Time sold cheaper than all my words; I was free here for a time. With all the old lists of all my old losings as company through my chores; the doors still spun all the same and I was free here for a time.
Words stank so softly of cinder; I was free here for a time. Ears a' ringin' loftily and spirit soarin' loftily and loftily I lived for no more; I remembered little all the same and I was free here for a time.
Cinder burned through all my mind; there was only this and nothing more. With my time all sold and my words grown cold; I was free here for a time.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Blackouts : By Any Other Name
The picture to the left is of yours truly, Zane Neumann, standing outside of his childhood home and smoking a cigarette--not a habit he picked up during his childhood, but damn near.This picture was taken by his childhood friend Cyrah Hawkins, the self-titled Unlonely Traveller, who was passing through Pennsylvania on his way back down to Hotlanta and had stopped by to visit.
During those years of childhood friendship, Cyrah and Zane would spend countless hours with LEGO building blocks; worlds were created and characters created in turn, all to further enrich those fantasy worlds coming from the young boy's minds. Stories were built, brick by brick, and all made from those bright, geometric bits of plastic and imagination.
Cyrah was a close friend of Zane's and so it is sad to say that Zane was neither present nor pleased (or so he is told was his demeanor) with his friend's surprise visit that night the above photo was taken; Zane had drinking on his mind that night you see, and such a thing takes precedence over friends and warm, long-ago memories of make-believe.
Such a thing takes precedence over life itself and negates the presence of being that is synonymous with the very act of being alive.
And so the reason behind my strange lapse into third-person begins to make itself clear to you, I hope. Nope, I'm not yet (or should I say, "no longer?") crazy enough to use it out of egotistical eccentricity or a disassociative impulse to escape my own identity--this time, there's a method to my madness.
As I sit here now and type "I," I am aware of both it and myself. My mind is functioning; there is a symbiosis between my body and my essence. I am aware, I am awake and I am here.
When this picture was taken, I was not. I was "I" in body alone, in name alone; more an object than a true subject. "Zane" was only a word to describe a thoughtless body that operated on tainted instinct, semantic memory and cellular thirst; actions were done, words were spoken, all without context to one another or coherency pertaining to that context and flow of events. There would be no difference in calling that body "Zane" or calling that body "Mud;" a name is just a word when all semblance of character is absent from the body that name is used to identify.
In short, when this picture was taken I was in an alcoholic blackout and I cannot remember any of it.
In Donal Sweeney, M.D.'s book "The Alcohol Blackout: Walking, Talking, Unconscious...And Lethal" he compiled accounts, testimonies and a lifetime of his own research into the condition and created a succinct and accurate book on the topic. The fact that the actual "how" and "why" behind the phenomenon are sorely overlooked and malignantly ignored topics by most medical professionals makes Dr. Sweeney's work even more pertinent. Below is a link for anyone who may be interested in the book:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/11/1768/Health_and_Fitness/article/The_Alcohol_BlackoutWalking_Talking_Unconscious_and_Lethal.html
As Dr. Sweeney writes in his book, a person operating while in an alcoholic blackout does so in a state of constant "present"--and a constant state of "present" without presence.
A person in a blackout may do, and usually does, something that hurts or upsets a person that they care for. As is par for the course for people operating with awareness, this person will then admonish the blacked-out individual for their abusive or inappropriate behavior. The blacked-out individual will, in immediate response to this, either argue the validity of their actions or apologize...and then in the next moment forget the entire episode took place. Consequently, should the circumstances and situation remain the same and evoke the same feelings in the blacked-out individual again, they will repeat the previous inappropriate behavior again. Their mind is not capable of context; they are operating entirely without cognitive thought to guide them.
This all occurs because that blacked-out individual is physiologically incapable of creating any new memories and physiologically incapable of behaving any way other than how they are behaving in each moment of their blackout. This is the physiological truth behind the "not remembering" that occurs following blacked-out episodes and the disjointed, uncharacteristic behavior that occurs during them.
I can "remember" so many times over my years spent as an active alcoholic when I would wake up feeling sick. Hungover, of course, but also consumed with the dread and fear that comes along with waking up and realizing that you cannot remember anything from the prior night.
I spoke of living with the certainty of madness pertaining to the abuse and the escalating regularity of it directed at myself and my mother by way of my father; over the years, this same feeling of certainty grew pertaining to my own drinking, my own blacking out and my own not remembering. I knew that not every time I drank or even binged that I would blackout, but I also knew that every time I did blackout I became a monster. And, of course, I knew that after having become this monster I would remember none of the monstrous things I did while he wore my skin and bore my face.
At that point in my life the most direct and sane preventative measure--not drinking to begin with--was something I was incapable of. And so, I lived with that knot of fear in my gut and waited for the next episode of madness to unfold. And it always did. It always did, because after enough drinks, that knot of fear disappeared and was replaced with drunkenness. Drunkenness and, when circumstances aligned maliciously, another blacked-out night spent as that unknowing monster.
One such blacked-out incident was the final straw that destroyed a ten-year friendship and relationship. My drinking at this time was completely sub-human and there are quite a few instances of gray-outs (partial lack of memory formation) sprinkled amidst all of the dark in my mind; the only beams of light, in other words, are just a lighter shade of pitch. And so I can't say if this conversation occurred the day following my blackout or the day after that. I have absolutely no idea; no ability to place events in a coherent time-line.
What I can remember is this friend crying when I told her that I couldn't remember what I had said and done. "It isn't fair, Zane! It's isn't fair!" Those words, her hurt voice crying those hurt words, still echo far back in my mind. Her voice was breaking, much like her heart was, and I still hear it in my mind. I hear it because that echoing voice, that hurt voice, is speaking something that echoes my own sentiments.
No, it is not fair.
But that's so much of why I believe we strive to learn as human beings; so much of this world evokes the reaction of "It isn't fair!" from deep within our souls. We use those emotions as the motivations to look for explanations; the explanations do not take away the "wrong," they do not take away the hurt, but they do give us a chance to breathe and clear our eyes.
For myself, as with all who experience or have experienced blackouts, our inability to remember are not examples of Freudian repression or of cowardly guilt-dodging. The lapse in memory occurs because, during our time in a black-out, our mind is recording absolutely nothing and so there is nothing there for us to remember when we sober up.
We can be told, but we will never remember; what is done during a blackout is forever absent in the blacked-out individuals mind. But being able to be told is still, at the very least, a starting point for understanding.
Accountability is the focal point of recovery from active alcoholism; the foundation that re-learning, learning and growth can be set upon. During interventions, loved ones give tearful and painful ultimatums to the beloved alcoholic in their lives. During therapy and groups, addicts and alcoholics are told that they are not responsible for their addiction, but are responsible for their recovery.
Accountability pertaining to blackouts directly is more of a heated topic: can a person be held accountable for their actions when they are, in the truest sense of the word, unaware of what they are doing? Our legal system tells us that yes, of course they can. Our hearts tell us that yes, of course they can, when the "they" in question is a person that we love and trust and who has hurt us while blacked-out. And, I'm sure, there are many men and women in prison who are there for crimes committed during an alcoholic blackout who could lend their opinions and voices to the argument.
What I know is this: I will never remember the things I did while blacked-out. Unlike events done when drunk or when grayed out, these things will never return to me. I will never remember them; but what I can always remember is that very fact.
My name is Zane Neumann and I am an alcoholic. More on blackouts to come.
Monday, March 1, 2010
A Poem : Simple Wind
This simple wind upon your brow; returning here, a hollow home that's warm and old. Without which to turn aside; to cask and mark with every thought and every crooked knowing. To measure off in fingers length, to feel again and speak again; embitter me, entice me stay, a branch, a bough and all the simple wind between them.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
A Poem For The Past
Winter came for me all at once, old man. The leaves turned; inside that’s how we die. First the winds grow cold. That’s first. But only first. Remember my love to this world, this world that hated me so.
Where do we sleep when dreams are denied us? Where do we find that refuge? In the waking hours? That blind us with bitter sunlight? Or somewhere deeper inside? Where all but the most cowardly are fearful to tread.
I have seen the halls my fathers built. All of them. The halls bled for me and the fathers scream through me; ten thousand times over, I remember their smells and their stares. God, strip this mind from me, and let me sleep forever.
It's interesting how the creative mind works, how it shuffles (and cycles) through all of our past even as it exists and expresses itself purposefully in the present.
Last week, a friend and I were working on a script for a psychological/zombie-flick idea we've come up with. It was getting late in the evening and good-natured fuckery was beginning to seep into our...or at least my work ethic.
Script writing is a new form of story-telling for me and one that was initially, and at times still can be, a bit daunting. It's because of how terse script language is, how matter-of-fact and straight forward it reads to my eyes and mind.
There are times when writing, "James shot Jill in the neck. Jill clasps a hand to her wound. She falls over. James fires into her body again. Jill is dead." works--to my writing sensibilities, there are times when this kind of direct, Hemmingway-esq simplicity conveys a deeper poetry. But writing entire pages using that dry, non-descriptive, anti-emotional language? And only being able to dip into "flavor" writing during dialogue? Yep. That's a new experience for me when it comes to writing and I could only take so much of this stolid, utilitarian molding of words before my essentially emotion-driven (and, by way of that, sometimes asinine) character rose to the fore.
I know that one of the rules of editing--the golden rule of the re-write, actually--is "omit needless words." But, the knowing of this does not make my first drafts any less verbose--I think you folks can tell, for example, which of these journal entries I bother editing and which I do not--nor does it alter my "in the moment" writing habits. Editing, for me, is the spit shine that comes after the initial act of creation; I slash a path through the snow with my imagination, writing as quickly as possible, and then head back to true the course--to dot my i's and cross my t's, in other words.
To me, that's what creating is: holding up a light in the darkness and using it to find our way. The light is our own life, our own imagination: the joys, the sorrows, the trials, the setbacks--all of the things that shape who we are and how we perceive. That light is the part of us that knows both parts of ourselves and parts of the story (or song, or painting, or etc) that we're working on. But, please notice the intentional redundancy at work there and meditate on it for a moment. I believe that creating, like life, is something that we can only know so much of at any one moment because it is in its truest form constantly in flux--fluid--and to attempt to instill a general, all-encompassing concept of "truth" over it only serves to ebb the natural flow of energy.
What I'm saying here, pertaining to writing, is that all of those outlines, idea bubbles and story-telling spin wheels that are brought up in creative writing classes--all of those things? Those things should be thrown right out the fucking window and into the trash heap down below, where they can sleep their good sleep and hopefully dream a little dream of their own. Because, when creating, there is a huge difference between knowing "part" of a story's plot and purpose in your mind and believing you know "all" of those things. Stories are like life, we live and we write and in doing so we are making life, and like the lives we live these make-believe lives cannot be shoved into a pen and be made to obediently wait for us to give them permission to breathe.
Don't get me wrong; make believe can be, and is, made in that suffocating manner. And you can always tell when it is; the stories are essentially DOA. The plot is either predictable or generally unmoving, the characters are cardboard cut outs and the entire fiasco looks/reads/feels like a farce--like something trying to be rather than something that is. And, in my opinion, that's because the people responsible for this piece of story-telling did not allow their work to just be, to organically grow and change and live. Instead, they trudged forward, head down, eyes set, already knowing everything there is to know about their characters and plot; they held steadfast to these beliefs even as the direction of the wind changed, even when their internal compass told them they should now head north instead of west. And so, out came a story saturated with this ideology; a sad and usually dismissible creature more concerned with trying to be than being.
End semantic opining about the creative process.
And so, anyway and as I was saying, John and I were working on this script of ours. It was getting late and we were both running on fumes and coffee. And because of all of what I've mentioned, because I was tired and because, after spending several hours working on this script (which I do enjoy--both the process and the story we're telling by way of it) and writing in this unfamiliar style, I opted to do something off-the-cuff. I grabbed the keyboard and in the space of a minute typed out the italicized poem at the top of this entry.
I did it mostly because I was tired, as I said; I also did it mostly to make us laugh. I did it without really thinking--I just hammered it out and afterwards we cackled like fools, reading these Shakespearean lines in the middle of our gritty and bloody and somber story.
I typed it out as a three-part monologue, spoken sequentially by three different characters. Each paragraph signifies the perspective shifting from one character to the next; each paragraph is a highly dramatized account of that character's thoughts and feelings.
Interesting how, looking at all three blocks of rant set one above the other, I can see a connection between them--and I can see myself as the hub of that connection.
I completely agree that, for creative people, everything that we create is an echo of our own experiences and thoughts. For a storyteller, all of our characters are fragments of our own mind; our past is our own, but it also belongs to and resides within every man, woman and child we magic out of the creative ether.
And I already knew the point that I'm driving at here--that we do these things, these things occur, even when we are not operating with the express intent of calling them forth. But that's the magic of it--that's what motivated me to type up this entry. I was not thinking of my past, my alcoholism or my experiences in either realm in that moment of late-night script fuckery. When I wrote those lines, those over-the-top, romantic lines of dialogue, I was not consciously making a connection to either myself or my experiences--what I was doing was making a joke.
But that's not all of how "doing" works. The part that's on top, the part that we "know," is always stirred along by the currents underneath. After the waters have stilled, after that moment of "doing" has become "done," we can usually see what lays beneath its surface.
And our own face. We can always see our own face, reflected back at us.
So, three paragraphs, three different characters in a script with different backgrounds and perspectives and written in the space of a minute. And all of it, when stacked one on the other, looking like a swatch of lyric from a darker, drunker time in my life.
It's interesting how the creative mind works, how it shuffles (and cycles) through all of our past even as it exists and expresses itself purposefully in the present.
Last week, a friend and I were working on a script for a psychological/zombie-flick idea we've come up with. It was getting late in the evening and good-natured fuckery was beginning to seep into our...or at least my work ethic.
Script writing is a new form of story-telling for me and one that was initially, and at times still can be, a bit daunting. It's because of how terse script language is, how matter-of-fact and straight forward it reads to my eyes and mind.
There are times when writing, "James shot Jill in the neck. Jill clasps a hand to her wound. She falls over. James fires into her body again. Jill is dead." works--to my writing sensibilities, there are times when this kind of direct, Hemmingway-esq simplicity conveys a deeper poetry. But writing entire pages using that dry, non-descriptive, anti-emotional language? And only being able to dip into "flavor" writing during dialogue? Yep. That's a new experience for me when it comes to writing and I could only take so much of this stolid, utilitarian molding of words before my essentially emotion-driven (and, by way of that, sometimes asinine) character rose to the fore.
I know that one of the rules of editing--the golden rule of the re-write, actually--is "omit needless words." But, the knowing of this does not make my first drafts any less verbose--I think you folks can tell, for example, which of these journal entries I bother editing and which I do not--nor does it alter my "in the moment" writing habits. Editing, for me, is the spit shine that comes after the initial act of creation; I slash a path through the snow with my imagination, writing as quickly as possible, and then head back to true the course--to dot my i's and cross my t's, in other words.
To me, that's what creating is: holding up a light in the darkness and using it to find our way. The light is our own life, our own imagination: the joys, the sorrows, the trials, the setbacks--all of the things that shape who we are and how we perceive. That light is the part of us that knows both parts of ourselves and parts of the story (or song, or painting, or etc) that we're working on. But, please notice the intentional redundancy at work there and meditate on it for a moment. I believe that creating, like life, is something that we can only know so much of at any one moment because it is in its truest form constantly in flux--fluid--and to attempt to instill a general, all-encompassing concept of "truth" over it only serves to ebb the natural flow of energy.
What I'm saying here, pertaining to writing, is that all of those outlines, idea bubbles and story-telling spin wheels that are brought up in creative writing classes--all of those things? Those things should be thrown right out the fucking window and into the trash heap down below, where they can sleep their good sleep and hopefully dream a little dream of their own. Because, when creating, there is a huge difference between knowing "part" of a story's plot and purpose in your mind and believing you know "all" of those things. Stories are like life, we live and we write and in doing so we are making life, and like the lives we live these make-believe lives cannot be shoved into a pen and be made to obediently wait for us to give them permission to breathe.
Don't get me wrong; make believe can be, and is, made in that suffocating manner. And you can always tell when it is; the stories are essentially DOA. The plot is either predictable or generally unmoving, the characters are cardboard cut outs and the entire fiasco looks/reads/feels like a farce--like something trying to be rather than something that is. And, in my opinion, that's because the people responsible for this piece of story-telling did not allow their work to just be, to organically grow and change and live. Instead, they trudged forward, head down, eyes set, already knowing everything there is to know about their characters and plot; they held steadfast to these beliefs even as the direction of the wind changed, even when their internal compass told them they should now head north instead of west. And so, out came a story saturated with this ideology; a sad and usually dismissible creature more concerned with trying to be than being.
End semantic opining about the creative process.
And so, anyway and as I was saying, John and I were working on this script of ours. It was getting late and we were both running on fumes and coffee. And because of all of what I've mentioned, because I was tired and because, after spending several hours working on this script (which I do enjoy--both the process and the story we're telling by way of it) and writing in this unfamiliar style, I opted to do something off-the-cuff. I grabbed the keyboard and in the space of a minute typed out the italicized poem at the top of this entry.
I did it mostly because I was tired, as I said; I also did it mostly to make us laugh. I did it without really thinking--I just hammered it out and afterwards we cackled like fools, reading these Shakespearean lines in the middle of our gritty and bloody and somber story.
I typed it out as a three-part monologue, spoken sequentially by three different characters. Each paragraph signifies the perspective shifting from one character to the next; each paragraph is a highly dramatized account of that character's thoughts and feelings.
Interesting how, looking at all three blocks of rant set one above the other, I can see a connection between them--and I can see myself as the hub of that connection.
I completely agree that, for creative people, everything that we create is an echo of our own experiences and thoughts. For a storyteller, all of our characters are fragments of our own mind; our past is our own, but it also belongs to and resides within every man, woman and child we magic out of the creative ether.
And I already knew the point that I'm driving at here--that we do these things, these things occur, even when we are not operating with the express intent of calling them forth. But that's the magic of it--that's what motivated me to type up this entry. I was not thinking of my past, my alcoholism or my experiences in either realm in that moment of late-night script fuckery. When I wrote those lines, those over-the-top, romantic lines of dialogue, I was not consciously making a connection to either myself or my experiences--what I was doing was making a joke.
But that's not all of how "doing" works. The part that's on top, the part that we "know," is always stirred along by the currents underneath. After the waters have stilled, after that moment of "doing" has become "done," we can usually see what lays beneath its surface.
And our own face. We can always see our own face, reflected back at us.
So, three paragraphs, three different characters in a script with different backgrounds and perspectives and written in the space of a minute. And all of it, when stacked one on the other, looking like a swatch of lyric from a darker, drunker time in my life.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Furious Love : Drunk In Public
We like to hold on to our illusions of control and hate to let these things go.
In early summer of the past year, I finally got it into my mind to reach out for real help. No more "cutting back," no more "I don't have a problem"; my drinking, always prone to insanity, had descended into a new and even deeper circle of Hell. I was constantly, perpetually drunk--usually in a state of walking blackout--and my entire life was being washed away by the torrential downfall of beer, liquor and alley wine.
Now, with all of this said, when I called Roxbury Treatment Center to inquire about rehabilitation, I nonetheless had questions.
I had concerns.
And never mind my condition at the time--one that I was, in my clouded and alcoholic way, beginning to grasp was dire--I wanted answers to these important concerns.
The woman I spoke with on the phone was very kind, very cordial; more power to her given the fact that I can only half-remember the conversations I had with her and the quality of my own telephone etiquette during these conversations.
When you call a rehab facility, and when "you" are the alcoholic seeking treatment, the answers you're given are vague but reassuring. I can understand why; despite the fact that I desperately needed help, I believe I would have turned down in-house treatment if I had been given a straight answer on some of these oh-so important questions. Questions like:
"I play guitar. Will I get to play guitar there?"
"How long will I have to play guitar? Do I get to watch tv? How long do I get to watch tv?"
Yes, I was allowed to play guitar--I could have also watched tv, if I had wanted to. I could do both of these things for one hour a day...and two hours on Saturday.
If I had been told this directly, I know that I would have balked at the idea of in-house rehabilitation. Never mind the fact that, as low as my drinking had laid me, I was no longer playing guitar or singing when I had a good 14-or-so waking hours a day to spend doing it outside of Roxbury. Never mind again that, for the most part, there's nothing but horse shit on tv anyhow--and that, as my drinking was then, I enjoyed my tv watching time in a state of alcoholic blackout, chain smoking cigarettes and yelling at the actors onscreen.
I would have turned down help over these insignificant queasies--and the kind-voiced woman I spoke to on the phone knew these things, I'm sure. I would have turned down treatment at Roxbury, turned down rehabilitation, turned down awareness and acceptance of my alcoholism; I would have turned down my own life. Because I could only play guitar or (not "and," OR) watch tv for one hour a day I would have continued to not play guitar at all and sit in front of the tv, comatose-drunk.
Well, I did go to rehab.
I could only play guitar or watch tv for one hour a day (I opted for the guitar) and I did begin to address my alcoholism.
While doing this, I was introduced to a documentary along with the rest of the resident alcoholics and addicts. This film was called "Drunk In Public" and it tells the story of one Mark David Allen, a man entirely ensnared and destroyed by alcoholic insanity.
Seven months later, I ordered the DVD from filmmaker David Sperling's website and rewatched it.
To recant the impact the film had on me, and the importance I feel it carries, I'll transcribe an email I sent to David Sperling below:
Mr. David Sperling,
Hi Dave.
I'm a recovering alcoholic and I, like many alcoholics, was first introduced to your film while in rehab.
Despite some of us being fresh out of detox and unable to keep down more than crackers and water; despite some of us flip-flopping between those two conflicting questions that run through all addicts heads in very early recovery (those questions being, "Why am I even doing this?" and "What happens if I go out there again?); despite the fact that some of the folks who watched the film AMA'd the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that; despite all of that, the reaction the film had on myself and the rest of the group was profound.
We laughed, we shook our heads, we groaned--but the most telling part is how often we were all silent. Watching. Feeling. Looking at Mark on the screen and in him seeing ourselves; the larger picture of what alcoholism does to a person who, at their core, is essentially good.
In my own journey through addiction and recovery, researching addiction and alcoholic pathology as well as keeping my ears and mind open to the experiences of others, I've come to believe that while there are some circumstantial elements to addiction that are as diverse as the people that suffer them, the core psychological element is always the same: there is a lack of ability for self-respect or self-love.
Mark displays (displayed?) a great deal of sensitivity, of creativity, of empathy and the ability to care for the feelings of his family and loved ones. His capacity for, and squandered potential to further develop, these very rare and very wonderful traits is what makes his descent into alcoholic insanity heart breaking.
Sure, there are scenes in the movie that are funny; even an alcoholic can laugh at a guy stumbling around drunk, a guy who says "about fifteen minutes" twice in a row when asked how long he's been in the drunk tank. That's just being human--not necessarily mean or unsympathetic. Hell, if he was still able to follow such things, I think Mark himself would even find certain scenes funny in a slapstick, Three Stooges kind of way.
And, again, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that; it injects a kind of humanity into the film. It makes it more than just another dry, soulless video about addiction to put recovering folks in rehabs to sleep.
The humanity of the film is what makes it work: what makes it powerful.
The fact that there are times where you can see the potential man Mark could have been, and not just see him as a stumbling, ranting drunk is what brings that power--that hushed silence that washes over the room as I mentioned earlier.
Because, to me, the core of this movie is simple: the core of this movie is that addiction is real--call it a disease, call it what you will--it is real and without awareness and acceptance it destroys those that are afflicted by it. On every level: mind, heart, soul, body.
It systematically and completely fucking destroys a human life.
And the only thing that can possibly combat the power of addiction, the condition of addiction, is awareness of addiction. For addicts like myself, recovering or otherwise, that means self-awareness as well as outward awareness. Hell--getting honest and letting go of the defense mechanisms and false ways of feeling/living is one of the hardest parts of recovery--especially if you've relied on alcohol as a mechanism for coping for a long, long time as I did.
How people find this is individual to each of them--recovery is a personal experience. Some find it in religion, in the Rooms, in alternative 12-step programs, in atheistic sobriety groups--in the end it doesn't matter. It all boils down the same two things: awareness of alcoholism and yourself as an alcoholic and acceptance over these indisputable truths--acceptance that only in sobriety you're capable of maintaining.
This film is another way of bringing about that awareness. It carries that power just as a self-help book, a medical document on alcoholic pathology, the AA Big Book, the SOS manuals or any of the other plethora of material available. The power it has that none of those very important sources have, however, is that it puts a human face on the lessons--on the truths. It's so hard--impossible, in my own opinion--for an active addict to truly see their own faces. In early recovery, in rehab, in the psych wing of a nearby hospital, your own face is still distorted to your eyes. Your own thoughts and feelings are distorted to your own mind. Because of this film, during those hard and uncertain times, those brave and fortunate souls embarking on sobriety have a face to focus on: Mark's. You can see the ravages of alcohol in his sad eyes; in his lack of any real self awareness; in his misery. And, during that fragile time of early healing when you are only beginning to "see" yourself, these souls embarking on recovery can see themselves in Mark's face. They can see themselves in Mark's face before they are yet capable of seeing themselves in their own.
Thanks for doing what you do, Dave.
Sincerely,
Zane Neumann
If you have not seen the film and feel so inclined, please visit David Sperling's website at www.FURIOUSLOVE.com and order a copy.
If you have seen the film and feel that it is a valid and powerful tool for elucidating the reality and severity of alcoholism, please use the link below to email the fine folks at The Oprah Show.
http://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=215
Dave is trying to raise awareness of his film; the majority of the responses he receives seem to be of the curt, "we-believe-awareness-of-alcoholism-is-important-but-we've-done-our-quota-of-alcoholic-sob-story-shows" variety.
But importance never dissipates; like life, it keeps rolling back around like a wheel. Yesterday's active drunks are today's sober thinkers (or at least, some of them are--sadly not Mark David Allen, for one) and today's alcoholics seeking sobriety are as thirsty for knowledge and help as any ever were before.
In early summer of the past year, I finally got it into my mind to reach out for real help. No more "cutting back," no more "I don't have a problem"; my drinking, always prone to insanity, had descended into a new and even deeper circle of Hell. I was constantly, perpetually drunk--usually in a state of walking blackout--and my entire life was being washed away by the torrential downfall of beer, liquor and alley wine.
Now, with all of this said, when I called Roxbury Treatment Center to inquire about rehabilitation, I nonetheless had questions.
I had concerns.
And never mind my condition at the time--one that I was, in my clouded and alcoholic way, beginning to grasp was dire--I wanted answers to these important concerns.
The woman I spoke with on the phone was very kind, very cordial; more power to her given the fact that I can only half-remember the conversations I had with her and the quality of my own telephone etiquette during these conversations.
When you call a rehab facility, and when "you" are the alcoholic seeking treatment, the answers you're given are vague but reassuring. I can understand why; despite the fact that I desperately needed help, I believe I would have turned down in-house treatment if I had been given a straight answer on some of these oh-so important questions. Questions like:
"I play guitar. Will I get to play guitar there?"
"How long will I have to play guitar? Do I get to watch tv? How long do I get to watch tv?"
Yes, I was allowed to play guitar--I could have also watched tv, if I had wanted to. I could do both of these things for one hour a day...and two hours on Saturday.
If I had been told this directly, I know that I would have balked at the idea of in-house rehabilitation. Never mind the fact that, as low as my drinking had laid me, I was no longer playing guitar or singing when I had a good 14-or-so waking hours a day to spend doing it outside of Roxbury. Never mind again that, for the most part, there's nothing but horse shit on tv anyhow--and that, as my drinking was then, I enjoyed my tv watching time in a state of alcoholic blackout, chain smoking cigarettes and yelling at the actors onscreen.
I would have turned down help over these insignificant queasies--and the kind-voiced woman I spoke to on the phone knew these things, I'm sure. I would have turned down treatment at Roxbury, turned down rehabilitation, turned down awareness and acceptance of my alcoholism; I would have turned down my own life. Because I could only play guitar or (not "and," OR) watch tv for one hour a day I would have continued to not play guitar at all and sit in front of the tv, comatose-drunk.
Well, I did go to rehab.
I could only play guitar or watch tv for one hour a day (I opted for the guitar) and I did begin to address my alcoholism.
While doing this, I was introduced to a documentary along with the rest of the resident alcoholics and addicts. This film was called "Drunk In Public" and it tells the story of one Mark David Allen, a man entirely ensnared and destroyed by alcoholic insanity.
Seven months later, I ordered the DVD from filmmaker David Sperling's website and rewatched it.
To recant the impact the film had on me, and the importance I feel it carries, I'll transcribe an email I sent to David Sperling below:
Mr. David Sperling,
Hi Dave.
I'm a recovering alcoholic and I, like many alcoholics, was first introduced to your film while in rehab.
Despite some of us being fresh out of detox and unable to keep down more than crackers and water; despite some of us flip-flopping between those two conflicting questions that run through all addicts heads in very early recovery (those questions being, "Why am I even doing this?" and "What happens if I go out there again?); despite the fact that some of the folks who watched the film AMA'd the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that; despite all of that, the reaction the film had on myself and the rest of the group was profound.
We laughed, we shook our heads, we groaned--but the most telling part is how often we were all silent. Watching. Feeling. Looking at Mark on the screen and in him seeing ourselves; the larger picture of what alcoholism does to a person who, at their core, is essentially good.
In my own journey through addiction and recovery, researching addiction and alcoholic pathology as well as keeping my ears and mind open to the experiences of others, I've come to believe that while there are some circumstantial elements to addiction that are as diverse as the people that suffer them, the core psychological element is always the same: there is a lack of ability for self-respect or self-love.
Mark displays (displayed?) a great deal of sensitivity, of creativity, of empathy and the ability to care for the feelings of his family and loved ones. His capacity for, and squandered potential to further develop, these very rare and very wonderful traits is what makes his descent into alcoholic insanity heart breaking.
Sure, there are scenes in the movie that are funny; even an alcoholic can laugh at a guy stumbling around drunk, a guy who says "about fifteen minutes" twice in a row when asked how long he's been in the drunk tank. That's just being human--not necessarily mean or unsympathetic. Hell, if he was still able to follow such things, I think Mark himself would even find certain scenes funny in a slapstick, Three Stooges kind of way.
And, again, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that; it injects a kind of humanity into the film. It makes it more than just another dry, soulless video about addiction to put recovering folks in rehabs to sleep.
The humanity of the film is what makes it work: what makes it powerful.
The fact that there are times where you can see the potential man Mark could have been, and not just see him as a stumbling, ranting drunk is what brings that power--that hushed silence that washes over the room as I mentioned earlier.
Because, to me, the core of this movie is simple: the core of this movie is that addiction is real--call it a disease, call it what you will--it is real and without awareness and acceptance it destroys those that are afflicted by it. On every level: mind, heart, soul, body.
It systematically and completely fucking destroys a human life.
And the only thing that can possibly combat the power of addiction, the condition of addiction, is awareness of addiction. For addicts like myself, recovering or otherwise, that means self-awareness as well as outward awareness. Hell--getting honest and letting go of the defense mechanisms and false ways of feeling/living is one of the hardest parts of recovery--especially if you've relied on alcohol as a mechanism for coping for a long, long time as I did.
How people find this is individual to each of them--recovery is a personal experience. Some find it in religion, in the Rooms, in alternative 12-step programs, in atheistic sobriety groups--in the end it doesn't matter. It all boils down the same two things: awareness of alcoholism and yourself as an alcoholic and acceptance over these indisputable truths--acceptance that only in sobriety you're capable of maintaining.
This film is another way of bringing about that awareness. It carries that power just as a self-help book, a medical document on alcoholic pathology, the AA Big Book, the SOS manuals or any of the other plethora of material available. The power it has that none of those very important sources have, however, is that it puts a human face on the lessons--on the truths. It's so hard--impossible, in my own opinion--for an active addict to truly see their own faces. In early recovery, in rehab, in the psych wing of a nearby hospital, your own face is still distorted to your eyes. Your own thoughts and feelings are distorted to your own mind. Because of this film, during those hard and uncertain times, those brave and fortunate souls embarking on sobriety have a face to focus on: Mark's. You can see the ravages of alcohol in his sad eyes; in his lack of any real self awareness; in his misery. And, during that fragile time of early healing when you are only beginning to "see" yourself, these souls embarking on recovery can see themselves in Mark's face. They can see themselves in Mark's face before they are yet capable of seeing themselves in their own.
Thanks for doing what you do, Dave.
Sincerely,
Zane Neumann
If you have not seen the film and feel so inclined, please visit David Sperling's website at www.FURIOUSLOVE.com and order a copy.
If you have seen the film and feel that it is a valid and powerful tool for elucidating the reality and severity of alcoholism, please use the link below to email the fine folks at The Oprah Show.
http://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=215
Dave is trying to raise awareness of his film; the majority of the responses he receives seem to be of the curt, "we-believe-awareness-of-alcoholism-is-important-but-we've-done-our-quota-of-alcoholic-sob-story-shows" variety.
But importance never dissipates; like life, it keeps rolling back around like a wheel. Yesterday's active drunks are today's sober thinkers (or at least, some of them are--sadly not Mark David Allen, for one) and today's alcoholics seeking sobriety are as thirsty for knowledge and help as any ever were before.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Sleepless Dreaming : Thirty Days Sober
I began writing this entry October 25th and then, as we tend to do when living, got sidetracked away from it by other obligations, commitments and pieces I felt more pertinent to write.
But, sifting through some of these older and unfinished entries now--many of which I've had to resign myself to sending to the waste bin in the name of self-interest and better "blogging"--I'm finding that there are some that hold a curious power. They work as a way of cataloguing not only what I feel and believe now, but of how what I feel and believe now has already shifted in some ways in a handful of months. This is one of those entries.
I've gone through and done a bit of editing, a bit of rearranging, but I did my best to leave the overall flavor of the piece untouched. I did my best to keep the voice of the piece the same as it was "way back" in October.
Why?
Because this is not only a snapshot of my first month of recovery...but a snapshot of how I perceived that first sober month (it was August) and recovery itself in October. Re-reading and re-working this entry, I'm looking back doubly so; there are more layers at work in and around us than we are aware of at the time of doing. This piece functions like one of those strange, three-headed Greek Gods--the ones who can see the past, the present and the future all at once.
And there's power in that--in that resounding sentiment. For me at least, there is.
And so, without further ado...
My first thirty days of sobriety consisted of a lot of sitting around, of shambling about life as if I was hungover without the prerequisite drinking. I lived life as something I only half-remembered how to do. I half-watched a lot movies or television, barely ate and played video games and video poker until well after the sun had come up due to a crushing insomnia that was only rarely interrupted by uneasy, restless sleep.
I am looking into a drug called Campral, which is used to help recovering alcoholics find some respite from PAWS symptoms. The worst of my symptoms is insomnia, but I had a little taste of all of them. This drug may be what I need to help with my insomnia as well as diminish the other, less pervasive symptoms I've experienced (loss of equilibrium, fatigue, moodiness, etc.)
But, even with a drug like this, I'm afraid of my inclination towards abusing mind-altering substances. I am an alcoholic--part of that means that I am dependent on chemicals falling under the "depressant" family. Prescription sleeping pills, over-the-counter sleeping pills, cough syrup (both the powerful, prescription codeine and "vanilla" varieties): these are all substances that I've abused in the past. And knowing that now, and knowing that what I did wasn't "doing what I had to" but, in truth, abusing drugs frightens me away from the prospect of having any sort of mind-altering substance at hand's reach. A prescription from a doctor may make these pills legal for me to possess and consume, but that prescription does not act as a ward to keep away my addict inclinations. And, at this point, I don't trust myself enough not to start self-medicating with Benadryl, let alone prescription medication.
(Note from Zane: At this point, still on the "unmedicated" side of things--on a psych's advice and counsel.)
But more importantly than the pills or potions, there was me. Still here, still living under the same roof where my father pointed loaded guns at my mother, where he and I would fist fight, where he drank himself to death; the same roof where my mother drank and drinks, screaming and crying to no one, "Why did he leave me?! Why?!"; and where I drank my own life into ruination.
(Note from Zane: I've since moved to a nearby town, Red Lion, about twenty minutes away from York.)
I was still sober, and terrified not to be, but still as stagnant as I was in all my time of drinking.
I did not write or sing.
I did not spend much time with my friends--and when I did, they would tell me how my eyes looked pained and my smile looked forced.
And so I stayed home, same as I did when my drinking was at its worst, by my lonesome. Biding. Brooding. Hurting. But, in some fundamental way that must be--has to be true--I was healing. I was, for the first time, truly accepting the wreck my life had been. Looking back now, I feel that's what I was doing then--even now, only two months later, my disposition has improved. I believe this shift came from those initial, quiet, alone times; those were the moments where the beliefs I have now were tempered, where my feelings and thoughts were subjected to my first, honest chronicling. This was the real first time of self-inventory and the beginning of awareness.
But the beginning of something is only the beginning.
On many of these restless nights...hell, on all of them (openness and honesty, right?) I would sit at the computer, with the phone at my side, waiting--more so, expecting--the woman I had loved and had hurt so badly over all my years of alcohol abuse to contact me.
I would hit the refresh button on her art web page every fifteen minutes or so, waiting--and again, expecting--some new message to pop up. "Hello Zane, I'm still here. I'm glad you're doing better. Let's talk." And, of course, "I love you."
You see, I could remember her telling me those things. The fact that the last conversations with her that I could clearly remember were...hell, a year ago? Two years ago? And that during that in between period, that blacked-and-grayed-out period, there had been a lot of other conversations.
Horrible ones.
But, as I said, I sat there at the computer, waiting and hoping and feeling sick to my stomach. The phone was always at hand and how I resisted calling her number I can't rightly say; what I can say is that the same principle I applied to the internet I applied to the telephone. I would shift, one call at a time, through the caller ID function, prove to myself that she had not called that day...and then I would convince myself to forget that, to believe there was a possibility that she had, that I had missed her call, and I would sift through the calls again. The phone letting out its monotone, comfortless "beep" as I cycled through three months of calls one at a time, making a night out of it, letting the phone's lonesome voice keep me company as the hours rolled from 2 to 3, from 3 to 4.
And onward.
I began reading every piece of literature on alcoholism, alcoholic pathology, recovery, treatment programs and twelve step programs that I could get my hands on-- and though I was retaining all of the information I was taking in, I was only storing it away. I felt no empowerment or enthusiasm upon finishing each new book or medical analysis--but I stored it away all the same. I know this to be true, not only because I can recall having done it now--but I can recall what I had read. And take comfort and meaning from it now; find further insight and awareness.
My belief is that, during that first month, I was an emotional "zero:" everything that I was experiencing, feeling and thinking was being taken in and recorded. But I was incapable of processing it at that time; the system was down. But I believed that once things rebooted all of those events would still be there in my memory and I that I would be capable of deriving emotional sustenance from them. This turned out to be the case for me.
But not so much then, if at all. Not so much then during that first month.
I attended AA meetings, counseling sessions and early recovery groups--all of which I still attend with the exception of the early recovery group, which I "graduated" from. Like with my readings, early on I walked away from these sessions with only a head full of information and a heart that was still wounded and weary.
I was smoking then, but not smoking as much as I am now.
I've smoked since the age of 16 or so, but never considered myself to be a heavy smoker. A pack of cigarettes could last me three days or so, and even on my nights of binging, and taking into account the cigarettes I'd drunkenly bum from anyone around me I saw lighting up a butt, I don't believe I ever smoked more than a pack at a time even on those intoxicated occasions.
Unfortunately, I can't recall how much I was smoking during my worst period of drinking. I take some comfort in knowing that the amount of cigarettes I was smoking at the time is probably the very least important thing I could possibly remember out of all the things I can't.
What I can tell you is that I'm now smoking up to a pack a day, stone sober.
(A little less than that, now. 1/2 pack, 1/3 pack depending on how the day goes.)
It's on those long, sleepless nights that I smoke the most. Not during the day, when I'm relearning the joy and importance of music and writing make-believe, or on the nights when I can lay down, put on an audio book, and drift peacefully away to Stephen King's Dark Tower westerns. It's on those sleepless nights. It's on nights like those and this one; my bed is just a piece of functionless furniture and my mind defies me with its wakefulness and that pack of cigarettes just runs empty as the hours pass by. Sometimes, most times, I smoke one after another until my throat is sore and the smell of the smoke alone turns my stomach. Usually I'll smoke another two or three after I hit that point--cross-addiction is it's Name-O.
But I'm doing okay. I'm doing all I can do. This entire process is new to me; living without alcohol and...just plain living is new to me.
I've worked to find and to feel and in doing so I've found my own version of truth. I can utilize my counseling sessions for issues aside from my broken heart. It always goes back to it; but that's life, isn't it? It's a wheel and it always comes back around. And I was gone for so long, and missed so much of the spinning, I feel like playing a little catch-up is the best I can do at the moment.
I've found literature that can make as much sense to my heart as my mind, words and stories that are strong in both purpose and understanding.
I'm finding my own recovery; making a checklist in my mind and marking off my own convictions regarding the importance of my sobriety.
I've been working on songs again, honestly and without alcohol, and I'm pleased to find that both my ability and my joy is still there. Not broken; just packed away behind all of the booze.
I'm blowing the dust off and taking the sheets off of these precious things that I'd neglected in storage.
I've even begun writing a western of my own. It's called "Old Stone" and, unsurprisingly, it's primary themes are about the cycles committed by fathers and their sons and, of course, alcoholism.
So I'm stepping back into life, my life, and finding fulfillment in living it.
But, even with that, the emotional wreckage is still there. It's coming to the surface a little more each day, and I think that's a good thing. It was buried for too long and needs to come up to breathe; perhaps to drift away into the sky.
Due to my own alcoholism, I never grieved the loss of my father in a healing way. More so than healing from his loss, I can recognize now that what I had done was simply write him out of my life--not an incredibly hard position for me to take, seeing as how my father wrote himself out of his life by way of his own addictions long before his passing. But the wrong position to take all the same. The unhealthy position. And certainly the position that an addict would take; fuck dad, let's get drunk. Now I have one more reason to justify my atrocious drinking.
I began to think of all of this during those first thirty days--and I still think of it now.
(Note from Zane: And now.)
Due to my alcoholism, I hurt a woman who loved me. I hurt her bad. And, despite not being able to remember the worst moments, remembering what moments I can and the constant absence of her in my life now is all the evidence I need to confirm this sad truth. She loved me and I treated her to a nightly sampling of emotional abuse, directed at both her and myself; to manipulation and veiled threats; and, always at the end of one of my long binges, threats of suicide.
She came back time and again, time and again; I continued to drink. Because that's what alcoholics do.
If I could have one wish now, just one, I'd wish that she would've thrown my ass into rehab years ago. Or got my friends to. Or...
...Or nothing. There's no "alternate" scenario: this is how my life has unfolded. This is how my life is now because this is how Zane functioned as an alcoholic:
1. Wake up
2. Pretend to care about living; about having a life (write, music, work if I had work)
3. Drink
4. Get drunk
5. Shoot through the phases of drunkenness (talkative/emotional, "the professor," depressed)
5a. Blackout
6. Threaten the people that care about me that I'm going to kill myself
6a. Later this also became: punch out windows, fall through windows, get into drunken fights
7. Pass out
Hell, she was 19 when this craziness started on my end. She was 19. That's more a girl-woman than a woman and I treated this beautiful, intelligent, funny, wonderful girl-woman like a sack of shit. And she did not deserve it--nothing changes that fact; no book on alcoholic pathology, no group, no discussion. Nothing.
I was first able to begin realizing this during those first thirty days; I'd sit at the computer with the phone at my side, yes, but I would think as I sat there. And, like with my dad, I still think of this now.
(Note from Zane: And now.)
I realized during those first thirty days that I was abusing myself as well the ones in my life; I did not deserve the hell I had put myself through. I think about this all of the time now; it's one of the most powerful realizations that take the "shine" off of the prospect of drinking in my mind. It's one of the most powerful players in replacing the "alcohol good" thoughts in my mind with "alcohol bad."
(Note from Zane: And I still think of this now.)
Earlier I spoke of cycles pertaining to a western story I'm working on--my mind is filled with the inescapable concept of life existing as a cycle, or a sequence of cycles, right now. Some cycles are actually doing double-duty; they're a cycle and a spiral. That was my drinking; it was both a cycle, repeating and self-feeding; and a spiral, leading forever deeper down.
But this is a cycle I am free from now; of the drinking, the abuse, the shame and the hurt. And while life is full of cycles--life can be looked at as a cycle itself, depending on one's inclination--this is a cycle that I will never allow to spin freely within my own life again. The pain of such living, of such thinking, of addiction lives on for miles and is the only thing living inside it.
But, sifting through some of these older and unfinished entries now--many of which I've had to resign myself to sending to the waste bin in the name of self-interest and better "blogging"--I'm finding that there are some that hold a curious power. They work as a way of cataloguing not only what I feel and believe now, but of how what I feel and believe now has already shifted in some ways in a handful of months. This is one of those entries.
I've gone through and done a bit of editing, a bit of rearranging, but I did my best to leave the overall flavor of the piece untouched. I did my best to keep the voice of the piece the same as it was "way back" in October.
Why?
Because this is not only a snapshot of my first month of recovery...but a snapshot of how I perceived that first sober month (it was August) and recovery itself in October. Re-reading and re-working this entry, I'm looking back doubly so; there are more layers at work in and around us than we are aware of at the time of doing. This piece functions like one of those strange, three-headed Greek Gods--the ones who can see the past, the present and the future all at once.
And there's power in that--in that resounding sentiment. For me at least, there is.
And so, without further ado...
My first thirty days of sobriety consisted of a lot of sitting around, of shambling about life as if I was hungover without the prerequisite drinking. I lived life as something I only half-remembered how to do. I half-watched a lot movies or television, barely ate and played video games and video poker until well after the sun had come up due to a crushing insomnia that was only rarely interrupted by uneasy, restless sleep.
I am looking into a drug called Campral, which is used to help recovering alcoholics find some respite from PAWS symptoms. The worst of my symptoms is insomnia, but I had a little taste of all of them. This drug may be what I need to help with my insomnia as well as diminish the other, less pervasive symptoms I've experienced (loss of equilibrium, fatigue, moodiness, etc.)
But, even with a drug like this, I'm afraid of my inclination towards abusing mind-altering substances. I am an alcoholic--part of that means that I am dependent on chemicals falling under the "depressant" family. Prescription sleeping pills, over-the-counter sleeping pills, cough syrup (both the powerful, prescription codeine and "vanilla" varieties): these are all substances that I've abused in the past. And knowing that now, and knowing that what I did wasn't "doing what I had to" but, in truth, abusing drugs frightens me away from the prospect of having any sort of mind-altering substance at hand's reach. A prescription from a doctor may make these pills legal for me to possess and consume, but that prescription does not act as a ward to keep away my addict inclinations. And, at this point, I don't trust myself enough not to start self-medicating with Benadryl, let alone prescription medication.
(Note from Zane: At this point, still on the "unmedicated" side of things--on a psych's advice and counsel.)
But more importantly than the pills or potions, there was me. Still here, still living under the same roof where my father pointed loaded guns at my mother, where he and I would fist fight, where he drank himself to death; the same roof where my mother drank and drinks, screaming and crying to no one, "Why did he leave me?! Why?!"; and where I drank my own life into ruination.
(Note from Zane: I've since moved to a nearby town, Red Lion, about twenty minutes away from York.)
I was still sober, and terrified not to be, but still as stagnant as I was in all my time of drinking.
I did not write or sing.
I did not spend much time with my friends--and when I did, they would tell me how my eyes looked pained and my smile looked forced.
And so I stayed home, same as I did when my drinking was at its worst, by my lonesome. Biding. Brooding. Hurting. But, in some fundamental way that must be--has to be true--I was healing. I was, for the first time, truly accepting the wreck my life had been. Looking back now, I feel that's what I was doing then--even now, only two months later, my disposition has improved. I believe this shift came from those initial, quiet, alone times; those were the moments where the beliefs I have now were tempered, where my feelings and thoughts were subjected to my first, honest chronicling. This was the real first time of self-inventory and the beginning of awareness.
But the beginning of something is only the beginning.
On many of these restless nights...hell, on all of them (openness and honesty, right?) I would sit at the computer, with the phone at my side, waiting--more so, expecting--the woman I had loved and had hurt so badly over all my years of alcohol abuse to contact me.
I would hit the refresh button on her art web page every fifteen minutes or so, waiting--and again, expecting--some new message to pop up. "Hello Zane, I'm still here. I'm glad you're doing better. Let's talk." And, of course, "I love you."
You see, I could remember her telling me those things. The fact that the last conversations with her that I could clearly remember were...hell, a year ago? Two years ago? And that during that in between period, that blacked-and-grayed-out period, there had been a lot of other conversations.
Horrible ones.
But, as I said, I sat there at the computer, waiting and hoping and feeling sick to my stomach. The phone was always at hand and how I resisted calling her number I can't rightly say; what I can say is that the same principle I applied to the internet I applied to the telephone. I would shift, one call at a time, through the caller ID function, prove to myself that she had not called that day...and then I would convince myself to forget that, to believe there was a possibility that she had, that I had missed her call, and I would sift through the calls again. The phone letting out its monotone, comfortless "beep" as I cycled through three months of calls one at a time, making a night out of it, letting the phone's lonesome voice keep me company as the hours rolled from 2 to 3, from 3 to 4.
And onward.
I began reading every piece of literature on alcoholism, alcoholic pathology, recovery, treatment programs and twelve step programs that I could get my hands on-- and though I was retaining all of the information I was taking in, I was only storing it away. I felt no empowerment or enthusiasm upon finishing each new book or medical analysis--but I stored it away all the same. I know this to be true, not only because I can recall having done it now--but I can recall what I had read. And take comfort and meaning from it now; find further insight and awareness.
My belief is that, during that first month, I was an emotional "zero:" everything that I was experiencing, feeling and thinking was being taken in and recorded. But I was incapable of processing it at that time; the system was down. But I believed that once things rebooted all of those events would still be there in my memory and I that I would be capable of deriving emotional sustenance from them. This turned out to be the case for me.
But not so much then, if at all. Not so much then during that first month.
I attended AA meetings, counseling sessions and early recovery groups--all of which I still attend with the exception of the early recovery group, which I "graduated" from. Like with my readings, early on I walked away from these sessions with only a head full of information and a heart that was still wounded and weary.
I was smoking then, but not smoking as much as I am now.
I've smoked since the age of 16 or so, but never considered myself to be a heavy smoker. A pack of cigarettes could last me three days or so, and even on my nights of binging, and taking into account the cigarettes I'd drunkenly bum from anyone around me I saw lighting up a butt, I don't believe I ever smoked more than a pack at a time even on those intoxicated occasions.
Unfortunately, I can't recall how much I was smoking during my worst period of drinking. I take some comfort in knowing that the amount of cigarettes I was smoking at the time is probably the very least important thing I could possibly remember out of all the things I can't.
What I can tell you is that I'm now smoking up to a pack a day, stone sober.
(A little less than that, now. 1/2 pack, 1/3 pack depending on how the day goes.)
It's on those long, sleepless nights that I smoke the most. Not during the day, when I'm relearning the joy and importance of music and writing make-believe, or on the nights when I can lay down, put on an audio book, and drift peacefully away to Stephen King's Dark Tower westerns. It's on those sleepless nights. It's on nights like those and this one; my bed is just a piece of functionless furniture and my mind defies me with its wakefulness and that pack of cigarettes just runs empty as the hours pass by. Sometimes, most times, I smoke one after another until my throat is sore and the smell of the smoke alone turns my stomach. Usually I'll smoke another two or three after I hit that point--cross-addiction is it's Name-O.
But I'm doing okay. I'm doing all I can do. This entire process is new to me; living without alcohol and...just plain living is new to me.
I've worked to find and to feel and in doing so I've found my own version of truth. I can utilize my counseling sessions for issues aside from my broken heart. It always goes back to it; but that's life, isn't it? It's a wheel and it always comes back around. And I was gone for so long, and missed so much of the spinning, I feel like playing a little catch-up is the best I can do at the moment.
I've found literature that can make as much sense to my heart as my mind, words and stories that are strong in both purpose and understanding.
I'm finding my own recovery; making a checklist in my mind and marking off my own convictions regarding the importance of my sobriety.
I've been working on songs again, honestly and without alcohol, and I'm pleased to find that both my ability and my joy is still there. Not broken; just packed away behind all of the booze.
I'm blowing the dust off and taking the sheets off of these precious things that I'd neglected in storage.
I've even begun writing a western of my own. It's called "Old Stone" and, unsurprisingly, it's primary themes are about the cycles committed by fathers and their sons and, of course, alcoholism.
So I'm stepping back into life, my life, and finding fulfillment in living it.
But, even with that, the emotional wreckage is still there. It's coming to the surface a little more each day, and I think that's a good thing. It was buried for too long and needs to come up to breathe; perhaps to drift away into the sky.
Due to my own alcoholism, I never grieved the loss of my father in a healing way. More so than healing from his loss, I can recognize now that what I had done was simply write him out of my life--not an incredibly hard position for me to take, seeing as how my father wrote himself out of his life by way of his own addictions long before his passing. But the wrong position to take all the same. The unhealthy position. And certainly the position that an addict would take; fuck dad, let's get drunk. Now I have one more reason to justify my atrocious drinking.
I began to think of all of this during those first thirty days--and I still think of it now.
(Note from Zane: And now.)
Due to my alcoholism, I hurt a woman who loved me. I hurt her bad. And, despite not being able to remember the worst moments, remembering what moments I can and the constant absence of her in my life now is all the evidence I need to confirm this sad truth. She loved me and I treated her to a nightly sampling of emotional abuse, directed at both her and myself; to manipulation and veiled threats; and, always at the end of one of my long binges, threats of suicide.
She came back time and again, time and again; I continued to drink. Because that's what alcoholics do.
If I could have one wish now, just one, I'd wish that she would've thrown my ass into rehab years ago. Or got my friends to. Or...
...Or nothing. There's no "alternate" scenario: this is how my life has unfolded. This is how my life is now because this is how Zane functioned as an alcoholic:
1. Wake up
2. Pretend to care about living; about having a life (write, music, work if I had work)
3. Drink
4. Get drunk
5. Shoot through the phases of drunkenness (talkative/emotional, "the professor," depressed)
5a. Blackout
6. Threaten the people that care about me that I'm going to kill myself
6a. Later this also became: punch out windows, fall through windows, get into drunken fights
7. Pass out
Hell, she was 19 when this craziness started on my end. She was 19. That's more a girl-woman than a woman and I treated this beautiful, intelligent, funny, wonderful girl-woman like a sack of shit. And she did not deserve it--nothing changes that fact; no book on alcoholic pathology, no group, no discussion. Nothing.
I was first able to begin realizing this during those first thirty days; I'd sit at the computer with the phone at my side, yes, but I would think as I sat there. And, like with my dad, I still think of this now.
(Note from Zane: And now.)
I realized during those first thirty days that I was abusing myself as well the ones in my life; I did not deserve the hell I had put myself through. I think about this all of the time now; it's one of the most powerful realizations that take the "shine" off of the prospect of drinking in my mind. It's one of the most powerful players in replacing the "alcohol good" thoughts in my mind with "alcohol bad."
(Note from Zane: And I still think of this now.)
Earlier I spoke of cycles pertaining to a western story I'm working on--my mind is filled with the inescapable concept of life existing as a cycle, or a sequence of cycles, right now. Some cycles are actually doing double-duty; they're a cycle and a spiral. That was my drinking; it was both a cycle, repeating and self-feeding; and a spiral, leading forever deeper down.
But this is a cycle I am free from now; of the drinking, the abuse, the shame and the hurt. And while life is full of cycles--life can be looked at as a cycle itself, depending on one's inclination--this is a cycle that I will never allow to spin freely within my own life again. The pain of such living, of such thinking, of addiction lives on for miles and is the only thing living inside it.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
I Can Remember : Part 1 Of ?
They say that it's the small things in life that make it worth living. Simple, straight-forward moments that both keep us grounded and give us wings. There's romanticism at work here, but romanticism that manifests itself in a simple way. A sunrise, a smile, a hug, a warm meal with kind people, telling someone "I love you" and meaning it: these are the small and special things that they are talking about. Things that are small but are also quite valuable; our life's pearls.
"They," is a ubiquitous, abstract concept that we're all aware of--we're all aware of "them" and what "they" have to say. We've all had experience with "them" and "they"--what "they" say or think about this, that and ourselves. My father was one hell of a "they-er," and so was I for a good long time. Denial is one of an alcoholics closest friends and nothing perpetuates denial like deferred blame and guilt--and no one wears or bears these thorned crowns quite as well as a faceless "they."
I was fortunate enough to have a person I cared for (loved) actually say these words to me, to tell me that it's the simple things that matter--peanut butter on toast was one of the examples she gave me. This was a few years ago, and only recently have I been able (or willing) to cast my mind back and remember that conversation. At that time, of course, I was not capable of taking anything from this precious advice--it was too contrary to my experiences, to the flawed and black ideology that had already taken root at the core of my being and begun its cycle of bearing toxic fruit.
But I can remember.
On the other end of the spectrum, they ("they") also say that the devil's in the details. In practice, this is a phrase that usually accompanies an endeavor--the writing of a story, a song, the painting of a picture. Sure, the overall work is great--but just what is the one, tiny element that I feel is missing? What's this itch that I can't seem to scratch? Hell, the devil's in the details.
The saying doesn't carry a straight-ahead, negative connotation with it...but there's that word, "devil," lurking within the phrase. And while most folks, and most turns of the phrase, envision this variation of evil as a tiny, pitchfork-toting imp, for the purposes of this entry I'm going to summon up the full force of the word. I'm talking fire and brimstone here; I'm talking the ruination of souls--Lil' Imp is not the image I'm conjuring so much as the Lord High Satan himself.
Below are some saints and devils from my own life, from my own experiences with alcoholism, dysfunction and devastation. Even the most recent of them is still in the past: still not "now." But they are mine all the same--they were and still are. These are all moments that existed, that I lived in (or more so, through) and that still hold gravity and bearing on my life now.
I know this because I can remember.
I can remember my first taste of alcohol. I was ten years old. My first drink came to me by way of a half-full (or was it half-empty?) sixteen-ounce can of Schaeffer's offered by my father.
We were standing on the back porch of our home in York, PA--a porch that has for years now been overgrown with creepers and weeds. Addiction robs us of our awareness; there is no essence left when it's through. And no time or concern for back porches, weeds or creepers.
I believe that the old back porch fell into disuse long before my father's alcoholism became terminal, long before his passing due to acute alcoholism; long before my spiral and my mother's spiral into full-bore alcoholic insanity. But I can't rightly say with any real certainty; I was drunk so much and for so long.
But back then, during that early time, it was still a place where my father would go out to grill, to smoke his unfiltered Camel cigarettes and drink his few beers or slug of brandy a day. This golden time came long before his few a day became first a few too many, and then a few over the line of sanity and then, ultimately, only a few away from death's door.
His face was unshaven, grizzled, his hair was shoulder length; standing tall and strong in his blue jeans and t-shirt. The pack of unfiltered, full-flavor, full-tar Camels I mentioned earlier glared rebelliously out of his t-shirt's breast pocket; they called the world's bluff and the world looked away. He smelled of cigarettes, of beer, of brandy and most of all of the outside--this "outside" smell, a cold, wild, unkempt smell, is one that I still remember and one that I will always associate with my father. He was an outdoors man, a hunter and a fisherman, a Westerner and an alcoholic and looking up at him then, from my ten-year-old position so close to the ground, he looked like an immortal and a hero. There was no one stronger, I can recall thinking then, tougher or better than my dad. No one.
"This is nasty--it's not sweet," was my response to my first taste of Schaeffer's--a bit ironic, I suppose, because a lifetime of using and perusing brands and beers later let me know that Schaeffer's is, in fact, a very sweet-tasting beer.
"That's good, buddy. It's good that you don't like it. Don't start drinking," my father replied, Camel jutting from his mouth and grilling tongs in hand.
A father and a son sharing a beer on a summer night, the air cool, the sun low, the grill fired up and steaks sizzling: a slice of pure Americana if there ever was one. And not a completely unpleasant memory; seeing my father clearly in my mind's eye, strong and young and still right, is a precious mental photograph.
But, with the clarity of sobriety and with the matured perspective age and experience imparts, I can see the madness nipping away at the edges of this moment. A father and son sharing half a beer; Americana, as surely as I said earlier. But, for a father who is an alcoholic and for a son who has every odd stacked in his disadvantage, every card lying face up and screaming, "You will become a drunk," Americana is only empty romanticism: the self-deceptive kind, not the pure, strings-free manifestation I mentioned at the offset of this entry.
There was no evil at work within my father in that moment: only ignorance. He did not wish for the end he received 20 odd years later--emaciated, incapable of speech due to a trach in his throat (one that filled and then ran over with black bile and blood), his body gaunt and frail; broken and dying, regretting so much and understanding it all far too late.
Likewise, he did not wish to make me into the alcoholic I became. And I am not making the claim that this one long-ago moment did that trick, that it performed it all by it's lonesome; my intentions are to paint one picture that follows the theme of unknowing. One picture in a long line of them and most of them portraits of my own ignorance.
But this is how ignorance works in its purest form: under the guise of night, invisible to our waking minds. Ignorance implies not knowing, not knowing better; painful as it is to say and know, this means that there was no other way things could have played out when ignorance is the tune we dance to.
I can remember the first time I got falling down, rip roaring drunk. I was 13 or 14--I can't say with any certainty to which age I was closer, though I do know that middle school was still a new-ish thing to me. That's as good as I can do with recollecting that part of things, I'm sorry to say.
So, young--13 or 14. And I had put down an entire box of Franzia table wine.
The bathroom was spinning around me like a tempest, I was on my hands and knees, and I was kneeling in an inch deep pool of red puke. From what seemed to be outside of my self--slightly above and to the right, actually--I watched my hands rise to my face; my pants were soaking through to the skin, soaking through with stinking, staining vomit.
"No! I'm too young to die!" I remember screaming, breathless and hoarse. My nose was filled with puke, my sinuses were drowning in puke, my pants were stained and ruined with it and my hair was gelled with half-digested food and stomach fluids. I can't remember getting to the bathroom--all I can remember is the being there--but what is certain is that my world in that moment was completely saturated with puke.
And yet, despite the overpowering stench of puke, when I saw all that red on my own palms I was convinced that what I had vomited up was blood; that all of the lectures and talks that I'd heard in school about the dangers of drinking (lectures and talks that, in respect to waylaying my own alcoholism, unfortunately came too late) were all true.
I had done a bad thing, gotten shitfaced drunk, and now I was dying because of it.
If predisposition is prophecy--a concept that I believe does have merit--than that long ago moment I spent in an upstairs bathroom paralleled beside my life and alcoholism as it developed could be something right out of Nostradamus' writings. Because, in time and in years, I would actually hit the point where I was coughing up my own life's blood due to my advanced alcoholism.
While we're on the subject of my time in middle school, I can remember taking fifths of Crown Royal liquor with me to school in my backpack and then mixing it with my ice tea at lunch. And taking little, bird-small nips of it between classes of course.
I can remember polishing off six-packs of wine coolers and beers every night; I'd lay upstairs in my bed, listen to my parents screaming and fighting downstairs, and tuck them away one after another. My friends were drinking soda or iced tea and working on their homework; I was getting drunk.
Somehow I managed to maintain a high grade point average and attend "advanced" classes all throughout middle school and up until 10th grade, when I dropped out of high school due to "just not giving a fuck" anymore.
I went on to finish my final two years of high school at a local alternative school; but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Allow me to backpedal a moment.
We all have our gifts as well as our curses and my mind is a gift that I can only truly be thankful for, and more so than that respectful towards, in sobriety. I could, for a time, function as an alcoholic both physically and mentally--emotionally is another story--when it came to commitments like school and work and personal obligations like stories and songs. I could function, but I was certainly not present--especially as the years, and the bottles, stacked one on the other. But the makings of my mind as it exists now stand firmly in those past times; beliefs, concepts, ideologies change but I do not believe that capacity is fluid. Who we are as a person, so far as how our individual minds work, comes with the original package in my opinion.
Since becoming sober, I've had several people close to me refer to me as a "survivor"--one of them frankly telling me he "Doesn't know how I am, or how I did it, but I am and I did."
Do either of these things explain how I continued to achieve in school while working double time on the booze as a young, fledgling alcoholic? I think they both do. But, more so than both of them I did what I did--what I was capable of doing--because that's what we do as human beings. The thinking and doing and achieving in school as well as the pounding of beer, wine and liquor were simply what I was made to do at that point of my life: by way of genetics, circumstances and environments it was who I was.
That's where so much of the sadness comes from; it's a vacancy, looking back and having to say in honesty time and time again, "I was drunk for that. I can't remember. I can remember that, but I was still drunk. Drunk again for that moment." Continue ad nauseum.
But the remembering is important, the remembering of both those saints and those devils.
And I can remember.
"They," is a ubiquitous, abstract concept that we're all aware of--we're all aware of "them" and what "they" have to say. We've all had experience with "them" and "they"--what "they" say or think about this, that and ourselves. My father was one hell of a "they-er," and so was I for a good long time. Denial is one of an alcoholics closest friends and nothing perpetuates denial like deferred blame and guilt--and no one wears or bears these thorned crowns quite as well as a faceless "they."
I was fortunate enough to have a person I cared for (loved) actually say these words to me, to tell me that it's the simple things that matter--peanut butter on toast was one of the examples she gave me. This was a few years ago, and only recently have I been able (or willing) to cast my mind back and remember that conversation. At that time, of course, I was not capable of taking anything from this precious advice--it was too contrary to my experiences, to the flawed and black ideology that had already taken root at the core of my being and begun its cycle of bearing toxic fruit.
But I can remember.
On the other end of the spectrum, they ("they") also say that the devil's in the details. In practice, this is a phrase that usually accompanies an endeavor--the writing of a story, a song, the painting of a picture. Sure, the overall work is great--but just what is the one, tiny element that I feel is missing? What's this itch that I can't seem to scratch? Hell, the devil's in the details.
The saying doesn't carry a straight-ahead, negative connotation with it...but there's that word, "devil," lurking within the phrase. And while most folks, and most turns of the phrase, envision this variation of evil as a tiny, pitchfork-toting imp, for the purposes of this entry I'm going to summon up the full force of the word. I'm talking fire and brimstone here; I'm talking the ruination of souls--Lil' Imp is not the image I'm conjuring so much as the Lord High Satan himself.
Below are some saints and devils from my own life, from my own experiences with alcoholism, dysfunction and devastation. Even the most recent of them is still in the past: still not "now." But they are mine all the same--they were and still are. These are all moments that existed, that I lived in (or more so, through) and that still hold gravity and bearing on my life now.
I know this because I can remember.
I can remember my first taste of alcohol. I was ten years old. My first drink came to me by way of a half-full (or was it half-empty?) sixteen-ounce can of Schaeffer's offered by my father.
We were standing on the back porch of our home in York, PA--a porch that has for years now been overgrown with creepers and weeds. Addiction robs us of our awareness; there is no essence left when it's through. And no time or concern for back porches, weeds or creepers.
I believe that the old back porch fell into disuse long before my father's alcoholism became terminal, long before his passing due to acute alcoholism; long before my spiral and my mother's spiral into full-bore alcoholic insanity. But I can't rightly say with any real certainty; I was drunk so much and for so long.
But back then, during that early time, it was still a place where my father would go out to grill, to smoke his unfiltered Camel cigarettes and drink his few beers or slug of brandy a day. This golden time came long before his few a day became first a few too many, and then a few over the line of sanity and then, ultimately, only a few away from death's door.
His face was unshaven, grizzled, his hair was shoulder length; standing tall and strong in his blue jeans and t-shirt. The pack of unfiltered, full-flavor, full-tar Camels I mentioned earlier glared rebelliously out of his t-shirt's breast pocket; they called the world's bluff and the world looked away. He smelled of cigarettes, of beer, of brandy and most of all of the outside--this "outside" smell, a cold, wild, unkempt smell, is one that I still remember and one that I will always associate with my father. He was an outdoors man, a hunter and a fisherman, a Westerner and an alcoholic and looking up at him then, from my ten-year-old position so close to the ground, he looked like an immortal and a hero. There was no one stronger, I can recall thinking then, tougher or better than my dad. No one.
"This is nasty--it's not sweet," was my response to my first taste of Schaeffer's--a bit ironic, I suppose, because a lifetime of using and perusing brands and beers later let me know that Schaeffer's is, in fact, a very sweet-tasting beer.
"That's good, buddy. It's good that you don't like it. Don't start drinking," my father replied, Camel jutting from his mouth and grilling tongs in hand.
A father and a son sharing a beer on a summer night, the air cool, the sun low, the grill fired up and steaks sizzling: a slice of pure Americana if there ever was one. And not a completely unpleasant memory; seeing my father clearly in my mind's eye, strong and young and still right, is a precious mental photograph.
But, with the clarity of sobriety and with the matured perspective age and experience imparts, I can see the madness nipping away at the edges of this moment. A father and son sharing half a beer; Americana, as surely as I said earlier. But, for a father who is an alcoholic and for a son who has every odd stacked in his disadvantage, every card lying face up and screaming, "You will become a drunk," Americana is only empty romanticism: the self-deceptive kind, not the pure, strings-free manifestation I mentioned at the offset of this entry.
There was no evil at work within my father in that moment: only ignorance. He did not wish for the end he received 20 odd years later--emaciated, incapable of speech due to a trach in his throat (one that filled and then ran over with black bile and blood), his body gaunt and frail; broken and dying, regretting so much and understanding it all far too late.
Likewise, he did not wish to make me into the alcoholic I became. And I am not making the claim that this one long-ago moment did that trick, that it performed it all by it's lonesome; my intentions are to paint one picture that follows the theme of unknowing. One picture in a long line of them and most of them portraits of my own ignorance.
But this is how ignorance works in its purest form: under the guise of night, invisible to our waking minds. Ignorance implies not knowing, not knowing better; painful as it is to say and know, this means that there was no other way things could have played out when ignorance is the tune we dance to.
I can remember the first time I got falling down, rip roaring drunk. I was 13 or 14--I can't say with any certainty to which age I was closer, though I do know that middle school was still a new-ish thing to me. That's as good as I can do with recollecting that part of things, I'm sorry to say.
So, young--13 or 14. And I had put down an entire box of Franzia table wine.
The bathroom was spinning around me like a tempest, I was on my hands and knees, and I was kneeling in an inch deep pool of red puke. From what seemed to be outside of my self--slightly above and to the right, actually--I watched my hands rise to my face; my pants were soaking through to the skin, soaking through with stinking, staining vomit.
"No! I'm too young to die!" I remember screaming, breathless and hoarse. My nose was filled with puke, my sinuses were drowning in puke, my pants were stained and ruined with it and my hair was gelled with half-digested food and stomach fluids. I can't remember getting to the bathroom--all I can remember is the being there--but what is certain is that my world in that moment was completely saturated with puke.
And yet, despite the overpowering stench of puke, when I saw all that red on my own palms I was convinced that what I had vomited up was blood; that all of the lectures and talks that I'd heard in school about the dangers of drinking (lectures and talks that, in respect to waylaying my own alcoholism, unfortunately came too late) were all true.
I had done a bad thing, gotten shitfaced drunk, and now I was dying because of it.
If predisposition is prophecy--a concept that I believe does have merit--than that long ago moment I spent in an upstairs bathroom paralleled beside my life and alcoholism as it developed could be something right out of Nostradamus' writings. Because, in time and in years, I would actually hit the point where I was coughing up my own life's blood due to my advanced alcoholism.
While we're on the subject of my time in middle school, I can remember taking fifths of Crown Royal liquor with me to school in my backpack and then mixing it with my ice tea at lunch. And taking little, bird-small nips of it between classes of course.
I can remember polishing off six-packs of wine coolers and beers every night; I'd lay upstairs in my bed, listen to my parents screaming and fighting downstairs, and tuck them away one after another. My friends were drinking soda or iced tea and working on their homework; I was getting drunk.
Somehow I managed to maintain a high grade point average and attend "advanced" classes all throughout middle school and up until 10th grade, when I dropped out of high school due to "just not giving a fuck" anymore.
I went on to finish my final two years of high school at a local alternative school; but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Allow me to backpedal a moment.
We all have our gifts as well as our curses and my mind is a gift that I can only truly be thankful for, and more so than that respectful towards, in sobriety. I could, for a time, function as an alcoholic both physically and mentally--emotionally is another story--when it came to commitments like school and work and personal obligations like stories and songs. I could function, but I was certainly not present--especially as the years, and the bottles, stacked one on the other. But the makings of my mind as it exists now stand firmly in those past times; beliefs, concepts, ideologies change but I do not believe that capacity is fluid. Who we are as a person, so far as how our individual minds work, comes with the original package in my opinion.
Since becoming sober, I've had several people close to me refer to me as a "survivor"--one of them frankly telling me he "Doesn't know how I am, or how I did it, but I am and I did."
Do either of these things explain how I continued to achieve in school while working double time on the booze as a young, fledgling alcoholic? I think they both do. But, more so than both of them I did what I did--what I was capable of doing--because that's what we do as human beings. The thinking and doing and achieving in school as well as the pounding of beer, wine and liquor were simply what I was made to do at that point of my life: by way of genetics, circumstances and environments it was who I was.
That's where so much of the sadness comes from; it's a vacancy, looking back and having to say in honesty time and time again, "I was drunk for that. I can't remember. I can remember that, but I was still drunk. Drunk again for that moment." Continue ad nauseum.
But the remembering is important, the remembering of both those saints and those devils.
And I can remember.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
