I bet it is, especially my stomach. I was starting to develop some serious stomach issues near the end there, and I know my stomachâs thanking me now. Yet another reason not to go back.
So again, this not only symbolizes my quitting of drugs and alcohol, but is instrumental in keeping me off drugs and alcohol. Iâve basically branded myself with a statement: I will not do drugs and alcohol. So I canât just go back now.
Itâs not quite the original drawing:
But Iâve learn something about the art of tattooing: not any drawing is transferable. Sometimes, you gotta let the tattoo artist customize it to best suite the purpose. Several things come into consideration: the shape of your body (where the tattoo is going), the thickness of the lines, how the color will fade over time, and generally what looks good as a tattoo as opposed to a drawing on paper. But in any case, my tattoo artist certainly captured the essence of it and Iâm happy with his work.
So far Iâve spent a lot of money on this transition in my life. Almost $1000 for the tattoo, $2000 for the Dale Carnegie course, $180 every visit to my therapist⌠quite the investment for someone who isnât taking this seriously.
I have this hanging up on my bedroom wall. Itâs to remind myself of all the reasons not to do drugs and alcohol (and itâs not exhaustive⌠thereâs about 5 other reasons on the other side). Note my number 1 reason: Cassidy & Kaden, my two children. â So again, not very serious.
I also had a talk with my kids the other day about how they like their dad before and after the drugs & alcohol. I asked them:
âDo you guys notice any difference in me before I quit the drugs and alcohol and now?â
Cassidy: âMmm⌠no, not really.â
Daddy: âDo you guys feel maybe I hurt you when I was on drugs and alcohol? Like I was abusive?â
Cassidy: âAbusive? What do you mean?â
Daddy: âWell, some people on ILP think maybe I did you guys harm when I was on drugs and alcohol or that I was abusive.â
Cassidy laughs: âWho thinks that?!?!â
Daddy: âArc does. Some other guy named Pedro. But sometimes itâs true. Some alcoholic or drug addict parents end up abusing their children. Arcâs mom was like that. But she thinks itâs the alcohol itself that makes the parent abusive. The alcohol can exacerbate the abuse but usually an abusive parent is abusive for a much deeper reason, something that was there long before they started drinking alcohol. In fact, the alcohol is usually more a symptom than a cause. But not all alcoholic or drug addict parents are like that. I hope I wasnât like that with you guys.â
Kaden: âWell, we WERE, daddy!!! You were a TERRIBLE daddy!!! You were just sooo terrible!!!â â He said it with a huge grin on his face. He likes to joke around like that.
Iâm also reminded of something Cas said to me the other day: âYouâre an awesome daddy.â
Me: âOh yeah? Whyâs that?â
Cas: âBecause when I jump into your arms, you catch me and you hold me.â
Me: âYeah? Other daddies donât do that?â
Cas: âNo, most of them say theyâre too tired, or too busy, or some other excuse. But you donât.â
Now just in case I have inflicted irreversible damage on my kids and weâre all in denial about it (as Arc and Pedro are bound to point out), Iâm going to schedule a visit to my sonâs therapist probably sometimes in October. Sheâs a child psychologist who would know the signs of abuse in children, maybe even due to alcohol or drug addiction, and Iâm going to ask her if sheâs seen any signs of that in Kaden. Iâll report back with the results.
So I checked out an AA meeting Friday night. I was awarded a coin for lasting 3 months! Everyone thought it was a huge deal. And I guess it was, but I think they thought so more than I did.
What was it like? Meh⌠it was all right. I didnât really feel like I fit in. Everyone there had much more grueling stories than I could ever tell. Stories about going to jail, about bring caught in a cycle of drinking themselves silly every day just to get over the hangover from the previous day, of isolating themselves from their families, about rehab and detoxification. My alcoholism was never that bad. My weakness consisted of sometimes telling myself: gib, no drinking tonight, and then failing, going to the liquor store to buy 100ml of whiskey. Sometimes, not all the time. Overall, I felt like those guys at the meeting were at a whole other level of addiction than I was.
It made me feel like I shouldnât be calling myself an alcoholic. Maybe I never really was.
One of the heads of the group said he was going to call me sometime this week. Not sure what he wants to talk about, but Iâm sure it will involve encouragement to come to the meetings regularly or to keep in contact with him or other members. I might have to go into some detail about my experiences, my intentions, my condition, etc. which is fine, Iâll go through the motions, but I feel uncomfortable about going back there. I went to check it out, see what itâs like, but I donât think itâs for me.
Now there is another program: the SMART program (Self-Management and Recovery Training). Check it out: addictioncenter.com/treatme ⌠-recovery/. A friend recommended it. She said it was a more hands-off and non-religious approach to recovery. I intend to check it out in the same vein that I checked out AA⌠just to see what itâs like, to see if itâs for me, but no intention of committing. Iâll post an update here once I go.
I also found my energy specialist (a naturopath), but Iâll report more on that later.
As I said last time, I intended to pay a visit to my sonâs therapist to ask if sheâs noticed any signs of abuse whether drug/alcohol related or otherwise. I went yesterday. She emphatically said no. Sheâs seen a lot of troubled kids and she knows the signs of abuse. She said with confidence that she had no reason to suspect my son was being raised by an alcoholic or drug abusing parent. I had never told her about my problem with drugs and alcohol until yesterday. She said my son is just a difficult child by temperament, and that his hot temper is most likely genetic.
In fact, she thinks my ex and I are very caring parents and itâs obvious that we put our childrenâs needs well ahead of our own. She told me in cases where the parents who bring their children to see her are divorced or separated, usually itâs the mother bringing them in and the father never comes for a visit. While my ex and I donât go at the same time, I try to make the occasional visit, and she tells me Iâm one of the rare fathers who actually bother.
So that puts that one to rest.
Oh yeah, that guy from the AA meeting? Never called.
Perhaps you were just more of a high-end social drinker�
Since (being able to) going back to weights, Iâve practically gone off alcohol, so substitutions we find pleasurable/enjoying, or in my case⌠re-substitutions⌠of which there are still very few, resolve the need for recreational use of social drinking etc.
Went to a SMART meeting. I liked it a bit better than AA. If AA is about relying on others because you are powerless to do it yourself, SMART is all about self-empowerment. They give you the tools to change yourself. Tonight, we talked a bit about strategies for changing your thought patterns. Unlike at the AA meeting, no one there really got a chance to tell their stories, so I didnât quite feel like a fish out of water. Doesnât mean itâs a policy. Maybe next meeting will be all about diving into peopleâs stories.
This wonât be a regular occurrence, but I might go again. And not just because I liked it a bit better than AA, but because I know a girl there who I really, really, really like. Unfortunately, she doesnât think itâs a good idea for us to date (for reasons I will not disclose), but she seems to like me anyway, and I really enjoy being around her. So if going for my own sake isnât motivation enough, maybe she is.
My book is done! All three volumes are available online here and here.
Woopie!!!
So why post this in this thread?
Because, my friends, because! If anyoneâs been paying attention, you might have noticed that sometimes I say that my drug abstinence is permanent, other times a year, maybe a year and a half. Whatâs permanent is my decision to abstain from the three categories of addiction: alcohol, caffeine, and cannibinoids. But strictly and formally speaking, my plan has always included a release valve. After a year, maybe a year and a half, I would return to my decision to quit drugs and alcohol and consider whether I wanted to experiment with other kinds of drugsâyou know, rare and exotic kinds, ones no oneâs ever heard ofâI was sure to satiate my curiosity before July 1 with the usual suspectsâcocaine, ecstasy, acid, mushroomsâthe only one I regret not having had the chance to try is peyote, but I sadly accept my losses. But there are plenty of rare specimens out thereânaturally grown and produced in a labâand theyâre discovering new ones every day.
So a year after July 1, maybe a year and a half, I might end up going back to drugsânot alcohol, not caffeine, not cannabinoidsâthis time around knowing how not to get addicted⌠but in all likelihood not. You see, this is only a formality of my plan. Hereâs where the other phrasing comes inâthe one that goes, âI give up all drugs and alcohol foreverâ â Thatâs the one Iâve really been going with. Itâs just not formal. So in all likelihood, in a year from July 1, maybe a year and a half, my decision will be not to experiment with new and exotic kinds of drugs, to stick to absolute abstinence all together and forever.
Now then, what does that have to do with my book? Well, I no longer half to say âa year, maybe a year and a halfââas of December 5, it is officially one more yearânot a bad estimate if I do say so myself (you know, Dec 5 of 2019 will be almost a year and a half from July 1). Dec 5 was the official day I completed all 3 volumes of my book.
This is important to my goal and gives you all a larger picture of what Iâm trying to achieve here. Giving up drugs and alcohol is part of a larger goal of âletting goââletting go of unhealthy attachments. Drugs and alcohol were one of them, my book was another. Why is my book unhealthy, you ask? I wouldnât call it âunhealthyâ per se, but itâs been a distraction for me, something that sucked a lot of time and energy from me that could have been, and now can be, put towards more important things. This was the same for the drugs. I now feel like there are no more âselfishâ attachments in my life. I will experience one year of what this is like, and see what I can do with my life sans unhealthy attachments and selfish distractions.
Itâs from the ass-kicking that I gave to so many other things after they fallaciously gave me the ass-kicking they thought that I deserved.
As in, I actually wrote it myself and came up with it myself. Youâre still struggling. This is where you fall down and go boom and when you begin to realize just how little you actually succeeded in getting off drugs and alcohol because you went about it the wrong way. This is when you begin to realize how right I was months ago and where your failed success gets seen for what it is. Will you redeem yourself by the time your life is over? Certainly, especially since there is no way for you to take back this current course of idiocy that youâve been on. Itâll help you succeed and when you succeed, youâll realize how much I knew before you did and how stupid and idiot your gloating and laughter has been. How false your smugness.
You, Pedro, and Arc⌠three peas in a pod. You all seem to want to send a nebulous message that my success doesnât count, that somehow itâs really âfailureâ. I gotta tell you, I really donât get it. I donât get the punch line. Was I supposed to stay on the drugs until Iâm âreadyââwhatever that meansâdid I quit for the âwrongâ reasons? Are you still waiting in the wings for my impending doom? Are you under the impression Iâve already fallen? That Iâm back on the booz and the drugs?
Come out with what you want to say, instead of being all vague and mysterious. Then at least I can know whether to agree or disagree with you.
Youâre pissing me off. Youâve got an attitude problem about me simply using my own life experience to look at where you are, know by the tone of your body language, how you lay your words, where you are in your life, your experiences, etc. and put it down to you exactly how it was going to be. Your reaction now; petulance; only shows this to be true. Your very emotion as you typed up âthisâ reply is something palpable and able to be felt. Youâre in the moment, instead of distanced and couldnât help but respond naturally.
When I was younger, I was having trouble in school and decided to go into Job Corps. Before I went in, my step-dad told me I was going to fail. He used his life experiences to size up where I was at as a child and I was a bit upset about him telling me, but he did turn out to be right. Itâs one of those things where I learned how to overcome people telling me I was going to fail. That reason coincided with actual emotional growth in my life and made it easier for me to seize success later on for other things.
Iâm sure youâve heard people talk about how the places they grow up in are black holes they canât escape from. Same concept.
My own experiences with drugs and alcohol⌠mixed with watching the experiences of others that were going through rehab; the âbuzzâ or âwordâ passing around society at the time, etcetera.
When I quit drinking, it was after I wrecked my car. I didnât wreck my car because I was drinking, I wrecked it because there was gravel on the road. The loss of my car; and I loved that car; coincided with me wanting to get my head on straight and quit doing âstupidâ things while drunk. Things that âdont existâ, including my own weak emotional psychology and mind at the time (Iâve since strengthened my mind quite a bit) were causing me to do things I wasnât proud of. My lack of self-worth and insecurities and inadequacies mixed into it had me being able to be talked into doing things that I have been ashamed of and easier for me to be too weak to fight off the other things that I also was ashamed of. Without getting too much into detail about those things, Iâm sure you can relate. You donât see those things the same way I do because you have yet to be broken, which means that you are weaker than I was throughout all the personal experiences Iâve listed in this response. Youâre at the point of making excuses for the things you do, even while sober.
My drinking was starting to get out of hand when I wrecked my car and I was starting to turn into an alcoholic. I quit drinking for a couple months before the urge to drink came up again. Thatâs where you are, pushing off the urges and trying to consider yourself healthy for it, successful. What I did that was different than you? I realized the urge to drink again for what it was and what it could be: I like drinking and drugs, and if I ran from that; like youâve been doing the entire time youâve claimed to be clean; then my fall would be worse just like those people in rehab and AA. So, what I did was choose to drink again, to allow myself to face that fear instead of run from it and fought to keep my mind during drinking and using drugs.
Youâre still running. When you stop running, when the urges catch up to you again and you âbingeâ as youâre going to do, itâs going to be worse than youâve ever had it be before, but it will make you strong enough to start fighting the way that Iâve already been fighting. Since my first response in this thread, I have had time to learn many other things, get my mind to a more cohesive and sharper edge to where now I can pick up on things about you that were impossible for me to do before. My mind is âclearerâ even when on drugs and alcohol. Your mind remains fogged and cloudy even while sober.
You also wouldnât have listened to anybody tell you differently back when you started this project. You can know by looking back at your past that with the âblindersâ you had on, people did try to tell you and tip you off and you just blew them off. They let you instead of banging their heads against the wall.
Still donât know what the hell youâre talking about.
So now you think you can size other people upâlike what goes around comes around; well, tell you what sparky, maybe the reason your step-dad told you you were going to fail is because you are a failureâa big fucking no good failureâat everything in lifeâmaybe what it means that he said you were going to fail and you did fail is not that what goes around comes around but that it begins and ends with youâyou are a failure and thatâs all youâre ever going to beâyou donât get to pass the buck on, you donât get to tell me that Iâm a failure nowâyouâre stuck with that buck and thatâs the way it will be for the rest of your life.
Again, not being very clear. You really gotta pin down some examples. What excuse did I make for myself?
Well, finally we have some clarity from you. Youâre jealous! You couldnât last two months and here I am six months and still going strong. And of course, you canât live your life thinking of yourself as the failure your papa knew you were, so you think to yourself: drugs=strength (I guess thatâs what you mean by âbreakingâ).
Tell me, did it feel like strength when you caved to the urge to drink? If thatâs what you think, then anything can be considered strength. I cave in an arm wrestle, feeling that the will to resist the other guy is just me being too weak to face what I really want: to relax my muscles and just let go⌠that would feel really good⌠it takes real strength to just give up.
The mind always feels clearest in the momentâitâs called projection.
Since you bring it up, I think a report on how Iâm doing is in order. You mentioned that Iâm struggling. Well, thatâs probably one of the few things you got right, but that shouldnât come as a shock to anyone. Struggling is part and parcel of recovery. I donât think Iâve ever heard of an ex-addict who doesnât struggle. But youâre absolutely wrong about the urges. I said it to Arc and Pedro, now Iâm saying it to you. What Iâm struggling with is not the urge to drink or do drugsâI can still go to the bar and not even consider whether Iâll just have one beer this one timeâI go to the bar and I know I wonât be drinkingâI know it so well itâs on auto-pilotâwhat Iâm struggling with are the achievement of my goalsâthe oneâs a set out to meet since July 1; self-esteem and confidence, energy, wakefulness, happiness, true happiness, fulfillment⌠all these things are still outside my reach. And the reason Iâm struggling with these and not with the urge to drink or do drugs is because I keep looking forwardâforward towards my goalsâand never back. He who looks back to the things he gave up has nothing to live for, no reason to go on without those things, and so always looks back longing for the days when he could at least drown his pain in the soothing comfort of the anesthetic. The only reason you think of yourself as strong is because the drugs fuel that type of delusion. Believe me, I had my fair share of drug-induced delusions of grandeur⌠so long as I went back to them, it kept the delusion alive and I could feel all kinds of awesome. But in time I came to understand the difference between feeling awesome and being awesome (which I believe I explained somewhere in this thread), and with the drugs, the two are mutually exclusive. You feel awesome (strong) but in reality your not. Strive for awesomeness (strength) in real life, and you may achieve it though you may not feel it. If I were you, Iâd have a second look at those two months of your sobriety and consider whether that was really your strongest moment though you may not have felt it.
You can get mouthy all you want, but itâs still you just putting on an act. Know the worst part? Youâve got years before you get on top of even half the things you want to be on top of, and then you still wonât be on top of them at all times and will have to accept that.
Johann Hari, in this video, explains how Portugal almost completely got rid of their drug and alcohol problem by not only legalizing all drugs and alcohol but astonishingly cured, more or less, almost all users of their addictions by âconnectingâ them to their communities and reintegrating them into society. It is a lack of âconnectionâ, Johann explains, that most makes an addictâthe nearly wholesale deprivation of human interaction or sense of belonging and trustânot just in the physical sense of being secluded from people but in the psychological sense of having no real deep or intimate connections with others. He furthermore points out that people who have strong and healthy bonds with friends and loved ones can take copious amounts of drugs and not get addicted (he gives the example of hospital patients who can be drugged up on morphine for weeks and not become addicted upon their release).
Now, I find this very interesting because it really resonates with me. Iâve always been a loner. I donât have a lot of strong ties with other people. I live by myself, I donât see my kids as often as Iâd like, my best (and only) friend lives 500 miles away, and my immediate family lives all over the globe (my oldest sister lives 200 miles away). I donât socialize much, donât feel that comfortable around people, and frankly donât trust anyone a hell of a lot. I am, for all intents and purposes, disconnected. Itâs no wonder I used to booze and smoke up all the time.
It was the agony of the deafening silence. When youâre at home with no one around, the quiet can be loud enough to drive you mad. Getting drunk and high really took the edge off that. Now I just listen to music and watch youtube videos all the time.
So my drug and alcohol problem may have been caused (or at least allowed) by a severe lack of connection with people. But you know what the truth is? I still donât really want to socialize all that much. Itâs not quite the same thing as filling the void of loneliness, just the void of under-stimulation. Even though I still go to the bar and order non-alcoholic drinks, Iâve been going less frequently, and when I go itâs to bars where the staff donât really know me so that I donât have to socialize.
The only exception here is that I long for love. Iâve said before in this thread and Iâll say it again: I would have given up the drugs for love. And I mean deep love. Intimate, sexual, absolute trusting love. But alas, girls wonât even give me the time of day. Nonetheless, Iâve given up the drugs anyway. Now Iâm just left with loneliness and emptiness.