I Couldn't Say It any Better....

When I fell from grace

I never realized

how deep the flood was around me.

A man whose life was toil

was like a kettle left to boil,

and the water left scars on me.

I know now who I am.

If only for a while,

I recognize the changes.

I feel like I did before the

magic wore thin and the "baptism

of stains" began.

They used to say I was

nowhere, man,

heading down

was my destiny.

But yesterday, I swear,

that was someone else not me.

Here I stand at the crossroads edge,

afraid to reach out for eternity,

One step, when I look down,

I see someone else not me.

Looking back and I see

someone else.

All my life they said I

was going down,

but I'm still standing,

stronger, proud.

And today I know there's

so much more I can be.

From where I stand at the crossroads edge,

there's a path leading out to sea.

And from somewhere

deep in my mind,

sirens sing out loud

songs of doubt

as only they know how.

But one glance back reminds, and I see,

someone else not me.

I keep looking back

at someone else... me?

The Madness That Keeps on Giving...

I'm just trying to stay straight and get back to living life and I keep getting pulled into the insanity of others who are out there still out there doing what they do and I have to change my cell phone number again. The ones I stated earlier that weren't calling are now blowing up my phone with this drama or that drama that I'm expected to fix for them. The sad part of it is that there are many innocent people in their lives (kids, parents, spouces etc...) that are caught up in their loved one's insanity that will be hurt if I don't intercede but for me not to would seriously put myself at risk at many levels and I just have to let the chips fall where they may. I sure didn't give any of these folks their first blast and I can't do anything to take away their last...

I Lock Myself In At Nightfall...

So last Sunday I graduated my fellowship program at The Center for Progressive Leadership and flipped right into my 12 week substance abuse treatment program at the VA Hospital the following day...talk about polar opposites...such has been my life for 39 years. I'm pretty much physically detoxed off my 6 month run back into the depths of insanity and demoralization and while the insanity part has subsided the demoralization has gotten far worse as snippets of what I did, with whom I did it with and where I did it pops into conscious memory.

I won't elaborate further as it serves no purpose to do so but let's just say I'm one blessed man for having escaped relatively unscathed and I lock my doors at night more to keep myself in than anyone else out.

Pulling back on the stick full force....

The nosedive of my relapse into my addictions has me pulling back on the stick so hard I've bent the fugger...my landing gear was sheared off by the treetops and I've had to jettison the spare fuel tanks but as they careen into the deck I find myself pulling up and out of the dive with their explosive flames blackening my tail.

I can see a speck of blue sky through the flames, smoke and tree branches stuck to my canopy....it was a close one...the closest yet in this 39 year long dogfight and I've yet to access the flack damage yet I feel the engine sputtering back to life and I am once again heading in an upward trajectory...

I have returned to the fight...

Shadows of Existence

So today is my birthday...my fifty first. It's a beautiful day meteorlogically and metaphorically speaking and I am alive, clean, sober, unincarcerated, have a roof over my head, food in the fridge, have a car in the driveway and so forth....so on...blah, blah.

Think I'll stop at that....and think of all of those who have none of those....

When it rains....

My luck has turned from bad to really, really sucky. I was informed that the investors at GiveClicks.com took heavy losses on another venture and have pulled funding and handed everyone pink slips with no severence, no warning, no nothing and that I won't be paid effective immediately. Great, they were my sole source of income and I have less than $100 to my name and have a stack of bills already late and more due on the 1st. Not sure what to do, not much to do other than start beating the streets for work I guess.

Great timing huh?

Waitin on a Train...

Today I met with a social worker at the VA for my final step in qualifying for the 12 week substance abuse intensive outpatient program and she interviewed my about my life and substance abuse history and I told her of my five 28 day inpatient treatments, use history of every substance, periods of use for each, method of use for each, family history, marital history, employment history, medical hsitory, nonsubstance addictive behavior history and so forth, so on. Needless to say she determined me "qualified" for admission into the program and scheduled me to begin treatment on September 14th which will be about 45 days after I first sought help for my problem and 30 days after my last use. As a lifelong addict, I'm used to waiting. Addicts are always waiting as Lou Reed so aptly chronicled in his song "I'm Waiting For My Man".

I'm waiting for my man
Twenty-six dollars in my hand
Up to Lexington, 125
Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive
I'm waiting for my man

Hey, white boy, what you doin' uptown?
Hey, white boy, you chasin' our women around?
Oh pardon me sir, it's the furthest from my mind
I'm just lookin' for a dear, dear friend of mine
I'm waiting for my man

Here he comes, he's all dressed in black
PR shoes and a big straw hat
He's never early, he's always late
First thing you learn is you always gotta wait
I'm waiting for my man

Up to a Brownstone, up three flights of stairs
Everybody's pinned you, but nobody cares
He's got the works, gives you sweet taste
Ah then you gotta split because you got no time to waste
I'm waiting for my man

Baby don't you holler, darlin' don't you bawl and shout
I'm feeling good, you know I'm gonna work it on out
I'm feeling good, I'm feeling oh so fine
Until tomorrow, but that's just some other time
I'm waiting for my man

So, you see, I'm used to waitin...

Funny how the phone stops ringing....

It's been a bit more than a week now since I've gone very public about my struggles and I noticed today how much less my phone has rung and I kind of chuckled a bit. The old using friends have now all found out that I'm clean and no longer have anything to offer them and their lack of calls are welcome. It's an unwritten law and fairly understood among users that when one gets clean that the others leave them alone. It's a mix of wanting that person to succeed as they wish they could and an inherint distrust of their former fellow user...it's just the way it goes. Once fast friends through thick and thin, through the daily hustle to keep everything together and everyone dosed simply disappear off the face of the earth. There are remnants of their existence around that I am still finding around the house....a G-bong made out of a soda bottle under the sink or a lone CFM shoe under the bed but they've all scurried off and found another place to get high or another buddy to fix with who will listen to their babbling story of regret, remorse and justification.

It's not just them though...it's all the others who I knew in my "other" life...the business contacts and the non-using friends. Those are the ones who I can only assume feel betrayed by my revelations and to those all I can say is I'm sorry but I didn't become an addict just yesterday. I've been one since I was 12, long before I met you and I've never hid this fact from any of you and quite to the contrary have always been very upfront about it. Did you think I was kidding? Do my open discusssions about my situation embarass you? Make you uncomfortable? Make you want to distance yourself from me? It's ok if they do...distance away if you must but I'm still here, still me...just clean now...not long to you perhaps but to me 10 days is like 10 years.

The Ghosts that Haunt my Soul....

It's early Sunday morning and I'm alone with my cat in the Urban Abode less than 48 hours since attempting to check myself into the psych ward at the VA hospital and being turned away...if that wasn't the ultimate rejection I don't know what is. I guess insane people don't know that they are huh?? It's now one week since I last injested any illicit chemicals and my brain is starting to thaw out and is oozing sorrows of a lifetime onto my floor and I lack a mop adequate enough to to sop them all up. So I've been sleeping on the floor surrounded by these puddles of pain...rolling around in them...feeling their cold wetness...reliving the nightmares over and over again...gonna get out of here...anywhere but here.

Nationwide Sober Living Home and Recovery Resource - Virtual Tours, Brochures, 3D Maps, and More...

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Book, Addicted Like Me, A Mother Daughter Story of Substance Abuse and Recovery

Book, Addicted Like Me, A Mother Daughter Story of Substance Abuse and Recovery

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Surrender To Win Is Just Not My Style...

The concept that an addict must first surrender in order to win goes against every cell in my body to the very core of my being yet here I sit once again beaten down, in poor health, alone in my pit of demoralization and depression. Unable to stop but likewise unable to go one more day as it's been these past four months since my relapse into darkness. I drove myself to the VA Hospital a few weeks ago to start the process of getting help. The paperwork was easy but the wait for treatment was almost a month and I started it two days ago with a physical, meeting with a dietician, labwork and on Monday I meet with the folks in the mental health clinic to start treatment for what I already know is my diagnosis....polysubstance addiction, ADHD, depression and PTSD...quite a cocktail to drink on a daily basis but it's been my morning coffee now for decades.

This will be my sixth full scale attempt at treatment in the past 25 years.

Crossroads

Today I'm going to seek treatment for my addictions (again) at the VA Hospital. Here we go again, another surrender, another failure, another shame. It's hard to admit after all of my former attempts but it is what it is and to live in denial any longer would be futile insanity. Another turning point, another fork in the road, another decision.

Nolo Contendere...I do not wish to contend

It's a 100 degree plus early Friday afternoon, listening to Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" and having a light lunch of Saltines and black cherry soda and watching Juliet trash yet another catnip mouse and roll around on the oriental in the kitchen. The past ten days or so have mostly been spent laying on my bed watching the fan go round under the dim red light with towels shoved in any cracks between the blinds and window frames. A lot of sweat, a lot of regret, not much use for fear anymore...it serves no purpose...not much left to be afraid of anyway. There was a double murder earlier this week four doors down and when the ghettobird illuminated my bedroom in the middle of the night I simply rolled over and put a pillow over my face...Nolo Contendere...Nolo Contendere...

100 Days of Lost Divinity

Took a turn off the 202 at Priest on Friday evening March 27th while on the phone with Cam who I informed that I was off on yet another mission. Eight months clean, sober and as sane as I had been in years yet very much insane and with full forethought and malice made a beeline to where I knew I could score and use with impunity....and did just that. I had told myself that it would just be one night, one last dance with a mistress of 35 years....a mistress that took my virginity at the age of 12. More later after I get her out of my veins but just had to make a public admission to document the moment of clarity and surrender...one more time.

I have all these brushes...

I have these paint brushes hanging on my wall over my desk back in the office...some are used and have paint residue on them and others are new and unused...all different sizes and shapes...some flat bristle...some round. I stare at them sometimes and look upon them as the many things I do to occupy my time while I wait...one for my CPL Fellowship...one for my work with Alwun House...one for The Icehouse...one for my cat...one for my friend Barry...one for my probation officer...one for my photography...one for GiveClicks.com...one for the urban abode and on and on and on and on, so forth, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

Busy little brushes they are....all lined up in a modicum of order...each with their own place...own color...own spot on the palate...each serving to sop up time like bread in gravy while I wait...

The problem resides in the fact that I have no clue what I'm waiting for...but I'm waiting just the same...the other shoe dropped years ago so that's not it...nope...it's something else.

Bad luck? Success? Fame? Fortune? Love? Lust? Ripped through all those like a box of Kleenex when you have a cold many years ago....there they are crumpled up in the corner over there...see them all?

Death? Naw..."Keef" & the Cockroaches got a running bet to see who's last left alive and I'm holding their bets so that's not it either...shit!

Waiting, longing, wishing and hoping only work well when you know what it is you're waiting for and when you don't it's just this hole in your gut...a tear that runs down your cheek at night and rolls into your ear...

The Razor's Edge...

I'm currently reading W. Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge" again for the first time in probably about 30 years and finding myself identifying greatly with both the young protagonist "Larry" as well as the older, wordly yet disingeuine "Elliott Templeton" as if I'm Larry trapped in Elliott's life. My life right now; while on a truly positive track for the first time in 38 years, if ever, is continually hampered and haunted by the past in very real and profound ways on a daily basis; the specifics of which are ancillary to the core of the conundrum I find myself in.

It just seems that with every step I take in a positive direction I am pulled back two or more steps as the result of some misstep(s) of my past life and the situation is frustrating at the very least and at times quite maddening in cause and effect. At first and even second glance it would seem that I will be stuck in this situation for the rest of my life and that I will never be able to climb out of the karmic hole I've dug and thrown myself into and that I may as well just toss dirt over myself and and make it my literal as well as figurative grave and give up yet the changes I've been through to date are preventing me from doing so. I've never been a quitter in my life yet I've never really completed anything for that matter either. I've been paying for my entire life by cashing yesterday's checks by funding them with tomorrow's promises and now that I've abruptly ceased doing so the caboose of my "train" is catching up with the engine by slamming into one freight car at a time over and over again....bam, bam, bam!

I don't know how many more freight cars there are left separating the caboose from the engine but I do know in the core of my being that I must keep a deathgrip on the handbrake of the engine as I quite clearly see the end of the tracks leading over the precipice of a bottomless chasm into which my train will surely catapult into and burst into flames should I ever go back onto the track my life was dead set upon a very short seven months ago...

The cock crows thrice and other tests....

I'm in a very strange, almost surreal space right now and I feel as if something is testing me hard and around every corner. It's as if my moral character is on trial and on the witness stand and it's being cross examined by a very contemptuous and crafty prosecutor who's throwing 100 mph curveballs directly at my head in rapid succession. I also feel that it's no coincidence that my confirmation name within the Roman-Catholic faith of my childhood is Peter, first of the twelve apostles who was later to deny Jesus three times before the cock crowed three times before dawn.

Without going into great specific details I'll just touch upon a series of events that occured yesterday that have me wrestling with myself over moral issues. The first of which is that I discovered through some investigative legwork of a friend who it was that burglarized my home twice this month and stole several laptops, what's left of my guitar collection as well as some treasured and irreplaceable family heirlooms. I know for a fact it was a person who was doing some work here at my "urban abode" as I heard and recognized his voice on a voicemail he left on my friend's cell phone in responce to my friend's email sent on the one guitar that this person was attempting to sell online. My dilemma comes into play because I know this person is going through a very painful trial right now with a terminally ill spouce being removed off life support today and being allowed to pass. Does this justify this person to break into my house and steal family treasures of extremely sentimental value that I had been saving to pass down to my son? Obvioulsly not but it does cause me great internal struggle about having told my discovery to the detective assigned to my case yesterday. I was very upset with the fact that I was violated by a person that was hired and paid to do work in my home and who took items of such personal value to me yet conflicted and moved to tears with feelings of understanding and deep compassion for someone who is under the great emotional distress of having to literally disconnect a spouce from life suppport and I am still struggling within myself over this situation although I intellectually know what is right and what is wrong and that I did the right thing by giving this information to the detective to investigate.

The other test that presented itself very vividly to me yesterday was being made aware of a friend who was in the depths of methamphetamine withdrawl which is a living hell that I've had to experience more times than I care to recall in my life and was seriously dope sick and in need of a fix but broke and no means to "get well" other than to resort to selling her body which she would have done in order to get what she needed so I asked her this question "Do you want to get clean or are you just out?" and the answer was "Just out" and although I know it was the wrong thing to do I wound up giving this person enough money to get well and spared her the indignation of selling herself. I don't abide by the "tough love" philosophy as I've been on the receiving end of that doctrine and it doesn't get anyone closer to surrender, it just makes them do more degrading things in order to get well and cause the cycle of guilt, shame and remorse to start all over again...lather, rinse, repeat. I know all too well that nobody's ready to clean up until they're ready and I sense this person is close but not quite at that point so she would have "gotten well" one way or another without my intervention and that's a fact but I do struggle with it and actually came very fucking close to doing some up with her myself last night and took off out of her parking lot like a bat out of hell with my "hand wet on the wheel" as in the song Radar Love and locked myself up in my little house down here in the hood with the bars on the windows and held my little kitten and thanked God or whoever, whatever it is that's throwing these curveballs at me for one more day clean and sober.

That's all for now I guess, just needed to get this out so I can get back to the many tasks at hand and let things shake out the way they will shake out and be glad that I have such "moral dilemmas" in my heart today for not too long ago I would have handled these very same situations much differently. A very short seven months ago I would have hired a few goons, gone to this guy's house, kicked in his door and his face, taken my shit back then gone to my other friend's house bought and sexually abused her body and then done the dope with her and that's all there is to it....

Violation & Solitude

It's Valentine's Day and since my last post my home was burglarized twice and that's never happened to me before and it has left me wanting very little to do with people and I find myself in a very solitary mode and withdrawing from socialization more and more with each passing day. The violation of coming home to finding my back window smashed out and muddy footprints on my pillow and much treasured, irreplaceable personal items missing has been devastating. This little house down here and the few things that I have left to show for my 50 years on Earth mean so very much more than merely "possessions" to me....I lost most of my "possessions" many years ago and every single thing that I have left, which, is not much are treasures to me and the thief stole things like my son's first guitar that was a gift from a very dear friend of mine and my last bass that was a gift to me from another friend that was the last icon from my decade in the music industry, my grandfather's pocket watch and my father's WWII Army Air Corps pilot's wings. It's as if my very DNA was taken from me and I am saddened and angred beyond description yet I realize that they are most likely gone forever and I have to accept it and continue on and not allow it to dissuade me from continuing along this new path I'm on.

The clock just struck twelve....

...and with that I just crossed the 6 month hurdle mark on this trip I've been on drug free for the first time in 38 years of living hell. I don't know where this path will will lead me down the road, all I know is that so far this has been one hell of an adventure filled with "highs" so much higher than I ever got from using and that's no bullshit. Look, if there ever was any addict out there that stuck it out through thick and thin it's me. I took it past the divorces, bankruptcy, lost careers, jails, rehabs, halfway houses, being robbed, beaten, shot at and stabbed to the very brink of insanity and death many, many times in my life. I have been legally declared as being "unrehabilitatable" and I am here to say that there is no such thing and that I am living testament to that it is indeed possible for anyone to:

1) To restore to good health or useful life, as through therapy and education.
2) To restore to good condition, operation, or capacity.
3) To reinstate the good name of.
4) To restore the former rank, privileges, or rights of.

So, if anyone out there who may stumble upon this blog post is having a hard time believing that it can be done and is stuck in the depths of the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization which was my daily existence for very long, very hard 38 years I'm here to tell you that it can be done! It's not easy, in fact, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and I have to do it over and over again every damned day but it's starting to get a bit easier to do with every passing day that goes by.....one day at a time.