Teetotaled!

Death

Me with shrink played by Bruce Willis:

LD: I mean its probably nothing, I’m just an anxious person

But sometimes I get kind of cold

I feel like this weird prickling in my neck and arms

oh, and then of course i see dead people

I mean, I’m probably overreacting

BW: Wait what happens?

LD: I guess I would describe them as like these sudden chills

BW: No, the other part

LD: (gesturing to neck and arms) Tingling, or even a “prickly” sensation

BW: No that stuff is normal, but the dead person thing

LD: yeah it happens right before that. do you think it could be MS or diabetes or tired blood-

BW: No, the physical things seem incidental

LD: Are you sure, because also when I floss for the first time in a couple of weeks,

my gums bleed

BW: That happens to everyone, can we talk about-

LD: And after I eat a lot of asparagus, my pee still smells the same

BW: Ok, but lets get back to-

LD: Also everyone else seems to love the Lumineers, Is something wrong with me?

BW: They have a certain folksy-

LD: Oh last one, if I stare at the sun too long I see colored spots all over the place

BW: Can we get back to- yknow, you really shouldn’t stare at the sun

LD: (sheepish feigned guilt) ugh I know, I’ve really cut back lately

BW: Let’s talk about the dead people you’re seeing

LD: Seems like kind of a waste of time, no offense.

BW: What do you mean, no offense?

LD: I just mean its too late for the dead people, they’re already… well.. you know. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Stares at therapists belly)

BW: I don’t understand (camera pans down to bloody wound he is unaware of) 

LD: Nothing, I don’t know. Can I just get all my prescriptions renewed? (List includes Xanax, Adderall, trappist ale and Fen-Phen)

Sober October!

I started drinking again after a year of sobriety last September. Well, that’s not really true. I drank a swig of listerine twice, I binge ate and purged once or twice a week then starved and counted calories obsessively the first 8 months of sobriety, then after I kicked that I’d buy inhalers of Benzedrex once a week and eat the cotton inside- a cheap, jankety stimulant that kept me up all night writing jokes and doing weird minty burps.

I decided to drink again September 1st. I drank a bunch of cough syrup the night before, too much, and tripped for a day straight. It was the first time I’d ever tripped and was also very weird and jankety, but as I started to come down, I had the very clear epiphany that I wanted a dark beer. I wanted to drink it for the taste, because dark beer is very delicious. I had been chemically altered for far too long and was really bored of it, and realized I had no ulterior motives and just wanted a damn beer. I had 2 Shiner Oktoberfests that night, and they were the best beers I’ve ever had. I felt like Charlie Bucket when he found ten dollars in the ice and ate two Wonka bars after living on cabbage soup for years. 

I was very careful for the first two weeks of drinking not to drink liquor or become inebriated. But soon, I started breaking my rules and feeling very guilty about it. I’m also in my first serious relationship which is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, because of all the feelings and the terror. I started to drink those feelings, because that’s what I did for 5 years. I got drunk before I went up at open mics, because it makes it easier not to care about what the audience thinks. It usually didn’t go well, because most of the time they had to be thinking “Hey, that girl is pretty drunk”.

The cycle of alcohol abuse is an easy thing to slip into- I think you’d be hard pressed to find a drinker under the age of 30 who hasn’t slipped into it. You drink all night until you pass out then wake up feeling so crappy the only thing you can think about is when you can drink again and feel better. You become anxious about how much you’re drinking and paradoxically turn to what is still the best medicine ever made to combat fear. Your tolerance builds and you drink more. Your fear and self loathing grow and you drink more. And other than the misery you’re putting yourself through, there’s really no reason not to.

I don’t know if I’m an alcoholic. I don’t really know what that means anymore. Right now, I don’t think it’s a part of who you are that never leaves you as much as something you do. Everyone has way of avoiding their pain and feelings, smoking, eating, sex, and it’s rare that a person finds real peace with those addictive behaviors whether they quit them or not. What I do know for sure is I like being sober more than I like being drunk. I know that I’m very impulsive and I worry constantly. I know that if I’m upset about something, I drink heavily to stuff those feelings down into my belly. I know I’m a better writer, a better comic and a better person when I’m not drinking. When I am drinking, I’m mostly concerned with putting the right things inside of me to make me feel as happy and well as I can be. When I’m not, I’m closer to the essence of who I am- someone who believes that in this life we’re all a team and helping and connecting with other people to make this world a better place is the only way to give this silly, strange dream of an existence some meaning. I know that unlike the five years I spent in a stupor, I’ve found other things in life that bring me much greater joy. I fear that if I continue to drink heavily, the pleasure center in my brain will get all fucked up again and writing and reading and fucking and hugging my boyfriend will only be fun if I’m drunk while I do them. 

I’d like to be able to drink normally some day, not so much because I enjoy drinking and connecting with fellow drinkers, but to make peace with booze. About half of alcohol abusers who take a period of abstinence are able to do this. I’d like to never worry about gaining weight or eating too much, but that’s something I’ve battled with far longer than alcohol and the world is, well, it is the way it is. I know it’s something I don’t actually care about, my brain just does a weird thing when I feel scared and out of control where it processes my little body as large and fleshy. The way I respond to feeling powerless is to restrict my food intake so I feel some control over something. I’ll continue to fight to be healthy and happy, but if I have to deal with these issues my whole life, that’s pretty ok with me. Pretty amazingly lucky that this is my pain in life instead of poverty or AIDS or the various life or death struggles of 95% of the world. Plus I have a lot of people I love and get to write stuff that you read and say stuff into a microphone that people listen to. Anyway, this is who I am, warts and all, and thank you for taking the time to learn a little more about my weird baggage. I’d really love to hear about yours sometime.

BEHIND YOU!: A Hearty Breakfast

An AA alternative

http://www.thefix.com/content/how-smart-smart-recovery

BLACKOUT

I was a blackout drunk and am completely fascinated by it. Here is a great, easy to follow article on how exactly alcohol makes the lights go out in your brain while your body continues to run around drinking like a chicken with its head cut off:

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm

BEHIND YOU!: The Mysteries of Life

I don’t remember much at all from that year. Between the nightly purge of brain cells through binge drinking and monthly ictal spasms where my mind seemed to glitch, then auto shutdown

and reboot, I wasn’t able to retain it all with my usual crispness lucidity. Or maybe there wasn’t much worth revisiting, memory destinations unwelcoming when unlit by excitement, connection, the impetus

to pursue a similar sabbatical from the days of coffee with too much milk, hours lost in the hypnosis of repetitive work, then watching serial television beside a loved one wondering why I’m unable to shake the numbness, 

and revisiting the haven of a wild night, even a bad night, even one of the worst nights because at least I felt so deeply, so bright and animal and a part of it all. When I think of those times I don’t go back to the place,

just a shadow picture slideshow on an empty screen, captioned in my unrelenting voiceover: this is the night I got drunk and naked and wrecked their house and everyone hated me click, i taste a too strong vodka cranberry

in their new mugs, clock, i am awash with the strangeness of waking up in a curtain cell roped to a cot by the IV in my arm, a new appendage, click, the relief that I was still too drunk to feel

the depth of the fallout, click the shame and the fear smaller in the distance. This is the day my best friend told me everyone hates me, click, closeup of his putty colored face, hawklike, black eyes, grimacing click the terrible epiphany, the dread

as my head finally catches up with my click the rage that I know he told me just to hurt me, that it seems almost possible to pretend that it was a lie to intended to gut me,

but even if he’s lying it is and has been true for me that I have no friends here, am reviled, an infamous loudmouth whorish lush click Telling Ryan he could kiss me, click an oasis, his eyes like my fathers, click comfort click anticipation,

but muted, are they cries muffled by distance and drowned out by closer caterwauling pining for newer boys or was it was always just a quiet stirring, or just a place I never go

because there is no adventure or wild lust and memory’s picture fades unless you keep up maintenance, taking pictures of the pictures of the pictures until what you have is so deeply

tilted from the angles and the lens of your mind in each moment you looked at it, a goodbye wave becomes a symbolic push becomes a brave salute becomes her silly little fingers teasing becomes a wave

and maybe she never waved in the first place. So maybe just the feelings, a brief synopsis, the facts as I remember them, have retold them, recited them, is a lot truer

than the scenes that I rewatch and revisit regularly, still in awe of this piece of me, still scoping the scene for a new clue or just nostalgic for the place and time

and self of then, specifically, like an old song.

But so many days are missing, so many events, thick stacks of leaves torn from my rolodex, it must have been my soft sick brain, for fear and pain never blocked me

from cataloguing everything perfectly before, every all nighter, every fight, the scene’s objective, who I played, how much I weighed, the line Kevin says that killed me even the second time I saw the episode in 8th grade,

that I wanted to use to make someone feel like I did when I heard it. I must have atrophied, couldn’t carry it all. I wonder where I carry that part of my experience then?

And what about all the nights I drank so much my brain fell asleep inside me and my brutal, desperate Id took over, or I drank past that and almost killed the id too

as I sputtered about, crawling, leaking, groaning helpless, where when what was that. In sum it has to be 2 weeks of my life I have spent in a blackout. Where do I carry that experience?

Every time I blacked out could I access it and it all flooded back and that’s why I kept drinking but I have no way to remember or tell anyone? Perhaps privy to moments that changed the world,

curled in the corner unnoticed like Churchill’s dog, a gibberish spitting amnesiac no one would think twice she buries data so deep inside her brain even she can’t access it.

We Used to Love Each Other

We Used to Love Each Other

We lay curled up in the warm pillows. We were one then. It seemed like we sat forever in the darkness, entombed in the

cushions, safe from the bright shrieking world below, so quiet but the thump of a single heartbeat. And we slept, and as we slept

we grew. And then one day, no way to tell when exactly, you seemed smaller. I tried to shrivel but I was growing too

fast, unfurling into a magnificent beast, becoming. Still you sat beside me, a smooth stump, stubborn, unblinking. I made thousands of machines to power our city,

pulsing, spitting and decoding messages in the splinters of a second, I did everything I was supposed to do and you just floated beside me, a limbless

mound of flesh. So I worked harder, tried to fill you, pumped you full of life and hoped it woke up something inside you and you would yawn and stretch and in that motion fill exactly the

the shape of your potential. Still you wouldn’t budge, and then I knew for sure what I always knew, that you were dying, dying in the dark before we were even born. I gave a mouthless scream

and fought so hard oh God I tried to give you every bit of me I gave you all my blood I gave you all my food if I could have sent my soul like a letter in that little tube and you could’ve sucked it in I’d have

done and soon the heartbeat thumped softer, slowing ticking of a clock signals time is running out for both of us. 

I hope you know I didn’t do it for me. I hope you know I would’ve died with you in that dark room, that part of me did. But I knew there was only one way to get us out of there. I stopped pushing me into you and slowly as I drained from your body you went pale.

And beside you, my city, my machines began to run almost as good as new but to a syncopated time, a heart that skips a beat then flutters, a life just out of step. And while I healed and grew I ate your body and I drank your blood. It made me bigger, stronger, complete, and we were ready for our journey into the sun. 

Sometimes even all these years later when my funny heart flits I feel you smile.

(this is about a parasitic twin)

Update

Thought I’d post since I haven’t updated this guy in awhile. I skipped two AA meetings I was supposed to help run the Tuesday before last. I hate doing stuff like that- bailing without notice by completely going off the grid- because it’s a very familiar pattern of behavior for me, what I’ve done at almost every job, class, commitment of any sort, and makes me feel ashamed and like a terrible, selfish, broken person doomed to fail and never care about anything enough to finish what I start. It makes me want to punish myself and disappear. 

I apologized to both groups but I won’t be coming back. I realize now how much anxiety those meetings gave me- the fear that I was a liar for not working a program despite being open about it  when asked, reciting words and prayers I didn’t believe in, half-heartedly setting up a meeting I didn’t care about at all when for many others there it is as important and serious as life and death. I felt dishonest and scared, like if people in those rooms really saw me they’d brand me as a sick person, not fully recovered, on the brink of relapse. And while I wish I could let others fear or judgement of me bounce off like the proverbial rubber, a little part always sticks, is absorbed, wonders what if they are right? 

This was the worst possible way for me to go about it and I wish I’d continued my service and stuck it out two more weeks. People were depending on me and I not only disappointed them, but created suspicion and worry- most of the time when someone doesn’t show up and can’t be reached for an AA meeting, it’s because they’ve relapsed. But even that is a prime example of why I don’t want to go back- the atmosphere of fear, the looming ghost of relapse, people examining your commitment to the program, if its found lacking, detaching, preparing for your absence, who’s next.

My recovery was based on managing and minimizing stress and fear and personal growth, but I don’t feel like I’m in recovery anymore- I feel like I’m just living, and I want to challenge myself, butt up against my limitations which are all created from fear and burst through to the other side. I know I’ve made   this comparison here before, but I really was in love with drinking like people fall in love with each other. I didn’t finally feel ready to quit because I was finally strong enough or had learned enough or it was my last chance before every bridge burned and I was trapped. I felt ready because I had fallen out of love with drinking, and it didn’t make me feel free and happy and I couldn’t rely on it anymore, didn’t make me feel like I was the person I always wished I was anymore. I don’t know if it happened because I started writing and doing comedy and the things that make me feel alive and like myself today, simply because my tolerance was severely lowered, or because I finally learned that tomorrow was always coming, thumped into my heart in a way no perfect number of drinks could make me forget. But I do know there’s no going back. It would be like if Rick from Casablanca visited America a couple years after the whole Ingrid Bergman thing and she told her husband she was visiting her sister and they stayed at a seedy motel  and banged for a long weekend. Would probably be pretty fun but mostly just weird and sad and lying to myself.

Also, I am beginning to find myself more and more curious about the theories that addiction is a choice. While I still believe in the disease model of addiction, I really feel like there ARE a lot of choices one makes to get there. It’s kind of like how I feel about my bout with agoraphobia- in my mind, I really believed I would die if I left my room, but I brought on the insane amount of pressure and anxiety that put me there by skipping class, cutting myself off from the outside world, lying to everyone who cared about me. In the addict’s mind, the drug is inexorably linked to survival (I thought this as well as feeling it- the anxiety I felt almost constantly was similar to the panic I would go into when I was about to have a seizure which to me was a fate worse than death, and I thought with backwards half logic that alcohol would keep me safe since I’d  never had a seizure after drinking, even though alcohol is a seizure trigger for many and dehydration from hangovers probably played a part in a few of mine). But its often a long road of choosing to reach for your drug before dependence happens. Also, the farther I move away from it, the more disdain I have for the stigma of being an “addict”. Everyone has sadness and struggles and hard times and weakness and selfishness- we’re all people. Being labeled an “addict” and told I would do anything I could to avoid living life and “fill the whole inside myself” made me look at all my actions through a dark lens, believing reaching for a cigarette, drinking too much coffee, oversleeping were the actions of a desperate junkie looking for some kind of release. The fact is, everyone wants to feel good, because it feels good. I see alcoholism more as something I did than a part of who I am, because I no longer want to be defined by my wounding. I don’t feel like I’m healing, I feel like I’m whole.

It will be interesting to see where advances in neuroscience take recovery in the future. Someday we will be able to determine if someone is an addict or just a heavy abuser based on brain scans.  Will AA, which has always contended that what makes one an alcoholic is a belief in one’s own alcoholism the same way a belief in Christ makes one a Christian, change their program to accommodate both the heavy drinker and the alcoholic? Will the alcohol and drug abusers have to create a program of their own? Will they discourage people from even taking the test? Will there be a vaccine or pills my children can take if they have the same defect in their VMPC so they can drink normally? Will drug addicts and alcoholics begin to start being acquitted due to insanity if there is medical proof that they are suffering from a mental malady beyond their control? Philip K. Dick stuff, ya’ll. Thanks for reading