When Suicide is not Suicide

(Vatchi):  Sotto, you are not Jim. Perhaps your
distraction is a wall you have put up. Consider yourself lucky that you are not
him. I don't know if you know this, Sotto, but that auditory hallucination, that
simple "Jump!" that Jim heard, that's late-stage chronic alcoholism. If he had
gotten worse, he might have jumped out that window and people would have quickly
written it off as suicide.

   Some suicides are not suicides at all, Sotto. They are addiction having
the last word.

   Some suicides are not suicide at all.

 

from "All Drinking Aside" (rough draft), Chapter 3

Fighting Freedom With Fear

Give up this fight. It's futile. Don't fight it. Fight fear with flight. Gimme a light. Fuck. Fear this fight. Don't think it. Drink it. Give up this fight. Fuck it. Don't think it. Drink it. Fight pain with pain. Fuck it. Drink it. Fuck it, don't fight. Drink it. Don't think it. Fight pain with pain. Fuck it. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck it....

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal," Chapter 87 (rough draft)

e-info @ moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

click on "ALCOHOLISM" below for related quotes

"... Catch the beat, Dance your feet...

... To where the Sprinkles are..."

(Sotto): It's so sad, Vatchi, that even when he produced ... fairly well put together piece[s], he was broken inside. That "art produced in concentration camps" [that he mentioned]. [That] is the illusion of the creative process for the addicted person. The trick was thinking you produced because of the addiction, not in spite of it. Living [in] a sad, sad illusion.

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal," Chapter 83 (rough draft)

e-info: moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

"I Can Have Drunk Dreams Sober...

...But I Can't Have Sober Dreams Drunk."

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal" (Rough Draft)

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This...

... This is when the only food is the juice in my vodka and cranberry. This is when it takes me two solid hours to get out of bed and put on a pair of shoes. This is when there is no next drink, there is just this one long drink that goes on forever. This is where there is no up or down and I can only move sideways.

This is where waking up is like falling through a stage prop wall. This is where I carry my addictions in a cardboard box as if I were moving to another location. This is finding no location and the box is empty. This is standing and not being able to move. This is drunk and crashing, falling, falling through a bottom, tumbling.

This is where a hospital wakes you up and you do not know you or where you are.

(Sotto): This is where Jim gets lost in his past and I get lost with him. This is where I ask you to help me, Vatchi. This is where he traps me in his past, Vatchi.

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal," Chapter 78, (rough draft)

e-info: moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

Repression Oppression Addiction.
The Struggle to be free.
Then, Surrender to be free.
...
Oblivious to the obvious:
The Unknown Soldier was Love
All Along.

"Good Things Come To Those Who Wait"

The present informs my past. I remember standing inside the Rodin Museum, not far from Philadelphia's Art Museum. Frozen in my alcoholism, like an insect trapped in amber, its destructive powers gave me a certain strength. Entrapment, the permanence of my disease, gave me an insane sense of indestructibility.
Dying from my disease, that is what I might have known of eternity, what I should have felt, if I could have felt. The present informs my past.
There is a connection here. The god of alcohol led me to the god of frozen yogurt.
"I feel like a piece of burnt toast dropped on a shag carpet landing butter side up."
That is how I felt when the Librium wore off.

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal," Chapter 55 (rough draft). To see all related entries, click on "Alcoholism" after the word "LABELS," below. e-mail inquiries to moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com.

A Regular Schedule for a Balanced Life:

Note: Replace "SLEEP" with "Pass Out".

The Myth of Sisyphus

The myth of Sisyphus, that eternal hell of pushing the exact same rock up the exact same hill, only to watch it roll all the way back down every time. There's a whole lot of hell going on there, but at least Sisyphus knew the score.

With alcoholism, I had too much at stake to admit this reality. The Legacy Effect: I had too much at stake. I had to put a higher worth on my worthless efforts. Protect what was destroying me because my identity was immersed in alcohol.

I wonder if Sisyphus drank?

Rolling Rock, no doubt.

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal," Chapter 50 (rough draft)

e-info @ moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

WARNING: Alcoholism Ahead

There were no signs posted on the road my life was taking as I grew up. Even the supposed 'cultural revolution' of the sixties (and early '70's): the Beatles, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Women's Liberation and that whole ball of wax. No warning signs there (or ignored, at best).

Alcohol was not only socially acceptable (as was smoking cigarettes, really), it was expected. Alcoholism, like a thousand and one others, was a taboo subject.

The rooms of my childhood and adolescence were not big enough for all the elephants in those rooms. And the elephants in this room, the room that I am in right now, will not be recognized by me except in retrospect.

Self-justification becomes a way of life.

from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal," Chapter 49 (rough draft)

"Please dear, your Auntie Mame's hung."

click on "LABELS: ALCOHOLISM" for related posts

Kincade Seeks Sink Aid...

Someone Put the Pedal to the Paintbrush.

Painting Under the Influence?

The BooK: Too DrunK to WriTe

My resolution, to give up drinking in moderation, prevented me from writing

"A Drinking Man's Guide to Bar Exercise".

"All Drinking Aside":

The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal.

Getting sober is a slow thaw.

Bear with me.

(To read only blog entries related to alcoholism, click on the label below):

"Lather. Rinse. Repeat."

The only thing unusual about me drinking beer in the shower was the low alcohol content. Dr. Jim (that's me) prescribed a drink in the shower for its medicinal sobering up qualities and its effervescent lilt. Beer was the Common Man's brew. Dr. Jim only drank beer in public as a way to show that he flowed with the sea of humanity (or was too drunk to drink anything else).

"Lather. Rinse. Repeat."

I thought I could follow directions. But my direction faded. I and alcohol and fear went down the drain together....

from "All Drinking Aside", Chapter 66 (rough draft)

e-info at moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

This

This is one of many nows, this now. This sober day. This is a day of living where sobriety is a routine, a change of habits well rehearsed, a life reversed. This is what is left when the last tremors of the earthquake have subsided. This is where the illusion of illusions has melted.

This is Page One.

from "All Drinking Aside," Chapter 70 (rough draft)
e-info: moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

Phantom Memories

I still have phantom memories of my drinking past, euphoric recall, twisted. It's as if one of my legs were amputated, but that I can still sometimes, somehow feel those toes that are not there.

Triggers are phantom toes wiggling. Don't take the bait. Don't bite. Use your good leg, the sober leg. The bad leg is gone. Let it go. Say your eulogy. Mourn this death and move on.

Addiction is a beast that lives within you. You cannot kill the beast. Denial, anger, fear will not kill it. Begging, pleading, blaming will not tame it. Depression, self-pity, doubt: They only feed it. Confront it. Accept it. The beast will never die.

from "All Drinking Aside," Chapter 65 (rough draft)
e-info: moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

Patty's Addiction

Patty's addiction decided for her that she had suffered enough. The pain was enough. The pain of being unable to feel the pain was enough.

The unbearable pain of the struggle to be free of her addiction was a giant wave whose undertow drew her back to the ocean of her addiction. She could no longer live free. No longer free. Under she went. The undertow of addiction drowned her.

Patty's addiction could not undecide her death.

from "All Drinking Aside", Chapter 72 (rough draft)
e-info at moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com

The Battle With My Brain

Thinking that I could win the battle with the alcoholic part of my brain. Never realizing, or admitting, or being in denial about this one basic fact: There is no one part of my brain that is alcoholic. My entire brain, my entire being, my entire life is one of alcoholism. I'm either living in my disease or I'm living in recovery.

(Id, Ego, Superego, pictured to your right)

from "All Drinking Aside", Chapter 43 (rough draft)

e-info at moonshine2sunshine@yahoo.com