Phase Next - Sobriety

It’s been a tumultuous and peculiar couple of weeks…scratch that…couple of years. The last couple of weeks and particularly this last weekend the vortex had been picking up momentum to the point of collapse. During times of duress folks will say that they, “have not been feeling like themselves.” In my case the problem has been that I feel exactly like myself. My response to this sensation had been to get pickled past the point of oblivion, climb deep into a few bottles and repeat…day after day after day after day. I’ve seen and experienced a number of versions of what the 12 steppers refer to as ‘rock bottom’. It’s not a place I ever anticipate returning to when it happens, but I’m convinced that this last foray to the bottom of the pit is and must be the last. I’m not going to get into all of the details of the event; suffice it to say that involved alienating myself from a couple of people I hold dear and being talked down off of the ledge of eating the business end of a shotgun.

    Point being, there was some point in there, some point after the fact that it finally was driven into my thick, pickled skull that I do indeed have things to lose if I keep that shit up – that it’s time to forevermore put down ‘the drink’. I’ve over done it, 25 years is enough; I can no longer go there, not even a little bit lest I start the whole process over again – get it done right the first time and just put it down. The bottle has cost me a great deal, in increments and drips and drabs over the years, a cumulative loss. There is no illusion that those things can be recovered or salvaged – they are long gone, never to return. The hope and goal is to take the worn and damaged structure that remains standing and remodel it into something more inhabitable.

    I tried the AA thing a couple-three years back; it just didn’t work for me. I have a real problem with the ethos that demands constant reinforcement of the notion that the individual in incapable of self-control. Maybe it’s the way I was raised, but I’ve always found guilt and shame to be much more effective tools. So I’ve decided to use public spectacle as one of many tools to accomplish this goal of turning my head around in the broader sense. I have a number of piles of rubble in my life that are collecting dust and rust that can be cleaned up, dusted of, recycled and reused in this ‘structural remodel’ – physical, intellectual, electronic and otherwise.

    I’m certain that the substances, the booze in particular (I quit the smoking of the dope some time ago, which was the only other drug that I’ve used in years that contributes the plural of substance) are the symptom and not the cause of the angst, a symptom and not the cause of the larger basket of ill tempers – though the booze is an incredible lubricant when the whole thing reaches critical mass and begins it’s slide down the big hill. So there’s an array of things to work on here, and here at Monkeyeggs is where I’ll be chronicling the process…