LIGHTBULB MOMENTS

The post I wrote yesterday titled My Secret Admirer was about a disastrous 5-year relationship I had with a man named Sal. One might wonder how an intelligent woman would get hoodwinked into such a relationship. I've asked myself that question many times. I think the best answer I can provide is that I was at a low point in my life when Sal came on the scene. I had just given up drugs and there was a huge void in my life where drugs had been. That void was where all my self-destructive tendencies seemed to play out. I replaced drugs with work and Sal. They became my new addictions. Plus Sal was a master manipulator. He knew how to get into people's heads and how to work them. He was very clever at it.

I know we all have had relationships with people that were not meant to last for one reason or another. So why do we get into those relationships in the first place? Why don't we think things through from the beginning and sidestep the ones that are only going to end in pain? Are the relationships that don't last meant to be learning experiences to take with us into the ones that do last so we'll know what not to do? Is there never any foresight in relationships and only hindsight?

My situation with Sal grew dangerous and involved the two of us owning things jointly even though we never married. I did have some wisdom to never do that even though he asked me to marry him almost every day we were together. When it had gotten to the point of no return and I had gotten arrested (a story for another time), I had no choice, but to do the rational thing and that was to pack my car with what I could, put my children in it, drive away and not look back. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses when you can before you lose your life.

On the flip side I've also been the recipient of unrequited love, the situation started as a casual one, but  realistically how many of those things ever stay that way the more two people see each other especially if great sex is involved? Okay! I know men and women look at sex differently most of the time. I do know men can have sex as just a physical act and it can be just that and only that without feelings ever being involved and that's okay if that's what the initial agreement between the two people is, but if no such "talk" was had to begin with and then it's a whole entire ballgame! In my case, no "talk" was ever had to keep things light and casual. As the two of us spent more time together, I developed feelings for him and he didn't for me. He monopolized my time because he liked the sex. 

All the situation it did was kept me hanging onto to something I never had any chance of calling mine and ultimately it made me feel used. The nicer thing would have been for him to have been honest with me than for him to be a "nice guy" and to keep coming around because he needed someone because he was lonely and at a lowspot in his life. All it did was kept me from moving on and finding someone who would and could love me the way I wanted to be loved. I wasted a great deal on time and effort on him for nothing. He just wanted how I made him feel whenever we were in bed together and that's it. This woman needed much more than to be someone's booty call. From start to finish the relationship if you can call it that lasted over two years. Looking back, I can't believe I let it drag on that long. I guess I did him a favor by ending it because when I did within a year after that he was married.

I learned a lot from those experiences, but also those things robbed me of much that I'll never get back. While the Anti-Christ (Sal) may have stolen a piece of my soul, the thief who stole a piece of my heart may very well be the reason I found Sal or he found me. The sting of being used and feeling unworthy stays with me still to this day. My ego was badly damaged in ways I never thought it could or would. I give myself all the pep talks, but nothing I say seems to help. Yes, Sal may have been the Anti-Christ, but Johnny was the real snake in the grass.  

30 TRUTHS IN 30 DAYS - DAY TWENTY-NINE

Truth #29: As a young person, we all think we are invincible. We can survive on alcohol, junk food, drugs and practically no sleep and be ready to go do it all over again the next day. The abuse we put ourselves through both physically and mentally isn't something we ever give much thought to until something happens to us or to someone we love. As we get older that abuse catches up to us in the form of health problems. Most of us learn the hard way that we have to take care of our bodies. We have to eat right and exercise. We have to stay hydrated with water and not booze or Coke. Those bad habits like smoking, alcohol and drugs, take their toll in enormous ways on our bodies and on our personal lives and relationships. If we don't part ways with them, they will devour us and unfortunately, be our demise. 

Here are a few things that usually develop as a result of neglecting our bodies:

Heart problems: Alcohol and most drugs are linked to heart and blood vessel problems. This can lead to irregular heartbeat, heart attack, stroke, and death.

Dental problems: Many different substances cause dental problems, like dry mouth and tooth decay.

Lung problems: Smoking or inhaling drugs can damage your lungs and increase your risk for lung problems like bronchitis or lung cancer.

Infections: Injecting drugs increases your risk of infections like HIV, hepatitis, or heart and skin infections. Drug use can also weaken your immune system, making you more vulnerable to infections.

Kidney damage: Some drugs can damage your kidneys directly or make them have to work harder than normal.

Liver damage: Alcohol and drugs can damage your liver, especially when combined.

Mental health problems: Many drugs can worsen or cause new mental health problems like depression or anxiety.

Cancer: Cigarettes and alcohol have been linked to different types of cancer. 

[I'd like to dedicate this post to my biological father who died at 58 years old from complications of what years of alcoholism and smoking 3 packs of non-filtered cigarettes daily did to his body.]

NEW BREAKTHROUGH OR NEW NIGHTMARE?

One might question why two of the most addictive chemicals on Earth (nicotine and cocaine) would be combined. The Genetic Literacy Project has an article and video shedding a little light on the subject:

A tobacco plant relative called Nicotiana benthamiana has been genetically modified to produce cocaine in its leaves. Cocaine is produced naturally in the leaves of the Erythroxylum coca plant, and scientists set out to recreate this process in N. benthamiana. A team from the Kunming Institute of Botany in China altered N. benthamiana to produce two enzymes that generate cocaine when its leaves are dried. The breakthrough could lead to a way to manufacture cocaine, or produce chemically similar compounds for medicinal purposes. 

 

While cocaine is notorious as an illegal drug, it has also been used in medical practices as a local anaesthetic or to narrow blood vessels to stem bleeding. However, pharmaceutical companies are limited in ways they can produce the drug, as key steps in its biosynthesis have remained a mystery. In their paper, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the scientists finally discovered what was missing. Two enzymes, EnCYP81AN15 and EnMT4, are essential for this conversion reaction to form methylecgonone.

TO MILDRED FROM MILDRED

There are few absolutes in life. With the exception of birth, death and taxes everything else falls in a hazy gray area subject to loopholes, pitfalls and mediocrity. There is however one other thing I can say with 100% certainty about my life in general. No one should ever use my life as a model for sobriety. The road I've walked to get here has been an exhausting one. I did everything the Mildred Ratched method instead of doing them in a way that would have been faster, easier and with better results. Never being able to completely surrender has always been a huge problem for me. My inability to learn by other people's mistakes and having to do everything the hard way isn't due to any genetic mule-like tendency. My real problem stems from lack of trust. When a person is damaged at a young age, they spend their entire life either trying to heal or trying to run away... or both. 

Their futile attempts of trying to gain normalcy is like some slow emotional death sentence. Somehow they manage to prove ourselves right time after time by the unhealthy relationships they form and the tangled, drama-filled situations in which they become involved. The outcome is always the same...disaster, disappointment and despair. Throughout life I have learned how to skillfully navigate through failure, but never have learned the proper keys to success. As long as I manage to remove drama and negativity from my life, I'm able to stay afloat. As long as I isolate myself from having any intimate relationships involving love and sex, my thinking stays relatively unclouded. As long as I have virtually no life, I can live drug free. So what! So what if I can say "Hey, look at me. I stopped doing drugs!" My life absent of drugs is far from what anyone would call a life. Every fiber in me screams at anyone looking at my life for answers to look elsewhere. Anyone looking at me needs to quickly come to the conclusion that they need to do things the right way and not the Mildred Ratched method. They need to find a way to let go and trust others. They need to stick with it and know anything good in life requires great patience and extreme effort.  

So here I am 50 something years old and I'm wondering when the hell that happened. How have I managed to come so far, but never leave square one? The ugly truth is that I isolate myself just to stay sane, sober and safe. Surely, there could have, should have been some other way to get here, but Miss Mildred Mule picked the path of least resistance. She picked the path where all she had to do was do what she does best...listen to herself and no one else. Trust herself and no one else. In doing so, Mildred picked the path once again of self-destruction. Mildred's addiction without drugs is like a gun. She just keep loading her gun, placing it to her head and firing away. So far, her gun has shot blanks. So far all her gun has done is numb her to its horrors. So far, all her gun has done is kept her from living, from being able to succeed and be happy, from being able to accomplish anything that requires effort, focus and stamina. Pulling that trigger everyday is the easiest thing Mildred has ever done!

* reposted from November, 18, 2011

MY QUEST FOR GOD - PART II (REPOST)

The summer of bible camp was "The Summer of Love."  How ironic I thought, while others everywhere were tuning in, turning on and dropping out, I was trying to understand basic human nature and to find out if God really does exist. From a child's perspective, I grew up thinking if the people who claim they love me and want to protect me will hurt me, then what will the rest of the world do to me? That isn't actually the right stuff to guide a person into adulthood, but nonetheless it guided me into being clueless where romantic relationships are concerned. The "funny" thing about it is that I've gone through life waiting and wanting someone to prove me wrong, but to date no one has. My logic says since people are human and humans are flawed, anyone is bound to hurt/disappoint someone else, but on a deeper level...one still filled with idealism and good things that can't be destroyed by this cesspool called life, I choose to hold onto the belief that love is a good thing and in many situations is the only thing that keeps us afloat. So until love comes my way, I'll just stay in my canoe and hope I don't lose my paddles. 

After that summer when I fell short of receiving God's grace, I turned to trying to understand evil instead. When Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible was hot off the presses, I purchased one and read it from cover to cover hoping for a lightbulb moment. Needless to say, it was just another book filled with words written by man and it didn't explain the great mysteries of life any more than the Christian Bible had. My spiritual journey I suppose some would say was corrupted by my inability to believe what I couldn't see. Instead of blindly believing, I questioned EVERYTHING instead. If God loved us so much then why do bad things happen to good people? Where are the miracles? Why are there wars, famine and disease? No one seemed to be able to adequately answer these things through the Biblical verses they would throw my way. I needed more than meaningless words on a page to help me swallow anything I was told about God. I needed more than just empty written words to make God a reality.

Eventually my salvation was found in my experimentation with drugs. As that experimentation deepened, I found certain drugs had a numbing effect. That feeling was one my whole body craved.... especially my emotions. Nothing bothered me as long as I stayed high, so by the tender age of 14, I stayed high ALL the time. I could easily sit back and blame my choices on my genetic background. I'm sure the long line of alcoholism that runs on both sides of my family would be enough of reason to say I didn't stand a chance not to be a substance abuser. Yes, the odds were against me, yet somehow I know that's not why I changed the path I had walked as a small child. I didn't begin life as an addict. You see, I actively sought out finding something that would make me numb. It took me many years to realize that without drugs I would have been a much uglier statistic. I choose drugs to stay alive if that makes any sense. They didn't choose me. 

Looking back on it, I call the next 16 years of my life "my leap of faith". They say God looks out for fools and drunks, but I think He/She has a special fondness for all addicts. Addictions, whatever they may be, cause an emotional bankruptcy in the person. No love is greater than that of a person and their drug of choice. When I say "drug," I include food, sex, gambling, shopping, work or whatever it is a person uses to escape. All other things in life come second regardless of what we try to tell ourselves and everyone else who is in earshot. That moment, at the climax when nothing else matters, I found freedom from pain and a facade that made me think nothing could ever hurt me again. Many years later, when the truth stared me in the face daring me to look elsewhere, I realized the truth and only the truth would set me free. 

AN EMOTIONAL CUTTER'S LIFE - PART II

Perhaps I should start Part II with my definition of "emotional cutter." An emotional cutter and a drama queen share many of the same characteristics, but their motivation for their bizarre behavior is at opposite ends of the spectrum. Whereas a drama queen creates situations in order to call attention to themselves, an emotional cutter may perk along for awhile with everything going well and then BOOM! It happens! An emotional cutter can't stand serenity, so they will rip the scab off the wound just to feel alive. Happiness is a foreign feeling...pain is what we feel comfortable feeling and there's nothing like feeling pain to let yourself know you're still alive. As I teeter on the edge, I poke and prod and make myself miserable and blame myself for all sorts of things. The drama is like it is with a drama queen, but unlike our "drama queen" cousins, we suffer in silence and many times, not a soul will see our pain.  We're masters at covering it up like a cat working diligently in a litter box.  We skillfully cover that pile of crap we call life and wear a smile while we suffer in silence.

When you're young, you can only hold things in for so long before the pot boils over. And when the pot boiled over in my case, everyone just scratched their heads. Of course, it was much easier to just label me as a "bad kid" at that point, but I wasn't a bad kid! I was never a bad kid. Sure, I always had a bit of a rebel in me, but I wasn't bad. I just always had a mind of my own. Is that a bad thing?  I started doing drugs to dull the pain and I kept doing drugs because being comfortably numb worked. Are you acquainted with being comfortably numb? My comfortably numb almost killed me. My comfortably numb almost tore my heart from my body and locked it in a dark dungeon where no one could hurt me. It was my safe place. I felt nothing. No pain! No fear! No hate! No anger! But no joy or pleasure or love either. Emotional bankruptcy is void of everything and anything, but it's a safe place to hide out until either you're forced back into the land of the living or you perish forever. 

My mother wasn't what I would call a a warm, nurturing person or at least, that's how I saw her. She was an only child and I don't think she was equipped to handle difficult situations like raising four children while dealing with an alcoholic husband. I don't think many people are suitably equipped for that task. I think like most people who fall in love, they go into the relationship with unrealistic expectations.  Life is wonderful until reality hits. In my mother's case, I believe when reality hit, it made her angry and bitter. Instead of focusing on what was in front of her, she became encapsulated in a cloud of her own angst. Listening to her talk about life on Walter Street, it was always all about her own pain. It was as if my brothers and I didn't exist or our pain was less important than hers. A few times over the years, I'd get frustrated from listening to her synopsis and I'd remind her as she recounted those years from what we all refer to as "the hornet's nest," that I knew the story too well because I lived it, too. I'd let her rave on about what a son of a bitch my father was and at the end, I'd make her say one nice thing about him. That always rattled her!

She didn't hug me much. I guess she didn't hug any of us very much that I remember. She screamed a lot. Just ask anyone in the neighborhood. Anyone not knowing us would have thought we were the children from Hell. She also loved to whack the bejesus out of all of us, but I remember the last time she tried to do that. I was old enough by then to stick up for myself. When she was about to hit me with something, probably a hairbrush, I grabbed her wrist and I told her not to ever hit me again. The look on her face was priceless. A true Kodak moment! I'm sure if I could ask her about it now, she'd claim she doesn't remember it, but I remember it too well. I think it's when Mildred was born. Mildred is pretty fearless and a force to be reckoned with when needed. From that day on, I did things my way. It seemed to amuse her when she'd tell people that I stopped listening to her when I was about 12 years old. Oh yes! Her attempt to control me was a total failure and that beat of a distant drum she claimed I heard was more like a whole symphony. Her need to control things that were out of control continued, but it no longer affected me until much later in life.

I have to admit that it did my heart good to see her life change when she married my step-father. He treated her well and tried to give her everything she wanted. The struggles she had once faced were behind her and she was finally able to bloom. Yes, her dream of becoming a fashion designer was gone, but instead she became an artist. Living life under totally different circumstances seemed to make all the difference in the world. Yes, she still had those "only child" tendencies, but she didn't scream and wasn't angry all the time. It was nice to see her in a different light. When she and my step-father had first gotten to the point of needing someone to live with them, my adult daughter volunteered. About three weeks after she had moved in, I got a phone call at work from my daughter where she announced to me that she now understood why I did drugs when I was younger. To that lightbulb moment of hers, I first laughed and then, I responded by telling her that her grandmother had mellowed out in her old age and that she wasn't the same person now as she was then when I was a teenager. 

WHAT REVS YOUR ENGINE?

I can close my eyes and I can smell that smell. Can you? Ooooh, that smell! The smell of death surrounds me! It isn't just in the drugs and alcohol that people abuse. It's in our food. It's in our water. It's in the air we breathe and the pharmaceuticals our doctor prescribes us and deems as necessary and perfectly safe to take. It's in the cars we drive and the cellphones we use! It's in the sex we have! It's in the wars we wage! It's in the poverty and hunger all around us! It’s in our planet as it grows warmer and more polluted. It’s in the hatred and the fear we feel towards each other. It's in the politics that divide us more each day. It's everywhere! Just look around. It's in everything we see, feel, smell, taste and hear! There's no escaping it... I feel like I'm drowning!

Any insomniac, addict, mentally or emotionally disturbed person or anyone who has ever been in dire straits and is at the end of their rope with nowhere to go is well-acquainted with temptation, self-indulgence and pleasure seeking behaviors. Satan, imaginary or not, comes in many forms and touches the lives of the most desperate and the most vulnerable. We are his army, the hedonists of the world. Even when we aren't capable of actually feeling pleasure, there remains the memory of pleasure and what a driving force that can be. To love one more time...to feel the pleasure of carnal delights one more time, to experience whatever revs your engine and gets your creative juices flowing is the ultimate mind candy! SIGH!

I say it's time to dig down deep inside yourself and satisfy that wild hair that beckons you and when you do heed its call, please make sure you write about your adventure in explicit details and post photos so I can satisfy my troglodytic voyeurism. (Oh no! I think I just discovered a new psychiatric diagnosis! lol) So what really revs your engine? Be honest. To thine ownself be true... Here at Mildred's place we make no character judgments. We just live and let live! I need a little something something to put some pep in my step and I don't know quite what it is yet. Any suggestions? I NEED A SPECIAL WILD HAIR DAY!!!

Well, I'm off to the doc, maybe she'll fix me up. Ha! When has that ever happened? Hey, doc, have you got something that'll satisfy my wild hair? I guess there's a first time for everything and I shall return, but I have a feeling it won't be with a smile on my face...

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART II

So how do you mend a broken heart? Chin up? Chest out? One foot in front of the other? At 18, all I wanted to do was dull the enormous ache in my heart until it completely went away. For me, it was all about living in the moment and rarely saying no to anything. The crazier it was, the better I liked it. If it rattled around in my head long enough and became an actual thought and if it brought a twinkle to my eyes and a smile to my face, it definitely got done regardless of the consequences. 

Going back to Maine that summer was a trip in every sense of the word. For the first couple of weeks I was there, I didn't leave my brother's house nor did I try to contact any of my old friends. Although I wanted to see all of them, I was scared to death to see any of them. When I finally worked through my fear, I boldly went to my old neighborhood...unannounced, of course. As I walked through town, everything seemed much closer to the street than what I remembered...and smaller. When I reached my old house, I stop dead in my tracks. The driveway seemed so short compared to what I remembered. Later, I was told it seemed much longer to me then because most of the time I had to crawl up it to go inside my house. Not really! But it was true that my brain was remembering things through the clouded vision of a druggie. I was always high from morning until I finally closed my eyes at night. Drugs threw off my perception of everything and everyone around me.

As I went through the process of trying to figure out what I was doing in Maine. I picked up the phone and called the drug rehab (Kinsman Hall) I had been released from only months earlier.  I still had friends there and there was someone there I wanted to see that I felt I should have a conversation with and see if he'd agree to see me. It was important to me that I finally tell Stacy how much he meant to me even if he didn't feel the same way about me. I knew all outside calls would have to go through staff so I was hoping to catch a friendly face. I was glad when it was Mike Morra who took my call. What I wasn't counting on was being told to stay away from Stacy. This seemed to be the same theme from day one for Stacy and I as far as Kinsman Hall saw it. I never figured out why staff was so dead set against he and I being together but that's how it was. I was forced into accepting that when I left Kinsman Hall I'd never see Stacy again.
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When I finally came out of my self-imposed prison at my brother's house, I was told repeatedly by people how good I looked and how healthy I looked. Go figure! Two plus years of being clean will definitely do something to a person. I ate right. I got enough sleep and I wasn't high all the time and nor was I engaging in risky activities. I knew what being around my old partying friends would lead to, but I went around all of them anyway. Willpower isn't one of my strong points unless willpower is fueled by desire and determination. After all I did quit smoking cigarettes over 25 years ago while living with a chain smoker. With the right fuel I can do most anything. So needless to say my willpower flew out the door and I eased my pain in a way that seemed so familiar (like an old comfortable shoe or a great fitting pair of jeans). I scratched that itch, but I had a much bigger itch that needed scratching. I needed to get laid! I'm sure I could have rustled someone up to do that thankless task, but I held off until left Maine and returned to Florida. My scorecard remained at one in Maine. My first love was the only person I slept with while I lived in Bangor. For some reason I felt I needed to keep that record unblemished by keeping my pants on my body and avoid being horizontal around anyone tempting including him. By the time I left Maine that summer, my hormones were at a fever pitch and I was ready for some good old promiscuity. I wanted cheap, sleazy sex and I wanted it from someone who could go the distance without a lot of hoopla. 

Instead of returning to Pensacola, I tagged along with my brother, Brian and his family. My brother was going to attend a heavy equipment class at a vocational school in Chipley, Florida.  Being the new kid on any block is a difficult situation regardless of where that block is located. This new fishbowl I landed in was an unfamiliar rural Southern country town that could have been taken right out of the movie, Deliverance.  Everywhere there were faces of strangers waiting and watching, but what they were watching and waiting for made me a little uneasy.

Vernon was dubbed "Nub City" because so many residents there make limb loss insurance claims to supplement their income. In 1981 several years after I lived there Vernon was featured in a documentary highlighting the eccentricities of the people who lived there. The movie angered many residents who felt the documentary portrayed the area in a negative light. Negative light?  How could blowing off your arm or foot with a shotgun for insurance money be considered negative?  Shouldn't it be considered creative and ingenious instead? Oops! There goes my good old Maine sarcasm acting up again! Boys will be boys and rednecks will be rednecks and if you combine the two and get lucky what you get is something the Beatles sang about...Happiness Is A Warm Gun. 

I was ready to get this show on the road and stir up this tiny fishbowl. I desperately wanted someone's finger on my trigger, so the only logical thing to do was to put checking out the local talent at the top of my list. I was confidant I could find a suitable warm gun to scratch my itch. Bang! Bang! Shoot! Shoot!

THE HOUSE WITH PEACOCK CURTAINS

The year was 1974. I remember eating a lot of bologna sandwiches and actually liking them. Sometimes those bologna sandwiches were washed down with mushroom tea. I guess when you’re young and perpetually high, eating anything tastes great even the putrid tasting mushroom tea cut with kool-aid in attempt to hide the horrid "earthy" taste.

We lived in a small 2 bedroom house on Highway 90 in Chipley, Florida (population: approximately 3,000). My bedroom had peacock curtains. Looking back, I really think those curtains were symbolic of my life and times…loud, proud and wowed. We would fell asleep each night listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Pink Floyd then awake to Bad Company. And in between there was sex, sex, sex…lots of drugs and a few bologna sandwiches to keep our strength up for those midnight rodeos.

We were 3 females, Carol, Theresa and I who lived together, worked together at Evergreen Construction Company and played hard together. Of the three of us, I was the only one who stupidly got pregnant during that era. I had a beautiful baby girl, but my life was meant for anything, but traveling down some conventional avenue. I was on the fringe teetering gracefully on the edge and there I have remained doing my own thing whatever and wherever that thing has been over the years. Carol married and became a teacher. Theresa remained single and I have escaped finding a love as colorful as those peacock curtains. 

Those days seem like so long ago, yet when I get together with Theresa or any old friend it all seems like just yesterday. Our lives have changed immensely over the years, but I think the more things change the more they ultimately remain the same. So in remembrance of those good old days and the people who imprinted themselves upon my life, I flick my Bic and inhale slowly…deeply until my smile glows from within and the memories warm my chilly heart. Here's to you, the peacock curtains and the love I've yet to find!

THE QUAGMIRE

What made me do it in the first place? Was it a conscious choice or was it nothing more than my fated plight? Some say the road to addictions is rooted in our genetic make-up while others more lean towards environmental and societal discord being the culprit. So the argument between nature vs. nurture goes on and on. So should addictions be viewed as an disease as real as cancer? Isn't an addiction like having cancer of the soul, of the psyche or of the whole being? Ask any addict and when they reach a moment of truth, they'll tell you just how diseased their life really is and how their disease has affected every person who cares about them.

For me, drugs were a highly effective numbing agent. They masked my pain and helped me build that rubber wall I existed behind for many years. For years, I thought what I had constructed was a rather superior brick wall. Pink Floyd was even nice enough to write a few songs that nicely summed it all up until an old boyfriend, my first love opened my eyes to my flawed thinking. No, my wall wasn't made of bricks unless those bricks I used were made of rubber. You see, normal bricks no matter how thick can be penetrated. My bricks had to be made of rubber because everything just bounced off them. The few times I did have any real feelings during those dark years were quickly disguised by my "I don't give a shit" attitude.

The sad part is that the disguise after awhile wasn't a disguise at all. It was who I had become. I was a person who had few morals or values except those ones I learned on the streets. So, was it a conscious decision to build that wall? Well, yes and no! I think it started out as just living in the moment and experimenting with those things offered to me and then something clicked when my reality was altered. The addiction switch got turned on and then everything was fair game for keeping the cancer growing ...eating, sex, drugs, gambling, work, etc etc. It all fed the starving monster!

I wasn't a typical addict, but one who binged and purged on everything. The purging part was what kept me in denial for such a long time. Hey look at me! I haven't done drugs in a long time so that means I'm not really an addict. Hey look at me! I haven't had sex in a long time so that must mean I'm not really an addict and so on and so forth.

The reality of it is that I've learned my limitations the hard way. I know what I'm capable of and with just a little taste of those things I love most, the monster is let loose once again. So does that mean I don't take risks or battle with that monster inside me any longer? No, it's always present. It's always lurking somewhere just beneath the surface. It has kept me from believing that I can not or will not ever experience "normal"...whatever "normal" is. You have to understand, "normal" is that pie in the sky that every addict fantasizes about tasting. However, somehow we all know a "normal" life isn't something that would hold our interest for very long. The word "quagmire" comes to mind.

Gratitude statement: I'm grateful for the truth no matter how harsh and ugly it may be at times because if "they" are correct, "they" say the truth will set you free.

THE SUMMER OF LOVE

The summer of bible camp was "the summer of love" (1967). How ironic I thought, while others everywhere were tuning in, turning on and dropping out, I was trying to understand basic human nature and to find out if God really does exist. From a child's perspective, I grew up thinking if the people who claim they love me and want to protect me will hurt me, then what will the rest of the world do to me? The funny thing about it is that I've gone through life waiting and wanting someone to prove me wrong. My logic says since people are human and humans are flawed, anyone is bound to hurt/disappoint someone else, but on a deeper level (one still filled with idealism and good things that can't be destroyed by this cesspool called life) I choose to hold onto the belief that love is a good thing and in many situations is the only thing that keeps us afloat.

After that summer when I fell short of receiving God's grace, I turned to trying to understand evil instead. When the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey was hot off the presses, I purchased one and read it from cover to cover hoping for a lightbulb moment. Needless to say, it was just another book filled with words written by man and it didn't explain the great mysteries of life any more than The Bible had. My spiritual journey I suppose some would say was corrupted by my inability to believe what I couldn't see. Instead of blindly believing I questioned instead. If God loved us so much then why does bad things happen to good people? Where are the miracles? Why are there wars, fathom and disease? No one seemed to be able to adequately answer these things through the verses they would throw my way. I needed more than words on a page to swallow anything I was told about God.

Eventually my salvation was found in my experimentation with drugs. As that experimentation deepened, I found certain drugs had a numbing effect. That feeling was one my whole body craved.... especially my emotions. Nothing bothered me as long as I stayed high, so by the age of 14 I stayed high all the time. I could easily sit back and blame my choices on my genetic background. I'm sure the long line of alcoholism that runs on both sides of my family would be enough of reason to say I didn't stand a chance not to be a substance abuser, yet somehow I know that's not why I changed the path I had walked as a small child. You see, I actively sought out finding something that would make me numb. It took me many years to realize that without drugs I would have been a much uglier statistic. I chose drugs. They didn't choose me.

Looking back on it, I call the next 16 years of my life "my leap of faith". They say God looks out for fools and drunks, but I think He/She has a special fondness for all addicts. Addictions, whatever they may be, cause an emotional bankruptcy in the person. No love is greater than that of a person and their drug of choice. When I say "drug", I include food, sex, gambling, shopping, work or whatever it is a person uses to escape. All other things in life come second regardless of what we tell ourselves or everyone else. That moment, at the climax when nothing else matters, I found freedom from pain and a facade that made me think nothing could hurt me again. Many years later, when the truth stared me in the face daring me to look elsewhere, I realized the truth would set me free.

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful for the fleeting moments of the truth I see.