Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Altruism, cancer, Recovery, Trauma, Uncategorized

This is not a Eulogy.

This past Saturday the 27th my mother surrendered to cancer, almost a year to the week that she first told me she was dying. I got the call from my uncle while my fiancé Julia and I were out to dinner. We both went home and cried. So much for the rest of our evening.

The whole thing was not unlike how my father told me my parents were separating when I was 13. They’d been fighting a lot, and mom was drinking heavily. They really hadn’t told me much, but children can sense when something’s wrong. I was watching Saturday morning cartoons, and my dad came down with a severe look on his face – a look I’d not seen from him before.

So much for the rest of my teenage years.

—

This is not a eulogy, nor am I attempting to speak ill of the dead. I’m speaking honestly of the dead. During one of our last conversations, Mom told me the following:

“Honey, one day you’re just going to have to accept the fact that I was not a very good mother to you.” That’s the closest I would ever come to receiving an apology. I also believe that it gives me permission to say what I need to say.

And what I need to say, is that I’ve been grieving my mother – or rather, our relationship, our family – for over 30 years.

Mom’s passing wasn’t unexpected. Even before my mom knew that she had cancer, I could sense something was off. She kept telling me she was “healthy as a horse,” but my mom never, ever, told me an entirely straight story. One of her friends said her secrecy was to “preserve her dignity.” That’s what my mom’s friends have always done though: euphemistically defended her utter inability either to be truthful, or be a mother.

So what I feel inside is a combination of numbness, and sameness. Everything feels, sadly, quite the same. My mom’s passing has not impacted my day-to-day life, save for a kind of exhaustion that permeates my whole body. I have to force myself to get up, to do things. So I know I’ve been impacted by my mom’s death.

The short version of what happened to our relationship is that Mom began teaching English at a private school in Raleigh, and fell in love with one of the administrators who also happened to be a woman. She felt romantic love – probably for the first time in her life – and found herself trapped in a marriage that she never realized she was trapped in. That was the beginning of the end. Her drinking was simply a side effect of all those pent up emotions, because I rarely saw my mom drink when I was growing up. Even if she had been, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. My dad, who was busy focusing on his own career (really, they both were) seemed completely blind-sided.

Mom would come to pick me up, and be drunk. I would tell my dad, who could also clearly see my mother’s condition, and he would send me with her anyway. My guess is he was concerned with appearances, or maybe just didn’t like me challenging his authority. Regardless, there were times I’d have to grab the wheel out of my mom’s hands when she was nodding off on the road. Eventually I told my dad I no longer wanted to see her, and for almost two years I hated my mom.

The typical things that always accompany alcoholism began to occur. Mom’s life fell apart, she went to rehab, relapsed a bit and then was able to stitch a small stretch of sobriety together thanks to AA. To regain my love, she bought me things – clothes, CDs, food, nearly anything I wanted. Material things were always her way of showing love for someone. But it was never really her money. I came to find out it was my grandparents’ money. They had given her a credit card, in addition to multiple other credit cards she had opened for herself. My uncle related to me that she would secretly call her parents and ask for money in the early days of my parents’ marriage.

Those bills went unpaid for years. She ended up declaring bankruptcy at one point. In her house in Colorado, my uncle and I carried out 55 gallon trash bags full of unopened credit card statements, store bills, phone bills, as well as tons of beer and wine bottles hidden in the master bedroom of her house where she never slept. What was strange is that my mom left money stashed all over her house. So there was money to pay the bills. She simply never paid them. My poor uncle was left with the task of seeing that all those debts got settled. I got the task of cleaning out her storage sheds (two in North Carolina, one in Colorado).

Years before her diagnosis I would literally beg my mother to help with her storage units, knowing eventually I’d end up having to deal with them. I would ask over and over, and she would say it’s no big deal. “I can manage it.” But she couldn’t, and she didn’t – all the while claiming she was doing the best she could and simultaneously doing nothing. My guess is that, like the unpaid bills, she hoped she’d be long gone before she’d have to face her loved ones cleaning up her messes for her.

While cleaning out one of the storage units, I came across the documents finalizing my parents’ divorce. Dad had always told me he asked my mom to leave and initiated the divorce. My mom said that she didn’t fight to get custody of me because she knew that she was in bad shape and probably couldn’t have handled it. For years I accepted those answers.

However, having been a participant in both AA and NA for the better part of ten years, I’ve known many single moms. Moms who fled their husbands. Moms who had no idea who the father was. Moms who had been pregnant in the streets. And every single one of them fought tooth and nail to keep their kids. Even the ones who lost custody because of their addictions desperately fought in court and in the rooms to gain custody and/or visitation. I’ve watched them weep uncontrollably. (To be fair I’ve seen many single dads do likewise.)

Mom never once lived in the streets. She knew who the father was. She might’ve been in a very bad way with her alcoholism, but was in treatment and in the rooms trying to get well. I’d developed several issues with her version of the story, and suddenly it all became clear.

As it turns out, she was the plaintiff. Her name was listed first.

She wanted the divorce, petitioned for it, and got it a year later in 1988. Whether it was the alcohol talking, or her frustration, or just selfishness, she’d become tired of being a wife and a mother. I know in my heart it was something she always regretted, but regret is not a mechanism for personal change.

My dad, whose pride was already wounded knowing that mom had left him for a woman (which in the mid-1980s was taboo, if not outright scandalous), probably couldn’t handle another bruise to his ego. Hence, his version of things.

—

So this is not a eulogy. This is a story of secrets. My parents’ marriage was one secret after another, secrets based on shame, on fear, on embarrassment and disappointment.

Secrets are unique in that they require work to maintain. When someone asks “can you keep a secret,” they’re asking if you have the physical ability to carry it, similar to asking if you can lift a heavy box.

It’s stressful to keep a secret, and in my opinion it’s unfair for an adult to place that burden on a child. Which they do, either by direction instruction or indirect transference. My uncle, until I saw him last summer, had no idea about what caused my parents marriage to end. I’m beginning to suspect that my dad never told his siblings the full truth of their relationship either.

Finally, secrets prevent healing. Our culture teaches us to bear our hidden burdens for the sake of others. But those emotions, those hurts, will come out eventually – in odd and unexpected ways. Anger that seems to come out of nowhere, over nothing. Unending depression. Ruined marriages. It is of benefit to no one to bury the past without examining it. One way or another, it will eat you alive.

But I’m letting all that go now. I will no longer be the keeper of the secrets.

As Anne Lamott, one of my mom’s favorite writers, said: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

I only wish I’d known that I had this power long ago.

Abuse, addiction, Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Altruism, Consequences, Electronic Dance Music, music, Podcast, Recovery, Religion, Trauma

Experience.

I was recently interviewed by InRecovery magazine for a piece on active addiction (shameless plug alert: you should go read it and then leave a comment if you like)
https://inrecovery.com/journey-fun-abuse-dj-fm

Sometimes it just doesn’t feel real to me. I’ve never thought of myself someone whose experience or opinions should be held in high regard by anyone. I’m just one voice among billions. Granted, in the last few years I’ve had things like this published about my journey in recovery in various places. I’ve also been interviewed twice on the Klen & Sobr podcast which was amazing. If anything, I am not anonymous.

But still, I can’t believe that it’s me. I often scoff at the Tony Robbins types. They seem well-intentioned, yet I’m never able to trust whether they truly want to help their audience, or simply like hearing the sound of their own voice. All of this of course speaks volumes about my own insecurities. We are all a work in progress, but I’m no one’s guru.

I also watched “The Defiant Ones” on HBO last week, a 4-part documentary about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s musical and business collaborations, and their long history in the music. I am impressed by their stories. Two guys who literally came from nothing and now sit atop what remains of the music business. The greater the risk you take, the greater the reward I suppose.

I want to say I’ve never been the “starving artist” type, but in truth I was once. Between 1996 and 1998 I wrote and recorded my first album “Breakup.” I was 23 and had limited access to recording equipment, so I had to go into an actual studio and work with a producer to bring my vision to life. Of course, that meant paying for the time – and the money which went to the studio meant money wasn’t going to rent or food.

In fact, I was 3 months behind on rent and had to borrow money from my recent ex-girlfriend to get caught up. I was eating the leftover food my roommates didn’t want, and when there was none of that I was eating microwave popcorn. It sucked. My hat’s off to anyone who quits their job and goes out on a limb for their art. It created an added level of stress that I simply couldn’t handle. I have been attempting to find balance between art and “career” ever since.

Fortunately, my producer was patient with me and he came from a similar musical background and similar tastes. He taught me everything I know. I paid as I could, and “Breakup” became DJ FM’s first album. So many lessons were learned, and so many good things came about as a result of that album. Most importantly I learned the most was that if you want to be a creator – a musician, an artist, a writer – your vision comes first. Like I said, I have never believed that my opinion or my voice mattered to anyone else. Music helped me realize that my voice at least had to matter to me.

I now have a sponsee. One. The only sponsee I’ve had in 8 years of my hit-or-miss recovery. We “worked” together for an entire year, in which he didn’t call and didn’t do any actual work. I was his sponsor in name only. He is from India, and in the process of becoming an American citizen – not an easy journey in the era of Trump. Still, he wasn’t doing the work, so I fired him.

And then he had to leave the country, simply so he could re-enter and get a new Visa. I felt like a piece of shit. This was about the time Trump was mobilizing his travel ban and even though India was not on the list of banned countries, I worried for my friend. Who knows what an authoritarian regime is capable of, even in the United States?

He reached out to me from his home country a few times. We chatted. He asked if I’d be his sponsor when he came back. I told him “we’ll see – it depends on whether someone else comes forward.” I really didn’t know if I wanted to be his sponsor. I was at a point of not caring, because he certainly didn’t seem to care that year I tried to sponsor him. I blamed myself for not being tough enough, not being interesting enough.

Of course, in my mind I know that’s ridiculous. You can only lead a horse to water. What they do from there is up to them, especially in recovery. Those who suffer from substance use disorder are some of the most stubborn and incorrigible people you’ll ever meet. Have you met me in-person?

What happened was remarkable. He came back to the US, and it was as if a fire had been lit beneath him. He asked me twice if I would be his sponsor, and I finally said yes. We have been working together and every time we meet, he thanks me for listening, thanks me for guiding him. I see my experience benefitting another.

The way I was raised, and after most of the trauma that took place in my early teenage years, I spent most of my first 36 years of life feeling like I’d been permanently punched in the gut by god. Alcohol and drugs eventually numbed the pain of that sad worldview, but what I’ve learned is this: your vision matters. Your experience matters. Your voice matters. I would’ve never understood this without recovery.

You have to believe in you, first.

Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Altruism, Consequences, Election, Religion

On Trump, and Religion.

The election of Donald Trump has pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks from blogging about either music or recovery. I’ve had a few sleepless nights, like many folks, and am trying to come to terms with everything. In the week or so since, a lot has happened, so I’d like to focus on one particular event.

My girlfriend – one of the most kindhearted and non-confrontational people I have ever known – posed a question on her Facebook page (always a dangerous move) after the election. Essentially: how could a person who identified as a Christian support a candidate like Trump, whose hate-filled rhetoric ostensibly goes against everything Jesus taught?

Before going further, I have a history with Christianity that I need to come clean with.

–

Following my parents’ divorce, I became depressed. I was failing the 8th grade, I was shop-lifting, I was lying about everything. Rather than put me in therapy, my father and I started going to church (as much for him as for me). My dad has always hated doctors and I’m guessing this was the only solution he could understand or trust. In any case, when I turned 16 I began going to a different church with some of my friends. I wanted a church of my own to go to. I accepted Christ (i.e. “got saved”) at this church, and my freshman year in college I became a member.

The former pastor of that church had this to say in his blog, about his early experiences as a young minister founding a new church:

“While I was in the ministry, I was deeply troubled by the ability of otherwise intelligent people to tenaciously embrace beliefs that were patently absurd…For example, there were those who believed passionately that the world was only 6000 years old, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Others would walk confidently into my office and tell me that God had told them the future, making specific predictions that never came true. Undaunted, they would confidently make even more outlandish prognostications, ones that would eventually prove false, as well. Nevertheless, they still refused to re-examine their belief system…

The most salient example of this phenomenon was the small group of faith healing aficionados in the congregation. Some of them carried vials of olive oil with them to dab on the foreheads of ailing people before proclaiming them healed. When the “healed” person later died, they would simply move on to their next patient, insisting that death was a form of ultimate healing, one that ended all pain and suffering, and that their prayers had been answered after all. It amazed me how quickly (and conveniently) they forgot that their prayer had been for the person to be restored to health and go home to their jobs and families, not to be taken immediately to heaven. If they felt uncomfortable with this obvious discrepancy, they never said anything about it to me. Rather, when I questioned them about the effectiveness of their methods and the genuineness of their healings, they explained away the facts and doubted my faith.”

I experienced my own disillusionment within that church. While working as a youth field staffer, one of my responsibilities was phone duty. We maintained a list of all the kids who came to the church regularly, and tracked from week to week who was in attendance. If someone had been there the week before, but was absent that day, we were to call the number they provided us with to check up on them. I was about as good at cold-calling for Jesus as I was selling fruit for my high school marching band, and hated it to the core.

For that matter, so did most of the parents I called. They would say, “He/she is home. They didn’t want to go. Why are you bothering us?” And that’s a very pleasant way of rephrasing it. They would then ask to be removed from the list. In fact, most of the parents who left their kids with us didn’t seem too interested in whether or not it was religious in nature. They just wanted to get their kids out of the house for an hour or two and not be bothered.

I heard and saw this sentiment expressed over and over again by many of the kids I talked to – “kids” who were barely 3-4 years younger than I was. As if I had any business spiritually mentoring anyone at that point in my life. But I was the one they talked to. Everyone else told them to “read the bible.” I would actually tell them my *life experience* – what we call sharing our “experience, strength and hope” in 12-step recovery. Telling someone to “stick their nose in a book” is no different than Dr. Jan’s “I love you, go away” ACOA message. When you’re on the receiving end, it’s not easy to parse.

To be fair, the kids didn’t seem too unhappy to get out of the house. Quite a few of them would walk to the back of the building and smoke weed or do “whippets” – either aerosol cans from the grocery store, or whipped cream canisters containing N20 – which create a 30-60sec long “head-rush” when inhaled. Once, the youth pastor called the police on a kid. It was probably only the second time in my life I’d seen someone using substances other than alcohol. Behind a church. So much for being sheltered.

Then the youth leaders began to question my music choices. As I’ve said in previous blog entries, the early 1990s were a great time to be an angry young man. And legitimately, I had a lot to be angry about – I just kept up the illusion on the outside that I wasn’t in any pain. I attended bible study, church, did well in the classes I was motivated to do well in (really not too different from my attitude in high school). I’d pull up in the parking lot listening to Alice In Chains, or Pantera, or Slayer, or some of the early industrial rock I had discovered like KMFDM. Many of them would try to introduce me to Christian bands which were “soundalikes,” just with religious lyrics. I always preferred the old hymns, sung by a choir, played on an old pipe organ.

The final nail in that coffin was when a youth minister approached me after finding out I’d gone to Lollapalooza in 1993. She took me aside and told me, flat out, that she didn’t think Jesus would’ve gone with me. I was completely taken aback and enraged. I stopped wearing preppie clothes to field staff meetings. I started wearing my hair down instead of in a pony tail, started wearing my metal t-shirts, and kicked my feet up on chairs during the meetings. And then I simply stopped going. I think I might’ve mentioned to one of the other field staffers that I was contemplating it – but really I was there, and then i wasn’t.

My former pastor concludes his blog entry with this…
“But illusions need not be of a religious nature. As a pastor, I was merely in a position to observe closely the resistance to objective reality that existed in some devout people.”

What I began to see in the ensuing years was that “resistance to objective reality” becoming more and more widespread, specifically among devout people.

My father – a professor of counselor education – had in his toolkit a puppet called DUSO the Dolphin. DUSO was an acronym which stood for “Developing an Understanding of Self and Others.” For some reason I had this image of my dad sitting in an elementary classroom, talking to children with a hand-puppet. It always made me smile, thinking of him talking in funny voices and being kind to little kids. I don’t know if he ever actually did that, but it seems DUSO became a “desperate threat.” From the New York Times, 1993 (my sophomore year in college):

“The most frequently challenged curriculums in public schools across the country no longer involve sex-education programs or classic novels like “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” according to a national anti-censorship organization. The new battlegrounds are elementary school self-esteem programs whose imaginary central characters include a blue dragon named Pumsy and a dolphin named Duso.

“Local groups, relying in many cases on information distributed by conservative religious organizations, have challenged “Pumsy in Pursuit of Excellence” in at least 35 school districts around the country, said Matt Freeman, a spokesman for People for the American Way.

“Uproar over the program, which is used in about 17,000 schools, has also provided a key issue for grass-roots religious organizations seeking to place their candidates on local school boards, Mr. Freeman said.

“Opponents of Pumsy and similar self-esteem programs, which in part are anti-drug measures and are thus mandated for districts receiving Federal money, contend that children are being introduced to Eastern religion, the occult, ‘New Age’ spiritualism and relaxation techniques they characterize as hypnosis.”

(Did you catch that? ANTI. DRUG. MEASURES. Take away a child’s ability to center, mediate and be at peace and they will be at-risk for drugs and alcohol, especially in poor neighborhoods. Of course, they’ll run right into the arms of the church when they’re desperate – which is exactly what was intended.)

It would be another 10 years (2003) before I’d ever darken the doors of a church again. I had lost a relationship and a job, was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate. I listened to what my father had always said, and found a new church home upon moving to a new city for a job. I had also just been convicted for the first time in my life of DUI, so if I’d been smart I would’ve chosen to go to a 12-step meeting and quit drinking. Instead, I stumbled upon another evangelical church whose members referred to themselves as “sippin’ saints.” It is no lie when they say that an alcoholic can find the drinkers anywhere they go.

This church had its own brand of extremism. In Bible studies one of the texts that was taught was “Answers in Genesis,” the Young-Earth Creationism program created by Ken Ham (yes, THE Ken Ham of the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate back in 2014). Also, many of the churchgoers I ate Sunday lunch with would heckle the openly gay and lesbian couples they saw on the street. I could not abide this. I wouldn’t be a “jerk for Jesus,” nor would I hurl insults at people in whom I saw no wrongdoing.

After finding a job in my hometown a year and a half later, I moved back and haven’t attended a church since. I also got sober during that time and found a spiritual life far more rich, accepting and tolerant than any I found in an established “church.” I cannot over-emphasize how much of a role sobriety played in my becoming clear-headed.

————

Now that you understand my biases, I return to my girlfriend’s genuine Facebook post.

One of her former church friends posted the following rant in response (not edited for spelling, grammar or contradiction):
“It has been prophesied by many that this is where he [Trump] is supposed to be at this time. He is far from perfect as many Christians are. He did give his life to Christ several months back. The media and Hillary have made him out to be something he is not. The “racist”, “womanizer” & more. He is the closest candidate aligning with God’s wills. As paster Mike spoke about on Sunday. Abortion is not of God. That simple. She is for it. He is against it. We need real drastic change and Christians have been coming together and praying for it. He is going to bring it. Check out some prophecy videos online. Some recent and some dating back a ways. He wants people here legally. He wants to change our economy. He wants to protect our lives from terrorism. Unfortunately. . The majority of illegal immigrants are Hispanic. The majority of terrorism comes from Muslims. So we need drastic radical change. Its not going to happen over night and I feel he will give opportunities to become a citizen the right way…And the woman… not women.. he called all those names was only.. Rosie O’Donnell. That was many years ago after she bad mouthed him publicly…Rich Vera .. John Paul Jackson .. CK & Mike Thompson .. and Kat Kerr .. All well known prophets.. all said the same.”

My response:
“People are often subject to confirmation bias – the human tendency to use new information or evidence to give validation to our existing beliefs. It is no more evidence of God’s will than me running into the street and claiming that *i* had a vision. There is no such thing as prophesy – you have been sold a bill of goods by people attempting to profit on your sincere faith (of which I have no doubt). Jesus says it best in Matt 7:15-20 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits…I promise you, not today, not next week, not even when Trump is sworn in…but soon, you’ll know him by his fruits. And when you do, see it for what it is, and don’t dismiss it. The message, the lesson, will be right there plain as day.”

Her response (verbatim):
“The prophets that have made these prophecies are not false prophets. Im sorry you have never had an encounter with the Holy Spirit to know that prophesy is very real and it is one of the 5 fold gifts of the spirit from God. These well known prophets all heard from God that Trump would be in the White House. Whatever preconceived notion that you have of Trump from the media is false, right along with a little less than half of this country. I have first hand seen prophesy come to pass…Trump is not a racist. He wants people here legally. That includes all races. Most illegals just happen to be Mexican. ALSO Muslim is not a race.. it is far fetched that he wants Muslims out.. but unfortunately.. the majority of terrorism comes from Muslims. sooo we got to do what we got to do to protect us.. The US.. The media made him look racist. Trump did not mock the reporters disability. Look it up!!!…Mainly.. Trump gave his life over to the Lord recently and thats what is most important. JUST WAIT and see.. you have no choice but to.. or you can just move out of the country :)”

For my girlfriend, this was not the end of the story. She plays piano for a small church (a paying gig for her, nothing to do with faith of any kind), and after the most recent service, an attendee who had seen her Facebook post approached her saying, “I’m one of the ‘basket of deplorables’ who voted for Trump” and proceeded to chastise her – despite the fact my girlfriend voted for neither Clinton nor Trump. She came home in tears after the service, and is now considering leaving the job.

My former “paster” from the 2nd church I attended also posted a snide comment on my timeline the day after the election, saying that now I would know how he’s “felt for the last eight years.” Take note, this is not a white working-class individual. This is a straight, white male who came from considerable privilege, who clearly also believes that Trump is the fulfillment of some modern-day prophesy.

“Or you can just move out of the country.” Smiley-face.

Go to hell and God bless.

This is what it’s come to. I love you, go away.

So I now pose my own question(s) for the religious right, those who voted for Trump despite his hateful rhetoric, despite his clearly immoral behavior (behavior which they’re all-to-happy to point out in candidates from other political parties), despite his clear love of money.

First, how do you account for the Apostle Paul’s statement to his followers in Romans 12:18?
“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”

Live peaceably, with ALL human beings. Seems like a pretty clear message.

What about Matthew 5:9, one of Jesus’ beatitudes?
“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

There’s that word peace again. And the people who make it seem to be pretty important!

Or what about Jesus driving the money-lenders from the temple in John 2:13-16:
“And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

If you believe that Trump is prophesied to bring about the 2nd coming – a man who has been interviewed sitting on a throne of gold in his high-rise in Manhattan – then I hope you’re prepared to allow the money changers back in.

Because in my estimation, you too have betrayed your faith…and for far less than 30 pieces of silver.

Altruism, Consequences, Election, Recovery

Change.

Change is the only constant I’ve known in my life. Just when I thought things were stable, going okay, consistent – that’s the moment I had the rug pulled out from under me. Every damned time, from childhood up to now.

So here is a hard truth: you cannot vote for change. Change is a force of nature, neither serving the good nor the bad. It happens in direct response to our actions. It is neither a bolt of lightning from the sky or a magic wand. It is a simple consequence of personal choices. Some of those choices lead to the positive, others to the negative.

I used to not deal with change in healthy ways. Often times, I found more and more creative ways to destroy myself because of someone else’s bad decisions or mistakes. The “other” was either out to get me, or the “other” was who would save me. I was never to blame for my own potential demise.

Then I almost did meet my demise. I saw death in the headlights quite clearly.

And it was at that moment of decision it dawned on me: I am responsible for myself and my actions. Likewise, I am not responsible for anyone else, though I might alternatively wish to save and/or suffocate people depending on the day. The people who hurt me have most likely been hurting themselves for years. They have their own crosses to bear.

Eight years ago, I voted for hope and change – and I can tell you the measure of change I got wasn’t the measure I was promised. So if you voted for change yesterday, I feel for you. Truly. I don’t blame you for feeling left out, and you certainly made your voices heard. I can tell you, however, that the measure you want will not be the measure you get. Despite your best intentions to vote for a candidate outside the system, they are now a part of the system, working for a party and on behalf of leaders who have stymied the legislative process for at least the last 4 years if not longer. Most of them are still in office.

It’s the system that’s broken. Nothing will change until you begin making promises to yourself, and then keeping them…

I will treat my family better.

I will manage my money and my resources better.

I will navigate difficulty with my head up.

I will learn to navigate the new world we live in without fear.

If you don’t know what to tell your children, tell them these things. Do good when those around you do bad. Help when you can. Fight when you must.

When they go low, we go high.

addiction, Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Altruism, DJ, Electronic Dance Music, Recovery

My (Sober) DJ Story, Part OnePointTwo.

So this isn’t the actual Part Two. I haven’t quite finished writing it yet. Because, lazy.

This is an interlude of sorts.

I’ve spent my life watching technology get smaller and smaller, and more accessible. I owned a walkman as a kid which could play one cassette, had auto-reverse, Dolby-B noise reduction and an AM/FM radio. By contrast, my iPhone 6S – coming in at 1/3 the depth and half the weight – can hold every single song that I’ve ever listened to, in any format, since birth, allow me to access the sum total of human knowledge, help me navigate virtually anywhere on earth and serve as a portable HD television studio.

Oh, and it makes phone calls too. It’s almost quaint that it uses the word “phone” in its name.

(This was the “phone” we had when i was a kid. Trimline, SON! And it came in more colors than the iPhone!)

With that in mind, I made my first full-length music video over the weekend, using footage I took at various gigs since I first got sober. I used nothing more than my MacBook Air, the same iPhone I mentioned above, iMovie and Adobe After Effects. A $4,000 investment, tops. Not counting what it cost to produce the song, using the same laptop, and other software. Not 15 years ago, these endeavors would’ve required huge studios, crews, hundreds of man-hours. The democratization of technology really allows us to express ourselves in any way we choose.

To any millennials who may be reading this, make no mistake: we live in remarkable times.

(So meta. A picture of the video I made, with the blog post I’m writing about it – as I write! Dear Apple, I love the walled garden you’ve built.)

In early sobriety, everyone’s expectations for you drop. So every little thing you do sober is much like when a baby takes its first steps.

“Oh look honey, our recovering boy just took his first shit in sobriety! Good job kiddo!”

At first, it feels good – everyone congratulating you on every little thing accomplished. After awhile, for me, it became patronizing. I DJ-ed my first sober gig in a bar and everyone who knew me came up to me to tell I played better than I ever had in my using days – which I found very hard to believe. Again, I knew they meant well, it just seemed a bit much.

Now, 7 years into the process, two rehabs and one relapse later…I have the footage to prove they were actually right. Hours and hours of it.

I find it a little more than coincidental that technology has arrived at the place it is – and my sobriety has brought me to the place where am – that I can write a piece of music while living in a Oxford House and seven years later have the footage to prove I can DJ sober AND use said footage to tell the story.

I truly have been able to “face down” all the demons I’d been holding onto for so long. Enjoy the video.

Okay, go read Part Two 😉

addiction, Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Altruism, Consequences, Recovery

My Story, Part Four.

Not. Fucking. Guilty.

I left the courtroom, walked to my car, put my head against the steering wheel and cried. The two biggest obstacles to my recovery (in my mind) – the legal charges and the hospital bill – were now over and done with. A year and a half later.

I called my mom and told her the news. It was over.

I drove back home. My sense of relief was overwhelming.

It was a miracle…

…so I smoked weed with my girlfriend. And that is the truth. Not an hour after the end of my trial.

Relapse.

They say relapse starts way before you pick up – and I believe them.

My end goal the first time around in the recovery had been to get back to where I had been before, just better. I had achieved all that. Back with the girlfriend, DJ-ing again, money problems overcome, health problems overcome.

The problem is that where substances are involved, you can’t simply walk back into your old life. You must change your life, and start anew – especially if your circumstances were as desperate as mine. Some people are able to go back to drinking in moderation. Others have been able to kick elicit drugs, yet still drink alcohol with no issues. I don’t begrudge them, because I recognize that addiction is a spectrum.

But that is not me.

Sure, the things that happened to me as a kid were awful, and needed to be addressed. They weren’t. No one had shown me how to manage my own money. No one had shown me effective ways of coping with my anxiety. The people I counted on the most had basically run for the hills to tend to their own wounds. I was left to tend to mine on my own as well. I now deal with that pain, and learn to cope with it one day at a time through a variety of (healthy) means.

But I had destroyed my life. No one did that to me, but me.

For better or worse, once you reach a certain age no one cares about your problems. The assumption is that when you’re an “adult” somehow you’ve figured it out – or can at least fake it well enough to not be a public nuisance. Faking it carries its own set of problems, but jail time is generally not one of them.

My girlfriend had always had marijuana in the house, as well as a small stash of LSD and mushrooms which were left over from Burning Man. Prior to recovery, I wasn’t much of a pot smoker – primarily a drinker who used downers to come down after using hallucinogens. I didn’t smoke daily at first, but we learned that one of her performer friends was a dealer, so we began buying from her. Then I began buying on my own, weekly. All told I spent over $8,000 on weed over the course of a year and a half.

Things on the home front were rough, marijuana notwithstanding. My girlfriend, filling the role of the perfect co-dependent, attempted to control everything I did and every move I made. I had to maintain a spreadsheet of all my expenses and money owed her, to the tune of close to $2,500. She also made me add daily expenses to that spreadsheet, especially anything she bought “for the house” and split those evenly. So even as I paid down my debt to her, the tab was perpetually increasing. There was no hope of getting out from under it.

What began as an amend began to feel like indentured servitude.

I was unable to find steady graphic design work at first, taking every contract position I saw on craigslist and collecting unemployment in between. When I was unemployed, my girlfriend had a list of tasks she expected me to accomplish while she was at work. I would do everything in my power to do them correctly, but no matter what I did, she would find fault and criticize. Eventually, I would do the exact opposite of what she wanted done on purpose simply to piss her off. Then, I would spend whole days getting high, not doing anything, in defiance. In other words, I was using “at” her. I couldn’t make her happy, I thought, so why try?

She had also assumed the role of stage manager for the DJ event I was helming, and was booking the talent, eventually taking the role of booking the other DJs away from me. My suggestions went unheard. At the end of every night, basking in the afterglow of an amazing gig, I’d have to endure the car ride home where she perpetually bitched about everything that went wrong and why I hadn’t taken better video of her on-stage. Of course, my response was to go home and smoke. I got to the point where I hated going to the gigs. My attempt to give my girlfriend a creative outlet had turned into a personal nightmare. I felt trapped.

At this point, any semblance of a sex life was non-existent. I had stopped going to meetings, stopped calling my old sponsor or anyone in my network. As a fall-back, my girlfriend and I started going to couples counseling sessions, which devolved into her venting about everything wrong with *me.* Our counselors had to split us into separate sessions so that I wouldn’t be made to feel like the “fuck-up.”

The one ray of sunshine I had was the dog we had adopted, Roy – a Jack-Russell/Beagle mix. He was the only dog I had ever owned, and I loved him more than my life. At one point during an argument, my girlfriend accused me of loving the dog more than I loved her. In the beginning, that would’ve been false, but by the end of our relationship it was the absolute truth. I wanted to take him and quite literally run away from her.

During the summer of 2012, she and I “toured” together…booked to play/perform at several different festivals, one as far away as Pennsylvania in a town not far from where I was born. I had allowed her to book the dates because I didn’t want to argue with her about anything. It was exhausting, physically and emotionally. In fact, on our way back from Pennsylvania I had a nervous breakdown. I had to stop the car and pull over – and she wouldn’t stop nagging me.

Things started looking up in October of 2012, as I took a long-term contract position with a local government agency. They seemed to like me and I did good work. At home, my pot smoking had really taken off. In fact, when I went to a conference in Charlotte to take photographs for a work function, I took a small vial of weed with me to smoke in the hotel room after work was over. I wasn’t caught, and everyone seemed to like the photos. So I didn’t think twice about it.

I had gotten to the point where I hated being at home. For all intents and purposes my girlfriend and I were simply friends living under the same roof, and sleeping in the same bed. My girlfriend had been in 3 different post-doctoral positions and had ended up leaving all of them for various reasons. I was paying the full rent on our apartment, still paying my tab, working, playing DJ gigs, and on the verge of losing my mind with no rest. The only time I had to myself was when my girlfriend would fall asleep, and I could come downstairs to smoke weed.

My mentality had shifted entirely away from recovery, and back into active addiction.

Marijuana had become my coping mechanism, and it was starting not to work anymore. On New Years Eve, my girlfriend had double-booked herself and told me she had taken care of things at our main gig, Revolution. Unfortunately, she hadn’t, and I ended up having to field questions and put out fires because of it. The gig went well, but that was my breaking point. She had asked me to buy a bottle of vanilla vodka for her for the new year (2013), and I did (why anyone would ask a relatively new recovering alcoholic to buy vodka, I’ll never know). She had opened it and taken a swig during a break from one of our sets.

Without her knowledge, I did too. And that is where my full-blown relapse began.

It escalated on February 20th, when again she asked me to go to the ABC store and buy her a bottle of bourbon. I bought one for her, and one for myself. I drank it over the course of two nights, and drank some of hers as well. I then bought another bottle for myself in secret, called in sick to work, and spent the day drinking it. She came home and found me passed out on the couch – and understandably let me have it.

At this point, I had a chance to turn it around…so I took it. I was worried about losing my job, so I went to the local treatment center where I got my Effexor prescription and told them what was happening. My psychiatrist saw how shaky I’d become, but I convinced her that I could taper myself off. So she prescribed me Librium, with a strict 10-day regimen to follow. I took another day off work to get my shakes under control.

She also prescribed me a 50mg dose of Trazodone to help me sleep. I’d had issues with being able to sleep continuously through the night ever since entering treatment. When you’re drinking like I was, and using like I was, you will screw up your sleep cycle. Additionally, being unable to sleep caused me a great deal of anxiety in early recovery. Most people look at you and tell you, “that’s what you get for using!” The tough love approach never really worked for me. Needless suffering is needless suffering, plain and simple. I cannot express how much good this did for me.

I completed the Librium taper and the shakes were done. I also started going to meetings again. I picked up a “start over” chip and got phone numbers.

If I had been able to navigate the next 30 days, I might’ve been able to stay the course. Unfortunately, my girlfriend took vocal issue with me using Trazodone. Even though it was prescribed to me by a doctor, even though this same doctor had reassured me that it was a tiny dose, my girlfriend the rocket scientist knew better. She started getting angry with me for taking it, making me feel guilty, made me feel like I was using again. I hadn’t been sober a month when I started drinking again. I had no peace, and no escape. I could’ve left the relationship – but I didn’t. My self-esteem was too shot for me to care.

At that point my drinking simply spiraled downward. I began drinking during work hours, sometimes passing out at my desk and coming to after the office (and parking deck) had closed. Watching me scale a wall to get into a locked parking deck was a sight to see, let me tell you. I was also buying marijuana from a different dealer closer to my work, and smoking during working hours. I didn’t want to go home, and yet I did because I didn’t want to leave my poor dog alone. In order to get sleep, I began stealing my girlfriend’s 2-year-old Lunesta pills, her Ambien, and her Xanax.

I was finally fired from my job after my HR manager found me passed out in my car in the parking deck, surrounded by vodka bottles. This began a further month-long downward spiral, where I did everything to avoid going home to my girlfriend. My couch-surfing tour took me as far as Asheville, NC, where I ended up having to be hospitalized with DTs – again. I was able to stay with two very dear friends who helped me over the course of 4 days. I came back to the condo I shared with my girlfriend, and I broke up with her, having been sober for 4 days. I knew it couldn’t continue – I knew I was no good for her, no good for myself.

I went walkabout one last time before voluntarily checking myself into rehab and not telling anyone. I was drunk when I checked myself in to rehab and turned my phone in before I realized I should probably make a few calls. All of the earthly possessions I could fit in my car were, in fact, in my car. I spent a week in treatment with no access to email or phone. As my girlfriend’s area code was not local, I couldn’t call her from the office phone (no long-distance calls). I was in this rehab for one week, and ended up moving into another Oxford House.

(studio, before relapse)

Upon leaving rehab, my girlfriend took possession of the bulk of my recording studio equipment as payment for the money I owed her – save for my electric guitar, electric bass, my laptop and one speaker. She wouldn’t allow me to enter the house to retrieve my belongings unless I was supervised. It took me four trips to get my things out of the house. I pondered lawyering up to get my music studio back, but didn’t have any money. I had been locked out of my checking account by my bank for missing a loan payment, and was having to use a backup checking account I hadn’t touched in years.

(studio, after relapse)

My father, who’d been so supportive of me in early recovery the first time around, made it a point to showcase his displeasure with me.

He refused to see me for 3 months, and for my 40th birthday he sent me a card with an enclosed letter explaining in detail that he would no longer be giving me anything. His reason was that I was old enough to take care of myself (fair enough), but his real reason (in my opinion) was to twist the knife. I’d rather he simply said because he didn’t want me spending any of his money on drugs or alcohol. Or, he could just as easily have sent a card telling me how glad he was that I was alive on my 40th birthday, and let that be that. I would’ve been happy with that. Instead, he chose to use it as an opportunity to punch me in the gut. I’m still working out those resentments.

I was able to get contract work out of rehab designing Powerpoint slides, and then landed full-time work as a pre-press person for a print shop. Here I was managed by a scatterbrained boss and her 29-year-old lackey office manager. In February of 2014, she and I both determined that I “was not a fit for that job,” and I left with a severance package that allowed me to exist until finding a new full-time job in April of 2014, one I still have today. I have now been employed with this place longer than any other job I’ve had since graduating from college.

I was able to buy all new DJ equipment, all new PA equipment, and started two bands – Roxaboxen and Born Like This. With the money I’ve earned playing DJ gigs since 2013, I’ve been able to pay for and pay off all the gear I purchased. I helped start Raveclean – an event company that for a time threw clean and sober dance events in North Carolina. We’re currently on hiatus, but again – miracles are always possible.

(Born Like This)

(Roxaboxen)

It was at one of the Raveclean events where I met my girlfriend – who is herself a singer, songwriter and pianist. We live in Greensboro with a dog named Boots and a cat named Shadow. It is a better life than I ever could’ve imagined for myself. In my online travels I’ve met a host of wonderful people in the recovery community who’ve strengthened me on my journey. I hope that I’ll know them all for a very long time to come. They will all certainly be welcome wherever I am.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. I know that there will be good times and there will be trouble. I’ll just keep blogging, keep making music, keep doing all the things I need to do to maintain my recovery, and surround myself with people who support my efforts.

Thanks for reading. Be well and take care of one another. We’re all we’ve got.

Read Part Three here:
https://mylaststand.org/2016/10/24/my-story-part-three/

Altruism, Recovery

Test.

2-3 days ago I was out walking my dog. Ahead of me I saw people pushing a broken down SUV. I thought about walking the other way – why? Because if I were to stop and help, I’d have to attempt to tie the dog to a light post. Boots (my dog) has gotten off his leash before and is hard to catch. So do I attempt to wrap his leash around a post and help, but risk him running away? Do I turn around, take boots home and come back to help? Do I simply walk past?

I chose to walk past, assuming they would understand. One of the men pushing told the driver “there’s a dog behind the truck.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” was the driver’s response. Clearly he was angry about his vehicle breaking down – but fuck his shit for wanting to hurt my dog.

(Really bro? You want to hurt mah dawg?)

Being the traditionally non-confrontational person that I am, as I passed I simply apologized for getting in their way. The driver, in a resentful and acerbic tone, said “thanks for your help.” All the things I’d thought about above, about Boots, about taking him home, tying him up, helping, all rushed through my mind. I was pissed off and wanted to explain myself to the driver. He was physically pretty imposing, and I didn’t want to start anything.

For days, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Pissed off at the driver’s attitude, my own indecision, second-guessing myself. It was awful. This is what my mind does to itself, regardless of the size of the situation. My girlfriend and I have a disagreement, and my brain goes into overdrive, panic… “rushing thoughts” I believe is what they call it.

So last night, the exact same scenario took place, just a different house and different driver. I was out walking Boots very late, and I watched a beat up old Honda Civic roll down a steep driveway and bump the curb. I could hear the driver trying to turn the car over, to no avail.

As I was walking up the hill, he said “hey man, can you give me a hand?”

I had the same debate with myself, for about 5 seconds. I said “sure, no problem.”

I tied Boots to the light post, and helped the guy get his car off to a running start. He had just installed a new starter, but it was a lemon. He reached his hand out the door and said “what’s your name?”

“Jon,” I said, shaking his hand.

“I’m James – man, thank you! Thank you so much. Now I can get to work!”

“No problem man, I know exactly where you’re at,” I said. And I did. I’ve had so many problems with cars over the years, either because of lack of maintenance/accidents/battle damage from my time in active addiction, or simple bad luck.

The moral of this story isn’t “Lord, it’s a miracle!” Is it coincidence that these two breakdowns occurred in my neighborhood within 2 days of each other…sure, probably. I’m out walking my dog all the time, and I bet that sort of thing happens once a day. Is it from my “higher power”? That depends on the individual, and I’m certainly not here to assign divinity. If you choose a spiritual path in recovery, there are infinite possibilities and we all must choose our own.

But it is a lesson, and it’s a lesson that life gave me another chance to learn.

I believe the lesson is this: altruism is impartial and consistent. If I see someone in need, and there is indeed something I can do for them – even if I have to plan for 20-30 seconds about what to do ahead of time – then I should.

The simple fact for me is that approaching strangers is hard for me. Why? Because I am afraid. Afraid of small talk. Afraid of conversation. Afraid they’ll get to know me. Afraid of what they might do to me. Afraid they’ll want to maintain contact with me. Afraid of losing something in the process of giving to someone else. Afraid of my dog running away. Just afraid.

Our media, our culture, our environment in this country has long taught us to fear the “other.” That fear (or at least mistrust) was first instilled in me by family, then in school, then in life. What I continue to learn in recovery is that I have a lifelong calling to be of service. I would believe that whether I was a 12-stepper or not (I am). A person in need, whether in recovery or not, is a person in need.

My Last Stand.

Category Archives: Altruism