3 months is roughly 90 days, which isn’t that much time while simultaneously being a long time. I don’t know how to explain it, and i’m not going to try. I don’t write as much as I did at other junctures of my life, but I haven’t stopped completely. I woke up, meditated, read little things on a micro learning app, all while drinking coffee and smoking the morning smokes. Lately, I’m trying not to start my day in the nexus of the social media, especially given the ramifications of Americans electing one of the literal worst people ever to the presidency… the liberal tears and the shit lord grunts of victory. I’ll get to the gram and the book eventually, of course (I’m as stuck or more stuck in the dopamine currents as anyone).
Where was I going?
Oh, yes….
3 months, 90 days. As someone with a history of chronic relapse, getting peoples hopes up only to smash them, I’m wary of doing the whole “everyone should know my clean time” thing anywhere. But you know what? There might be someone who can’t fathom 90 minutes without their chemical, or plural of chemicals that they require to function. 3 months, 90 days ago that was me. A number of things happened in a relatively short period of time in the summer, I wasn’t back on the street sleeping on a pile of cardboard or pissing and injuring myself but i felt just as empty and isolated as I ever had during the times when I was. No, I was in my nice house, in my nice bathroom…which is fitting, because my mental and spiritual health was in the metaphysical toilet.
So, what happened? Hmm, well… I was a speed freak, naturally. I parlayed a year or so of amphetamine prescriptions into a full on speed habit with big pharma’s bastard street cousin, Tina. I would tolerate people around when it served the purpose of acquiring aforementioned chemicals, but other than that I really preferred to be alone, despite isolation being so inherently tortuous.
there’s an old saying that addiction wants you dead, but it’ll settle for you being alone, or something…i’m not sure exactly. Obviously I wasn’t dead, but I was alone. Speed freakdom is a drag, you’re either all the way “on” or more than all the way “off”, and you can’t do anything or stand to be off so you've got to stay on. All the while, i’m making it make sense, when it doesn’t, like “well, i’m not smoking crack in the ghetto”. This smoking crack in the ghetto, it’s important because of who I was last smoking crack in the ghetto with had a part in me getting to where I am now, not that I've arrived anywhere, or that I ever will.
Anyway, a close friend got married in July, up in MA, and I wasn’t there. That’s not it, but there’s no reason that if I had my shit together I couldn’t have been present with all of my freinds back where I came from, even if everyone else drank like fish… after all I did see more Phish shows when I was sober than I ever did high, and Phish shows aren’t exactly a convention of sober people doing sober things. When you’re trying to get sober, one of the things you hear a lot, is the whole “stay away from people, places, and things” trip, but i’m the person, anywhere I am is the place, and everything I do is the things. If I’m doing the interior work, the external factors aren’t as relevant as one would think (in my experience), not that i’m hanging out over on Sutphin and Archer in downtown Jamaica, Queens (like I once was). So many of the people that mean so much to me were in one place, all together, and I was drunk (which I never got) , high (which I always was), and alone in my bathroom.
The whole thing depressed me, so naturally I decided I needed to have a psychedelic experience on Ketamine, after all that’s the new magic bullet for depression, just check out all of the targeted ads I get on my Instagram feed. I was most likely depressed also from not getting the sufficient amphetamine intake that my brain had become accustomed to. The k trip was powerful enough to put me in some kind of bouncy house of harsh realities that I was exerting so much effort not to bounce around with. The good thing about bouncy castles, is that they aren’t made of concrete and steel like the real world, so you are a lot less likely to crack your skull open (metaphorically speaking). It was not the whole spiritual experience that I would find myself having, but it was a bit of a spark. I was thinking “oh man, that was scary, educational and beautiful, but what am I going to do with it?”. I didn't want to be sniffing drugs all of the time in an effort to stay in that place, and I remembered that there was actually a Hindu temple right around in the corner from my house.
”Psychedelics are not a substitute for spiritual development. They’re an adjunct. They’re like a door opener. But once you’ve opened the door, you have to do the work to maintain that awareness.” -Ram Dass
I try not to write things twice so:
So, things went on. I saw my psychiatrist, who wouldn’t prescribe me amphetamines for my ADHD, but was open to trying out this non stimulant stuff called Strattera. Well, it turns out I’m allergic to that, so I had 3 days of phantom fire ants all over me, which I’m sure wasn't exactly helped by the fact that I couldn’t stop getting high. It was madness. People from everywhere were on the other end of phone calls and texts, helping me make it through that, which is beautiful.
all the while I was texting and social media-ing. One of the people I was texting with was the aforementioned young lady whom i had fallen into a crack habit with back in the winter. Well, it turns out she had gotten into AA and she was texting me that message, and I was telling her to beat it with all of that, because I had the AA book memorized and It wasn’t doing anything for me. Once I came out of it, I realized having the book memorized intellectually isn’t at all the point. Eventually, I knew that she was doing what a good AA is supposed to do, and carrying the message of recovery to the still sick and suffering.
It was on that day, when I was thinking about going to a meeting, when my longest serving AA sponsor from the years when I was sober (2014–2018) randomly messaged me to say hi. I probably hadn’t spoken to him in at least 2 years, but there he was, saying hi. I took it as a sign…how couldn’t I. This guy, his whole trip was always service, service to others, that’s how you stay sober. I remember going through the AA text with him when I was going through the 12 steps, and him stopping me to highlight every time service was mentioned. I took his message on Facebook as a sign, and in remembering what he was about I went to a meeting and became the coffee maker, and it’s become not only one of the highlights of my week, but a room full of people that know me, and would notice If I wasn’t there.
“I want you to notice when i’m not around” — Radiohead, “creep”
at some point around then, my brother really ripped into me via text about what a self centered fuck I was. I’m into facts, and I didn’t really have any to support an argument against what he was saying. I added it up, and multiplied it by the idea of service from the former sponsor who happened to text me at the moment when I was on the fence about forgetting whatever preconceived gripes I had with AA, and heading to a meeting.
Now, I’m a volunteer for 2 organizations, one that feeds people and another that walk’s their dogs. My hope is that if i’m busy doing something for people (and dogs), i’ll be too busy to hang out in my muck puddle of self centered neurosis, which can be deep enough to swallow me whole. I started going outside, and giving a smile and a nod to folks, or telling them they have a cool shirt and I realized that I was in the center of this beautifully alive little community here in Queens, and it started to feel like home.
I write in little bursts, that generally tend to be about 4–5 minute reads according to Medium. In my mind, I never do sufficient justice to the experiences or how they feel. Also, in my mind I never do enough to get to where i’m trying to go, especially since I often have about two hours of energy a day in which to operate (I’m still trying to get to the bottom of this). Luckily I have a good sponsor, who reminds me “easy does it”. It’s been only 91 days since I decided to take a completely different approach at the way I was moving around in life, and I may not immediately have the results as fast as any 21st century digital boy would want them (NOW).
This isn’t a victory lap, nor am I looking for any kind of participation trophy. I’m trying to say that if the way you are living isn’t working out, and you just cant stand it (and cant stand yourself), you can stop living that way (and stop being the person that you can't stand). It’s not great all the time, in fact I have regularly scheduled hours of not being able to stand myself, and being convinced that i’m not enough, but… it’s way fucking better than it was 91 days ago. I used to think about how much worse things were going to get, but now I’m excited to see the possibilities of how much better they can get. I’m not an anti-drug commercial, or trying to persuade anyone to do anything, I can only tell my story in my voice, which is what I intend to keep doing. If there’s any credit to be given out for all of this transformation in such a short amount of time, I really can’t take any of it, it’s all on the universe and the folks that it saw fit to put in my path (it always was).
Whether i’ve done anything justice or not, i’m going to keep trying and you can be notified via email every time:
When i’m not trying to write, i’m making other things that can be seen here
It hardly ever really bothers me, but I haven’t really got any money money, if you think what I do is good for something there’s a tangible way to express that. either way i’m going to keep doing it. If I was in anything for the money, i’d be on indeed.com or something, not volunteer match and medium.
https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
