Profundities By LT

Reading in 2009

2009-11-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

I started reading fairly young. I think it had to do with spending so much time in hospital waiting rooms. All growing up, I read quite a bit. I remember in 6th grade reading Stephen King books while the other kids were reading R.L. Stein books (if they read at all). I have since spoke with many people who say similar things, so I know that I am far from unique in this. I’m not in 6th grade anymore, but some things stay the same. In the last week or so, I’ve read 3 books. I read Push by Sapphire (it’s the novel that the new movie ‘Precious’ is based on), The Godfather of Poker by Doyle Brunson (an autobiography), and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I’d already read this one once or twice, but I love it).

After finishing the 3rd book this week, I started wondering how many books I’d read this year. I thought back and listed just the books I read completely. Even if I read ¾ of a book I didn’t consider it. Off the top of my head, I came up with 23 books so far this year. That seemed pretty high to me, so I figured they must mostly be small books. Looking back at each book and making a note of how many pages each one was, I realized that these weren’t small books. While the smallest of the books (Push) was only 150 pages, the largest (The Stand by Stephen King) was 1149. The average number of pages for all the books I read this year came up to 446 pages. That’s a pretty decent average. After breaking it down, though, it only comes up to 31 pages a day. For the pace I read at, it averages out to about 52 minutes a day spent reading. Just numbers….

Here are a couple of the books I’ve really enjoyed this year:

Push by Sapphire – At 150 pages, this is the shortest book I read this year. Despite it’s brevity, it has to be one of the best. This book is powerful. If the movie is anything like it, it is going to be amazing. The style of the narrative is the uneducated first person. What I mean is that it is written like ‘I did this’ ‘I thought that’. The first person. The ‘I’. The uneducated is just like it sounds. I really enjoy when an author can adopt the tone of someone they are so clearly not like. In doing so, you can empathize with the narrator of the story (In this case a poor, uneducated, overweight black girl living in Queens that has a life that must be hell on earth), but also see past their view to see things that the narrator clearly doesn’t see or grasp. Think of To Kill A Mockingbird or even Forrest Gump. In fact, after finishing this book I had to reread Mockingbird. The themes and styles of the two books are not so far off.

Dean & Me by Jerry Lewis – This book by Jerry Lewis is about Dean Martin and the relationship they had together during the 10 years they spent in the Martin and Lewis act. I actually listened to this audio book. The reader was so good at the voices of Martin and Lewis, I think it was probably even better listening to it than reading it from pages might have been. I really like Dean Martin. He’s my favorite of the Rat Pack and his greatest hits album has to be in my top 10 of all time. I laughed so hard at times that I had to rewind the audio book to catch what I missed (no small feat on an iPod). I originally listened to it because I liked Dean Martin, but this book influenced me to further my education on classic films and read about other Hollywood actors from the 40’s and 50’s. I went on to read ‘By Myself and Then Some’ - Lauren Bacall’s autobiography; ‘In Black and White’ about Sammy Davis Jr; and Sinatra: The Life. It takes quite a book to make me get interested enough in a subject to read several more books and watch even more movies. This is certainly quite a book.

Angela’s Ashes, ‘Tis, and Teacher Man by Frank McCourt – When Frank McCourt died this year, I took the opportunity to reread a few of his books that I really liked. Angela’s Ashes won a Pulitzer Prize back in the 90’s for nonfiction. It is the story of Frank’s life from when he was born until he was about 20 and came back to the US. Much has been written about this book, and I don’t have much to add other than it is a great book. It is written well without any of the bitterness you might expect given the subject matter. In fact, Frank is able to look back with some humor at some pretty appalling things. ‘Tis and Teacher Man continue the story of his life in New York working his way through the military and school before beginning his teaching career. Any of these 3 books are worth reading. If I had to pick just one, though, I’d have to go with Angela’s Ashes. Frank – I hope you are enjoying a pint in the everlasting pub in the sky.

RIP Michael

2009-06-25T15:34:00.001-07:00

I don't care what anybody says about you. I'm a child of the 80's and you'll always be the king of pop to me.

East of Eden (1955)

2009-06-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

John Steinbeck's books have made some great films. The Grapes of Wrath was made into a fantastic movie by director John Ford and starring actor Henry Fonda. There have been a few versions of his novella Of Mice And Men. East of Eden continued this tradition. Director Elia Kazan (On The Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Gentleman's Agreement) directed this version which gave James Dean his first leading role.

It's hard to imagine the 1950's without thinking of James Dean, and yet for all of his smaller roles he really only had 2 or 3 movies as a lead actor. He had just started getting lead roles in the year before he died. East of Eden was his first lead actor role in a film. He was only 24 when the movie was released, but man(!) does he nail this role! It's not so far off from his role in A Rebel Without A Cause, so it's easy to see how he developed his public image.

The movie version of East of Eden is the story of the Trask family in Salinas, California right before and during World War I. Adam is the father to Aron and Cal (played by Dean). The movie starts off with James Dean following a lady running a 'house of ill repute' from the bank to her home. She gets spooked by him and when she gets home sends a man out to talk to him. After being roughed up a little, Cal tells the man to tell his boss that he hates her. From there, the movie moves to a house and we are introduced to Adam, Aron, and Aron's girlfriend Abra. We can see right off that Aron seems to be the golden child. He can do no harm in the eyes of his father. Cal, on the other hand, can't seem to do anything right. As the movie progresses, Adam invests all of his money into a business venture that would provide ice to keep lettuce cold during transportation - allowing it to be sold to more locations further away. For some reason the venture fails and Adam is left broke. After losing his fortune, Adam is forced to take a job a the draft board sending young men off to war. Cal eventually goes back to the house of ill repute and confronts the woman - Kate. We learn that Kate is Cal's mother and that she doesn't want her other son Aron to know of her existence. Kate is really well off. Cal comes up with an idea to make money to give his father back the money he lost in his venture by borrowing money from his mother and investing in beans - an industry suddenly thriving during the war. As the movie progresses, Cal gets close to his brothers girlfriend and things seem to be improving for Cal. Eventually Cal's investment pays off and he arranges to give the money he makes to his father at a birthday party. At the birthday party, as he his about to give his gift his brother interrupts him to announce that his gift to his father is that he is engaged. Adam is very happy and says it was the best gift he could have imagined. When Cal makes a gift of the money, Adam is not happy at all. He refuses the money saying he couldn't profit off of sending young men to war. All Cal ever really wanted was for his father to accept him and all the work he put into getting his father's money back was his last ditch attempt to save the relationship. From there all hell breaks loose. In anger, Cal takes Aron to meet his mother. Upon his father finding out, he has a stroke and is bed ridden. The final scene, Abra begs Adam to tell Cal that he loves him saying it is the only way he could be a man. In an emotional scene, Cal visits his father and his father whispers something in his ear. The viewer is left hoping that Adam professed his love for his son, but hopes are dashed when it turns out his father told him to stop fighting. And with that the movie ends.

This movie is fantastic. The story is interesting - darker than you'd ever expect from a movie in the 1950's. John Steinbeck had a genius for instilling strong emotions into his readers (viewers). You honestly want things to work out for Cal and are really bummed out when they don't. Rebel Without A Cause is the work that James Dean is most known for, but I'd have to say that his acting here is a little better. If you haven't seen this film, you should!

Dial M for Murder (1954)

2009-06-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, you see a lot of movies built around 1 person. As in 'the new Bruce Willis movie', or 'the Tarantino flick', etc... If you look at the names included in this movie, it's pretty impressive. You take Ray Milland, who won an Academy Award for his role as a drunk hitting bottom in The Lost Weekend. There's Grace Kelly - a beautiful actress renowned for her sense of style and beauty, who would also go on to marry a Prince and become a Princess. And then there's Alfred Hitchcock. He practically invented the term 'psychological thriller'. You don't see that mixture of talent too often these days. (The newer remake of Ocean's 11 is a good example of an exception)

1954 was a great year for movies. Besides Dial M For Murder, there was White Christmas (the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye holiday movie), The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa's classic), Rear Window (Hitchcock's other big hit that year), and eventual Academy Award Winner On The Waterfront - which starred a young Marlon Brando and included his famous line 'I coulda been a contender'. Brando had paid his dues acting in theater and it wasn't uncommon to see crossover actors and films. Dial M For Murder was one of those. The movie approaches 2 hours and only takes place it 2 or 3 locations. Not that it's a bad thing, either. What it lacks in set diversity, it makes up for in plot.

The movie starts out with a husband kissing her wife. The next shot is of that wife kissing another man. As her and her lover start talking, we soon learn that she and her lover were writing letters back and forth to each other. She had one stolen from her and started receiving letters demanding money in exchange for the letter. She paid the money, but never received the letter. We learn that the lover and the husband know each other and, in fact, are to attend an engagement together. When the time comes for the dinner engagement, the lover/friend of the couple shows up. Our hero lets his wife and her lover know he won't be able to make it due to some pressing work matter and with that the wife and lover leave. The hero makes a call to a gentleman inquiring about buying a car and talks him into coming over. From here, our hero proceeds to do some things that don't seem to make a lot of sense. He pulls out some gloves and lays them on the couch, walks around adjusting things, etc...

Knowing that this is a mystery film, I found myself trying to figure out why he was doing these strange things. That is one of the really strong points to this show: you are constantly having to think things over. Other than gratuitous explosions, there is nothing I dislike more in a movie than when the director explains things more than is necessary. A great movie leaves things up to the viewer. I should catch some things on a second viewing than I missed on the first. I won't miss subtle plot lines on a movie like Gone in 60 Seconds, you know? Anyways....

When the car salesman comes over, our hero slowly lets out that the car salesman is no car salesman and he isn't interested in buying a car. He is interested in blackmailing said car salesman into killing his wife. You see, despite the acting job, he's known that his wife was cheating all along. It was he who blackmailed his wife in the first place, and now he wants her dead. He explains how it is to be done and we move to the next scene. As the plan progresses, everything seems to be going fine. Then the whole 'murder' aspect goes awry and the attacker becomes the victim. Our hero is a quick thinking fellow who figures out a way to make it look like his wife knew the attacker and killed him for blackmailing her. And so it goes....

It would be difficult to understand a basic plot synopsis without seeing this film. There are enough twists and turns and explanations necessary to make it throughly confusing on paper. What Hitchcock did was make an engrossing movie with top notch talent while not losing itself in the plot details. I thought Ray Milland did a fantastic job. Grace Kelly was not bad herself, but I found myself not at all sympathetic to her plight. She cheats on him, he's mad and wants to kill her and he's the bad guy? It doesn't seem that easy to me. The bottom line is that this is classic Hitchcock and can be watched a second time through and still pick things up.

Double Indemnity (1944)

2009-06-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

To truly appreciate this movie, we have to take it in context. This movie came out 3 months to the day after the US invasion of Normandy. Two and a half years after Pearl Harbor, World War II was in full effect with the US now in Europe going for Hitler. During the war, Americans were having to make sacrifices. They needed entertainment to escape more than any generation up to that point. 1944 was big band music. Sinatra was big, although some saw him as a draft-dodger. It was the era of the Hollywood studio films. Nowadays most movies are filmed on location, but that change was a few decades away at this point. Casablanca had come out the year before and cleaned up at the Oscars....

IMDB lists this as the plot to Double Indemnity: 'An insurance rep lets himself be talked into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses an insurance investigator's suspicions.' That's a pretty bare bones description of this movie, but it's a good starting point.This film is in a genre of films they call 'film noir'. Think of a lady walking into a private detective's office with a voice over saying something like 'She walked into my office on a Wednesday. She was quite a dame'. That is film noir. While this wasn't the first or last movie in the genre, it may be the best. The American Film Institute lists this film at #38 on the list of 100 greatest movies. Accolades aside, this movie is eminently watchable. From the beginning, I was sucked in.

The story starts with a man stumbling into an office and beginning to record an intriguing message for his boss about the murder of a client. Cut to an earlier time, and our insurance rep hero is visiting the home of one of his clients to warn him that his car insurance has lapsed. (I couldn't even imagine that happening nowadays. You'll get a notice in the mail, but you're lucky if you get an automated phone message let alone your sales rep showing up at your home...) While waiting for his client, he sees a scantily clad beauty at the top of the stairs. He is instantly smitten and notices her bracelet. They start up a dialogue and then our beauty disappears to finish getting dressed. After some flirting and inquisitive questions as to the nature of our hero's job, they arrange for the main character to come back another day to meet with the client. When he does come back, the client is nowhere to be found and his beauty of a wife starts asking questions that make it more and more obvious she is looking to start an insurance policy on her husband without him knowing. Right around this point our hero realizes why she's asking and shuts down. He takes the moral high ground and opts not to help her get paid in case her husband dies of an 'accident'. He leaves, but eventually runs into our beauty again and changes his mind.

The title of the movie comes from a clause in the insurance policy that would allow for the beneficiary to be paid twice the amount if the insured were to die in an unusual way - say, a train accident. My favorite line in the movie is after our hero agrees to help Beauty kill her husband. He explains the clause and tells her they have to kill her husband and make it look like an accident. She asks him why and he says 'We're taking it for the limit, baby!' That line may come off as laughable today, but he pulled it off like a champ in 1944. Having insider information will help them commit the crime, but they have to make sure the hero's claims adjuster boss doesn't get wise to what's going on. I'm not going to get into anything else that happens in case someone out there wants to watch this. I'll just say that it's very suspenseful and held my attention the whole time. Despite the movie starting near the end chronologically, there are still a few surprises.

This movie was directed by Billy Wilder, who was to go on to direct Best Picture Winner 'The Lost Weekend' and comedy classic 'Some Like It Hot'. The main characters are played by Fred MacMurry and Barbara Stanwyck. Edward G Robinson - famous for playing a gangster in earlier films - does a fantastic job as the claims examiner boss of the hero. Seriously - this guy is to claims examiners as Patrick Swayze is to bouncers in the movie 'Roadhouse'. They ought to hang his picture in insurance offices everywhere. This movie has a surprising amount of innuendo with no actual blatant sexuality. Go 1940's. If I wanted softcore porn, I'd watch softcore porn. If I want a kick ass crime movie, I'll watch Double Indemnity.

Changing Directions....

2009-06-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

So my life has been pretty steady lately. I'm staying sober and seem to be getting along with everyone pretty well. Maybe I'm getting a little bored with my life, but my sponsor says my idea of boredom is other peoples' idea of serenity. Because nothing major is going on, I guess like I've been feeling like there isn't a lot to write about.

I'm a pretty avid reader and I like to watch movies, too. A friend of mine and I were recently talking about a movie that was out. We'd both read the same review of the movie and were discussing it. I made some smart assed comment. My friend thought it to be pretty funny and told me I should review movies. So I think what I'm going to do for a while is to review a book or a movie. I have to be up front and let you know that I'm somewhat opinionated. As far as movies go, my tastes run more towards Scorsese or Billy Wilder than Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer.

To some extent, I think that the advancement of technology has been detrimental to the overall quality of a lot of movies. Think of it like the old 8 bit Nintendo. The graphics on that system are archaic by todays standards. They weren't all that great then. (They were good by the standards of the day, but we have to remember that this is shortly after Pac Man and Donkey Kong) Graphics aside, a lot of those old games were really fun to play. You find me a man between the ages of 25 and 35 that doesn't know the code to get 30 guys on Contra, and I'll show you a man that has been cheated. Movies from years ago don't have the special effects. They made up for it with plot, great direction, and fantastic acting. There is a reason there is only 1 movie made after 1982 in 50 of the American Film Institutes's top 100 films of all time. And the one movie that is up there (Schindler's List) was filmed in black and white with no real special effects. Today it seems like a contest to see who can make a movie that blows the most stuff up. Testosterone driven teenage boys may love their Vin Diesel movies, but how many times can you see the same car explode without needing some plot to keep you interested?

With that in mind, maybe I can turn you on to some movies or books you wouldn't normally see. I'm not going to try to review new books or movies, either, just older ones. Stay tuned...

Steve Perry

2009-04-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

When I signed on today, I thought about writing something so profoundly awe inspiring that it would change the world. And then I saw this picture. Awe inspiring writing. This picture. It was an easy choice.

Pictures that are Awesome!

2009-04-09T10:30:00.002-07:00

Following the shenanigans of my ultra-political last 'Awesome!' posting, I'd like to lighten it up. I promise, you will barely have to think at all.

According to this motivational poster, it's 'comforting' knowing you'll never be this awesome. I disagree. This poster reminds me of the first time I heard a face melting solo by Yngwie J. Malmsteen. I was simultaneously blown away by level of Awesome coming out of the speakers, and depressed that I could never attain it. It was life changing for me. There was pre-Yngwie and post-Yngwie in my world.
So, was it a very emotional poster? In a word, yes. Was it comforting? If you define 'comforting' as wanting to step out in traffic to avoid the pain of living so far below this level of Awesome!, then yes it was comforting.

Some people say they live their life without regret. I have a word for those people: Liars. I regret lots of things in my life. I'm pretty sure my 5th time through rehab was a waste of time and money. The fact that I left the hospital and went straight to the liquor store reaffirms this to me. One of the things I don't regret, however, was taking this picture of my wife. There we were on a cruise: I had just waken up and peeked out onto the balcony to see the weather. There was Katie making out with a breakfast roll. I had to pause for a second to remember why we got married. And I thought 'Why did we get married, unless it was to spend life together trying to irritate and embarrass each other?'. And then I went and got my camera. With a little photo shopping, BAM! Now she's saying stuff AND making out with a breakfast roll. Embarrassing your spouse with awkwardly timed photos is Awesome! Here's another example:

(In a side note, I will say that sleeping on the couch tonight will be entirely worth posting this!!!)

GDMF'n MLM'ers

2009-03-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

You know who I hate? Multilevel Marketers (MLM'ers). Want to know who I hate more? MLM'ers who won't admit that's what they are. They will tell you all the reasons why their 'plan' isn't MLM. If there is anyone who shouldn't get uppity, it's someone begging for my money. If you are curious about whether or not you are being scammed by a MLM'er, here are some of the signs:

If someone you know in passing suddenly wants to 'meet with you', watch out.
If you hear the words 'plan', 'downline', 'monthly commitment' or 'small investment' - run fast!
If someone says they are 'working for a new company and you'd be a perfect fit!', write that friendship off.

Living in Utah, which seems to be the epicenter of fraud and MLM'ing, I've been accosted many times by 'friends' who get involved in these things. Put the word out: anybody that approaches me and tries to get me involved into one of these can save their breath. If they still think they can 'help' me 'understand', that friendship is done. Good friends do not take advantage of each other. Good friends eat steak together (or vegetables if they are so inclined). They raise kids together. They take vacations together. Nowhere on that list do the letters M, L, and M appear together.

Whenever some 'friend' of mine tries to hit me up with one of these deals, I instantly put a red mark on their name on the file in my mind. Everything that person does from then on is shadowed. If they think the Cowboys are going to win the Super Bowl, I think to myself 'this coming from the guy who thinks selling his friendships is a good idea'. It's like I mentally handicap them. When I talk to these people again, I mentally pat them on the forehead like I would a 7 year old. I don't care if you sell soap, vitamins, financial services, legal services, or anything else: I don't want to sign up, make a commitment, join your downline, or even so much as see the plan, discuss my future, or take a look at your company. I know that you have your handbook with comebacks for my top 10 objections. You can try to convince me how much you are just trying to help me, but at the end of the day your dignity will be gone and I'll still have my money.

More Things that are Awesome!

2009-03-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

In continuing with my commitment to improving the world by pointing out to it the things that are worthy of their attention, here is the latest installment of Things that are Awesome! But first, a short rant:

Kids, don't listen to those anti-smoking ads. I hate that it is not politically correct to trash on almost anything and yet smoking/smokers are still held up to ridicule. There is a series of ads playing here in the state I live that make fun of smokers. Understanding that they are trying to tip the scales of today's youth to stay away from smoking, they are still effectively slandering an entire group of people for choices they are making. Imagine the repercussions that would occur if we saw ads trashing on a group of people that chose a certain religion. It interests me to know if any of my tax dollars go into these ads. If we would all focus on ourselves instead of trying to change other people by making fun of them, we'd get along a lot better. And on that note :

Cigars are Awesome!

With cigars you get the best of both worlds: you get the thrill of holding a stick of fire up to your head without actually inhaling. If you want, you can get deep into the world of cigars where you can talk about earthy overtones and smooth draw. If you just want to look and feel like a man's man, that's okay too.

Garages are Awesome!

Since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of garages), women have held sway over both the decoration of the house and of certain marital privileges. In his continual effort to have a place of solace and perpetuate his species, man has gone to the garage. Here you'll find no flower paintings. No pink rugs here, unless you're talking about the one on the girl on a poster on the wall. Just the smell of gas, oil, and manliness. Common accoutrement here include tools, posters, vehicles, and the occasional dart board. Some men are lucky enough to have room for a couch and a TV. For the rest of us, though, a couple of lawn chairs and bar stools suffice. In this era of metrosexuals, it's nice to know that there is a place where men can find refuge.

(In a side note, when you combine the awesomeness of cigars with the awesomeness of the garage it adds up to something that is too cool for some. My wife, for instance won't let me smoke in the garage. I think it's because she's afraid of that much awesome coming together. Maybe she thinks I might be overcome by it all and spontaneously combust)

Barbecue Grills are Awesome!

This one goes along with another one of my favorites, steak. You, too, can enjoy a steak whenever you want to. Just buy some meat, fire up the grill, and bada bing bada boom- steak!

The Tides are Turning

2009-03-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

There have been 2 situations in my life in the last 2 weeks that lead me to believe that my attitude and countenance have improved. Both of them left me scratching my head. I'll let you be the judge:

1) 2 weeks ago I went to a 6:30 meeting for the first time. I think the main reason I did it was that I knew I was going to have to go to a meeting a day and I wanted to have some nights available to relax. It turned out to have an added bonus: I came to work after that first morning meeting. I had arranged to be into work about 15 minutes late so I could catch the meeting. I got to work at 8:15. In my mind, I came in and kept to myself like I usually do. At about 10 o'clock a co-worker came up to me and asked 'Are you okay?' I was confused. I tried to think of why she was asking me. I drew a blank, so I answered honestly. 'Yeah, I'm fine. Why?' She says to me 'You just seem like you're in such a good mood. It's weird.'

2) So last night I go to pick Katie up at the airport. I'd had 4 days off in a row. I went to meetings, hung out with guys in recovery, cleaned the house, and took naps. Anyways, I'm at the airport and Katie comes down the hall to the waiting area. I see her and I stand up to meet her. It's at this point that I notice that besides her brother, it turns out she was flying back with the friend I referred to towards the end of my posting before this last one. She walks up to me, hugs me, and before I even have a chance to open my mouth she says to me 'You've been drinking! You're drunk!' If my coworker caught me off guard, this situation knocked me on my ass. I had nothing to say. Eventually I regained my balance and told her 'I probably deserve a lifetime of being accused of being drunk. This time is one where I'm actually NOT drunk' Eventually she realized I wasn't drunk, but I was curious about why she thought I was drunk. Her answer? 'You just seemed so relaxed and happy.'

The part that jumps out at me from both of these is that I hadn't even said anything. I must have exuded anger and unhappiness before I started making some changes about 3 weeks ago. Especially with the 2nd situation, where I was caught off guard and didn't have any time to adjust my behavior it shows that a significant change has taken place in me. It is a welcome one to say the least. I hope one day I'll be able to look back on the days when I was so angry and wonder how I did it.

I May Need Counseling After This

2009-03-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend Katie and I went with some friends to a local comedy club to see Marcus. We went out to dinner before the show and were among the first to get in the club an hour before the show was to start. While Katie and most of the others went in, I stayed behind to smoke a cigar with my buddy Jared. When we finally made it in, I found out that we were on the first row. And they had left the spot closest to the middle of the stage for me. A bad feeling hit me as I sat down, and as it turns out it was not unfounded.

The warm up comedians mainly stuck to their own material and didn't pick on the crowd too much. When Marcus got up there, he started off with his own material. As he got warmed up, though, pretty soon he was interacting with the crowd. At one point a cell phone went off. He went into the audience, took the phone, and hid it on top of a speaker on stage. When one lady was laughing obnoxiously, he mercilessly made fun of her saying 'Somewhere there is a horny dolphin wondering where that noise is coming from'. Yikes! Shortly after this, Marcus was grabbing a drink of water. I took the opportunity to stifle a yawn, except that he turned and saw me doing it. I knew I was in for it at that point. I was wearing some glasses, and he asks me 'You like TV, don't you specs?' I nodded yes and he went on with his routine. I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that I was off the hook. Maybe that was his plan.

He was setting up a joke about David Bowie's...lack of underpants in the movie The Labyrinth. He started it by talking about movies and 80's movies in particular. When he got to the point where he was joking about David Bowie flapping in the breeze like a flag in a storm, he hung the microphone around his waist and started bouncing it back and forth between his legs. We were all laughing when I realized he was coming for me.... As he climbed my chair and started bouncing the phallic microphone about my head and shoulders I tried to shrink away. There was nowhere to hide, though. My face was about 2 inches from his junk and I kept thinking it would end any second, but he kept going. At some point the joke turned into how long he could make me uncomfortable. The answer, for me, was FAR too long. All things considered, I thought I was a pretty good sport about it. I think I've learned my lesson with sitting in the front row and daring to yawn.... Here we are - post molestation.

Recovery Update/ Kids in the future?

2009-03-06T08:06:00.000-08:00

This will probably be boring for most people. This blog has been tough at times, but for the most part a fun way to vent. For those friends and family that are interested in where I am right now, this is the answer:

I'm now into my 20th month of continuous sobriety. 20 months seemed like such a long time to me: until I got it. If a non-alcoholic sees a person who drinks and always seems to get in trouble, it seems logical and obvious that if the person stops drinking things will get better. Some of the more obvious problems (hospitals, jails, etc) do go away at first with just not drinking. From experience, I can tell you that they will always come back unless the alcoholic can find a way to deal with things differently.

At 18 months sober, I found myself the very same person I was when I started - sans booze. All the same fears, the same ways of dealing with things. Even the same results (witness my last post). How tough it is to hear from your sponsor 'You're suffering from untreated alcoholism'. He said the same thing to me 36 hours hours after my last drink. My excuse then was that I had a drinking problem. What's my excuse now? I haven't had a drink in over a year and a half. It's safe to say that drinking is not my problem. Living life sober is my problem. I won't say it's all been for nothing: all the meetings I've done and all the work this time around has kept me sober long enough to become willing to completely surrender myself to staying sober. For the last week and a half, I've been going to a meeting every day. I've been calling my sponsor every day. I've been praying every day. I talk to other alcoholics every day and still work with a guy or two. My willingness now extends to losing sleep: I've been catching a 6:30 am meeting this week. The first couple of days have been really hard, but it has been paying off. Starting my day off in willingness and recovery has made this the best week I've had in some time.

This is where the rubber meets the road for me. I am a good mimic and can talk a good game. When it comes down to it, though, only my actions will show how much I really believe this program can help me. I think I've caught some people by surprise. Myself included. Katie has already commented on being surprised I was willing to get up early. I wasn't a guy that was willing to go to a meeting a day. Look what that got me. I don't have to be too hard on myself, because I'm showing a willingness to stay sober I didn't know I had. For that reason this whole experience has been a good one for me.

* * *

In the past I've written about not being able to have kids naturally. When the denial and anger subsided, I was left with shame and hurt pride. Sometimes situations force us to be bigger than we really are. This is one for me. Despite the tough emotions that still sometimes arise, Katie and I have moved forward in the process to becoming parents. Together we chose a donor online (man, you really can buy ANYTHING on the internet...) and a couple of weeks ago I accompanied her to the doctor for the first insemination. I joked with some people that I wanted to be there so I could say I was there with my wife when she got pregnant. The truth was that I wasn't sure I wanted to be there at all. I felt like I could almost handle having children this way, but having to be there would just be too much. In the end, the responsibility I felt as a husband and potential father outweighed the shame I felt at being inadequate. I think this is the definition of being an adult. It was made tougher when it turns out the nurse doing the procedure was a friend of Katie's and someone who I'd been to dinner with before. My humbling was made complete when the nurse mentioned she'd told another friend of Katie's that we were trying to have kids this way. A friend that Katie has somewhat of a history with and I've had trouble accepting because of it. For Katie it was comforting to go through the procedure with a friend. For me it felt like another test to be endured.

Despite my feeling to the contrary, we both made it through the first procedure. Chances are that this won't be the last insemination before Katie gets pregnant, so I'll get another opportunity to stay humble. I hope that it gets easier.

Crash! Part 2

2009-02-26T14:50:00.000-08:00

So this morning I was in another car accident. Or should I say 'a MAV full of teenagers driven by a 45 year old man crashed into the back of me when he became enraged that I passed him'. Either way, right? (MAV= mormon assault vehicle for those of you who don't know. Utah residents will know right away what I'm talking about. For those of you not in Utah, imagine a prison transportation vehicle full of polygamists)

Seriously. No joking here. I'm in my car driving, listening to some Michael Jackson, I pass this guy and 'BAM' I feel my car lurch forward. (I can't resist: what is it about Michael Jackson and getting rear ended?) I look in my rear view mirror and there is a guy shouting and waving his fist at me. I put some distance between me and the guy, write his plate number down and pull out my phone to call the police. I pull over at the next light and get out of my car to see what kind of damages we're looking at. Out comes the next Big Brothers Big Sisters star shouting at me. The dispatcher hears me about to get my ass handed to me and suggests I get back into my car. Relenting, I hung out in my car until the cops showed. I ended up getting a lecture about passing someone to merge rather than slowing down to merge. No tickets were issued. Damages were minimal. No harm, no foul I guess.

Like attracts like, I guess. I finally met my match in the anger department. How many times have I thought to myself 'I'd love to ram my car into that jerk'. In a sick way, I kind of respect the guy. Kind of. As much as you can respect a middle aged guy that hangs out with teenagers driving around ramming their car into other drivers.

Random Cell Phone pictures last week

2009-02-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

I got a new phone last week and due to the novelty, I have been taking more pictures than normal. As I was looking at some of the pictures, there were 2 that I thought were pretty strange and worthy of sharing.

This first one is of our cat Roxy and her new hobby: watching TV. Being the refined feline that she is, she is not satisfied with mere romantic comedies or action adventure movies. She prefers 1 program. The documentary 'Planet Earth'. I have never seen a cat pay attention to anything that wasn't a flying thing or something to eat like this before. We're talking 15 straight minutes of a cat staring at one thing. Sometimes she tilts her head when she gets particularly interested. Other times she has to go look behind the TV to make sure the birds on the screen didn't disappear behind there. As soon as we watch something else, she leaves; but as soon as we put it on, she'll come from any part of the house to take her spot - right in front of the TV. (p.s. - I know what you're going to say Mom. Yeah, yeah, we need some kids...)

This second one is a letter I received. A letter that causes me to believe I'm being stalked from afar by someone who isn't very good at stalking. When I opened the letter, which was addressed to my first name (Steven) it was 1 sentence written in small font in the middle of the page. It said, simply: 'You are a sad, sad 'little' man' It was sent with no return address, but the postal stamp was to a town in California. A town I've never been to. I can be tough to get along with, so I figure I probably got someone upset enough to look up my new address and send me a mean letter. I still can't figure out why it was addressed to my first name, though....

Why Katie is lucky to have me

2009-02-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

This morning as I was driving to work I was contemplating something that I think about quite often: I was thinking how lucky my wife was to have snagged me. Take yesterday, for example. While she was at work being lazy, I was home with the day off working hard. I did my laundry. I changed the oil and spark plugs on my car. I watched Casablanca. I caught a meeting. Just typing what I did reinforces to me that Katie is one lucky lady to have snagged such a renaissance man. I even let her cook dinner for my dad and I after her lazy day at work. Man I'm a good guy.

Speaking of old movies: I recently made a decision to watch all of the American Film Institutes's top 100 movies of all time. I want to have them all in my collection one day, so I started buying the films in the top 10. So far I've collected Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler's List, The Graduate, and On The Waterfront. I've watched all of them but The Graduate and On The Waterfront. At the risk of sounding ignorant - I've been a little surprised to find that these movies are not only watchable, but really good movies. I had this idea that movies in black and white were old and boring. It may be true with some of them, but not these. Citizen Kane, in particular, is fantastic. I found myself caught up right away. I think that I've seen enough cartoon spoofs of it to know the relevance of 'Rosebud' right from the beginning. Even with that knowledge, though, the movie was amazing. To think of a 25 year old first time director coming up with that film boggles the mind. I would encourage anybody to watch the film.

On January 27th, I celebrated 18 months of sobriety. If I continue on this path, later this year I will be able to say that I have YEARS of sobriety. That's something I haven't been able to say since I was 11.

Cruise Pics

2009-01-26T13:21:00.000-08:00

Here are Katie and I out to dinner the night after the Bahamas. This picture was taken by the
girlfriend of a 'friend of ours'

Ahhh yes. Smoking a Cuban out on the balcony. Believe it or not, I'm listening to a book on my headphones.

Here are Katie and I in the Bahamas after our shouting match and subsequent making up. :)

Living The Dream on Eleuthera Island.

Here we are in the room the first night on the ship. Notice my CIA shirt. You have to be in the agency to buy these (or anything else with the official CIA logo on it)

Here are Katie and I out on the balcony. I spent a lot of time out there this trip because I brought Jenny (my guitar).

Here's me smoking a stogey in my favorite room on the ship: The Speakeasy cigar lounge.

Here is a picture Katie took. She was laying out and realized she had a pretty good view. She grabbed the camera and took a couple of pictures from the beach chair.

Here are Katie and I in St John, USVI. We're overlooking scenic Trunk Bay. Although we didn't get to spend long enough on this island, we absolutely loved it.

Jenny and I: this one is sort of sad. After 6 years of faithful service, she was cracked in transit on the way back home. I don't have the heart to throw her away or get a new one.

I'm not an art critic or anything, but I just love this picture Katie took of a beach chair on the beach at Orient Bay - St Maarten. It looks like it's just waiting for me.

Here were are dressed to the nines on the first formal night. We didn't get any other pictures of this, and it's too bad: we looked great!

The Cruise - Part 2

2009-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

"Troy, wake up. Troy. TROY!"

As I blearily opened my eyes, I noticed Katie was walking back to the bed from the door to the balcony. Even half asleep I could tell she was bordering on panic, but being as how this is a condition that she frequents often I wasn't too concerned. What was she afraid of? The fog outside. She was afraid that she couldn't see the water. I muttered something about her going to bed and when she wakes up it will be gone and then fell back asleep. That's my Katie: afraid of the fog (I love you babe :P)

The first day was the Bahamas. We had to tender in, which means that the ship wasn't at a dock. We had to ride a smaller boat to shore. We went over at about 10:30 in the morning, set down our things and went over to the small booth set up for kayak rentals. We got in the kayak and I quickly learned something: neither of us had any experience in a kayak. As we bobbed around in the water, I got more and more frustrated. Pretty soon I was yelling at Katie that she was doing it wrong and she was yelling at me to shut up. Ahhh. Vacation.... (I want to interject here that we were asked several times during the course of the vacation if we were on our honeymoon. People said we seemed so happy together and in love. I guess when we're not yelling at each other, we get along pretty well...) We eventually got a system down and had a good time. As we were headed back to turn the kayak back in, we were in about 4 feet of water as we passed over a stingray. I'd forgotten that they like shallow water. Despite Steve Irwin's assertions, stingrays are mostly harmless. We floated by, got back to land and turned the kayak back in. A few minutes later Katie's back started to tighten up. We only ended up spending another hour or so on land. We got something to eat, I went over to buy some cigars and souvenirs, and we laid out in the sun for a few minutes. By then Katie's back was hurting her bad enough that she wanted to get some medicine. I didn't mind. We could lay out just as easily on the ship. As the day progressed, Katie was hurting bad enough that we started worrying about the rest of the trip. We called the service department there on the ship, but they had no ice packs or heating pads. Turning into Macgyver, I remembered I had a few Ziplock bags I kept deodorant and toothpaste and such in to travel. We called for some ice, and once it showed up Katie had a ghetto-fabulous icepack. She had pain for a day or two more, but we stayed on top of it and disaster was averted.

That night, we went to a 'Friends of Bill W and Dr Bob' meeting on the boat. How ironic is it that on a boat that holds 3200 passengers and 1000 crew that the only room they make available to have an AA meeting is the one room in the ship with a camera in it streaming on the internet? Maybe they don't realize the second A stands for Anonymous? More likely they don't know who the friends of Bill and Dr Bob are. Anyways, there was a better turnout than I've seen on a boat. There were about 11 of us drunks (strangely, The Flapper wasn't there...) , a couple of compulsive overeaters and an Al-Anon (Katie). I'm normally a stickler for who should go to AA meetings, but when you're on a floating bar and buffet the rules are relaxed a bit. By the end of the trip, nobody had relapsed so the meetings were a success.

On Tuesday (the day after the Bahamas), we had a sea day on our way to St Maarten. We slept in late and laid low most of the day. Katie's back was still a little sore from the kayak, so it worked out perfectly. At dinner we ended up seated by a friend of ours (random thought: I always liked how in the cosa nostra/mafia movies all the made guys refer to other made guys that way. For example 'Joe, I want to introduce you to a friend of ours' would mean the guy being introduced was a made guy. 'Joe, I want you to meet a friend of mine' would be a non made guy. I think I'm going to steal the term and refer to my alcoholic cohorts as 'a friend of ours' starting now) and his girlfriend. I'm constantly amazed by how quickly people in recovery can be good friends and so comfortable with each other. I don't even think people in the same church are able to come together so easily as 2 sober drunks. This guy was from Chicago. I'd never met in my life until the day before, but I felt like I could have been having dinner with my sponsor and his wife. I love recovery.

************

The Cruise - Part 1

2009-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

We got on the ship at about 1:15. Despite the 30 minute line to get in, there weren't many people on the boat overall. Our room was at the top of the ship and it was pretty nice. We've been really spoiled in having balcony rooms on each of the cruises we've been on, so we went out on the balcony and hung out for a minute before deciding to go look around. At this point our luggage wasn't in the room yet, but we weren't concerned. Our room was on the same floor as the buffet and most of the pools. We walked over to one of the pools and ordered a couple of burgers and fries. While we were waiting, someone came by selling drink cards. If you've never been on a cruise before, these are a really good deal (relatively). While the cost of the cruise includes room and board and all the food you can eat, drinks are not included. And at 2.15 for a 12 ounce coke, it can add up. For 30 bucks each we got all the soda we could handle. Compare that to over $7 per alcoholic drink. With our new mugs full of all-we-could-drink soda and burgers in had, we sat down and enjoyed a meal in the sun next to the pool.

As soon as we were done, we headed to the next pool over where there was a 50 foot movie screen showing the Eagles vs Giants NFL playoff game. My eyes lit up, but Katie didn't want to watch football. After touring some of the rest of the ship, she gave in and we went back to the football game. There were a lot of people from New York and Philadelphia on the ship, so it was a rowdy group. I watched about half the game before heading back to the room. From there I watched some of the game while we waited for the muster drill. A muster drill is where you learn what to do in case of an emergency. Basically you get your life vest and go hang out in a place until you receive further direction.

By this point, we were starting to get worried because we hadn't seen our bags yet. By 5:00 we were minutes away from the ship leaving port and we hadn't seen our bags. I was especially irritated after dropping 20 bones on a guy that I thought would take good care of my things. About 5:30, the ship blared it's horn 3 times and we were off. Still having no bags, I was pretty nervous. Over the next hour, we started seeing piece by piece of luggage show up outside our door and eventually we had it all. No thanks to my now $20 dollars richer friend back at the port.

The first night we found the dining room and were seated. At our table were 3 middle aged couples, 1 elderly couple, and us. Being an old soul, I don't necessarily mind spending time with older couples. In fact the only person I really had a problem with was in the couple that was next youngest besides us. It all started waiting in line to get in. I'm standing in line with Katie when I hear this awful ripping, flapping noise that can only mean one thing. I instantly ask Katie if she heard the noise. She hadn't, but within about 10 seconds the guy in front of us starts cringing. When the smell hit us Katie and I started blinking and breathing shallowly through our mouths like we were being hit with mustard gas. The jerk who let fly in close quarters never turned around the whole time in line. Not that I blame him after what he put us through.

As we were seated at his table, we realized we were being seated next to 'The Flapper' as we called him due to the noise I first heard before the wall of stink hit us. And it turns out that besides having no qualms about nearly sh*tting his pants in public, he also doesn't mind getting belligerently drunk in front of strangers. Katie and I put on our game faces and set about trying to enjoy the meal. At one point the flapper starts telling us that he and his wife are newlyweds. We all congratulate them and ask how they met. It turns out they met at work. It further turns out that they worked at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. God has a sense of humor. He really does. If there is anybody that deserves to be sentenced to hanging out with trashy drunks, it's me. Trust me, I've been that guy more times than I can count. It took every remaining iota of self control I had not to innocently ask naive sounding questions about treatment centers. The best part of all of this is that because it was the first night of the cruise, it took over 2 hours to complete the meal so we got extra time with my brother in alcoholism. From there on out, we waited for tables for 2 to become available every meal except 1 (I'll get to that later).

One Thing I Learned On My Trip

2009-01-20T15:28:00.000-08:00

On Saturday the 10th, we got up at about 7:00 took showers and got ready then left for the airport with Katie's mom. We flew into Atlanta and from there to Fort Lauderdale. We took a cab to the Marriott hotel across the street from the port. We had some misgivings when we told the cabbie we wanted to go to the Marriott by Port Everglades and he asked 'Where's that?'. I was thinking that the Marriott corporation is doing pretty well if those directions didn't narrow down the search... So anyways, we checked into the hotel and went across the parking lot to eat at this cool little Italian joint. After that we went back to the hotel and went to bed. Sunday we woke up and got ready then went over to the port in a cab. We got out of the cab and gave most of our luggage to the guys there that take your bags and get them on the ship. It was here that we ran into a recurrent theme: how much to tip.

I'm not a cheap guy. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I have little respect for money in general. What I'm not a big fan of is having to tip everybody you see. Not that I have to, but I feel like I have to. With someone like a cabbie it's easy because it's just 'keep the change' when you hand him a 20 on a 15 dollar tab to get from the airport to the hotel. You get your bags out of the cab, though, and all of a sudden there is a bellhop there to take your bags. They don't ask, either, it's just 'here, let me get that for you'. And how much do you tip? This guy literally lifts 5 bags a foot off the ground to the waiting cart, pushes the cart around for a while and takes the bags off of the cart. It takes him maybe 10 minutes with the time it takes you to check in. Meanwhile, he's trying to make conversation. He's asking you about you and telling you about him. Sometimes I just want to say 'Cut the B.S. man. You're getting a tip. If you keep talking, you're getting a smaller tip. We don't know each other. Let's stop pretending we're good pals.' That's something about me, though. I'm not very good at social situations. I just don't see the need to do that. But I digress... So I come to the conclusion that 5 bucks is an okay tip for a guy in that situation, but then I wuss out and give him 10. At the port the next day I get hit with 2 situations in a row. The cabbie talks our ear off the whole block or so to our ship and when we get there he's falling all over himself to drag the luggage out of the cab (Something I've learned in life: people you don't know that talk your ear off in public usually want a tip). So I pay 20 on a 12 dollar tab. 8 bucks. 75%. Which I think is excessive, but what am I going to do: ask him for $5 bucks back? It turns out I should have, because now I've got another guy that wants to take my bags from the cab to the ship. Having been on a cruise before, I know that this guy is going to take my luggage to some place that I don't see while I pray that all of my stuff remains intact and finds it's way to my room on the ship. This guy literally has all my belongings. He's not a guy you want to start getting cheap on. As I open my wallet, though, I panic when I realize all I've got is 20's. With a sick feeling, I bust out a 20 and lay it on this guy to ensure my bags don't get lost. And now I feel guilty that I 'only' gave the cabbie 8 bucks. I hate it. I've been in town all of 15 hours and I'm already out $43 bucks to pay people I don't want to for things I can do myself. And to top that off, Katie sees this and gets pissed at me for wasting money. It turns out she had smaller bills. So the lesson here is this: when you're on vacation in situation where you are going to have to tip, be prepared with lots of 1 and 5 dollar bills unless you want to start throwing out 20's like a drunken sailor.

Blink

2009-01-20T14:45:00.001-08:00

Does it ever seem like you're the only guy in pictures without his eyes open? Man, I swear.... The answer used to be to take 2 pictures in fairly rapid succession. My powers of blinking at exactly the wrong time allow me to blink in rapid fire succession, though, thus thwarting what could have been a pretty good picture... Blink.

T Minus 40 hours and counting....

2009-01-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning Katie and I jump on a plane to head down to sunny Fort Lauderdale. We'll spend Saturday night at this gem of hospitality:

We'll wake up Sunday morning and get on this cutesy little boat:

And then we'll spend a week in heaven. It's going to be awesome.... :)

Victory is Mine!

2008-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Ahh, the Christmas season is upon us. And as much as I love the stress of it all, there are some things I don't really look forward to. One of those things is my wife's office party. Sometimes it's bad enough going to my own. Most of the time they're just so awkward. You hang around with people you work with and try to make small talk. It's still a work function, so you can't really relax. You put in your hour or so and then get out of there. With my wife's, you get the added bonus of not really knowing anybody. Getting reintroduced to people you somewhat recognize, having to listen to a little small talk, trying to be on your best behavior so not everybody will know Katie's husband is a complete idiot. Like I said, just not my idea of a good time.

This year was different, though. They scheduled a bunch of activities; one of which was a poker tournament. Realizing I could save myself lots of small talk and awkwardness, I signed up for the poker tournament. So we show up and after some walking around to tour the place the party was at, we get in line to get some food. Pleasantries, introductions, and other mind numbing social niceties went on until the poker tournament started. And then it was all down to business.
There were only 16 of us, including an 11 year old kid and one guy who was asking a lot of questions about how to play and what hands beat what. All in all, I liked my chances. Up for grabs were prizes for the top 3. 3rd place was a $25 American Express gift card, 2nd place was a nice hoodie with the logo of the company, and 1st place was a portable fire pit. As we got started, there were 2 tables of 8. Each table was to play down to 4 and then combine. From there, we'd play until there was a winner.

For the first 30 or so hands, I didn't see a single playable hand. In fact, I think I saw one face card and one ace. I thought about playing the ace-five offsuit because I was so desperate to see some action. With a raise and a re-raise to me, though, I thought better of it and let the hand go. A few hands later I picked up pocket queens in early position. I threw a raise out, and despite not having played a single hand up to this point, I got 3 callers. The flop came down Q-x-x rainbow. I had top set. A powerful hand. I bet a smallish amount and got 2 callers to the turn. My bet on the turn saw everyone fold. My first pot! And it was my last for a while. Slowly people started being eliminated and my chip stack was average at best. When we combined tables, I was below average. I was going to need to make a move fast if I was to survive. When I looked down at AK suited, I knew it was my time. I threw a normal preflop raise out and got two callers. One was the 11 year old. The flop came down and was a queen high rainbow - no help. I figured there was enough in the pot, that I would just as soon take it down. So I pushed all in and prayed. The first guy to act after me had a few less chips than me, but he wasted no time in calling. The ll year old though for a second and called me as well. I knew I was dead. The first guy turned up ... A-6 ? No pair, ace high. I actually had this guy beat. The 11 year old turned up his Q-9, though, so I had two chances to catch a king, an ace, or running straight cards. The turn was a blank, so I had 1 more chance to catch any of the 2 remaining aces or three remaining kings. For you math whizzes out there, I was about a 8.4-1 underdog. Lo and behold, though, the river came the beautiful king of hearts and I was back in it.

From there, I started getting cards all over the place. I started being able to afford to see cheap flops with no real hand. Out of the big blind, I looked down at 6-8 offsuit. There were 2 callers and I checked my option. The flop came down j - 8 -6. The first guy checked, the 11 year old pushed all in, and I somewhat apologetically called his bet. The first guy got out of the way and 11 year old showed j - 7. The turn and river were no help and he was out in 5th. When the short stack finally made a stand, his small pocket pair came up short and we were down to 3. I had made the money (so to speak). Here is a picture of the final 3 and the dealer. Notice everybody is watching the guys hands to see how much he is going to bet. I'm watching his eyes to see what he was thinking.
Eventually the lady to my right and I got heads up. She was the reigning CompHealth poker champion, having won the 40 person United Way tournament they had earlier this year. She played really well, and I was nervous. She had mentioned wanting the second place prize, so I made a deal with her. We would agree that I would take the fire pit and she would take the hoodie. We could still play it out for the winner, but at least we'd each get the prize we wanted. She agreed. I played really aggressively heads up and had taken a slight chip lead when I looked down at A-K of spades. I was first to act, and I decided to just call the big blind. I was going to be sneaky. She raised the pot a really small amount. It seemed like a pretty weak bet to me, so I raised her about 3 times the size of her bet. She pushed all in on me, and I figured she had a hand like A-Q or maybe pocket tens. I called her bet and she turned up pocket queens. I was in trouble. The flop was no help. The turn was a blank, and once again I found myself looking for one of 6 cards. (about an 8-1 underdog). When a king fell on the river, I let out an involuntary cheer. Even though my win included knocking an 11 year old out of the tournament and I had to suck out to get there, it still felt good!

Life in a band

2008-12-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

Last night was the gig. When I say gig, you may be imaging people selling tickets, people dancing, people standing around, etc. However, you would be wrong. Our gig last night was to a bunch of people busy playing blackjack, craps, and poker for pretend money. A song would end and our wives (husband for Jody) and girlfriends would clap. It kind of made me laugh. Every gig I've ever played but one has been to an audience of crickets. (not that I've played a lot or anything, but I'll bet I've played a dozen or so in different bands) It was perfect.

It always happens like this: you finally get a bunch of people showing up (somewhat) regularly to practice and get some songs down. 1 person in the band brings up an opportunity to do a show. You agree on it, because it's usually a ways off and you figure you can work out any kinks between now and then. You're usually practicing an hour or two a week for a couple of months. Then, about 2 weeks before the show you start gearing up. Your practices are between 2 and 3 hours and twice as often. Maybe the night before you do one final practice to go through your set. Then comes the day of the show. You get off work early and meet up at the drummers house (your equipment is almost always at the drummers house: his equipment is a lot more difficult to move). You spend a half an hour loading heavy awkward equipment into vehicles. Then you head over to the show. You get there hours early. You take another half an hour to drag the equipment out of the car and put it on stage. Then you take the next 45 minutes setting the equipment up and trying to get the volumes right on everything. Maybe you go through a song or two to test the levels and warm up. And then you wait. Slowly people start filing in and eventually it's your time to go on. You get up there, a ball of nerves, but once that first note hits you go into a zone. And before you know it, the show is over. People file out. Then you spend the next 45 minutes taking your equipment down and putting back in the vehicles. Then it's back over to the drummers to put all the equipment back.

For your hour long show (if you're lucky), you have probably spent 40 hours getting everything prepared. And if by chance you are in competition with roulette for play money, then God help you! :) You may be reading this wondering 'What a pain in the ass! Why bother?' Myself, I'm in it for the chicks...not. Think about it, though: How much do you have to LOVE something to go to these lengths and keep doing it? It's one of the most rewarding things in my life. I've spent thousands of hours playing music in my life. It's part of my self image. I'm a musician.

Patterns - A novel

2008-12-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

As an alcoholic I do things over and over again by definition. Taking a drink and waking up in a different state... causing dumb arguments with my wife and others.... I could increase the list ad infinitum. There are 2 things going on in my life today that are glaring examples of this. The first is something that has been happening in one form or another in my life for as far back as I can remember. I don't get along well with others. That's not to say that I don't get along with ANYONE. It's usually just 1 person. And it's usually a person I work with. At different times in my life since I started working at 15, there is usually 1 person that I seem incapable of getting along peacefully with. It's usually a person that I may be able to be friends with in different circumstances.

Right now, I'm causing myself a lot of grief because I can't seem to let go of resentment towards a person I work with. Or to put it another way, I'd love about 15 minutes alone in a room with this person with impunity. This is a person that manages to come in 30 minutes late, take an hour and 15 minute lunch, and can still manage to throw in 3 or 4 20 minute breaks in one 8 hour period. So when this person today interrupted my work to add a few hours worth of work for me that they didn't want to do I lost my cool. The underlying character defect that jumps out at me is this: I don't deal with frustration straight away. When something is bothering me I just sort of ignore it. Until, that is, I snap. When that happens I've been known to put my job and safety in jeopardy. As a consequence I'm known as a very angry person. Probably because I have years of this behavior stored up. If the average person is at a 1 or a 2 on the frustration chart at any given time, I'm at a 7 or 8. It takes very little to put me up over the 10 mark. And then I blow up. And although this causes a lot of confrontations, I am not a confrontational person at my core. I am a fearful person. I avoid confrontation. The funny thing is that if I was more assertive, I could avoid 90% of the confrontations I get into. It's my very cowardice that causes me to get into situations I fear. What do I fear? Uncomfortable situations in general. That you won't like me. Again, though, I could avoid most of these if I was more assertive.

So anyways, the other situation is one that goes back a few years. I think I've written about how I caught my mom cheating on my step-dad. It was really traumatic and the decisions I made in the aftermath have caused my life to go in a completely different direction than it might have. About 4 years ago my mom and dad started dating again. (note: when I say dating, I mean sleeping together and practically living together. This is the definition of 'dating' in my family) It was really weird. I know most other people are used to seeing both of their parents living under one roof, but I definitely wasn't. When that relationship sort of fizzled again, I was almost relieved. When my mom mentioned that she was seeing the guy that she cheated on my step dad with, though, it wasn't just weird. This is the same guy that helped to create so much pain in my family 10 years ago. To say nothing of the pain that it caused his family; because he was (and is still) married with children too. When my mom told me she was seeing this guy again, she told me he was married still. I think she told me as a way to prove that nothing serious was going on between them. It did just the opposite. I was thinking 'Mom, what the hell? Did you not learn 10 years ago?' She even arranged for this guy to show up when my mom and I were out doing some Christmas shopping. I could ignore it until this guy was shaking my hand, a sheepish look on his face.

So where am I going with all this? I'm talking about patterns here. And to be more specific MY patterns. I'm tired of getting into the same fight over and over with people. To stop doing that, I need to change my pattern of not dealing with things. That is going to mean that I will be uncomfortable a lot. I think I am willing to accept that if it means I will avoid these dumb situations. I came to this conclusion while talking to my mom on the phone today. I decided to ask my mom about this guy she is seeing. I told her how it is bringing back a lot of painful memories and feelings for me. I also told her that if she planned on continuing to see this guy and ultimately wanted acceptance from my sister and I, she was facing an uphill battle. When the conversation ended, I felt strangely exhilarated. Like I was in uncharted territory. I hope this place is somewhere I get to know very well.

What's in a name?

2008-11-24T15:32:00.000-08:00

I was driving on a 2 lane road the other day when I got stuck behind one of these. Being as how I had to slow down 20 miles an hour, I thought it slightly ironic.

Cruising

2008-11-20T15:37:00.001-08:00

Katie and I are going on another cruise in January. Even in the doldrums I've been in lately I still look forward to vacationing. I've been thinking about our cruise experiences in the past and thought I'd share a story with you. It's a story with a moral.

On the cruise line we've been on in the past, they have a set time for dinner. You are assigned a table which usually has 10 place settings. This means that you end up sitting with people you don't know. Because dinner can take well over an hour on a cruise, you're a little bit nervous about getting stuck with someone that you don't hit it off with. If you were to ask most males who their ideal table mates would be, you'd probably hear 'scantily clad large breasted women'.

So anyways, when we showed first to the table on the first night of our last cruise we waited anxiously to see who we might be subjected to sitting with. When a party of 4 came up to our table and started seated themselves I quickly realized that one man's heaven is another man's hell. Of the 4 people, there were 3 girls wearing low cut dresses. They all had huge boobs. It turns out the three were a mother and her two daughters. The gentleman was the father of the girls and husband of the mother (and by the way turned out to be a hell of a nice guy). The girls sat right next to me. I can count on one hand the times in my life I've been more uncomfortable. I've got my wife on my right side, 3 beautiful ladies falling out of their dresses on my left side and their father/husband across the table looking at me. I think I kept my eyes on the ceiling for an hour to avoid getting busted sneaking a quick peak at an illicit rack. When we met up with another couple in recovery the next day, I was grateful to switch tables to some people I felt more comfortable around. The moral of the story is: what's the point of all that eye candy if you can't even take advantage of it?

Telling on myself

2008-11-19T15:40:00.000-08:00

So I've been struggling for the last couple of weeks. The color has gone out of the world for me. I find it hard to get excited about anything. Katie and I put an offer in on a house. That should be exciting for me, but I feel nonplussed about the whole deal. If we get it, okay. If we don't, okay.

When I was younger and still drinking and doing coke I felt terrific highs and catastrophic lows. Often in the same day. Right after I finally stopped doing all of that, the mood swings were tough to deal with without the aid of alcohol and drugs. I went on antidepressants for a few years to level out the swings and repair the damage that the years of drinking and smoking crack did to the dopamine centers in my brain. Of course I was drinking and using here and there while I was taking those antidepressants so they weren't as effective as they could have been. I eventually got off the meds and learned to deal with the ups and downs. And those ups and downs leveled off in time.

Lately, though, I feel as though I've flatlined. No ups, no downs. So the good news is that my mood has been stable. The bad news is that I'm sick of feeling this way. An alcoholic who wants to feel differently is in a dangerous spot. Because I know EXACTLY how to feel differently. Feeling differently isn't worth losing a marriage to me, though. And that's what would happen. So I'm telling on myself. My thinking is suspect the last couple of weeks. I've thought about drinking more than I have in the nearly 16 months of sobriety. I'm going to meetings and meeting with my sponsees. I'm talking to my sponsor, and all the while I'm thinking about drinking.

I understand that even thinking about drinking is a form of insanity. Why would someone who has been through what I have ever even consider drinking again? There are a lot of answers to that question. One is that I am nuts. I'm okay with being nuts. It doesn't bother me. The more practical answer is that I've got complacent. I've allowed myself to slip back into doing the things that keep me sober just so I can put a mental check next to my mental list. Meetings. Check. Talk to sponsor. Check. I have failed to enlarge my spiritual life as they say in the rooms. And I'm paying the price.

So what am I going to do about it? After talking to my sponsor about it, it's pretty clear what I have to do. Keep working on making my amends. Keep going to meetings. Don't panic and don't run. And remember that to a large extent my feelings are unimportant. You guys don't judge me by my thoughts or my feelings. You judge me by my actions. That last one is really tough sometimes because feelings and emotions can be really overwhelming at times. They always pass, though. Good or bad. And this too shall pass...

Update

2008-11-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

I think my phone is an optimist. It doesn't have the words crap or bureaucracy in it's text dictionary. Of course it doesn't have Katie's name in it either, so maybe optimist isn't the right word. Romantic, perhaps.... Kidding, I'm only kidding...

Why do they call the people that prepare sushi for you 'sushi chefs' ? Don't chefs have to go to school and learn more than how to properly cook rice and tempura? When some wise ass calls himself a 'Doctor of Love' we all laugh, but we go along when someone calls himself a sushi chef? What gives? Do we feel we know more about what a real doctor does than a real chef to call out the love doctor but not the sushi chef? The Krebs cycle, well that's easy. Making a fine beef wellington, now THAT'S a mystery!

When I drove by my credit union on the way to work today I noticed it said it was 17 degrees outside. Not 5 days ago I was complaining that the air conditioning in my car didn't work well enough and now it's 17 degrees. Welcome to Utah...

So our band has a gig in December. We're playing my company's 'Year End Festival', which I believe is the PC version of the company Christmas party. There won't be too many people there, maybe 80 or 100. Still, I'm kind of nervous. These aren't random yahoos that I never see. These are yahoos I see every day. 2 other people that work here are in the band, so at least I will sink or swim with company. Stay tuned....

Vegas Baby!

2008-10-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

Katie and I just got back from Vegas; we were celebrating our 3rd anniversary. Throughout the weekend, we had a good time. I lost a little money playing blackjack, but won it all back and then some playing poker at the Hooters Casino. Katie was not so fortunate. We were at the Bellagio (Sunday) last night when I noticed that a World Poker Tour event was starting today (Monday, October 20th). I've wanted to hang out for the beginning of a major poker tournament for a long time. The last time I was in Vegas, I left about 5 days before the WSOP (World Series Of Poker) started. So Katie agreed to come along with me to watch the beginning of the tournament. We were walking into the Bellagio when I looked up and who did I see walking at me? It was the 'Orient Express' Johnny Chan!!!

(Note: For those who don't know me, know that I am a huge poker fan. I generally spend at least 2 hours a week watching it on TV. I've read about a dozen books on or about poker, and know scores of top notch poker pros on sight. If you haven't seen the movie Rounders or don't know who Johnny Chan is, I apologize for the gratuitous name dropping I am about to do)

Johnny Chan

As we made eye contact, my eyes bugged out of my head and I said to Katie 'Holy Sh*t, that's Johnny Chan'. Before I could make a scene, Johnny averted his eyes and picked up his pace. Snubbing aside, I was ecstatic! As we hung out, I was thinking about whether or not I should have said hi (I'm thinking probably not). I decided that if I happened to see anyone else, I wouldn't be shy. After all, how often to you get to meet some of your idols? The answer for me today was 'quite often'. The next half hour before the tournament saw me hanging out near and sometimes talking to a bunch of my poker heroes. I saw Erick Lindgren and Gavin Smith hanging out with Bill Edler.

Erick Lindgren / Gavin Smith

Bill Edler /

I decided I would go say hi. I walked up expecting to be denied. They were extremely polite and even agreed to a picture with me until security stopped us. Erick said 'I think there's a robbery over there' in an effort to get the security guy to let this one go, but it wasn't to be. I shook their hands and thanked them for their time. Bill Edler said some really nice things about how lucky I was to be with Katie. Besides these 3, I also managed to shake hands with and say hello to Hoyt Corkins. Minutes later I saw the only person to win both the WSOP Main Event and the WPT Championship : Carlos Mortensen and said hi to him. After shaking his hand, I introduced him to Katie and wished him luck. He wished me luck back. Just then I turned and saw the number one person on my 'List' - Jennifer Harman. I was going to say hi to her, but I saw her husband Marco Traniello and chickened out. A girl next to me called her over, and there I was: within an arms' length of a girl my wife would let me sleep with and have it be okay. Afterwards I joked with Katie that I had come closer to sleeping with anyone on my list than she has with anyone on hers. Before we left I saw Phil Ivey, Chau Giang, and a few others.

Carlos Mortensen / Hoyt Corkins

Chau Giang

Jennifer Harman / Marco Traniello

Phil Ivey

While this was going on, Katie patiently let me be starstruck. Some people get really excited over celebrities or musicians. I think I've said before how I don't get too worked up over those types. I've always had a tremendous amount of respect for top notch poker players, though. Their ability to handle swings in the game just astounds me. This trip in general and today in particular was great. I think I'll remember it forever. How many days in your life do you get to fraternize with people you look up to so much? I wish I could have taken a picture or two, but I will settle for my memories.

Here's a useless bit of information for you: I mentioned 10 names in this post. Those 10 names in total have accumulated about 50 million dollars in tournament victories throughout their careers. And most of them only play tournaments for fun!!!

Things I'm Glad I Did

2008-10-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

On May 16, about 5 weeks before his sudden passing, I got a chance to see George Carlin at Abravanel Hall. I managed to get seats in the second row for a buddy and me. I didn't know that until I showed up, but when we got there and sat down I was stoked!
I had first experienced George Carlin like a lot of people from my generation: from watching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Reading his books and listening to his records through the years, I knew that I had to see George soon. When my friend Dan mentioned he was in town, I jumped at the chance. I have to thank Dan for my renewed interest in Mr. Carlin. If ever there was a guy that knew more about pop culture than me, it would be Dan. His attention to the finer things in life gave me the opportunity to see a legend.. weeks before his death.

In November of 2005 I had been married for about a month. In the midst of the wedding festivities, my soon to be father-in-law mentioned to me that the Rolling Stones were going to be in town. He asked me if I was interested in going. Was I ever! Our threesome included Katie and we had a blast! I think my life since I met Katie could be set to a Rolling Stones soundtrack. When we first met, I gave Katie a copy of Beggar's Banquet. She fell in love that album even quicker than she fell in love with me. When we started dating I was drinking and that was our 'Some Girls' phase. We listened to that album over and over hanging out. Right before we were married, the Stones came out with their 'Bigger Bang' album. That was the album they were supporting on tour. There were 2 or 3 of those songs we heard quite often. My father in law, Terry, was fond of the funky 'Rain Fall Down'. That album stayed front and center until 5 months later when Terry got sick and died after a brief illness. At that point, the song was 'It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)'. Terry loved that song and it's still tough to hear it without thinking about him doing his shoulder dance while listening to it. Earlier this year, Marty Scorcese came out with a documentary film called 'Shine A Light'. We had been waiting for it anxiously and it didn't disappoint. That soundtrack and a song from a different era called 'Cherry Oh Baby' are 2008 for me. I know that as we stay married a different album or song by the Stones will continue to capture that time. I'm glad I got to see the Stones with Terry. I didn't get long enough with the guy, but at least I got the Stones with him.

You Know What Would Be Uncomfortable?

2008-10-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

You know what seems like it would be kind of awkward to me? Introducing your wife to a girl from your past that you've fooled around with. You're having a conversation with your wife at a party when you see a ghost walking at you from across the room. You pause mid sentence. Your wife notices your sudden silence and the pale hue your skin has suddenly taken. Your mind races as you try to figure out how you're going to handle this train wreck waiting to happen. Do you pretend you don't know this girl? Do you acknowledge you know her and try to beam eye rays of 'Don't say anything about us' to the fling from your past coming towards you? When she finally walks up to you, you stand there like a wet end. Your wife is clearly wondering what she missed. (Of course, 98% of women will have already picked up on the weirdness and know EXACTLY what is going on) You mumble a 'Hey, how ya doing? Long time no see' as you say a silent prayer longing to be somewhere else at this exact moment. Anywhere else. And God forbid you forget your flings' name. Both women staring at you waiting for introductions as you feel the heat rise to your head. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that would be? Yeah, me neither, I was just asking....

You know what I think would be more awkward than that, though? Your wife introducing YOU to a girl from your past that you've fooled around with. "Troy, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. Her name is ....' Man that would suck. I hope that never happens to me.

Crash! or LT contemplates a new career

2008-10-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about the movie. Or the video game character. I'm talking about one car running into another. It happened to me a couple of days ago. There I was, driving down the road minding my own business when a lady tried to nose out into traffic to turn left. I honked my horn and had 2 options that I saw: 1 was to go into oncoming traffic or the traffic sign at the beginning of the island in front of me. The other option was to pray to the brake gods that mine were good. I went with the second option and found that, while my brakes were good, they in fact were not good enough. Bummer.

All in all, it seemed to be not that big of a deal. There was no broken glass or headlights; no fluids leaking. I was upset that the cop didn't ticket the lady for her obvious infraction, but after I started raising my voice to the cop I quickly remembered an incident earlier in my life. An incident where I got vocal with a cop. That cop in turn got violent with me. Rage in check, I opted for the more traditional 'work it out with her insurance' route. I filed a claim with her insurance company, hoping that my insurance would never hear about my little fender bender. About 10 minutes later I received notification that she had filed a claim with my insurance. I was pretty upset for a minute. After I spoke to her insurance to give a statement, I was genuinely concerned. They seemed rather combative. Within a day, though, they called back to tell me they were accepting liability. So the Road Warrior (the name bestowed upon my 2002 Mazda Protoge) is in the car hospital getting fixed up. With so little damage, I was surprised to learn that despite the lack of broken glass or leaking fluids my car had nearly $3,800 in damage. Yikes! All over a little bit of plastic. That's about half the value of my entire car. All in the bumper. I would have thought the engine might be worth that much. Or perhaps the transmission. Nope. Just the bumper.

That got me thinking. I'm in the wrong industry. I need to be making plastic bumpers for cars.

Caribbean Dreams... and other random thoughts

2008-09-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been having these daydreams where I imagine selling everything I own and moving to the Caribbean to be a beach bum. While I'm thinking about this, I'll put some steel drum music on, throw my feet up and just imagine that the office sounds I hear around me aren't existing; that it's just me, the sand, the ocean, and the sun. Having only worked at my new job for 2 weeks, my new coworkers are probably wondering 'What's with the new guy?'. Oh well. It's nothing personal against them. I'm just longing for a lack of responsibility. And a suntan.

My wife is in Seattle right now. I've been joking around with her and some of the people around me that because she is in a different area code, I'm a single man. Last night I was in with group of friends after a meeting. One girl didn't know me very well, so when I was asking everybody around me if they knew anyone I could hook up with for the weekend while my wife was out of town she got this incredulous look on her face. I had to pull her aside and tell her that the joke was in the fact that I love my wife a lot and she 'owns my soul' so I would never consider stepping out on her. Hearing that, she decided we could be friends after all. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure this is how rumors get started. Mental Note To Self: Not everybody enjoys a good joke about cheating on your wife....

So I have this embarrassing habit... I wake up in the middle of the night to eat sweet things like chocolate or Little Debbie's snack cakes. Sometimes I take these treats back to bed with me. I wake up the next morning with chocolate all over me and little recollection of what happened. It's awful. I'm a grown person and I wake up with a handful of mush and dirty sheets. I guess I should be glad I don't wet the bed anymore. When I woke up this morning, I was in rare form. Chocolate was everywhere and I don't remember getting up at all. Needless to say, I'll be doing laundry in the immediate future....

Things That Are Awesome! (part 2)

2008-09-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

In this second round of all things Awesome!, I will discuss some things near and dear to my heart. Things like hard rock, raw food, and things I like to do in my spare time.

AC-DC is Awesome! There is something that is Awesome in a very literal way about a 5 foot tall guitarist wearing a school boy uniform still rocking over 30 years later. I just think 'Wow' when I think about it. My mind can barely wrap itself around the idea of so much cool in such a small package. How cool is AC-DC? For my 16th birthday, my mom put me on a plane to visit an aunt and uncle in California. The reason for the visit? AC-DC was going to be in town on my 16th birthday. I went to the show and it is safe to say it changed my life. I came home, dragged an old guitar out of the attic, restrung it and have spent the last 12 and a half years trying to be half as cool as Angus. If I ever even attained that, I would die a happy man. Here's to you, AC-DC!

Sushi is Awesome! The only thing I don't like about sushi, is the fact that I didn't get to try it until my early 20's. I can remember being skeptical about raw food. I can also remember being skeptical about girls, so I can safely say that I had no idea what was going on at times in my life. The first birthday I celebrated with my now wife Katie, we went to eat sushi.

Ramen Noodles are Awesome! I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the various makers of ramen noodles. What college student or culinary impaired adult would be alive if not for this staple of the less refined palates of the world? Certainly not me. I once lived for a month on a diet nearly entirely composed of Top Ramen and multivitamins. Granted I lost 15 pounds and nearly died, but I think that may have been due to my extracurricular activities around this time more than anything else. Also - I didn't ACTUALLY die, so it can't be that bad, right?

Naps are Awesome! Anybody who knows me knows that I am a small child stuck in a slightly larger child's body. I love naps. Naps are a blessing from the Good Lord. I try not to ever go more than a week without at least 1 nap. I've been warned that kids can ruin naps. This is one reason why I am trying to hold Katie off on the whole kids thing for as long as possible.

My Wife is Awesome! Just like every mother thinks their kid is the cutest thing ever, I think my wife is the Awesome! -est ever. Need proof? How about this: we're still married. She should be canonized for that. She has seen me through 2 different rehab's. Although at times she has been frustrated, she never gave up on me. She has a sense of humor and is one of the most selfless people I've ever known. On top of that is that she is hot (see picture below).

So that does it for this installment of Things That Are Awesome!. Stay tuned for more examples of why God loves us.

Ode to Football

2008-09-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

Ahh. The end of summer. The kids are back in school. The temperature is no longer so hot you get burned walking to the mailbox. More than this, though, is the start of football season. Manly american football to be more precise. The cacophony of crowds cheering, plays being called, and men crashing into one another is music to my ears. Each year from September until the beginning of February, I have an excuse every Sunday to go hang out with my brothers while watching our favorite pasttime. It matters little to us that our team probably won't break .500 this year. What does matter is that once a week we get together to watch hours of beer, car, and movie commercials with a little football thrown in.

It's Thursdays at the beginning of the season and on Thanksgiving. It's Sundays through January. Mondays through December. And when that sad day comes in February when football season ends, we go back into hibernation. We spend 6 months making up with our families for having ignored them 1 day a week for the last 5 months. Inside, though, we're waiting. We're keeping posted on the draft and on training camp. We're doing research for our fantasy football teams. We're secretly hoping Tom Brady decides to give ballet a try, lest he destroy our team again this year.

Football is about coming together and enjoying the time we have. It's about teamwork and camaraderie, not taunting and childishness. It's about tradition, not holding out for more money. Don't cry to me because someone is being mean to your quarterback. If you're going to cash your paycheck, then shut up and act like a man.

Football is tailgating and barbecues. It's brats, steak, and beer (if you're so inclined); not quiche or salad. Football is machismo. It is manliness personified. Feminists beware. Don't be confused, though. Football is not exclusive. Anyone is invited. All you need is a TV. And some brothers.

Any Ideas?

2008-09-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

Whoever invented bringing flowers home to your wife is a wise man. Anybody that remembers to do it when they're not in the doghouse is a genius. Add me to that list. Last night I brought the wife some flowers and a couple of games for her game boy out of the blue. She probably told me 10 times how happy she was. She also said something slightly disturbing to me. She said 'You haven't brought me flowers since we were dating'. We're not an old married couple or anything, but we're not exactly newlyweds either. God willing, we'll celebrate 3 years next month. What she was saying to me is that I haven't brought flowers to her in 3 years. YEARS!

That got me thinking (yeah, I know: bad idea); I'm either doing something right by bringing flowers so infrequently or I've got to step it up in the old romance department. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about all of the stuff that seemed fun when we first started dating. Stuff that seems like a waste of time now. Stuff like going for walks out of the blue or ...actually, I can't really think of a lot of things that would apply now. Her visiting me in rehab doesn't go over as smoothly as it used to. What do people do that is romantic that doesn't involve detoxing from alcohol? If any of you have any ideas, please let me know. If my wife is that happy over a bunch of flowers and some games, I've got to be doing something wrong. I'm clueless. In fact I'm starting to wonder what it was that I did or said that tricked the wife into marrying me in the first place. Did I used to be more spontaneous and it went away? My idea of a good time now is to sit at home on the couch watching a movie or tv show with the wife and cats. That couldn't be what charmed the pants off of Katie, could it? (if you're reading this Mom, pay no attention to the wording of that last sentence - it's just a saying) So anyways, if anybody has any ideas on how to charm the pants off of my wife once again please let me know.

Things That are Awesome! (part1)

2008-08-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start an ongoing thread. I'll call it Things That are Awesome! Like the title hints at, I will list things I find Awesome! . Sometimes I feel like there is a shortage of Awesome! in the world. These posts will serve as reminders that there aren't enough pairs of Crocs in the entire universe to take away all of the Awesome! in it.

Steak is Awesome! My apologies to any of my vegetarian or vegan friends, but few things in life give me the pleasure of gnawing on a hunk of cow. Mmmm cow.... I'm tired of being made to feel badly for enjoying meat. As a poet once said 'I didn't climb to the top of the food chain to eat a salad.' Amen to that.

Scantily Clad Women are Awesome! Here's another thing I won't apologize for: I like nearly naked women. Despite my earlier assertions, I'm not a chauvinist. I'm an admirer of God's handiwork. God may have made man in his image, but he perfected his work with women.

Not Waking Up Confused in a Different State is Awesome! Ever since I quit drinking, I don't have this problem anymore. Other things that are Awesome now that I don't drink: Not Peeing in Garbage Cans in the Middle of the Night is Awesome!, Not Leaving My Credit Card at the Bar is Awesome!, and Not Getting Thrown out of the House by my Wife Because I got Drunk Again is Awesome!

Guitar Solos are Awesome! Now that grunge has gone out of vogue, it is acceptable once again to throw a wicked solo into a song. Although the solos are awesome, I'm still on the fence with the long hair and tight leather pants.

Gangster Movies are Awesome! Marty Scorcese should be knighted or made a saint or something. His contributions to pop culture bring a tear of joy to my eye. A manly 'I enjoy violent gangster films' tear of joy.

28! or Things I Know

2008-08-21T14:01:00.001-07:00

The other day I woke up and realized that I'm 28. It scared me. When my mom was my age, she was getting married for the 2nd time. She had a 7 year old kid. Lots of people I know that are my age are college educated with good jobs and families and houses. I still think of myself as a kid in my own head. It helps that I look like a kid and hang out with old guys all the time, but holy crap I'm an adult and I just realized it!!! I feel like I've been in a coma and just woke up. When I was a kid, 28 year old's were Big People. They were responsible and took care of business. Now that I'm a 28 year old, I realize that the 28 year old's of 20 years ago were clueless. They didn't know what was going to happen. I know this because I'm 28 now and I don't know what's going to happen. I think I knew more stuff when I was 19 than I know now. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Here is a list of things I know:

* The government is always going to take their share from my paycheck. If I get a $2,000 a year raise, I know that I will really only get a $1,500 raise.

* I can't drink alcohol normally. I've been in an ambulance so many times, they should give me a punch card so I can get my next ride free.

* Change is the only constant. I believe it was a wise prophet who once said 'The more things change, the more they stay the same'. ( A wise prophet, or the singer of the band Cinderella. I forget which one)

* It is virtually impossible to shout something in public and sound intelligent. If you doubt this, I challenge you to go into a mall and shout something you feel sounds smart. 'A squared plus B squared equals C squared' sounds no more intelligent than 'Hey everybody, check out the rack on that Betty over there!' when spoken at top volume. Trust me on this.

* There are certain things you never bring up around other people unless you want a fight. Here are a few: religion, politics, and the size of someone's butt and how it may or may not look in a pair of jeans (note: this mainly applies when speaking to women).

I think that's pretty much it. On a parallel note, here are things I know about women:

* _

Now that I think about it, though, maybe that's why girls like guys that are self confident. Girls don't have any more idea what's going to happen than I do. They want someone that seems to know what's going to happen. Nobody really knows, though. That's one thing that I do know.

The List

2008-08-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

My wife Katie and I have a running joke going. From what I understand, the joke we have ongoing is a fairly common thing. The joke is an agreement of sorts. A list. Our joke is this: If you could have a get out of jail free card to sleep with 10 people, who would be on your list? For this little game, we have some unspoken ground rules.

1) We both understand this game is a joke. We don't really get to sleep with anybody and have it be okay. Neither of us are Andre Kirilenko. While we are both okay joking about it, I'm pretty sure even if Brad Pitt seduced my wife it would be a deal breaker for me (as I say it, though, I just think to myself 'Man if you're in that spot, Katie, just go for it. I'll get over it in time....')

2) The people on the list have to be people that we don't know. If I put Katie's best friend on my list, I somehow think the joke would be over. And after all, the point of this exercise is to laugh. (I also think you can learn a lot about a person by the type of person they are interested in).

So, without further adieu and in no particular order, here is my list:

1) Jennifer Harman

Who, you ask, is Jennifer Harman? She is arguably the best female poker player on the planet. Some guys go for a big rack, other guys are ass men. I’ll take a girl that shares my interests any day of the week. Just look at her sitting there with all those chips in front of her. Just thinking about her check raising me in a pot makes me want to reconsider how much of a joke this list is.

2) Alison Krauss

Back to the category of attractive women with serious talent, Alison qualifies. She can rock the fiddle as well as belt out a tune. Plus, I may be wrong, but I get the impression that this girl could just as easily cook me a nice dinner at home on a Saturday night. Don’t judge me. It’s my list. If I want a girl to cook for me in my fantasies, let me be. Which brings me to #3:

3) Rachel Ray

Yum-O. I’m not quite sure where to start. Okay, yes I am. This chick is HOT! She’s talented, she’s rich, and if I’m hungry she can feed me in a half an hour. Mmmm…. Food……

4) Jenna Fischer (Pam from the Office)

Okay, so I met my wife at work. I have experience with the office hottie. Pam, er I mean Jenna, qualifies. She’s funny and can relate to me at the end of the day. Awesome. Which brings us to number 5:

5) Jennifer Connelly

Ms. Connelly qualifies for a number of reasons. She’s an Academy Award winning actress. From what I’ve read about her, she seems to be pretty thinky. I likes me some thinky women. You all can take your Pamela Anderson’s and other Playboy centerfolds. I’ll take me a girl I can have a conversation with. Some of the things we could talk about? What it was like being handpicked by famed director Sergio Leone at the age of 13 to be in his gangster epic ‘Once Upon A Time In America’ starring Robert Deniro, James Woods, and Joe Pesci. Or maybe we can talk about her portrayal of an addict slipping into oblivion in the indie film ‘Requiem For A Dream’. The same movie I shamelessly stole the title from for my first 20 or so posts….

6) Ellen Page

Continuing the trend of intelligent women (or at least women who can ACT intelligent), number 6 is Ellen Page. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. This quote of hers sums it up for me “Anyone who gets me is really lucky because I'm not really crazy about jewelry or flowers

." A low maintenance hottie. Enough said.

7) Halle Berry

I know very little about Halle. I know she’s a great actress that has won an Academy Award and I know she’s hot. That’s enough for her to make my list, though.

8) Norah Jones

Norah, Norah, Norah. From her angelic voice to her fantastic ability to finger the ivories, it’s easy to overlook the fact that she is gorgeous. Surely Katie couldn’t fault me for this pick. I’m not so sure that Norah wouldn’t be on Katie’s list…

9) Jamie Lynn Sigler

Meadow Soprano. When hot girls and gangster flicks come together, Jamie Lynn is the result. God bless America and our obsession with the counter culture.

10) Jessica Alba

Let me think. Jessica Alba seduces me. Can I think of any scenario where I can say no?…. …. ….. Nope, I guess not. For that reason, she makes the list.

So that’s my list. It’s always changing as I get new hobbies and find new hot chicks that share those hobbies. I was thinking the last couple of days about adding Belinda Carlise, but I couldn't decide who had to go. So, sorry Belinda. Maybe you'll make the next list. Does anybody else out there have a list? Anybody who thinks Katie should kick me to the curb? Feel free to comment.

Chauvinist? I think not.

2008-08-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Going back the last 60 years or so, it seems that each new generation is a little more open minded than the last. The beatnik generation (50's), the hippies (60's), the bra burners (70's), the gen x'ers (late 70's - mid 80's), then the P.C. era (90's). As the years went by, thinking slowly progressed away from the patriarchal led family unit to the era of equality for all. According to a friend of mine the progressive trend of each generation being more accepting than the last is finally over. The buck stops with me. Last night a friend called me a chauvinist. This friend is twice my age. Coming from someone of a different generation it made me laugh. I think he had misunderstood my tone from the conversation we were having and not realized I was joking; but the idea of me being a chauvinist is hilarious to me. My mother is a borderline femnazi. In the house I grew up in, the men did most of the cooking and cleaning. I am as effeminate as straight men come. If my friend Cameron is 49% gay, then I am 49.5%...

At issue was an article I read on CNN regarding a new trend among young couples with no children to have one member of the couple stay home during the day without a job. In the article, all of the examples given were of women staying home while their husbands worked. I was telling my friends about this article and how it struck me as misleading. With no children, I couldn't understand what there was to do at home all day. The article listed things like doing laundry one day, deep cleaning the house another day, shopping another, etc. I was thinking to myself 'How much laundry do 2 people use' and 'how dirty is a house with 2 people and no kids anyways?'. I thought it was misleading, because it seemed to me that laziness was being disguised behind.....feminism? The pros for this situation were listed as that there was less stress on the person working and on their relationship because they didn't have to worry about errands and making dinner after a long day at work. Those in favor of this setup said that it wasn't sexist because the feminists of the 60's and 70's weren't fighting for the woman's right to work, but for the right of the woman to choose if she wanted to work or not. It's a valid argument. I'm curious if those bra burning feminists would be inclined to agree, but all of that is beside the point. I was telling my friends last night that because I saw it as laziness, if my wife were the one staying home I would expect her to clean and cook dinner for me. This was where my friend interjected by calling me a chauvinist. I stand by my point, though. For a relationship to be equal, both partners have to bring things to the table. If a person (man or woman) isn't working or raising kids, they've got to be doing something to be equal in the relationship. If they aren't handling responsibilities financially or maternally, does what they bring to the table equal what the hard working member of the relationship brings? The last time I was in a relationship where I didn't have to work or take care of kids was when I was living with my parents. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that. And at those times, I am being LAZY.

Because my friend thinks I'm a chauvinist, I figure I might as well act the part. Here are a few things the new chavinist me thinks:

*Beating Women: A while ago a friend of mine was asking if I ever just wanted to beat a woman. The new chauvinist me says Hell Yes! Woman today are just too full of opinions. 'I think I'm equal' 'Women are people, too'.... Whatever. Women today just don't have fear in them. I think a good beating would put that fear back in them. What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing; you've already told her twice. What do 50,000 battered women in the US each year have in common? They just don't listen. Last Christmas my wife asked for a new watch. I told her she didn't need a watch: there is a clock on the stove. If God didn't want a woman to make my dinner, he wouldn't have made women's feet smaller to stand closer to the stove.

*Beating Children: The new chauvinist me says why should children be excluded from the beatings? When I have kids I'm going to keep a knee length tube sock around. At different times, I'll fill it with billiard cue balls and nails. When my kid steps out of line, WHAM! upside the head. The cue balls will do more immediate damage, but the nails will cause infection. Either way, my kid will learn that the only happy child is a silent child.

*Women Voting: Chauvinist LT says that women will be too busy cooking steak for me and cleaning my house to be wasting time with things like voting. If God wanted women to have opinions, he would have made them men.

If you can think of anything I may be missing, please feel free to comment.

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Keep On Rolling!

2008-07-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've been told by some people that I'm a very angry person. I'll admit that I'm pretty good at getting upset. I'm one of those people who is not assertive. I smile and nod and slowly get angrier and angrier until I snap. Not 'going postal' snapping; more like 'that kid forgot to take his medicine' snapping. I notice more people with raised eyebrows when I lose my temper than people running for cover. I also have an exaggerated sense of fairness. If I feel that something is not fair, I am more likely to go from sweet kid to unbalanced lunatic in no time flat. So to sum things up, I know that I'm good at being angry.

What I'm even better at than BEING angry, though, is manipulating other people into becoming angry at me. I'm sure I've developed this skill throughout my life, but I'm so good at it I think I was just born with the ability to royally piss people off. I don't even have to bring up religion or politics. For that matter, I don't even have to say that many words. I just have an invisible sign that says 'Angry people apply here'. An aura, if you will. With all of this in mind, I want to tell you a story....

It was the fourth of July last year. Katie and I were going to be lighting fireworks with her brother Nate, his girlfriend Nicole, Nicole's mom, and my mother in law. We were over at Nicole's mom's house. We showed up while it was still light. We ate some burgers and dogs, enjoyed some good conversation, and eventually it was time for the light show. Katie and I had stopped by a local fireworks stand on our way over, but not Nate. No, Nate was not satisfied with roman candles that merely flung sparks while laying on the ground or flowers spinning centimeters from the ground. He wanted the real deal. In order to buy the Real McCoy, though, it required that he go out of state. This was in the days when gas was not $4.15 a gallon, so Nate thought nothing of driving to Wyoming to purchase the illicit pyrotechnics. He would have made any adolescent boy proud with his ambition.

As we gathered in the street, we could hear the hullabaloo of nearby families happily enjoying the fireworks and each other's company. We started small. We lit some of the lesser fizgigs purchased by Katie and I. Soon, though, the desire for flames soaring through the sky overcame us and we started lighting Nate's contributions. If you've ever seen the lighting of the Christmas tree on the Garfield Christmas Special, you would know how we appeared as we stared into the sky with glee. And so it was, that staring into the sky I heard a low methodical humming noise. It took me a while to register, but eventually it grew louder. When I realized the noise was getting closer, I looked around. And like a cowboy slowly meandering into the light of a fire, a vision slowly became apparent. That vision was a 75 year old man in a wheelchair. And not just any 75 year old man riding a Jazzy. This handicap parker had taken upon himself a noble goal. His goal was to rid his neighborhood of the riff raff and criminal activity that had plagued it for too long. So coming into the light, he firmly told us that we were done lighting our illicit goods. As I started to light one of our ground locked firecrackers, I told the good sir not to worry; we were almost done firing off our wares. On the side of righteousness, he told me that he didn't care if we were almost done or not. We, he told us, were done firing firecrackers.

As he was talking, he was slowly moving towards me. I had a firecracker in one hand and a lit match in the other. I warned him that I was lighting a 100% legal firecracker. Seeing that I was telling the truth and he had saved his suburb from lawlessness, he turned to go. Then it was that I uttered the words that have haunted me each and every day from that one to this: 'That's right. Keep on rolling, old man."

The mechanical whirring stopped then started again as he slowly maneuvered the Jazzy back towards me. I realized that I had made a grievous error. My intrinsic ability to cause anger in others had struck again. As Katie told me 'Troy, stop!' and my mother-in-law reminded me to 'Respect your elders', I stood my ground against the aggrieved neighborhood watchman. By now the match I had lit to start my firework was out. I stood there with an extinguished match in one hand and a lifeless flower in the other. Captain Jazzy came to a stop inches from me and asked me a thought provoking question. 'Do you want to fight?' he asked. But before I could answer or even ponder the invitation, he followed the offer with 'Just because I'm in a wheelchair, don't think I won't fight you.' Considering his first offer withdrawn, I felt it impolite not to say anything. 'I'm not going to fight you' I said. We were like gunslingers standing (except that one of us was sitting). Each waiting for the other to make a move. Eventually, my non walking friend put his wheelchair back into motion. The threat having passed, I lit another match and started my firework. Since that incident, nary a day goes by without my battle cry being thrown back at me by a friend or family member: 'Keep On Rolling'

1 Year! - Disclaimer

2008-07-27T19:47:00.000-07:00

Today I celebrated 1 year sober. It only took me five and a half years to get here!

Over the last couple of months I've taken the time to write about some of my experiences in getting sober. When I started out, I was going to stay completely anonymous. I didn't want to make anyone around me uncomfortable by knowing some of the sordid details of my past. The feedback that I was getting was pretty positive, though, and I slowly moved away from being anonymous. Eventually I posted a picture and with that ended the question of anonymity. I even told my mom that I was writing about what happened in a public forum. I sent her the link and waited anxiously for her to give feedback. I heard from her last Thursday and she surprised me. She said that she was proud of me for staying sober and sharing my experience. My mom has been clean for over 3 years now. She said that she felt ashamed reading the parts that she was in, but that she has come to terms with what happened. My mom is a really cool woman. I said it before, but I'll say it again: My mom has always tried to take care of me the best way that she knows how. I'm proud of her that she can acknowledge that she feels badly for what happened, but accept that it is in the past and move on. She is a strong woman and I'm grateful to have her be a part of my life.

There are other members of my family that perhaps will not react as well as my mother to me 'putting it all out there'. If I have offended anyone or offend anyone in the future, I hope that they can forgive me. It isn't my intention to embarrass anyone or to be any more vulgar than necessary. I can only explain it like this: in the book that the 12 step fellowships are based on, it says 'we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it'. Everything that I've done and gone through in my life has lead me to the point where I am now. The good times and the bad. If I hadn't smoked crack with my mother or gone through tough times with my wife, I would not be the person that I am today. And like it or not, I am who I am. I wanted to write this stuff down so I could remember who I am and where I've been. Time has a way of changing my memories so that small things become bigger and big things become smaller. I want to remember how I got here. Because if I ever forget, I am doomed to go back. As far as doing it in such a public manner, maybe I have a little exhibitionist in me. I've always been the guy to show you the new song I learned on the guitar. Look at this as my new song. In a selfish note, I was reminded of a lot of things in trying to get most of the details. It wasn't always easy to write. In fact, sometimes it was painful and humiliating. It has been helpful to me, though. I find that I am quicker to share my experience with a friend in recovery. I'm more comfortable with who I am. In that way, I am a better asset to those friends of mine trudging the road of sobriety. I hope that readers will be willing to sacrifice a certain comfort level with me in exchange for my improved assistance with other alcoholics. And work with other alcoholics will help keep me sober.

So Thank You to anyone reading. Thank you for taking the time to read. Even if it was only because you enjoyed reading this like you enjoy a good train wreck: you just can't look away. (I'm not too proud. Attention is attention, right?) I hope you'll check back from time to time to hear the new song I'm working on.

Full Circle (Requiem 23)

2008-07-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

In March, after being sober for nearly 7 months, Katie and I went on another cruise. We looked forward to the 12 step meetings on the ship. That first day we showed up for a meeting, only to find nobody around. After consulting the agenda provided by the cruise company, we realized we were in the wrong part of the boat. Getting to where we were supposed to be, we found just 2 people around. It turns out they were a couple from Kansas City (Don and Leah). Despite the fact that Katie was not an alcoholic, Don and Leah allowed her to sit in the meetings we had. During the whole cruise, nobody else showed up to the meetings. The four of us wound up sitting by each other at dinner and spending a lot of time together.They had 2 kids with them on the cruise, a high school aged son and a junior high school aged daughter. One night, the son was out partying on the ship. His newly found friends brought him back to his cabin wasted and passed out in a wheelchair. Don was having a hard time the next day. Although he was about 19 years sober, he was powerless to help his son. He asked me if I wouldn't mind talking to his son as an alcoholic '12th stepping' a potential alcoholic.

In recovery, there are a few simple things that are suggested in order to maintain continuous sobriety. Getting a sponsor, going to meetings, and working the 12 steps are a few of these suggestions. The steps can be broken down into this: after getting honest with ourselves, we trust God, clean house, and help others. Most people know that the first step is admitting you have a problem. This is partially true. The second part of the first step is that we have lost power managing our own lives. Essentially, we have a problem and we can no longer manage our problem or any other part of our lives. Steps 2 and 3 are where we realize that something outside of ourselves can keep us sober and help us get a little sanity back. We then ask that entity to keep us sober. Most people call this being a Higher Power or God, although not everybody believes in God. Nor is it necessary to believe in God to stay sober. Steps 4 through 9 are about cleaning house. We take a look at ourselves honestly. We write down our faults and tell another person. We then become willing to move past these faults and ask God to help us. From there we list the people we have harmed and make amends to them. This doesn't mean apologize to them. Most alcoholics have made a career out of apologizing for things we've done when drunk. Amends is about making things right. Once we have attempted to make things right from our pasts, we continue looking at ourselves on a daily basis to make sure that we aren't making the same mistakes over and over like we used to. We continue to try to get closer to God, as we understand him. The last step is to help other alcoholics stay sober. Some people like to view the steps as more circular than linear. In other words, once we get done with the 12th step, we start over again at one. It's a continual process. You never 'graduate'. You don't regain the ability to drink like a normal person. This is a simplified version of the steps, but hopefully you get the gist of the program.

A '12th step call' or '12 stepping' someone is basically just talking to an alcoholic (or potential alcoholic) to find out if they want help and if they want help then offering it to them. Don was asking me to talk to his son about whether or not he had a problem. Typically when someone asks us to talk to a friend or relative, the main question is 'Do they want to get sober'. Through my experiences I've learned quite well that you really have to want to be sober in order to stay sober. I can't get or keep someone else sober. So when someone asks me to call on a friend or relative of theirs to help them, I typically offer my phone number. If that person truly wants help, they will call. And from experience, I've never had someone call me in that situation. Being stuck on a ship was a little out of the norm, though, so I decided I would at least take an hour and talk to Don's son (Justin).

After dinner that night, I took a walk around the ship with Justin. I could tell right away that he wasn't interested in sobering up. We finished the walk and called it a night. The rest of the cruise was a good time. Although I wasn't able to help Justin, it got me thinking about how good it felt trying to help someone else. Even if Justin didn't stay sober, I did. When I got back from the cruise, I spoke to Kim about my experience. I had been questioning whether or not I said the right thing or what. He reminded me that when someone really wants to get sober, you can't say the wrong thing.

About a month later after a meeting, I was talking to some friends when Kim called me over. He was talking to a guy. He asked me if I knew the guy. I said I did. He said to the guy, 'This is your sponsor' signalling me. He looked me and said 'talk to him a little bit' and walked off. And with that I found myself someone else's sponsor. I was pretty nervous about the whole situation, but if my sponsor was asking me to do something I wasn't going to say no. Here was a newcomer to recovery. If anybody knew something about being a newcomer in recovery, it was me. I had spent the previous 5 years getting drunk and sobering up, ad nauseum. If there was one thing I could help this guy with, it was introducing him around in meetings and helping him feel comfortable. We would get together once a week and hang out for an hour before going to meetings as we slowly got comfortable around one another. 3 months later, and the guy has been sober for over 90 days.

In a sense, I have come full circle. Once doomed to a life of drinking and drugs, I now am sober and helping other people stay sober. As I learn to deal with the day to day struggles in my own life, I am constantly amazed by the realization of how far I have come. I'm a kid who wasn't supposed to live to see 2. My family life is untraditional to say the least. I've seen the inside of more rehabs and psych wards than most people I have ever heard of. During one 3 and a half year stretch, I spend a total of 6 months inpatient. That doesn't include the 5 plus months of being in a recovery home. I am not supposed to be here. I have a wife who has stuck by me even at times when she couldn't stand me. People used to tell me how lucky I was to be alive. I'm starting to believe them.

And I stayed Sober (Requiem 22)

2008-07-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

One of the most important things to happen to me in recovery was being thrown out of my house after 2 weeks of being sober. It reiterated to me a basic understanding that I had been forgetting: my problem was not alcohol. My problem was living life. I was and am ill equipped to deal with the day to day events in an ordinary life. Once I realized alcohol could alleviate the various pains (anger, heartache, disappointment, boredom etc...) associated with growing up and being an adult, I only resorted to actually dealing with them when I had no other choice. To put it another way: alcohol had allowed me not to have to grow up. I was emotionally immature. With no alcohol to deal with these pains, I was in desperate need of finding something to replace it.

Back at my grandma's I found myself. Right from the start I knew that I was going to have to stay sober. There was no other way. I focused on working and meetings. I was rarely home. Weekends came and I went to band practice and met with Kim. I was buying a lot of books and reading with my down time. I spoke to Katie pretty frequently, but a funny thing happened. After a couple of weeks, I was nervous that we might move back in together. Being out of the house seemed to take some of the stress out of my life. I was worried that moving back in would see that stress put back in place. After almost a month, Katie and I decided I would spend a night or two back at the house to see how things went. The first night was pretty tense. We were polite to each other and careful choosing our words. It was not unlike being on a first date. We were both waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. I kept going to meetings and pretty soon I had 60 days sober. Then 90 days. We were getting along better than we had in a year and things seemed to keep improving.

I started reading the book 'Alcoholics Anonymous' with Kim. Which is to say that Kim read the book to me and I listened. Every once in a while he would give me an assignment. One such assignment was to name the traits and qualities that I would choose in a God. I put some thought into it, but in classic alcoholic fashion forgot to write them down until 30 minutes before I was supposed to meet with Kim. I scrambled to list things like forgiving, loving, kind, father, brother, friend. Kim told me that my higher power was all of those things. Another time we kneeled and said a prayer; turning myself over to God. And I stayed sober.

Kim had lived in a few places since he had sobered up. When I had been sober about 60 days we took a trip to Atlanta to visit his friends there. Along with Kim and I were my friends JM, Tony, and Steve. We were all sponsees of Kim's. We visited the meetings he used to attend and met the people we had heard stories about. I sat across the table from two men at dinner one night. One man used to sponsor the other. He had given the other guy advice to give his wife some space. He had then used that space to have an affair with the wife. The woman was long gone from either of their lives and they were no longer sponsor/sponsee, but they remained friends in recovery! We had a good trip and I got to experience what meetings were like in Georgia.

A month after we got back from Atlanta, we had a mens' retreat at Kim's house. About 20 guys came over one Saturday from 8 in the morning to 8 at night to talk about recovery. The camaradarie I felt after that was unmatched. When I would run into one of those guys in a meeting during the next few weeks we would just look at each other and nod. We knew. And I stayed sober.

Katie and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary by going to Logan. I had lived there for a few months back in '99. Katie had gone to school there in '98. We had a great time. Our relationship was getting stronger and stronger. We were not arguing that much. When we did disagree, the disagreements weren't lasting as long and were nowhere near as intense. The old wounds were healing. We began to talk about kids again.

For the third time, my wrist began to swell again and I knew I was looking at surgery. I decided to go to a different doctor and took Katie with me to help me avoid pain pills. A few days before Christmas I went and had a 3rd surgery. They had given Katie the pain pills, although I did ask them to only give her a few. Something happened, though. When I got home after the surgery, I got very sick and couldn't hold anything down for a few days. It was 2 days before I could even think about my wrist. God was looking out for me. Those first two days are the worst as far as pain goes. I had survived those without pills. When my wrist ached during the next week, I took a pill or two and never experienced the craving that I usually did. New Years, 2008, came and found us playing poker at Kim's house. We had a good time, and I stayed sober. January found me picking up a 6 month chip. I was still meeting with Kim on Saturdays, working the steps. I was chairing meetings and helping set up other meetings. When I turned 28 in February, I thought a lot about addiction. By turning 28, I had outlived a lot of my musical heroes. Musical heroes who also happened to be addicts. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. All 27. There was a time in my life when I didn't think I'd live to be 20. Then 25. At 28, I was beginning to imagine a life that didn't evolve around alcohol and drugs. At my sponsors urging, I was praying daily and life was comfortable for me. Was it to last?

Tricked Into Staying Sober (Requiem 21)

2008-07-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

I can imagine there are some people who are asking themselves 'What makes this time any different than the last 10?'. To them, I say that I can't really say. Leaving Wendover that day, I didn't think it was any different than any other time I'd drank (other than the fact that I stayed out there rather than getting an ambulance ride back). For the first few months of sobriety, I played along not really thinking I was going to stay sober. At some point in the last year, though, I realized that my desire to stay sober is a lot stronger than my desire to drink.

The day after my painful drive back from Wendover, I showed up at Kim's house to play the guitar. We jammed for an hour or so and started packing up again. As I was leaving, he asked me how I was doing. Reflexively, I told him I was good. Things were fine. As he looked at me (seemingly through me), I realized that I wasn't fine at all. I clarified and said that I had relapsed during the week, but that I was fine.

This is one of those mysterious lines that people in meetings always laugh out loud at. I was 1 day sober and trying to bring myself across as fine. To a guy that can spot a lying alcoholic from across the room. It was the equivalent of pretending that you know all about medicine - to a doctor.

To Kim's credit, he didn't call my bluff. He just asked me if I would be interested in reading from the book that our fellowship is based on with him after band practice each week. I told him that I was absolutely interested. In retrospect, I realize he must have had something like this in mind all along. The guy invites me over to his house to play guitar during the time he meets with sponsees. He knows I've been bouncing in and out of sobriety for years. I like to tell people that I was tricked into staying sober. Thank God for that.

The next Saturday I showed up. We jammed for an hour downstairs at his house. Then we came upstairs and I was introduced into his Serenity Room. It was a study just off of the front door of his house. It was a smallish room that could have doubled as a shrink's office. There was a couch and a chair in it. There were two end tables on either side of each piece of furniture and a coffee table in front of them. On one side of the room was two bookshelves filled with different kinds of books: classics, popular modern fiction, and different books of recovery. On the wall were various antiquated bar signs. "Free Beer (tomorrow only)" "Sober Up" There were books lying on the coffee table and the chair. This was a room that was used frequently. I sat down on the couch, he sat down in the chair, and then he changed into a different person altogether. Gone was the laid back drummer. In his place was a no nonsense, take charge version of Kim. He told me how it was. He said that he had helped hundreds of men get and stay sober the way he was shown by his sponsor. He said that of all the men he had taken through the book, he knew of only one or two that were not currently sober. He said that he didn't want me to waste his time. He wanted me to make a commitment to show up each week on time and if I did he would help me to stay sober. Of everything he told me, the thing that stuck with me the most was that he had taken hundreds of guys through the book and almost all of them were sober. Hope slowly leaked back into my life.

That's not to say that my life got any better right away. I was still the same angry person I had been. Katie was still at the end of her rope with me. I was somewhat surprised she didn't throw me out after my last drink. Things were tense between us and came to a head about 2 weeks after I sobered up. We went camping with one of her brothers and his girlfriend. From the start I was belligerent. I was upset that she picked an awful campsite. I wanted to go back home. I didn't go with them to the lake when they went. We went for one night, but in that time I managed to embarrass Katie severely. During the drive home the next day I was angry and driving like a maniac. If the camping didn't make up her mind, the driving the next day sealed the deal. I was out. I stayed the night home that night, but the next day I packed a couple of bags and made my way back over to my grandmas house.

Humble Beginnings (Requiem 20)

2008-07-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Vegas. Sin City. Not exactly the place you'd expect a bunch of sober people to go to have a conference. But there we went. And the timing couldn't have been better. I had been running out of the pills the doctors had me on for a while. I had weaned myself down to make quitting them easier. In Vegas I finally ran out. Since then, I haven't had to take any antidepressants.

Getting sober feels physically similar to quitting antidepressants. When you quit too fast after having either in your system for too long, you get this weird sensation of being on a boat in rough seas. Except that you're not on a boat. It's a very swimmy, swishy feeling. One minute you're fine and the next, your equilibrium is off and you feel like you might tip over or throw up. With acute alcoholism, throw into that mix the shakes and sometimes hallucinations. Either way, it's enough to keep some people drinking or taking antidepressants for much longer than they ordinarily would. Also like quitting booze, when I quit taking antidepressants I had a strong desire to drink at times. Being around other sober guys really helped.

While we were down there, I spent time with JM's sponsor, Kim. He was a guy who had been sober for 22 years at the time. When we talk about wanting what someone has in recovery, I wanted what this guy had. Not his house or car or money, but his state of mind. He seemed to be very serene. He handled situations a lot better than I did. He could comfortably talk about his experience getting sober. More than that, though, I just related to the guy. He was a cancer survivor as well as an alcoholic. He talked about how he used to be angry a lot and it was like he was telling my story. He was a musician. We bonded a little bit over this and agreed that we would get together and play. Unlike most times I made tentative plans with people I barely knew in recovery, I really wanted to follow through with these plans.

The trip was a success. Not financially (this was Vegas, after all), but we all stayed sober and had a good time. I got to meet one of my hero's in recovery. A guy whose speaker tapes I had been listening to for years. I was shocked by how normal he was. I guess I was expecting him to don a cape and tights or something. It made me respect him all the more, though. When we got back, I really felt connected to recovery. I went to meetings regularly for a few months. I ran into Kim at a meeting and we set a date for me to come over and play. It was for the coming Saturday. I had heard that Kim had sponsees over on Saturdays to read from the book. That he was giving me a Saturday 'slot' didn't connect. When I went over that Saturday, we set up the drums and guitar and started looking for common musical ground. It didn't take long. While we were probably painful to listen to, we had a good time and agreed to keep playing.

After a few months of bliss following the conference, I started falling into my old patterns. I was missing meetings and slipping towards another relapse. It finally happened on the 24th of July, 2007. I snuck a couple of beers home while Katie was at work. I drank them, fell asleep and woke up when Katie got home. She was none the wiser. The next night I tried the same thing because Katie was going to be gone to a meeting. I went and got the beers. As I got home, Katie called me and said she was coming back because she wasn't feeling well. I scrambled to hide the beers under the socks in my dresser before she walked through the door. The next day I went to work. I got off work and went home. I drank the now warm tall boys (24 ounce cans of beer) that were hidden in my dresser as I was watching poker on TV. I decided I wanted to go to Wendover to play in a poker tournament. I jumped in my car and took off. I called Katie on the way. She knew right away that I was drinking or planning on getting drunk. I was driving fast, probably 95 miles per hour. As I zipped through Tooele, I saw lights in my rear view mirror. I stayed calm, pulling over. I tried every trick I knew to show the officer that I was sober. (Hands on the steering wheel at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, car turned off, no sudden movements) The officer took my information, went back to his car, then came back with a ticket for 11 miles over the limit. Somehow I had avoided the DUI I most surely deserved. It should have stopped me in my tracks to get pulled over drunk. As it was, though, I continued on to Wendover to finish my last debacle.

We're told to never say never, but it seems fitting to me that I took my last drink the way I began my journey into recovery. Wendover seems to have bookended four of the most difficult years of my life.

So this is how I began my sobriety: My eyes slowly roll open. I feel like my eyelids have been glued shut with superglue. As the small amount of light hits my eyes, I feel an explosion of pain in my brain. I crawl out of the bed and over to the toilet in the next room. My stomach is cramping as I wretch and heave vile. After a few minutes, the cramps subside. I take the opportunity to pull myself up to stand in front of the mirror. I'm wearing nothing but boxers. I start wracking my mind for memories of what happened the night before. All that comes to mind are various snapshots. I'm playing a table game. I'm on the phone with Katie. I'm being dragged by security to the front desk. I must have got a room and gone to pass out. Coming back to reality, I grab the glass on the counter and fill it up with water from the tap. I take a short drink, testing my stomach. I seem to be fine, so I take a bigger drink. Hopefully this stays down. I put the half finished glass back down and start shuffling into the other room to lay back down.

I notice my clothes in a pile by the bed. I reach down for them to get my shirt on. I'm a little chilly. As I pick up the pile of clothes, I realize they are wet. I know before I even pull the clothes to my face to smell them. I've been here before. This isn't the first time I've done it. I must have thrown up all over myself. Repeatedly. I notice the clock on the night stand says it's 10:30. I don't even have time to dry these clothes or lay down for an hour before I have to be out. Just then my stomach starts cramping. I manage to just make it over to the toilet before I'm sick again. A few minutes later, I get back up and turn the shower on. I'm hoping a shower will help me feel human again. After the shower, I'm forced to get back into my clothes covered in vomit. Just the smell is turning my stomach. I grab my phone and call in sick to work. My boss seems to be cool with it. A few minutes later his wife calls and lays into me. I realize I'm about to be canned. I keep waiting for her to say it, but the words never come. Maybe they'll do it when I come in on Monday.

I smell so badly, I know I won't make it home without getting sick. I gather up my stuff and decide to try to find a gift shop to buy a new shirt. As I walk, I try to keep the wet shirt on my back from touching me too much. I'm pinching the shirt in two places trying to keep it off of my skin. In the gift shop, I don't find a single shirt. I'm afraid people are going to start looking at me. What a sight I must be. I decide to try a gas station on my way out of town. As I open the door to the outside of the casino, I'm hit with sun. It's paralyzing. I can barely see and my head is exploding in agony. And the heat. It's July in the desert. I've got no sunglasses, I smell like puke, and for a minute I don't recognize anything. My stomach is starting to cramp and I'm hating life. I start walking around and eventually find my car. I drive over to the gas station on my way out of town. I had been hoping it would be empty, but for some reason at 11:00 am on a Friday it's packed. As I come through the door, the bell rings and everybody turns to look at me. I walk in, look around, and I realize there are no shirts for sale here. I am defeated. I buy a water and some aspirin as people stare at me and cringe. Getting in my car, my head is throbbing. The sun seems brighter than it ever has before and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make it back without getting sick. I pull the wet shirt off my back, and start driving. Humble beginnings, eh?

The Night Is Darkest... (Requiem 19)

2008-07-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

There is a saying in recovery that says 'While you can never be too dumb to get sober, it's possible to be too smart'. People had been telling me this since my first relapse. Everything I needed to stay sober was right in front of me. My friends were staying sober. They were going to meetings, hanging out with other kids in recovery and working the steps. My buddy JM is a good example. Since I had met him, he had stayed sober. I had gone in and out, but JM had over 3 years of sobriety. He had steadily gotten better, but I had slowly gotten worse. This isn't to say that I was smarter than JM and, therefore, couldn't stay sober. Quite the opposite, really. JM realized that he could not kick the drugs and alcohol on his own. He was smart enough to rely on other people to help him. I couldn't get this for the longest time. And as I stayed drunk, I was slowly driving people out of my life. The thing is, though, I WANTED to be left alone. All I wanted to do was drink and if Katie or anybody else was going to stop me, I would rather not be around them. That was my state of mind when I moved into my grandma's house.

My grandma and mother lived together in my grandma's house. I was the third person in the house and I felt like the proverbial wheel. I would go to work during the days, then come home and try to drink without getting caught. Sometimes I smuggled bottles of vodka downstairs into the room I was staying in. Other times I would keep the bottle in the trunk of my car outside. Not going to meetings, I had plenty of spare time. I read a lot, watched a lot of TV, and accomplished very little. My tolerance for booze was coming back pretty quick. I was drinking a bottle every two days. When you go through bottles like this, access to booze is pretty important to you. My worst fear was to get caught on a Sunday with no booze. I was starting to measure how much I was drinking in glugs. As in tipping the bottle of vodka upside down and drinking. 'Glug, Glug, Glug' would be 3 glugs. A whole bottle might have 12 or 15 glugs to it. With a smile on my face and feeling the booze rise to my head, I would mentally pat myself on the back for being so funny. Then I would black out and come to at the sound of the alarm going off. Time for work again.

After a couple of weeks I had a resurgence of the desire to get sober. I got in touch with Katie and told her that I was going to try to stay sober. She agreed to let me stay home if I would stay sober. Thanksgiving and Christmas that year were really tough. Mixed in with the sadness that my father in law was gone was the guilt that I stole from him. While Katie's family seemed to come together through this, I felt like an outsider. The wrist I had surgery on a year before started hurting again and I was headed towards another surgery. I saw the doctor and got pain pills before I had the surgery. I was abusing them before too long. For one of Katie's brothers' birthday that year, we went to dinner at his favorite restaurant. Both her brothers and their families were there as well as my mother in law and Katie and I. I had lied to Katie about having took some pills and was nodding off from the opiates. There were my young nieces and nephews staring at me as I quite literally put my head into my plate. Katie would kick me or elbow me and I'd slowly raise my head, wiping the drool and food off of my face. At that age they couldn't have known exactly what was going on, but they knew something was up.

There are people in recovery who will say that they are only an addict or only an alcoholic. While I readily admit that I am both, it was really easy to believe 'at least I'm not drinking' when I was getting high on prescribed medicine. After all, hadn't the doctor prescribed them for me. And I'd had surgery, right? That's one thing about recovery that kind of makes me laugh. It's like some type of a sick reverse caste system. The joke goes: The people who inject cocaine and heroin (H) look down on people who smoke coke and H. The smokers look down on the sniffers. The sniffers look down on the alcoholics and EVERYBODY looks down on paint huffers.

In my mind I could justify using these pills. I had told Katie that I wouldn't drink, and so as long as I didn't drink I was keeping my word.

One day I got my hands on a couple of sleeping pills. I took one, blacked out and came to a day later. Katie was afraid when I wouldn't really talk and just stared, zombie like. She took me to the emergency room. I don't really remember going there, but they said I was fine and if there were any problems to come back. My stomach started hurting pretty badly a day or two later and I was unable to go to the bathroom. (I wasn't aware of it, but this is a fairly common problem among opiate users) We went back to the emergency room. They took me back and were starting an IV, but the unfortunate nurse couldn't get one going on me. I wasn't helpful. I was shouting at him each time he drove the needle in, missing the vein. Eventually I told him that I would suffer rather than wait for him to hit a vein on me. I got up and left. A few days later Katie was out with her friends. I had taken quite a few pills and was nodding off. I was having a hard time breathing and I panicked. I called the ambulance to come get me. What it comes down to is that I was playing a game with life or death consequences. There was no glamour in what I was doing. I was acting like I wanted to die, but every time I got close to that I had an overwhelming desire to stay alive.

I started going to meetings regularly after months of not going at all, or only going sporadically. I was about 30 days sober when I started seeing a psychologist thinking it couldn't hurt. She referred me to a psychiatrist. She met me once and said that I may be suffering from ADHD as well as being bipolar. I disagreed with her wholeheartedly on both counts, but didn't speak up. She prescribed me some medicine for the ADHD. I knew from what I'd heard in meetings and from my own experience that I should stay away from the stuff. I didn't, though. I filled the prescription. I took a couple of pills. Then I took a couple more. We went to see a scary movie and my heart was beating like crazy from the legal speed I was on. Later that night I was back in the emergency room. I told the doctors what I had taken, but not how much.

Katie was nearing the end of her rope with me. We started talking about splitting up for good. I kept going to meetings and picked up a 60 day chip, despite abusing the medicine. I was invited to go to a 12 step mens' conference in Las Vegas with my friend JM, his sponsor, and another guy. I decided to go. It was scheduled for March 29th-April 1st, 2007. My life was about to change in ways I never imagined.

Hope Lost (Requiem 18)

2008-07-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest things that recovery has to offer to the alcoholic is hope. Hope that one day life won't be like it is when we got here. In meetings, we are told to share our 'experience, strength, and hope' when we speak to newcomers. Without hope that things will get better, why would we come back? Every time I went back to drinking, I lost a little more hope that one day I would learn to stay sober. When I left the recovery house, I made a decision that I was not going to try to get sober any more. I was sick of failing. Then things got serious with Katie and I decided that I would keep trying not to drink. After my father in law died and I stole his pills, I felt awful. Finding out I couldn't have kids so soon afterwards was a knockout punch of sorts. I didn't make a decision that I wouldn't try to stay sober like before, but I had lost hope that things would get better and gave into that self pity. I gave up trying at that point. I had been sober for about 2 months when our trip to Washington D.C. came around. Not because I wanted to stay sober as much as because I didn't want to cause any more disruption to an already chaotic and painful first year of marriage.

A lot of my family is from Minnesota, so for the first 25 years of my life I was a Vikings fan. One of the unspoken stipulations to my joining my wife's family was that I support the Washington Redskins. I hadn't followed football for years by this point, so it was an easy transition. This trip was, in part, to prove my allegiance to the right team. The season opener that year was the Vikings versus the Redskins. We managed to get some great seats in the first 10 rows or so at about the 40 yard line. To the non football fans, we were close to the action in the middle of the rectangle shaped field. After the first quarter I starting really wanting a drink. My brothers-in-law both knew that I was an alcoholic, so if I was going to have a drink, I was going to have to sneak away to buy a beer and chug it. All without raising suspicions. Throughout the game I kept disappearing to 'go to the bathroom'. At one point, I grabbed my camera and asked the guy across the aisle from me to take a picture of us. So here we are:

My brothers behind me enjoying the game, I pretending like I was enjoying the game more than I was. The truth is that I was focused on getting the maximum number of drinks in me while raising the minimum level of suspicion. On the bus ride back to our car, a guy had a bottle of whiskey and was filling up the cups of anyone who wanted a drink. I found a used cup and had him fill it up. I chugged the drink without regard to where the cup may have been. The next day we were due to fly back. I had booked my flight later than my brothers in law, so I was on a different flight. When we got to the airport we separated. And then it was on. I had 3 hours to kill, so I parked myself at the bar in the sports bar and set about killing that time. By the time I got off the plane that night, my wife could see that I was drunk from 20 yards away in the airport. She was furious with me. I tried to play it off and act as though I had nothing wrong, but she wasn't buying it. She had been watching me for a year and knew there was no reason to justify me drinking.

Now that she knew I was drinking, I figured there was no reason to try to hide it. For the next few days I drank openly around Katie. She was absolutely unhappy about it, but was as powerless as me to stop it. After a few days of drinking, I knew I was getting worse and fast.

* * *

People say that alcoholism is a progressive disease. What they mean is that over any substantial period of time, it will always get worse. Even though I had only been drinking for a few days, I was quickly in as bad of shape as I'd been in right before going to detox before we were married. The first night I had 2 or 3 glasses of beer and half a glass of whiskey. The next day I had drink after drink in the bar. Within 3 or 4 days, I was buying a bottle of vodka and drinking it in 2 or 3 days. So within a week I would go from sober to drinking all night or until I blacked out. It would only be a matter of time before I lost my job and started drinking during the day.

I didn't drink as much as some people. I had friends who could power down 2 fifths of Jack Daniels a day. That doesn't change the fact that I could completely lose myself to chasing the drink within a week of drinking. And once I had been sober for a little while, I couldn't lie to myself any more. I knew that it could only go downhill from there. In a moment of clarity, I decided that I needed to go somewhere to be away from the booze. I needed to get the heat off of me long enough to figure out what I was going to do next. That was how I ended up going to detox at the same facility I had been to four previous times. This time there would be no rock stars. This was going to be my last shot at any type of a detox or a rehab. I was only at my new job for a couple of months. I think the only reason I wasn't let go then and there was that my brother in law was a part owner.

When I was in the hospital, I spent about two weeks with them putting me on large doses of some of the same types of pills I had been on before. After two weeks they let me out. I went back to work and started getting violently sick. I had to have my brother in law take me to an emergency room one day. I went back to the detox ward for another couple weeks for them to adjust the doses on my medication. I got out about a week before our first wedding anniversary. I had put on about 35 pounds in the 4 weeks due to the meds they had me on. I started drinking again right away. I had learned nothing in the 3 or 4 weeks in the hospital. Katie demanded that I stay sober through our anniversary, so I spent that day sober. The next day, though, I came home drunk. Katie was done with me. She'd had enough. She threw me out. I packed up a bag of stuff and headed off to live with my mother and grandmother.

Real Men Don't Feel Sorry For Themselves (Requiem 17)

2008-07-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

Around the time when my father in law was losing his battle with cancer, I was getting a lot of pressure from Katie and my mom to get a certain test done. I had been holding this test off for years because deep down I knew the answer. It was the uncertainty of my knowledge that kept me from giving me up at times and falling completely into self pity. As long as there was the slightest doubt in my mind, I could keep trudging through life with a certain innocence. Mothers being mothers and wives being wives, though, they convinced me to go have this test done. So after I had the test done and found out that I couldn't have kids, I was furious with Katie, with my mother and with God.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was diagnosed as a stage 5. That is the highest level and it is nearly always fatal. I was optimistically given a 1 in 5 chance to survive. At the time, the priority was on keeping me alive. The doctor pulled my mother aside and told her of the side effects. He said that if I were to survive, I would be smaller than average, I would most likely have diminished kidney function that may require dialysis or a transplant in the future, and due to the chemotherapy I probably wouldn't be able to have children. All that mattered to my mother was that I stay alive. She didn't care if I would only have part of one kidney remaining or that I might not be able to have children. She just wanted me alive.

When I pulled through the cancer and then surprised everyone by functioning normally, everybody was quick to tell me how lucky I was. My whole life I'd had people tell me that I was lucky to be alive. Perhaps. All I saw, though, was that I was smaller than everyone else. I have no real memory of surviving the cancer and the treatment, so it was hard to be grateful. When I found out that I couldn't have kids, it made things worse. That day I hated God for the first time since I had come to believe in him. When some privileged father of four children who never had to go through cancer and it's effects or had to deal with alcoholism told me how lucky I WAS, I wanted to go through the roof. In fairness, they were trying to be kind and helpful. To me, though, that type of ignorant patronizing was unforgivable. And it was worse to hear from people that 'You can adopt. DNA doesn't make you a father'. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Katie wanted to have children. Even if it meant going to a sperm bank. To me, that was the epitome of not being understood. I was dying inside and here was my wife saying to me: my desire to bear children is so strong that I don't care if I bear somebody else's children.

A huge part of my pain in all of this was my ego. Real men get their wives pregnant. Real men do not have to have their wives go buy sperm to have kids. I could even have dealt with adoption, but that's not what Katie wanted. If I was to keep from living in self pity, I was going to have to redefine what a real man was to me. It would be nice to say that I went off into the woods and came back a man with an understanding of what a real man was. It would be more truthful to say that I stayed angry at God and Katie and my mother. I wallowed in self pity for months as my understanding slowly changed. I may never know what a real man is, but I know some things that a real man does or does not do: A real man accepts his limitations, however painful they may be. A real man does what's right for his family, even if it causes him pain. A real man makes mistakes, but learns from them; and a real man doesn't feel sorry for himself.

While I was slowly coming to an understanding of how the test results would affect my life, I managed to stay sober for a few weeks. One long 4th of July weekend I stayed home while Katie visited her sister in Sacramento. She was barely out the door when I left to go buy beer. I got home and was pretty drunk when I thought it would be a good idea to play some poker and blackjack online. I lost quite a bit of money and started drinking more and more. The rest of that day is pretty much a blur, but I remember the hangover well. It lasted the better part of 2 days. When Katie got back she was understandably upset. I set about getting sober again and went back to meetings. About two weeks later I interviewed at her brother's company. I'd been at the same job since the first time I sobered up, but was looking for a change. They gave me the job and I gave notice at my company.

At the end of July, 2006 I started working with Katie's brother. Football season was coming up soon, and we were looking forward to Redskins games. We bought tickets to see them play in a Monday night game to open the season. The game was scheduled for September 11th, 2006. 5 years after the towers came down. Security was heightened as we got on a plane the morning of Saturday the 9th. Just Katie's two brothers and me out to catch a little game of football....

Two Thieves In The Night (Requiem 16)

2008-07-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest dangers in trying to stay sober is not being honest with yourself. My sponsor tells me 'You can lie to other people, you can even lie to me, but DON'T lie to yourself'. There is a tendency to sugarcoat the truth. I'm not 'drinking', I'm 'relaxing'. I'm not 'lying', I'm just 'leaving things out'. At the same time, there is this idea that our pasts go from our biggest liability to our biggest asset. For example, I went in and out of rehab facilities for years. I felt ashamed and embarassed about this. When I finally sobered up, though, I turned into an example for others in the same boat: "I, too, went in and out of hospitals for years. I managed to get through it, and I'm sober now." I am uniquely qualified to help certain people that others might not be able to simply because of what I've done and been through.

In the vein of being honest with myself and my past can become my biggest asset, I have to look honestly at the things I did and my motive for doing them. It would be easy to say that I did what I did because I was in pain and wanted to get out of feeling that pain. If I said that, though, it would be dishonest and I wouldn't be taking responsibility for my actions. The fact is that no matter what was going on around me at the time, I saw an opportunity and took advantage of that fact.

While we were on our cruise, my father in law had some tests done to find out about some persistant back pain. The results came back and they pointed towards cancer. (A few days after we got back, he got a call confirming that he had cancer. A few minutes later he got a call telling him they had made a mistake. I'm not sure if it was a lab mix up or if someone misread the results, but they told him they had made a mistake and that he did not have cancer. A few days later they called him back a third time and said that once again they had made a mistake and he indeed had cancer. Whatever happened in that doctors office, it seems cruel to put a man through that series of ups and downs) Everyone in the family was really upset, but they tried to stay optimistic. Me more than any of them because I had been through cancer and lived to tell about it. They worked out a treatment plan of weekly radiation with periodic chemotherapy treatments. They put him on some vitamins and medications to help his body offset the effects of the cancer and it's treatment. During the next month and especially after his first dose of chemo, he grew progressively weaker and weaker. With the stuff they had him on, he was more emotional than Katie or I had ever seen him. It was really hard to watch. Still, though, I maintained my stubborn optimism. It was as though I couldn't even consider that he might not get better. Katie was worried sick, so I wanted to show her that she didn't need to be afraid.

Around the middle of April, he was so weak they decided to put him in the hospital to build his strength back up. One day I was over at my in laws' house and saw his bottles of medicine sitting there. Without thinking, I popped open a couple of the bottles of pain pills and took a few. My father in law was in the hospital and wasn't using THESE pills, I reasoned. We visited her father in the hospital about that time. He was obviously feeling the effects of what was going on with his body, but he maintained his sense of humor. Even though he was running a pretty high fever one day, he still managed to smile at Katie and say 'It's hot'. This was an inside joke between them. A few days later I went back for more pills. Then one day at work, Katie got a call from her mom saying they had moved her dad to ICU. We left work that day and went to the hospital. They had sedated her dad and had inserted a breathing tube. It was a tough thing to see. While we were visiting him, one of Katie's cousins who was a nurse showed up. She said that she thought it was the end, so we should call up Katie's siblings to come home. I made the call to Katie's sister. I was a mess and could barely speak. I told her she needed to come home and quick. She flew in a few hours later. Since I had first started taking them, I was high on Katie's dad's pills pretty much all the time. That day was no exception.

Katie stayed at the hospital with her mom and sister until pretty late. She got back and we prepared to go to bed. We got a call saying it was the end, so come back. We got to the hospital and spent the next two hours at his bedside. When the end came, there were doctors all over. Doctors doing CPR, doctors doing emergency dialysis, doctors watching. They had pulled a curtain, but Katie's mom and I were at one end looking in on all of this going on. When they called the time of death, it was surreal. I kept thinking 'what just happened?'. Then one by one, the doctors went away until there was just family. Katie had a panic attack for a moment, but the rest of us were mainly just silent. We were just waiting for someone to come claim the body. In the midst of this, it occurred to me that he wasn't going to need those pain pills now. So I left before everyone else, went back to his house, and stole most of the pills he had remaining. That was April 26th, 2006. One year to the day from when I checked into Journey.

* * *

A week or two after the funeral, Katie and I were at her mom's house. Katie was talking to her mom and I was reading a newspaper. Katie's mom says to Katie 'Somebody stole all your dad's pills. I think it was your brothers' friend ******'. I tried to remain calm. I had only a day or two before told Katie that I had taken the pills.

When I am in active addiction, I will do and say things that I never would do or say while sober. I had stolen medicine from a dying man. My wife's father. Neither was this the first time I had stolen pills from a dying relative. I looked at the person my mother in law was accusing. This was a person that I hadn't met. I only knew this person as someone that had a history with Katie and was a friend of her brother. I had the chance to let him take the blame. But Katie would have known, and more importantly I would have known. And for all of my failings, I couldn't let that happen.

I waited a few days and then went and talked to Katie's mom. She listened to me, asked a few questions, and then thanked me for telling her. I wished she would yell at me or throw things. That would have been easier than the kindness she treated me with. It is one of the low spots of my life. That day, I went emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.

Honeymoon (Requiem 15)

2008-06-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

I’m a childhood cancer survivor. I had one whole kidney removed and half of the other in two separate surgeries when I was about a year and a half old. I went through chemotherapy for a year. Whenever I tell people this, they inevitably ask ‘So you probably shouldn’t drink then, right?’ I usually give them a line about how I’ve always functioned about the same as anybody with two kidneys. They’re right though. I probably shouldn’t drink. Using that type of ‘should seem obvious’ logic, knowing that I’m a full fledged junkie and a drunk should cause me to be on my toes 24 hours a day to avoid slipping back into old behavior. If only it were that easy.
It’s hard to explain the type of thinking that precedes me drinking again. If the thought ‘I should go get drunk’ popped into my head, I would laugh it off. At the risk of sounding schizophrenic, the ‘alcoholic’ in me, is much more subtle than that. It generally takes advantage of situations I’m in. For example, if I’m having a toothache I start telling myself that I need some pain pills. Not to get high, just to deal with the pain. I actually tell myself this stuff. And I believe it. The minute I get my hands on the prescription, though, then it’s ‘I’d better take 3 or 4 just to get on top of the pain‘. Pretty soon, all pretense is lost and I’m out to get high again. With alcohol, the thoughts that work on me aren’t ’I want to get really drunk over and over again.’ They are more along the line of ’I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I want a drink. Just to relax.’ Again, though, once I’ve taken a drink then I’m off to the races. Anybody who has seen alcoholism up close for a period of time can see right through these justifications and rationalizations. Somebody who hasn’t been around it can easily be taken in by them.

A few months before Katie and I got married, I was having some pain due to a cyst growing on my wrist. I talked to a doctor and he prescribed me some pain pills. Right from the start I was taking them more than prescribed. I told myself that because I was in pain the guidelines for when to take the pills were more suggestions than set rules. In August of 2005 I had surgery on my wrist. I finished all of the pain pills, but I had the doctor refill the prescription when I didn’t need him to. I told myself I was still sober and this type of behavior didn’t count. A month before we got married, Katie had a prescription for the same pills for something or another and I found myself taking them on the sly. I was still in pain, I told myself. Despite my history of pain pills throwing me off, I didn’t think this was losing my sobriety. And so the wedding approached. The day of the wedding, I barely remember anything. I have only mental snapshots of the ceremony and the reception afterwards. For our honeymoon we went to Disneyland. There is much I could say about it, but I will only say two things: I had a great time and if I could do it again I would absolutely not.

When we got back, we fell into a routine. We worked during the week, went to her parents on Sundays to watch football and eat dinner, and I went to meetings almost daily. Katie’s dad and brothers were die hard Redskins’ fans, and that year for the first time in 5 or 6 years the Redskins had a decent team. I’d go watch the game with her dad and brother and often afterwards just sit around and talk to her dad. Besides his time in the CIA, he was an adjunct professor at the U of U in the political science department. I’d ask him about experiences that he had and he would talk for long periods of time. Sometimes he would interrupt himself and ask ‘Do you really want to know this stuff, or are you just humoring me?’ I definitely wanted to know. It wasn’t like me to spend any time with family like this. Our family wasn’t that close, so I just ate it up. In November, the 3 of us (Katie, her dad, and I) went to see the Rolling Stones play. On the recovery front, I was working with my sponsor and still going to meetings. The new year came and went and things kept on.

In February, Katie and I decided to go on a cruise to the western Caribbean. It was scheduled for the second week of March. The day we left, Katie’s dad dropped us off at the airport. I had been a little concerned about being on a boat with so much booze, but we found out that they had 12 step meetings on the boat. I had one or two hard days, but I got through it sober. The day we came back her dad picked us up at the airport. He took us back to his house where we had parked our car. We were showing him some of the souvenirs we bought when he got serious on us. ‘I have something to tell you' he began. And then he layed a bombshell on us.

The Big Day Approaches (Requiem 14)

2008-06-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

At the hospital with my rock star friend and Caylee, I had to make a choice about telling Katie's father what was going on with me. I was really not looking forward to it, but Katie was having to constantly explain that I wasn't available for this or that and she was tired of it. So I called my soon to be father in law. He answered the phone and almost the first thing out of his mouth was 'Why does my caller ID say you are calling from University Hospital'. Nothing got by this guy. I spared him most of the gory details, but I let him know that I was an alcoholic and I wanted to get it under control before I married his daughter. He seemed to handle it pretty well. I think I may have gained a little respect from him. As much respect as admitting you're a drunk and need help can get you. After I finished detoxing, I went to another facility called Journey. On the way between University Hospital and Journey, I managed to stop by a store and buy a bottle of cough medicine. I downed the whole thing so that when I showed up and they did my intake, my vital signs were pretty out of whack. I had to cop to using on the way between hospitals. Katie was flabbergasted.

Time and time again I used. Just the thought of never being able to drink or use again caused me to WANT to drink and use. You hear a lot about 'one day at a time' in meetings. It's a great slogan, but for me it stayed a slogan. I just couldn't seem to grasp the idea of not worrying about drinking tomorrow. At this point, I wasn't drinking as a social lubricant. I wasn't partying or having a good time. I didn't even really want to drink. But once the idea got in my head, I couldn't seem to get it out. I was obsessed. That's the only way I can really explain getting high in the hour between leaving one hospital and entering another.

Journey was somewhat unique. Besides the usual 12 steps, they took a somewhat holistic approach. They didn't serve any red meat, incorporated a new age philosophy book, and once a month had a native american sweat lodge. I had a hard time with the food, but I loved the sweat lodge. With the sweat lodge, I really felt connected to God. Off and on through my life I've had a hard time with religion and spirituality, so I enjoy any time I feel particularly close to God. Even if it's doing something I would not normally do.

I grew up with no religion in my house. Both mom and step dad had been raised in different religions (mormon and catholic respectively). They weren't religious people. I was antireligious until I was 18 when I did an about face and was baptised into the predominant religion here in Utah. I went to church for a while, but I didn't seem to find what I was looking for. I think the initial euphoria I got when I finally admitted to myself I believed there was a god eventually subsided. My pink cloud burst you might say. I learned that there was a difference between religion and spirituality. It was possible to be religious without being spiritual and vica versa. As I understand it, religion is a social thing. It's a bunch of people getting together and practicing the rituals that they understand connect them to their god. Spirituality on the other hand is all about you and what you believe in. Other people don't come into the mix. If you have a good connection to your god, you are spiritual.

When my 28 days were up, I coined out. (most graduation ceremonies in rehab involve getting a commemorative coin. You spend thousands of dollars at their facility and at the end of your stay you get a coin, a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous, a pat on the back, and this advice: go to 12 step meetings. I could have saved thousands by buying a $5 dollar book and going to meetings. I only wish I hadn't been through rehab so many times before this finally sunk in) That night I went out and ate the biggest steak I could get my hands on.

That was the end of May of 2005. Our wedding was scheduled for October. So we began the preparations for the wedding as I once again set out to put together some time sober. About a week out of Journey I went to a meeting and heard a guy share that I related to. I asked him to be my sponsor. His plate was full so he passed me off on one of his sponsees. Once again I had a sponsor. I started calling him and he suggested I come with him to his home group. A home group in a 12 step program is a meeting you go to regularly. The idea is that you can get to know some people pretty well and they can get to know you. So if you are a little bit off one day, they will notice and talk to you about it. His home group was for both alcoholics and their spouses. Katie was game to go try it out, so we went. It was a Tuesday night group at a government building. It was a little weird because it was the first time I had to sign in with a cop in order to go to a meeting. Despite having to quasi-surrender in order to get in, we liked the meeting. We found couples in recovery. I saw guys who had over 20 years sober. Katie saw girls who put up with those guys. If we were going to make this marriage work, we were going to need something like this. So we made that group our home group and went back most weeks.

Time flew by and pretty soon I had 90 days sober. Then 4 months. The wedding was right around the corner, I was about 5 months sober and things were really cruising. The biggest roadblocks had to do with the wedding planning. Even though Katie took care of everything for the most part, I got sick of the constant talk of the wedding. I tried to be a good sport, but I failed. At some point my soon to be father in law pulled me aside and said something like 'Look. I know this is a lot of fuss. Let me give you some advice. Just let her have the wedding. Do what she asks and it will go a lot smoother. Trust me on this'. In the end, he was right. I still wish I could have had the powder blue tux, though.

Obituaries and Famous People (Requiem 13)

2008-06-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

In recovery, you hear about the 'jumping off' place. It's the crossroads of two paths. One is the path where you are sick of drinking and using. You are sick and tired of being sick and tired. The other path is where you are sick of being sober. You just aren't getting life while sober. It's too hard. The intersection of these two paths is a horrible place to be. What do you do when you don't want to drink or use, but you don't want to be sober either? A lot of people choose the terminal solution. Whenever I see somebody under the age of 30 in the obituaries with no real explanation of what happened, my mind goes to the jumping off place. I'd been there many times. Each time I'd been there, I looked at my options. Drinking and using might kill me, but suicide would kill me for sure. And so each time I drank.

Okay, so you can only go through rehab so many times before you have the obligatory 'rock star in rehab' experience. I had mine while in the hospital after being given the ultimatum. Respecting his anonymity - I'll just say that he was the bass player of a big hard rock band. A band that some of my friends listened to. He was detoxing on his way to the famous rehab facility on the old Osmond sound stage. One or two of the people in there were pretty clingy to him. I felt sort of bad for the guy. I imagine he was used to the hanger's on, but I wasn't. You hit bottom and decide to do something about it. You're at a low spot in your life and you have people that want you to tell them about how cool it is to go on tour. Bless his heart though, he took it in stride. I had a couple of chances to play guitar with him when Katie brought my guitar, Jenny, in. One day he made a comment to me about musicians. He finished it with 'But you're a musician, you know'. Nothing like bonding with a rock star to start sobriety out. When he transferred out, he even gave his cell phone number out. I took it and gave him mine, but I'd played this game before. I didn't expect him to call me and I KNEW I wasn't going to call him.

When you're in rehab, the sense of camaraderie is tremendous. Like you are a group of explorers planting your flags together - 'This is where I take my life back". Spend 28 days or even 7 in close quarters with complete strangers and you get to know them pretty quickly. Especially when you count all the time spent in groups talking about feelings and the things that surrounded your drinking and using. A lot of us haven't had any relationships like this before, so we think we are forging these lifelong friendships. Sometimes we do, but mostly people fade away. I stayed on the outskirts of recovery, but I kept coming back. Of the 30 people in the first rehab I went to over 5 years ago, I know of exactly 1 person that stayed sober. (Jen E) And this after the promises of sobriety. The signed books that say 'This time will be different. I know we'll stay sober'. In my experience, if you still see 1 person in 5 still at meetings even 90 days later it is above average.

At the same time, a girl I'd been in another hospital with came into this hospital. I didn't remember her (it had been a bad detox), but she explained that we had hung out at the other hospital. When I went from this detox to another hospital for the 28 day spin dry, she followed me. Her name was Caylee. Like me she was to continue to struggle. I guess I should have known she would have a hard time after being in 3 different rehab programs with her. One day I saw her and her mom on the A&E program Intervention. I want to be careful to say that I wasn't ashamed of her. That's not how I felt. I just felt sad. Sad and tired.

I collect obituaries of people that I've known in rehab/recovery that have died. One day after a meeting about a year ago I went up to a newcomer named Andrea and talked to her. We had a five minute conversation about recovery and what was going on in her life. I went home and went about my life. When I went back to the same meeting the next week, people were talking about Andrea. She had overdosed a few days after I spoke with her. I clipped her obituary and added it to my collection. These experiences take their toll on you, so that when you hear about a friend that 'went back out' to drink again you mentally detach a little from them. Because you know that one day you're going to be reading their obituary.

I think I'm bringing up these friends to make a point: a drunk is a drunk. Whether they have toured the world and made millions or if they live day to day, hand to mouth. I feel just as honored to have known Caylee or Andrea as to have met my rockstar friend. When I hear about a Lindsay or a Mary Kate being in town going through rehab, I always wonder what the big deal is. I've got friends that are sort of fame whores that way. They'll go an hour out of their way to go to a meeting where someone famous is. I'll take an hour with my sponsor Kim over an hour with Lindsay or Mary Kate. Any day.

Family Man (Requiem 12)

2008-06-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve done some incredibly shocking things while drunk. For example: Since I started playing the guitar in 1996, I’ve played in bands a few times. In 2002 shortly before beginning my rapid descent into madness, I was in a band that played mainly covers. Practices were usually nothing more than a glorified excuse for me to drink a half dozen beers while deluding myself into believing I was doing something useful. One day at practice I changed it up and was drinking whiskey and cokes. After practice we were all going from the singer’s house where practice took place to the drummer’s house to party. We jumped in the car of the sober guy and took off. About a block away I realized I’d forgotten my bottle of whiskey. We doubled back so I could grab the bottle. We pulled up, I got out and noticed there were some people waiting at the front door. I jogged up to the front door, excused myself through the people and let myself in. I made it halfway up the stairs before I realized that I didn’t recognize anything in the house. It then hit me that I was in the wrong house. I turned around to see the shocked look on the faces of the people still at the front door. This was THEIR house. I turned around, mumbled something along the lines of ‘Whoops. Wrong house. Sorry about that.’, and then jogged to the right house next door to grab my booze. My band mates were cracking up in the car as I tried to play it cool. Like I didn’t just walk into somebody’s house by accident RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.

As laughable as that as, it’s not the drinking story I tell people that raises the most eyebrows. By far, that honor goes to the fact that I got engaged while drunk ....in a bar....on a dare.

As my drinking slowly got worse, Katie and I were spending all of our time together. She had even introduced me to her family (shortly before meeting her father, she said to me cryptically ‘There’s something I want to tell you about my father. He used to work for the CIA’ – I thought she was messing with me. She wasn’t. I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but Thank You Hollywood I guess you can). About 3 days after I met her family, her grandfather died. The day he died the doctor had told the family that he was going to go soon. Katie wanted to stay with her family that day. It was my birthday that day, and I selfishly talked her out of being with her family to go to Wendover with me. I mention this to show how self centered I can be while drinking. Unfortunately, this behavior wasn’t a one time thing. While drinking I could be incredibly mean. While sober, I worked overtime trying to make up for the damage I had caused by my words or actions. It wasn’t just Katie that I treated so poorly while I was drinking. Anybody nearby was fair game. I would be as charming and sweet as I knew how 6 days a week and turn into a monster on the 7th day. I’m not sure why Katie stuck around, but she did.

At work one day, a coworker told us he was playing a show in Park City at this bar I really liked. Katie and I made plans to go up there. Around this time I was drinking this bubbly wine called spumanti. At the bar that night, I ordered a bottle of it. People around us saw a couple order a bottle of bubbly and were looking at us to see what the occasion was. Katie thought it was pretty funny. She dared me to go tell our buddy playing drums in the band that we just got engaged. As a lot of people know, never dare a drunk to do anything unless you don’t care if they do it. I was already 2 or 3 sheets to the wind, so I went up to the band and told them. Our buddy then did something neither Katie nor I expected: he announced to the bar that we had just got engaged. The bar comped us the bottle of wine, and we spent the night being congratulated. The next morning we both woke up and looked at each other. The talk went something like this: “Man, Rob is going to tell everybody at work’ ‘You're right, he is’ ‘What are we going to do about it’ ‘I don’t know. Are you against the idea of us getting married?’ ‘No. Are you?’ ‘Not really, no’ ‘Do you want to just be engaged?’ ‘Yeah. Sure. Okay.’ ‘You have to ask my dad, though, okay?’ ‘Yeah. Sure. Okay’. And we were engaged. That day we went and picked up a ring. The next day we went over to her parent’s house for family dinner. Her dad had this way of dragging me off to a room by ourselves to watch TV and do some manly socializing. I’ve never felt overly masculine, but that day I was petrified. I had visions of CIA interrogations as I tried to change the topic of discussion from ‘How the Redskins look this year’ to ‘By the way – can I marry your daughter’. I don’t want to give away too much - her dad died not long after we were married and I don’t have enough memories of the times he and I spent together to be passing them around - but it went far better than I could ever have expected and I got his approval.

The celebration was short lived. Katie gave me an ultimatum to sober up or the wedding was off. After a false start in another rehab before a booze filled vacation, I went back to the hospital I’d been into twice before in the last year.

Leaving Las Vegas (Requiem 11)

2008-06-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

During the period of time I was going through IOP, I had a routine. Monday through Thursday I was busy from dawn until dusk. The weekends, however, were mine. I still went to meetings, but I had time to myself. I had got a new sponsor by this time and I would meet with him on Sundays. He read to me from the book our program is taken from. I started to work the program. I went out to eat with people in recovery. At a restaurant with a group of people one day, the waitress was really flirty with me and gave me her number before I left. I hadn’t really given girls much thought since Jess. It’s like Chris Rock says, though, (to paraphrase): I can’t run fast enough to avoid a girl chasing me.

At work, I would tell Katie about her (her name was Xanie – pronounced Zanny- short for Alexandria). Katie and I were becoming pretty good pals. I felt comfortable around her and would tell her pretty honestly about what was going on.

One thing about being an alcoholic is that people have these ideas about what an alcoholic is. I’m sure most people have visions of burning garbage cans under bridges. Of old men with big red noses always carrying brown bags; covered in multiple layers of dumpster retrieved army jackets and wool sweaters. Most of us aren’t like that, though. I was 24, but couldn’t have passed for older than 18. I’m a small kid anyways – 5’5” and 130 pounds at this point. I dress conservatively (preppy some might say) in polo shirts and shorts. To look at me, you couldn’t assume I was alcoholic. Yet I was. I found it funny how people perceived me. I think a lot of people saw me as an enigma. I looked like a high school kid, but I spoke of things far more serious than most high schoolers. When I told Katie of some of the things I had done and been through she seemed appropriately shocked, but I don’t think she really understood that I am the same as the bum under the bridge with the bottle surgically attached to his hand. The only difference between that guy and me was that I hadn’t burned all my bridges. Yet.

After I had been sober for 2 or 3 months, some of the guys in the house had a trip planned to Florida. I hadn’t been on a vacation in probably 7 years at this point, so I was looking forward to it. We flew down to Orlando and spent the night a friend of ours’ girlfriend’s house. We did DisneyWorld the next day and then drove over to St Petersburg. It’s on the gulf of Mexico and it was fantastic. We fished most days. One day I caught a baby hammerhead shark. During the trip, I called Xanie once or twice and experienced excess levels of drama. When I got back I called her and told her that the relationship was over. I’ve received my share of being yelled at through the years, but never have I ever (nor do I ever expect to) received the verbal onslaught I took on that phone call. Everything I had heard about fiery latinas was true. I let her speak until she said everything she wanted to. It was only fair.

I was talking to Katie one night not long after I got back and we decided she should come over. It was snowing pretty hard and by the time she came over it was late (probably 1:30 in the morning). She stayed over until morning when I had to go chair a meeting. I got busted for having a girl over and had to do all the chores in the house for a week. I did them without too much fuss. The next week my old nemesis Paul had stepped out of line and was responsible for all the chores. He didn’t do all of them, but nobody cared. I was really mad because the guys had been on me like white on rice to get everything done. It was more fuel to the fire I was carrying against Paul.

Katie and I started hanging out on Saturday nights at this point. We went on our first official date to a steak house. The next night I went to a family Christmas Party. For a few weeks prior to this, I had been telling anybody that would listen what a dirt bag Paul was. (One of my biggest defects of character is my mouth. Despite my small stature, I’ve been known to mouth off to guys much larger than me – Paul was one such guy) I let it get to me so much that every aspect of my life was affected by it. I was constantly irritable and unhappy. So I was at this family Christmas Party and I saw people having a glass of wine or a shot of tequila with impunity. They were having a good time and I was just angry. On my way home I made up my mind to go get trashed. I called Katie and asked her to meet me at a bar. She didn’t want to see me throw away my sobriety. Okay, I told her. I knew she’d come around. About 5 minutes later she called back and said she’d meet me there. By the time she showed up, I was one or two boilermakers to the good. A Boilermaker is a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser. When you want to get there fast, the boilermaker is the way to go. At some point we were asked to leave due to my level of drunkenness. I woke up the next morning at Katie’s apartment.

A week before Christmas, I was thrown out of the recovery house. I crawled back home to mom’s house determined not to slip into the level of addiction I was in before. I made a decision that I was done with 12 step meetings and recovery. I kept hearing in meetings that if I wasn’t done, I needed to go out and get done. While my friends in recovery had a New Year’s party, I rang in the new year of 2005 passed out in my sister's bed after a drinking a bottle of rum.

The Road Narrows (Requiem 10)

2008-06-15T00:53:00.000-07:00

So at 24 years old, one more time I was back in the hospital. It was the 6th different hospital I'd been admitted into in a year and a half. It was the 2nd time that year I'd been at this particular hospital. They put me in a different ward this time. It was geared more towards psychological problems. I fit in far too well. Each morning they brought breakfast to the communal room we had. I'd eat and then go get my medicine.

As far as medicine went, I was on quite a few. One drug was Thorazine. It's an older drug. It acted like a tranquilizer in me. It would hit me like a freight train and I'd sleep for hours. After a few days, they always took me off of it. They also had me on Librium, which is a drug in the class of Valium. It is given to help offset the effects of detox. They slowly lowered my dose on this drug until I was off of it completely. They also had me on an antidepressant. I don't remember which one I was on by this point, but I bounced from one to another for a good couple of years there. They also had me on vitamins. Alcoholics are notorious for being malnourished. They tried various antipsychotic medicines (Depakote, Geodone). Antianxiety medicines (Seroquel). Sleeping pills (Trazedone). The general goal of this hospital was to find the chemical cocktail that would allow me to function normally. It's a wonder I could walk or talk with all the meds I was on.

A frequently used line in meetings is that alcoholics cease growing emotionally when they start using. For example, I started drinking around 11. When I sobered up, emotionally I was 11 years old. I believe it. Once I discovered alcohol and drugs, I used it as a tool for living. When things were tough, I used. When I wanted to celebrate, I drank. Alcoholics are fundamentally sensitive people. We never really learned to deal with life. We have extremely low tolerance for pain (mainly emotional, but physical too). We knew that if we were in pain, we could take something. Why, then, would we ever bother to learn how to feel our way through loss or heartbreak? Yet when we sober up, we are now forced to deal with the day to day ups and downs that most people our age have long since learned to deal with.

After medicine, the day would drag slowly by. There were groups where we discussed daily goals. There were groups to draw or paint or play music. There were meetings with counselors, and psychiatrists. And down time. Lots of down time. Time passes slowly in the hospital. It's how I imagine time would pass in prison. After 1 week I wanted to go home badly. I had crossed the line, though. Leaving was no longer my option. I spent a couple of days in open hostility at them for keeping me there. I was so angry that I couldn't leave. I would say horrible things to the staff. They just listened. The longer I was going to act like that, the longer they were going to keep me. And keep me they did. A couple of days of this, and I realized I was showing them that they were making the right decision by keeping me. Once I made the connection between being a jerk and staying in the hospital for a really long time, I instantly turned calm again. I spent a total of 3 weeks in the hospital that time. And they only released me when I got into an intensive outpatient (IOP) treatment center.

IOP treatment is when you go to a place for several hours a day, several days a week. I was going Monday through Thursday from 6-9. My life was like hell week from boot camp for recovery. I got up at 7:30, got ready and went to my 8:30 job. From 8:30 to 5:00, I worked. At 5, I was off work to head over to IOP. I had just enough time to do ...nothing. Rush hour traffic meant I got there about 5:30, so I'd grab some tacos at a nearby taco stand and eat them while I waited for everybody to show. From 6-9 I was in groups listening and occasionally giving feedback. (note: I have since spoken with one of the girls I was in IOP with. She remembers me giving pointed feedback that was accurate, but quite harsh. She says I told her she was going to go back to doing drugs. Ouch!). At 9, I left to head back to the house in time to do ...nothing. We had our 10 o'clock closing meetings, so I was pretty much booked all day. By this point, the closing meetings were coming up on 2 hours. Between the hours of 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. I was booked for 13.5 of the 15.5 hours. And with those two hours, I had to get from one place to another. To say I had minimal time to myself would be an understatement. I had no time to drink or use. And so the months passed...

Russian Roulette (Requiem 9)

2008-06-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

Note: This is the story of a few days of my life that I am not proud of. I am retelling it to remind myself where I come from and what I am capable of while drinking. I hope nobody will find it too distasteful. I don't condone any of the things I did while drinking and using. Neither will I try to offer any excuses. My goal is to tell the story truthfully and accurately.

Readers are doubtless wondering to themselves "What is wrong with this kid? Why doesn't he just stop drinking. This story is the same thing over and over." If it sounds repetitive while reading it, try to imagine living it. They say insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. According to that definition I was insane. It had been about a year and a half since I came to recovery and each time I drank I found myself caring a little less about what happened to me. The danger with relapsing is that after a while it stops being that big of a deal to you. You figure 'I'll just get sober again. Anyways I only have a few weeks. That's nothing.' It's a real life version of russian roulette. Each time I took a drink was one more pull of the trigger. Eventually it was bound to catch up with me.

On my way to Wendover, I drank 7 or 8 beers in about 80 minutes. Being too much for me, I was forced to pull over to the side of the road to be sick about 20 minutes from Wendover. Somebody driving by at the time would have seen a car rolling down the shoulder of the road with the door open. My foot had slipped from the brake, and because I had my head out of the door throwing up, I hadn't noticed. I only noticed when I went off the road into the dirt. Braking the car again, I grabbed the cans (crushed and still full) rolled down the passenger window and tossed the lot out the window. Being now composed, I drove into Wendover. I played at one casino, drinking while playing. I jumped back into my car and drove to another casino. I very nearly crashed the car into another parked car while parking mine. I got out, went in and began to play again. At some point I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital again, disoriented. I was at the university hospital back in Salt Lake. I walked outside and called my mom. I laid down to rest and fell asleep. About two hours later I woke up still outside the hospital. I called again. She sent Tony to come get me.

When Tony got there, I told him I had some money and was looking to cop. No problem, he said. We got back to the house, I found a bed and crashed while Tony set about getting some coke. I woke up with Tony asking me how much I wanted. As much as you can get, I told him. In the meantime, he had some pain pills he could sell me for 5 bucks a pill. I bought them all and popped 4. He brought out the coke and we proceeded to smoke some. It was only at this point that I noticed a porn was playing on the TV. I went back to ignoring the TV and focused on getting high. At some point my mom joined us in the TV room. People were coming and going and at one point my mom and I were left alone in the room. Mother and son smoking coke together while a porn played. The most striking thing about the situation was the fact that neither of us noticed or cared. Tony happened to walk in the room then and had a moment of clarity. He told us it was wrong what we were doing, that it wasn't right for a mother and son to smoke coke together while a porn played. I always laugh to myself at that. How messed up do you have to be that the coke dealer is disgusted with you?

One of the people that came over was a stripper. She showed me how to take a hit of coke via a kiss. Naturally, I was smitten. This was a Friday and my mom had something or another going on that night, so we had to leave. I went with my new stripper friend to her house with her kids. We smoked more of what I had while her kids were in the next room. She had plans to do something or another, so she left with the kids. She came back a little while later and took me back to my moms house. I spent the rest of the night until early Saturday morning smoking coke and popping pills. I finally had too much and passed out. (Cocaine is an upper, but if you do too much of it your body shuts down. It should be a huge warning sign to lay off, but I didn't see it that way) I came to Saturday afternoon with the house to myself. A knock on the door and the stripper was over. She was acting strange. I didn't get why she wanted me to stay upstairs and talk to her. Then it occurred to me that my stash was downstairs. I ran downstairs to check my stash and found it gone. I ran back upstairs in time to see her drive away. They had unlocked a basement door and hatched a plan to steal my drugs.

When my mom and Tony came back I got some more coke. I was smoking some, but a funny thing was happening. I kept throwing up. Because I hadn't eaten anything, I was only dry heaving. I tried to take some pills to calm down, but I kept throwing them up. Saturday turned into Saturday night and I was ill. At some point all of us heard someone walking around upstairs. We were all supposed to be downstairs, so we panicked. We started getting rid of our stuff and vaccuuming the floor to clean up any coke that might have fallen. My mom and her friend took off, leaving me alone. I was convinced the cops were going to arrest me. I did the only thing I could think to do: call 911. The ambulance was there within a minute. They put me on a stretcher and took me out of the house. As I was leaving I saw my aunt and my grandma watching the goings on. I was delusional and shouted at my aunt that she stole all my money. At the hospital I told them I had a seizure. They loaded me up with painkillers. At around 3 in the morning I called my dad to come get me. He took me home and I fell asleep on the couch.

When I woke up, I took inventory. I had a few blister packs of pain pills, a prescription for more, and only my new stepmother was around. I asked her where my dad was. She said he was at work. I was confused. Why would he work on a Sunday? She told me it wasn't Sunday. It was Monday. I had been out for nearly 30 hours. I spent an hour thinking about what I was going to do. I couldn't go back to the recovery house. Neither could I go back to my moms. I decided that if I didn't go back to a hospital I was going to be dead in only a matter of time. I asked my stepmom if she could take me to the hospital. We stopped first by the pharmacy to fill my prescription. On the way to the hospital, I took all twenty pills in the prescription. When I got there, I didn't tell them I had. My thinking was that I didn't want them to pump my stomach, and if I was going to be sobering up than this might be my last hurrah.

Heartbreak Hotel (Requiem 8)

2008-06-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

Some people view 12 step programs as a type of group therapy. On some level that is right, but if that was all they were, nobody would stay sober. It is a 2 pronged approach: the fellowship of recovery, and the program of recovery. Meetings are the fellowship. Spending time with other people in recovery is the fellowship. We show up and talk to other people just like us. We see we aren't alone. It's what keeps us coming back at first. At some point, though, the fellowship will stop keeping us sober. In order to do that, we need to work the program. The program is the 12 steps. It's getting honest, cleaning up our pasts, and passing it on. Both are vital, although around the time I moved in to the Heartbreak Hotel I did not know it. I saw the fellowship as the sum of what recovery had to offer.

My days began like this: I would wake up in the downstairs room I stayed in. Usually exhausted, I would go upstairs and take a shower. Back downstairs to grab my things then I was off to work. After work, I'd head back to the house. I'd usually find one of the guys hanging out and go catch a meeting with them. Afterwards we'd invite some people back to the house and hang out. At 10:00 each night we'd have closing group. Anybody was welcome to come and many did. Imagine your first year at college. You're excited to be on your own, people over at all hours, you have arrived at last. Those were the types of feelings I felt during that first month.

I was feeling so good that I didn't pay much attention to my 'break' from Jess. Then one day I got word she was getting married. This could only have been 3 weeks or so since I moved out. I was shocked and confused. I didn't understand. A night or two later I had a dream. In this dream, Jess told me she was pregnant and felt compelled to marry the guy. I woke up in a cold sweat and mustered the courage to call Jess. I called her and asked her what was going on. She stuttered a little bit so I just came out and asked her "Are you pregnant?". As it turned out, the dream was right. She told me that she was pregnant and felt compelled to marry the guy. It was a kick in the gut. Only in the next couple of days did I get wind of the fact that she was due at the end of February. Doing the math, that meant that I could be the father. I later learned that it wasn't a possibility, but at that time I just knew that I either was going to be a dad or else she had cheated on me. Neither possibility was one I wanted to look at. Jess always maintained that she never crossed the line before I moved out. Even still, that would put her pregnant the weekend I moved out.

A lot of us alcoholics tell ourselves that we aren't hurting anybody when we're drinking. Take this example, though. Jess wanted me to marry her. She wanted me to stay sober and be responsible and start a family with her. I wanted to get drunk and use drugs. When it comes right down to it, can I blame her for stepping out? I don't think I can. I'll venture to guess that I forced her into it. I didn't force her to become pregnant, but I held her hostage in a relationship where I wasn't showing her love or affection. I wasn't even trying that hard to stay sober: a bare minimum for any alcoholic relationship. Sorely missing the love our relationship was lacking, she looked outside of it. She was desperate to find what our relationship was missing and perhaps made some poor decisions because of it. It's taken time to come to this understanding, but when I catch myself thinking 'this decision won't really affect anybody else' I remind myself about what my drinking did to Jess's life.

A week later I had a doctors appointment. The doctor prescribed some anxiety medicine. I brought the prescription home without filling it. Talking with the guys in the house, we decided I should not fill the prescription. Making a show of it, we shredded the prescription and may have even set fire to it. The next day I called the doctor and told them I had lost the prescription. They called one into a pharmacy for me. I picked it up and took a few. I showed up to a meeting that night, but the pills were beginning to hit me. I crawled into the back seat and fell asleep. The guys at the house found me asleep in a car with a bottle of pills in my hand. The heater was blowing full blast (It was set to cool, but I was having overheating problems with my car) and it was already 90 degrees outside. They saw it as a suicide attempt. (once again I hadn't planned a suicide attempt. at least not consciously). I tried to explain to them it wasn't what they thought, but they weren't buying it. The house voted and decided that I needed to stay away from the house until I was 72 hours sober. That night I went to Jess #2's house. The next 2 nights I stayed in a pop up trailer outside of Rob's house. They had borrowed the popup trailer for the annual campout. When it came time to get back in the house, I had to drug test. I passed the test, but I also had to be voted in by the other guys. In the few days since I was out, they had brought in a guy named Paul. At the meeting to be voted back in, the guys went around telling me honestly what they thought about what I was doing to myself and what I needed to do to stay in the house. Having to hear what a dirtbag I was from a guy I didn't know was more than I could stomach. I started a resentment that I held onto for a long time against Paul.

The campout was a lot of fun that year. I got back ready to stay sober. At work I was doing well and got along with most of the people I worked with. One girl, Katie, and I would flirt around. It was nothing serious, but we got along pretty well. Things mellowed out at the house. I was sober for about 6 weeks when I went to go to sleep one night. I looked at the clock and seeing that it was 12:30, I had the sudden thought that I had better get to the gas station before it was 1:00 if I wanted to buy beer. Nothing was out of the ordinary, I just knew I had to get to the gas station.

One thing you hear in meetings is that at times, we are without a mental defense against alcohol. I wasn't upset, I just had the thought that I had to buy beer. I lived in a recovery house and went to daily meetings. I was doing everything I could think of to not drink. Still, though, after this thought I didn't even put up a fight.

I went to the gas station and as I was buying a 12 pack a cop walked in. I smiled and nodded my head at him as I walked by with the beer in my hand. I got into my car, opened the box and grabbed a beer. Before I started backing up out of my parking spot, I cracked the beer. Backing out of my spot, I looked at the cop in the store with his back to me. I smiled, took a drink, put my car in drive and got on my way to Wendover.

Pitiful and Incomprehensible Demoralization (Requiem 7)

2008-06-09T22:52:00.000-07:00

After another week in detox, I came out with a renewed vigor to stay sober. Unfortunately, it did not last. The next 3 and a half months saw me in and out of treatment centers, the relationship with Jess disintegrating along the way.

Out of the third hospital, I made it to 29 days and got drunk. I drove out to Wendover again and got an ambulance ride back. I made it a week and got drunk. I started hitting emergency rooms with phantom symptoms of pain fishing for pills. I entered a psychiatric hospital that also handled substance abuse. I was in a lockdown ward for a couple of days and then got transferred to the open adult ward. I met a girl there and fooled around with her one night in a room where we thought everyone was asleep. A day or so later I faked a seizure. I was rushed to an emergency room where I was loaded with all types of painkillers. A few hours later after a bunch of tests determined I was faking, they took me back to the open adult ward. I was released and thrown out on my ear. I was reaching depths of demoralization I had never dreamed of and all the while Jess was slowly detaching herself from me. A few days later I was getting drunk again.

It wasn't too long before I was searching for coke again. One night I ended up at a dealers house. I scored and spent a surreal night driving around from coke house to coke house. By the end of the night I was broke and had let a dealer borrow my car for one rock of coke. I didn't see my car for 2 days. I couldn't keep on like I was, so I checked myself back into the place I first went through rehab. I spent 3 weeks there again. By the time I came out, I knew that nothing was going to change. Jess and I never really fought, but we never really talked either.

One Sunday I stole over to an old drinking buddies' house and had a couple of beers while watching a movie. When I made it back home I was thinking that a break would probably be a good thing. That week I went to a meeting and ran into a guy I had known since I first came to recovery. His name was Rob and we talked about how things at home were pretty bad. Rob's wife had just moved out and taken the kids. He was about 45 days sober and talked about how he was alone in this huge house. He was walking around kicking his kids' toys out of the way. He looked at his walls and saw dusty rectangles where family pictures had hung only days before. I felt like a ghost at my house and we talked about maybe moving in together to help each other through this tough time. That night I went home to Jess to talk about maybe taking a break. When I brought it up, she said she was thinking the same thing. I called Rob to see if he was serious about moving in together. He was. That was a Wednesday. We made plans for me to move my stuff out on Friday. Friday marked one year since I had been found outside of the strip club. When the day came, I got off work and called JM. He came over and helped me move my stuff. The first night at Rob's he got a call from a friend of ours named Dave. Dave was drunk and was looking at a possible divorce. The next night Dave joined us. Not long later, a fourth guy named Bruce came. He, too, was going to be starting a divorce. The house was quickly becoming known as "The Heartbreak Hotel" after the place Homer stayed when he and Marge were getting divorced on The Simpsons (which, of course, came from the Elvis song).

Determined to stay sober, we all sat in his living room one night. One person pulled out a recovery book and read the daily thought. We went around the room and told about our days. The highs, the lows, how our cravings were. After we had all shared, we felt a little better. Just knowing that there were 3 other guys new in sobriety trying their hardest to stay sober through relationship woes felt good. We decided we would continue these 'closing meetings'. We also decided that we should try it in the morning, but that only lasted a while because we all had different start times in the morning. Without trying to, but thanks in no small part to Rob's generosity, we had started a sober living environment. Things were beginning to look up again.

Relationships and Other Distractions (Requiem 6)

2008-06-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

There are some jokes in recovery circles regarding alcoholic relationships. One goes something like this: What do you call it when one alcoholic moves in with another? A second date. Another says: What do you call dating a newcomer? The thirteenth step. As with most recovery-isms, they are steeped in truth.

Following the campout, I began to spend more and more time with Jess. She had been sober for about 7 months then and, as expected, received no small amount of grief from her sponsor for thirteenth stepping me. We weren't exclusive then, and I was still enjoying a newly found resurgence in the old libido category. Not that I was tramping around or anything, but before things got too serious with Jess I hung out once or twice with another girl named Jess. When I would talk to JM about things, it got complicated. I ended up having to call them Jess #1 and Jess #2. After double booking myself once, I realized that I was hurting Jess #1's feelings. It caused me to analyze what it was that I wanted. What I wanted was Jess #1. Once that decision was made, I concentrated on being with Jess (#1).

The next few months were a blur of activity. My dad was moving in with someone and getting rid of the apartment. At this point I could have probably moved in with Jess, but I still wasn't too sure if things would work out. JM was getting an apartment with his step dad and asked if I wanted to room with them. I decided I did and we moved my stuff one night. I didn't own a bed or anything, so moving was easy. I stayed exactly 1 night in the apartment. For the rest of our 6 month lease I stayed with Jess. After about a month, I decided the polite thing to do was to pay rent to Jess for living with her. So for 6 months I payed rent at 2 places. I got a cell phone. I still didn't have a car, but Jess was a saint and thanks to our work schedules I was able to get a ride to work with her in the mornings. JM would pick me up after work and we'd go catch meetings. I fell into a rhythm and weeks passed.

One day in October, Jess and I were driving to go to dinner with a couple of my cousins and their husbands. I was in the passenger seat reaching down by my feet for a book of cd's when we crashed into a car that had stopped in the middle of the road. We weren't going that fast, maybe thirty miles an hour, but my face was right next to the airbag when it went off. My face was swollen and bleeding and I was in shock a little bit. Somebody called an ambulance and I found myself in a hospital again. They did some xrays, gave me a prescription for pain pills and sent me on my way. This event was important for 2 reasons: one is that I was later to receive an insurance settlement that allowed me to get a car. Two, and more importantly, I was to learn that like cocaine and alcohol before it, I was incapable of using pills like a normal person.

I didn't drink right away. I used the pills like they were prescribed, but found myself looking at the clock to see if 4 hours had gone by yet. I craved those pills like mad. The anxiety I felt never completely subsided. At the end of October we moved from her apartment to a house near the avenues. By then the pills were all gone, but I was still not quite right. I went to meetings, but it was more like I was doing it to check something off of a list. Went to a meeting. Check. Called my sponsor. Check. The desire to improve myself was not there. As November turned into December, I stopped going to meetings. I did pick up a few 6 month chips around the middle of December, but for the next month I didn't hit a single meeting. I told myself I felt fine, but I was fundamentally off. The insurance company from the wreck paid me off and I used the money to buy a cheap car. I started going back to meetings in January, but a month later I found myself with a pretty bad cold.

At meetings you hear people warn against certain types of medicines. Pain pills, Sudafed, even cough medicines. These types of medicines often have addictive substances in them. To the average guy they get sick and buy a bottle of Ny-Quil. They take some for a night or two and then have half a bottle that sits there until it expires and then gets thrown out. To the alcoholic, they buy a bottle. Maybe they take a dose one night. But then the craving sets in and they finish the whole bottle. Not always, but just enough to cause most recovering alcoholics to avoid those types of medicines.

I woke up that morning knowing I needed something to get through the day. I went into the store looking for something without alcohol. I found some Robitussin and bought it. I took it out the car and dosed up. I drove off to work, but by the time I hit work I knew I had made a mistake. I was stoned something fierce. I managed to get through the day, reloading on cough medicine at lunch (of course). I left work with a purpose. I needed to get drunk. I stopped by a convenience store and bought a twelve pack on the way home. I called Jess and asked her not to come home, but she wouldn't hear it and came home anyways. I started on the beer when it hit me that I could really use a rock or two. I called my mom's boyfriend and he came by with a couple of rocks. I didn't have a proper pipe, so I used his for a rock or two. I must have been acting really weird because he told me he was taking his rocks back and left. I don't remember much of that night. The next day I woke up scared. I was right back at it. I got a ride to the hospital I had detoxed the first time at and checked myself in. They did some blood tests and took me back to the lockdown wing I had spent a week in almost a year ago to the day. A nurse came in and asked me where I had got the PCP. I didn't know what she was talking about. She told me they had found PCP in my system. That might have explained my lack of memory of the night before. The 24 hour tally included 1 bottle of Robitussin, about 10 beers, 2 rocks of coke laced with PCP, and an entrance into my third hospital. I was not getting this whole staying sober business.

The Campout (Requiem 5)

2008-06-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Following the relapse, I continued going to meetings. I started hanging out with more people in recovery, and before I knew it I had a regular group of friends. I related quite a bit to one friend in particular: JM. He, too, had used with his mother. He had also gone through treatment at the same place I had. We would drive around and talk about some of the things that we had done in active addiction (translation: before we sobered up). Not being too far removed from doing these things, sometimes it was hard to talk about them. After you've been sober for a little while you are able to laugh about the things you've done, but at first there is nothing funny about the way of life you led. Ever since we first sobered up, we had been hearing about a campout that was supposed to be like sober Woodstock. We decided to go to it. I had been sober about 30 days by then. When the Friday came, we packed up tents, sleeping bags, and stopped by the store to buy some food. We took his red truck and hit the road.

By the time we got there it was dark, but we could see it was going to live up to the hype. There was a pavillion near the entrance to the campground covered by a roof with a stage at one end. A band was playing and people were dancing. We drove around in the dark until we found a spot to set up our tents. We got everything set up and went up by the band. I recognized some of the people from meetings I'd been to. We hung out that night and went to sleep, excited at the prospect of a few days to enjoy the unknown. When I woke up, it was like waking up on a different planet. Because it was dark when we arrived the night before, I'd missed the surroundings. We were in a valley surrounded by mountains. A little ways from the pavillion there was a river with a bridge over it. The beauty was awe inspiring. There were tents everywhere. Behind the covered area, there were rudimentary cabins. Although it couldn't have been past 8:00 in the morning, people were already up drinking coffee and talking amongst themselves in small groups throughout the campsite. When everyone was up, we made some breakfast and set out to see the campground. During the rest of the day, there were contests like tug-of-war and arm wrestling contests. There was a stable of horses near the pavillion and we'd see people riding horses across the river to the trail. To someone who had spent the previous few years drinking and using drugs all the time, it was enough to make you a kid again. We passed the day leisurely laying around in the sun, enjoying being alive and sober. At night there was a 'sobriety countdown'. Almost everyone there went up to the pavillion for it. There was an announcer who started it saying "50 years. 49 years. 48 years...." When the announcer said your amount of sobriety, you would stand up to a round of applause. There were people on the sides counting the hands. Here is the cool thing: the less time sober people had, the louder the applause so that by the time somebody stood up with one day sober everybody was on their feet and the noise was deafening. The newest comer to sobriety was then invited to the stage to be presented with a book from the person with the most sobriety. It was a very humbling experience and one that I can't really relate to anything outside of recovery.

There are a few suggestions made to newcomers to recovery. One of which is to avoid any major decisions for the first year of sobriety.( i.e. divorce, quitting a job, moving to another state, etc) Another is to abstain from romantic relationships during the first year. The reason is that in general, we are looking for anything that will help us feel better. Relationships do that at first. The problem is that when we feel good, we don't have a lot of drive to improve ourselves and learn to live sober. By the time we hit bottom we aren't very good at relationships, so there will usually come a time when those good feelings will go away. If we haven't been working on learning to live sober, we're going to put ourselves in a position where we feel badly and want to feel good again. You can do this in recovery, but it's a slower process than we alcoholics want. We know exactly how to feel good again fast: a drink. It doesn't always happen this way, but it happens enough that many people tell newcomers to avoid romance like the plague for the first year. Some of us are better listeners than others....

After the countdown, there was a talent show and after that a dance. During the dance I ran into a girl I had seen at a few meetings. I asked her to dance. After that we starting chatting. Long after the dance was over, she mentioned she was going to catch hell from her sponsor (with whom she was sharing a tent) for coming back to the tent so late. I caught her drift and took my cue: "No problem, I've got extra room in mine...." And so it began.

The Beauty of Meetings (Requiem 4)

2008-05-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

There is a myth out there that alcoholics have a drinking problem. I see why people would think this. I hear people in meetings say it all the time. They are wrong, though. Drinking is not our problem. It is our solution. There are some people who DO have a drinking problem. Their solution is to stop drinking. You take an alcoholic and a problem drinker. Let's say they both have too much to drink one night, get in the car, drive off and get pulled over. They get hit with a DUI, go to jail, and get hauled before a judge. The judge says to them "If I see you in my court again, I'm going to send you to prison." Up until now there is no difference between the two. Here is the difference: the problem drinker thinks about his job, his wife, his insurance rates, and decides he is done drinking. He makes a decision to stop drinking. The alcoholic starts thinking about what prison is going to be like. He knows he is going to drink again. The thought of not drinking scares him infinitely more than prison.

So for the second time in less than 4 months I started drinking and woke up in a hospital. It was after midnight. I called for a ride from my aunt and waited for her show. While I was waiting a nurse came in and gave me my discharge instructions. It included this computerized printout showing my condition and the treatment. Apparently, I was suffering from severe alcohol intoxication and chronic alcoholism. It told me I should stay away from alcohol if I couldn't limit my consumption. If I was unable to stay away from the sauce, there was help available in the form of a 12 step program or a professional counselor. As horrible as this situation sounds, I'm actually really grateful for it. If I had any doubts as to the nature of my condition, they were dispelled. I now knew that what I was hearing at meetings was true and applied to me: no alcoholic drinker once losing the power of choice in drinking ever regains it.

My aunt picked me up and took me to my apartment. I had caused quite a bit of concern when I didn't show up to my normal meeting or come home at a reasonable hour. The next day I woke up, called in sick to work, and then called Jen up. She was really upset with me. It's hard to describe the bond of two people that go through rehab and set about trying to turn their lives around. Strong bonds are forged quickly during times of catastrophe. And make no mistakes about it: my life was a train wreck (as are most that hit bottom). We went to two meetings that day. I stood up as a newcomer again, which was pretty tough. My pride didn't want to admit to screwing up.

We go to these meetings where we find people that are just like us. And in a way, we are given a new life that first time. We meet new people who only see us as fellow survivors of alcohol. People who see us in meetings and have only seen us do good things for ourselves and for others. At first, I think, it's why a lot of people go back to meetings. We go to our jobs where a lot of us have barely been getting by. We're angry and unproductive and always on the verge of being fired. We go home to our families. The people that have watched us make promise after promise to stop drinking and clean up our acts. They've heard it all before and talk is cheap. So maybe we try to reach out to our friends. Except that a lot of us have burned most of our bridges by the time we become willing to make changes in our own lives. If we do have friends that want to spend time with us, it's the friends that we drank with. The friends that did the same things we did at their jobs and to their families. They used to be our salvation, because for a couple hours a week we could just be ourselves and not be judged for it. Now, though, we want to stay sober. And suddenly we find these same friends a whole lot less cordial. They treat us as if we are a spy for the sober side. Or perhaps a missionary from teetotalerville. And so we are alone.

We go to these meetings and people seem normal. They smile and laugh and they look good. They have jobs and cars and houses and we think 'I am not like these people'. And then they start telling their stories. Tragic and Horrifying stories. Awful stories. Stories like ours. And maybe someone gets up and tells a story of driving drunk. And they get pulled over. And the officer comes up to their car. The officer can see they've been drinking and tells them to step out of their car. And they go to get out of their car except they are too drunk, so they fall out of the car onto the ground at the officer's feet. And then they throw up on the officers shoes. And for some strange reason, this strikes everybody as HILARIOUS. So they laugh. At horrible things like this they laugh. And when somebody does an everyday thing like get insurance for their car or get their drivers license, they applaud. And at first we don't get it. We think 'What are these people laughing at or clapping for?' Then one day somebody gets up and tells our story. Some of the details are different, but it's our story. They talk about missing births and disappointing their family. They talk about the pain and the loneliness. And we realize that we aren't alone. These people, we think, have been where I have been. And it slowly dawns on us that these people seem normal. They are happy. They have been in the darkness that we are in and have found a way out. And if they have found a way out, they can show us the way out. And for the first time in months, if not years, we have hope. We are not alone, and hope is suddenly not lost. And so we keep coming back.

So when I had to come back to those meetings and stand up as a newcomer, it was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do. Suddenly, the dissapointment, shame, and embarrassment of my life before I tried to stay sober came back.

Divine Intervention (Requiem 3)

2008-05-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

Fresh from rehab in early spring of 2003, I made it exactly 110 days before I was found unconscious and not breathing outside of a strip club. Let me back up and explain...

The night I left rehab, I went back to the apartment. My dad had packed it up in order to prepare for a middle of the night backdoor move. There was stuff everywhere. I had to unpack a blanket and pull a mattress off of the wall it was leaning on in order to sleep. My dad was staying with his ex wife, so I had a few days with nothing to do. I scrounged what food I could find in the apartment and began the rest of my life. The one thing I remembered was that I was supposed to go to meetings. I had no car and our phone was off, so I had to walk a mile and a half to the nearest gas station to call my aunt and arrange for a ride to the one meeting I knew about. I went to the meeting and it was different than I remembered. In rehab, we were subjected to various meetings all day long. By the time the 12 step meetings came towards the end of the day, it was all I could do to concentrate. After a day on my own, I hung on every word. I kept hearing to get a sponsor and read the book. I left the meeting resolving to do just that. A couple of days later Jen got out and I now had a partner in crime. She told me about a club she had heard about that had meetings all the time. We arranged to meet at the club at noon one day. I showed up, but never saw her. After the meeting I ran into her. Apparently they had more than one meeting at a time in the club. I bummed a ride home from her and we arranged to catch a meeting another time.

My dad and I moved all of our stuff out of the apartment one night a few days later. My dad brought his ex wife and a couple of her kids (which included a half brother of mine). Between the five of us, we were out in about a half of an hour. I'd heard about covert moves like these before, but this was my first experience with them. Our new home was in an apartment right by Highland Ridge Hospital. It was also right by the train here in town, which was good. I was now not so dependent on others for rides. I set about trying to get a job. I spent a day or two at my grandmas looking through the paper and making calls. I got a job fairly quickly, but it wasn't going to start for a week or two. I knew I was going to need a bus pass to get to the job, so I got up at 5:00 AM one morning and snuck a free train ride over to where I could get to a day labor place. I filled out some paperwork and hung out until someone walked in and said they needed a half dozen people to pick up garbage at the dump. I volunteered to go and worked it out to give 5 bucks to a guy with a pickup to drive me out there. I think I was being paid about $6.00 an hour. I worked all day on my feet in the middle of a dump. We put in about 9 hours straight. I didn't think to bring a lunch, so it was a long 9 hours. The sun was out all day and I got burned pretty bad. We got back to the day labor place to get our checks. I got my check and cashed it with the machine there. I paid the driver his 5 bucks and after the government had taken their share, I only had about $35 dollars left. $35 dollars for 9 hours of being on my feet in a dump in the sun. I felt pretty good that I was going to such lengths to get my life back together. Pretty good, that is, until 5:00 AM the next morning when I woke up in agony. My back hurt, my feet hurt, my head hurt, and I felt as though I hadn't slept at all. I sucked it up and hopped the train back to day labor place thinking maybe I'd get a better assignment this time. They sent me right back to the dump. By the end of the day, I decided I was going to live as conservatively as possible to make my new fortune of $70 last until I got my first check at the new job. And I did.

I started the new job on April 15th. I learned that the first 3 months or so was training. I always did pretty good in school, so I was stoked at the prospect. I had to get up by 5:2o to make the 5:50 train that took me to catch the 6:30 bus to my 7:00 job. I had a new respect for people who relied on public transportation. At a meeting one day I heard you were supposed to pick a sponsor who had what you wanted. I asked one guy and was turned down. Then I heard a guy talk about all these vacations he was taking. I wanted that, so I asked him to be my sponsor. He had me start on the steps and read the book. I was calling him pretty regularly and going to meetings. Things were sort of falling into place. I had even started seeing a girl I used to see again. One day at the beginning of June, I opened one of the letters for me from the insurance company that had been sitting on our kitchen table for a few weeks. It was a check with a letter that said that my insurance was cancelled. I didn't understand at first, but what I came to find out was this: when I was let go from my job, my insurance stopped immediately. It was the 28th day of January. I had my grandma pay for one month of my insurance and my father another with my money. The insurance company took my grandmas payment and applied some of it towards the remaining 3 days in January. That left me short a couple of bucks for the February payment. That wouldn't have been a problem except that my dad never paid the second month. He took my money and never paid the insurance. They sent me letters asking for the remaining premium for February and for March, but in the move they were set aside. It was a whole month before I read them, but by then my grace period was done. The check was a reimbursement for the February premium that was short. I faxed in an appeal and prayed for it to go through. On June 9th I got word that my appeal was denied. I thought about all those bills I would soon be responsible for. Despondent, I got permission to leave early on June 10th and went home. I had this check for several hundred dollars in my hand with knowledge that I was going to owe tens of thousands. Tens of thousands that I didn't have. I called my sponsor, but got his voicemail. I thought about going to a meeting, but I made a deal with myself. I decided that if the check cashing store on the corner wouldn't cash my check, it was God's will that I not drink. I went to the store and after a long wait, they told me they needed another form of ID. Divine intervention, right? I went home, got the other form of ID, returned to the store and cashed my check. What can I say? I wanted to drink. I thought about bars in close proximity to the train. The nearest one I could think of was a strip club. The funny thing is that it is the same stop to go to the club for a meeting. I got off on the stop and stood there. I looked left knowing that I could go to a meeting and talk to someone about this. I looked right knowing I could get hammered and forget about this right away. I went right.

They Tried To Make Me Go To Rehab… (Requiem pt 2)

2008-05-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

At 23, I found myself without a job or a car. I had no money, girlfriend or any friendships that weathered the storm of my addiction. As it turns out, it was a perfect spot to start my journey into recovery. It began with an ambulance ride in the middle of the night from one hospital to another to begin detox. When I woke up the next morning I was numb emotionally, but physically I was a wreck. Nurses came in frequently to check on me. They gave me pills to detox from the alcohol. The first 2 days I was unable to leave the bed except to go be sick in the bathroom. I couldn't hold any food down and tried to sleep as much as possible. When I started to feel a little better, I was encouraged to leave my room. When I did, I found that I was across from a nurses station at the far end of a hall that went down about 5 rooms and ended with 2 locked doors. There was a security camera by the locked doors. All in all, it was like being in jail. Despite the surroundings, I was not uncomfortable with where I was. There is a certain comfort that comes from knowing you don’t have to worry about staying drunk or finding drugs or remembering to eat. I wasn’t allowed to have shoelaces or belts. This was a fact that played on my mind. This was the culmination of my life: I couldn’t be trusted to have a belt or shoelaces. It was a little disheartening, but I shook it off and tried to make the best of my circumstances. There were about half a dozen other patients mulling around the lone hallway. There was a common area that contained a TV and this was where the meals were served 3 times a day for the remaining 5 days of my stay in detox. When it came time to start looking at what I was going to do when I left, I was quickly informed that I would be going to a rehab facility. I needed to get my insurance in order, which required that I have somebody pay my insurance premium for the next month. Being in lock down, I arranged to have my grandma make the current month’s payment for me. After that, I had to arrange to have my dad pay for the next month’s payment with the remaining money from my check I had left at the apartment. With that done, the next rehab was arranged and I left one hospital for another.

On February 27^th, 2003 I entered Highland Ridge Hospital. The hospital was set up in 2 sides: detox/psych and rehab. I was given a packet of information and placed into the detox half to spent another week there. After meeting with the psychiatrist, they put me on Prozac to offset the years of chemical damage I did to my brain. It was here that I met my first friend in recovery, Jen E. Jen was an alcoholic like me. She was married and she had a young child. Jen, myself, and another guy we called Vinnie played cards to pass the time when we weren’t too loaded from all the pills they had us on. We made a bet on one game of gin rummy where the low score had to bring the other two their dinner plates for a day. I lost and they started calling me Jeeves. As in ‘Jeeves, please bring me my dinner. I’d like to eat now’ Eventually Vinnie left and Jen and I were moved over into the rehab side of the hospital. Or as I lovingly call it: the brainwashing side or general population (gen pop for short). To this point, I’d spent 2 weeks detoxing off of alcohol. Realistically I was detoxed after about 3 or 4 days, but I was still nervous to go over to the other side. When I did, it was a shock. In detox I could sleep in and take naps during the day if I wanted. In rehab, we were up at 6:00 and had our days planned for us down to the half hour until 10:00 at night. The first few days I spent trying to stay awake and get used to the schedule. I’d get up at 7:00, shower if I felt up to it and then go down to the cafeteria to get something to eat. After breakfast it was to morning meditation. We’d read from a couple of recovery books and lay on gymnastic mats for 15 minutes listening to soothing music. After meditation, it was back to the common area to drink coffee and wake up. Starting at about 9:00, we’d split up into to different groups based on which counselor we were assigned to. Some groups were for presenting the steps or autobiography we prepared out of the packets we were each given when we entered Highland Ridge. Each step would have many questions we had to answer. Some of the questions seemed ridiculous. (“How has alcohol made my life unmanageable?” As if being in a hospital where they didn’t trust you with your own shoelaces was somehow managing my life well…) Other groups were for therapy to discuss different issues that came up. I remember that there was another patient who was really cold to me. One time he said to me something along the lines of ‘Are you even old enough to drink? How can YOU have a problem with alcohol? I spilled more alcohol than you ever drank”. With a little time now and in retrospect I can see that he was a sick alcoholic only sober a few days himself. At the time, though, I was furious that this guy was such a jerk to me. Deep down I think I agreed with him. I was only 23 years old. I always thought I’d be able to drink at least until I was in my forties or fifties.

After a week in the rehab side, my insurance company told the hospital that they were done paying for me to stay inpatient. They would pay for me to come during the days, but not during the nights. The hospital knew that I wasn’t ready to go home yet, so they put me up in an apartment next to the hospital. For a week, I went over there at nights. By now, it had been about 2 weeks since I started Prozac and I started to really feel the effects of it. I was really spacey and slept a lot. One time I feel asleep at the apartment and missed a group. They drug tested me when I came to the hospital and told me I failed. I was livid. I hadn’t used. They asked me to come back to the hospital. They told me they would board me there for the duration of my stay and work it out with the insurance company. I spent a day furious with the hospital. I explained to the other patients why I was staying at the hospital again. Nobody believed me. They all assumed I used. I stayed for one night and then told the hospital I was leaving. To make things worse, when I explained that I was sleeping because of the Prozac they took me off it cold turkey. So after 2 weeks in detox and 2 weeks in rehab I left the hospital, determined to stay sober.

In The Beginning (Requiem part 1)

2008-05-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

I started drinking when I was about 11. My parents had a box of wine in the fridge. I took a travel mug and filled up on my way to 6th grade. I'm not sure why I did except that I've always had a tendency to defy authority and I thought it would be a fine trick to drink booze under the teachers nose. I didn't drink much of it, though. I didn't care for the taste. In junior high I progressed to drinking before school. Mixing a little of everything out of the liquor cabinet, I would fill them back up with water to maintain the levels. I started smoking pot a little bit and on a couple of memorable occasions, tried acid and cocaine. I was in the gifted and talented classes at the time. I maintained a high honor standing despite the chemicals and the harder classes I was taking.

In high school I didn't experiment as much, but I continued to drink when I could. Out of high school I started drinking more and more. I had a scholarship from the state for graduating high school early and started college a year later. Within two weeks, I decided that school was cutting into my drinking time too much. I had a day job, but quit it after a fight with the boss. After a period of unemployment, I met a girl and moved on a whim to a college town an hour and a half away to be near her. I got a job and stayed away from alcohol for a few months. I was eventually fired for missing a couple of days and moved back home. The girl came to live with me back home. During one fight, I downed a half of a fifth of Canadian Host. Another time, I downed a bottle of sleeping pills. The relationship eventually came to a head when I was arrested for domestic violence. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I had to re-evaluate my life and the choices I was making. I was sentenced to 6 months of classes and moved back home with my mom to put the pieces back together. I had a truck repossesed right before this happened so I had throughly hit bottom. Or so I thought.

I kept up the drinking, sometimes drinking so much I would be sick for days. Living with my mom, I noticed she was keeping unusual hours and had strange friends stopping by for 5 minutes or so. I knew what was up, so one day I asked her if she could get me some coke. A few days later she came down to my room and told me to follow her to hers. Once the door was locked, she pulled out some powder and lined up a couple of rails for me. I did the lines and we chatted. At one point, she pulled out a glass pipe and took a hit off of it. She offered me one, showing me how to do it. (I want to say here that I would not change anything if I could. I love my mother and she was taking care of me the best way she knew how.) It was at that point that I crossed the invisible line in the sand. It was my Rubicon, and there was no going back. The next six months watched me smoke myself down to 92 pounds at my lowest. I begged, borrowed, and stole what I could to keep high. I had a job at the time. It kept me in money every two weeks for a few hours and kept the line of credit with the dealers open. I was a fiend and not beyond knocking on my mom's door at 3 in the morning to beg for one last hit. I have strong memories of this time. I would go get a post dated check loan and start smoking at 7 or 8 at night. I would go until 3 in the morning or until I ran out. I would beg first for more coke. If there was no more, I would beg for Valium, Soma, or anything else that would take the edge off so I could get to sleep (including alcohol if that was all that was available). I'd get to sleep at 3 or 4 (if I got to sleep at all). I was paranoid and was once so delusional, I spent 5 hours in the bathroom convinced the police were there to get me. I had showered with all of my clothes on and pushed the last few rocks down the drain to destroy the evidence.

The alarm would go off at 6:00. I would get up, more drained than I have the power to explain. I would try to wake up in the shower. Then it was off to work on my bike. It was a little over 3 1/2 miles and some mornings it was absolute hell. My legs would tremble and ache, furious at having to do so much with so little. We were on church welfare, so lunch was usually ramen noodles or (more often) potato flakes with warm water poured over them and stirred with salt and chased with a multivitamin. Every once in a while I could get my mom to let me borrow her car the few miles or I'd get a ride from her boyfriend Tony. One night a few days before Christmas I was locked in my room and started having a sort of seizure. I lost control of myself and lay on the ground shaking uncontrollably. The next day I went to my grandmother begging for her to help me. I spent about a week at her house. My father had come back into my life after 3 years of not seeing him. We called hospitals asking for help. They asked what I was taking and I told them all about the coke, but neglecting to tell them about how much alcohol I was drinking. They told me that I didn't need to detox from coke and that I should try Cocaine Anonymous.

I tried my hardest to stay sober (or as sober as I knew how). My grandfather was dying and I was stealing his pain pills before work to help me get through the day. I made it about 3 weeks without coke or alcohol then drank and ended up back at my mom's house begging for coke. I moved in with my dad and kept trying to stay clean. I lost my job after calling in sick one too many times (the irony is that the occasion I was fired for was a time I actually had the stomach flu. I missed countless days being hungover and drained from coke, but the stomach flu killed me) I started just drinking, but I would crave coke when I was drunk. I once bought a quarter ounce of coke after drinking about 10 beers. I didn't have a proper pipe and wasted most of what was there. When I ran out I was drunk and high, but severely depressed. I tried to kill myself, but chickened out at the last second calling out for my dad before I bled out. Then in February, my grandpa died. I took it hard and went on a bender. I drank prodigiously. The day of the funeral I had made plans to work on putting a band together. The girl came over and we started working on some songs we both liked, but I eventually drank the bottle of wine she brought and the 12 pack of beer I had. We went on a beer run and I blacked out. I woke up the next morning still drunk and took inventory. I was in my bed wearing just boxers with only a vague idea of what had happened. I had a couple hundred dollars left from my last check and knew I would soon have it spent if I didn't conserve. I had the idea that if I went to Wendover, I could drink for free. There was the added benefit of not knowing any coke dealers out there. I took a cab from our apartment to the bus stop and took the fun bus to Wendover. I blacked out. I have vague memories of being layed out at the back of the casino. The ambulance showed up. I remember smelling the salts they put in front of your nose. I've smelled them several times since them, but this was the only time they didn't cause me to cringe. I can remember them rifling through my wallet and then being in the ambulance. As a cancer survivor, I felt I should tell them. Except I just kept saying 'kidney cancer'. They took it to mean I had cancer. They called for a helicopter and I woke up in a hospital in Salt Lake surrounded by my family. They took my actions as another attempt to kill myself. It wasn't, at least not consciously. They told me I could voluntarily go to the hospital or I could be court ordered there. I told them I would go. I later learned that when my blood alcohol was taken about 5 hours after I blacked out, I was at a .24% That was still 3 times the legal limit and it was hours after my last drink. I had hit bottom again, this time via a helicopter.