WARNING: Graphic Language of Drug Use: DO NOT READ If Easily Triggered

 

MY TRIGGERS are EVERYWHERE: on television, in magazine ads, unavoidable on billboards and on the many menus of restaurants that serve liquor, to name a few. So, what's the big deal?

I've seen the icy stares of social drinkers and have confronted my own fragility.  

"Go ahead. Have a drink. One won't kill you" they used to say or words to that effect when I first got sober. I have faced the fact that addiction is addiction is addiction, whatever the substance, its social acceptance or its legality. "One is one too many" is my thought, but a simple "No thanks. Not today," usually suffices.

My perspective has moved outwards since then. Social drinkers, some of them anyway, may never understand the power alcohol once had over me and how my risk-assessment laughs in the face of their mere suggestion of a drink. 

A little over-the-top, perhaps, but here's how I once expressed my addiction to alcohol being like heroin to a heroin addict:

"Slow the injection of truth. Insert the needle of truth into my vein, into my brain, slowly. First, hold the needle upright. Squeeze out any air. Leave only the clear, the liquid, the truth. Inject me slowly. I want to watch that crystal clarity enter my vein. The truth, too fast, could only scare me. Inject me slowly, or quickly watch me die."

Well, there you have it. Right or wrong, that fairly captures how I once felt. I had to confront the absolute fact that I am an alcoholic and that abstention, for me, is "the easier, softer way."

Confront. Confront. Confront. 

My addiction to alcohol was a brutal truth, separate from the glamorization of alcohol in our culture. I was an addict, addicted to alcohol. Stopping drinking, staying stopped, learning to deal with it, was truly an internal confrontation. Complete acceptance accrued over time.

Calling myself an alcoholic felt like a deadly admission that rattled me to the core for a long time. "Poor me." Self-pity, doubt, fear, a volatile mix of emotions.  

Today, after more than 19 years of continuous sobriety, it is still necessary to reflect upon feelings even after they have evolved and are long passed. Odd perhaps, but memories sometimes help me stay grounded and focused on the future.

Dead or alive, people of all ages are garnering another day sober somewhere: in AA, NA, Group & Individual Therapy, Smart Recovery and more. My hat is off to anyone anywhere who finds another day clean and sober. We, the men and women in recovery, strive daily to right our rudders on our clean and sober ships.

I hope everyone reading this is TRIGGERED to remain on the path of recovery and not revert to their old behaviors. 

Chill. 

Strive on. 

Socially distanced, close, close to acceptance of whatever comes my way. 

Sober. 

Today.  

Chilled.

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal  

Find it on Amazon. Book it here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Find 7,500+ Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/jimanders4 

Remembering THE TERRIBLE TWEET STORM OF AUGUST 8TH, 2020*

 

(art.com)

I posted 21 Tweets on Twitter on August 8, 2020. Here they are in chronological order as posted:

1. "Can my past, too, be infinite or are all the stones already carved?"

2. "How come if alcohol kills millions of brain cells, it never killed the ones that make me want to drink?" - Author Unknown

3."At least I'm not an addict." That's the sense of moral superiority I once had. Today, that statement would be sadly laughable.

4. "Alcohol separated him from the world in his addiction and loneliness can take him back out there."

5. "No one ever knew he needed help because he was so good at hiding it from himself and from others. Sweet oblivion. Pretty poison."

6. "Not that I'm making excuses, but it just seems that once you slide so far down into your alcoholism after so many years, you are so entrenched that it seems the only answer is another drink."

7. "Where do you turn when more is too much, too empty, too lost?"

8. "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without also helping himself."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

9. "I don't think we get more alcoholic. I think it just shows more as time goes on." - A New Pair of Glasses, Chuck "C"

10. "I don't know if I can ever feel as empty as Jim has felt. Knowing the cause does not erase the effects of his emptiness. I don't think I've ever felt an emptiness quite like his."

11. "A mind stretched by a new idea never shrinks back to its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

12. "Being drunk allowed me to deal with the drunk in me."

13. "But when he turns his back on empathy, he turns his back upon himself."

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

15. "His sobriety, at first, was like a bad translation."

16. "How many keys did I have to lose before I would learn that alcohol no longer opened doors?"

17. "I measured my life in pints instead of hours."

18. "If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we could not." - Emerson Pugh

19. "It's not trespassing when you cross your own boundaries." - Anonymous

20. "When I thought I could stay sober alone, I wound up drinking alone."

21. "You are what you eat, but what are you when you are only what you drink?"

*(All quotes, except where noted are by the author of All Drinking Aside. All 21 Tweets are excerpted from this same book.)

*****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both Books are Available in Print and Kindle Editions.

This illusion offers us comfort.

In our vain attempt to make sense of where we are at any particular moment, we tend to tie the story of our lives together in such a way that past events are twisted into conforming to the narrative we write for ourselves. Where we are today, when explained as inevitable, gives us reassurance, explains us to ourselves. How did I get to this point, we ask ourselves and it seems in retrospect it couldn't have been any other way. 

This is not destiny, although to many of us it may certainly seem that way. Every moment, thus, has the potential to be a sort of Deja Vu. It most certainly couldn't have been any other way. No wonder it feels so familiar, as if we had known this very moment had somehow already happened before. Deja Vu.

An almost forced inevitability threads our narrative as we move forward in our lives. This illusion offers us comfort. We find evidence where none exists because we want to continue to believe that where we are is right and good and could not have been any other way.

Were we to travel at the speed of light and then come back to ourselves, we might be younger by some small fraction. Questions of Destiny and Freedom of Choice are best left to Philosophers, we tell ourselves, all the while living it out as self-explained. The answers to our questions seem obvious because we ask the questions that will be supported by the realities of our strings of moments. 

All of this is an illusion. Or none of this is an illusion. Or so much a most curious mixture of both and neither that we rarely give it a second thought. By now, we have already reassured ourselves and so pay little or no attention to all of the above.

*****

I almost hate to say it (but said with a certain relish) but some of this post is part of the questioning that went on for me as I moved from Victim of Addiction to a Person Responsible in Recovery.

The things that unite us (and by Us, I mean those of us who have survived addiction, those of us who still feel a sense of entrapment and those who have never been addicted to a substance or a behavior) are far greater than the things which divide us. Our common humanity, truthfully, is the framework upon which my recovery (falteringly at times) has been built.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

*****

You may also enjoy my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal  

Find it on Amazon. Book it here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Find 5,900+ Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/jimanders4 

Reader Review, "ASTONISHING," by Jan Trew-Smith (From ACROSS THE POND)

Reader Review of ALL DRINKING ASIDE

"Astonishing" 

by Jan Trew-Smith

"This is not just a novel but a journey into the mind of Jim and you as the reader. The author's writing left me stunned and, at moments, frozen in my own thoughts. Be prepared to have a light shone into your subconscious. I cannot recommend this book more highly."

*****

Read all the Reader Reviews of ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

Find it on Amazon. Book it here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/jimanders4  

GROWTH, ACCOUNTABILITY & GRATITUDE

In Alcoholics Anonymous, a Sponsor is a Mentor who helps foster your growth and accountability in Recovery. My Sponsor lived a long and productive life with over 60 years of continuous sobriety before he died of Alzheimer's well into his 80's. He died clean and sober and thanks to him, that is my best intention. His lived experience guided many others over the course of his illustrious life. This one man did for me what a battery of doctors, therapists and psychiatrists were unable to do in the eight years prior to the development of our friendship and kinship in Recovery.

One day (honestly, many days), when I was completely perplexed and I didn't know what to do next, he offered me a small bit of advice that changed and likely saved my life. To paraphrase, he suggested that when I didn't know quite what to do next, I should simply seek to help someone else. It's a Win/Win situation, he explained. Helping someone else in need would help me keep my boat upright in these sometimes murky waters of Recovery. Years later, his best advice has proven to be true in my life.

Kudos and Gratitude to him for helping me find a sustainable way forward.

In a larger sense, each generation passes on the mantle of responsibility to their successors. And so, life goes on.

Even now, I hear a whisper to pass this on.

*****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both Books are Available in Print and Kindle Editions.

A Spiral Staircase, Phantom Memories & Insanity's Bouquet ("YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE PROOF")

 

ADDICTION: A blind man descending a spiral staircase leading to nowhere.

**********

Phantom Memories

***

I still have phantom memories of my drinking past, euphoric recall. It's as if one of my legs were amputated, but that I can still sometimes, somehow feel those toes that are not there. Triggers are phantom toes wiggling. Don't take the bait. Don't bite. Use your good leg, the sober leg. The bad leg is gone. Let it go. Say your eulogy. Mourn this death and move on. Addiction is a beast that lives within you. You cannot kill the beast. Denial, anger, fear will not kill it. Begging, pleading blaming will not tame it. Depression, self-pity, doubt: they only feed it. Confront it. Accept it. The beast will never die.

**********

Insanity's Bouquet

***

Insanity's bouquet is not of different colored roses, or different flowers of various sorts.

It's a bouquet of weapons, destruction, defense and offense, all wrapped in lies and gin-soaked tears, false laughter, hollowed out bones. This is insanity's bouquet. Hot steel. cold steel, nothing. I will fill the black holes of my memory with a retrained brain. Live my way sober or lie my way drunk, powerless victim or sober victor. One foot in front of the other.

**********

"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE PROOF"

***

The Court of Public Opinions will convict me.

"You Can't Handle the Proof."

The Masquerade of Time will dispel recovery's urgency.

"You can't handle the proof."

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

"You can't handle the proof."

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

"You can't handle the proof."

What is my disease and what do I have left?

"You can't handle the proof."

Sobriety is my long-last act of love.

I can almost handle the truth.

**********

"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

**********

The above quotes are all excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

5 Influencers' 5 Star Reviews of All Drinking Aside: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-most-helpful-star-reviews-all-drinking-aside-jim-anders/

BLACKOUT: He Couldn't REMEMBER that He'd Spent the PREVIOUS NIGHT with Me!

(thesunmagazine.org)

I'd already sold my car a year or two before the episode I'm about to describe occurred. Moving from Pennsylvania and away from a failed relationship brought me to the Jersey Shore in my mid-twenties. I could remember the anxiety I used to feel at last call when the bars closed at 2 in the morning back home, so bars open 24 hours at the Shore was my definition of heaven at that period of my life. I experienced no "last call anxiety" because there was no last call with my new, free lifestyle. And no car meant that I could pursue my drinking career any time, day or night, without worrying about killing myself or someone else in a drunk driving accident.

A little drunker than I was at that time, some guy from Philadelphia asked me one night if he could crash at my place, knowing he was too drunk to drive an hour and a half back to Philly in the middle of the night. No big deal. No problem. Sure.

Surprised to find him already gone from my third-floor apartment when I woke up the next morning, I kind of shrugged my shoulders and went about my business.

When I went out again that very next night to the very same bar, after a bit, I noticed that the guy who'd stayed at my place the night before was already there across the bar from me. After a few minutes, I figured he hadn't yet noticed me, but would surely come over momentarily to thank me for the hospitality I'd shown him the night before. 

Eventually a conversation struck up and as we talked, I began to realize that he didn't remember that he'd met me the night before and in fact had spent the previous night at my apartment about as drunk as he seemed to be at that very moment. 

I didn't attempt to refresh his memory.

Obviously, you already know "He Couldn't REMEMBER that He'd Spent the PREVIOUS NIGHT with Me!"

Long story short: 

We ended up climbing the steps to the third floor of my apartment building again, for the second night in a row. As I put the key into my door to let us in, I remarked, looking back at him and grinning sheepishly, "You were here last night, too, remember?"

"You're kidding?"

"I'm serious." The conversation went something like that. Never saw him again.

Decades later, other details of the story are unimportant.

But if you drank like I did, perhaps you have blackout stories of your own.

It wasn't until I finally got sober that I learned what blackout drinking truly is. You are so ossified that although you are nearly fully conscious, your brain has become incapable of storing some or all of what is going on around you. No memories formed. Nothing to remember, no matter how conscious you may appear to have been at the time to yourself and to others.

By now, I don't have to tell you that I'm not trying to show you what a fool that guy was. I'm describing the kind of guy I became. 

My life eventually progressed into a kind of Blackout Drinker's "Groundhog's Day." I would wake up the day after the night before and could never fully answer for myself or others, the who, what, when, where or why of the last dozen drinks. 

I did not blackout today. So I guess you know I also did not drink today. I can think today, focus today, remember today.

Now, finally, I know that "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

That concludes this episode of "A Day in the Life of a Blackout Drunk."

lol :-) 

Sober as Hell!

Have a Happy & Clean & Sober Day!

*****

Enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

5,500+ Recovery Tweets: twitter.com/jimanders4 

HIGH-FUNCTIONING ALCOHOLIC? It was my degree of DYSFUNCTION that I never questioned.....

(sandiegoaddictions.com)

High-Functioning Alcoholic?
I was high, alright. I was functioning. To a degree.
But it was my degree of dysfunction that I never considered. Not for years, anyway. Not until the downward progression of my addiction had me totally non-functioning did I even begin to consider the possibility that I had been dysfunctional to varying degrees - for years.
You see, for years "I thought that there were two different kinds of alcoholics, those who did function (have a job, a place to live, friends, relationships), like me, and a second kind of alcoholic who was quite unlike me [like the brown-bagging beach bum I eventually did become!]. I was unaware that there is only one kind of alcoholic and that they are all 100% alcoholic and that if they are functional at present, it is only a matter of time until that progressive, downward spiral jettisons them from whatever functional path that they may have thought that they were on."
As I progressed on my downward slope, denial of my worsening condition was easily glossed over. I could forever blame my failures on bad breaks or dumb luck and the undulating hills and valleys of addiction could convince me for a time that things would get better and that I could continue being the high-functioning alcoholic I imagined myself to be.
"What will I become?" slowly turned into "What has become of me?"
"By the time I had a reason to stop drinking, reason no longer had anything to do with it."
*****
I don't mean to discourage anyone who identifies as a high-functioning alcoholic except to suggest one simple little question to ask yourself: How much better might you actually function if you were to delete alcohol from your life? And I might proceed to add that perhaps your alcohol use (which you describe to yourself as an aid to your performance) is actually a hinderance to your performance.
*****
Try sobriety and you just might find that it suits you better than you might ever have imagined.
In sobriety, I am high-functioning. I am an alcoholic who is in recovery. But, truth be told, high-functioning alcoholic was not ever in my portfolio, although I could have sworn it was.

*****

"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

A DRINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BAR EXERCISE

There was a time when no one could have convinced me that I would ever stop drinking:
*****
"I sort of imagined myself as some ancient, noble Eskimo, wandering off into the northern lights with bottle in hand to die some unknown, tragic, heroic and drunken death.
I romanticized my disease when I was drinking until the reality got so bad that the romance had to die, with me following on its coattails.
At each step in my slow, downward progression, I would tell myself that it couldn't get any worse and that however bad I was, it wasn't anything that another drink couldn't fix.
But it did and could and would always get worse. Never would I think to stop drinking. Attempts to modify my drinking to a more reasonable amount of consumption failed on a nightly basis.
My resolve dissolved [with each and every drink until eventually my ideas for...] A DRINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BAR EXERCISE lost all momentum on the stillness of my barstool."
*****
You see, drinking replaced everything.
Now, Recovery is my Everything.

*****

Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more.

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

"MAN, I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T GET SOBER," said nobody ever.

"There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way." - The Tao
*****
"Alcohol is my poison, my prison. A brick wall, a trap door, a cancer, a bad joke, an empty bottle, an excuse, a leaky faucet, a loan shark, a broken promise, a cracked mirror, an earthquake, an avalanche, a train wreck, a recurring nightmare. Alcohol is my insanity."
I didn't know when I wrote this that a decade later I would be diagnosed with cancer and that I would survive it. One lesson in recovery serves another (your own recovery from whatever else may come down the pike or someone else's recovery from addiction or anything else).
Also, I could have added something about the epidemic proportions addiction has taken in our world, "an epidemic" [not sure where exactly I'd insert it in the quote] suggestive of our other epidemic, this whole Covid-19, Whole-Earth event.
*****
"MAN, I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T GET SOBER", said nobody ever.
*****
"There was a time when I was not there, but I did not know it yet. I would drink to forget, forgetting what I did not know. Not yet. I did not know yet. Where was I then, when I was not there? For years I lived somewhere between myself and the next drink. I would drink to forget what I could not think, halfway to nowhere and another drink. I was grieving and I did not know it. Someone was dying, but I could not feel it, feel my own dying. I could not own it because it owned me. Denial is so hard to feel, yet, there it is, standing next to you. You: Halfway to nowhere and another drink."
*****
"MAN, I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T GET SOBER", said nobody ever.
*****
"Addiction is godless, headless, insane. It rejects faith, reason, feelings. Addiction is heartless, the blackest night. No light. No sun. No stars. In its nothingness, we feel nothing and accept that nothingness is acceptable and true. 'Cunning. Baffling. Powerful.'"
*****
I'll stand by my words because "nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO