Owning Up, Releasing Shame

This one is hard to do, but hey, let's give it a shot.  Instead of holding on to the shame, bitterness, and the outrage that has settled into grooves around our collective eyes, let's instead find a way to own up to our past(s) and be at peace with those pasts, such that they do not negatively impact our current and future selves.

It is easy, especially after partaken in tremendous amounts of shame inducing activities, to NOT LEARN from those activities, but instead let the lead blanket of shame that came from those activities cover up current life.  But that's really no way to live.  Nor is the other extreme, simply forgetting about the past completely.  But there is a sweet spot here, one that is highly idiosyncratic, that you cannot learn from others necessarily, but must endeavor to find on your own pace and intensity.

Which is to say that you don't need to hold on so desperately to all of the bad stuff, even or especially because it is familiar and routine.  It is possible not to be defensive and insecure and to live into the future on a level plane of curiosity, neutrality, and relative engagement.

Trying New Things [and] Killing What You Love

I know you think you know what I'm going to say, that there's a way to abscond from our base desires, to heighten our meditational stance against the warring forces within and without, and just climb over past blights as if rock solid foundations, reaching new heights and then, well, the zen-buddhist stance goes on into a beautiful cycle of constant renovation through dismissal and letting go and all that, and it is all true.  I mean, it is all as true as you want to make it.  But it is not what I'm going to say.

I just tossed the header together, since I think there's a serious tension between trying new things and trying to hold on to what it is you know you love.  And here I don't mean people, not explicitly anyway, although there's nothing quite as sour as the obvious reality of a relationship going south and the awareness that it is occurring, all the while both parties try to preserve it in a weird way that makes me think more of paternal suburban inauthentic cliches than it does about (actual paternal instincts or suburbia), and so what/  The point is more about trying to get into words a little bit of a lived experience, a reality that we know and one that we, individually, and mostly to ourselves, have trouble totally coherently talking about.

See, that's the thing, really, some sort of accuracy, that's the thing I like, or want, or think I want even as I really want what I really want instead anyway, like all of us.  And yes, there's a bit of me smeared all over the highway there and you too, because we're dancing this accident out, in a kind of slow-mo booty call late into the night when we should be back in suburbia, living remote lives, buying creamy drinks, falling into patterns, and habituation of interactions and all the rest that yes, I admit, drives me in a way that also disgusts me.  And that simultaneous understanding, when truly understood is indeed enough to crack better men than me, i.e. it is enough to crack me, and i.e. by the way, I have all sorts of cracks, for better or worse, and microscopic or relatively major, and life sober is not easy because it is very hard to stay sane without alcohol, no?  And yet.  And yet.  Life with alcohol is not exactly manageable.

See the thread of impossibility runs through so many currents that it is impossible for me to walk away from this place.  Basically everything I think is related to alcohol or something about alcohol, or something about alcohol is related to everything I think or experience, and that's fucking scary, and not because I'm an addict or alcoholic, or obsessive in a genuine almost need to be medicated way, but also more importantly, in the way that thoughts can merge and form synergy and find a way into brand new not just version2 thoughts, and realizations and insights, and what's simultaneously happening is that these great new insights are working on themselves, too, like bleach left on the counter, working to disabuse themselves, finding a way to crack, and fling mud and over-modulate right into the rough texture of incoherence, again, at the same time that they find a way toward foundational stability.  And that's what it is, really, a live wire, one that is in constant tension, just balanced there with a lot of energy on either end, in all directions, and that's it, right, the thing I mean to get out here, and with that, I will go and eat a delicious baked in a slight layer of coconut oil sweet potato and go on trying to believe in myself, because I need to, for the base fact of going on.

I Can't Stop -

I guess I just can't stop posting here.  I thought I was done, but every now and then a thought pops into my head, and I'm obliged to follow it through, and then, well, there's only one place for it, a place unfettered by the dogma of mindless social anxiety or forced interaction, or all of the filters and layers and endless sputtering that one must put up with to actually try to have a decent conversation; and that place, well, it turns out, is right here.

So I'm not quite back, but I'm not quite leaving, either, and that means I won't try to stick to a rigid schedule; I'll just post what and when I feel like (um, that's not quite different or anything, but a re-affirmation never hurt).

Because this is a bit of my identity, whether I like it (or want to walk away from it) or not, and I can't quite deny it anymore, even though I've sort of aggressively embraced it, I underestimated the need to stay strong in a low-volume way, and in a consistent way.

Yours always and truly, constantly striving to make headway into the nether regions of our collective addictions,

Offbooze (and off everything else).

Being Honest -

It is okay to just think the thoughts that you have and follow them, and know that they are not purely your own thoughts, and that those particular thoughts at that particular time don't determine everything about you or necessarily define you for all eternity.  They could even be meaningless, inconsequential, flighty little things that don't hold much more water than the most recently passed flatulence.

Faith

It has become evident to me that faith is paramount to life.  It is a thing that religion gets fundamentally correct, at base, and it is important that we all see the more abstract notion of faith, divorced from any baggage of guilt or the sabotage of our personal histories regarding what we've been told to think, or reacted to, regarding religion.

Faith is vital.  We must believe in the future.  We must come to an emotional or philosophical, or even a hold-me-by-my-hips kind of need or want to aim into the future, not for personal gain, for laziness, sloth, etc., but because we can fathom a future of betterness, improvement, constant development, and where we matter. --

Not where we tell ourselves we matter, or where ambition flouts about for ambition's sake.  But a future that we somehow fundamentally believe in, because it matters.  Because it matters without a because.  It matters.  That's the faith part, at once intoxicatingly simple to say and disregard and hideously difficult to practice and hold steady and strong.  But that is what we need, make no mistake, and we will go about trying to find it.  Better to be clear about what we're looking for first, before embarking.

Push Toward Flat

I have a tendency to build hyperbole into everything I do, think about, react to, or experience.  It is exceedingly difficult for me to experience, to live, accurately, flatly, neutrally.  I'd prefer to have some pinch of feedback to know that I'm alive.  As if life's meaning is flat because life is flat.  Because there is no drama.

I'm also intensely self-aware, which, when combined with the need to have drama, or seek action, really pollutes my own feelings of contentment or the possibility of peace.

I also don't think I'm alone.

So what?

So nothing.  Deal with it and development within it too--a much harder task than the constantly bounding mania that so often fueled the exegesis of anything and anyone who would listen.

Death On My Mind

Constantly.  That may sound strikingly myopic, or abnormal.  Perhaps I am indeed deranged in some fundamental way, or just wrong, deep down.

Or perhaps not.

Regardless, I do maintain what I believe in is a healthy respect for death, for darkness, for the reality and need to heed that flavor of our basic existence.

It is hard not to sound quaint or even cliched at this moment, this point, and I don't mean it in a way to evoke some weird kind of nostalgia or even any reflection whatsoever.  It is more about me getting to the basics of accuracy. I experience life with a chronic understanding of death.  It isn't bad, necessarily.  It just is. Before we get to bad, we get to what exists.  In short, I have a certain awareness of vulnerability.  I don't think it is bad, per se.  I think it is perhaps helpful.  You may think that my concurrent problem of never being able to relax, to "settle" into my life, as it were, was closely related to my chronic fatiguing ever present awareness of death.

You'd be right, possibly, but I don't exactly care because I know the more entrenched reality is that you likely care less than that.  My thoughts are almost uniquely inapplicable to you, average person, and your thoughts to me likewise.  It is truly depressing, that sort of relentless unhinged nature of modern life, but I do stare it down with as little distortion as possible.

The point is that death isn't funny, and it isn't intriguing and it certainly isn't something that can be used lightly.  It is scary.  Scary because of its permanence.  Permanence is a concept that takes some time to get used to, since it is easy to hold traction of such notions in conversation, and much harder in the waves of isolation, or even habitual every day life.  Permanence overlays lot of things, the concept of it, a nice little ancillary sub-death thought.  I believe that we make decisions that stick with us, and maybe I'm wrong, but then again, the chance that I'm right is what worries me more.

I Think That's It -

From now on I'll post on a different blog, with mostly different topics, and maybe more or less frequently.  Perhaps I'll check in here every now and again.  I feel like I've actually "done it," whatever that means, and my sobriety is now a foundation instead of a shaky bit of dramatic angst, so I don't feel compelled to draw out every last shade to you, or to myself.  I appreciate all previous comments, emails, communications, etc., and I wish everyone the best of luck.

Alcohol Exacerbates Anxiety -

If you have serious anxiety, don't drink. I'm serious. I'm serious without needing to develop this idea too much. I personally experienced hard and relentless panic attacks as a drinker. If you are suffering, as anonymous is, below, then please: eliminate all stimulants from your life (coffee), concentrate on getting rest, try hard to eat enough protein and exercise. 

Sounds simple, I know. Simple, everyday stuff.

 Everyday living. The regular routine things that get us through become quasi-religious.


 Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "What Happens When You Stop Drinking. How Long to ...": I haven't drank in 5 months and I'm still an anxious nervous wreck. Don't know how long a can go on. I need relief. I need a drink

Showing Status Through Alcohol

Not like this needs to be said, anyway. But. Booze is a status marker. And not only that, some people are convinced that collecting expensive booze, and, for instance, showing it off at a party, is a "hot shit" kind of thing to do. And they're mostly right, for a certain crowd. The method for showing it off can vary from understated (like serving blue label and acting like it is no big deal) to over-stated, like, well, forcing the presence of said whiskey on everyone's ears but not tongue. Anyway, ever been at a family get-together that devolves into vicious fighting? It wasn't helped out by the "blue" label.

Music = Perfect Combination of Intelligence and Emotion

I Miss You, IPA -

It is no joke.  Not drinking.  There's less relief now, at over three years, than there was before at three days or weeks or even months.  The relief on night-afters is higher.  Social engagements are less tricky, and most of my friends respect non-drinking, mostly because they know just how much social events revolve around drink.

And there's none of those pesky 3am panic attacks.  At least, not related to drinking.  Except I do maintain the police dream, whereby I'm being chased.  But it has morphed a bit.  Sometimes (often), I am being surrounded by large bears, and they are everywhere, and they will get me, I'm sure, but they don't, since I always wake up first, screaming!  Fuck me, I don't know why I have it, but I do.

Anyway, crowding out bear dreams is the fact that my life is objectively good!

I just want a strong release at times!  And I love frothy IPA.  And my wife, who gave birth 3 months ago, finally decided she's going to have a drink since she was sober for 9 months, and bought this delicious large brown bottle of some esoteric IPA.  And IPA is by far my favorite beer.  Strong, and bitter, and just fucking righteous in a way that nothing else is.  And exercise is not quite the same, or, well, it takes over two hours to get that incredible focus and elan which a quick drink would give.

So anyway, I can't hold my shit, is the basic thing.  I cannot just moderate my drinking.  I cannot drink.  I did not drink.  I will not drink.  I hear you, those of you who comment, telling me that they've been sober for SEVEN years only to think it is okay to drink, and waking up TEN years later, the need to get sober again alive, again present, again visceral and again, life wasted.

I hate the wasted life aspect of drinking.

Fuck me, I hate that wasted life aspect.    My layers of regret and denial and just general shame are sufficiently complex, thick, and idiosyncratically alive, that I a think shame may be just about the strongest of emotions.

The point is not to relive bad times.  I'm not trying to do that.  The point is to find meaning.  Being sober and looking for meaning is a lot harder than being a little bit tipsy--the same kind of tipsy that large brown bottle of beer would provide in oh, about twenty minutes of indulgence.  Meaning rich and frothy and honest, I do believe, and inspiring.  And it hurts to not have that ease of meaning because I'm simply not responsible enough to do so.

And at times it is just not enough to know that I'm fighting the good fight.  Instead I just feel bad for a bit.  Actually, to be honest for a moment.  I feel bad a lot.