"The Drinking Life"

(Unapologetically, I present a short & simple verse I wrote. When one has moved from a space of chaos to a place of tranquility, simplicity seems the order of the day.)

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A man jumps out of a burning building...

"A man jumps out of a burning building, his clothing consumed in flames. Ripping off his clothes, some of his skin and burning flesh comes off with the shirt he was wearing. The blisters are now just forming, the smoke and stench of burning hair in the air. Paramedics struggle to put him on a stretcher, his arms and legs flailing from the pain of his suffering, his screams drowning out the screams of the sirens. Suddenly, he breaks free from the paramedics and runs back into the burning building, the walls now consumed in flames.
This is the insanity of alcoholism. This is Relapse. And this will happen again and again, each time just a little bit differently, each time progressively worse. Insanity, according to Einstein, is 'doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.' The insanity of my disease wants me to cross through the threshold of that door, cross back to drink, to think that more is more."

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The passage above is excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here:  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

Scratch the Surface Until the Truth Runs Clear

"Here you are drunk and walking the hallways of the Taj Mahal Casino, picking cigarette butts out of ashtrays. You break off the filters and re-roll the butt ends with new cigarette papers. This is a way to survive, to think that you're surviving. This is when the only food is the juice in this vodka and cranberry. This is when it takes you two solid hours to get out of bed and put on a pair of shoes. This is when there is no next drink, there is just this one long drink that goes on forever. This is where there is no up or down and you can only move sideways. This is where waking up is like falling through a stage prop wall. This is where you carry your addictions in a cardboard box as if you were moving to another location. This is finding no location and the box is empty. This is standing and not being able to move. This is drunk and crashing, falling, falling through a bottom, tumbling. This is where a hospital wakes you up and you do not know who you are or where you are..." 

Scratch the surface until the truth runs clear.

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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

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

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The passages above are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here:  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

Flying Rivers of Hope

"Flying Rivers of Hope," is not part of All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal (an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders - linked here):  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

The Drunken Fox & The Grapes of Sobriety

An urge submerged leaps forward in this fox. A hunger overcomes him seeing a cluster of grapes glistening in the sun. Out of reach. Out of reach. He can not attain them alone, sly as he may be. "They're probably sour anyway," he says aloud, turning around, looking down. Sobriety will not be his today. "They're probably sour anyway." A victim of familiar pain, afraid to choose the path that only help can help attain. "They're probably sour anyway." Sobriety will not be his today. Another drink will come his way.

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"The Drunken Fox & The Grapes of Sobriety" is by Jim Anders, but not part of his book All Drinking Aside. an Autobiographical Fiction - linked here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO

Visit his Niume Recovery page here: https://niume.com/pages/profile/?userID=26056
& find his Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

The Tomb of the Anonymous Addict

Sometimes walking down the street you think you hear the sound of leaves scuttling along, but these are the plans, hopes, dreams of the dead. Wind barely whispering over the green lips of empty bottles, syringes puncturing the silence in their stillness. Sentences gasping for a last breath, forever unfinished.
The Tomb of the Anonymous Addict is really many tombs in many doorways, further down anonymous valleys than any still alive have ever ventured.
No such monument truly exists. It's undedicated, the dead remains unidentified. It is truly unnamed and unguarded.
It tires me, this Tomb of the Anonymous Addict. It exists in my mind only.
And it makes me weary. 

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Jim Anders is also the author of All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction, linked here :https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

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PTSD: Do Not Forget a Soldier's Heart.

Lost in Terror when My Bottom Found Me,
Then This: So Close to PTSD, I wrote:

"A soldier's heart is what they called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the U.S. Civil War (which ended in 1865, one hundred and fifty one years ago). They did not know what else to call it. It was at the core of what they felt. "He's suffering from soldier's heart," they said.

Time marches on (and did march on) and during WWI the same sick soldier would be called shell-shocked. The munitions changed and the positions changed, the diagnoses altered slightly from the soldier's heart to the shell casings of bombs dropped too near.

The concentric circles of war overlapped once again in WWII and combat stress reaction and a spray of other diagnoses erupted as the medicalization of symptoms evolved and the prescriptions changed.

Today we call it PTSD and for a second, we may look upon that same soldier as if under a microscope whose magnification may bring us closer to the truth found possible through advanced scientific methodologies, yet somehow further from the man, the man an echo beneath a barrage of symptoms.

Do not forget a soldier's heart."

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(Please note:  The above post is not from my book. When I first heard about Soldier's Heart, I was immediately reminded of PTSD and how I felt when I first hit bottom in 1996 - lost in terror.)
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Jim Anders is the author of All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal , an Autobiographical Fiction, linked here:  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Sometimes Suicide's Not Suicide at All

Sometimes Suicide's Not Suicide at All. It's Addiction Having the Last Word.

Back in my drinking days I just wanted to get as safely crazed as possible. How could that have been? Wanting to get as Safely Crazed as possible? Who was I then? How was I able to maintain? What was I thinking when I truly felt and believed that? Truly, suicide was never my intention.

Maybe you don't know about the bragging rights of getting high like I once did. Bragging "I was so fucked up last night " or "How did I ever get home? Can anyone tell me?" or perhaps more sheepishly sighing, "I don't remember a thing from last night" and all of these a subtle (and not so subtle) form of pride. A pride in how much I could drink and still sustain a career and housing. Boastful, but within certain limits. One did not want to boast too much.

"I was always a little afraid of pills. Taking one Quaalude and waiting an impatient hour for the effects had, in the past, led me to take a second Quaalude, only to regret it later, after the first one grabbed hold.
Administering the proper dosage of alcohol to achieve the desired effect seemed more manageable. Not strong enough? Switch from scotch and water to scotch on the rocks. Not fast enough? Use less ice. I felt more in control with my alcohol (italicized, because alcohol was my little baby: she never let me down)."

When one considers that I was a blackout drinker who continued to drink long after my ability to form memories dissipated, I still clung to the belief that, somehow, I had control over my drinking. I was always able to explain away the negative consequences of my drinking more easily than the other drugs. The other drugs could come and go as they pleased, but my drinking required more protection because it was always necessary.

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

This outcome was not my intention. My intentions were always good. My intent and my consequences rarely seemed to jive. It might best explain why I never was a social drinker. My drinking and drugging would always continue, no matter the consequences.

"If it takes eight pills to kill you, I used to feel safe taking six, and then two hours later I'd start wondering if it's safe to take another one or two. Never was it a case of wanting to commit suicide. I just wanted to get as safely crazed as possible.
"After the first drink, there is no other." That's how it was for me. Always another until my memory's obliteration. MORE was my operative word. And the operation was invariably a disaster.

Currently, with 19+ years of continuous sobriety, MODERATION is now the operative word for me. Moderation in all things (with the exception that I abstain from alcohol and other drugs). The middle way is my way of steering clear of the excesses of emotions or actions that might parallel the insane extremes of my 30 years of acute alcoholism.

Sometimes Addiction Does Not Have the Last Word, Recovery Does.
"Loving to drink. Living to drink. Dying to drink. Dying from drinking. This is the progression of alcoholism. Wanting to live. Learning to live. Loving to live. Living with love. This is the progression of recovery."
Sometimes suicide's not suicide at all. And Sometimes Addiction Does Not Have the Last Word, Recovery Does.
The Final Word is... Love.

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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

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The passages above in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside:  The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal , an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here:  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

The lights outside the hospital emergency room were like the lights on the landing strip of an airport...

    The lights outside the hospital emergency room were like the lights on the landing strip of an airport and I was a helicopter hovering, hovering, hovering. I stood on the street outside the emergency room of the Atlantic City Hospital. I had been in a blackout and I did not know how I got there. Finally, a paramedic came over to me, after 5 or 20 minutes. An hour? I don’t know.
　 "Do you need help?"
　 I answered, "This is not working. This is not working. The alcohol is not working. I cannot do what this is now, not working...."
　 I collapsed on the street like a sandcastle knocked over by a wave. My sand spread out onto the sidewalk....

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from All Drinking Aside: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

Download to Uplift

Keys to Recovery Newspaper has reviewed All Drinking Aside on page 14 of their October 2016 edition. 

http://www.keystorecoverynewspaper.com/digital/100116/#page=15

Here's the text, but PLEASE, check out this entire Recovery Resource!

ALL DRINKING ASIDE: THE DESTRUCTION, DECONSTRUCTION, AND RECONSTRUCTION OF AN ALCOHOLIC ANIMAL. An Autobiographical Fiction. Written by Jim Anders. Printed by Create Space.
Loved it! Thank you Jim Anders for being so candid with your own personal battle with alcoholism and drug addiction. This book is so cleverly written that it kept me completely captivated, and I finished it within days. I love how he starts each chapter with a morning meditation. Ex. Pg.82 “The door to the prison of addiction opened and I was afraid to leave. Fear of leaving was fear of living, because I had not lived beyond that door for decades.” Wow... I can totally relate. Then he ends each chapter with an evening meditation and question of the day. “How is [it] that tomorrow never comes, but the next drink always did.” In between he writes about his descent into alcoholism, and his rise into recovery. Intense! Brilliantly written Jim Anders. A must read! Available [on.Amazon] 

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Here's the Amazon link to it:

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