"Broken Record"

    Had not a senseless, drunken and violent crime against me broken out all my front teeth (and broke my jaw and punctured my lungs), I might have let my teeth rot further as I drank each endlessly continuing drink. A blessing in disguise, I guess, but it was one big mother fuckin' disguise.

 

    I need this damned jukebox brain reprogrammed, man. Livin' on bar snacks. Same old, broken refrain. Arm broken, needle rusted, record warped, spinning, wobbling, warped.

 

    Wednesday. Thursday. Friday? WTF.

(Surimi): You both give Jim too much credit. When he speaks with any kind of authority, his knowledge is merely a pretense, a shield, another form of denial. Not denial of his alcoholism, but his denial about not knowing a whole hell of a lot more than anyone else. A defensive smokescreen.

 

    One doesn't have to be talking of God to come off as "preachy".

 

    Jim's pedestal is stemware with a martini glass base.

 

    It's all part of his recovery process, finding his own sober middle ground.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 75)

"Taking a Breather"

    Is sanity control? I know insanity is not. Thinking to myself instead of talking to myself. How can I practice what I preach if I am not preaching?

(Vatchi): His wheels are still spinning much too fast. Jim thinks that he has changed much more than he really has. I think he needs to slow his pace even more here.

 

    I am an old carnival man now. A Carnie. "He could have been good, once." "Too many spills on life's tightrope without a net." "Too many spilled drinks." "Too many stained carpets." "Too many sweat-stained armpits." "Too much blood in the gutter."

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 74)

"The Sober Road"

    “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance: the wise man grows it under his feet.”

James Oppenheimer

Morning Meditation:

    Actions have consequences: drugs, laws, morals. Sometimes, that’s a tough pill to swallow.


    The universe seems to welcome life. A forest, destroyed by fire, completely rejuvenates from the necessary ashes. Life replenishes itself and I am replenished when I remain open. There is splendor in sobriety, in all of life. I could not have appreciated this in my drunkenness.

(Sotto): Vatchi, life seems to have given Jim another chance. He does seem to be on the proverbial road to recovery, doesn't he?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 73)

"Insanity's Bouquet"

Evening Meditation:

　　

   Sometimes the present seems worse than the past. The present has fresh wounds, more hurtful than mere memories of wounds past. But one thing I know for certain: I want no drink before my final curtain. A drink, for me, can no longer heal my wounds. Only cause them.
　

   "Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow... but only empties today of its strength."

C. H. Spurgeon

 

Question for Today:

 　　 The door of more leads to another door. Won't you, don't you, adore the door?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 72)

"Virtuous Cycles of Progress"

　　 “I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.”

Helen Keller

Question for Today:

 

 

 　　 What became of the world that I thought only LSD could give me? Am I there now, along its infinite borders? How many borders am I crossing right now?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 71)

"This is Page One"

　　 “You alone can do it, but you can’t do it alone.”

Dr. Ron B.

Morning Meditation:

 

　　 Even when lost in this beautiful, new reality called recovery, I must remember to keep one foot on the ground, just like I used to do when the room spun around and around on a roll.
f
rom All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 70)

"My Last Relapse"

 
　　 What I did not know, when I made the decision to drink away my last thirty-five dollars over this four day period was that my new landlord had been out of the country and that all the weekly rent checks I had been giving his secretary sat undeposited in his desk drawer.

　　 By the second day I had spent the entire thirty-five dollars and wondered if between loose change lying around my room and whatever was left in my bank account I might be able to buy one more bottle of vodka (even a half pint would have to do) before straightening out and resuming my sobriety (Who would know?).

　　 Long story short: I called the bank's automatic teller to find my balance and as I sat there drunk I heard that I how had several hundred dollars in my account due to my undeposited rent checks…


   If you’re a drunk like me, you know what happened next. I went on a bender, one

ATM cash withdrawal after the other, until all the well-intentioned rent money was spent and I ended up in the hospital.

　　

   Yada. Yada. Yada. Same old story. So much for some new miracle of control.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 69)

"Epiphany-Deprived"

  

   The fear I felt coming back on the bus from the Lakewood Rehabilitation Hospital was palpable. I was afraid I could not do it. I would not be able to stay sober. I had tried before. My history reeked of failure, leaving the emergency room of the Atlantic City Hospital or another detox and immediately I would pick up a drink. The simultaneous insanity of me and I, myself and absence of self, my hand, this stranger's hand, attached to this arm, my arm and a glass comfort, a cold-warm comfort, a drink, this drink, insanity in my hand and down. Down. How did I get in here? This is the only thing I have left, the only thing that I can do, what I am.

   I felt fear on the bus. A killing fear. I didn't know if I could do it. I fought fear and fear fought back. Every emotion I had had a drink in it.

   Off that bus I poured my fright-filled self.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 68)

"Monkey Frocks"

   Time takes time. One shuffle replaces another. One relapse replaces another. Finally sober, sustained sobriety, and "Bolero" by Ravel weaves through my mind, melodious and gentle. The cool breeze of its wind instruments mindful of my sobriety's harmony.

   Chaos is not gone, but the insane chaos of being in the drink is now a memory to be remembered only, not relived.

   Shuffle me sober. Monkey frock sober and then some. Not numb. Hum.

 

Evening Meditation:

   One day at a time sobriety somehow has me feeling lost, directionless, rudderless. That feeling, that looking for a drink feeling, sometimes returns, even when it's not a drink I'm looking for. Some purpose, any purpose can keep me moving forward. There are many different kinds of 'one day at a time' and they're not all good.

   “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

Maya Angelou

 

Question for Today:

 

 

   Does your pulse know the difference between fears real and fears imagined?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 67)



"Insanity Cubed"

 

   Half insane. Twice insane. I am Insanity Cubed.

   No wonder then, no wonder when, I'm sober long and strong, a disease whispers and I do not know I hear, "It could have been, it shouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been insane."

   Somehow, then, I picture the captain of the ship, tied to the masthead, so he could not bring his ship aground upon that ever-beckoning shore, the Sirens calling.

   It is myth that keeps me sober, some life force which wants only to replicate itself in abundance. The dance of abundance, this will to live, this myth that keeps me sober. Amen.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 66)

"Phantom Toes Wiggling"

   From alone with the bottle to alone without the bottle. I could not be alone, alone. I could not be alone. I could not be. I could not.

 

   The death of one part of me to allow the life of another part of me. Ritual sacrifice. I've got blood on my hands from this phantom beast who will not die. This near death to prevent more death.

 

   This life thing will take some time. This sober thing. This thing.

 

Evening Meditation:

 

 

   I was Peter's Sponsor in our Twelve Step Recovery Program. Once he said to me, "Jim, every day I pray that I never have to go back to prison." "Pray instead," I said "that you learn how to stop doing the things that put you there."

   “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

Chinese Proverb

 

Question for Today:

 

   Is there always a lesson to be learned? Relate or relapse? Is that my lesson? Is?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 65)

"My Extreme Flowchart"

{after Jim touches upon the subject of love, these responses emerge}:

(Sotto): Is that why Jim drank? Or is this where drinking took him?

(Vatchi): What makes you think it matters, Sotto? The result is just the same either way.

(Surimi): Isolation, depression, anger, resentment. A thousand excuses for an alcoholic to drink. And the one reason he should not? Because he is an alcoholic. It does not matter where it takes him. It will always take him down.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 64)

"Inject Me Slowly, Truth"

    When I first got sober, I tended bar for one solid year. It was a year, anyway. And apparently, not too solid, or I would not have relapsed.

    Some people can get sober and tend bar and stay sober. Obviously, I couldn’t. And now, I wouldn’t even want to: The thrill is gone.

    Partly being sober. Partly growing older. Maybe growing up? Hopefully, growing up.

    “Forty Year Old Virgin”? Try this: Sixty Year Old Teenager.

(Vatchi): He lives in a liquid/solid dream world, skating on thin ice. "A solid year sober." Not a very funny pun.

    I don't know if his self-esteem has returned yet, but it seems his 'steam' has. See? I can be punny, too, Sotto.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 63)
 

"A Pack of Loners, Alone"

    Every drink is the first drink, and no drink is the last drink. This is alcoholism. This is "all bets are off." That first drink seems to flip a switch in my brain, the "more" switch, the no turning back switch, the river of no return switch.

    Speaking personally, the only way I have ever stopped drinking, through multiple, multiple relapses, was through eventual alcoholic poisoning and hospitalizations from near fatal overdose.

    Some people "make a decision" to stop drinking. Not me. The best I can do is to "make a decision" to not start again after I have been forced to stop through my inevitable hospitalization. I have finally realized that I have a disability: I can't drink and that's about as brilliant as I can get.

   Here's the really fucked up part: When I'm sober, I sometimes have a hard time understanding other peoples' relapses. Quite simply, that is why I need my AA meetings. I need near daily reminders of other peoples' weaknesses and consequently, my own. The consequence of my not participating in my own recovery by going to meetings is always the same (and worse): relapse.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 62)

"Depression and Anxiety (Dissolve)"

(Surimi): You two amuse me. Your perspectives on him, at times, are as uneasy as his steps. He's not choosing his emotions. He's trying to live through them. Emerge on the other side, I think. But he doesn't seem to know how to let go.
   Hopefully, he can learn how to embrace his sobriety, live in today instead of through yesterday. One step at a time. His brain is used to waiting for the next drink. He's remembering his past, the feelings he had while waiting for his perpetual next drink.
   Let it go, Jim. Let it flow.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 61)


"An Unremembered Emptiness"

Evening Meditation:

    The final irony is that at first I drank as a way to break the ice until what melted the ice broke me. Alcohol, the tool I had used to connect with others, ultimately separated me from others. It would be through connecting with other sober alcoholics that I would break that chain.

   What will fix this brokenness? Being human is my glue.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 60)

"Double-Visionary"

 (Surimi): Sotto, Vatchi! Don't let Jim pull you down when he gets lost in thoughts of his own mindless past, his path. But let me add here, Sotto, I like what you just said there about alcoholism being a developmental disability. You've said a mouthful. And as Jim just said, it is crippling. Alcohol has a crippling effect on alcoholics, slow erosion, years in the making, the unmaking, the taking.

   And Vatchi, please, Jim has hope, or at least, let me say this: I still have hope for him.

    I must change. I have changed. I am changing. I must conjugate my recovery. Recovery as a verb, as action. I used to get drunk. And then I was a drunk, a drink, and then nothing. Blind. I was blind. The eye that could not see itself and then could not see at all. Blind drunk, ten ways to someday.

   I must change. I have changed. I am changing.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 59)



"Alcoholism Disconnects, Recovery Connects"

 

    Connectedness. That’s what it is. That’s what it takes. Alcoholism disconnects. Recovery connects. The gathering of eggs in the morning at Uncle Paul and Aunt Edith’s farm. Climbing nearly to the top of the old pine tree at the bottom of the gravel driveway. Up there where the birds fly. Pinecones. Hickory nuts. Walnuts. Chestnuts. Fuck it. Everything’s one if you make it one.

   Alcohol broke my world apart. Humpty Fucking Dumpty. Put me back together.

   Connectedness.

   Sobriety is connecting the sober dots. The dots that are left. Connect the dots. Collect the eggs. One half of my brain is fried, the other half is scrambled.

   Am I such a bad egg?

   Connect the dots.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 58)

"Finding Peace"

Morning Meditation:

    To me, “One Day at a Time” has come to mean a lifelong daily commitment to recovery. It took me many days to learn that daily commitment to sobriety is both necessary and rewarding.

   No Doctor ever questioned me about my drinking habits. No stern warnings. Too many times I'd wind up in the emergency room, fill out papers and sit there or fall asleep, or get sent to detox or get hospitalized or... or... or... Dozens of dead ends, "Sick and Tired of being Sick and Tired." That's how you hear it at an A.A. meeting.

    Whale-watching in Provincetown: The beauty and grace of these huge animals gliding to the surface, diving, reemerging. So unlike my resurfacing from a blackout in a hospital emergency room.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 57)

"Express Snail"

    "The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment."

Eckhart Tolle

Morning Meditation:

    Habits vs. Addictions. Habits are like going to recovery meetings on a regular basis. Addictions are like what you go back to when you stop going to recovery meetings on a regular basis.   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 56)




"Down for the Count"

Evening Meditation:

    Back in the Old West, the Pony Express was called 'express' because it was fast for
those times. Today, our Postal Service is jokingly called 'Snail Mail' because it is perceived as slow relative to the instantaneous internet. The fact is that 'Snail Mail' is far faster now than the Pony Express was then. By far. And a drink is fast. Far too fast for me. A drink is far too deadly fast for me. Too Fast. Far too fast. Deadly, deadly, slowly, slowly fast.

    "Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst."

Lin Yutang

Question for Today:

    Why won't you paste your hatred on me?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 55)


 




"The God of Frozen Yogurt"

 (Surimi): The guilt known and the guilt unknown, memories lost, never to be returned. Memories never stored in the first place. Blackout drinking. Blackout living. Blackout dreaming.

    The electrical storm in Jim's brain. The electricity will go out. His frozen yogurt will melt. His sobriety can never restore what was never stored in the first place.

    His studying alcoholism does not create his sobriety. Nothing is retrieved. Nothing can be relived.

    The storm is over, Jim. This storm is over.

    I do not know why all of this sounds so good to me. I do not know if it is part of my disease or part of my recovery. This avalanche of frozen yogurt or the gods who melted so soon after.

    This god is dead. Long live this god.

    Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.
 

Evening Meditation:

    Cocaine was one of many forces which sped me to my bottom. Less blackouts, more binges. I might have died a horrible death years and years later from alcohol alone. Cocaine and other drugs sped the progression of my alcoholism. Thanks, Cocaine & Company!

    “Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.”

Edwin Markham

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 54)

"Accomplice to Murder?"

(Surimi): I think you're right, Sotto. I think Jim does feel an indefinable sense of guilt. He did not witness the murder, but he knows he could have, given his blackout history.

   And, in a certain sense, he is both the murdered and the murderer, the victim and the perpetrator. Death of self, with the weapon, alcohol.

    Alcohol is his poison, his potion, his perpetrator. His problem.

    Tumbleweed blows down an empty street.


    Now, what is left?

    Angel Dust. Angel weed. PCP .

    Tumble. Mumble. Dead. 
from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day, 53)

"Simon Says Stay Sober"

   I guess time doesn’t travel in a straight line for alcoholics like me. Time travels in circles, like I did when looking for my car that final day after that final night before.

   Time does travel in a straight line for police. And police cars travel in a straight line when you call 911 at six o’ clock and ask them whether it is six AM or six PM because you have just awoken from a binge.
 
(Sotto): Vatchi, I’m beginning to see how Jim’s biography has no time sequence. He’s not saying, “I did this and then this happened. And I did that and then that happened.” Time is like, “SPLAT!”-Shot from a paint gun. No dates. No consecutive order. Random chaos. Ping-pong balls shot through the tube in a State Lottery drawing.

    “And the Powerball number is…Alcohol!” from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 52) 

"One Trick Pony, Dismount"

(Surimi): Now, that is funny. "One trick pony"? He's had countless relapses, fallen off the wagon, gotten back on his sobriety high horse, and now he wants to be a one trick pony.

    But listen up, guys. When he says "one trick pony," I think he means "from this day forward." You know, like a wedding vow, except this time it reflects a commitment to sobriety.

    If fear doesn’t overtake him. Or his ego, past or future. Or some misaligned need for instant gratification. Then he’s got a shot, guys. I think he’s got a shot.

    And I mean a shot at sobriety, not a shot of scotch.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 51)



"Safety in Numbers"

Evening Meditation:

    I should hope that somehow this sorrow for myself will end. But it has not ended yet. It exists within my current self, my sober self. It is a sorrow and a pity for my younger, drunken self, that self near dead, containing a dormant predator.   This predator waits for me to let down my guard. Yet today, self-pity is one of many baits my predator disease lays out, a mouse trap in my recovery maze. Relapse will always be a possibility. There are traps and I must be vigilant. I see my younger, drunken self this world over. I must remain vigilant.   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 50)


"My Hiroshima, My Nagasaki"

    Thinking of my disease when I was in my disease was a pleasing cul-de-sac at times. Trapped, but a drink would fix all that. My deadened thinking somehow allowed me to separate myself from my disease and being separate from it in many ways allowed it, encouraged it. The courage to be discouraged. Some such insanity. Separation from reality allowed its separation. Insane.

    Too much saki. Too, too, too much saki. Too much, too much, Nagasaki. Insane.

Evening Meditation:

    When addiction co-opted the pleasure system of my brain, my irrational thoughts and fears became a perpetual motion machine whose purpose for spinning was spinning to spin. The waterwheels and windmills fueled by the self-sustaining powers of alcohol. Eternity seemed complete in my alcoholic delusion. At least for twenty years or so. from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 49)




"This Pickle Must Change"

    "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."

Henry David Thoreau

Morning Meditation:

    Ancient in origin, the “well-trodden path” did not seem to be the one I was on when I first got sober. I had a lot of vine hacking to do to stay sober. And it took a while for the trail from my drinking to grow over and this new path called sobriety to be my foothold. My path to sobriety would be my own, yet I could not, would not, did not do it alone. "Well-trodden" to others, yet unique to each and all. Ancient drums beating in the distance, my newly sober heart straining to hear and follow.



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 48)

"Alcoholic Bonsai Bastard"

Evening Meditation:

    Like a scene from The Exorcist, there was a time when I felt as equally possessed by alcoholism as Linda Blair's character felt possessed by the Devil. At one point, we both would have done anything to make it stop.

    What makes alcoholism and other addictions even worse is that for most people, hitting bottom is a complete nightmare and each successive relapse is a recurring, worsening nightmare.

    "A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well."

Dan Rather

Question for Today:

    How much of isolation is self-imposed after the King, Alcohol, has been deposed?   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 47)



"Implosions"

Evening Meditation:

    I tended to believe in my expectations, in the good times drinking promised to deliver as it once had done. I accepted what I wanted to believe. But the cold, hard facts were that the results of drinking, that eventual brick wall, did not and could not and now never would, live up to my expectations. Expectations and I got smashed. We, oui and whee!

    “The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.”

G. K. Chesterton

Question for Today:

    What signposts did I pass by on my alcoholic highway? What wouldn't I ignore for one more for the road?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 46)

"Albino Grubs"

Evening Meditation:

    “I” am the eye of this life’s storm.

    “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without also helping himself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Question for Today:

    Do you hear that inanimate thing, that drink, calling your name? Do you hear the drumbeat of your heart, of that drink? Can it, will it, ever be just a memory? Can you outlive it? Can you survive it? Can you live sober?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 45)

"Sweet Oblivion, Pretty Poison"

(Vatchi): Sotto, that's why the support of others is so critical in recovery. Without support, especially, I guess, for people like Jim, that half fear, half-prayer could turn into a full shot glass.

    Solitude can turn to loneliness without that support that Jim is finding in his AA meetings. Loneliness can be a big trigger. Alcohol separated him from the world in his addiction and loneliness can take him back out there.

    Who doesn't pack vodka?

    I have to stop right here. My sister, Betty, blew her brains out with a shotgun.

    So her body wasn't at her funeral.

    Who doesn't pack?

    I have to stop here.

    Who doesn’t?

    I have to... stop.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 44)

"My Battle, My Bottle, My Brain"

    My battle with my brain rages on incessantly. My brain against my brain. Clearly, there can be no winner in this war. I may as well drink. You see? It's like that. "One alcoholic helping another" does seem about my only hope for a continuing recovery. "We have seen the enemy and he is us" is about how Pogo expressed it in Walt Kelly's comic strip. My brain is lame. Hence, thus, therefore: lamebrain.

    Suffering for my 'art' ends here. Recovery for myself starts here. I did not drink today and that is that.

Evening Meditation:

    On 'Land's End', the edge of a lake in Mays Landing, New Jersey. In a drunken stupor a couple of relapses ago. I don't think I consciously chose to be a dying drunk at the water's edge. Each grain of sand along the water's edge could have been an epiphany if I had had the power to feel. Survival of the fittest seemed to have taken over when I was no longer able to fight. Sweet surrender: what I could not yet know.

    “One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”

Henry Miller

Question for Today:

    Can the past, too, be infinite or are all the stones already carved?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 43)