Tag Archives: addiction

Dark Days Gone Lighter

In 2008, I was at a stalemate with my life. I had a job with a publishing company and was on meds for depression and back pain. The back pain had been real once, but became a syndrome and a cycle that was soon all in my head, like I became my back pain, instead of it being just a part of me.

It was at this point, around Christmas, that I was let go from a publishing job I thought (but knew deep down wasn’t) my dream gig. I had previously sought the help of a (purported) substance abuse specialist to get me off of the codeine, we were going to try a new experimental drug—suboxone—that he said would help with both depression and pain.

As soon as I went on that new drug, what I thought was my last beacon of hope, I lost sight of myself: I fell into a rabbit hole and didn’t come out for another year and a half. I don’t know where I went, but I just found a journal from that time and I don’t remember writing anything in it.

Apparently, I was considering having kids. I was feeling guilty for not having a 9 – 5 anymore, but I’d been unhappy with the cube life for years, slowly dying inside because I was a writer and a musician, but I wasn’t writing or really doing anything with my music. Sure, I was writing in my journal, and making up little melodies on the guitar, alone, in my bedroom, but mostly I  was penning laments about sleeping all day and not being able to wake up at an acceptable time in the morning anymore.

The doctor was prescribing a (perchance deadly, in retrospect?) combination of Ambien, Ritalin, Lexapro, Klonopin and Suboxone. The thought now makes me want to vomit. I was walking through a cloud…nothing made sense anymore, but for some reason, I thought the problem was me, not the pills he was giving me.

I tried very hard to get out of that hole, and eventually I did. Everyone has what they feel are the dark days in their lives (I think. Right?) These were my darkest days—the days where my marriage started to change, the things I had wanted up until that point disappeared; I started to find, again, that my passion in this world was still music and writing, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to pursue it. I was too scared. And life was too expensive, so much of a struggle.

Three years ago, I checked myself into a rehab facility because I was unable to deal with the mental and physical pain that resulted from trying to taper off 5 different medications by myself, although I managed to lower all of the doses significantly and reduce it to only three medications. My doctor didn’t want to help me, told me I’d have to stay on them forever due to my “issues.”

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the uphill battle I’ve climbed since then, and whether or not I really want to share this experience with people. I realize that being vulnerable sucks, but its necessary if you want to grow in life.

So I’m training myself to keep doing it, even though people judge and criticize and ridicule and whatnot.

On a side note eventually leading back to my point, two cool things happened this last week in relation to music:

I went to an open mic after someone invited me along, and out of 40 people waiting to play I was given slot 9 by random chance. My friend bailed, so I gave his slot (14) to a singer-songwriter I met recently and she was stoked. As I walked up to the stage, she went “Woot!”

The emcee asked me as I approached the stage if I’d just wooted myself.

“Nope,” I said.

“I did,” said the singer-songwriter (we will call her ***) from the back of the room.

The emcee said, “If *** whistled you, then you must be good!”

I played my song, and afterwards, the emcee said, “My friend said to me when you were playing, ‘I want her voice.’ I think that’s what everyone was thinking, she just had the nerve to say it.”

A handful of talented musicians came up to me afterwards and said I did great.

Rewind to two and a half years ago, six or so months off those pills, newly back to practicing my songs, still not sleeping, feeling doom and anxiety daily. I went to this open mic, got on stage, and my leg shook so badly I couldn’t play the correct chords. My guitar was out of tune and I didn’t make sure I could hear myself in the mic. This same scenario happened the second time, too, only worse.

But I didn’t give up. I kept playing, I kept searching for musicians to work with, and I kept booking my own shows. Thus, the third scenario, in which I got wooted and people appreciated my song, and it was no big thang…

Second awesome thing that happened: The band Ours, fronted by Jimmy Gnecco, opened for Peter Murphy (frontman of Bauhaus) at a very small venue called The New Parish. I wanted to go for weeks but tickets, at $35, were outlandishly expensive on my part-time library salary (freelance work has been a bit dry lately, I barely have enough for gas and food). My friend got me on the guest list and split the cost of my ticket with me.

I have wanted to see Ours since someone handed me a flier for their show six years ago as I was walking near the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. That show was $10. Jimmy Gnecco has an amazing voice, I admire his craft immensely.

I didn’t go to that $10 show. I regretted that for years…they didn’t play again for a long time.

This time, on the way, I was anxious. I got there an hour after doors opened. They were cash only. The only close ATM’s were broken.

Finally, I got cash and got in just as the show was starting.

The band’s performance was awesome. After they played, I saw the band members leaving the upstairs portion of the building, headed downstairs, probably to the van. Gnecco got stuck out in the smoking courtyard, he was being shuffled by his peers, and looked a little lost. The only way out of the courtyard was for him to turn towards me. So I said, “Hi.” He, cornered, looked at me, stopped for a minute. He was pretty slippery, he got from one side of me to the other in about three seconds, and was headed back upstairs.

“Great job,” I said to him quickly, before he fled, “You’re one of my favorite singers.”

He was nice–he paused, and shook my hand, I told him my name, and he said hi to my friend, too, before he vanished, shuffled off by his mini entourage.

My friend and I went down the street to Rudy’s after the show, and when we walked back to my car, the band were all sitting in their van waiting to leave. We walked on by. I’d already gotten all I wanted.

So I only partially stuck to my philosophy of Avoiding My Heroes, but whatever.

So. The point being this. I have made tiny little baby steps in my life over the past three years, but had you told me when I was a sobbing mess checking into rehab, thinking for certain I had brain damage and would never get better, that my life was over, this was it, I’d gone and messed it all up, that I would be living in Oakland again, standing on the floor of the New Parish with a birds eye view of one of my favorite singers upstairs walking around with his shirt off, I would have told you to shut the hell up. Any joy at all, even from little things, seemed impossible at that time.

Life, it seems now, is all about the simple moments. Thank heaven I can finally see and appreciate them!

Sharing Gritty Life Stories (That One Person, Part 2)

Credit: Lee Nachtigal

I recently went to a training for my part-time job. It was based on working with homeless and mentally ill people, both demographics I work with. The day before the training, I wrote a blog about how I write, even though it’s hard to put myself out there, because I want to help that one person.

I expected to get a lot out of the training, but I didn’t expect to get as much out of it as I got. Some of the employees from a public library in a major city nearby were behind it, and they shared about their experiences working with the homeless population that flocks to their library.

At one point, a woman who works in the library system as outreach for the homeless went up in front of all of us library workers–most very proper, analytical people: managers, librarians, deputies. She said she was nervous and that she hadn’t really talked in public like this before.

She shared that she had worked all of her life, but had lost her business in the bad economy of 2008 and had moved to San Francisco in her car, because she knew that it was easier to be homeless there. The car had broken down, and then she had become very sick. She also struggled with substance abuse issues as a child of the ’60s. Eventually, she found help through a homeless peer who directed her to outreach services and detox. Now she works in a public role in the library offering service to those in her old shoes.

Everyone, after she talked, gave her multiple rounds of very loud applause for sharing her story in this setting.

I didn’t think I would have a chance to talk to the woman afterwards. I had stayed to chat with some coworkers after the training was over. When I walked outside of the library the woman was standing outside, alone. There were coworkers I know were there but who I hadn’t even run into after it was over; over one hundred people who had been in that training and were now nowhere to be seen, just her, out on the curb, as if she were waiting for me.

I told her thank you.

While she had shared about some of the issues modern homeless are facing, I had remembered being homeless as a teenager for a number of reasons (not that I didn’t have a physical home and parents who loved me, but my home was an emotional land mine due to a number of things going on at the time), and seeking youth outreach services.

In my early twenties, I struggled with homelessness for almost a year, living off of other people’s kindness, going from couch to couch. A rehab I went to for 60 days ejected me after my time was up, even though I didn’t have a place to live, and I was able to get into a sober living house because a friend from rehab loaned me $800, the amount it cost per month for the room I would share with five other girls.

I remembered being sent to a Tenderloin detox in 2002, after being kicked out of the sober-living home for drinking. I had been living day by day, watching my housemates eat while trying to pretend I wasn’t hungry, so no one would be aware of the fact I didn’t have money for food. One  roommate was a postal worker, and let me use her change jar sometimes for coffee and food, thank god. Then I wasn’t even in the sober living house anymore.

I finally got a call-center job (just before I got ejected from the sober living house and had no place to live) through a person I met in a self-help group. I was trying to get my act together. I was 21 years old.

Often, when I wasn’t warm and safe at the job I was very grateful to have, I went to the library in San Francisco to use the internet, waiting until I got my first paycheck (I had to wait a month) so that I could afford to give someone money for a room. The library offered me a safety net, and a place to go. Often, I would sit there and read books, because it was warm and safe.

I also remembered around 2008, when I lost my job in publishing. We were renting an apartment in Berkeley for around $900. The landlady asked us to move out so her daughter could move in, right around that time. We couldn’t afford the normal rents in Berkeley or El Cerrito or Oakland. We were worried about survival, biting our nails. We had a car payment, a motorcycle payment, student loans, and now only one income.

My Uncle approached us and asked if we would like to take care of my grandparent’s house (empty, and it had it’s own issues, like black mold) until we got back on our feet. Without his offer, I don’t know what we would have done. We spent two years in that house, worried we were one paycheck away from being homeless. There were few jobs. I applied for them all. I was on unemployment, which was half of my previous income, and my husband wasn’t getting as much business at work. I was constantly sick from the mold. It was scary.

I think many Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless. I grew up with the same weight over my head–my parents always wondering where the next check would come from. They didn’t own property. I don’t own property. Even people who own property are at risk.

I knew where she was coming from. I’ve been there, too. She spoke to me.

She had said, while she was talking, that most homeless and mentally ill people walk into the library already thinking they’ve done something wrong. They’re already on edge. They feel like they don’t belong. Many times I felt that way, like someone was going to arrest me for being me. Like I didn’t belong.

She told me, “I didn’t even feel like sharing today. I was nervous, I was afraid, I didn’t want to do it. I thought of canceling.” Then she said, “But I thought, if I can just help one person…”

I’m so glad that in spite of her fear she had the courage to share how she turned her weakness into strength and how she has used her experiences and the serendipity of being asked to work in an outreach situation to give back what was given to her.

I told her that I write non-fiction stories and read them in public, and share personal stories on my blog, and I had just written yesterday about not wanting to share sometimes, feeling embarrassed about being open and putting myself out there. Then, my friend had said those exact words, “If I can just help one person,” and I’d used that as the title of my blog post. Usually, I said, I’m the one sharing personal details that are hard to share. “Wow,” I had thought when I heard her speak, “This is what it’s like to be on the receiving end of someone stretching themselves and speaking directly from the heart, even though it’s not comfortable or convenient or guaranteed to help a single soul.”

It seems like everyone in that training, most of whom likely had not directly experienced her reality, benefited from her personal experience. And because she’s been there she is at an added advantage of being able to do her job of outreach. It’s the same reason why your addicted niece or spouse or friend won’t listen to you when you try to give them advice if you’re not an addict, but will listen to someone who was an addict and has been through it. People know when we are speaking the truth, and it resonates with them. And mostly, it helps them, too.

Life lessons like this don’t always happen, not with such blatant obviousness, but when they do, it’s a trip.

Do You Remember?

Dear Self,

Remember when you were twenty years old, and you had thrown away everything because of a boy, back at home in your parents house in the suburbs, working 40 hours a week at a coffee shop for $7.50 an hour?

You were looking for an apartment, but nothing, even out in the boondocks, was below $800 a month. You were still pining for your ex-boyfriend, in spite of the fact that you had relapsed on alcohol while living with him. You still thought he was your twisted soul mate.

Do you remember moving into your best friend’s aunt’s upstairs bedroom? Getting a job at Trader Joe’s even though you had taken a handful of muscle relaxers and blacked out during the interview?

Do you remember digging through drawers in your best friend’s aunt’s house for whatever pills you could find, taking them even though you didn’t know what they were? Going in the back room of Trader Joe’s and drinking the loose beers in the bathroom quick as you could, then putting them into the trash, then taking the trash out into the back so nobody would see before going back out on the register to ring up customers, smiling, “Hi, how are you?”

Remember how you got fired because your ex came into town and you couldn’t resist taking off for a week, even though you knew you would get fired? Do you remember his best friend telling you both that you were bad for each other, that you only caused each other to self-destruct? Do you remember getting a DUI and having your license suspended?

Do you remember on the last day of that week away, driving down through Northern California, taking your pill bottle out of your purse while listening to Frank Sinatra’s “I Get A Kick Out of You” on his car stereo and freaking out because you realized it was completely empty?

Do you remember everyone in your life being sick of your shit?

And when you checked into an outpatient program, your car caught fire on the way to the building. And two weeks later, you met your husband, the kindest guy you’ve ever known, the first one who treated you like an equal and not some dumb girl.

Do you remember being 25, working at a small press in Berkeley, watching all of the books come across your desk from female authors–mommy bloggers, poets, freelancers–who had written books about their self-made careers, their travels, their children, their open marriages, their transgender pregnancies?

Do you remember starting this blog back then, because you thought you could be like them, because you thought your book could someday be published there, too?

Do you remember being “let go” from the publishing company? Do you remember being unemployed for a year and a half, sick as a dog from the back pain medicine you were taking, taking all sorts of other pills to counteract it, floundering, fumbling, not even writing music anymore?

Do you remember that you had given up?

You weren’t spending time with anyone, it was an effort to get out of the house to walk around the block with the dog, you were having issues with your heart rate and were trying desperately to take yourself off of 5 different pills your doctor was prescribing you, but had no idea how to do that.

At 27, you thought your life was over. And it seemed like it was. No job, addicted to pills, living in your grandparents house, your family distracted by their own issues, your husband working 7 days a week to get the hell away from you.

Do you remember crying at your husband’s friend’s house, saying, “I don’t know what’s happened to me.” And being embarrassed that it had come to this–you never cried. But here you were, crying every day. Waking up and wondering how you were going to get through the day. Praying to a god you didn’t believe in anymore to take away the pain of being hopeless and alone, of feeling like you were going through life wrapped in gauze, a stranger to happiness.

Do you remember checking into a program to cold turkey off the pills your doctor wouldn’t help you get off of? Him saying, “You need these pills.” Do you remember how hard that was? Not sleeping more than a few hours a night for a year, the inner thrumming in your nerves, constantly feeling like you should be moving but being exhausted at the same time, like your body was doing some complicated nervous system speedball?

How no one understood what you were going through?

Do you remember that for nine months, you couldn’t feel joy?

And when you finally had a moment, one day, where you felt good, out driving the car, like you were on the right path as some kind of bird flew through the air in front of your car windshield, you held on to that moment for another year, remembering an essay Anne Lamott wrote about how we cobble together all these eight second blips of happiness–how her essay got you through, made you feel like you weren’t the only freak who felt bad all of the time.

Do you remember all the friends you met? Picking up a kettlebell because it was a challenge, losing 30 pounds of flab, having people to talk to for the first time in years.

Do you remember playing your sister’s old piano in the quiet of your grandparent’s musty house when no one was around, transcribing your song from guitar and singing it like you were on fire, how you felt like you were tapped into a crystal geyser? I’m in the right place, you thought as you thrashed the keys with your fingers, singing into the dead air as the sun burst through the dirty picture windows over the piano–even though you’re not a classical pianist, not even a pop rock pianist, not by a long shot.

Do you remember started to record yourself playing songs again, and posted the videos on facebook even though you were scared shitless that everyone would laugh at you?

Nobody laughed.

Do you remember going into the recording studio for the first time in years, putting down tracks for four of your songs, getting positive feedback from the engineer and engineers in training, slipping the rough mixes into your CD player on the drive home, listening to your songs, and feeling like everything was finally clear?

Do you remember when you read one of your non-fiction stories in public, how you had 8 friends with you, and you felt like a star, and when you read, everyone laughed, or said “ew” at the right moments, and you said to yourself, this is one of the best nights of my life?

And do you remember this morning, reading a blog by one of the published mommy bloggers whose book you worked on back at that small press company you were employed at, reading all her publishing credits, noticing she lived in LA, reading a post she wrote that was poignant and resonated with you but hating that it was poignant and resonated with you even as you enjoyed it?

You wiped the bleariness of waking up from your eyes, looked at your blog stats and realized only 50 people even glanced at it yesterday, thought yourself downright delusional to think anyone would be interested in reading what you have to say.

You were wearing a formerly black sweater, now gray and threadbare, the sweater your husband bought you eight years ago, drinking cold coffee, procrastinating on taking the dog out, wondering how you were going to make ends meet, stop working so hard for so little all of the time, wondering if you’d ever amount to anything, wondering why after so many years of wanting something you’d been waylaid and sidetracked by pills and men and depression and joblessness and fear. You were feeling regret…

Do you remember that as you remembered all of these things, you started writing a letter to yourself in your journal? You shared it on your blog hoping that maybe one person might read it and not feel alone, feeling like a cheeseball for wanting to connect with other struggling artists out there, feeling like all the “established” artists are going to judge you, but knowing that connection is why you do this thing: creation.

Do you remember putting this up on your blog even though you knew people would judge you, your family might read it, everyone might say, “Oh my god, she’s such a beginner. I was already doing all of this stuff by the time I was 20.”

Do you remember telling yourself, if only for a second, that you’re glad you’ve been able to finally feel–for the first time in your life, you have these moments where you are completely in the moment, and it’s only because of the battles you’ve faced. So what if you’re not successful to the world. So what if only once in a while someone reads this blog and something resonates. So what if it’s only a small group of people. You haven’t given up.

Addiction Takes One More at 27

I’ve just read Russell Brand’s moving tribute to Amy Winehouse.

It resonated with me for many reasons. I have a couple of friends who struggle with addiction and I have my own personal stories as well (another time, another place). It never goes away, in my opinion. It’s always lurking. And when you have friends who struggle with addiction, you are just waiting for that phone call from their family, telling you that they’re gone. And then the emptiness is intractable.

Though I didn’t know her personally, I can’t help but be affected by this news just as I was affected by by the deaths of both Heath Ledger and Brittany Murphy. The latter two were sudden and unexpected. With Winehouse, you just knew that something would happen, but I had no idea that it would be death, like so many of her musician and actor peers that came before her, at the age of 27. She was a very talented gal and now listening to her songs is like listening to a phantom and gives me chills and heartache.

I don’t know what it is about the age of 27. For myself, it wasn’t the best year of my life. In fact, it was one of the worst. A very bare bones synopsis of what mired me at 27 is posted on Goodlife Zen.

I never linked it here before, because I didn’t want to make my picture or that battle public on this blog (for fear of being judged), I rather wanted to keep myself out of the mix as nothing more than a muse, but maybe if I make this more personal it might resonate with others. My goal here is to help people. So, I may be judged, but what the hell.

I got sober for the first time at age 15. I was sharing a handle of whiskey every morning with my boyfriend, on the streets. My story was pretty public, as I was sent to a controversial program in Jamaica, which was later featured on 48 Hours and has since been shut down. Can’t really hide that from a google search, can I.

I was sober for around four years, then met a musician who lived in L.A, moved in with him and relapsed again on alcohol, since he had drinking problems himself, and was trying to moderate at the time. Boy, I didn’t help him with that one at all. Moderation schmoderation.

Did I prove to myself that I can knock it back like the rest of them? Oh yes. And more. I ended up right back where I had been at 15. Homeless and checking in to rehab after a series of unfortunate events and broken relationships.

I have not touched alcohol or illegal substances for almost 9 years now. But I did have another battle with prescribed pills, socially sanctioned by my doctor.

The lines blur here, so I just called it a relapse and have now learned that pills aren’t for me, either.

People divide on the issue of pills, but it seems to me that they have caused so much pain for so many people and it kills me to see people “sober” and loaded on tranquilizers and legal speed.

These days, I don’t take pills. I don’t take drugs. I don’t drink. Because I don’t want to die.

And I don’t, like Brand described it, want to live behind that foggy barrier where I don’t see other people and am not connected to them. We all fight our own battles on this plane. Who knows what, if anything, is next. I don’t want to lose what little I have. This life is so important to me, despite mood swings and thoughts of destruction and tumult that come and go like the fog in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’m as straight edge as they come now out of complete necessity. And hanging out in the sober circles I spend time in now, I have seen (and experienced many times over) what happens when you tell yourself, “Oh, sure, just one. I’m just like everyone else.” Not worth it to me. I’ve lost too many people. I often wonder why I’m not dead, too.

Drugs and Creativity: A Myth Perpetuated by the Masses

There is an assumption floating around.

An assumption that creative people need to do a lot of drugs.

But (enter celebrity name) did drugs and was fine, you say.

OK. There are some people that defy logic. Like Keith Richards or Mick Jagger, who probably have heroin for blood and are somehow pickled and preserved by voodoo magic spells. They don’t count. For some reason, these few defy the norm. Maybe you can too and if you can, my hat is off to you.

Most of us mere mortals are not built like that.

I believe that drug use being able to continuously (notice I said continuously) enhance creativity with repeated use is a fallacy perpetuated by mass media and hearsay. Mass media  glamorizes the lives of famous individuals who used alcohol and drugs to cope with their innate sensitivity and raw perception of the world.

If you follow some of the most popular writers of their day throughout their later years, the intelligence starts to wane off after the toll of long-term drinking or drug use is taken.

From The Economist: “In America William Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald were the Paris and Britney of their day, caught in the funhouse mirror of fame, their careers a vivid tabloid mash-up of hospitalisations and electroshock therapies…In fact none of these authors would write much that was any good beyond the age of 40, Faulkner’s prose seizing up with sclerosis, Hemingway sinking into unbudgeable mawkishness.” The entire article is worth a read.

Psychiatrist Dr. Iain Smith, as quoted in The Independent, professed, “While many artists and writers were famous for substance abuse, most produced their greatest works while not intoxicated.” He claimed that in fact, alcohol and drugs stifled creativity.

Sometimes writers use their experiences getting sober to create an interesting story for other people to draw from. There are a ton of memoirs written by sobered up writers after they escaped the illusions of chemicals. Or in the case of William Burroughs, while they continued to use and write with or without the aid of a transcriber. And some write detailed smack memoirs delineating just how much of a problem drugs weren’t. Or create the best account of psychedelic degradation ever before offing themselves years later.

In history, creativity and madness seem to go hand in hand with a propensity for drugs and alcohol, to kill off the pain of living in a world that seemingly defies logic.

Folklore through books and movies of the last couple of decades show famous musicians such as John Lennon and Jim Morrison “tuning in”. They are painted as Greek gods with a genius that ordinary human beings cannot comprehend.

Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, three of the most famous druggie musicians of their time, all overdosed on drugs in their late 20′s after a steady fall from grace. Jimi Hendrix died face down in his own vomit. Jim Morrison in a bathtub with cocaine and heroin in his bloodstream. Janis Joplin in an apartment in Hollywood of an alleged heroin overdose. Kurt Cobain, a heroin addict by his late 20′s, shot himself. Three of these sensitive charismatic celebrities died at the age of 27. “Hendrix, Joplin, The Doors, Nirvana, The Stones – these are all bands and individuals whose music was truly great. And they never got to finish. Who knows what they would have gone on to produce if they were alive today?” said Jeremy Simmonds, author.

It happens. The good times catch up with you.

It’s not generally sustainable (or hot) to continue doing drugs as a coping mechanism to deal with your innate creativity. Go to any rehab and you’ll hear the same story. The well dried up. Nothing was getting done. Everything fell apart.

Many people who create for their livelihood and passion do not need to use drugs or drink alcohol excessively. If you are sensitive to the world around you, there are a million layers to be revealed when you pay attention. Being drugged dulls your senses and therefore your art. You’re not tapping into some secret layer of psychedelic wisdom in my opinion. Get high and you stop seeing other people and the world around you clearly.

We seem to think in America and elsewhere, that if you have great talent you have a right to make a mockery of yourself. People have a lot of excuses for using. Life’s hard. People suck. Creativity is painful. Is ending up with this instead of a body of enhanced work and a good reputation what we are aiming for?

My compelling argument is this: numbing your mind just ends up numbing your mind and causing more pain in the end. Unless you’re Mick Jagger.

How do we dispel the myth that drugs and alcohol fuel better creativity? We defy the norm one at a time.

Sure, drinking a glass or so of wine calms the mind and unleashes the tongue for more jovial convivialities. Yes. It is a copacetic substance often generating good-will amongst complete strangers who would otherwise be totally awkward. And it feels like a balm in the middle of a world that seems to give you shit at every turn when you’re trying to change it through words, music or art. Been there, done that.

Sober musician Trent Reznor stated in a quote posted on Metal Underground, “by the end of my run with drugs I’d also realized that my brain wasn’t functioning right and I’d lost the power to really concentrate – it really made my art suffer, which made me feel worse, which made me want to get high and you know, that cycle starts up.”

When you go past moderate drinking into full out binging or abuse, you dull up the senses and keep your mind from expressing all those deep divets and twists. When I popped pills or imbibed alcohol, my words dried up. My feet got stuck in a puddle of mud and brown slime coating I couldn’t scrape off. I couldn’t even READ my writing, let along captivate an audience with my fantastic guitar solos and belting vocals. I’d be lucky if I ended up in a Kumbaya singalong.

Wales poet Gwyneth Lewis writes: “I used to keep notes of my altered states of mind under the influence of drink in the hope that they would offer startling new images for poems. They didn’t. It was impossible to decipher my handwriting, and I kept throwing up. Another poetic myth bites the dust.” (quoted in an article in The New York Times).

I was in a tar pit wading forward a centimeter at a time until I washed off the gunk and let my mind expand to all the subtle nuances seemingly-boring-everyday rawness can bring. Complete sobriety is necessary for me to keep writing music and poetry, to find my way in this world, to cope with rejection day in and day out.

It may not be a problem for you, and that’s fine. To each their own.

Just be careful you don’t fall into that hole that many short-on-this-earth stars fell into before you. I don’t think it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Better to live a long life where your work unfolds gradually until it’s ready. Better to be present for all the world brings, good or bad. Better to be conscious of where you want to put your creations, how they fit into the grand scheme of your life and the lives of those around you.

Says one sober writer going by the name of Sugah in a public recovery forum online discussing sober writers and musicians, “For me? I thought I was a creative genius when I was drinking/using, though for every page of brilliant prose I produced, there were a hundred more that belonged in the trash. I didn’t start writing seriously until I got sober.”

My mind, without alcohol or meds, amazes me. I always dulled myself down for other people, to fit in. It wasn’t cool to be smart or witty when I was growing up. It was cool to be stoned out and screwed up, to wear skinny pegged jeans and shirts tied in a knot at the waist. So of course I took the requisite paths of self-destruction and fallacy, only to find, every time, that all I had was me and my words to get me through in the end. That the cool friends had dried up. The alcohol didn’t work. The pills were making me tweaky, even though they were prescribed by a doctor to take the “edge” off my nerves and “help with the pain”.*

Eventually I quit trying to fit in. Quit numbing myself down to take away the sensitive edge and inability to handle society on society’s terms.

Gradually, with time (each time this happened), my words and music re-emerged. All of that anger and regret, all the joy and wisdom became my new body of work. A temper tantrum quelled by the bottle just sunk me deeper.

Poetry and music are my drugs. I use them to channel the anger and pain of living in a world that doesn’t want you to be who you are. I use them to express joy and epiphany.

You don’t have to fall into a world of excess and dumbing down.

Back in Rome, it was bread and gladiator games to soothe the masses. Today, it’s football, television and pharmaceuticals. There is a pill for everything. Even foot-twitching. It’s hard not to give in to thinking there’s something wrong with you if you don’t conform to the norm. A glass of wine. A Xanax to take the edge off. Some Wellbutrin to get you up in the morning. Ambien to put you down at night.

I don’t buy it. I won’t dull myself down. There are people out there who don’t need to blitz out to tune in to the muse. They are out there. We will find them. This is for all of you out there who want out and think you have no company.

“They know I’m more dangerous to them sober than I am drunk” – Malcolm X

*Some of us struggle with depression and anxiety that is aided by conventional therapies. I am not criticizing people who find help in psychiatric medications for these things. I also hope things will improve for those who struggle with madness and creativity. Conventional therapies didn’t work for Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton in the long run. Both committed suicide after years with shrinks and medication.

**Updated to add that as of July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse, who suffered from addiction as well, has been found dead at age 27. Add to the list Brittany Murphy and Heath Ledger and the breath kind of leaves your body. Thinking of all the unknowns who die of addiction’s grip every day, I am baffled and heartbroken.

Existential Crisis

My head is spinning in some crazy orbit and I can’t hold it in my hands, it keeps getting away from me. There is no nightmare, only reality, as the sun shines through the window and I sit on my couch hitting my head with my hand over and over again not feeling a thing but twitching all the same. Maybe I should reincarnate my old myspace blog posts. Back then I had some semblance of torture and animosity.

I feel, sometimes, when I’m reading a memoir about a behavior-modification program or a drug addiction, I feel like, oh, right. There’s that memoir I wrote. All two hundred pages of it. I should do something with it. And so I did. And then I get physically ill. And that’s just the addiction part.

So I bring out the old arsenal. Guitar. Food. Tea. Do I feel better? Exponentially. At least these days I am not a faded being, I am something more oh what’s the word, opaque. Sometimes glinting in the light, like a black sheet, or sometimes white. Ah, I realize I am making no sense. I am sitting here shaking my head back and forth like Jim Morrison in the desert thinking of all the ghosts of my path who are still alive, wonder if they are watching me or if I’ve become a blip on the radar. If I could erase all the experiences that happened to me from 12-16 and from ages 19-21 would I? I just might. In something like electroshock therapy, and I would be whole with missing chunks, and I wouldn’t relate to these tattered beaten souls who bang down my door late at night and share drug stories with me. What the bloody hell am I doing in life. Just drifting. Surviving. Nothing MEANS anything to me. Not the sun. Not flowers. Just outward gestures, like the point of a pinky finger holding a fucking cocktail glass…

And then I fall into some coma. And I’m asleep for years. And I’m sitting at a table with corpses and swine. What happens. Dreams come to you, they appear real, you fall into a pink cloud and you’re suddenly alive, manic with the energy of REAL LIFE and then you fucking SINK down down down into a tunnel of what. Nobody can explain. All the memoirs covering my shelves can’t explain. All the atlases. All the friends in the world. Where are they now? And I can’t cry, never been much of a crier. Just one for playing the guitar loud and alone, holding my feelings until they can be released in the empty walls of my room.

Happiness not shared is….

Happiness not shared is…

Had to throw it all away. Had to throw it all away.

My eye has been twitching constantly. There’s been some inner and outer commotion lately. All the outer straws are lined up but I’ve been speeding a little too fast toward the end result, not knowing what the end result it. Truth is I’m afraid to write. I am another person inside this person inside this person like those russian dolls. Open one and you get another and another and another and there are so many pieces of me smashed across the continent, in peoples hands, eyes, faces and memories. Even erased and fragmented. What are we. Are we real or just fragments of imaginations. Pieces we tell ourselves and spin together to form some halo of lucidity, to smash out and declare I AM REAL. ME IS I IS WE AND I AM HE AS YOU ARE HE AS YOU ARE ME AND WE ARE ALL FUCKING IN THIS TOGETHER.

But in the end, we are born alone and we die alone and all the famous musicians, poets, artists and vagabonds scream the same tragic tale, waiting for redemption, waiting for the end when it will all fall together, CLICK, the proverbial joining of broken puzzle pieces, we have missing puzzle pieces out whole lives and we can never ever find the tip of the tower or the middle of the ocean, because someone up there or out there has the pieces in their hand, is holding it, is laughing at us as we fall on the floor grasping at straws.

But what do I have if not this? This attempt at life. This existence that I so take for granted. What I had what I did, so many pauses and starts, fits and gasps of struggling.

And from the time he was a boy he worked hard, always had a straight line for a mouth, shoveled dirt, built a house, married a wife, had seven children, three of which died of scarlet fever. They rode into the little down to buy sugar and flour and cloth from the little store and shared a moment with the owner, but nothing struck out except for the gash of land on which they had fashioned some sort of life for themselves. Did they have books on the walls? Did they quote Dostoevsky? Did they struggle with their proverbial existence, waking up as coachroaches for whatever it means? Did they dance for the crowd inside a circus fence?

Did they flash to the future where people would click on the television.

Your hands are blood-washed violet. It takes one gash to end the world. One person to change a life. Yet everything falls as insignificantly as cherry blossoms to the ground. Once beautiful, now dead. And the song has no interlude. And I feel dizzy with the feeling of it. Birth and death. Spring and Winter. Fall and Summer. And I spin through this crazy nondescript world wondering…

what the hell does it all mean?