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 

16 Years Sober: June 16, 2020

(commonwealthclub.org)

****************
The smallest of notes (ha-ha!) is that June 16th, 2020 marks my 16th year of continuous sobriety, preceded by 8 years of perpetual relapse and 30 years of blackout drinking (50,000 plus drinks really do add up) before that.
Okay.
That's looking backwards.
I admit it, but this birthday (of sorts) has refreshed my memories.
I could go on and on, but let me delineate a few of my more prominent moments of reflection:
1) What about Covid-19, the protests of racial injustice sparked by George Floyd's death and staggering unemployment? What if I were newly sober today, confronted with greater unpredictability than I've seen in my lifetime? Would I be able to accumulate 16 years of sobriety?
It's an "If Elephants Could Fly" kind of thing, I know, but I'd have to guess, if I were now the person I was when I first got sober, I'd likely have an even harder time of it under these present conditions.
You see, in my addiction, alcohol eventually separated me from anything that did not include more alcohol. In drunken oblivion, around 1996, in a solitary stupor, another nearly empty bottle at my feet, I thought to myself, nearly aloud, this four-word absurdity:
"I am a cup."
It's silly and a little bit painful to admit, but it seemed that the only purpose of my existence had been reduced to drinking, a drinking animal and barely that. I had become an empty container of a man.
"I am a cup" was a twist on the "Hamster Wheel of Addiction." But I was too immobilized to climb aboard that Wheel, so, if you will, fill my cup, fill my cup, please fill my cup.
Today, 16 years of sobriety has given me a certain degree of fortitude and I stand on solid ground. 16 years and one more day, I think I can do, but were this my first day sober, in the world as it is, would likely be a bridge too far.
A drink, too close.
Hope too much to even hope for...
WRONG! Enough of me looking back into a well of self-pity (almost fell in there!). I did it. Under any conditions, including these, you too can do this and I could do this again. Each day we all do it again. Each day we all need help, including me. Please include me. I am not immune. 16 and a day, a day, another day. Each and all.
************
Gratitude.
************
2) I need my Peeps.
It took me around 5 years to admit to myself that Social Connection is what brought me back to the Human Race. I began to understand that my most profound inspirations were off-shoots of my human experience, refined in isolation, perhaps, but learned and experienced in real time at moments of human connection (including science, literature, music, art and all the humanities).
**************************
Gratitude. Gratitude.
**************************
3) I'm not so afraid of the distant future, the near future, tomorrow, this moment, now.
*****
Oh, listen...
My air-conditioner just shut off.
Distant sounds seep through the walls.
I hear music playing and I am not so alone now, even in solitude. Human community is all around me. My perceptions are so very present now. I feel more in touch, more human. Through these walls, the distant drumming of music heals and connects me.
Solitude and a sense of belonging are still mine to feel in isolation.
Sober.
A drink is the most disturbing company I have ever kept.
***************************************
Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude.
***************************************
4) I have crossed the threshold of my 16th year.
"Welcome Home!" (I welcome myself home here, back on Planet Sober, Planet Earth).
Through these walls even the sound of human music is the music of the spheres. For now, all is sweet music, none my own, and I am home, at last, sweet 16.
P.S. I'm still a cup. Only now, the four-word reality is "Recovery, fill me up!"
*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
Passages in quotes are from my first book, All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. This 17th year ahead involves working on my next book, Becoming Unbroken: Inside Addiction & Beyond Recovery. Inspiration is all around me.

Thank you & you & you & you.

One and All, Thank You!
Sweet 16.

WHEN "HOPE itself has become DEGENERATIVE," STRIVE [anyway]!

(proclinical.com)

Addiction is a degenerative disease characterized by progressive and sometimes irreversible deterioration and partial or total loss of all matter of bodily functions and organs.
Some changes are unchangeable (I'm getting a little choked up here).
Imagine being the sibling, parent or child of someone deep into their addiction. Now imagine wondering if the addict doesn't stop now, they may be on the road to where certain changes to their brain will become permanent. It may be too late already, you think.
You know that the addict or alcoholic is still using because with your own eyes you see that they have been slowly dying. You are glad when they get arrested because you know that when they are behind bars, their disease has also been arrested. It's not living, but it's not dying either. You squeeze a little hope out of this jail cell interruption. This is wearing on you, has been wearing you down for years now. Your hopes are slowly eroding, hoping for the best, but beginning to expect the worst.
Each time, each relapse, each arrest, each drama more like the countless times before. Hope itself has become degenerative.
Unwillingly, you are swept up in your user's addiction too.
You, too, will now need help.
Whether you can feel it yet or not, you are becoming the victim of a victim of addiction. Twice removed from reality you may begin to wonder about those around you. Are they becoming a victim of a victim of a victim? Thrice removed.
Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters.

None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent.
You have long felt that everything you do and/or don't do has somehow become part of the problem.
"You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."
You'll hear this in an Al-Anon meeting. The 3 C's. Cause, Control, Cure. "You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."
There are no 100% right or easy answers. Every situation is different. Every person is different.
It is easy to forget that Change is possible.
"Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters. None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent."
*****
"Hope is still possible," I tell you.
You are reluctant. You've heard it all before, from the addict, from others in recovery, from deep within your own heart (I'm getting a little choked up here).

Change is possible.
I've seen it before.
I warn you that I've seen people suffer permanent brain damage. Suicide. Complete and utter hopelessness. But I have seen change, too. The possibility of change. The reemergence of hope after the smallest hope seemed nothing less than foolish. 

I have seen too, that recovery may miraculously spread outward from the human pool, purifying the waters. All may begin to heal. These waters may become restorative and resilient.

*****

"It is not the most intellectual or the strongest of species that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself."- Charles Darwin

*****

These are the waters in which we find ourselves. These are the waters of addiction and these also are the waters of recovery. Every flick of our fins may move us towards the Beauty of Recovery and away from the complicit and degenerative qualities of Addiction. 

Swim in the direction of Recovery and away from the progressive, downward pull of Addiction. There are 10,000 ways forward. 

Find your way forward because "nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

Recovery is possible, doable, irreplaceable.

Strive.
Strive on.
It is the least, the most and sometimes the only thing that we can do.
Strive!

*****

Journey with this Author through this Autobiographical Fiction.

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

Find it on Amazon. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

5,800+ Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4 

*****

SHARED COURAGE: Gateway to Recovery

(Hubble-Image)

"Some people who survive a life-altering disorder or experience develop special sensitivities, insights, and skills to help others similarly afflicted." - William L. White

Striving to motivate others is fodder for my own recovery. Brick by brick, a life in recovery is built. Fast and slow, in uncertain measure, the days go by, and years of recovery are built. "It takes a village to raise a child" and I could not have been raised out of addiction (SUD/Substance Use Disorder) by my own bootstraps alone.
I encourage courage because courage will be necessary.
Shared Courage is the Gateway to Recovery.

Delete the Scientific Jargon and the Religious Jargon and pretty much the only thing left, for me, has been others. By myself alone, I am lost, or will and would become lost again.
I LIVE IN A PERPETUAL FEEDBACK LOOP OF RECOVERY. No alphabet soup of the letters on diplomas or sworn testimonials by people of faith are enough alone to keep me sober.
Connection is key.
Recovery is constructed from the debris of the persistent pummeling that is Addiction. I was nothing, left with nothing, when I first got sober. Recovery constructed itself from Ground Zero. 

This post is a single wave of Recovery, a single inhalation and exhalation, one continuous brushstroke forever repeated. My celebration is solemn, quiet and life-affirming.
Recovery is life itself to me (to US).
GATEWAY to RECOVERY: Shared Courage.
BECOMING UNBROKEN: Waves of Recovery.
I Live in a Perpetual Feedback Loop of Recovery.

Do what you must, what you will, to get there, stay there and live there.

Recovery is Possible, Doable, Irreplaceable.

You + Me = WE (Shared Courage)

*****
Enjoy my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon, Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
5,800+ Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/JimAnders4

Bipolar Disorder, Crystal Meth (& lest we forget... My Alcoholism)

"Bipolar disorder can be characterized by extreme mania followed by dark depression - but so can using crystal meth."- David Sheff in Clean, p. 242.
*****
My daily intake of alcohol followed a wide curve, a roller-coaster much as David Sheff expresses in the quote, above. Up, then down, Up, then down, my pattern of use and misuse continued for me emotionally, long after all alcohol was drained from my system. 
The first few drinks of alcohol elevated me until their accumulated effect was to bring me down. Up, Down, Pass Out, Come To. This pattern repeated itself daily for 30 years.
If three separate sheets of graph paper are drawn showing the up and down cycles of bipolar disorder, crystal meth use and alcoholism, they might (minus words of explanation) easily be mistaken for each other.
It's no wonder when I first got sober that I was misdiagnosed as having a bipolar disorder.
Long after a ship's engines are shut off, it will coast forward in the water under its own momentum before it slows to a stop.
After 30 years of daily drinking, the ups and downs produced by alcohol continued in my early sobriety. 
",,, extreme mania followed by dark depression" is only the slightest exaggeration of my worsening 30 year ride on a sea of alcohol.
*****
Stigma slows the treatment and recovery of these 3 disorders and a boatload of other disorders that I have not included here.
Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. To each and all.
No matter what boat you're on or off or in or out or under or around or through.
Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.

*****

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

#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

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

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

"HEALING: Preparing for the Next Wound"

(lizarch.com)

"A man who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary." - Seneca

"Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but doesn't get you anywhere." - Anonymous

*****

Learning to live without the next drink prepared me for whatever battles I will have had to face without that drink. And I've had plenty.

My Recovery from Alcoholism prepared me for my diagnosis, treatment and eventual Recovery from Cancer. 

"HEALING: Preparing for the Next Wound" may sound a bit Ouch-y!, but life is tough and as a young kid, the only tools in my toolbox were alcohol and other drugs. I would and did get through practically everything with a drink in my hand.

Alcohol was my solution to everything, yet it solved nothing (much like worry in the opening anonymous quote). And alcohol, so much like any other addictive substance, caused me unnecessary suffering, much more, in most cases, than any pain it was attempting to offset or relieve. 

I used alcohol preemptively to kill the pain of any impending doom I may have anticipated. As a preemptive measure, alcohol failed miserably. 

Addiction is a cul-de-sac, a road with no apparent end or escape.

RECOVERY. RECOVERY. RECOVERY. 

Recovery is healing, learning to cope with all of life's issues, large and small, without dependence on a substance to deaden any possible future pains.

"HEALING: Preparing for the Next Wound" is another way of saying that Recovery taught me to live life on life's terms. 

After overcoming alcohol, cancer was a little bump in the road compared to what it may have been had I not learned to survive my Substance Use Disorder (SUD) first.

Nothing about Addiction is empowering, but Recovery from Addiction IS empowering.

RESILIENCE: Recovery taught me resilience. 

And the Next Wound?

I am Ready. I am Willing. I am Able.

ALCOHOLISM: Loving to drink. Living to drink. Dying to drink. Dying from drinking.

RECOVERY: Wanting to live. Learning to live. Loving to live. Living with love.

Addiction prepared me for nothing. Recovery has prepared me for everything.

Period.

*****

[Please NOTE: The quotes excerpted here are two of the 180 found in All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal]

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

Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4  

"The Distinction Between a User, Abuser, and Addict...

(madinamerica.com)

"The distinction between a user, abuser and addict is irrelevant when a person is sentenced to prison because he was driving high and killed someone, or when he suffers permanent brain damage or a stroke, or when he OD's." - David Sheff, "Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy," p. 77.
*****
Sheff's quote left me speechless, lost in reflection of my own slow descent into addictive hell.
*****
Escalating forms of denial accompany the up-and-coming addict as they go down-and-out.
*****
How well I remember that "by the time I had a reason to stop drinking, reason no longer had anything to do with it." I flowed seamlessly from user to abuser to full-blown addict.
Lickety-split.
Truth and consequences took a back seat once addiction was in the driver's seat.
As I've heard in the rooms of recovery, 'Jails, institutions and death' are addiction's usual destinations.
Even after recovery has been achieved, addiction seems patiently to lie in wait, to take up where it left off.
User, abuser, addict?
Irrelevant.
*****
"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."
Love will solve what stigma has dissolved.
*****
Quotes which follow David Sheff's are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

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

Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4