Last Christmas, Mouthwash, & My License

Today is Thursday December Twenty Fourth Two Thousand Oh Nine. Christmas Eve. I am hoping to put forward a better performance this xmas than I did last year. Last year my dope ran out on xmas morning and I had to substitute booze for it. Bad idea. There is nothing more wretched than someone withdrawing from heroin and drinking like a fish. I would drink enough to pass out, get up drink enough to pass out, get up drink enough well you get the idea. It was poor and one of the first time my perental units sensed there was something seriously wrong with me. After doing a very similar performance after burning man the previous summer my brother called me and was like what the fuck dude ? Can't say I disagree with him on that one, I got high and drank every day like it was my job and well, for a few years there anyway it was.

I keep waiting for someone to ask me how I ended up being physically addicted to alcohol. Its easy to explain away being addicted to heroin because it doesn't take all that long for you to be physically addicted to the shit. Alcohol in my experience takes quite a bit longer and much more effort. The main thing for me was waking up shaking not unlike what happens with a bad hangover. Add throwing up to that shaking and when everything goes away after an hour of drinking thats pretty much the whole story. I started drinking in the morning somewhere around 2006 and was really only needed to drink in the morning the last year. What a year that was, I focused my life around getting heroin and drinking. Didn't have time for anything else and really didn't want to. My only thoughts were how I was going to make it thru the day after my first few cocktails at six in the morning.

Ecch. Bad memories there but they are memories I need to keep in the forefront of my mind so that I never forget where I once was in life. I started drinking mouthwash because one sunday I woke up and needed some booze to calm my hands. I spied my roommates mouth wash, poured some in a glass and drank it. In the beginning it was super hard to drink but it goes easier and boy oh boy does it get you hammered. It was that reason and the fact that I could steal it from CVS that I drank mouthwash pretty consistently for the last three months of my active addiction. My pee smelled weird and I could smell the chemicals ooze thru my skin. It was not pleasant and I was a complete mess towards the end of my drinking. Turns out that thanks to AA I am not the only person in the world that drank mouthwash but I am pretty certain that as far as consistency and length of drinking I am a winner. Oh, and I preferred the yellow kind, the basic Listerine. It has the most booze in it. I don't use mouthwash anymore and I would rather have every one of my fucking teeth fall out before I had that crap in my mouth. I would break my streak of not vomiting for sure, I have not puked since I got sober and I continue that trend.

Ok, enough about that its almost Christmas after all. I am going to my folks place in Maine for the weekend and I am leaving work early to catch the bus up there. I don't have a license yet because I lost it for getting a DWI on xmas a few years ago when I blew a .27. I told myself I would not get another license till I had a year of sobriety so thats a goal for me after January. I figured that since I was still going to be drunk all the time that it didn't make sense to get a lisc that I would certainly lose again, this time for a long time. It may sound nuts but it worked for me and I really don't want to go to jail again. That sucked and I will write about my experience in the Portland, ME jail sometime soon but thats about all I have for now.