One More Time: I Love You

Up until now, I've been working on this journal from a mental blueprint--the same sort of quasi-outlining I employ with everything I do.

Call it another symptom of my controlling/perfectionist streak--if that is the case, it's a symptom I'm thankful to be aware of at this point.

Awareness, after all, is a powerful thing; the ways it comes to us are mysterious, ambiguous, amorphous. But in the end, when we know it's there, it's voice is a pure voice that tells us no lies. In that way, awareness is a lot like love--in that way, awareness is love. And while it is always from a place of ignorance that our greatest injustices make themselves known, the possibility of awareness is always present if we are brave enough, strong enough and fortunate enough to welcome and keep it.

Awareness is always shining, even when we can't yet see it--we are all promised the potential of awareness. Just as, even during the pitch black of night, we are promised the coming of the sun. In our hearts we know it'll be there for us in the morning when we're ready for it to rise.

Yep.

I'm going to allow myself to derail here for a bit, if you haven't already noticed.

This is not the next topic or idea I had "planned" to work on--as a matter of fact, this entry will touch on several topics that I will return to later (the relationships between love/acceptance and awareness/ignorance, for example)--but it's the entry that's coming out of my fingers as we're sharing this moment together.

It's an entry for the ending of this year and the beginning of a new one. A new year, a year of moving on as we all do--a year that does not mark a new life, but a new awareness towards an old one.

So strap in folks, as I've strapped myself in here, with my orange juice and my cigarettes close at hand. You can move your chairs closer to me for this one, if you'd like: for while all of these entries are for me, about me, this one is for you as well. About you.

This is a thank you to the ones I'm fortunate enough to be thanking. And so, yes, this' gonna be a long one.

So, please, move your chair in a little closer to me. Get comfy. And let's share another moment, you and I.

Saying that it took 26 years for me to realize that I'm alive may be a bit too maudlin or melodramatic for even my own tastes; so, I'll settle for the less epic but still entirely horrible scope of justifiable truth--for those 26 years I spent the lion's share of my time and energy running away. I ran away into songs and stories, into make believe and making due with the things I didn't know how to change--all the things that, ultimately, I didn't believe could be changed.

And yes, I ran away into booze. As time stretched out, I ran away into those bottles until my legs were too tired for leaving and I was too lost to find my way out even if I had the strength for walking.

Over a life time of drinking, over the past five years since my father passed and my drinking escalated, over these last two years when my rampant alcoholism crushed out nearly every spark of my essence, I existed in a state of ignorance. Imprisoned, I remained ignorant to myself as a man, as an artist, as an alcoholic and as a person who loves and can receive love--I remained emotionally stunted, my vision narrowed to the point of blindness, my ears deaf to anything I did not want to (or, more so than that, at that time could not) accept.

Acceptance, the ability to comprehend what is and is not "right" for oneself and for others, sets the tone for the development of a person's inner world. It lays down the fundamental basics of not only who that person is in the present, but the parameters determining who they can be further down the line.

Consequently, this capacity for awareness also plays a defining role in that person's ability to develop relationships with others--and of the quality of these relationships.

Over all the years of my drinking, I never accepted my alcoholism. Over time, as it happens with all alcoholics, I no longer liked what it did to me--the sort of sub-human creature it would make me into, by way of my distorted thoughts and distraught actions.

But accept my alcoholism? Confront it? I could never stare my addiction straight in the eye without reserving the right to blink, the right to look away and stare into some distant, empty corner. My way was the way of running away, and so sometimes this empty space would be a song or a story--and that's horrible enough, an injustice enough to those things--but most times this corner was a person who cared for me. I'd run away into them to escape myself and then wonder, usually when drunk and belligerent, why that wasn't enough to take the weight off of my heart.

While my friends and loved ones could look at me and see a person they cared for, a person with traits or qualities that they respected or that resonated with them, I could not look them in the eye and honestly accept or reciprocate those things. I tried to, I wanted to; but in their eyes I saw my own and in my eyes I saw that need to run away.

Three weeks ago, I went down to Ol' Kentucky to spend some time getting to know my uncle, his family and my aunt and her significant other. It would seem appropriate, within the context of this event, for me to have used the word "reconnect"--that I spent a week "reconnecting" with my family. But that term, as correct as it may seem, would only be appropriate if we were talking about someone other than myself.

There was never a real connection there--aside from familial ties and holiday pleasantries, there was nothing present to reestablish.

Hell, I was never able to completely love or accept myself. The friends who knew me best, the ones I spent the most time with, were always kept on the other side of the barrier I put up between myself and my addiction; between myself and the world as it is.

In light of living with this, living like this, what was family? What does that word even mean? And does that word exist as anything other than just a word--did it have some meaning besides what the dictionary tells us?

Did love?

How about life?

Anything?

For a very long time, my answer to all of this was no. Of course not. Family are just people you see during the holidays, love is something that I wanted to feel but couldn't believe in and life is only a jail sentence.

I couldn't feel love because it did not exist--not in the sense that the songs and stories tell us. That wonderful, energizing, transforming force--that undying light.

That love, all of that talk, was just a fable--a story to make children smile--and it only existed as an abstract concept.

As you can tell, and as I've mentioned in an earlier entry, every definition of love that I'd ever felt or intuited before confronting my alcoholism and myself came with the cost of promised and acceptable pain. This is how I came to view love as the child of two volatile, unaccountable alcoholics--this is how I needed to perceive love to be able to love my parents in any capacity. And this is the love that I lived, that I considered to be valid; I carried it within myself and into every friendship and relationship I've ever had.

That's a sad thing to type. A sad thing to accept. It's not that I offered these people that I loved, that I loved in my way, a box of nothing. If that were true, I don't think there would be so many tears that come along with my looking back.

What I offered time and again was an incomplete gift; a story half-written, a song half sung. There were makings of something meaningful there, bits and pieces that felt right or rang true, but there was no certainty to any of it. None of the confidence that comes with the finishing of something, of completing it as best you can and knowing that you did the best you could.

I offered love, my incomplete version of love, and accepted love as I could then. But there was no true synthesis between the two--my version of love expected too much and was never satisfied with what it received in turn. I was inconsolable and so was my sad version of love.

The knowing that there were fundamental pieces missing, and the knowing that I did not know how to put them in place, frustrated me. My childhood depressed and damaged me and all the alcohol enraged me. I'd lash out at the ones I loved, casting the blame on them with drunken words and drunken actions; I was staring into that empty corner again.

An empty corner is a fine place for an incomplete person to bide in--a fitting place for the undone. But when that corner became my life and not my illusory refuge, when Hell plainly revealed itself to be Hell and not a vision of salvation, I began to make the first stumbling steps towards the mirror. There were no other eyes left to blame for my life, there were no other eyes left to see my own in--there were only my own, and this was fine; looking into those eyes without blinking was a duty long overdue.

Going down to Kentucky was very meaningful for me, very special. It was wonderful to begin to know my family as people, not as Uncle David, or Aunt Cathy, or Cousin Hannah--but as actual people; as Dave, as Cathy; to lay aside the masks I was taught to wear around others by my life's circumstances and by myself. To let myself be known as myself and to know others in that same honest, real way.

Essentially, to look myself in the eye as I looked into their own.

Once awareness comes to us, once it comes to us fully realized and we look into its eyes and see that they're our own, there is no going backwards. Somethings, once done, can't be undone. The same can be true of understanding; somethings once we know them, once we feel them, can never be unlearned. They can be disputed, we can feel hesitation and uncertainty at times, but that awareness stays with us like the sun. It'll always rise in the morning--all we have to do to remember that is look out the window and see ourselves in the light.

I can see myself now. And I can see more than myself. I can look at a friend and smile, knowing that they may be here forever or gone tomorrow, but that either way we're well met on this road.

I am an alcoholic, and being able to accept that as true lets me know in my heart that so much of what I spent my life running from was not. Alcohol is a mind-altering substance; it can be said, if speaking poetically, that it also alters our hearts. And both the mind and heart of one who is young is as pliable as sculpting putty and as fragile as a breath.

I fell into a pit very young and lived there very long. I tried to decorate it as best I could, inject a little life into all the death, but a pit is a pit no matter what's hanging on the rock walls.

And a pit is a prison, lets not mince words. It's a lonely hole. Some folks may come and visit, but when they've had enough of the dark they know the way back out. They're only visiting, after all; they don't own the hole, they don't live in it as we do.

The fact that they come back after their first taste of this dismal place should mean the world to us--and, sad to say with what comes next, in many ways it does--but all the still it makes us angry to see these people come and go.

Free.

And so, even though we love them as best we can, we want them to stay. We want them to stay with us very badly, down in this horrible hole.

After a time words and sentiments become grasping, desperate hands--and we drag down the ones we love. Because for us, leaving is not an option. What they are capable of doing, venturing out beyond the pit we call life, is not within our power. The sun is there, it's still shining, the promise of awareness is there, still shining, but our eyes aren't ready for it just yet. That light would dissolve us, like a ghost, like the revenant spirit haunting our own lives that we've become.

What I'm saying is that an addict in active addiction cannot stop for themselves. At least this addict couldn't.

No matter how much the ones who loved me wanted me to, no matter the expectations, the bonds of love and friendship, a drug addict cannot stop for themselves.

And I would not have either, if it weren't for the ones in my life who I love--for the remembering of them, as best I could in my addiction; for the memory of what they meant to me whispering beneath the alcohol. For the beginnings of acknowledging that time-honored recovery adage, "We don't just hurt ourselves with our addiction."

Each one of you, in your own way, gave me a two-fold gift when you gave me your friendship and love: you also gave me the potential for awareness, you gave me the motivation to move towards sobriety. Your lives having touched mine planted the seeds, sowed the soil alongside time, and enabled more than a damaged, depressed drug addict to grow out of this soul.

And now, sober, it is my responsibility to myself to maintain this gift. To play every card in my hand to keep it. I do this for myself: I have no life otherwise. No sanity. But is that selfish? I don't believe so. Because, in keeping myself, I'm able to share myself with others--with all of you, who shared so much with me.

Thank you.

For those who love me now, thank you.

For those who loved me then, thank you.

For the ones who shared thoughts and words with me, thank you.

For the ones who shared tears and dreams with me, thank you.

For the ones I could never break or wear down, but who I hurt all the same, thank you.

For the ones I drove away as I drowned my own heart, thank you.

For the ones realizing now that they never really knew me, thank you.

For the ones who know now as they knew then, that what they knew was that they knew me all too well, thank you.

For the ones who call me an old friend in this new day, thank you.

For the ones who call me family, from near and from far, thank you.

For the one who called me her first love, thank you.

For all the past, thank you. And thank you for all the future. But mostly, thank you for the now.

Thank you.

My name is Zane Neumann, I'm an alcoholic with tears in his eyes. And both of those things are A-OK.

Dedication

When my drinking was at its worst, I could not drive past a bar, state store or beer distributor without--at the very least--gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter or clamping one claw-like hand down on my knee.

And there were many times when that was my reaction.

However, as I made a point of typing, that reaction was the "very least" of all possible reactions I could and would take. More often than not, I would end up turning off or doubling back, putting aside whatever plans or commitments I had made that day for another drink, another binge, another round in the ring with self-destruction and shame. And only afterwards, when the bottle was empty and my heart heavy, only after that incredibly strong impulse to drink had passed, could I lament (as best I could, hungover, inebriated or--as it was when my drinking reached its absolute lowest point--neither drunk nor hungover but completely sick and destroyed) the vows I had broken and promises I had swept aside.

An example of this: about a year and half ago or so it became necessary for my grandmother to move to Louisville, Kentucky, where she could live in a facility better suited to caring for her needs. Before arriving at Louisville, she spent a small piece of time in the geriatric ward of the hospital I work at due to some minor injuries and psychological issues.

My uncle David from Louisville came to visit, to check on his mother and to establish and then finalize the financial and practical elements of her transitioning from York, Pennsylvania to Louisville, Kentucky. David is exceedingly talented when it comes to this sort of thinking and acting, and I can remember talking with him and his wife while they were at the hospital. I can remember David telling me, after overhearing a conversation I had with my grandmother, that I had reminded him of Bernie (my father, his brother, now deceased due to alcoholism) in that moment. Very apropos, for that tender reason as well as one other: I was hungover that day.

Later, my uncle John--who lives in the area--came to the hospital to visit his mother. I was on duty that day, and so I headed up to the third floor to speak with him. We talked about moving my grandmother's packed up belongings out of the apartment she had lived in. I told John that of course I'd be there to help, and I sincerely meant it at that time. Why would I not want to help my uncle take care of his mother and my grandmother's personal possessions?

It should come to no surprise to anyone reading this, though it certainly surprised me then, that I did not help my uncle John with the moving endeavor.

By the time I arrived at the assisted living community, red eyed and hungover, the room was empty: the walls devoid of paintings and pictures, the furniture and boxes already whisked away. My uncle, his sons and whoever else had helped with the loading of bubble-wrapped packages and duct-taped boxes into trucks were long gone.

I walked outside, lit a cigarette and drove home, feeling ashamed and disgusted with myself. How could I have essentially stood up my own family? How could I have done that when, in a very real sense, I've got a little less family to stand up than most of my friends? What the hell was I doing, what was I thinking anymore to do this shit?

I can't remember if I drank again that same night--but I did drink again.

Obviously, I drank again. And when I did, as it always was and always will be for me, the most poignant and immediate response to this act was the quadrupling of all my life's problems.

The way that addiction rewrites the human mind is an insidious, deliberate process: our virtues, higher thinking and reasoning, traits and talents, our sexuality, our basic needs for food and water--all of these things become secondary to the consuming impulse to drink.

It becomes an obsession: when we're not drinking, all we can think of is drinking. When we are drinking, all we want to do is stop. And, caught within that fruitless cycle, all of these thoughts really amount to only so much nothing--we continue to drink despite them (or in spite of them) because drinking is the priority of the mind in active alcohol addiction.

And yet, there is something more to it than just that. More to this concept of obsession that walks hand in hand with addiction.

Addiction does not discriminate: it does not care about age, ethnicity, intellect, skin color, hair color or social standing. With that said, it does not surprise me that addiction runs rampant amongst the artistic and intellectual--that the strong currents of dedication (otherwise known as obsession) can prove to be so susceptible to being diverted into a new, skewed direction.

I have met many artistic, creative, thoughtful individuals over the course of my journey through rehab, AA and other sobriety/recovery groups. I have met fellow writers and musicians, fellow singers, I have met painters, dancers and teachers. The ideological background of these people has been varied enough to include, to list only a selection of principles, fundamental Christians, non-affiliated Christians, Humanists, Agnostics/Atheists, Native American traditionalists and unclassified free-thinkers.

The thread that unites all of these creative people, despite their religious beliefs or principles, is the very thread of creation: of understanding, either on top or underneath, that creative people have a fluid nature to their character that is essential to being creative. I think that it's fair to say that, because of our nature as artists, we are more inclined to descend into full blown addiction while we remain uneducated and unaware.

When beginning to write, a writer will write the type of stories that initially inspired him to pick up a pen or sit in front of a keyboard. A singer will emulate the vocal style, genre and song themes of the singers who influenced him to stand behind a microphone. The same is true of painters, dancers and musicians. The precursor to interpretation is imitation.

But over time, over hours of effort, we begin to develop a sense of "self" within our respective form of expression that fits us--that is us. We become tethered to a general sense of what we are, what we do, by a strand of creative integrity the length of which is determined by our own tastes and lives.

For example: I could not foresee myself writing a rap/hip-hop song any time soon (the back of my mind even whispers "or while my heart's beating") and yet...I have nothing against hip-hop that is honest and meaningful. As a matter of fact, I respect and enjoy this sort of hip-hop. It's just not a form of expression that feels valid to me, for me--it's not who I am, it's not what I feel.

And yet we do allow incredible, expansive growth take place within the parameters of what we do feel: there is music I listened to and performed when I was younger that no longer resonates with me as it did then, there is music that resonates with me now more than I ever thought it would. Because these are the ways that my mind and heart have changed, the direction its grown in over the years and all of the trial and error.

Sometimes this kind of shift can be painful or surprising--art can be pain. And it's for this reason that I believe artistically inclined people fall so fully into the entrapment of alcoholic self-delusion. Through our efforts in art, we learn that suffering is a great tool for fertilizing the soul. We become intensely aware of these rifts taking place within our creative being and so, when these same sort of rifts begin to occur in our collective being, we apply that same sort of tenacious mindset to adjusting to and then living with the changes.

After all, if you had told a Megadeth-Slayer-and-Testament-listening-to, 16 year old version of myself that in ten years his version of hard-rock/heavy-metal would have just as much to do with traditional country and outlaw country as it did with Metallica, he would have just stared at you disbelievingly--as if you were speaking a foreign language or, even more so than that, were some strange breed of insect whose mind could have no way of understanding the intricacies of his own.

Dedication then, dedication now: the length of my rope has changed over the years, but not the essential grounds it's tethered to.

As I've said before, there is dedication at work within addiction. As I've said before, it's not just about punching in at 9 and leaving at 5. There's dedication at work when you begin to dry heave while singing, rush upstairs and away from your friends, proceed to cough blood up into your cupped hands, stare at it in disbelief...and then simply wash it away.

There's dedication at work there--self-delusion as well.

But self-delusion is also an important part of the foundation of an artist--of the creation of a person who creates.

No one begins "good" at anything--and if it wasn't for that streak of self-delusion, none of us would progress past the point of novice or hobbyist. No one, ever, would have published a book or released a song or painting to the public if they didn't have that internal voice telling them "This is good, this means something" while their parents softly encourage them to have something fall back on and acquaintances remind them not to quit their day jobs.

And, even when the tune of those around this budding creative person has changed, it is still this powerful, internal voice that holds the most sway over that person's conceptualization of the importance of what they are doing.

It's a voice that, in regards to my own art, became misplaced due to my alcoholism. It did not become lost: it existed as a twisted version of itself, no longer bolstering my opinion of songs or stories, but instead whispering the importance of the bottle or the can that the rest of my brain was telling me was so very essential to me now. Not lost then, but certainly not found: certainly not sound.

In this way, there is a strong parallel between addiction and art, between obsession and dedication.

There is a world of difference between my staying up all night drinking and my staying up all night working on a song or a story--a universe of difference. And yet...there is that similarity there, a resemblance that can't quite be called a parallel, but may be called a reversed reflection. Two pictures, side by side, one in full color and crisp, the other blurred nearly to the point of being unrecognizable. But similar, all the same.

I suppose, in closing, we should always remain aware of whether or not the things that we love, love us back. If they fulfill and fill us, or drain and destroy us. If the coin in our hand is showing heads or tails and if we're present enough to even tell the difference.

As always, my name is Zane Neumann and I am an alcoholic.

Enough: Part 1

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Jon R. Weinberg's medical analysis on alcoholic pathology:


Why Do Alcoholics Deny Their Problem?


Introduction


The denial system of a person with alcoholism is notoriously well-known to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the problem. The individual will not accurately report the quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption. The adverse behavioral consequences of drinking will be minimized, explained away, or denied completely. For example, violent fights with a spouse may be described as minor arguments, or explained as due to the mate's bad temper, or simply ignored altogether. From the standpoint of the helping professional or friend or relative, the alcoholic's denial is usually perceived as lying, a transparent dodge to escape responsibility for his harmful actions. The result more often is hostility, as people generally have an intense dislike for lying and clarify the factors which produce and maintain the denial system, so that others may react helpfully rather than rejecting the alcoholic.

Three components may be identified as critical in generating the denial system, all of which are interdependent and interact with one another to maximize their impact. For convenience, however, they will be discussed separately under the headings Cultural History, Social Environment, and Intrapsychic Consistency.


Cultural History


Alcoholic behavior has been described throughout recorded history. As with mental illness, the rationale used by people over the centuries to explain grossly inappropriate behavior involved possession by demons (including demon rum) or similar forces of evil. The problem was then dealt with by punishing the individual whose mind was possessed. The 19th century saw the beginning of a shift in attitude toward those called insane, but to this day a social stigma is clearly evident for this group. The problem with alcoholism is still more complex as a function of the enormous cultural ambivalence toward drinking. One of the dominant institutions of our society, organized religion, has influenced us so powerfully against alcohol as an evil this this century saw a successful attempt to legally proscribe its use on a national scale. The failure of Prohibition reflects the eternally continuing importance people attach to using mind-altering chemicals.

The great majority of people today do use alcoholic beverages and are culturally endorsed for doing so in their own peer group and by enormous mass media pressure exerted by the liquor industry. At the same time, however, our history is one of applying a powerful moral and social stigma to those whose drinking produces sufficiently undesirable behavior to lead to the label "alcoholic." In short, we reinforce drinking but vilify victims of alcoholism. In spite of a few decades of trying to shift social attitudes from a view of the alcoholic as "an evil person who should be punished" to "a sick person who should be treated," this transition has barely begun. The mentally ill have a century advantage over alcoholics in this respect and are by no means free of stigma. (Note that wealthy people who act crazy are usually sent to a "rest farm" in the country or a general hospital to recuperate from a "nervous breakdown" or from "overwork," while the poor end up in state hospitals labelled schizophrenic.)

In brief, alcoholics have historically been regarded as being evil, morally and/or mentally inferior, and thus subject to social punishments -- disapproval, rejection, ostracism. Who wants to be placed in the category "alcoholic"? Nobody! This is how cultural factors set the stage for denial.


Social Environment


The section above noted that drinking is a highly prevalent behavior in our society, with the combination of social custom and advertising glamour of alcohol use as an essential part of the "good life." For most people, drinking is a generally harmless activity secondary to various social occasions. For perhaps 8% to 10% of those who drink, however, alcohol use slowly shifts from a harmless to a harmful activity. The person's behavior gradually becomes increasingly inappropriate to the occasion. For example, a holiday gathering of a large family may be spoiled by his loud tirade directed at a sibling for some alleged old injustice. Perhaps an embarrassing scene occurs at a neighborhood party when she propositions her best friend's husband in front of everyone. Or again, he has the boss over to dinner hoping to win a promotion and ends up by telling him exactly where to go.

What will be the normal consequences of the undesirable behaviors sited? The answer is either nothing at all or at worst an admonishment the next day by the spouse. The latter may even suggest the desirability of drinking less, but the family or the friends and even the boss are very unlikely to say a single word to the individual (although they may be gossiping freely elsewhere.) The budding alcoholic who may remember the incident fuzzily or not at all (a "black out") is unlikely to accept the mate's version as accurate without other confirmation, and may impugn her motives or otherwise rationalize it away. Faced with hostility from the drinker and lack of support from relevant others, the spouse most often takes the path of least resistance and resentfully tolerates his behavior. Worse, she may buy the common idea that his drinking is somehow caused by her allegedly inadequate behavior as a wife. She is even likely to cover up for him by making excuses for his behavior to others, e.g. telling the boss he's home sick with the "flu" instead of a hangover. Thus reality is not being forcibly presented to the individual.

As adverse consequences of drinking gradually multiply, more people are introduced into the picture. A physician, marriage counselor, or clergyman may be consulted at the mate's insistence, after years of increasing family turmoil. What are the chances that alcoholism will be diagnosed and made a central focus? Minimal, as a function of inadequate training in alcoholism plus, often, systematic cultural biases against considering a person alcoholic until the late stages. Physicians may quietly suggest "cutting down" on drinking while writing a prescription for some other sedative drug which potentiates alcohol. Counselors may discuss "improving marital communication" and ignore the drinking as a "mere symptom." Clergymen may press for more regular church attendance and family togetherness. Here, "experts" are saying in effect that the problem is not alcoholism. Furthermore our social system is so structured that the higher the income level the less probably alcoholism will be diagnosed.

In summary, what are all the important people in his life, possibly excepting his mate, most often saying to the person with early-stage alcohol-related problems? Nothing whatever about the harmfulness of his drinking. They may be just plain ignorant about the early stage of alcoholism, believing alcoholics are winos in the gutter, never well-dressed businessmen and housewives; they may be too polite or too fearful of hostile reaction to discuss this socially embarrassing topic with the individual; or they may feel it's none of their business. The result of this innocent but deadly conspiracy of silence in the individual's social environment is to provide extremely fertile soil for denial of reality.


Intrapsychic Consistency


It appears to be a law of human behavior that two directly conflicting beliefs cannot co-exist for very long in one individual. As a person's drinking begins to produce adverse results, such a conflict is created. On the one hand, alcohol has become an important and rewarding component to his life. He likes to drink because it produces unusually good feelings and/or helps shut off bad feelings. On the other hand, reality is relentlessly trying to impose awareness of impaired mate and family relations, work efficiency, etc. At this point, there are only two possible resolutions of the conflict: reject drinking or reject reality. Some in fact do select the former, especially is he is one of the lucky few who has important people, such as family members or helping professionals, confronting him with the connection between drinking and undesirable reality. Many more, unfortunately, begin to reject reality, which is obviously the more likely alternative given the remarkable propensity of humans to rationalize whatever behavior they find highly rewarding.

Is the alibi system of the alcoholic really so different from that of the compulsive smoker who rejects the medical evidence for lung damage, the compulsive eater who says people like her better fat, the compulsive executive with heart disease who insists the corporation would collapse if he didn't put in 16-hour days? All of these people have a specific delusion, a denial of reality, which serves the vital purpose of allowing the desired behavior to continue without overwhelming mental conflict. The primary reason people are sometimes more disturbed by the alcoholic's denial is that his behavior is relatively more harmful to other people, as opposed to being harmful only to himself (which probably also explains their higher recovery rate.)

For the alcoholic, accepting reality is tantamount to working to maintain sobriety, and it is simply unreasonable to expect someone with a profound dependence on a substance to give it up without a struggle. The longer the history of dependence, the worse reality becomes, the more complete the denial must be, and the greater the struggle to modify the process. In the terminal stage, near death from cirrhosis, the alcoholic may deny any history of drinking whatsoever. Such pathetic outcomes can only be prevented by a widespread knowledge of the early symptoms of alcoholism combined with a forceful confrontation with reality by all those deeply concerned with the developing alcoholic. In the early stages, such intervention will lead to a high proportion of successful outcomes.


Summary


The history of moral stigma associated with alcoholism provides the cultural context for denial. The tendency of family, friends and helping professionals to avoid or overlook the issue in dealing with the alcoholic in the earlier stages provides the social environment which permits and encourages denial. The individual's normal tendency to avoid internal conflict fosters denial of unpleasant reality in order to permit the rewards of continued drinking. If the cultural attitudes toward alcoholism are successfully shifted to an illness-without-stigma model; and more importantly, if concerned persons are knowledgeable enough to see alcoholism developing and persistently confront the individual with reality, then far fewer problems will occur with the third, or individual, component. In other words, if the environmental reinforcements for denial are absent, the individual will have little opportunity to successfully generate a denial system. Until those changes occur, we will continue to be frustrated by the stubborn resistance to change of the advanced stage of denial most people associate with the illness of alcoholism.

Whew. That's a mouthful and a work out for the old fingers.

But, all the same, I hope that you can find some new insights into the condition of alcoholism from this article.

I know that I have--and that's why I will be using many elements from within Dr. Weinberg's analysis as a touching point for the next part of this entry.

Wayward And Home

"You don't know anything about yourself. You know that you're an alcoholic...but you don't even know who you are anymore."

This was said to me sometime past midnight on July 1st of this year. It was said by a person I loved dearly and who loved me in turn--a person who knew me in my best times (relatively speaking) and my worst times--a person who, ultimately, knew me.

She knew that whether the sun was shining or the sky was covered in clouds, I was an alcoholic. But believed, for a very long time, that I was trying to be something more. Something resembling the person she had fallen in love with: something alive.

But the truth is, I wasn't trying. I was living in my addiction, not living with it.

I was crying, hurting, begging and pleading--waiting and hoping for some change, some good to come out of the tears and the bottles. My inability to cope with my own life and pain had made me afraid of truly living and so I was staying alive the only way I knew how: with booze and self-deception and secrecy. I'd become stagnant, trapped in an abusive relationship with myself just as my mother had become trapped in one with my father, and no, I was not trying.

I can be honest with myself now, let out a slow breath, and admit that I wasn't. And, aside from my miseries and my drunkenness, I did not know who I was anymore.

I've always been drawn to the arts--I can remember, as far back as Elementary School, feeling a spark whenever I was pulling things out of the creative ether. And the best part of it was, the part that made and still makes it magical, is that I knew these things were coming from me. Not from the teachers, or the books, but from me--they came from inside of myself and that made them very special.

Now, granted, spending years writing (both music and prose) and performing have broadened my perspective on the topic: that some of this magic does come from the outside, that all artistic people absorb the work of others, the works that influence them, and then distill those influences through the prism of their own lives and experiences. But the final, potent part of the process is that act of distillation. Of interpreting and expressing these things in your way, a new way, and then putting them out there for the world. Sharing what others felt and thought before you by way of what you feel and think and then put down on a page or painting, or sculpture or song.

I enjoyed writing and storytelling from an early age, the act of creating make-believe that can be entertaining and meaningful or both, but music was something that I discovered a bit later on. It was during my early teen years, when the combustible components of an alcoholic mother and father were leading me towards the beginning of my own addiction, that I began to recognize the power of music. I was desperate for a voice at this time, a voice that could speak succinctly and be heard above the madness, with no room in between words for disagreement--I wanted to make a statement on things, and have it be known that there could be no swaying my sentiments. I needed a way to chisel my feelings into stone.

Music, to me, is very different from any other art form. I don't see it as something that should be open to interpretation or discussion, or something to be reshaped and given an identity by the minds of those hearing it. I feel this way because, within my own experiences as a musician, I don't believe that music is created with those intentions. Irregardless of how we interpret it, or what we think it means or makes us feel, that song is about something specific--thoughts, but most usually feelings, that someone is conveying to you with their voice and instrument. A song is not a painting of a field of flowers, where each one of us can find a different truth in every stroke of blue and red. A song is a letter: we can choose to interpret what that letter says however we like, but none of it changes what was said, or the intent behind it.

In that way, I view music as art...but not make-believe.

That distinction is why I began to adhere myself to music at the age of 16...as best a 16 year old novice can adhere themselves to anything they'd never done before.

As I began my own habit of drinking, I continued to write, to practice playing the guitar and the bass and the piano, to begin singing upstairs in my room when my father was either out of the house or passed out. And as I dedicated myself to these things, I found that there were people around me doing the same thing. Friends I'd known for a long time had been nurturing their own burgeoning talent, and now we had yet another ground to base our companionship on. And I met new people as well, people I could talk to about songs and stories with carefree, youthful passion.

For a time, I found a safe haven away from my problems at home. Whether it was playing music at a friend's house without fear of condemnation or judgement from my father, or staying up into the early hours of the morning on the phone, piecing together make-believe and my own feelings in the process, these places become sanctuaries for me. For the first time in my life, I began to feel secure, sure of something...and from that security, love began to grow. Love for myself, for what I was doing, as well as love for my friends: even romantic love slowly began to rise up from under the ravaged surface of my healing heart.

But there was a traitor in the midst, someone who could (and in time would) bring the whole works down: me. That traitor was the damaged part of myself: the part of me that had already let alcoholism in, given it permission to enter in the night like a vampire, and now could do little to persuade it into leaving.

Early on, my drinking never impaired my technical progress or the way that the act of artistic expression made me feel. But it was present. In my mind's eye, I can see it now, watching and leering, my custom-tailored addiction, setting up shop and waiting inside of me, nodding along with the music or smiling at the pages written, knowing that in time it would claim them and myself.

I believe this is the case with many alcoholics--that there was a time when we could "handle it," when it seemed to even invigorate us, but the nature of the disease of alcoholism promises us that those days will end. It promises us this very sincerely, but at that early time we are not as acquainted with its voice as we will later become, and we let the words fall on deaf ears. None of us set out in life to be drunks or addicts, and I believe that plays into why even when we are, without a shadow of a doubt we are to everyone around us and to the sanest part of our addled minds, we still find it hard to accept. I'm not an alcoholic, I'm Zane--I love stories and music, I watch westerns and read Stephen King, and I try to be a good person and friend to everyone I love.

There's a crucial point for alcoholics where this mantra of affirmation becomes an obvious plea of denial--it's a point that I know now, after getting sober, after talking and more importantly listening to my friends, that they were all aware of as it was happening. But what could be said? What could be done then, during a time when I would smile in the morning, and drink my beer, and go about my day and my duties with that same smile and a similar beer, move on into night and only then as the moon ran high, once I had my fill of whiskey and cheap wine, would the smile show its true sadness. Then came the rages, the tears, the insanity.

As the timetable behind that process sped up to the point I suffered through during these past two years prior to my getting sober, when I could and usually would be in a state of walking blackout as early as the afternoon, the urgency and alarm my friends felt for me picked up its pace to keep up with my own fevered self-destruction.

I can remember, and I use the term loosely here, a gig my band and I had about a year and a half ago. I drank the night before, during rehearsal the day of, I drank outside in the van when we got to the venue, I drank prior to the set and then immediately after the set. After that, I went to a bar.

I was driven home by a friend that night because I was so drunk the bar management had to kick me out. When I stumbled through the door and to my bed, crying and ashamed, I grabbed the phone and called the woman I loved. I had and still have no idea what time it was, other than knowing that our set had been at 8 pm and that I had spent a substantial amount of time drinking afterwards. Sobbing, I told her that I had fucked up again--that I didn't know why I felt the need to do this to myself, that I didn't know why I couldn't stop anymore. I can't remember much of what she said to me, but I can remember the sound of her voice: sad, hurt, afraid--there was still love there, but it was becoming all the more strained.

I can remember hearing and knowing that, too. Even then, it tore at my heart.

Since I've invested myself into my recovery with an honesty and effort I'd never mustered before in my life, I've kept my eyes, ears and mind open to those that I've met along this road. Invariably, every addict I meet has a life in them when sober, a strength of character that initially astonished me, and now only makes perfect sense. I haven't met a single alcoholic who can't speak passionately about the things they believe in and the things that make them right now and made them wrong then. Despite it being a form of slavery, being a drunk isn't about just punching in at 9 and leaving at 5--there's a twisted form of dedication at work in our minds, and one that usually, when we are sober, can be and has been demonstrated in more productive ways.

But whether we write or sing, dance or paint, our active addiction turns us against ourselves.

The feelings those who love an active addict go through are horrifying ones: as addicts we lose ourselves and all of the wonderful traits that make us who we are to our addiction. It's indescribably painful to watch someone you love go through this: to feel the desire to reach out to them, support them, confront them, but to also be unsure of how to go about it or what the addict's reaction may be. Using my own life as an example, I want to offer strength to anyone out there who may be waiting to have the talk that may save a friend's life.

Please, don't wait.

Your friend is still there, but they're deep inside of a mind that's grown dark and frightened. If your friend is like me, they will argue with you, attempt to bargain, to charm you, or will flat out disregard your concerns. They may say things that they'd never say in their right mind, condemn you for what they're perceiving as an attack, or cry and beg for forgiveness, making promises they desperately mean to keep in that moment but that will be recanted later when their thirsts run high.

All of those reactions are ones that I used myself, when I was in active addiction. And they may be reactions your loved ones use as well. But do it all the same, talk to them all the same--in doing so a seed may be planted. And from that seed, with time and effort, a tree strong enough to support themselves may grow. That seed we're talking about here is really hope after all, and a person with hope is a person capable of great strength and compassion.

In my experiences, and in the stories that have been shared with me by others in recovery, I can see a similar thread of hopeless self-destruction woven through the narrative. Addicts usually have good hearts, we would sacrifice life and limb for the ones we love, we usually try--desperately--to right the wrongs we've done. But, during our time of use, we have a deficiency when it comes to respecting ourselves. We don't know how to apply this same kind of mentality to our own well being--usually because we didn't learn how to do so as children, subsequently we ended up turning to our drug of choice as a replacement for growth and then, as adults, only half grew into ourselves.

Through our experiences in life, we've learned many things: some of them the defense mechanisms necessary for our surviving dysfunctional childhoods. These are things that are very hard to unlearn, but it is necessary to do so to grow into a person capable of self-love and self-respect.

I can remember many miserable conversations over many miserable months, when it had grown apparent to everyone who loved and cared for me that I was in a dire condition, where I would talk as though my life had ended and that my body was simply waiting to die so that it could catch up with the rest of me. I can remember telling people that loved me that I didn't write anymore, I didn't sing or play guitar--that those were childish, foolish things that I had no use for and that they did nothing for me.

Horrible shit to say to anyone who cares for you, certainly. Talk of throwing aside the things that always meant the most to you, the things that you loved doing, as if you were preparing yourself for suicide. But the most frightening thing is that it was all true. I had become so ensnared in my drinking, in wanting to stop but not being able to, and the misery and shame that the condition of late-stage alcoholism shackles to your heart that I could no longer take any enjoyment or fulfillment out of the things that once made me feel alive. If the rest of the band signed us up for a show (as I had absolutely no interest in doing so during those days), I would go and I would sing--I would also be drunk--but I would feel nothing for having done it. I could remember the mechanics of writing and, at times, I would even have ideas for stories that seemed pretty good. But when I would sit down, and try to breathe life into those situations and characters, my creative lungs no longer held enough air to propel the words across the screen.

And now...sobriety. And all the potential that goes along with it.

It was difficult for me at first, and still is at times, to step back into writing and music. In many ways, it's like pulling on a pair of shoes or pants that you're not certain will fit anymore. But I continue to try now, to make an effort and then allow myself to accept whatever feelings the act of creating stirs inside of me. Somethings had to change, some still do, and this concept was frightening and painful for me at the offset. Despite the fact that my drinking was only ever capable of taking away, it gave nothing back for all my years of misspent loyalty, the self-delusion that ran alongside it was comforting.

There are questions now, about whether or not I want to sing what I once sang, or write what I once wrote, but the answers that I'm learning to accept all speak in the same unanimous voice--those things can be whatever I want them to be, whatever I feel that I need. Whatever I feel that is meaningful to me now. What meant something then can mean something again, with a new insight and perspective, and those things that don't, I don't have to carry behind me if I don't wish to.

Besides being a form of expression, art is also a form of freedom. That's something that I can appreciate now and that has never meant more to me.

My name is Zane Neumann, I'm an alcoholic. I've also recorded albums in studios, played shows in front of rooms filled with strangers. I've written stories and smiled, because I enjoyed the act of bringing those characters to life more than I cared about whether or not someone else would appreciate what I was doing. And I'm able to realize now that all of those things can live together inside of me, and be all the richer for it.

Parents, Children And Alcohol: Mom

My mother grew up in Pennsylvania, primarily in the Dover and York areas. She was incredibly creative and thoughtful, though her spontaneous nature never allowed her to apply herself to honing those traits. Instead, she would flit from writing to painting, knitting to designing clothing. But, at least from what I know, there was no sadness or stress in her lack of direction--instead she just moved from one thing to the next, perhaps enjoying that movement more than enjoying the actual doing.

She was a self-titled free spirit and liked going to concerts, hanging out with friends, listening to music-- she lived her life laughing and loving. And, in the days of her young womanhood, when there were no wrinkles at the corners of her eyes or on her heart, I believe that she was.

But even freedom is something that we must work for in life, be aware of and have respect for, and always be vigilant to maintain. Without this kind of loving attention, even freedom will grow stagnant, sour, become the reverse of itself. I used "was" in my above description of my mother, because at this point of her life, at the age of 58 and with atleast half of those years spent in active addiction, her spirit is far from free.

At a relatively young age, my mother and father met. I don't know the specifics of the beginnings of their relationship (there are many closed doors inside an alcoholic home) but I do believe that the love they felt for one another, at least at that point, was as vivid, and powerful and wonderfully consuming as the love we all feel when it's real love.

While they may have met relatively young, they married and had me relatively late, my mother being in her mid thirties when I came into the world.

And, sometime after that, sometime when I was very young, the carefree, fun loving attitude that had carried my mother through her life to that point started to fail her.

There were episodes of periodic (though still detestable and unacceptable) abuse directed at my mother by my father prior to my birth, but the majority of these events came afterwards. Some I was too young to remember, and instead found out about years later, others I can still remember vividly. But, seeing as how I'm focusing on my mother as a young mother, I'll only share one story from that time--one that I was told by my mother when I was in my early teens.

I was very young, my exact age neither she or I know--I may've been 4 or 5 or 6, suffice to say, I have no actual memory of this event. My mother was in the backroom of the house with me, a house that, at that time, she still kept clean and decorated with pillows and blankets she'd make from kits or from her own ideas, laying on a sofa with some of the mentioned pillows laying around her. My father came home, saw her laying there and proceeded to scream that she was in bed with three guys--one of them was black, the other spanish. I suppose this distinction means that, while the white guy she was in bed with would just get a thrashing, there was a special hell in store for the black and spanish gentlemen callers.

My mother was the one who received this special hell. As I said, the white, black and spanish guys (yes, even the white one) my mom was having a tryst with were all pillows. Just pillows.

My dad beat my young mother badly, perhaps this was the first time the abuse escalated to this level, and of course he was drunk.

After this point, moving into the realm of time that I can actually remember living in, the time of my own childhood and "tween" years (though I'm thankful I was a "tween" before the word "tween" became part of our cultural lexicon) incidents of abuse were a persistent thing. They would become constant in the years ahead, but at that point, they were something that would come down on my mother--and later myself--from my father only from time to time. But, as these times stacked upon one another, a certainty began to build--an expectant fear. Despite there being weeks and months inbetween the incidents at times, our hope that they wouldn't happen again became a resigned belief that they would.

They would, and did.

It was at that point--where my father's own unresolved issues, his inability to cope with what had happened to him as a child, over the course of his life, as an adult, when his disappointments and his dissatisfaction with life caused his drinking to go from unacceptable to worse--that my mother began drinking more regularly and heavily to cope with the hurt, betrayal, fear and strained love she'd found herself inside of.

That last bit, talking of strained love...I'm sure that will be something that I hit on time and again within this blog. Though I am focusing on my mother right now, allow me to switch the focus to myself for just a moment. After all, love is a mysterious thing, and even if I knew the times and the events and who she was at that time better than I actually do, I still don't think I could speak with any certainty about the love she felt for my father and from him in turn. Love is a powerful, living thing inside of each one of us--and defining it within ourselves is, in my understanding, the closest we can come to realizing what love feels like within another person.

We learn about love as we learn about life, and the love that I learned was always one that came with pain. It was loving a person that hurt you, or loving a person that you hurt--and, most painfully of all perhaps, knowing the contradiction at work there. But not understanding, or feeling, that there can be change--that while love can change and move, and at times hurt, it should not be a painful thing by definition. Sometimes you can love someone truly and dearly and feel a want for them that transcends want into the realm of need, but time and space is required for that love to truly blossom, trust is required, for that love to breathe.

Love should not be a suffocating, strangling thing--but this was the love I learned and how I, at times intentionally and at times unintentionally, perceived love for all of my life until now. Like my life, it was something with little room to breathe and little trust in myself or for others--including the ones that I loved.

For my mother, I believe this was the love she learned over the years with my father. That she was either forced to accept or forced herself to accept. A feeling like drowning in a sea of emotions, with that kernel of despoiled love you once had as the only buoy keeping your head up and out of the waves. And with the person you hold that love for being unaware, unaccountable--distant. It's just you, the feelings, the waves and the depths below.

She'd spent her life, laughing and dancing, and in doing this never taking too long to analyze or acknowledge the things she didn't care for. Why should she? When there were other things she enjoyed. Yet now, she had woken up in a situation she felt she couldn't move away from. Though she certainly could have, she was unable or unwilling to make the necessary choices to do so. To reiterate what I said earlier, love should not be a painful thing by definition. This is not to say that the love my mother felt for my father was invalid, or that the love he felt for her was invalid, but love as a life preserver and not as life is no way to live or love.

As the abuse, drinking and emotional devastation continued over the years, every now and again my mother would try to have the band halfheartedly strike up a song, but the music would play very softly, and everyone involved felt the futility at work. Eventually, the band packed up their instruments, and the lights were turned down, and all the chairs put up on tables. The bar was still open, but no one was laughing or singing or holding one another now. And the bar, the bar's always open.

Her dancing days were over.

As I write this, October 23rd 2009, my mother is still an active alcoholic, and in my own periods of both use and sobriety, I've watched her life erode to nothing. She lives with no joy, no hope--only a misery that stems from one source, but one that she is still incapable of recognizing.

I say that with love, sadness and personal understanding: alcoholism is a form of insanity. And, while this isn't even close to universally true when it comes to the expansive world of mental illness, the old saying of "A person who's really crazy doesn't know that they're crazy" does apply.

As I was, she is certainly aware that she's miserable--that her life has become something she drags herself through. She's certainly aware that she's drinking too much, and that her drinking is harming her. She knows that she's an alcoholic.

But there's a failure to make the connection, a failure to actually accept these things. A failure in addressing the problem or believing the problem can be addressed or resolved. Instead, there's only the hopelessness of knowing you are condemned. A life in a prison where the only solace comes from the very thing that's keeping you trapped there. Crying, drunk, behind the bars while the walls rust and the floor rots and life collapses around you.

Choice is an important element to the process of declining into addiction and then (hopefully) resurfacing to life. We choose to begin our addiction, even if that choice is the only one we feel available to us at that time. There is a period where we choose to nurture our addiction--I can say this is a sure thing for myself, because early on there are moments that I can look back on and realize that I had chosen to drink entirely on my own. It was my choice. But as the addiction grows, the choices we can perceive diminish, until there is only one choice--and that is not the choice to drink. There is no longer any choice in our minds to drink, drinking has become a central part of our existence.

The one choice that does exist at the end of that road, the one that's the hardest to make, is the choice to do something. For me it wasn't as simple as choosing to stop drinking, but that became part of it in time. For me, it was the choice to do something--something became anything, and in time that became to stop drinking.

For my mother, as it was for myself and for everyone who ever has or will pick up and then put down, this one choice that holds so many others within it is the one that she would need to make to find her life again. She would need to put aside the defenses, the false ways of living, that she relied on during all of the years of abuse to keep her alive, alive but so very unhappy.

It's a frightening choice, but a necessary one--I emphasize, it is a frightening choice. I know that well, because I struggled for a long time with making it myself.

One way of looking at it that is helpful to me, and perhaps could be to my mother if she allowed it, and may possibly be helpful to anyone reading this is as follows:

You can choose to do something
You can choose not to do something
Or you can choose not to choose

Out of those three, the latter two directly correlate with my own experiences with descending into and then living within alcoholism. I believed, at times raging, at times crying, that I was choosing not to do something--that I was defending what I considered to be my way of life. But that was window show, whistling past the graveyard--when I finally signed myself into rehab, I was long past the point of believing I was choosing to continue drinking, that I was making a choice that I was fine with.

The truth is that I was choosing not to choose.

And, as I said earlier, recovery--initially, more so just the potential for change--came by choosing to do something.

I sincerely hope that one day my mother will choose for herself.

Introductions

Hello,

My name is Zane Neumann and I'm an alcoholic.

This is a phrase that I've said countless times over the last three months--in that way, you could say that it's a new phrase to me. Certainly, hitting rock bottom, staggering and stumbling towards the hope of change, rehab, recovery, sobriety--those things are all new.

But the focal point of that statement, identifying myself as a drunk, is nothing new to me at all. What's changed is my awareness of the depths to that phrase. The truths behind that word, of all the elements it encompasses, run as deep and as endlessly as all the bottles and cans I poured down my throat over the years of my ignorant, active use.

This December I'll be turning 26 and I've been regularly abusing alcohol since the age of 13--that's half of my life spent riding the spiral steadily down. That's a lot of life, and love, wasted.

I'm thinking of this blog as a journal of sorts, but one that's available for anyone to see that may want to. There are a lot of half-truths, straightforward lies and forgotten promises inside the miserable world of addiction. This blog will talk about all of those things, but will never fall susceptible to them.

I hope that the stories and thoughts I share here may help or mean something to someone reading it. Something new that I've learned over the course of recovery is that the things that lead a drunk back towards life can include experiences as intangible as one conversation or story from a stranger--the seed of wanting your life back, and how it's planted, is as varied as the lives that lead people like myself towards becoming alcoholics in the first place. It's as varied as all of the hurtful, terrible things we did to ourselves and others all for the sake of alcohol.

But, a word of warning: I do this primarily for myself. To address and take accountability in just one more way for my own experiences with alcoholism. Addiction is a selfish disease, it either forces or convinces you to sacrifice any and every other thing in your life for its sake, and there is nothing wrong with applying that same "selfish" ideology to recovery.

So, with that, let's move past the introductions. Introductions are always the hardest, most stilted part of things, and we never really get to know anything about one another through them.

I'll try as best I can over the days ahead to offer a clear view of who I am, what my experiences with active addiction were and how I was able to begin taking my life back, inch by inch.