(is) God Complex

Turn the other Cheek

Stand your ground! Be a man! Fight to the death! This is 'Merica God Damn it, land of the free, and home of the brave. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not obey threats. We fucking Nuke people for breakfast ... or just whole countries with people in it anyways. War and the fact that we are number fuckin  ONE have been glorified throughout our countries history.

At least that is what I think I picked up from History class, the History channel, and the John Wayne movie marathons I watched as a kid. Or perhaps it's a republican thing.. not backing down or giving in to the democrats in congress even if the changes could be better or maybe a step in the right direction. Don't even get started trying to think this is another liberal anti-war, or ReplubliCON rant. It AIN'T.

I really do have a point I am getting to. Because I happen to be fighting the fight of my life right now. I am waging a war against a disease that doesn't fight fair. It leaves me feeling quite cynical about having things like trust, faith, and courage.  That doing things a different way other than my own will ever matter. That doing good will prevail over evil in anyway.

This disease I speak of is addiction / alcoholism. I was born onto a battlefield and sent to the front lines of a fight I didn't know or understand I was even in. Not until I got lost deep into the core of it. And you just can't expect to turn around and walk out of a jungle you have been wandering into for 18 yrs now can you?

I am angry. I am pissed off. I want to bomb and Nuke shit. But I am learning not hit the red button . Learning that my first thought is wrong. My addict brain is broken... I keep hearing from old timers that this is the only disease you can actually beat by surrendering. That however,  is not the American way, and is probably why this great country has a great drug, alcohol, and mental health problem.

I can now recognize myself feeling crazy when I try to battle everything & everyone because I want to be right or in control. Even when I feel justified and I have my evidence & present my case / argument logically in my head.. It still doesn't get me where I need to go. It puts me living in fear, building up resentments and reasons why it would be ok to drink away the worries of my day. I am choosing to surrender today. And not in a French pansy way.. but in a turn my other cheek manly way.

Today I cease to fight anything or anyone, including myself, and it brings me peace.

Children of Divorce

Back to these cold, shitty days in Salt Lake....

Return from Cookie Mountain

Do you think Cookie Monster is happy & agreeable when he is stuffing his face with cookies all day? Damn right he is.

Would you think Cookie Monster freaks the fuck out when he is down to his last cookie, breaking it up into smaller pieces trying to spread it out so he wont run out? Then licks his fingers wiping the empty cookie jar clean of every last crumb and spec of cookie goodness? Most likely.....

I know you and I cannot decide for another if they are in fact an addict, but I think it's safe to say that Cookie Monster has a problem.... and his problems are sure to be exaberated when he runs out of his fix, affecting not only him, but others around him.

It's not hard to imagine the chaos that Cookie Monster would inflict on Sesame Street when he runs out of cookies and can't find more... Looking back, I can now start to see how I have acted out in personal relationships. (any relationship for that matter)  How I effected those closest to me when I ran out (or said I was quitting) of my drink, drug or any other cookie like substance. Irritable, dis-content, lonely, a complete asshole. But I didn't know why. I lashed out and compounded problems / issues, built up resentments out of them toward those closest to me and dove head first back into any cookie jar I could find...

Daddy fixes what?

Explore this.

And then all these feelings started... I don't know if I am doing this thing right. It feels strange, sometimes surreal as the reality of becoming sober is mixing with the reality that I wasn't sober for so much of my life. I won't sit here and say that re-learning life in your 30's as a single dad, business owner / operator, friend, son, racer, dreamer is necessarily hard to do... just different. All the emotions I had been swallowing whole after coating them with drugs, and chasing them with a bottle Patron, have decided they want to be regurgitated back onto my plate. Then analyzed, studied, poked and prodded then maybe I can properly chew them up, making sure to feel every texture and savor every taste. 

I am entering uncharted territory, I am exploring a new planet which pretty much resembles the planet I had been floating around on while getting loaded for 18 years, but somehow different. Similar climate, seasons, days and nights, moon and sun, the same gravitational pull, air to breathe and water to drink, etc. But on this planet, I am not doing every susbstance under the Sun to try and fly over the Moon. I am not fighting everything & everybody to be in control, I am surrending to the possibilty that I might not be a God or supreme being, that I might be as equally lost as you and every other person here. I am open to suggestions and to a power greater than me. I am willing to try things a different way, because I haven't reached my potential doing things my way. But I did reach a ceiling, and when I couldn't rise above it, I would end up hitting the bottom time after time. 

This is my second 90 day + stint of Sobriety in 6 months and a week or so. If you like to do math, then you can see that it didn't take me long to figure out when I relapsed that it was a bad choice. I dug my bottom a little deeper, ruined relationships a little (or a lot) more, lost time with my daughter. So, I called my sponsor and dove back into the program more willing than ever. And with that, I will take another 24. 

Drunk and Effect.

'Sober or Die."

Does that statement seem like overkill to some of you? Then perhaps you are what we addicts / alcholics affectionately call "Norms, Normies, etc."  Normal people who can drink or use substances socially and with impunity. The statement "Sober or die" would seem dramatic I guess, if you hadn't hit bottom after bottom always saying never, ever again would you go so low, ( never ever say never ever) wake up in that puddle of vomit in strange dark places after urinating on yourself...

One such place for me was in a Chevy express van on a hot summer morning in Phoenix AZ. I awoke from my stupor to a stench of what I would soon find out was a unpleasant mixture of whiskey, sweat, vomit (my own), and urine (also my own) With the outside temp a steady 110 degrees, making it god knows what inside the cab of the van, but I was certain I had indeed died and gone to my rightful place in one of the lowest levels of Hell. Vision still blurry, my head.... oh fuck. My head throbbing to the point where Hell seemed like the better choice at this junction. I opened a door, fell out of the van, the Arizona sun rays searing my retinas, the hot pavement searing my feet, of course I wasn't wearing shoes. I quickly hopped across the pavement realizing I was outside of my friend / business partner / pseudo roommates apartment where I usually slept on his couch.

Upon stumbling inside, he was making breakfast and coffee. Another set of smells that made my nauseous body want to puke. Apparently I had no known bodily fluids left to do so with. I dry heaved for awhile instead, threw my whithering, dying soul in the shower and tried to keep the room from spinning and not watch the water whirl pool down the drain as I laid my head against the wall. Why, oh why do I end up this way every time I try to socially drink? I came out of the bathroom, exclaiming to my co-hort, "Why the Hell would you leave me all night inside the van in the middle of summer!? I could have died in there...."


I was then de-briefed on the chaos of the previous night from those who witnessed it first hand, my two long time friends, including my then roommate and my then tattoo artist whom had never had the pleasure of going out for drinks with me explained my path of destruction.  I was more worried about being left in the hot sauna of a van, not how I came to be passed out there... for me, that seemed pretty standard. But. "I could have died in there." was my first response, not at all worried about the back story and the rest of the times I almost died that night. It could have been any the following reasons...

A) I could have died when I grabbed a girls ass at the bar in front of her huge, roided out, Affliction shirt wearing boyfriend. When he got in my face to ask if I had in fact grabbed his womans ass, I of course lied and said "Dude, I would never grab a girls ass with a boyfriend as big and strong as you apparently are, that would be suicidal." He bought it, until I grabbed it again, and that's when the near fight ensued... Luckily my friends and some not so friendly bouncers grabbed me and put me outside where I would be safe.

B) Once outside we waited for a cab to go to a concert or some event I don't remember. I really had to urinate at this point. Badly. I asked the nice bouncers if I could go back inside of their fine establishment to use the restroom, to which they replied "Come one foot inside this door and we will tear your arms off and beat you with them." Guess I will go with plan B... Which was, "I will show them (along with 20-30 people standing to get into the bar) by pissing my pants, right on this street corner." So, I did that. A dark stream of urine soaked my jeans from my crotchal region down my left pant leg and into my shoe. I felt so much better, girls were pointing and laughing, but I was relieved.

C) About this time our cab arrived to pick us up. My two friends were arguing over who would sit in the front seat, something about not wanting to sit by piss pants guy... I logically wanted to sit on the left rear seat so I could hopefully put my shoe and leg out the window.  I asked the cabbie to roll down my window, after which he obliged, I attempted to dry my piss pants out in the hot, desert air.. When the cabbie asked why I had my leg out the window, and I exclaimed that I was merely trying to dry out my urine soaked jeans, he immediately hit the brakes, pulling over to throw us out, yelling something about how I needed to "dry out."

D) I really don't recall the next couple of bars, but most ended up the same way, getting thrown out for my shenanigans, but the last thing I do remember is running outside into the gravel / cactus garden beside a Rockabilly bar that my tattoo artist claimed it would be near impossible for me to get 86'ed from... before I could test that theory out, the multitudes of whiskey I had been consuming decided to exit the building and exit my body.. out the way it came.  I was on my hands and knees, in the rocks, violently spewing and then spinning. I somehow found the van and crawled inside the back, where I would stay until the following blistering morning. And this was all before midnight.

I was never too concerned with the effect I caused on others while consumed with alcohol. My only concern was that I liked, I mean really liked the effect that alcohol & drugs had over me. The escape granted from my perceived reality, the windows open to not being my normal self for awhile. I figured that out as a teenager. I  have been running away from reality and / or chasing the chance to be somebody else ever since.  To the point you don't know who you even are without a buzz. Being fucked up was my identity. Getting loaded was the norm, hanging out with other people that got loaded the same way was S.O.P. 

I am not writing to tell of an awesomely bad drinking story as much as I am here to say that I am starting to get it... to understand this disease and that yes.. I am a alcholic. You see, this night I just referenced was circa 2009 ish. I was out there doing this for years before and years after and anyone of those nights could have been my last. So if I want to live, my motto has to be "Sober or Die"