Brain

   Climbing an invisible, hallucinated staircase, high on organic belladonna plucked fresh off the tree by me hours earlier high in the Guatemalan mountains, Gene and I were then arrested on suspicion of substance abuse, awaiting release through bribery. Some memories, like this  Guatemalan belladonna one, bring flashbacks like roll call at reveille. "I am Jim Anders, not all present, not all accounted for, sir." Sometimes I have to surrender to the present, surrender and strive to save whatever little time and mind I have left….


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 36)

The Music of Musical Spheres

 

(Surimi): What Jim just described is at the height of discord, Sotto. You cannot understand his insanity. It does not reside at the intersection of A and B. The insanity of alcoholism is a moving target. Or, in its own dimension, it does not move at all.
　　 Science may one day better understand it. But alcoholic insanity remains beyond reason, incomprehensible from the outside. And from the inside....


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 35)

 

Surviving Self

   Having hit a cascade of bottoms before finally gaining several years of continuous sobriety, I've learned this one thing (and I'm learning it now, continually): I have survived the alcohol and now I must survive myself....


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 34)

Life Overflow

   Now I get it. Jean-Paul had never lived a sober day in his life. He wasn't trying to protect me from knowledge of his impending death by AIDS. He used that as an excuse to continue living in denial about his own alcoholism.　

   Jean-Paul died of AIDS. 　

   But it was alcoholism that killed him.

   No epiphanies for Jean-Paul.



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 33)



Still Silly Sober

　　 Ted, court ordered, returns to the prison of the mental hospital.

　　 Jim, quart ordered (pun intended), continues in the prison of his addiction.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 32)



Part Two (Chapters 31 thru 60) begins

Every addiction recovery　meeting is an intervention between me and the first drink.


"Unnatural Disaster"

 

　　 “The unexamined life is not worth living.”-　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Socrates

 

　　 My last relapse taught me that my brain wants more alcohol than my body can endure. Ever.

　　 When I was very young, say six or eight, I didn't know the difference between a toy soldier and a dead soldier. Cowboys and Indians was more what we played in my neighborhood. And no one volunteered to be an Indian. 　

　　 And then the flood came. It changed my life....


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 31)



Reality Sandwich

(Sotto): I don’t like where this seems to be headed.
　
　　 I can’t let my past, my memory of my active addiction pull me into some inescapable vortex, to relive it all, again, through another drink. The past itself, my mere memory of it can turn into a drink if I am not careful. Or I can live forever in the memory of my past and find it impossible to move forward. I could ignore my past, but I must look at it. Hold it up to the light. Examine it.
　
　　 Then, let it go.
　
　　 “Don’t worry, Jim. You can let it go," I say to myself. "Don’t worry. I’ll be back to haunt you,” my dear Alcohol replies.

(Vatchi): Yes, Sotto, something bad has happened here. Jim can and can't face the　music here. He can and can't go on here. He's in a cul-de-sac here. There is no room in the present for this　Jim. His　past has succeeded in crowding him in. There are no answers for him here. These are disconnected memories.... (Cont'd)
   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 30)

Confronting him

　　 My dark tan and 'Summer Tourist' clothes make me stand out in the crowd. I would ignore this person if I were to meet him today. I would think he was a pompous asshole. But if I waited thirty minutes, I would have pity on this pathetic ‘gentleman’. In thirty minutes he would be carried out by two bouncers, plastered, wasted, coked out, luded out…. I will be confronting him again and again as I look backward at my life, as disconnected from my past now as I was disconnected from the present, then.
　　 I sigh, and plod forward in my sobriety….

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 29)

Going it alone

... There are a thousand forms of denial in recovery but the one denial that has always doomed me to failure and relapse is trying to stay sober unaided and alone. I don't think I will ever be smart enough to go it alone because addiction has formed a partnership with my brain. My brain has been compromised. It seems that way because it is that way. Maybe not for others and all, but for me that is the way it is. It is.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 28)

Chapter 27 closes with a drink

(Surimi):
Emotions. This will not be an easy trip. This sober road is unfamiliar. To stumble and yet not fall. I will now say that this can be done. There is no home. It is not yet built.
　

　　 Getting sober is like getting out of prison, I suppose. Recidivism, relapse- same thing. With no support, I collapsed. With support- which I refused, denied, ignored- I collapsed. My sippy cup is collapsible. Chronic, supersonic gin and tonic.
　

　　 All-consuming alcohol consumed me.

　　 Diplomatically searching for others equally high, we (my disease and I) would manufacture memories out of blackouts like free-range intoxicated chickens.

“Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.”

　Jane Wagner

How is it that tomorrow never comes but that the next drink always did?
　

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 27)





Distortions

　　 The train station in Philadelphia is quite beautiful, despite being radioactive from all the stones from which it is composed. Somehow it reminds me of a mausoleum, just peopled by the living rather than the dead.
　　 My memory is so faded, so distorted, by alcohol, by the crush of life. Even where the facts may seem to lack certain accuracy, the feelings often times are exact, if distorted. Distorted by alcohol, then. Distorted by my memory, now.
　　 Losing things because of my drinking and then drinking more to get over the loss. Then drinking to forget drinking over those losses. I wallowed in the pain, then. Am I wallowing in the memory of the pain, now?



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 26)

Vatchi Gets Emphatic

(Vatchi):
Your feelings for the alcoholic destruction of a semi-mediocre writer like Jim must be tempered somehow, Sotto. Addiction is a disease, Sotto. It changes the riverbeds of the alcoholic's brain, of the alcoholic’s life. It dredges out new gorges and leaves gaping holes in peoples' lives, Sotto.

　

　　 Forget Jim altogether, Sotto. Let Jim live as an example. Part of Jim is forever dead. Part of him will never live. There is no whole Jim left. A hole is in Jim that only his new, sober life can fill.

　

　　 He is but an example. Too pathetic to feel sorry for? Perhaps, Sotto. But he can still feel pathetic and I think he does.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 25)　


Alcohol is Food

   Thirty years later I finally see the irony. By the time I had my Friday night TV news segment, "Time to Dine,"  my days of 'dining' were clearly already over. This raging alcoholic did not 'dine' anymore at all by that time. I only ate after I was already fucked up (except for taping the show days before). Food screwed with my 'alcohol delivery system'. Most of the time I did not eat a single bite until I had already administerd the proper dosage of alcohol, unencumbered by food. This was normal. On an empty stomach I could more easily control my intake. I had power over my alcohol and it was manageable. That, of course, was one of alcohol's biggest lies, the illusion of control.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 24)

Spoon River

   When I reached a fork in my road, the knife of addiction chose for me. I know that must sound like an excuse to a non-addict 'normie' but initially, eventually, the power of choice is removed and responsibility for my sobriety wasn't learned until after several relapses. The stigma and shame of admitting my alcoholism kept me 'out there' before I got sober and the shame of relapse keeps many (but didn't keep me) from returning to the rooms of recovery they need to regain a stronger foothold in sobriety. Relapse for me was a baby learning to walk. Falling was learning to walk. Relapse was part of learning to live sober.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 23)

Control

(Vatchi):　

In control. Out of control. The illusion of control. Only an alcoholic has this perpetually deepening illusion of control despite continually worsening negative consequences. The disease is hard at work. Social drinkers do not drink like this. "Why doesn't he just stop?" The social drinker does not understand this alcoholic insanity.
　
　　 The die may have been cast at Jim's birth, through heredity, but each drink slowly soldered shut some door.
　
　　 Slowly.
　
　　 Soldered.
　
　　 Shut.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 22)


The End of Chapter 21

　　 Emotions induced by alcohol, unbridled emotions. Emotions twisted. Unforeseeable results. Lashing out with nerves exposed. Harmful emotions, hurt emotions. All this life perverted by alcoholism's insanity. Immediate gratification (never quite gratified), prolonged pain (immediate, delayed, prolonged).

　　 This is a shopping list of things I did not want or need yet could not know because all I knew was being in the throes of my disease.

　　 Let this be my last good-bye to my last last drink.

　　 The last one was, finally, enough.
“The heart cannot worship what the mind rejects."

                             Bishop John Shelby Spong

　 How can I best bring balance to my life?  from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 21)
　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

EPIPHANY:

    I didn't realize it until now, but I was a dry drunk during the period I didn't drink, smoke pot or take sedatives or speed in the 1970's....

   I was in the drink without the drink. Two months physically drug-free did not make me mentally free. Unknown to me, I was already a prisoner of alcohol, with or without the drink. I was lost at sea sober with no guidelines and no quick reinforcement. Two months sober with a little transcendental meditation under my belt could not possibly be instantly great. There is no 'instant' sober and I was used to instant relief and escape through drugs and alcohol and because transcendental meditation was not fast enough for me, I thought it could never work for me. Impetuous youth? Hardly. Hardcore Alkie, Baby. Hardcore.

Drunk without the drink. Meditate on that.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 20)

Drunk. Drunker. Drunkest.

　　 Ted was sent to Ancorra Mental Hospital after attempting suicide. His transformation after he stopped taking his psychiatric medication was insane. When he stopped taking his pills, his schizophrenia was no longer in remission. It progressed to the point of his attempting suicide. No one could believe that he had taken over my identity in his mind. Like psychiatric wards with patients thinking they are Jesus, Ted's disease took ownership of his mind. Ted thought that he was me and then attempted suicide. That was his alternate reality and that is the reality that I would have to live through. And I did live through it: drunk, drunker, drunkest.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 19)

Tumble down time....

　　 If I had to pick the year that was the turning point in my addiction, it would have to be in 1979. It seems like that was the year wherein every job and professional or artistic commitment or opportunity came my way. Shit, this is difficult. But it was here that my alcoholism really started to spiral downward at the same time that my opportunities for achievement were just starting to present themselves. I really did hide my doubts and fears about my possibilities within the bottle. Smirky, smirk-smirk: fuck.
　


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 18)

Surrounded

   I'll never be anything except a fall down, can't stop drunk. I felt that, believed that, accepted that, lived that. And now I must claim ownership of my realities, predicted easily though the observations of Gene and Ted at that time, yet rejected then adamantly by me.

   Resentment and denial, my real best friends.
　　

(Vatchi):  Jim's memory of his past is so fragmented, distorted. Underneath it all he knew that he was alcoholic, but just didn't know, couldn't know, how bad it would really get.
   Until his roller coaster crashed.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 17)