It's Been a While

Four months and 22 days to be exact (not exactly). I hate it when people say about exactly, or 5am in the morning. About implies an estimate, and 5am will always be in the morning. So please stop it.

Anyhow, its been exactly almost nearly five months since my release from prison and as I was painting my grandma's basement today I was trying to think of things that I hadn't written about. It's tough to come up with much as I was writing as it was happening and I literally had a lot of time on my hands to write. I've covered the food, the people including staff and residents, the daily grind, treatment, the counts after counts after counts, bathroom habits, showering, pooping, and sitting, a lot of sitting. So what could I possibly write about?

How about this: Sometimes I miss prison. 97% of the time I do not. But occasionally I do miss having the time to read a whole book in under two days, to call into work and not give a fuck because your paycheck will only be short $2, to play board games all day long on weekends, and very oddly, I miss Folgers Crystals. I could buy them out here and for much cheaper but it just wouldn't be the same. There was no responsibility or accountability in prison and for so many years, that's how I lived my life. And, well...... It was easy.

Things are starting to pile up. I have so many obligations that all of my free time is booked weeks out. Bills are starting to be something I have to be conscious of and I might even have to use that ledger thing in the back of my checkbook. I can't just turn my back on things out here and hope they'll go away. I can't go in my cell and lock everybody out and hide in a book, not even for a few hours.

Listen, I know what I'm saying, and I understand what it implies, but rest assured that these are all things I can handle and I'm well equipped to do just that. I don't want to be incarcerated any more than I have been in my lifetime. But maybe I do wish I could go spend the weekend in Moose Lake playing cribbage with the buddies, making fun of the child molesters and animal fuckers, and then come back out here and start up at work as usual on Monday. Meh, not gonna happen.

So, what do I do to get rid of that little nagging 3% in my head? Well, right now, I'm sitting at the Uptown House waiting for my sponsor so we can start reading the big book. Today, I start step one: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable." That's what it says on the board, but actually doing the step will be different. And it may be different for everybody and with every sponsor. But in a few minutes, my life will take that all important turn for the better, and I begin the real, honest, hard work that is necessary for me to achieve sobriety for the rest of my life, one day at a time, blah blah blah.

It's all very repetitive isn't it? But so was my drinking and drugging. I certainly established a routine. Wake up, get fucked up, repeat with no abandon. I did that for years. YEARS! Ugh. And what's odd is how often I look back at it and, even if ever so briefly, I think maybe there's a chance I could still drink and lead a normal life. Yikes.

Here's something I never got in prison, a parking ticket. I've been parking in the same spot for about a month and suddenly it's illegal? How could I have possibly missed a sign that said I couldn't park where I have been? I don't know, but I did. It was right above the other sign that implied I was okay parking there until almost exactly 9am in the morning. The second parking offense roughly states that I was parked more than 12 inches from the curb. Fuck me! Does anybody really even think of that rule after their road test? Surely this "parking enforcement" officer hates my car and all it represents. Well, at least I have the ability to park a vehicle, however far away from the curb, instead of having to walk everywhere. Right? And that ability I did not have in prison.

Until next time...

Area 51

I'm so sorry to any of you who found this post via internet search looking for information regarding the popular alien hot-spot in the desert. This post has nothing to do with extraterrestrial lifeforms, its title is solely based on the fact that this is my 51st post on this blog. If you happen to keep reading through your disappointment, you may find what you see more interesting than aliens provided once we actually discover life elsewhere in the galaxy, it turns out to be something small and boring like bacteria, not the bi-pedal, green, two-eyed freaks like you see in movies.

I am sitting at work on my lunch break and I actually have no idea what this post is going to be about, only that I wanted to get new material out there because my stats are low over the past few days. I'm off to a good start though as I have killed two paragraphs writing about absolutely nothing important. Well, back to work for now!

3:08pm This is my last 15 minute break of the day. I've not been laminating too much today, rather I've been helping the boss take apart and fix

6:10pm Okay, done with work. I was helping the boss fix the gigantic UV machine. I'm not good at things like that but I sure am good at nodding in agreement and saying the name of a part almost at the same time he does but just behind so he thinks I know what a hámmer is or a "bolt".

As we were working, overhead the speakers were playing classic rock. You know those same 200 songs they've been playing since the early '80s? They still play them, and I know all of the words! Well, anyhow, I'd like to mention this: At some point in the history of the world, somebody who is in charge of finding talent pointed to Bob Seger and said, " That man's got talent." Then, even worse, somebody even higher up agreed with him, and told Bob Seger he should sing on the A.M. radio, or whatever they had back then. I would post a link for his music here but then people might click on it, then Bob Seger might see an influx of interest in his "music" and think that people wanted to hear more of it. Well, to the man that discovered Bob Seger I say, "Fuck you!" If I ever see you I will slap you right in the face because you did a bad thing to our world. And that's enough on that subject.

6:30pm I leave the house right on time for one of my four hour blocks of free time. As I'm walking to my car I see what looks like an undercover police car not quite in front of our house, but close. Seeing a break in traffic, I bolt across the street and get in my car and go. The suspicious car whipps a shitty and pursues me. Uh oh. I make my way up Grand hill, around the big bend, and up just past Dale St. when my phone rings.... It's the restricted number I'm accustomed to seeing when my agents call. I answer but I don't hear anything. I put my right turn blinker on, and I make the turn on the street of my favorite sushi joint, Saji-ya. It happens to be a one-way street and I'm now going the wrong direction. Even better, I have tricked my agent into following me down the street, and he has now trapped me in-between his car and a random motorist. I break out in laughter and just sit there. This is fun. The random motorist backs up, and I proceed to turn left into an empty parking space so I could turn around and I look behind me and see my agent has actually taken a right into the alley behind me, which I did not see. Off to a bad start. So I back it up into the alley and reverse park next to the place where he's waiting for me. I roll down my window and we just stare at eachother. I smile and wave at him and he cracks. He laughed for the first time ever and says, "What was that?" And all I could say was, "I don't know man, I took one wrong turn and it went to shit from there."  And the rest of the visit took two minutes and went smoothly.

I didn't get nervous or flustered like I could have. I knew I hadn't done anything worth a trip back to prison, and my agent acknowledged that I'm working a good program so he wouldn't write me up for the wrong way down a one way ordeal. It's strange how everything can appear to be normal and then suddenly be so catastrophic, but there it was.

I had another fun night out with my Wednesday night friends. It's 11:13pm and I have to work early tomorrow so I will end these random paragraphs now.

The Hoppy Flight (My 50th Solo Post!)

Rarely do I have cravings to use drugs and alcohol. On those rare occasions, my urge to refrain from abstaining will last mere minutes and my day will carry on as usual. Generally speaking, my triggers (the people, places, and things that cause a desire to use) like driving by bars, smelling cigarette smoke, or hearing a beer commercial on my way home from work don't have too much effect on me.

Today it was something different. It happened at work and it stuck with me for hours. I was running the drink menus for Granite City Food and Brewery, and the pictures of delicious beer passed in front of my eyes just over six hundred times as I fed the sheets through my U.V. coating machine.

I like beer. I love beer. I love the flavor of hopps in particular and I kept seeing the Hoppy Flight which is a sampler of four delicious looking beers, all with beautiful colors and nice foamy heads. I could taste the hops. My mouth went dry, and I began to sweat.

It's the picture in the middle that got my brain working.

I envisioned myself sitting at the bar, the bartender himself much like Sam from Cheers: hand drying the cleaned mugs while he listened to my fascinating story about how I was the guy that laminated these very menus as I sat there and enjoyed four small beers then politely waved off another round. Yep, I was just a normal guy stopping in after work to try out a new pub. 

What I didn't envision, and we never do when we romanticize our use, is reality. What the fuck could I possibly do with four little glasses of beer? I'll have another round. That's just a teaser and now that my face is feeling warm I think there's room for dessert (Tequilla) and maybe my boss at the laminating factory is an idiot, and yeah I can have one more round (of beer & tequilla) and who the hell do you think you are looking at me like that? Is that not a reasonable place to put my vomit? I'm never coming back here again! What the hell did I do last night? Where are my..... Oh my god is that my car out there? I can afford to take today off of work to recover (drink excessively). And on, and on, and on it goes.

Fortunately for me, I've spent roughly 10 months now preparing for days like this. I realized what I was doing and simply stopped it. I looked at the beers on the menu as work I had to complete, not a potential after work mishap. Tonight I will meet my sponsor before my meeting and talk with him about it, and he will give me his advice and it will be over with, just like this post.

Diversity

Today I passed the half-way mark of my community service hours. Each CIP graduate is given 96 hours which must be completed by the end of the first year of early release. Almost every Sunday for the past four months, I've spent a few hours of my time helping out the fine folks at the Goodwill Outlet store in St. Paul.

If you've never been there, you haven't seen chaos. Never have so many fought over so little of crap that nobody wanted. A lot of people are there for the motive of profit. Thrift store owners, and people looking to send name brand items overseas are there every week. And every now and then, there are some really good items that come in. I have even bought a few pairs of Lucky Jeans, brand new, for about two dollars a pair. Anywho, enough about that. Let's talk about the people I get to work with every week.

Generally I'm the only "volunteer" there on Sundays. The rest are full-time employees that spend their week doing the same things over and over and over again. Most of the employees stay in back, and some for good cause. One of them is blind. I mean, I think he can make out shapes, but he'll throw things wildly toward a place he thinks a certain bin is while we're sorting things, usually after somebody has tried to tell him the general direction to throw. He doesn't know who I am until I speak, he's really good with voices. So, every time I come back to an area in which he's working I'll say  hey and his name so he knows its me and where I am. Or, sometimes I'll try out different characters on him but more often than not he busts me within 30 seconds.

The two Somalian ladies I don't ever really get to work with because they work together on a conveyer sorting things after they come off the sales floor and there's just no need for me to help. Their English is limited but we do the basics. I've never seen them out on the sales floor.

The Costa Rican guy is much like me with his sense if humor. He likes that I can understand a decent amount of Spanish, and am inquisitive about dilects and slang of his culture versus Mexicans. He's a hard worker like me and just got his forklift certificate, something I think I want to try. We're constantly joking around, and I change his name every time I see him and I play the part of the ignorant American that doesn't like no immigrants and he thinks its funny because he understands that it's not true. He also thinks its funny that I don't have a green card.

There's the crazy guy that screams at his bailer. His job is to bail clothing into 1,000lb bricks. He gets really stressed when the work piles up and he just goes ballistic. I've seen him have at least three meltdowns that would have made the news if he were a celebrity. I help him when I can, but then he complains about his job and I just don't want to hear it.

The big black guy with a shiny gold tooth. We scramble together the whole time I'm there to keep the boats (giant bins on wheels where various products are placed and wheeled out to the "showroom") flowing. I've worked with him every week since I started and we've become pretty close. We like to inform eachother of attractive women out on the floor so that we may proceed to go give them customer service which, is absolutely not any part of anybody's job there. But we like to go above and beyond. Oh, we have a secret handshake. Actually we settled on a fist bump because neither one of us are cool enough to figure out how to make a secret handshake. Someday.

There's the crazy band-aid head guy. I don't know what it is that he does, but every week he has one of those giant bandages on his forehead. How can an open wound last four months? It's a great question. I've seen him clean the bathrooms on occasion (oh, to anybody that ever plans on going to the Goodwill Outlet, ever, just go ahead and use the bathroom before you go. Trust me.) and I've never seen him do anything else. I'm not even sure where he is most of the time but he's there somewhere.

The cashiers. If you ever want really great customer service, you can keep on driving right on by this place. Today, as we were all watching a group of Hmong shoplifter-senior-citizens (no joke, it's a thing now) I was by the register and I watched a cashier throw a plastic bag on top of a customers purchase and proceed to text on her phone. Whatever, I don't own the place, hell I don't even work there.

The managers. Well, they're all white, and very clearly none of them enjoy working there.

If you've never been, I think everybody should go at least once to experience diversity and people watching at its best. You never know what you might find while you're there, I mean, electronics are only 29¢! Granted nearly everything is missing parts or dented or broken, you might just be there at the right time on the right day and find something you really want. And if you stick around you might get to see what happens when we bring all new boats out. I assure you it'll be an experience unlike any you've ever had.

On an unrelated topic, I mentioned in my last post that I've been typing all of my posts on my phone for a long time now. I need something better. I can't afford a new laptop, but its pointless to have a bad one. So I ask you, my readers, if you have or know somebody that has a laptop that you/they do not use. My right index finger can only take so much more :-( If you think you can help, you can contact me via comment on this blog or you can message me on Facebook. Thank you!

Monkeys!

I will be writing this post in segments throughout my day which consists of eight hours of free time and two hours for a meeting. I will start my adventure at 11am by having lunch with my cousin that I have been connecting with on Facebook since my release from prison, but whom I have not actually seen in....... Holy shit, 15 years. We're meeting at my favorite restaurant Saji-Ya, which in Japanese simply means Saji's Place.

Today is Saturday, January 23rd, and I started my day by finishing a project my mother hired me to do painting the long hallway in the condo. I think I actually did a pretty good job, and the limited light available in the old corridor is now amplified by a cheerful very light yellow enamel.

11:20am. The restaurant doesn't open until noon so my cousin and I decide to meet up at Nina's Coffee Shop. While I'm waiting for her I see an open table and head for it. I accidentally knock a woman's purse off of her chair, possibly because her purse is three feet wide and hanging over into the open floor/clearly designated walking area. I say, "Oh shit!" and I proceed to pick up her purse for her and hand it back. I hold up my mug and proudly proclaim, "I didn't spill my coffee!" At that point she opens up her novelty size purse and says, "Well my phone better be okay, I have a very expensive case." Bitch.

Now this is how I know I'm a better man than a year ago. I just walked away. I definitely thought of mean things to say. Wait, no, I mean I thought of true things to say, and the truth sometimes hurts, but I know that sometimes the smart thing to do is say nothing. Secretly, I hope her phone case breaks later in an "unrelated" accident. People in this particular establishment can be very snobby, but one of the female staff I find to be quite attractive so I put up with it. She isn't here today, so I'm very proud of myself for not making a scene.

3:43pm. I'm sitting in front of my grandmother's house waiting for her to get home. I just finished lunch and a trip to the zoo with my cousin. It was a very fun afternoon.

6:25pm. Well, my grandma showed up. Now I'm at home with an hour to spare before I leave for my meeting, so I can write for a bit. If you didn't already know, I do all of my blogging from my phone, typing every word you see with my right index finger. I can type maybe twenty words per minute provided they are short words and I don't have to back up too many times to correct my auto-correct. I ducking gate auto-correct, but I think it helps more than it hurts.

Anywho, after our sushi lunch, we headed over to the como zoo/conservatory to check out the winter scene. The place was packed! We did the rounds through the gardens which I hadn't been to since maybe my early 20's and then we saw the primates, aquatic animals, then the place where the polar bears should have been but they were at a meeting or something. We both agreed that I could beat bears and gorillas in arm wrestling, and we each went our separate ways.

These little fellers are my favorite.

A rainbow roll and a No. 9 from Saji-ya

This is a rare look from the inside of the Mir space station.

I helped my grandparents carry in the groceries and I listened to the problems they were having with technology and I took a look at another painting project which I will start next week. I'm not too terribly good with computers but I did get their internet working again and I helped my grandma learn how to use predictive text. I also ate many cookies and sweet chewy things from a glass dish.

I can say that today I felt very productive in many ways. Every week I continue to do things that involve the most important people in my life, and every week I feel a little better about myself.

Soon I will head out and meet my sponsor at a meeting after which we will read the Big Book together for a little while. I'll be starting my journey through the steps very soon. It was pretty tough last time I did it, 13 years ago. I'm sure this time will be no different. But tough or not, they are a necessary part of my recovery, and its the only way I'll ever be able to completely let go of my past and move forward with the best part of my life. It's time to start fixing broken.

Bowling

It had been a while since I'd donned the oddly colored and patterned shoes (and now made with real Velcro™) and made my way down to the floor of a bowling alley, but I made it all happen last night. I was worried that I may have forgotten my form because of my lenghthy absence from the bowling world. I consider myself semi-professional in the sport because I generally participate in it on alternating years. To my knowledge I've have not bowled sober since I was a kid.

My form is unique in my opinion. When I release the ball, I like to freeze with one leg on the ground and the other sort of bent and behind me, and I try very hard to balance that way until the ball hits the pins. I succeeded in doing this twice, not bad I thought. The other times I awkwardly stumbled off to the right where my momentum was going, or simply turned around because I knew the stupid ball was off course, surely due to a knot in the wood on the floor.

I should mention that this outing was another fellowship adventure after my Wednesday night meeting. There were only five of us, but I think it's safe to say that we had a good time. I bowled a 152 which is pretty damned good for me, and I won two prizes from the prize claw game. Not the hard one, but the one where the claw actually grabs things because they are worth far less than the 50¢ I have put in the machine. Can you believe in this era of moving pictures and automobiles that they still manufacture plastic things with such little value? I also did very poorly at a game in which me and my teammate shot plastic guns at various African wildlife on a screen. I kept being disqualified for shooting too many cows but I figure they would be better for meat than the lions and giraffes that the game wanted us to shoot.

Once again, it all ended too quickly for me and as soon as we left, I was excited for next week. Not every day can be as fun as I want it to be. It's nice to have something to look forward to consistently, and its a good feeling getting to know people a little better every week. It makes me comfortable around them, and maybe that will start to happen in other places and situations.

On another note, I've been getting more and more readers from far away places. I hope you continue to read and if you like what you see here, and if you haven't already, you should start at the beginning. This is where my writing began about 19 months ago. I've come a long way since then, and you can read the whole transformation of my life from that point on.

Please share this or the other blog with anybody you know whose life may be affected by addiction. Some people don't like talking about it but I can assure you that writing has helped me more than any treatment center ever has. And sometimes reading a story that one can relate to just might be the thing that makes them think there are other options out there.

That's all I've got for today.

Here's the Thing

It's not something that I've just noticed, I've known it for years and I really saw it in action last night. Like an epiphany, or like somebody just taking a dump on the dinner table when you're eating- you really notice it.

People in AA/NA in general aren't married. Of course that's not a blanket statement- I've seen one or two wedding rings in my day- but the vast majority of old timers that I see, including my sponsor, seem to have no significant other in their lives.

I was sitting at a table with 20 fellow recovering alcoholics last night and the trend was obvious, not one ring! My whole life save for a couple drunken years I've been single and now the very thing that is supposed to save my life might also doom me to a solo career in love. I am not okay with this!

What is it about me that makes women pass me up? Well, currently I suppose it's the fact that I'm 37 years old, just got out of prison, and I live with my mother. Shit, don't tell anybody that. Recently I had the thought that it would be great if my mom had dementia that way I could tell people I live here to take care of her, and that's why she's in that corner chair eating canned fake duck meat, but I don't want to lie.

What is it about AA's that seem so undesirable? We're people that are bettering ourselves and society! We're happy, joyous, and free. And super annoying. I see it every time I go out with them. We're the table that only wants water, but we need lemon. We want the free bread, but not everybody at the table ordered food. One woman actually did order a pop but the waitress didnt specify that they served Pepsi products and she talked about it for the next hour. I ordered pop and food and I didn't eat bread or utilize lemons. Maybe it's because of my food service background that I'm so critical of how people act at a table.

Where the hell am I going with this? I don't know. I'm scared that I might end up alone. That may be my biggest fear. I want a companion to share my life with, and I just don't know if I'll ever find her. Where are you? Do I already know you? Did I not noticec you?

I don't really know how to tie this post together to make any kind of a point. Please comment if you think we should date :-)

The Marijuana

First, a quick shout-out to whomever has been binge reading this blog in Russia. Thank you, and I hope to keep your attention. I recently added a widget on the blog's home page that instantly translates my posts into numerous languages and I hope that helps people from all over the world better understand me, and my life story through addiction. I'd also like to thank some of the fine folks down in Fillmore County that until recently, I didn't know we're readers. I often wonder who is reading and if it has the proper effect and I believe now that this is reaching those that need to see it.

Okay then, let's get to it shall we?

I was in middle school the first time I smoked weed. I went to an alternative school, I'm not sure why, but it was close to my house. It was called Expo for Excellence and its attendees for the most part were far from excellent. Some (I) might even say they were some of the dumbest people I've ever encountered and that includes most of the staff. I played Hank in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, that was the highlight of my stay.

I was invited to a birthday party with a few classmates and I was allowed to go. The plan was to take a big van to the drive in movies for the night. As soon as we parked and opened up the back doors, Brad's (Birthday boy) sister whipped out a mason jar full of weed and said we were going to smoke it all before we left. For some reason I wasn't nervous, scared, or anxious about it at all. I wanted it.

The movies started and so did the joints, one after the other. Around and around they went. One very unique characteristic about marijuana is that, in roughly 50% of its first time uses, it has no effect. That was the case with me. I didn't want anybody to know that I'd never gotten high before so I just acted like people did in the movies I'd seen, and it worked. They were impressed with my tolerance. Ha! Fuckin' idiots.

The first time I actually got high is a little different. I was 15 and my friend Nathan and I had spent the day shovelling sidewalks and we decided to spend our money on a bag of weed. We got it and we rolled a joint. I would always have a fondness for a good hand-rolled joint. Anywho, we walked over to Aldine Park in St. Paul where we smoked it and the fun began. My first high was not typical of every high for the rest of my life. It acted like more of a stimulant and hallucinogen. My body was flush, my eyes watery, and everything was an adventure. I think I spent an hour on the swingset alone. We walked around for hours laughing and doing nothing with purpose. I felt free and happy, feelings I hadn't felt in..... maybe ever. I knew I had found my love.

Flash forward two years, I had dropped out of school, been kicked out of my home, and I was stealing for  a living. Yeah I don't half-ass anything. My first felony, which I was arrested for when I had only been 18 for a few months, was a result of me trying to find a way to get a bag. Instead of getting a job and a paycheck, I tried to steal yet another high end mountain bike and got caught. And that was the start of years of legal troubles. It was also the start of my drinking which I could get away with on probation versus weed which would show up on a drug test.

I do miss it. I know what a calming, soothing feeling it can bring after a hard day of work. I know how much fun can be had in a circle of friends passing it around. I wonder if I could just stick to smoking weed. If I'm strong enough now to use nothing, then I could probably just get high and not use alcohol or the heavy stuff, right? I bet there's a high probability of that, but no guarantee. I tend to make bad, no, life changing terrible decisions for myself. I think I'll stick to zero. But in the back of my mind for some reason, marijuana seems like such a safe innocuous drug, and I had fun for years with it in my life. Years I went nowhere in life, but years I didn't harm anybody.

That's a lot to think about. I know I'm doing well now. There's still something (or someone) missing in my life, but I know it's not drugs. And as long as I keep my mind clean and clear of all chemicals, I will find whatever this life has in store for me. (Please let it be a hot wife and a bunch of kids!)

Methamphetamine

The cocaine high wasn't so much of a rush as a climb and a steady plateau. I always snorted because of my fear of needles, so there may have been a difference there. Of course the first sensation was the numbing, almost cooling sensation starting in the nose then going down the back of the throat. Normally I was drunk before I tried to access the hard stuff. As soon as I snorted a bit, the drunk was gone. I liked that because I could get drunk again. But then I started to need more: tolerance. And then one day, a friend suggested we try it the other way, so we cooked up some crack using equal parts baking soda and coke in water on a spoon. We lit a flame underneath until it just started to bubble. We then used a steel knife to attract the oil away from the water which then hardened and we could smoke it.

My first crack pipe was an aluminum can with a dent on top and poked with a pin repeatedly, and then a carburetor on the side which is just one big hole. On top we would put cigarette ash which didn't act as a filter, but would prevent the crack from melting and simply falling into the can. Well, the result, I thought, was amazing. After my first hit I ran to the bathroom to shit and throw up. What a miracle drug! And that's how my life went for about six months. That's when my creativity in stealing hit bottom and I resorted to taking things from unlocked garages and grocery stores. I also stole some money from my mom, something I only resorted to once, but i certainly do regret. I would take anything including things that were nailed down as long as I perceived some value for my various crack dealers. I also lost the few jobs I could get those days working in hardware stores fixing windows and screens. I didn't quite understand the value of a paycheck vs. The value of the occasional unattended lawn mower. Either way none of my money was used to pay rent or bills.

With meth, it was sort of the middle ground. And as I've mentioned before, there were so many ways to use it. Again, I chose smoking as my favorite way to do it, but eating it was pretty cool too. Smoking hit you fast, like 10 seconds. It was like a pot of coffee in every hit: I could actually hear my hair growing. It made me jittery, sweaty, and sticky, and I could play Angry Birds for hours without looking in any other direction. Eating it was way different. It was more of a visual kind of feel-good high. Having sex after ingesting meth was/is  very common among users. Feelings and sensations are heightened, and I often felt a wave of happiness overcome me. But after a while none of that mattered. I had to smoke to stay awake. I had my pipe everywhere I went, no matter what. It's very dangerous for a meth addict to try to function out in the real world during a drought. Falling asleep is no longer voluntary, and it can happen anywhere as I have written about many times.

One comparison I'll make with crack and meth is this: With crack, all of the doors were closed, blinds pulled tight, and any form of noise silenced. This was especially true if you could afford to be awake for a few days on the stuff. Oh fuck, the paranoia I had was intense. I would peek through the blinds so often that the little spot I used had a permanent sweat mark on it. But with meth, random people were always over. The TV and computer both had porn on, one stereo was playing at full volume, the other completely taken apart on the floor. Agates and other rocks were everywhere. Useless clutter piled on beds which no longer served a purpose, dishes all cleaned and put away as they no longer needed to hold food. A complete chaotic madness was the organizational style: Everything in its place, and everything else in that place as well.

There was paranoia with meth, too. I often thought people were talking about me or plotting against me. I've known people to hide in crawl spaces to avoid the police that weren't there. And strange irrational thoughts occured frequently. One example I can give occurred in Rochester when I was living in my apartment about ten years ago.

I had a female over that I was interested in. We were getting high, talking about nothing, and all of a sudden she just got up and walked out. I didn't see her again. Months later, a friend of hers told me that she left because of the other girls I had over. The girls that were hiding under the couch and making fun of her. I know that sounds crazy but when her friend was telling me this, she was actually mad at me because she believed that I had been hiding women under my couch.  All I could picture was a colony of midget women living and breeding somehow under my furniture and randomly sticking their heads out to patronize my guests. But to her, it was absolute reality. She saw what she saw and there was no changing her mind.

I could and did stay up for days even a week or so at a time with meth. Toward the end of my tenure as a drug dealer, I was working full time at a beautiful restaurant down in Lanesboro, Minnesota. I barely held it together. I would work eight or more hours then hit the road selling drugs all night. I wouldn't get home until 10 am or so most days at which point I would make the decision to try to nap for an hour or two, or keep it going. Most days I would arrive to work completely drained and unable to comprehend what I was doing. I was cooking outdoors on the grill in front of people most nights, and I can imagine the show I must have put on. My hands full of grill tools, only one of which I needed at a time. Me walking back and forth from tickets to grill because I could not retain orders in my head. Sweat pouring down my face. Arms and legs flying all over but not accomplishing anything, at least not very quickly. But apparently quick enough to keep the job, which I did for a full season. Once  the tourists were gone I was laid off ant that's when dealing became first priority. Just a few short months later I was on the news and in jail.

Every substance I've ever come across, I've abused. I've been to jail so many times that I still find mugshots of myself I've never seen before. I'm not at all surprised that I went to prison, I'm surprised I didn't go sooner.

Cocaine

It's amazing to me that I never put this piece of the puzzle together until just today. I was standing by my machine, watching paper fly by and I was thinking about last night. After our meeting a group of us went out for appetizers and fellowship at a little dive bar/restaurant near Highland Park. I seated myself at random but somehow got stuck between the two guys that only talk about football. Now, I know what a football looks like, and I've even heard of a name or two from our team. And that is as far as my passion for the game goes. I nodded and grunted to just barely hang on as part of the conversation and then they started talking about college prospects. Fuck. Check please!

That wasn't the whole night, and I did have a good time. I played one of those claw games and I won all three times. The point is that as I thought of that moment in the conversation I didn't want to be in, I thought about how much better I was at conversing when I was on uppers. It all started in a garage/mancave back in the 1900's......

I was 18 and was socially drinking and abusing marijuana, if you think that's possible. I liked alcohol because it made me more talkative and open to people. I had been a very strange and awkward teen, and I had very few friends. About six of us were sitting around drinking beers when one of my better friends asked if anybody wanted to try something that would help us stay up and drink. I did not hesitate.

What I found was a whole new world. A world in which I became just like everybody else. I could speak clearly and join in on conversations that I would normally shy away from. Back then, just like now, I spend a lot of time up in my head. It's nice there, and everybody likes me. I can hold conversations that I want to have, alter conversations that have already taken place, and live in a world where I don't have to take any risks.

Taking risks is risky and you can lose a lot. I spent my early teen years moving from place to place, never being able to make friends for any amount of time until we settled down in St. Paul and I met this particular group. We bonded over bong hits and convulsed with laughter on all night acid trips. It was the start of the end.

Back to the story, I believe cocaine did for me what an anti-anxiety medication probably would have. And I loved it. I could drink all night, make people laugh, and I was just super awesome in my opinion. Unfortunately, cocaine has some drawbacks, like becoming dependent on it, and its big brother, crack.

For me, crack did the opposite of cocaine. I wanted to be alone, in a sealed off room, away from things that would bother me like work, family, or continued education. I lost jobs, friends, all of my money, and dignity in my short stint as a crack head.

Thankfully, somehow through the haze, I realized that I had caught the eye of a cute young blonde, and I wanted her. She was a stoner and that was it, and I decided to clean up my act for her. She became my girlfriend shortly after my last hit, and the years that followed were the worst alcoholic period of my life, except for the much worse, much longer one years later. Yep, it was the beginning of my first "bottom".  And it was hell.

What would you really do?

We already know that the next Powerball winner is going to be a rich white man from the Hamptons whose only plans with the money will be to "put it with the rest of it."  Fucking boring, right? That's why I was excited today when a coworker told me that he thought that I was going to be the big winner. Based solely on his prediction, I told my boss to fuck off and I quit. To further seal the deal, I deficated on his office chair. He didn't seem to care at all because none of that actually happened except for in my head.

For about a week or so I've heard so many conversations about what people would do with that kind of money and so many of the same cliché responses. Paying off debt, buying a house, travelling the world, blah, blah, blah. We're talking about a billion dollars here, you can do anything... ANYTHING! 

Nobody ever says, "I am definitely going to hire 100 hookers, or I'm going to hire an assassin to kill that douche bag from high school, or I'm getting a sex change but not for me. It'll be a surprise for somebody I pick! Well, those are just a few things I might allegedly do if I win. Here are a few more:

You know those babboons with those giant red asses? Yeah, those red-assed babboons. I want a jacket made with only that red ass skin. Yes, full length maybe with a fur collar and cuffs. It would be all the rage.

Okay fine, I know I'm not going to win the lottery. So instead of wasting your time with wildly inappropriate ideas of mine, I will tell you how my night went.

This is the second Monday now that I've gone to the new meeting in Golden Valley to meet my sponsor. It went only slightly better than last week but that's progress. I got there before he arrived so I sat in the vicinity of where we sat last week. When he walked in he sat two rows in front of me and didn't look at me or say anything. I waited until the first part of the meeting was done and again I had to follow him and get his attention and even then it was as if he didn't recognize me. Me! With this sexy face! Hmmph. Well anywho, long story short, I finally got my hands on a big book, and we head for Doolittle's where we were supposed to get down to business but we just sit and stare at anything but eachother.
I wonder if he's socially awkward too.

People started joining our table and that's when I started to feel that old familiar....... I don't know what. I looked everywhere but at the people. I listened to conversations, watched food coming and people communicating, but I still couldn't do it. What the fuck am I supposed to say?

At the end I made plans to meet my sponsor on Saturday at a coffee shop closer to home where we can sit at a table for two and I can decide if he's the guy that's going to guide me through these 12 steps or not. I can get over the anxiety thing, I know this because I have at my other meeting. It just takes time. But I need to have a useful sponsor or I don't think I'll have a very good shot at long term sobriety.

In closing, I'd like to hear from you. What horrible or illegal or funny thing would you do if you had a billion dollars. Remember, your comments can remain anonymous. Tiajuana donkey show? Buy a black market human? Come on, just try to shock me!

Synesthesia

My first years of experimenting with drugs were quite memorable, perhaps because my long-and short- term memory had not yet been fucked. In my later teen years, after I left school, I had my first run with drug dealing. I had a hook up that was better than anybody else in town and had pounds, yes, pounds of mushrooms at my disposal and in my possession. I also had as much acid as any several people could handle. And I had pockets full of the best home-grown weed available, directly from the source. Nothing good could come of this.

But I had some good times. One day in particular, I dropped acid with a buddy and we took the bus out to the Mall of America to enjoy the indoor smoking and a lackadaisical security staff of the late 1900's. We actually did this fairly often because people watching is already intense there, and acid only amplifies things.

When our bus arrived we stepped off and if anybody was looking they would have seen that our smiles already went to the back of our heads and our eyes watery with mischievous intent. We rarely made it inside the building before the incontrollable laughter set in, usually spurred on by one of us catching a glimpse of the others face rearranged by synesthesia. Off to the playground we went.

If you've never taken hallucinogens then you probably aren't familiar with the term synesthesia. It describes the effect on the brain when your senses are mixed up. Like seeing a sound, or tasting the waves of colour that your own hand just turned into. Well the sense of taste is dramatically effected by acid, almost always in a negative way. We wandered into a candy store after roaming aimlessly for a bit where I stole what appeared to be a giant, extraordinarily vibrant blow-pop, the sucker famous for having gum in the middle, normally a delicious treat. We then proceeded to the parking lot and to the top floor where we usually smoked our joints.

It was a beautiful Summer day. I remember that, and very little else pertaining to the elements. I was focused on the streaks, lines, and ant races that I thought I saw on the ground. We lit up, smoked a massive doobie, and laughed at nothing. Then I opened up my treat and stuck it in my mouth. It tasted exactly like a lemon, nothing else. I immediately spit it out over the edge of the railing toward the ground 50 feet below. Just then a kid burst out of the doors below us yelling for his mother to wait for him. It was perfect timing. About ten feet out the doors he was rocked by a projectile from above that took his legs out from under him. From my view of course it looked like a bloody explosion happened on his forehead. My friend saw the same thing and we exploded with laughter, the kind that you know is going to make you hurt for days.

Tears streaming down our faces, laughter uncontrollable, we went back inside the mall where people were staring at us. All of them. I can't imagine what they thought of us. We were a mess. And I was so distracted by their stares I walked directly into a family. Yeah, a whole group of people that were walking toward us, I didn't see them. I trampled a small boy, knocked bags down, unintentionally hugged Dad, and then fell down myself. Of course this only made things funnier for us. I was on the ground rolling around and my friend was hiding (very poorly) behind a fake tree. Every time we caught eachother eyes it just got more intense. 

And still, no security, no escort off of the premesis, nothing. We just kept walking around being annoying and destructive for hours and nobody seemed to care. 

It was that night, after we had come down, washed up, and our minds a little more clear, that we went to our respective jobs as overnight cashiers at competing gas stations, and pulled off a daring crime that will forever remain a secret to only us... Unless I get a book deal :-)

And That Is How It's Done

In response to some confusion about my last post about the bloody hand, I would like to elaborate slightly. No, I won't. I have to draw the line somewhere I suppose. I can't go in to detail about the people or the things that take place in closed meetings of AA. Sometimes I may be intentionally vague when writing about certain situations that may or may not have occurred in a meeting but from now on I will simply say that I can't be any more specific.

In contrast to my experience the other night in Golden Valley, I went out after the meeting tonight with a hand full of people-most of whom I knew- to the Green Mill for Bingo and half priced appetizers. I'll get my favorite part out of the way right now: I was completely comfortable, held perfectly normal conversations, and laughed a lot. I had a great time. I felt like a normal person eating dinner with friends at a restaurant. And as normal as that may sound to you, it has been something I wasn't sure was possible for me until now. 10:30, the time I had to be home was approaching quickly, and I absolutely didn't want to leave. As soon as I walked out the door I was excited for next week and another night out. And that is how it's done.

Oh, here's something funny, I won the second round of Bingo! My prize? Two free drinks. They gave me vouchers which I promptly gave away. I was happy enough just to have been able to yell out, "Bingo!"

Another thing that went through my mind briefly while sitting at the table was that on Monday night, I had the recurring thought that I wanted to go sit at the bar because I knew I would be alone, safe, and happy there, if I could just break away from all of these God damned sober freaks. Using thoughts are normal, and its obviously a good thing that I don't act on them. For me they seem to go hand in hand with anxiety. Whenever I find myself in a place or situation in which I'm uncomfortable, I think of sitting at a bar or a closed off room with a meth pipe and a torch. And those are oddly comforting thoughts.

Recently I became covered by health insurance and I'm wondering if maybe if I figure out how to see a Doctor I should ask about social anxiety. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate feedback from my readers, but when that information varies so drastically, I think I should seek expert advice. Yes?

What else.....? Hmmm. Good question, Vince. Good question.

The Bloody Hand

In my last post I wrote that I was going out on an adventure in AA last night. This is that adventure...

It was Golden Valley as it turns out. In four months as a free man, I had not once ventured outside of meetings at the Uptown House, 8:00pm, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. The Uptown House is close enough to where I live that, even when I had to walk, I could make it there and back in time to abide by my restrictions. Last night I used a four-hour block of my free time to go to a new meeting and meet my new sponsor, and to go out for Fellowship afterwards. Four hours would not be quite enough.

I showed up on time which for me is half an hour early. I walked into the church and into a large room where it looked as if the meeting was already in process, but it was just a business meeting. It ended shortly after my arrival, and I waved my sponsor over. He said hi and then quickly shuffled away, leaving me in the middle of the room with roughly 50 people that I did not know. Instantly I missed the comfort and familiarity of Uptown House. I walked away to a different room where I found him organizing chairs and couches for what would eventually be a smaller meeting. I asked if I could help and he simply said no, and that he would be speaking later in this room. Again, he shuffled off to parts unknown.

This time, confused, I stayed put. My hope was that he would come back, but he did not. I waited five minutes before I walked back to the original room where he flagged me down to a seat next to his in the third row. He awkwardly introduced me to a pair of confused ladies that immediately walked away, and I sat down. And that is when the thing happened. A person. Hmm, well maybe more of a medical oddity. Either way, I could hear him coming from twenty feet away through the crowd, and I knew with 100% certainty that whatever strange noises were coming from behind me should surely spend the rest of the hour occurring next to me, and I was not wrong.

He plopped down next to me in such a way that his chair moves sideways away from me because his enormous thigh pushed against me in my chair. I could hear his labored breathing as it was carefully timed by his oxygen machine. And without hesitation he yelled his name at me and reached out his hand which I grabbed by instinct. Immediately I felt the warm running sensation of blood flowing over the top op my hand. Naturally, his open blisters and sores were all leaking and he was clueless. I do not like this sight of blood nor do I like blood near me, and definitely not on me. It took everything I had not to look back at his hand. I pulled away quickly and told him he should clean up his mess. The meeting was called to start.

As I stood up for a moment of silence before the Serenity Prayer as is the tradition in most meetings, I wiped my hand on my pants and shuddered in disgust. No sooner did he blow his nose into a handkerchief which he then used to mop up the blood on his hand. I couldn't help but peek. I was witnessing something that should have made me pass out but I was just fascinated. I wanted to know what his plans were for the handkerchief after the meeting.

The rest of the meeting went as they usually do, and we agreed (my sponsor and I) to meet up at Doolittle's a few miles away. I assumed this would be where we sat down and talked about what my needs from him would be and vice-versa. It turns out that there's quite a gathering after this rather large meeting and I ended up sitting at a table with 31 people that I didn't know, and that's when I felt anxiety for the first time in a while. Probably the worst I've ever had it. I had no clue what to do or say. I was lost and alone, surrounded by people that I should be able to identify with.

Am I staring? Are my legs moving back and forth too fast? What should I try to say? Should I wait for them to talk to me? Oh fuck what if they ask me questions!?? Will they think its weird if I go use the bathroom? WILL THEY NOTICE!?? Is she looking at me? Should I smile or look away? Fuck I only want to leave. But then they might ask where I'm going, oh fuck I'm screwed I have to just sit here. Did he just say something to me? Should I say what? I should look away because I don't know if he was talking to me. Oh my god I'm sweating now, can they tell? Can they hear my feet tapping? Fuck!!!

So that went on for an hour or so, I ate the chicken wings which were amazing, and I paid my bill and left. And then out in my car I thought of all the things I could have said, and those conversations got me all the way home. Am I normal? Is that an example of how people act in strange situations? Did I ever wash the blood off of my hands before I ate those wings? Yes. Yes I did.

Next

Tonight I'm meeting with my new sponsor for the very first time at a meeting out in Golden Valley or Apple Valley or Cottage Grove, or Apple Grove Gardenville, or maybe none of those, I'll have to look it up when I get home. Either way I'm excited to take this next step in my recovery. I had a sponsor for a while when I first got out but we never communicated and I liked that but I wasn't getting anywhere spiritually or emotionally. I finally took the plunge and asked an old timer I'd had my eye on for a while. Tonight I will go to a meeting with him and afterward I will get to tell him the story of me and what I want out of this recovery.

I got a little sick of seeing and hearing happy people in the meetings I had been attending. Then, last Saturday night, somebody spoke on the twelfth step, and something in my brain said that I wanted what he was talking about: happiness. He said he found his only through working the twelve steps with his sponsor. I'd actually heard that before. Not just a few times, but hundreds if not thousands. I had heard it but maybe I wasn't listening. Maybe I didn't want to take that more difficult road to achieve my spiritual awakening because I still don't like the idea of the God concept.

This next phase is going to have a lot of talk about a God. But in reality, all I have to do is believe that a power greater than myself can restore my sanity. Now that sounds manageable, in fact every time I walk into a meeting and walk out feeling better, that group has become that power.

There is no God, I honestly don't know how people can believe in such nonsense, but they do. See what I did there? I seem to want to focus on things I have no control over. Hmmm, I wonder if I've heard that from a counselor in treatment recently. It's so much easier to deal with other peoples problems than my own, and I doubt I am alone in that way of thinking. I still have a lot wrong with me and I haven't been working on any of it since I left treatment in prison four months ago. My only aftercare plan and reccomendation was to attend meetings as required by ISR agents. That's it. Three meetings per week with no fellowship allowed before or after was what they wanted me to do.

So four months later, I've decided to be a little proactive in my own recovery. I need to work these steps, and I need to be active in the recovery world or sure as shit, I shit you not, I will slowly lapse back into my old ways and thinking which always leads to the same thing: that first delicious, cold, foamy beer. And that will be the end of me, this blog, and my life as it could be. Fuck that. I'm gonna do some work.

St. Moose Mixup

Here's a mysterious old post that somehow got mixed up. The first half is from St. Cloud, the second from last Christmas in Moose Lake. 

I haven’t written any blog posts in nearly a week. My job keeps me busy, and I’ll say that there is a little more effort involved in the actual writing vs. typing a blog, from my point of view, anyway.

My co-blogger, aka Mom, came to visit me today. Like everybody else, she had a good laugh at my prison-issue glasses. But then we sat down and talked for two hours. We could have talked for two more and time would have flown by just as quickly. It was really nice to see a familiar face. We spoke on topics ranging from family health to sign-language-interpreting gorillas. It will probably be my only visit during my whole tenure as a prisoner, and it was a good one.

—

Last night I started reading Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I only made it through 40 pages and I had to get to sleep but so far I’m interested. I’m sure once I leave prison I’ll go back to reading zero books. My mind is impossible to control so I’m easily distracted. Sometimes I can’t get through a page without daydreaming. I’ll catch myself. And do it again minutes later. Brain. Bad brain.

—

I haven’t been sick in years. Years! I am in the middle of a terrible cold, and I don’t like it. I have been told several times over the years that, despite my claims, I am not a doctor. Even if I were, there’s little I can do to suppress the effects of the virus. So I’ll do the standard: rest, drink plenty of fluids, and complain.

—

I’m not at all religious but I went to a Christmas program for something to do, and I had a blast. There were six or seven musicians, all in their 70s or 80s, from some denomination whose name I cannot recall. Each played a different instrument ranging from accordion to piano to guitar. They had 50 grown men, drug dealers, pimps, and armed robbers, singing Twelve Days of Christmas and even doing the chicken dance. That was the best. We were all laughing. And we all needed that.

I think it may have been the first time in a while that some of the guys smiled.  Which will usually, unfortunately, later, lead to crying.  Quietly, so your cellmate doesn’t hear.  We will be thinking of our friends, families, and why we can’t be with them this holiday season.  I am one of the lucky ones.  I won’t be locked up next year.  Some will.  Some will be forever.  And although they are here permanently for a reason, it will still hurt.  They may not show it, but they will surely feel it.