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UNIT III - ADDICTION & RESTORATION
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It is true that just about anyone who knows more than ten people also knows at least one person who is addicted to a chemical substance. The substance may be legal and common such as alcohol. It could be a highly illicit drug such as crack-cocaine. It might even be a drug that few people have ever even heard of such as DXM. Addiction can manifest itself in such a way that it festers for years without ever being detected by a friend or a loved one. Surprisingly, some of the most dangerous and addictive drugs can be bought, manufactured, or derived from over-the-counter medicines and everyday household products. Plus, addiction does not necessarily have to be a chemical. There are many individuals that are compelled to over-indulge in such a way that they become addicted to gambling, sex, love, over-eating, exercise, or any number of things. The following pages are the result of a website I published called, "Drinking, Drugging, and Getting Sober". For more information on the ever-changing website, please see the end of this unit.
Monograph - 20
Discovery of a Higher Power in Substance:
WORSHIPPING ALCOHOL
I picked up my first alcoholic drink at age 15. It was the first day of Spring Break vacation. The concoction was a mixture with soda and vodka from my parents' liquor cabinet. I drank it alone in my room, late at night. Although I drank with other people at times, I never really had a 'social drink' in my life. I always ended up intoxicated because I thought that since one dose of this 'medicine' made me feel good, then two drinks would make me feel even better. Two drinks led to three. By the time I had my third drink, the first drink was starting to wear off so I had to take another, and then, of course, another.
In the beginning, I recall being fascinated with the science behind how the brain became intoxicated as the blood alcohol level increased. Sometimes I would study my high school health class notes while I drank. I remember a page that had a diagram of the brain with the descriptions of how systematic increases of alcohol intake affected different parts of the brain tissue, which resulted in various bodily reactions.
I remember I usually felt nothing after the first few awful tasting sips, but then I would suddenly come upon an overwhelming feeling of relaxation. Finally, after about five drinks, I would feel the exaggerated sense of well-being I was trying to achieve. It felt like all my issues and insecurities were gone. I could turn my mind down; I could turn it off, or turn it back on again whenever I wanted. I didn't have to worry any more about the fact I felt I didn't fit in with my peers. I was the kind of kid who didn't really fit in but didn't really get picked on either. I was just kind of there like a wallflower. I was shy, nervous, and confused. I also don't think I really wanted to fit in when I look back on it. When I drank, I didn't have to question anything about myself. Things like career plans, goals, attitudes, sex issues, anxiety, fear, anger, and loneliness were forgotten. For years, my mind raced uncontrollably with these worries but it was all gone when I drank. I wanted to feel this eternal buzz forever.
Alcohol made me a different person. It made me feel like I was proving my manhood. I would go around drunk on the weekends in my neighborhood and do things like graffiti, light dumpsters on fire, make false alarms, and cause other minor mischief. I had a police scanner so I could hear everything the cops said on their radios. I was fascinated with the late night when everyone else was asleep. (I still am.) The sound of the birds starting to chirp at about 5:00 AM on a Sunday morning was the most annoying noise. That sound was the signal that meant the fun was over until next week.
Since I would drink my parents' liquor, I had to fill the bottle back up with water so it looked like none was missing. They never drank much, so I figured they would never notice. But it didn't take long before my parents' entire liquor cabinet was mostly water. I worried horribly that they would find out I was drinking. I was sure that someday guests would come over and my parents would try to pour drinks but there wouldn't be any booze, just water. I also worried because I had to find another source for alcohol. I would ask my 19-year-old neighbor to try to get served beer. If he could get it, I would drink with him. Even though he looked over 21, sometimes he would get ID carded. I knew there had to be another way to get my fix. I had a spare key to my grandparent's house and knew they went to bingo every Friday night. I would ride my bike seven miles to break into their house, take liquor, replace it with water, and ride my bike seven miles back home while drinking. Then I would sneak into my basement and sleep it off. However, my grandparent's supply would soon run out also.
It was impossible for a 15 year old to get served liquor in my state, so I had to think of something else. I decided I could try to make my own wine. I rode my bike five miles to a library to find a book on home wine-making. Then I rode my bike two more miles to the supermarket to buy the fruit juice and the yeast. The wine tasted awful but it did the trick. I thought I could do this until I got a car and some older friends.
I did join a high school sports team the same year I started drinking which solved my identity problem and gave me something to do. I had friends on the team and really didn't need to drink anymore to forget my problems. However, I continued to drink anyway on the weekends as I had before because it filled an unknown need. Through the rest of high school, my alcoholism did not progress much but it did ruin my ability in sports. Because I drank so much, the full recovery from the weekend drunkenness took until about Tuesday or Wednesday. Alcohol was more important than sports anyway. Besides my grades were great. Alcohol was like my higher power and I worshipped weekly, sometimes twice a week. I lived for the weekends so I could go drink
Eventually my three usual ways of obtaining alcohol were not enough to feed my habit. However, I would go to any length to get alcohol. I ended up finding older people to purchase alcohol for me by age 16. For the next four years, I would drive local drug addicts down to the inner-city neighborhoods so they could get their drugs. I would ask to be paid in hard liquor for my 'illegal-taxi-fare'. At first, I engaged in this underground taxi business with enthusiasm for the thrill. Later, I only did it out of anxiety for the alcohol dependency.
The most powerful thing about drinking was the fact that when I was drunk, I simply didn't care that I had no place to fit in among others. Even in groups, I had always felt isolated. However, with the drink, I could be content in my isolation or comfortably surround myself with any type of crowd. Looking back, I think alcohol actually saved my life in a way. Because I could drink on the weekends and be temporarily content, I was not doing things like hating myself or thinking of suicide at the time. Little did I know how cunning alcohol would turn out to be later on in life.
From day one, the drinking was recorded in my mind as a 'quick cure' for all of my mental and emotional issues. Like I mentioned before, getting involved in sports did slow the progression of my alcoholism, but I didn't feel like I excelled enough in sports to make them a major part of my life. Besides, joining sports involved effort. I actually had to take the time to get to know people and participate. Even years into the future, I remembered the drink was much a faster and easier way to deal with troubling issues.
The reality of my problem did begin to sink in at an early age. It got to the point where I drank every single weekend no matter what. It became a big challenge to go more than a few days without getting drunk. I started to justify my heavy drinking. I would tell myself, "It's not like I'm drinking every day." I soon found out that I could drink even more booze if I smoked some marijuana while I drank. This allowed me to increase the quantity of alcohol I could take in without feeling sick. In retrospect, I now realize that alcohol was kind of like my religion. I worshipped every weekend and I worshipped well. It's almost like alcohol became part of my soul. Alcohol became my pseudo-spirit.
Adult Dating |
Monograph - 21
Chemo-Social Experience:
TO INTOXICATE FEELINGS
I graduated high school at age 18 and went off to college. When I graduated from school, I also graduated from the sports teams and all the people to who(m) I was so accustomed. My isolation got very bad. That year I started dating a girl for the first time. I drank with her from the beginning and found that I could do anything she or I wanted to do sexually if I was under the influence. I didn't even like her much but the sex made me feel grown up and masculine. These were new feelings that I thought I needed.
I found that in college, homework was not assigned every night and classes met only two or three times per week. It was possible to pull all-night study sessions before exams. I did not get involved in any college sports or activities, so drinking was now becoming part of my life during the weekdays. Getting served alcohol was easier now also. I found a place in a nearby state that did not ID card people. It wasn't that much distance away from my home, which was definitely in a conservative liquor control state. And after all, even if it would have been a long trip, I was willing to go to any length to get drunk.
My anxiety got worse at this time. I constantly felt 'anxious apartness'. I had no male friends to play sports or identify with. Guys in college all seemed to be busy with their own life. The school I went to was about 75% female and it seemed that none of them wanted to associate with me either. I became nervous when I was not drinking. I drank even more to feel calm. Little did I know that booze was causing a great deal of my anxiety. I felt very uncomfortable on the day after a heavy load. Feeling this 'uneasiness' around others caused me to drink again the next day. I felt like I was on the outside looking in for a good part of my life. The lack of enough alcohol made that feeling worse. I tried to drink more to make me feel good again only to have the problems seem much worse the next day.
I crashed my car into a telephone pole on one of my many reckless drunken driving sprees. This was my first real trouble with alcohol and the law. I was lucky the police did not or could press charges against me due to technicalities. Although I broke my right hand, I was sure to drink again within a few days. I needed alcohol to feel what I was thinking. I drank to feel happy, to feel sad, to feel depressed, and to feel angry, to feel anything. It was like alcohol itself had become my emotions.
By age 18, my illegal taxicab operation, from the metropolitan suburbs to the inner-city, became more of a job than a novelty. The area of destination was the segregated Puerto Rican and African-American sections of the region. I learned about this area from one of my neighbors that lived next door to me in the nearby suburbs. He was about five years older than me so knew his way around the ghetto very well. He lived in the 'badlands' for most of his life and recently moved to my area. He was a crack addict but didn't have a car to transport himself to the drug selling neighborhoods. I would drive him down for $10 cash but I would prefer to accept alcohol as payment.
The trips were frequent because his crack addiction happened quickly and it was very difficult for him to stop. The high from crack lasts only a few minutes but is extremely intense. However, this temporary intense high is only a fraction of the reason why it is so addictive. When one becomes a more frequent user of crack, they find themselves chasing a high that they can no longer reach due to the buildup of tolerance. More crack has to be used just to feel a little bit high. When the money runs out and when the crack starts to wear off, a deep and dull depression comes over the individual. Sometimes, the user becomes anxious or appears agitated at everything around him. He gets the feeling that he wants to desperately act out on an impulse.
Logic says crack is expensive, addicting, damaging to the body, damaging to the mind, and causes legal problems. Emotion says crack makes him feel exhilarated while it helps him forget his hopeless depression and bleak surroundings. Interestingly, some claim crack even satisfies any unfulfilled sexual libido. The logical part of the mind and the emotional part of the mind fight back and forth. The mind can't ever seem to come to a reasonable compromise. Strong feelings of confusion, fatigue, irritation, agitation, and worthlessness prevail. Sometimes he would even become paranoid. For him, it seemed like there was nowhere to turn except back to the crack -- even if it only offers minutes of relief. For me, alcohol was the same in many ways except it didn't all happen so fast. The cycles of euphoria, depression, agitation, and the emotional roller-coaster were much slower.
My encounter with street culture, crime, and flamboyant graffiti was hypnotizing. I was also amazed that a young kid from the suburbs was feared by many of the inner-city natives. I got to know a few people that my neighbor used to live with down in the ghetto. Their general outlook is not good as far as women, children, and police go. They have dramatic stories about learning criminal activity during their youth. The wild attitude of an inner-city hillbilly was very much a reality of some residents in the area. I learned early on that it only takes a few flashy members of any ethnic group to begin to cause stereotypes for the group at large, especially if that group is a minority within the American population. It seems that only the outlaws get the fame while the other 90% who expect to lead normal lives also pay the price for their neighbor's outlandish actions.
Eventually, I began to develop inner-city connections that led to knowing inner-city whites who knew suburban white drug users with money. Carting people down to the inner-city from rich neighborhoods proved to be very profitable to me. I tried drugs like crack but refused to continue using them because I saw the progress of the addict's spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, and financial destruction. I had previously justified my involvement with the drug scene because I told myself I was just being a taxi driver. However, at this point, I had a choice to make. In reality I was a drug dealer-enabler. The risk was high and I recognized that as I aged, the police and courts would not continue to be lenient as they would with a juvenile or a young guy.
I also started to see the re-gentrification of some inner-city neighborhoods during Mayor Rendell's administration. This also meant more police on the streets. I was aging and things were changing. I came to the honest realization that I was contributing to the urban decay of my region by making drug sales profitable. I also found myself becoming increasingly dependent on alcohol. I needed to drink heavily to be able to tolerate my 'customers' and the streets of the city. I quit this making runs 'down the way' (to the city) soon after I turned 20. I discontinued seeking the emotional rush of 'ghetto-blasting' with the underground taxicab operation. However, my personal alcohol and marijuana abuse problems did not go away.
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