Tag: alcohol

2thousandseventeen.

January 1st, 2018

Under five hours to go until 2018 is here and the time has come to say goodbye and let go of two complete different far side of the spectrum mountains in my life that I will not carry into the new year: my marriage and my drinking.

Maybe the failure of one dominoed the success of the other. And maybe that’s not true at all.

I don’t want to talk about my failed marriage publicly because it wouldn’t be fair for only one side to be expressed plus I’m never into airing dirty laundry, as it were. I can tell you this though, that my conquering an alcohol addiction 8 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years (or any other number in there) ago during said marriage, the chances are strong that the marriage would have survived and now be thriving. No, I guarantee it.

Hindsight however, is a real buzzkiller, pun fully intended. The crazy thing is how often during the trying times and even during the good times where I would always be the one saying let’s not drink, it’s poisoning our marriage. It wasn’t hindsight then; it was a magnificent and totally doable idea. Five minutes later though, who’s in the car heading toward the nearest liquorland? This guy. Oops.

For me, my recent walk from daily alcohol abuse came now. Not then when I needed it. When I needed to fix my broken wife. When I needed to fix our bank account. When I needed to get healthy, not continue to allow us to literally poison ourselves. When I needed to show my son that I am not a slave to a murderous master. When I needed to be able to look at myself in the eye and start to one day again like whom was staring back at me.

But I couldn’t do it then. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save myself. I couldn’t save the marriage. And in those dark months where it seems like all I did was cry and question why, a great healing was awakening in me.

For months after, I continued to drink nightly, the same as ever, no hope of quitting in sight. I’d beat myself up each time and in between. The loser that I felt I was got preached at by the guy in the mirror, and that hunched my shoulders further. Yet during this time of seemingly monotonous behaviours of the addicted kind, clarity and truth were slowly shining through me, like early morning sunlight through the bottom, sides and top of a closed door.

And when I was ready, I was able to open that door and the light was undeniable. It consumed every inch of darkness in me. Desires that plagued me were removed and only the mechanical response to it remained.

This year, I actually walked away from liquor!! Tears are coming fast as it’s an overwhelming joy that always taunted me and was at a distance I could not touch. But I’ve done it! It rules me no more.

And now I see that the timing was, in fact, perfect. I will always want to save people, especially those that I love. It’s who I am. But I cannot save my wife. I couldn’t then and I can’t now. I can’t do it.

But I saved me.
Defenestration

December 11th, 2016

A caged animal has but few options. He can accept the four barred walls he’s inside of, without hope and without happiness, and take the life that is his to live. This requires him to be docile and understanding: to feed when given food, to micturate at the appropriate time and to lay there as though this is as good as it gets.

Similar to a locked up criminal. Watched and governed by armed guards who care nothing for you as a human being (and generally treated as above mentioned caged animal), the imprisoned man or woman must adhere to the life available in their six by eight foot living quarters. And just like the dog or other animal told to sustain life behind steel bars, the options are to obey… or to unleash all anger, resentment, fear and violence that has built up inside of them, resulting in ramming themselves, animal or man, into the cage as a statement of aggression with the hopes and intention of freeing oneself, no matter the level of damage done to their self.

Inciting a riot. Bringing all hell to other inmates or other caged animals, if only allowed those beautiful moments of freedom from the cage that seals them in.

These behaviours result in anti-freedom, however. Solitary confinement. Longer lock downs. Beat downs, resulting in loss of conscienceness and other menial priveledges revoked. Imagine going back to square one, but behind even more and bleeding profusely. There is no end to this incarceration. You cannot free yourself and no one is there to help you.

The mind of an addict is not far off. He lives in a cage. He wants the life everybody else wants but can’t access it. He’s walled himself in and no matter how much he either does what he’s programmed or even if he plans a jailbreak, there is no escape.

The steel bars, he has implemented. They hold him nicely; cold and unforgiving, as his soul is inside the walls of flesh that contain him. The guards, he has appointed. He gives them permission to hold him down, even to beat him into unconsciousness on a regular basis. At times, he musters the weakest courage to fight back; to alter the governed system he has blueprinted and authorized but his kingdom is smarter than him, for he’s captive eternal.

Can he reprogram the system? Will he change himself and plant a virus so potent in the system he’s hardwired that it collapses from the inside and he can be fully pardoned and walk away unscathed, never to slip up again and feel the cold, steel shackles anchoring him back in these ways? It’s hope that keeps him alive.
Revolution

October 17th, 2016

A forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system is the definition of a revolution. And that, my friends, is exactly what is happening in my life at the moment.

I’ve never been a lazy man; I haven’t any time for that. But I have let bad behaviors get in the way for too long now, and they’ve crossed over enough to generally thwart who I am entirely. And I can’t stand for that any longer. I owe it to my wife, to my children, to my work place and to myself to be better and to overcome. It’s time to overthrow and welcome a new system of living.

Drinking. It’s killing me, probably literally. It has been the number one cause in my gaining 40 pounds the past few months. I feel like an old man when I open my eyes each morning, constantly cursing the night before. Why I’ve fell in love with its seductive intoxicants as badly as I have, I have no idea how I let it get this far. A drain on every area in my life and I want revenge. I want to damage it like it’s damaged me.

Working out. I was the guy in the gym 6 days a week, never missing a session and it showed. I was in the best shape of my life in my mid to late 30s. Then I let life and booze take greater precedence and I’ve never felt more unhealthy nor have I looked it. Fat covering my well earned muscles, love handles jutting out the back and a big ol’ beer belly out front. I’m in the one place I should never have been… out of shape and unattractive. And so much of it is connected to the liquor.

Writing. Been blogging for years, have a handful of TV scripts under my belt, a comedy cookbook in the works and currently a full-on novel being written (possibly novella, not sure yet). But being sick for nearly a month plus the brain cell killing habit of slurping late night spirits is giving me a certain writers block I have never known. I need renewal; a new sense of purpose in the one thing that I am most passionate about. I don’t want to just sit down and write for the sake of ‘yay, I wrote’. I have to be writing the best I ever have otherwise I’m not doing it at all.

So I find amidst this battle, on the frontline. Instigating change, albeit monumental change, is obviously a very trying task. Just saying I want a revolution isn’t going to cut it. Blood, sweat, prayer, support and tears will lead the way.

We are all overcomers. I shall forcibly overthrow this social order in favor of a newer, better and stronger system. My sword is unsheathed.
Belly Fat

February 23rd, 2016

I’m working on my professional six pack. Hard.

Crunches, in the form of daily writing. Planks, in submitting my work to publishers format. Knee ups, in the form of finding ways not only behind but in front of the camera. All portfolio boosters and all sweat breakers.

A steady, healthy diet is complimentary to the gym regiment. Creativity are my salads. Working on a piece of writing is my protein, sustaining me ’til the next feeding. Eight glasses of water are my next big idea.

Isn’t it so true though? Where you spend your time, or your money, and how you feed it and grow it is all up to you. Could be a positive like your body or as I’m referencing in this posting, my career. And easily enough, you could be nursing a bad habit to greater health than you’d knowingly allow it.

Look at alcohol. I used to think of it as a friend. We visited one another regularly and I gave him a solid foothold in my almost day to day life. Not once did it cross my mind that I was breeding a monster that would one day begin robbing from me and was becoming more powerful than I was myself. I fed it and he comforted me. I didn’t realize he was rallying an army against me. He was my enemy the entire time.

Look at the body. Sure, as one gets older, wisdom takes over where cockiness once lived. But let’s consider this point through a 25 year old male. Metabolism still burning bright, he generally eats what he wants when he wants. Exercise isn’t a big deal as he figures he has good genes and doesn’t need the hassle of breaking a sweat or investing his money in a gym. Party is a way of life, as is his casual smoking habit. Hey, he’s no alcoholic or even a full time smoker so there’s no harm. Fast forward a decade and all of a sudden he wakes up, Mister Together, and realizes his choices have him in horrible health, possibly irreversible the effects of his long term physical assault upon himself.

Look at the mind/soul. Take the same guy, put him at age 15 and forget all his other later-in-life problems. This young man falls in love (if it’s actually a thing) with pornography. His every day life is thwarted with when can he next view sexuality at its raunchiest. It changes him. He views women wrongly. He degrades his own mother and eventually his future girlfriend and wife. At one point, it’s not enough so he graduates to violent porn and when that doesn’t excite him, he toys with the thought of raping a girl and maybe he follows through. He loses his wife and he loses his freedom but guess what he has to face every hour of every day, staring at those cold prison walls? The grotesque monster that he allowed in his mind and in his very soul, so now to the point where it’s larger than him and it taunts him day and night.

Extreme examples but only to say that one little foot, or even a toe in a door, and you will reap what you sow. This is why it’s so important to plant those positive seeds, the ones that bring us life and peace and dare I say success. Be very careful what you entertain.

And so I continue to sweat profusely as I work my professional six pack. I want low professional body fat. I want to be career ripped. It’s a workout I love and will keep flexing these professional muscles every flipping day.
After The Influence

January 31st, 2016

I’ve never held anyone at knife point, begging for beer money. I’ve never woke up in the morning with the shakes and sweats, and the only cure was a long swig from one of the whisky bottles surrounding the bed. I’ve never put my family out of house and home due to my alcoholic ways. I’ve never underwent rehab. I’ve never lost my children to family services over my addiction. I’ve never been unable to hold down a job because of it.

So I must not really be an actual alcoholic. Yay! Or wait a minute… am I??

I have felt lost and not in control at times in regards to alcohol. I have seen my intake double (possibly near triple) over the past year and a bit. I have been addressed by my teenage son that I needed to stop. I have fought on countless occasions with my wife while under the influence, even involving police involvement. I have quit jobs largely in part to the daily hangovers and the illusion that I can easily find more work, just as easily as I can stop drinking.

I had literally, for the past decade add a year, been telling myself, “Tonight’s the last night”. It had become the biggest, baddest bad habit I’ve ever had in my life. Financially, I wasn’t even in a great place that I could, per say, afford it. I would just act like it was a near daily staple, just like bread or milk, but not.

It held such a dark side. I wasn’t okay with it. I had it inside me that it wasn’t necessary and I shouldn’t be doing it. I had it inside me that the hangover, the money spent, the hiding it from my children, the not caring about my job performance wasn’t worth the only good part of it all… the couple hour escape that it provided. I wasn’t stupid. But all those cons never once outweighed the one pro and I was stuck.

At one point, I came close to losing my wife and it involved me at an all time low.. a night in the drunk tank. My eyes were open 11 years ago but reality was never quite so biting as it was that night and the following morning. I remember walking home through the heavily falling snow, no longer having a wife and missing the first day of a new job. I remember the dread of telling my family and others knowing how bad I screwed up. I remember crying out to God; just bawling my eyes out on my hands and knees, feeling so empty.

My life is back on track since that bottom. I am sober now, as is my loving wife and we are heading in such a good direction. Education, meetings, church and church family, family and friends support has been instrumental in me finally being able to let go and walk away. God being our anchor has paved the way and will spell success for us every day, one day at a time. Easy times ahead? I wish but then again, steel sharpens steel so I choose not the easy road.

Life is life. A few steps ahead then a bunch back. The good with the bad and all that jazz. But somewhere in between, I can at least look at myself in the mirror and no longer lie, convincing myself “last time” over and again. Now, my reality can officially declare the last is truly in the past.

Tag: alcohol

2thousandseventeen.

Defenestration

Revolution

Belly Fat

After The Influence