Recolections On Past Drinking

Today is May Twenty Sixth Two Thousand Ten. I will admit that I was wrong when I was writing about getting another sponsor a few months back. I need to realize that not everyone cares about stuff the way that I do and that each person has something to give or a way to help me on my road to recovery. I met with my sponsor last nite for just over an hour but it really made a difference in how I felt yesterday. Its good to be reminded that all other problems aside, I am doing really well in my recovery and that I've been able to stay sober for over fifteen months is a fucking miracle. With my sobriety comes the ability to make reasonable choices on which way my life is going and if I don't have my sobriety then I'm not equipped to make any sort of sane decisions. I was drinking a liter of vodka a day minimum and many times was able to drink almost a half gallon. That is a lot of vodka. Much more than someone should be drinking once in their life, never mind every day for three and a half years.

I've been thinking a bunch lately about the historical context of my drinking. Partly because my mom asked me about it and partly because I think about shit often. I was always a hard drinker, went thru phases with bourbon, rum, gin, tequila, craft beers, & vodka. Many, many times people would remark at how much me and my friends drank and we were pretty proud of that. Its just how we did things, the more booze the better. In oh one I was living in Salem, MA and drinking every nite out in the bars was part of the culture and scene. I didn't really start drinking by myself till I left Salem and didn't have very many friends close to Boston or I didn't have many friends who drank like I did near the city. I remember living in a very small room with some friends and they actually called me out on my drinking. That was probably oh two or so. I'd drink a pint or more on my way home so that I could relax with my roommates and get away with only drinking three beers. One of them told me that she didn't know what the hell I did on my way home or who I hung out with but I should probably not drink so much. All this served to do it for me not to come home till late when they were already buzzed up and wouldn't notice my level of intoxication.

Then I moved to a place with a friend for about eighteen months and it was great. He is a good guy and was really chill to live with. We share a love of music and for the first time I didn't turn the tv on when I arrived home. We would listen to music and come up with cover songs for his band to play. I had a nice pot selling business going so thats where my focus was and I look fondly on those days. Then our landlord wanted us out of there so her son could move in so we had to leave. The only place I could find to move into was to a friends house. I knew that he sold cocaine and smoked it all the time but I was too lazy to check craigslizt or something like that. I didn't use coke any more than normal and since I hate smoking it things were pretty chill on that end. What wasn't chill was the bottle of vodka that I would buy on my way home and then pour into soda bottles so it would be on the down low. That was the first time I really hid my drinking and why I thought I needed to do that living with crackheads I will never know. I only lasted there about eight months and then I moved to my present location where I didn't know anyone and would spend lots of time getting fucked up by myself in my room.

This is when heroin came into the picture. I met someone at the crackhead's house who could score me smack and it went from there. In the beginning it was only now and then but a year or so later I had knee surgery. After the procedure which was supposed to be very painful I was rx'd percocets for six months. My knee didn't hurt all that much, it was more of a dull ache but you better believe that I told the docs I was dying so the pills kept coming. After they were gone I started doing heroin again but this time on a daily basis and for the second time in my life experienced withdrawal and felt what it was like to be dope sick. Being dope sick does really suck but I think there is more to it than that. First of all, when I am on dope I feel like a million bucks and anything that doesn't make me feel that way is bad. You know that the only think you have to do to feel better is ingest some heroin and everything goes away. Its really amazing actually. You will have a body ache, chills, sweats, runny poos, and general malaise and then after a line or a shot everything goes away. In like a minute. I think thats a big part of the addiction is the instant gratification.

When I was using heroin every day I would still drink but not as much as I normally would. If I didn't have dope then it was a different matter altogether. I would drink till I met my dealer or if I didn't have any money then I would just drink till I passed out. Then I would wake up in a couple of hours and drink till I passed out again. Drinking when your dopesick really sucks because it doesn't really make you feel any better or take the edge off. If anything it just makes you feel worse and causes you to puke more often. For me it was just a way to pass the time till I could figure out some way to get forty or eighty dollars for a bag of dope and then all my worries would go away. The thing is that I knew what the end game was, I knew that if I did this shit every day I could be addicted within a couple of weeks and then I would have to come up with eighty dollars every single day. For the record, eighty dollars time three hundred sixty five days is over twenty eight thousand dollars and I am sure that I spent more than that in the three plus years I was a daily heroin user. Add eight dollars a day for ciggys and ten dollars for vodka thats an extra six grand or so on top of the almost thirty grand a year for dope you are looking in the neighborhood of forty to fifty thousand dollars a year for my buzz. I make ok money but no THAT ok money.

When I really started drinking every day I rarely went beyond my front door. For one thing it cost too much and for another I didn't want to be judged by anyone or forced to face the fact that I was dependent on alcohol or I would suffer withdrawal. I remember more than one weekend while I had plenty of heroin and decided that I would take a couple days off from my drinking. Due to me not drinking I would throw up all weekend as much as fifty or sixty times over three days. I thought that perhaps I had just done too much dope but thinking back I am sure it was alcohol withdrawal. I couldn't even keep down water and I told myself that by the third day I wasn't able to hold anything down then I would go to the hospital for some fluids. This of course would cause me to admit to someone else that I had an serious alcohol problem and that wasn't going to happen unless I had no other choice in the matter. Whats totally insane is that I have since learned that going thru alcohol withdrawal without medical assistance is very dangerous and I am really fucking lucky that I did not experience a seizure. Every time I kicked alcohol I was by myself at my mom and dad's house up on the northshore. I went thru this about six or seven times and its a freaking miracle that my parents didn't arrive home to find my cold dead body on the floor.

I have the opinion that every single person sitting in an AA meeting is an example of a miracle and the blessing of life for a variety of reasons. The first is that they are actively seeking help in their life. They have admitted to themselves that they need help beyond what they can do for themselves. The second is that they are sitting there living and breathing. People take enormous risks not only in the chemicals they place in their body & the stress that the body goes thru, but they also take risks as a result of whatever chemical is in their body. There are many, many acts that seem like a great idea when you are drunk or high that would never even see the light of day when you are sober. I consider it a miracle that I didn't kill anyone or myself when I was driving wasted. I can't even begin to count the amount of times I had to drive with the windows down in the winter so I wouldn't pass out or with one had over my eye when I was seeing double. All in all, the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous are filled with many miracle by each and every person sitting there.