And before anyone gets their back up, remember that like always I’m not condemning anyone that drinks or does drugs. What we put in our systems is our own fucking choice. But like all choices, they have consequences. And I don’t want to hear any of this drugs and alcohol won’t kill you, ha. Want to ask me how many times they had to restart my heart or pump me full of chemicals to get me to stay alive but not fly off the gurney or bleed the fuck out? There’s a point to what I write. I’m not shaming anyone who uses, so don’t get this shit misconstrued. Drugs and Alcohol can fuck you up, especially if started for purposes like silencing ourselves. So if you can have a drink now and then, good for you, you can rip a rail and not get tethered to it, rad. I’m happy for you but that’s not all of us. So wipe your tears and check your insecurities if this makes you feel sad, mad or bad. Now to the point… (Can you tell I’ve had this debate more than once?)…
Listen, I’ve been there. The head is a Monster. It’s worse than the imaginary one under our bed that we shit our pants over as a kid. It gets more brutal and uglier the older we get. The more shit we go through; the monster grows another row of fangs.
So what do we do? Like the shit I talked about last week, all of those different scenarios, and those were just the cliff notes and I know some of you out there have been through shit I can’t understand because I’ve never been there. Horrible shit and horrible people happen to so many of us. None of us deserve it. No one should have to go through any of it, but that isn’t life. My heart goes out to the suffering, it’s the reason I write this shit, If I can help those going through shit get out of it, that’s all I care about. Even if it’s 1/100.
Here’s the thing, people and places, shit happens. Bad shit. Horrible fucking shit. And what do we do when horrible shit happens? When the multi-fanged Monster crawls out from under the bed ready to rip our heads off and all we want is to close our eyes, cover our ears and melt into the floor? We have to open our eyes. I’ve literally been in that position more than once. Young and old. The young me opened my eyes and grabbed for the bottle. The older me made myself get off the floor and say fuck it to the bastard and do what I had to get away from him and cut him out of my life. And same to the other situations that fucked with me in between me getting clean and this most recent one. Did it cross my mind that a bottle of whiskey would make the shit easier, of course. I’m a fucking alcoholic and addict. But did I know I’ll be damned if I let some fucked up, mother fucker drive me to drink and flush almost 9 years of sobriety down the toilet? Yes. So I didn’t.
Maybe for a few minutes or hours in of using I’d feel better, but probably not. When was the last time you or saw anyone else tie one on and they looked like they were doing great? Granted we feel distorted, numb, maybe get out of our heads but then the more you drink and use the closer you come to obsessing over it, but it’s not actually processing the shit. We’re just covering the shit up. Numbing ourselves.
The shit that happened to me in my early twenties, I drank before it but not to the capacity I did after. After that I drank till I was blacked out. Day in and day out. There was a bottle under my bed, pint in my glove box, and a flask in my purse, and I was a fucking bartender. I was never not blasted. I started in on it hard when I was at my bottom and it turned it into my crutch, and that turned into full-blown alcoholism and eventually addiction. That picture above was taken a few months after all that shit happened. It was my psych ward snap shot from when I voluntarily went in because I didn’t want involuntary on my record. I got annihilated. Parked my car in a back ally, finished a bottle in my car and slashed the fuck out my wrists with the broken pieces of the bottle I smashed the fuck out of on the street. Door hanging open and music going. I don’t remember shit except getting warm and shit fading out, then waking up on a friend’s couch, he had been overseas at war. I thought I was in Hell, dead when I woke up. Still in the same shitty neighborhood. But he happened to be back, noticed my car after leaving the bar, got me back and sewed my ass up. I was pissed. I’m thankful for him, but I was goddamn mad. I wanted to be dead. I didn’t want to think. And alcohol made me dumb enough to think that killing myself was the way to stop it. It made me make a choice, sober I wouldn’t have made. Granted me wanting to get dead was because I wanted the shit to stop, but I didn’t know what I do know. Death isn’t the answer. And neither is killing ourselves with drugs and alcohol or letting it be the catalyst to doing so.
One of my professors saw me bleeding through a bandage, that’s how I bought myself 2 weeks in the loony bin. I refused help there. I refused to eat. Kept ripping my shit apart. Tried again in there, tried again when I got out. Got found, how, I will never know. So I gave up. I fucking sucked at it so I hit the bottle harder and whatever downers I could swallow with it. I dropped to 92 pounds. I didn’t talk. I drank. A few months later I ended up landing myself in the can for multiple DUI’s. Fortunately I didn’t hurt or kill anyone. Imagine how you’d feel after that? Rather than trying to just push through the shit. Fuck.
Anyway. After racking up charge after charge and frequent flier miles at the clink, I learned there were more ways, better ways to numb out my head and I wouldn’t feel sad and lose my balance and walk around like a zombie. Thanks jail, I went in with a Master’s in booze and came out with a Bachelor’s in cocaine. Later on I’d I have PhD in both. $800 a week for chemicals, liquid and powder, 13 mug shots, multiple cardiac arrests, a minor heart attack and getting stuck full of shots to knock me the fuck out from going nuts on too much shit. All just to shut my fucking head off. It went from a shut the fuck up mechanism to grabbing me by the neck and not letting go until I decided to kick the shit out of it and put a metaphorical bullet in the so called Monster shield’s head. I never touched the shit again, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t cross my mind when things go to shit and everything is so fucked you literally rip your fucking hair out.
And heh, after the time you spent numbing yourself with booze and drugs, if and when you sober up, that Monster is bigger and 100 times worse looking than when you picked the shit up. Now you’ve got an even bigger beast to face and slaughter.
It took me years to clean up 13 years of skeletons that came pouring out of my mental closet and the ones that would start piling up while I was still cleaning the others up. I had to metaphorically sit each one in a chair, stare it down, process it, figure out what the hell I needed to learn from it, and then smash the fuck out of it, into dust and then sit the next one up and so on.
It’s not easy. It’s hell. But I wouldn’t have so many to smash, I wouldn’t have been like a prisoner in a chain gang smashing shit day in and day out if I had just faced the shit head on, talked to people, whether it was friends, family, therapists and scribbling it away in my journal.
Now I know to do that. Granted it took me weeks to get there with this last shit storm. To open my mouth and come out of hiding. And it still wears me the fuck out. After signing off a bunch of shit yesterday, freeing myself, and having to be in the same vicinity as the offender, I was wiped. Drained. Months of past torment replaying in my head. Feeling like a stupid asshole. Every emotion you can name, hitting me like balls flying out of a possessed batting cage, not letting up. So I took a nap. I paced and thought about the shit and what I got out of it. New shit to look out for in people for the future. That while it was bullshit I landed somewhere I like and around good people that had my back and a killer job. I had time to write. Then I cracked a kombucha. Sat on my deck. Talked to my best friend, my parents. Walked around my complex in the dark, thinking until I felt like I could drop and put myself to bed.
It was the first night I didn’t have nightmares for the first time in months. I had new locks. I had the place to myself, they weren’t allowed on the property, their name was off of everything but one thing left I’m waiting on, but I’d never have to see them again; all because I TALKED. I opened my fucking mouth. Not like a crybaby, but just what the hell happened, what went through my head in raw and brutal honesty, not leaving anything out. People reached out to me, I responded. Before I knew it I had an army behind me and I wasn’t alone. Some bonded over the same person, others similar situations and some just listened and helped coach me the best they could. That’s why no matter what the fuck I’m doing, if my phone rigs, a messages pings, I’m on it. I’m there to listen, to anyone who needs it, because we all deserve an army of people behind us to listen to us, to help us through until we get to the other side and the times when the shit creeps back up and rears it’s ugly head months or years later. I’m thankful for all of those in my life that have supported me and continue to.
Know you’re not alone and there’s more people than you think that will listen. And while getting up the nerve to spit out that first sentence, hit send or the call button, it’s worth it. Hit the button, not the bottle, pick up your phone and talk, not a bag and rip a line, and get that shit out.
Because while we can think numbing ourselves works, it doesn’t. I’ve watched it kill my friends. I’ve watched it turn people who’d never touched a drink or drug in their life into rampant addicts and alcoholics. Get locked up like me, go down the toilet like me, crumble like me, and some, not get back up.
If you’ve never drank or done drugs, you don’t know if you’re an addict or not. You don’t know if you can just have one, you take something to numb yourself, use it as a tool and then it becomes an addiction. One that will kill your body and mind. This is the most dangerous and damning way to start. So don’t start.
There is no person, no situation that is worth doing that to yourself over. Think of it like this. Are you going to give that son of a bitch or fucked up thing the power over you to destroy you? Or are you going to stand up and metaphorically punch the bitch in the face until it’s only left to dust and come out better for it?
So if you’re going through it, think of that and start talking and turn your back to the poison.
If you need help, you know where to find me. There is always someone to listen.
Until next time...