On January 7th, 2007 I turned 21 and it changed everything. All of the sudden i could get drunk anytime i wanted to, and I wanted to all the time. i was already an alcoholic from being born one, but in 2007 i became a daily drinker. I drank my way out of Umass Boston, where i had maintained a 3.7 GPA. It wasn’t that i flunked out (math class notwithstanding), it was that I got shitfaced and tried to jump off the balcony of my 7th floor apartment, and being stopped from that i took an overdose of Seroquel. this behavior alerted the authorities, and being that i lived right next to Umass, it alerted them too. I remember being called to the student advisory people, and lying on this questionnaire that was supposed to figure out if i had a drinking problem. It would be at least five years before i acknowledged that alcohol was a problem. I always had this defense that people my age drank like i did, and it was par for the course. Besides, all of my friends drank every day, but there was absolutely something different about the way i reacted to drinking, which i wouldn't be able to verbally quantify until i read the “doctors opinion” section of the Alcoholics Anonymous text. I’m very prone to blacking out, and doing and saying horrible things to the people i love the most. There is no worse feeling than waking up hungover, and just knowing i did something fucked up, and someone is angry with me…but having no idea what i did, or why they're mad.
To stay in school I had to go to this outpatient program in Brookline, on the other end of the MBTA green line, and i went a few times, until i started just going to the college bars while my girlfriend thought i was out there getting treatment. She gave me money to go down there, and i used it to get drunk. I was always lonely, and looking for friends at bars, but really making people uncomfortable and getting cut off. My drinks of choice were really strong IPAs and Jack Daniels, which, at under 150 pounds would have me absolutely leveled pretty quickly.
The summer of 2007 had me at my messiest daily drunkenness. There was also ample cocaine and LSD. I spent a lot of the time that i wasn't at festivals, terrorizing my friends and family in my hometown (Plymouth, MA). I specifically remember waking up, scaring up whatever the first 40 ounce cost, and crying my eyes out while trying to get it down. I don't know how i honestly thought alcohol was no problem, when I was crying into a shitty beer by 10 am.
Being that it was the anniversary of the summer of love, whoever made LSD was cranking out these summer of love sheets, and my Boston Deadhead people had access to pages and pages of it, which i was eating and giving to anyone who would stick their tongue out. There were a lot of drunken trips that summer, and my friends made a lot of money, I'd imagine.
This was the summer i began a torrid affair with a lovely young and free spirited woman, who i still view favorably via what memories i can piece together. It was one of those “hey man, she understands me and likes to get fucked up with me” things. I don’t know why i couldn't muster up the respect for my actual girlfriend to be faithful, as we were in what she assumed was a monogamous relationship. I think the worst part was that i fell for the more carefree girl who was down for absolutely whatever. She went on to travel around the country, and live in ashrams like the female muse in any good Robert Hunter written song. God bless her, wherever she is.
The summer of 2007 saw me being a drunken asshole to everyone, and not giving a fuck about anything. I terrorized my poor mother and sister. i was arrested for an altercation with my mother that i do not remember at all, she said i hit her with a fucking bottle! At the time i vehemently denied it, but when i think back i think that i was absolutely capable of something like that, given how i was behaving. It’s nearly incomprehensible to think of how i carried myself 16 years ago, except i know myself so its actually not that incomprehensible. I am ashamed of my behavior and the havoc i caused.
I capped off the summer by committing serious felonies to transport ungodly amounts of acid to the Gathering Of The Vibes festival in shithole Bridgeport, CT. I got so fucked up and caught up on this 18 year old girl in a tent that i missed Phil Lesh and Freinds, which was the only group i came to see. I was already at the phase of festivalgoing where i was not even making it to the stage, because of all of the drugs and wookery in the campgrounds. I actually broke my wristband, so security threw me out into the ghetto with no shirt and shoes and a head full of acid, i snuck back in with these kids who were printing fake wristbands. It was like the game Metal Gear Solid, army crawling under a fence, to get back to the drug orgy.
When i got back to school in the fall I came crashing down from the manic drunken energy that propelled me through all of the debauchery of the year. I remember trying to read a book about Assata Shakur, being completely unable to read and breaking into tears because I didn't understand what was wrong with me, I had always been a really fast reader. Mental illness dropped me out of my rather promising university career that fall, and I got a job at Best Buy by Black Friday.
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