Regarding the Sunset Brews and my Aggressive Unusual Behavior…

This seems to be this biggest source of contention with my readers on the blog these days – my drinking of my nightly sunset brews.  I have received more well intentioned advice and concern on this subject than more than anything in years.  I am trying to emulate the homeless Albert Vanderburg's nightly routine on Waikiki beach of this same ritual.  If you’ve known me for long, then you know I love rituals and routines. I also tend to romanticize the homeless lifestyle, and this routine seems so masculine, worldly, and helplessly homelessly romantic to me.  George will love reading about it in the blog posts I am mailing him each day.  He will live vicariously through my words and I have him in mind many nights when I drink them.  We both lived a pseudo homeless existence for the time we hung out down at the shopping center years ago every day. 

I try to tell myself that at the height of my drinking career, I was drinking 24 beers a day and that my drinking now is entirely mild compared to then.  I am not concerned at all.  I would basically crack open a beer back then when I awoke and would go to bed with an open beer on my night stand.  Maybe I am in denial, but two beers a night is a far cry from my olden days.  I was a miserable human being then.  Terribly disturbed mentally and emotionally.  The only time I have been happy and a heavier drinker was when I was hanging out with George and the gang down at the Piggly Wiggly everyday.  George could be a bad influence on me in those regards and most mornings would find us drinking ice beer as we talked, smoked cigars, and would shoot the shit as George like to say for hours.  I was a happy social drinker then.  Not the solitary “alcoholic” who sat at home drinking 24 beers a day in pain.  Or that sad individual who was grasping in pain at absolution by drinking mouthwash when my father cut the money off and gained power of attorney over me. I realize now most of my drinking resulted from a experience of a  supreme feeling of hurt, guilt, and despair.  Now? I like to have a drink to feel good and enjoy myself.  Not subdue all that distress I was experiencing.

Where will this lead me?  Only time will tell.  Some could say I am playing with fire.  I feel I am just being a pretty average Joe drinking a few beers after a hard day’s work.

One thing I am learning lately, though, is to take chances and be aggressive with my life and behavior. This also means living with gusto and doing things that make me feel good. For years, I have sat quietly at home, cocooned in safety, bored to tears, and acquiescing to my parent’s biddings of how I should live my life.   Now?  I am taking risks by returning to work.  By flirting with women at work when my social anxieties scream in retaliation.  By starting my own business when the odds of success are stacked against me due to my disability and my anxiety issues.  I feel as if I have awoken from some deep strange nightmare like some modern day Rip Van Winkle.  Like I wrote the other day, I better get busy living instead of dying.  And I was slowly dying emotionally and mentally in my previous life just a short few weeks ago and I was sober as a judge.

My thoughts often turn back to Kevin “The Homeless Guy” Barbieux and his life’s experiences he wrote about on his blog for years.  He’s brilliantly smart, but he doesn’t take chances or risks.  He won’t work a regular job saying it depresses him.  I am finding work the exact opposite.  It is invigorating.  This “depression” has kept him homeless for most of his adult life – safely sleeping in rescue missions and using the Internet all day.  He will claim it is a hard life being homeless always playing the victim, but it’s not that bad I learned from my own experiences.  It was cold, but you have zero responsibility and your pretty much get to do what you want when you want to.   How bad can spending all day on the Internet be and not having to work?

We were a lot alike until I decided I no longer wanted be that sick dependent victim.  I had to assert myself and take chances.  I had to think out of the box and it has been extremely uncomfortable for me to do in a way.  I am pushing boundaries and testing limits.  I was miserable, but I had everything to make life existential as far as the basics were concerned.  A home.  A car.  Nutritious food. Dubious if adequate mental healthcare.  All my financial affairs were handled by my father.  My bills were paid for me.  What was lacking is that I wasn’t living.  I was just existing.  I think Mr. Barbieux has fallen into this trap for most of his life.  He’s just existing like he has done for most of his adult existence.  I don’t want to seem overly harsh in my criticism of him, but I’ve often used him as my Atlas Marker for how not to live life.  I’ve learned a lot from following him on the Internet over the years. You can play the sick victim and be the valiant sociopolitical and religious Internet critic, but it isn’t going to pay the bills and it certainly isn’t going to do much for your self esteem or emotional wellbeing when all is said and done.  You just end up some lonely guy sitting in a McDonald’s with a laptop railing against society, government, and Christianity.

Well, it is 2am and I am writing yet another long blog post having driven over to get my six diet Cokes and they invigorated me.  I often like to write the most early in the morning as I smoke and drink my nightly Cokes mom puts out for me.  I better get on the couch, get some sleep, and get ready for work in the morning.  I am excited about starting a new week.  I keep telling myself that if I can make it through working for 30 days then I will  have made a healthy habit out of it.  Please wish me luck!  I need your help and encouragement.  I know I’ve written a positive blog this past week, but it’s been a hard row to hoe for me.  I am really pushing the envelope as far as my abilities are concerned.  My life has taken on a complete upheaval in just two weeks time.  And it feels good despite all the discomfort and pain caused by changing my life so drastically so suddenly. Good night.     

The Trials of Life, Alcoholism, and Mental Illness…

I can remember back in the early nineties when I was first diagnosed as schizophrenic.  I was strangely elated.  Most people would cry in horror at being diagnosed with such a devastating disease of the brain.   We now knew what was wrong with me – the strangeness with what I had struggled with since I was a child.  The paranoia.  The delusions.  There was the hope for help with a solid diagnosis.  I had answers and not some nebulous accusation of lack of character or laziness for the cause of my problems.  Medication after medication was tried with little absolution to my problems, though.  It was a time before the atypical antipsychotics were discovered or were still in clinical trials.  I grew depressed and drank heavier and heavier – my hopes dashed.  Beer my soothing mistress for my mental illness addled brain.  My father says it wasn’t until we tried Zyprexa years later that I had a breakthrough – the drug that had so helped my mother’s schizophrenia.  I was able to work a stressful prestigious job and I got married.  There were terrible side effects though.  I couldn’t wait to get home from work to get in the bed and sleep until the next day.  Bed was bliss.  Bed was an escape.  I was constantly sleepy and morose.  I didn’t realize it then, but I was terribly, terribly depressed.  Next, we tried Risperdal.  The side effects went away.  The depression lifted, but I began to drink heavier.  The Risperdal was more conducive to this and didn’t interfere with my drinking like the Zyprexa did.  I wasn’t sleeping all the time.  My marriage then fell apart.  I lost my job.  My then wife just couldn’t take the chaos that was my alcoholism.  I ended up homeless losing everything in the divorce – signing everything over to Rachel in a fit of drunkenness in a lawyer’s office.  Homelessness was a disastrous time of constant drinking and severe cold.  I lived in a tent in the woods like some modern day alcoholic Thoreau.  I drank so much I couldn’t afford an apartment.  Drinking was paramount then. I would go days without eating because it would interfere with the amount of beer I could drink.

I tried everything to quit drinking once my mother convinced my father to let me live in my late grandmother’s house next to theirs. There were conditions to me gaining a home and that was to straighten up and get sober.   I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.   I went through detox countless times often driving hundreds of miles to hospitals for which Medicare would pay.   I tried AA and would go a few times, but would end up drunk a few days later.  I looked terrible.  I weighed almost 300 pounds from drinking thousands of calories of beer per day.  My eyes looked yellowish and dim and often red shot.  There were black circles under my eyes.  I will never forget pacing the floor of my den as I drank my seventeenth beer of the night realizing I was going to die soon if I didn’t do something drastic to quit.  I had to get serious.

It was about this time that dad decided he had to do something drastic or his oldest son was going to die from alcoholism.  He got power of attorney over me and took over my Social Security disability account.  The money was cut off and we went through a tumultuous time of severe withdrawal.  Dad and I fought like cats and dogs.  Nights would be spent screaming accusations at each other as I would plead with him for a drink.   I would do anything to get drunk.  I was inescapably addicted.  It was then that I discovered mouthwash.   I read an online article about a man named Listerine Gene who would get drunk drinking his namesake.  Mouthwash was only a $1.09 a bottle at Fred’s dollar store and it would get you just as drunk as whiskey or beer.  It was terrible to drink, but the urge to get drunk overrode any inhibitions about the nasty taste.  I would somehow manage to scrounge up a dollar a day to get drunk. Dad was at his wit’s end with me. 

The chemical harshness of the mouthwash was what saved me.  I could no longer drink it.  I would take a drink and throw up violently – my stomach protesting. My sister warned me that I would soon develop pancreatitis.  I went into an ever deeper depression when I realized I could no longer drink.  I had exhausted all options.  I had no money.  I couldn’t work with my mental illness.  I finally got sobered up, but it was a shaky stasis.  My father had finally won the battle with which he had fought with a bulldog like tenacity.  He never gave up on me despite all I put him through.  I was going to live and possibly sober for a change.    

My Thoughts for the End of the Blogging Day…

I didn’t want to go to AA tonight and they say in AA that’s when you need to go the most. I have been completely engrossed by the Internet these past two days.   It was the 7pm clubhouse meeting in town with all the cranky old timers.  The 8pm meeting in Lagrange is just too late for me including the hour drive on top of an hour meeting.  I had to remind myself of that important saying in AA: principles over personalities – to not let those cranky old stodgy men to turn me away from something that is so vitally important to me. 

I walked through my neighborhood feeling kind of panicky.  I passed the First Baptist Church and sat on the front steps for a few moments to rest and smoke.  Could I make it?  I was certainly giving it my best try having walked so far.  The AA meeting hall was just down the road and it was 6:50pm.

I sat in the very back of the room and just listened not choosing to share tonight. They went around the room and when it got my time to share, I said, “I’m Andrew and I’m an alcoholic.  My higher power told me it was best I shut up and listen tonight. Thank you.”

A few men chuckled.  

“I would get so drunk I wouldn’t remember how I got somewhere,” one shaky looking unshaven fellow then said during his turn to share after me. “My car would be outside and I couldn’t remember driving.  It would scare the shit outta me.  I realized then I had a problem.  They put me in treatment for two weeks and I ended up here afterwards.”

I knew I had a problem from an early age.  My first drink was probably around the age of eleven or twelve and I drank two bottles of wine.  The very first time I drank I got drunk.  I thought it was the best thing I had ever felt – it was the most intoxicating and titillating experience in my life figuratively and literally. I would even drink cooking sherry as a child to get drunk and you all know how salty that stuff is.    It is amazing I got through high school without more problems than I had.  There is a long history of addiction on both sides of the family and it seems to have genetically amalgamated in me.  It is a sad shame really.  I had so much promise and talent as a singer and piano player.  Drinking took that away and gave me back a completely different life – a life I have chosen to no longer live.   It’s really liberating to finally realize you have a choice and you don’t have to be a drunk anymore. 

Good night dear friends. I am headed to bed early with my Maggie and my fan blowing the cool evening air on me.  Dad will be here soon enough with medications. 

Choices and Ramifications…

I had been homeless for about six months when I called my mother from my deceased grandmother’s house.  I had a key from when I lived with her.  Mom, her usually fretting self, immediately went into action.  She turned on the heat and made me a bed. “You’re not going to be homeless,” she told me. My father wasn’t too pleased, but what could he do?  Cast his son aside despite all his faults and drunkenness?

I had planned on going to Nashville to live.  From reading “The Homeless Guy” I knew I could get a place to sleep, three meals a day, and social worker help.  I would also have my full disability allotment to drink with.  I wouldn’t have any expenses other than cigarettes and beer.   It was sad, though, that my life had come to this.  To spend the rest of my days sleeping and eating in homeless shelters while getting drunk during the day.  I had two choices; to be put under my father’s harsh regime and live a semi normal life, or move to Nashville and probably die of cirrhosis in a few years.

I chose the former.  I realize dad can be harsh.  It is only because he cares.  I was unable to care for myself and he took over.  Many fathers would say to hell with that; he’s a grown man.  Let him fend for himself.   I was like a small child who needed care and guidance.  I always was and still am to a certain point.

When I write about dad and our interactions, you are only seeing my point of view.  You are not reading his.  I realize I can put him in a not so flattering light and I apologize for this.  He’s a good man; a responsible man. He has had to deal with two very mentally ill family members and do what he sees is best.  Despite our semi-frequent squabbles with dad, mom and I have good lives.  I have Maggie which brings me no end of joy.  I have an EXTREMELY nice computer setup and the Internet is my life. I lack for nothing except money.  I have some of the first friends in years in George and Mrs. Florene. 

I do believe trust will come with time.  It might take years, but those are years I would never have if I had chosen life in Nashville and drank myself to death.  Here, I have a fighting chance with sobriety.  I have a good life here.  Yes, it is easy to lament what you don’t have, but that is human nature.  With dad’s help maybe one day I can be independent.      

Loneliness is a State of Mind…

I sat two hours yesterday talking to mom.  I get so lonely in that house of mine despite Maggie. Maggie went with me and lay on the floor beside me listening to every word and watching the cat on mom’s bed warily.  Mom was in the bed with her cat Muffin on top of her. We talked mainly of small talk; a subject I am still mastering.  It was good practice.   It also gave me a good excuse to drink all the cokes I wanted.  Every time I would run out of a drink, mom would suggest I get another out of the fridge.  Bliss!  That doesn’t happen often. 

“Mom, do you think I am doing better?” I asked at one point.

“You’re still obsessive compulsive, but your doing better than you ever have before,” she replied.

That made me feel better.  Sometimes, you just to have to hear it from someone else. We really haven’t had any episodes out of me lately for a long time. 

Soon, dad was home from work.  He gets off at 2 PM on Saturdays. 

“I see I’ve got my whole crew here today,” he said with a smile.

“We’ve been talking for hours, “ mom said excitedly. “We’ve had the best time.”

“When you were drinking,” dad said. “You would never do that.  You would only be thinking about getting drunk.  You would never give time to your mother or I.”

He was right.  Drinking was the be all and the end all.  

Eggs, Bacon, and Sobriety…

This Sunday morning we have our traditional breakfast with Mrs. Florene and George.  Mrs. Florene already told me she was cooking scrambled cheese eggs, bacon, and biscuits for breakfast last night on the phone. 

“Monday, George will be two weeks sober,” she told me proudly.  “He really is like a different son. He is just much more responsible and thoughtful.”

“Alcoholism is he epitome of selfishness,”  I told her glibly.

My heart goes out to Mrs. Florene.  She is a saint.  For years, she’s put up with George’s alcoholic antics like running over the mailbox, pissing all over himself, puking till his guts about hang out, pissing in the bed and coming home mad and screaming and hollering at his mother.  Etc.  

Reading List…

Well, I finished Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga.  For a series of books written for girl tweens and teens, I really enjoyed it.   My favorite character in the end was Jacob.  I just loved his snarky wit, and what is there not to like about a good hearted and good natured werewolf?   The ending of book four left you hanging.  Which, I hope, means more sequels on the way.  The rumor has it that Mrs. Meyer wrote a sequel and it escaped out on the Internet.  It is now a new eBook free to download on her website.

I am currently listening to Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet.  I much prefer audiobooks cause I can pace the house all the while smoking copiously and drinking Wal-Mart orange drink.  It is a ritual of mine and good exercise.  So far the book has taken a sad turn for the worse and I hope it improves for the main characters. 

Next on the agenda, it the Harry Potter audiobooks.  Mom, my librarian, gave me the choice to listen to them or read them.  You already know what I picked.  Mom disliked the books saying they were childish.  I hope I fare better. 

Keeping Up Appearances...

It's a novel thing me keeping myself up.  For a year, I would go without shaving for a week.  Sometimes it would be days before I showered.  I wouldn't buy deodorant for sometimes months.  I would wear the same clothes for days.  Soap was like kryptonite. It exasperated my father.

"Take some pride in yourself, goddamnit!" he would say to me. "Shave and get yourself cleaned up!  We didn't raise you to live like this!"

It was my mental illness.  I felt too terrible to do anything of the sort.  It was the most maligning form of apathy - an apathy that put a big wedge in between my father and our relationship.  He's keen on keeping up appearances.  You never see him without crisp, clean dress shirts.  He always has a dash of cologne on.  I have never, ever seen him with facial hair.

Now?  I got some new soap today and couldn't wait to try it.  I spent $6 dollars of scarce money on something I used to would never use.  It was so nice to get in the shower with a bar of Irish Spring (with a moisture beads gimmick) and wash myself clean.  I take a shower everyday now religiously.  Sometimes two.  I am taking pride again now that I am feeling better.  

The hardest part about mental illness is it so effects our behavior as it relates to conventional society.  The norms and rules of society can escape us or we no longer care.  That's why you see so many homeless mentally ill people.  You can see cancer on an MRI or X-ray.  You can't take a test that shows you have schizophrenia.  There is no certain course of recovery except to trust in a doctor to carefully try different medications till you find something that works. 

A Reawakening...

Life's gone by fast these past few weeks since I've quit taking Lithium.  So many things are changing and I feel like a new man.  I realized now what such a poison that medication was to my body.  For four years, I took it forcibly doled out by my father.  I can distinctly remember when it was prescribed.

"He's acting moody," my father told my psychiatrist as my father sat in a chair next to me.

"Let's try Lithium," my psychiatrist said with a gleeful tone and a smile on his face. "It is the gold standard of psychiatry."

Most of my medications were prescribed in this way.  I realized now what little control I have of my own mental health, but things are changing.  I am more assertive and proactive - wary of my father's actions.  I don't want to live the rest of my life in some medication induced fog or hell.  And I have lived in a literal hell for several years now with those devastating attacks.  I could barely go out of the house - sometimes for weeks.  

This morning, I sat and listened to a whole music CD in one sitting.  No TV on.  Just me and my I-pod.  It was Joni Mitchell's Wild Things Run Fast from 1982.  I haven't been able to do that in years.  I took such pleasure from the synthesizers and the electric bass - bringing smiles to my face and the good, good kind of butterflies in my stomach.  I could so incredibly enjoy such things again.  

Do you ever just sit for an hour and just think?  Yesterday, I sat on the couch with my feet up on it.  Maggie was laying on the cushion on the back.  I just sat and thought of new blog posts to write.  Memories came flooding back.  I would smile and get excited.  I haven't smiled much in years, either.  I could have never even fathomed this when I was on Lithium. 

I talked to dad last night about my concerns surrounding the Lithium.  He was very, very defensive, but he did listen.  He said I could ask the doctor about taking a new mood stabilizer.  "You have to take something for your moods, though," he told me sternly.  "I don't want you on any manic highs like your mother has been on lately."

Stage Fright and the Flight Home

I was driving home this afternoon with my one delivery for the evening.  I felt tired.  I felt like I had been on stage for hours and I had.  Work is like a finely orchestrated play where all the participants must act out their part for the Grande finale which is closing time.  Luckily, I got to leave early with a light load to bear.  Today was an easy day. 

"You're John's son!" The elderly lady exclaimed as I handed over her blood pressure medication during my one delivery.  "I haven't seen you in years!"

A hug later, I was traipsing down her driveway headed for home.  "Thank God!" I muttered as I shut my car door and drove briskly off.   She lived in my neighborhood.  I wanted to get home and veg out in front of my computer with cigarillos and diet Cokes.  I wanted to see what the always interesting life of Maggie had been like in my absence.    

On top of the carefully orchestrated play that goes on at work, I also have a carefully orchestrated mental balancing act.  I felt mentally wonky today -- what I call a busy mind.  My brain seems to get ahead of my body and feels what only can be described as...  nervous.   I have to hide this and I have to take a lot of breaks for my body to catch up with my brain.  I am glad to be home.  I made it another day without a failure.  That is always a miracle in my book.   I want to climb the highest mountain and decree that there is recovery and there is hope from alcoholism and schizophrenia.  I am living proof.   I shy in saying that though for knocking on wood.  My ailments always lurk underneath that placid lake that is my calm and collected exterior.  

I will digress and say it does get easier.  Just today I heard rumors that my father is going to start giving me money again.  "Your Dad says he wants you to ask for the money.  You never ask anymore," Mom told me as she just ran by a Mrs. Edward's Lemon Meringue pie buying books at Krogers.   I am afraid to ask for being told no once more.   Could it be?  Could this long winter of doing without finally be coming to a close?  I can only hope.