Simon Says:
Finally, Christmas is over and I survived sober. Just seemed like another day to me. Almost forgot it was Christmas but then remembered and called my mother like I always do on the holidays. My daughter also visited me yesterday from California which was a real treat since I haven't seen her in almost a year.
On the 23rd the books I ordered on the Three Principles arrived. I ordered “The Enlightened Gardener”, “The Enlightened Gardener Revisited” and “The Missing Link”, all written by Sydney Banks. I tried doing some research on the guy but couldn't come up with much. Sydney Banks died in 2009 and it's my understanding he was just an ordinary working class man that had a profound spiritual experience about 37 years ago and dedicated the rest of his life to spreading the word of his experience. Originally called Health Realization, at his request it is now referred to as The Three Principles. The Three Principles are: universal mind, universal consciousness, and universal thought. The concepts are supposed to be so simple that they can't be explained in words. Mr. Banks does the best he can by using metaphors. There are several books and DVD's for sale on the subject. The Three books I just read on the subject are clearly written but they left me pondering the real meanings. One thing for sure is that you should let your past go and get on with living today. The past is gone and no longer exists, don't let negative experiences of your past define who you are today and when the thoughts of your negative experiences of the past come along do your best to let them go and recognize that they are just thoughts, not your current reality. I know there is a lot more to this and I'm going to continue to research it until I'm satisfied. The concept is supposed to work on all forms of mental illness and addiction.
Sydney Banks On The Three Principles
Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
AA Alternative
Simon Says:
Today, uneventful to say the least. Walked down to the store to get some munchies and smokes and that's about it. I'm still in the throws of depression along with the anxiety attacks. I had to take a klonopin just to walk down to the store. I call this small waves within the big wave. I believe that in general I'm on an upswing in my mood but while riding the big wave there are smaller ups and downs along the way. Right now I'm in one of those smaller slumps. I'm desperately trying to avoid alcohol and situations where alcohol is in the picture. That makes me an isolator for now but my hope is to slowly regain my mental health and level off somewhere above the bar of depression and anxiety. If I end up leveling off below the bar I don't see my future as being very bright. My mission right now is to find an alternative to AA. I gave AA my all for around ten years and could never reach that point where I was happy or felt that feeling of joy that so many other long term sober people seem to achieve. That being my situation I sometimes find it a little aggravating trying to participate in AA activities and pretending I'm having a great time. Laughing and smiling a lot seem to be a required part of their program. There just seems to be something a little unnatural about the whole thing. My personal impression is there is a type of hysteria involved in AA groups and some people like me aren't affected by it. Those people that are inclined to jump on bandwagons end up fitting in just fine. I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm saying it doesn't work for everyone and some people want it to work so badly they are willing to play along, hoping that eventually they will have that spiritual awakening and experience the happy, happy joy of sobriety. Fake it, 'til you make it, is their saying. That works for some people too. My Quest for the moment is to find a different solution, one that works for me.
I'm going to see a therapist in a couple weeks as condition of my commitment. You can go through a whole drawer full of therapists before you find one that works for you. Finding one that works for me isn't a condition of my commitment, only that I see one. This will be the second one since I was put on this stay of commitment. I'm nearing the end of it, I think maybe one month left. Then all I have to deal with is my probation. That was for two years, 18 months left. My plan is to stay sober from now on, no matter what it takes. That's what I'm saying right now but I also have to add the fact that when going through a prolonged anxiety attack all those resolutions can change. I just have to faith in my medication and therapy. I also have to have faith in my higher power which is an AA thing. Seems like I tend to waffle when it comes to my higher power but I do believe there's something to it.
One of my IDDT counselors suggested I check into a program called Health Realization or The Three Principles. I did some browsing around on the internet and decided to buy a couple of books on The Three Principles. They should get here in a few days.
Today, uneventful to say the least. Walked down to the store to get some munchies and smokes and that's about it. I'm still in the throws of depression along with the anxiety attacks. I had to take a klonopin just to walk down to the store. I call this small waves within the big wave. I believe that in general I'm on an upswing in my mood but while riding the big wave there are smaller ups and downs along the way. Right now I'm in one of those smaller slumps. I'm desperately trying to avoid alcohol and situations where alcohol is in the picture. That makes me an isolator for now but my hope is to slowly regain my mental health and level off somewhere above the bar of depression and anxiety. If I end up leveling off below the bar I don't see my future as being very bright. My mission right now is to find an alternative to AA. I gave AA my all for around ten years and could never reach that point where I was happy or felt that feeling of joy that so many other long term sober people seem to achieve. That being my situation I sometimes find it a little aggravating trying to participate in AA activities and pretending I'm having a great time. Laughing and smiling a lot seem to be a required part of their program. There just seems to be something a little unnatural about the whole thing. My personal impression is there is a type of hysteria involved in AA groups and some people like me aren't affected by it. Those people that are inclined to jump on bandwagons end up fitting in just fine. I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm saying it doesn't work for everyone and some people want it to work so badly they are willing to play along, hoping that eventually they will have that spiritual awakening and experience the happy, happy joy of sobriety. Fake it, 'til you make it, is their saying. That works for some people too. My Quest for the moment is to find a different solution, one that works for me.
I'm going to see a therapist in a couple weeks as condition of my commitment. You can go through a whole drawer full of therapists before you find one that works for you. Finding one that works for me isn't a condition of my commitment, only that I see one. This will be the second one since I was put on this stay of commitment. I'm nearing the end of it, I think maybe one month left. Then all I have to deal with is my probation. That was for two years, 18 months left. My plan is to stay sober from now on, no matter what it takes. That's what I'm saying right now but I also have to add the fact that when going through a prolonged anxiety attack all those resolutions can change. I just have to faith in my medication and therapy. I also have to have faith in my higher power which is an AA thing. Seems like I tend to waffle when it comes to my higher power but I do believe there's something to it.
One of my IDDT counselors suggested I check into a program called Health Realization or The Three Principles. I did some browsing around on the internet and decided to buy a couple of books on The Three Principles. They should get here in a few days.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
AA, staying sober and possible alternatives
Simon Says:
Right now I'm one of those socially introverted people I was talking about in my last post. I'm from Eagan and I've made a couple of moves in the last couple of years. I've ended up in West St.Paul where I don't know anyone and I really don't know my way around much. I know Robert St. pretty well and I guess that's good enough. I go to the Downtown St.Paul Alano Club now and then for AA meetings but not enough to get to know anyone. I just ain’t into it anymore and I get a little tired of alcoholic’s that keep putting on the “happy, happy, joy, joy” act all the time. Then there are the alcoholic's that take the program way too seriously for me. Big book thumpers they're called and I think I talked about them in one of my earlier posts. AA has a thing called sponsorship and everyone in AA is supposed to get a sponsor. A sponsor is supposed to help you work through the twelve steps and be kind of a mentor as you go through all the lifestyle changes that come with sobriety. I've had sponsors and I've been a sponsor but now I'm rethinking the whole AA thing. I'm guessing I'm looking for something different, an alternative to AA. I've watched my latest sponsor transform from a pretty cool sober dude to a full fledged big book thumper and I'm not so sure I liked what I saw. His whole life revolves around AA and I just don't know if that's for me. In reality, I was headed down that road when I fell into my last relapse. I cant debunk it all the way though because it has kept my last sponsor sober and he seems to be happy with his life. This is a guy that was just as bad off as me and he's managed to stay sober for five years now. I still go to an occasional AA meeting with him and we still get along pretty well, I'm just not sure if AA will work for me as well as it has for him.
I'm seriously considering alternatives to AA. There are a few but I've never really looked into them. A little research on the internet will turn up quite a few. The one I'm thinking about checking into is called Health Realization or the Three Principles. I don't know enough about this program to make any comments on it but my intention is to find a local group and try it out. When I do I'll be reporting on my experience. I have to go to a weekly IDDT (Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment) group as a condition of my commitment. It was one of my counselors in that group that suggested I check into the Health realization program. I have done some reading about it and apparently it has a better track record than AA. My personal belief is that AA's track record isn't very good at all. It's supposed to be a program of honesty and spirituality. I once was at an AA meeting where a guy who had claimed 25 years of sobriety finally fessed up to smoking marijuana the whole time. This particular group had what they call a group conscious vote and voted to let him maintain his status of being sober for 25 years. I've got nothing against weed but it makes me wonder how many others in AA are being less than honest about their sobriety. Technically in AA you're not allowed to substitute another drug to replace alcohol and still claim to be sober. That's where that term cross addiction comes in and I know a lot about that. I was one who voted to let him keep his 25 year claim to sobriety because in my opinion weed pales in comparison to the adverse affects of alcohol. I do know that weed raises hell with your lungs though, I have a couple of friends that have lung problems after very long term use of marijuana. I used to smoke the shit a lot but after awhile it would trigger panic attacks every time I smoked it. The only time I could smoke it was if I had plenty of alcohol to stave off the panic attacks.
Today was pretty boring for me, didn't do much but since I've been trying to stay sober that's been par for the course. I did have to go see my probation officer today and that sucks ass. I've got to take a cab there every month because the bus just isn't an option. I have to go to the court house for these meetings and it's pretty much the same thing every time. He just wants to know if my status has changed and whether or not I've been staying sober. Oh, and I have to report any contact I might have had with the police. I think we could do these meetings over the phone but he wants to eyeball me to see if I might be lying.
Right now I'm one of those socially introverted people I was talking about in my last post. I'm from Eagan and I've made a couple of moves in the last couple of years. I've ended up in West St.Paul where I don't know anyone and I really don't know my way around much. I know Robert St. pretty well and I guess that's good enough. I go to the Downtown St.Paul Alano Club now and then for AA meetings but not enough to get to know anyone. I just ain’t into it anymore and I get a little tired of alcoholic’s that keep putting on the “happy, happy, joy, joy” act all the time. Then there are the alcoholic's that take the program way too seriously for me. Big book thumpers they're called and I think I talked about them in one of my earlier posts. AA has a thing called sponsorship and everyone in AA is supposed to get a sponsor. A sponsor is supposed to help you work through the twelve steps and be kind of a mentor as you go through all the lifestyle changes that come with sobriety. I've had sponsors and I've been a sponsor but now I'm rethinking the whole AA thing. I'm guessing I'm looking for something different, an alternative to AA. I've watched my latest sponsor transform from a pretty cool sober dude to a full fledged big book thumper and I'm not so sure I liked what I saw. His whole life revolves around AA and I just don't know if that's for me. In reality, I was headed down that road when I fell into my last relapse. I cant debunk it all the way though because it has kept my last sponsor sober and he seems to be happy with his life. This is a guy that was just as bad off as me and he's managed to stay sober for five years now. I still go to an occasional AA meeting with him and we still get along pretty well, I'm just not sure if AA will work for me as well as it has for him.
I'm seriously considering alternatives to AA. There are a few but I've never really looked into them. A little research on the internet will turn up quite a few. The one I'm thinking about checking into is called Health Realization or the Three Principles. I don't know enough about this program to make any comments on it but my intention is to find a local group and try it out. When I do I'll be reporting on my experience. I have to go to a weekly IDDT (Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment) group as a condition of my commitment. It was one of my counselors in that group that suggested I check into the Health realization program. I have done some reading about it and apparently it has a better track record than AA. My personal belief is that AA's track record isn't very good at all. It's supposed to be a program of honesty and spirituality. I once was at an AA meeting where a guy who had claimed 25 years of sobriety finally fessed up to smoking marijuana the whole time. This particular group had what they call a group conscious vote and voted to let him maintain his status of being sober for 25 years. I've got nothing against weed but it makes me wonder how many others in AA are being less than honest about their sobriety. Technically in AA you're not allowed to substitute another drug to replace alcohol and still claim to be sober. That's where that term cross addiction comes in and I know a lot about that. I was one who voted to let him keep his 25 year claim to sobriety because in my opinion weed pales in comparison to the adverse affects of alcohol. I do know that weed raises hell with your lungs though, I have a couple of friends that have lung problems after very long term use of marijuana. I used to smoke the shit a lot but after awhile it would trigger panic attacks every time I smoked it. The only time I could smoke it was if I had plenty of alcohol to stave off the panic attacks.
Today was pretty boring for me, didn't do much but since I've been trying to stay sober that's been par for the course. I did have to go see my probation officer today and that sucks ass. I've got to take a cab there every month because the bus just isn't an option. I have to go to the court house for these meetings and it's pretty much the same thing every time. He just wants to know if my status has changed and whether or not I've been staying sober. Oh, and I have to report any contact I might have had with the police. I think we could do these meetings over the phone but he wants to eyeball me to see if I might be lying.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Getting Sober
Simon Says:
I've been living here for about three months now, two of them sober. It isn't easy getting used to living sober and alone. It's quite a shock to my mind and body. For me to get my life back I'm going to have to walk the straight and narrow line of sobriety. I believe it's true what they say about alcoholism and addiction they are both progressive diseases. I've reached the point where I just can't use anymore. When I do I might feel good for a short time but then I get sick and the only cure is to use some more. That will go on until I need to be hospitalized to detox. Well we all know how it goes.
Meanwhile, as a condition of my commitment I have an assigned social worker and an ARMHS (Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services) worker. Also I'm on probation for two years and along with that comes a probation officer. They've got me by the short hairs. I've got close to $3000 in fines for the DWI and other charges. It's going to be awhile before I get my fines paid off so I can get my drivers license back. When I was living with all my using friends I could always get rides to the store and shit, but now I have to rely on buses and cabs. It's a complete change in lifestyle I'm going through. At times I want to go back to the way I was living but to do that would be suicide. I don't want to end up homeless and sleeping at Dorthy Day's. So I'm complying and staying sober. The hardest part of staying sober for me is dealing with my mental illness. I've been diagnosed with Major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. I'm not trying to make excuses for my behavior but it's my diagnosis which makes me gravitate towards drugs and alcohol as a way of self medicating. There are medications for anxiety but once you've been diagnosed as chemically dependent it can be very difficult to find a psychiatrist that will prescribe anti anxiety medication. The only thing that works is a medication called benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines are considered addictive and psychiatrists are extremely reluctant to prescribe them to anyone with an addictive personality. I'm sure I've written about this before but it's a real pet peeve of mine. I believe that most alcoholics suffer from anxiety disorders and for some reason medical protocol dictates that alcoholics not be medicated for anxiety disorder. You can find psychiatrists that agree with me but you have to be persistent in your search for one. No matter how hard it is you have to remain sober for awhile before you try to get medication for your anxiety. Benzo's are what they use to detox people off of alcohol. Usually ativan or valium. These medications are used during detox to help prevent the patient from having seizures. The other two most common benzo's are xanax and klonopin. There are several others but these are the most common. I'm taking 1.5mg's of klonopin every day and I just recently was able to convince a psychiatrist to prescribe them to me. I had two years of sobriety before my last relapse and at the time I was taking 2mg's of klonopin every day. I had no problem's staying sober but for one reason or another I stopped taking the klonopin and I gradually slipped into a full blown relapse that lasted for a year and a half. Now I'm back on my medication and I'm gradually starting to feel better again. I also am taking celexa for depression and another anti anxiety drug called buspar. I don't really think the buspar helps much but I'm afraid to stop taking it to find out. Buspar is one I've never taken before but it was prescribed to me by the psychiatrist at Regions as an alternative to benzo's. The only thing that really works for sure are the benzodiazepines. If you or someone you know can't stop drinking have them read this. Then do some research on anxiety disorders to see if anxiety isn't your real problem. Alcohol is a symptom of and a way of self medicating anxiety. You have to realize though that if you do quit drinking a lot of other things in your life will change too.
If you've been drinking for a long time I'm sure your whole lifestyle has revolved around drinking alcohol. All your social activities probably involve alcohol. People with anxiety disorder need alcohol to be sociable. I guess there are people that drink alcohol in social situations that don't need it. They can take it or leave it and these are the people that probably don't have anxiety issues. But if you're the type that always has to have a few drinks to feel comfortable then you probably have social anxiety which I think is the most difficult because as you get older you will need more and more alcohol to feel comfortable in social situations. After awhile you will drink too much and do and say things you will regret. Then the line between just feeling comfortable and total intoxication becomes thinner and unpredictable. For me too much alcohol would actuate a complete personality change. When I would sober up I would have anxiety attacks as I would revert back to my old personality. I couldn't believe some of the things I'd done and said while drinking and that would just feed my anxiety even more. Of course the easy cure for this anxiety is alcohol. I've taken this cycle to the extremes and always ended up needing to be detoxed in hospitals. I guess what I'm doing right now is what AA'rs call white knuckling it. I've been sober now for 67 days without the help of AA. I've been to a couple of AA meetings but that's it. I've been involved with AA for at least ten years and obviously it hasn't been working for me. I've seen it work for some but I guess everyone is different. I've seen people put their complete faith in the AA program and carry their big books around like bibles. There's a lot of good things in the 12 steps of AA but I believe that the issue of anxiety needs to be addressed for some people and I'm one of those people.
The lifestyle changes that come with sobriety aren't easy. All your friends use alcohol or drugs and it will feel awkward trying to hang out with them sober. I guaranty it, at first you will be able to continue living the way you're used to, going to parties and outings with your old friends and they'll be cool about you're not drinking or using. If your sobriety lasts you'll find that gradually your old friends will feel uncomfortable hanging out with you. Maybe the only thing you had in common was getting drunk or high together. In the beginning no one will think your sobriety will last and they will go along with it. Slowly things will change and that's one of the reasons it's so difficult to stay sober for long. Well for a lot of sober people that's where AA comes in. You will have to start hanging out with other people trying to stay sober and that's where the fellowship of AA can come into play. Hanging out with sober people just ain't the same. If you haven't done anything about your anxiety issues your just not going to have a great time going to sober picnics, sober parties etc. It's just not the same as when everyone is getting buzzed and having a good time. It's not easy to feel loose at a sober party if you have social anxieties. You just must deal with your anxieties any way you can. Whether it be counseling, medication, or both. You should also find an AA group that you like and attend the meetings on a regular basis so that you get comfortable being around the group. Then when they have fellowship activities you can have a good time without getting buzzed up. I don't believe in the 12 steps so much but I'll play along as I work on my sobriety. It's OK, because as they say in AA, everyone works their own program, take what works and leave the rest. Maybe for you the 12 steps will be enough, but for me I tried it and it didn't work.
There is another way and plenty of people have taken this route. Sober up, do nothing about your social anxieties and become a social introvert. I believe there are many people like this. They just stop drinking or using drugs, go to work every day and don't participate in any social activities. A kind of isolated life. At work they usually are quiet, do their job and go home at the end of the day. They may have families that keep them busy but they don't do much else. If they are happy then more power to them. But there are those who take this route that don't have families to keep them busy, maybe they are divorced or just single. Maybe they are retired and don't have jobs. They stay sober but aren't happy. There may be mental health issues. I don't believe this kind of sobriety is very healthy. We all need social contact and activities to stay healthy. I believe there are many alcoholics living in this kind of isolation and you don't want to be one of them. I will be talking more about this in later postes.
I've been living here for about three months now, two of them sober. It isn't easy getting used to living sober and alone. It's quite a shock to my mind and body. For me to get my life back I'm going to have to walk the straight and narrow line of sobriety. I believe it's true what they say about alcoholism and addiction they are both progressive diseases. I've reached the point where I just can't use anymore. When I do I might feel good for a short time but then I get sick and the only cure is to use some more. That will go on until I need to be hospitalized to detox. Well we all know how it goes.
Meanwhile, as a condition of my commitment I have an assigned social worker and an ARMHS (Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services) worker. Also I'm on probation for two years and along with that comes a probation officer. They've got me by the short hairs. I've got close to $3000 in fines for the DWI and other charges. It's going to be awhile before I get my fines paid off so I can get my drivers license back. When I was living with all my using friends I could always get rides to the store and shit, but now I have to rely on buses and cabs. It's a complete change in lifestyle I'm going through. At times I want to go back to the way I was living but to do that would be suicide. I don't want to end up homeless and sleeping at Dorthy Day's. So I'm complying and staying sober. The hardest part of staying sober for me is dealing with my mental illness. I've been diagnosed with Major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. I'm not trying to make excuses for my behavior but it's my diagnosis which makes me gravitate towards drugs and alcohol as a way of self medicating. There are medications for anxiety but once you've been diagnosed as chemically dependent it can be very difficult to find a psychiatrist that will prescribe anti anxiety medication. The only thing that works is a medication called benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines are considered addictive and psychiatrists are extremely reluctant to prescribe them to anyone with an addictive personality. I'm sure I've written about this before but it's a real pet peeve of mine. I believe that most alcoholics suffer from anxiety disorders and for some reason medical protocol dictates that alcoholics not be medicated for anxiety disorder. You can find psychiatrists that agree with me but you have to be persistent in your search for one. No matter how hard it is you have to remain sober for awhile before you try to get medication for your anxiety. Benzo's are what they use to detox people off of alcohol. Usually ativan or valium. These medications are used during detox to help prevent the patient from having seizures. The other two most common benzo's are xanax and klonopin. There are several others but these are the most common. I'm taking 1.5mg's of klonopin every day and I just recently was able to convince a psychiatrist to prescribe them to me. I had two years of sobriety before my last relapse and at the time I was taking 2mg's of klonopin every day. I had no problem's staying sober but for one reason or another I stopped taking the klonopin and I gradually slipped into a full blown relapse that lasted for a year and a half. Now I'm back on my medication and I'm gradually starting to feel better again. I also am taking celexa for depression and another anti anxiety drug called buspar. I don't really think the buspar helps much but I'm afraid to stop taking it to find out. Buspar is one I've never taken before but it was prescribed to me by the psychiatrist at Regions as an alternative to benzo's. The only thing that really works for sure are the benzodiazepines. If you or someone you know can't stop drinking have them read this. Then do some research on anxiety disorders to see if anxiety isn't your real problem. Alcohol is a symptom of and a way of self medicating anxiety. You have to realize though that if you do quit drinking a lot of other things in your life will change too.
If you've been drinking for a long time I'm sure your whole lifestyle has revolved around drinking alcohol. All your social activities probably involve alcohol. People with anxiety disorder need alcohol to be sociable. I guess there are people that drink alcohol in social situations that don't need it. They can take it or leave it and these are the people that probably don't have anxiety issues. But if you're the type that always has to have a few drinks to feel comfortable then you probably have social anxiety which I think is the most difficult because as you get older you will need more and more alcohol to feel comfortable in social situations. After awhile you will drink too much and do and say things you will regret. Then the line between just feeling comfortable and total intoxication becomes thinner and unpredictable. For me too much alcohol would actuate a complete personality change. When I would sober up I would have anxiety attacks as I would revert back to my old personality. I couldn't believe some of the things I'd done and said while drinking and that would just feed my anxiety even more. Of course the easy cure for this anxiety is alcohol. I've taken this cycle to the extremes and always ended up needing to be detoxed in hospitals. I guess what I'm doing right now is what AA'rs call white knuckling it. I've been sober now for 67 days without the help of AA. I've been to a couple of AA meetings but that's it. I've been involved with AA for at least ten years and obviously it hasn't been working for me. I've seen it work for some but I guess everyone is different. I've seen people put their complete faith in the AA program and carry their big books around like bibles. There's a lot of good things in the 12 steps of AA but I believe that the issue of anxiety needs to be addressed for some people and I'm one of those people.
The lifestyle changes that come with sobriety aren't easy. All your friends use alcohol or drugs and it will feel awkward trying to hang out with them sober. I guaranty it, at first you will be able to continue living the way you're used to, going to parties and outings with your old friends and they'll be cool about you're not drinking or using. If your sobriety lasts you'll find that gradually your old friends will feel uncomfortable hanging out with you. Maybe the only thing you had in common was getting drunk or high together. In the beginning no one will think your sobriety will last and they will go along with it. Slowly things will change and that's one of the reasons it's so difficult to stay sober for long. Well for a lot of sober people that's where AA comes in. You will have to start hanging out with other people trying to stay sober and that's where the fellowship of AA can come into play. Hanging out with sober people just ain't the same. If you haven't done anything about your anxiety issues your just not going to have a great time going to sober picnics, sober parties etc. It's just not the same as when everyone is getting buzzed and having a good time. It's not easy to feel loose at a sober party if you have social anxieties. You just must deal with your anxieties any way you can. Whether it be counseling, medication, or both. You should also find an AA group that you like and attend the meetings on a regular basis so that you get comfortable being around the group. Then when they have fellowship activities you can have a good time without getting buzzed up. I don't believe in the 12 steps so much but I'll play along as I work on my sobriety. It's OK, because as they say in AA, everyone works their own program, take what works and leave the rest. Maybe for you the 12 steps will be enough, but for me I tried it and it didn't work.
There is another way and plenty of people have taken this route. Sober up, do nothing about your social anxieties and become a social introvert. I believe there are many people like this. They just stop drinking or using drugs, go to work every day and don't participate in any social activities. A kind of isolated life. At work they usually are quiet, do their job and go home at the end of the day. They may have families that keep them busy but they don't do much else. If they are happy then more power to them. But there are those who take this route that don't have families to keep them busy, maybe they are divorced or just single. Maybe they are retired and don't have jobs. They stay sober but aren't happy. There may be mental health issues. I don't believe this kind of sobriety is very healthy. We all need social contact and activities to stay healthy. I believe there are many alcoholics living in this kind of isolation and you don't want to be one of them. I will be talking more about this in later postes.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
My Story
Simon Says:
You know I just realized I forgot to mention what happened to Kathy. I kept in touch with her all the while I was going through all that bullshit up in Blaine. Us finding an apartment together just didn't turn out to be practical. She ended up getting a room in the Continental Hotel. The Continental is in Minneapolis and it's a hotel that I believe is subsidized by various counties to provide housing for the homeless and MICD patients. I went to visit her there a couple times and it turned out to be disaster. While I was staying at Mike's waiting for Rick to come back from AZ I took a bus from Blaine to Minneapolis to see Kathy. The first time I went to see her she wanted me to bring a bottle of vodka. You're not supposed to bring alcohol into the Continental but once again I made a stupid decision and figured I could smuggle a half pint in with me. We drank that and then she wanted more so we took a walk to the liquor store and this time I bought a liter and was able to smuggle that back to her room. We played around for awhile and then somehow I fell asleep in her bed. I had overslept and missed the last bus back to Blaine. That was my first thought then I noticed that Kathy was gone. Overnight guests are not allowed at the Continental and I was beginning to panic. I was thinking that maybe I could crash there anyway, who would know. But where was Kathy? I looked around her small apartment and didn't find anything that might indicate where she had gone. I sat on the bed trying to figure out what I was going to do when I got the idea to look in her closet. I opened the door to the closet and there she was, passed out on the floor naked. I managed to get her into her bed and she was totally incoherent. I kept trying to wake her up and finally she looked at me and said I'm diabetic and I'm dieing. Her cell phone kept ringing and I had been just ignoring it. This time I flipped it open and it said Mom. I answered it an handed it to Kathy and she was talking with her mother and I couldn't really understand what she was saying. Then someone started pounding on the door. I didn't know what to do but I had to think fast, here I was in a sober shelter, I'd been drinking and Kathy was passed out on the bed trying to talk to her mother. I hid the vodka bottle and opened the door. It was a hotel manager wanting to check on Kathy because her mother had called them concerned because Kathy wasn't answering her phone. I didn't know what to do, whatever was going to happen was going to happen.
The management dude called for the paramedics and they showed up pretty quick. I told them what she had told me, that she was in a diabetic shock. I don't think they believed it, they just figured she had too much to drink and they were probably right. They loaded her up in an ambulance and off to Hennepin County Medical Center they went. I stayed there until the ambulance left and then I had to think about my problem. I had no way to get home and didn't have much money. I figured I was going to have to hang out on the streets all night until the morning bus started running. I walked around for awhile thinking and then I called Mike to let him know I was going to be stuck in Minneapolis all night. One of Mikes buddies (dope dealer) was there and he said he would come pick me up but it wouldn't be for a few hours. I went to the Minneapolis Convention Center and told him to pick me up there. At least it was warm out and a few hours later the guy showed up and picked me up. I was a little surprised he showed up but I guess I had spent a lot of money on his shit and he was cool. I met a hooker on the street and she kept me occupied while I was waiting. She kept trying to get me to buy a blowjob but I didn't have the money. Finally I got picked up and I ended up hanging out with this dude and his girlfriend for a couple hours and then he dropped me off at Mikes. I went to visit Kathy one more time a few weeks later but she was passed out when I got there. She was sicker than me when it comes to alcohol and after that we just kinda let it go. I haven't heard from her since then. I did like her but she was too flaky for me. That's why our plans to get an apartment together faded out. I hope she gets better because otherwise she was a nice girl.
Now back to where I left off. Consider that last little story about Kathy a sidebar. So I was in my new apartment, off my medication and drinking heavily. Not according to my plan at all, alcohol was dominating my life again. My social worker showed up and tried to convince me to go back to the hospital. I knew that's what I had to do all along so I agreed to go back to Regions. I wasn't so sure they would admit me because this scenario was like a broken record with increasing frequency. Regions had no idea that I had been admitted to Fairview Riverside since the last time I was in Regions. At the time I was so sick none of that seemed to matter anyway. I was admitted to Regions and back in the psych ward again. When I started thinking clearer I realized my rent was due and I couldn't pay it from the hospital. I had to go through the humiliation of calling my landlord and telling them that I was in the hospital and couldn't pay my rent until I got out. They were pretty cool about it and didn't even ask why I was in the hospital. I just had to pay an additional $50 late fee when I got out. That was a relief, I tend to blow everything out of proportion, I think. Then I started worrying about the fact I was going to have to face some sort of consequences because of my stay of commitment. Turned out that because my commitment was from Fairview Riverside my hospitalization at regions wouldn't come up on the radar unless my social worker was to alert the courts and he didn't. Then because I'd ended up in Regions so many times they might just file for a commitment too. I don't know how that would work but it didn't happen. Regions just got me back on my meds and stabilized. In less than two weeks I was back here in my apartment. This time I didn't buy any vodka, stayed on my meds and have been sober now for a little over sixty days.
I've cut all my ties with my old using friends, I just disappeared. I don't answer my phone if they call and I don't answer my phone if I don't recognize the caller's number. I've been occupying my time writing this story with plans to revive this blog and get it back on track. The last few months haven't been easy for me, I'm not used to living alone and it's been awhile since I've been sober. I must say that this time around getting sober has been more difficult than in the past. Like I said it's been a little over sixty days and I still feel like I'm going through withdrawals. It's been pretty lonely here with no one to talk with and no car. I've got to rely on buses and cabs to get around and that simply sucks. I've been smoking cigarettes like crazy and watching a lot of TV. I know it ain't going to be easy but I just can't keep living like I've been doing for the last couple years. It's going to be a long rough road to recovery but I'm determined to make it. The story I just told you is the short version and I feel like I've aged ten years in two. I don't know what I'm going to do next but whatever happens, happens. Right now my main objective is to stay sober, it's going to be awhile before my brain heals meanwhile I'm going to just keep working on this blog. I still feel slightly ill all the time and there's been many times when I've considered having a drink or picking up the phone. So far for sixty days now I've been good. I've been a little worried that my probation officer is going to find out about my last two slips but so far he hasn't. He freaks me out a little every time I meet with him because he always asks if I drank any alcohol or used any drugs and I always say nope. There's a lot of things I need to do to fix up this blog but I've been spending all my time writing this story. I felt it important to fill the gap since I last fell off the planet up to the present day.
If you happened to land on this page of my blog and want to read my story from the beginning you'll have to go back around ten posts and start there.
You know I just realized I forgot to mention what happened to Kathy. I kept in touch with her all the while I was going through all that bullshit up in Blaine. Us finding an apartment together just didn't turn out to be practical. She ended up getting a room in the Continental Hotel. The Continental is in Minneapolis and it's a hotel that I believe is subsidized by various counties to provide housing for the homeless and MICD patients. I went to visit her there a couple times and it turned out to be disaster. While I was staying at Mike's waiting for Rick to come back from AZ I took a bus from Blaine to Minneapolis to see Kathy. The first time I went to see her she wanted me to bring a bottle of vodka. You're not supposed to bring alcohol into the Continental but once again I made a stupid decision and figured I could smuggle a half pint in with me. We drank that and then she wanted more so we took a walk to the liquor store and this time I bought a liter and was able to smuggle that back to her room. We played around for awhile and then somehow I fell asleep in her bed. I had overslept and missed the last bus back to Blaine. That was my first thought then I noticed that Kathy was gone. Overnight guests are not allowed at the Continental and I was beginning to panic. I was thinking that maybe I could crash there anyway, who would know. But where was Kathy? I looked around her small apartment and didn't find anything that might indicate where she had gone. I sat on the bed trying to figure out what I was going to do when I got the idea to look in her closet. I opened the door to the closet and there she was, passed out on the floor naked. I managed to get her into her bed and she was totally incoherent. I kept trying to wake her up and finally she looked at me and said I'm diabetic and I'm dieing. Her cell phone kept ringing and I had been just ignoring it. This time I flipped it open and it said Mom. I answered it an handed it to Kathy and she was talking with her mother and I couldn't really understand what she was saying. Then someone started pounding on the door. I didn't know what to do but I had to think fast, here I was in a sober shelter, I'd been drinking and Kathy was passed out on the bed trying to talk to her mother. I hid the vodka bottle and opened the door. It was a hotel manager wanting to check on Kathy because her mother had called them concerned because Kathy wasn't answering her phone. I didn't know what to do, whatever was going to happen was going to happen.
The management dude called for the paramedics and they showed up pretty quick. I told them what she had told me, that she was in a diabetic shock. I don't think they believed it, they just figured she had too much to drink and they were probably right. They loaded her up in an ambulance and off to Hennepin County Medical Center they went. I stayed there until the ambulance left and then I had to think about my problem. I had no way to get home and didn't have much money. I figured I was going to have to hang out on the streets all night until the morning bus started running. I walked around for awhile thinking and then I called Mike to let him know I was going to be stuck in Minneapolis all night. One of Mikes buddies (dope dealer) was there and he said he would come pick me up but it wouldn't be for a few hours. I went to the Minneapolis Convention Center and told him to pick me up there. At least it was warm out and a few hours later the guy showed up and picked me up. I was a little surprised he showed up but I guess I had spent a lot of money on his shit and he was cool. I met a hooker on the street and she kept me occupied while I was waiting. She kept trying to get me to buy a blowjob but I didn't have the money. Finally I got picked up and I ended up hanging out with this dude and his girlfriend for a couple hours and then he dropped me off at Mikes. I went to visit Kathy one more time a few weeks later but she was passed out when I got there. She was sicker than me when it comes to alcohol and after that we just kinda let it go. I haven't heard from her since then. I did like her but she was too flaky for me. That's why our plans to get an apartment together faded out. I hope she gets better because otherwise she was a nice girl.
Now back to where I left off. Consider that last little story about Kathy a sidebar. So I was in my new apartment, off my medication and drinking heavily. Not according to my plan at all, alcohol was dominating my life again. My social worker showed up and tried to convince me to go back to the hospital. I knew that's what I had to do all along so I agreed to go back to Regions. I wasn't so sure they would admit me because this scenario was like a broken record with increasing frequency. Regions had no idea that I had been admitted to Fairview Riverside since the last time I was in Regions. At the time I was so sick none of that seemed to matter anyway. I was admitted to Regions and back in the psych ward again. When I started thinking clearer I realized my rent was due and I couldn't pay it from the hospital. I had to go through the humiliation of calling my landlord and telling them that I was in the hospital and couldn't pay my rent until I got out. They were pretty cool about it and didn't even ask why I was in the hospital. I just had to pay an additional $50 late fee when I got out. That was a relief, I tend to blow everything out of proportion, I think. Then I started worrying about the fact I was going to have to face some sort of consequences because of my stay of commitment. Turned out that because my commitment was from Fairview Riverside my hospitalization at regions wouldn't come up on the radar unless my social worker was to alert the courts and he didn't. Then because I'd ended up in Regions so many times they might just file for a commitment too. I don't know how that would work but it didn't happen. Regions just got me back on my meds and stabilized. In less than two weeks I was back here in my apartment. This time I didn't buy any vodka, stayed on my meds and have been sober now for a little over sixty days.
I've cut all my ties with my old using friends, I just disappeared. I don't answer my phone if they call and I don't answer my phone if I don't recognize the caller's number. I've been occupying my time writing this story with plans to revive this blog and get it back on track. The last few months haven't been easy for me, I'm not used to living alone and it's been awhile since I've been sober. I must say that this time around getting sober has been more difficult than in the past. Like I said it's been a little over sixty days and I still feel like I'm going through withdrawals. It's been pretty lonely here with no one to talk with and no car. I've got to rely on buses and cabs to get around and that simply sucks. I've been smoking cigarettes like crazy and watching a lot of TV. I know it ain't going to be easy but I just can't keep living like I've been doing for the last couple years. It's going to be a long rough road to recovery but I'm determined to make it. The story I just told you is the short version and I feel like I've aged ten years in two. I don't know what I'm going to do next but whatever happens, happens. Right now my main objective is to stay sober, it's going to be awhile before my brain heals meanwhile I'm going to just keep working on this blog. I still feel slightly ill all the time and there's been many times when I've considered having a drink or picking up the phone. So far for sixty days now I've been good. I've been a little worried that my probation officer is going to find out about my last two slips but so far he hasn't. He freaks me out a little every time I meet with him because he always asks if I drank any alcohol or used any drugs and I always say nope. There's a lot of things I need to do to fix up this blog but I've been spending all my time writing this story. I felt it important to fill the gap since I last fell off the planet up to the present day.
If you happened to land on this page of my blog and want to read my story from the beginning you'll have to go back around ten posts and start there.
Friday, December 9, 2011
An Alcoholics Story
Simon Says:
I just continued doing what I always did while living there, smoking meth, drinking vodka and tweek'n out on my little electronic projects. Got into playing a couple of video games too. The two people that Mark left there would come to my room and we would party while I kept tinkering with my electronic crap. Any tweeker will tell you that there's something about electronic junk that seems fascinating when your smoking meth. I can't remember how long they stayed there but it seemed like maybe a week. One day Jim (I'll call him Jim cause I can't remember his name) ran out of meth and asked me if I could get him some. I said sure, so I called up this dope dealer I knew and an hour later he shows up with a teener. A teener is 1/16th of an ounce. I brought it downstairs for Jim and we were going to smoke some only Jim didn't have a bubble. A bubble is a glass pipe you use to smoke meth with, I think I explained all that in one of my earlier posts. By the way, if your reading this and want to read the whole story you've got to go back maybe ten or so posts where I started telling this story, it's kinda long but a lots happened to me since I was last actively posting to this blog.
Anyway I went upstairs to get a bubble and and all of a sudden there's a loud bang at the kitchen door, followed by more consecutive loud smashing bangs and then I heard someone yell, “this is the police open up”. We were being raided by the cops and it seemed like it took them about ten seconds to smash the kitchen door open. I was standing in the hall upstairs with the bubble in my hand. At the end of the hall is a bathroom and the door was open so I took the bubble and through it as hard as I could into the bathroom. The pipe shattered in the bathroom and by the time I turned around the cops were storm troop'n the house. I stepped back in my room and didn't bother closing the door. I didn't even have time to sit down when a couple of cops charged in my room and started yelling at me to get down on the floor. They had their guns out and they were pointed right in my face. I was kind of expecting this was going to happen one of these days so I never kept any shit in my room, just alcohol. They handcuffed me and brought me into the living room where the girl had been all along. They made us sit on the couch together and I was worried about Jim downstairs, I had just handed him a teener and I wasn't sure if he was smart enough to get rid of it quick enough. A couple minutes later they brought Jim upstairs and had him sit on the couch along with me and his sister. The place was swarming with cops, I would guess maybe fifteen of them. I just sat on the couch with my mouth shut. Jim's sister was drunk and was giving the cops a little shit now and then. Telling this story is making me nauseous. They wouldn't let us watch them search the house and they tore it completely apart. They trashed the whole place and took a bunch of stuff. I guess it was stuff on their stolen property list. They were there looking for both drugs and stolen property. The whole raid was because of Mark getting busted with a truckload of stolen property. The cops got a search warrant to search his place of residence for more stolen goods and while they were at it they were searching for methamphetamine and paraphernalia. They didn't find any drugs or paraphernalia but they did find a lot of stolen property. I think they were there for a little over two hours and they left. They left with the stolen property but didn't charge us with anything. So the raid was over and the house was completely trashed. I needed a drink and I had one, a big one. I was thinking that they could have arrested me because I was the only one there that actually lived there. I was really surprised when they gave me a copy of the search warrant and a list of items they confiscated and then just left.
I called Mike and the dude that brought the teener over after the cops left. I called the dope dealer to find out if he didn't have an encounter with the cops as he left the house. He said no, didn't see a thing. I don't think we were set up but the cops were probably watching the dope dealer too. What would be a better time to raid the house than just after he left. I put my room back in order and that's it, I just left the rest of the house as the cops left it. Jim said he threw the teener in the water softener so we went to check for it. The cops had looked in the water softener because the lid was off, there was no salt in the water softener, just water. The teener wasn't there, it would've been floating on the water being in a tiny zip lock baggy. I didn't know what to think about that, either Jim was bullshitting me or the cop that found it kept it and didn't say anything. I'm thinking the cop took it for his own use. All this time Rick is still in the psych ward and Mark is in Jail. Mark is a convicted felon and I don't think he'll be out anytime soon. A couple of days went by and nothing changed. Then the bitch from hell shows up, Mush and she says she's moving back in. She's being really nice to me but wants Jim and his sister to get out. Actually she say's that her mother wanted them out and she wasn't nice about it. I just went back to my room and continued getting fucked up. Jim and his sister left and I stayed there for a few more days by myself. Mush and her boyfriend stopped by every now and then moving their shit in. I guess they were moving back in, that meant I was moving out. I didn't know where I was going to go but I knew I wasn't going to stay there. Mike would stop by every now and then and we would get high together, then one day while leaving the house he got pulled over on his bike. Mike got arrested on his warrant and off to jail he went. I spent a few days getting totally toasted trying to figure out where I was going to go next. Rick got released from the psych ward and we hung out for a couple of days but the whole time I was trying to figure out a way to leave. I didn't have a car and that made it tough, besides I was toasted most of the time and once again I couldn't stop drinking. Every time I looked at Ricks sister I would get pissed but there was nothing I could do. Finally I reached the end of my rope and I called my old AA sponsor and told him I needed help. I told him where I was and told him I needed a ride to the hospital to detox. I hadn't talked to my old AA sponsor in about a year and a half, just before I fell off the wagon and got into all this shit. He said to sit tight and he would come get me and we both knew where I was going, back to the hospital. I was pretty fucked up when he got there and I had a fresh bottle of vodka. We sat and talked for a few minutes and I continued drinking. Then we left for the hospital, I didn't take anything with me, we just walked out the door and got in the car. I didn't want to go to Regions because I'd been there too many consecutive times in the past few months. I wanted to go to Fairview Riverside so that's where we went.
I had really hard time detoxing in the hospital. I was dope sick and detoxing from alcohol at the same time. Once I was detoxed I was put in the psych ward again and this time the doctors petitioned the court to have me committed. I had to go to court for the commitment and the sheriff picked me up at the hospital and drove me to court. I'm not even sure what court house I was in but the judge gave me a stay of commitment which is like being on probation only maybe a little worse. In my case it was a good thing. When you get on a stay of commitment they assign you a social worker and you have to cooperate and comply with the social worker's recommendations. When they thought I was well enough to be released from the psych ward I was brought right to Theo1 for MICD (mentally ill chemically dependent) treatment. I'd been through treatment there before as you know if you've read my earlier posts. While I was in treatment at Theo1 I had to go to court for that DWI I talked about earlier. Actually I had several charges and I think I got lucky because they combined all the charges into one and gave me ten days in Jail and two years probation. While I was in Theo1 I fucked up and smoked some weed with another dude going through treatment there. I knew they could UA me any time but I'd never been UA'd there in the past. The next day after smoking the joint they UA'd me. I told them right away that my UA was going to be dirty and by some weird coincidence they UA'd the guy I smoked the joint with at the same time. I don't usually believe in coincidence and I'm thinking someone saw us. I don't know why but the other guy didn't want them to know we smoked together so I lied and told them I had smoked it with someone else. I don't think it really mattered who or where only that I was in treatment on a commitment and I got caught smoking weed. It was a little weird because I've been in a similar situation in the past and I ended up in front of a judge getting my commitment extended for another six months. This time nothing happened, they told my social worker about it and they just let it go. I guess smoking a joint was kind of mild compared to what I was committed for. They let the other dude go too, no consequences. Then one day this dude asked me if I wanted to snort some methamphetamine and this time I said nope. He went ahead and did it and once again he was UA'd a couple days later and got busted again. This time he was kicked out, I just know if I would have snorted some they would've UA'd me too. It was like they had ESP or something.
I completed 45 days of inpatient treatment at Theo1 and while I was there I was able to find an apartment in St.Paul. My social worker turned me on to the place because they didn't require credit checks. I checked it out and they rented me an apartment with no hassles. I rented the apartment a couple weeks before I was released from treatment. When I was released I was transferred directly to jail. I don't like jail at all but I can endure it. The worst part of doing time in jail is dealing with the guards. It's like most of them are on a real power trip. Ten days is a cake walk and it was over fast enough. I was in Hastings again and this time I had a place to go so I called a cab and went straight from jail to my new apartment. That's where I am right now as I write this story. I've been here since like mid September 2011. When I moved in here I had nothing but a small duffel bag and a backpack. I had left the duffel bag here before I served my jail sentence and that's all I had. An empty apartment with two bags and a couple changes of clothes. I also had an old beat up TV and a play station2. I had bought them for fifty bucks from another guy in treatment and had also brought them to my apartment before I went to jail. First thing I did was call a cab. I went to Walmart and bought a cheap lawn chair and an air bed, then to the liquor store and I bought a bottle of vodka. I just thought I deserved a drink after everything I had just went through. For me it was the wrong thing to do.
When I got home from Walmart and the liquor store I had a drink and started unpacking my bags. My apartment has a pretty nice walk in closet with shelves in it so at least I had a place to put my clothes. All I could think about was all the stuff I had lost in the last couple years and now I had to start over again, only this time I was really going to get sober and stay that way. The bottle I bought was going to be my last. As I was unpacking my stuff I noticed that the jail had given me my Trazadone but the rest of my medication wasn't there. Uh oh, I can't afford to be off my meds, every time I've stopped taking my medication it's ended up in disaster. I just know the guards at the jail did this on purpose, they are the biggest fucking pricks on earth, way worse than regular cops. I figured there was no use in trying to get my meds back from the jail and the kind of meds I take require a prescription from a psychiatrist. I had enough meds to get me through until I found a new psychiatrist but now I didn't. I went off my medication and that bottle I bought led to another and another. I ended up right back in the same boat, I couldn't stop drinking. It's not very easy to get an appointment with a psychiatrist and when you do it's normally at least two or three weeks out. Well, I was drinking again and I didn't even bother trying to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. The first month of my drinking I was able to sober up enough for my appointments with my social worker and my probation officer. Then it got so bad I couldn't sober up at all. I really wanted to be sober, I just couldn't do it, I would get sicker than hell when I tried to sober up. It wasn't long before my kitchen counter was covered in empty vodka bottles and I couldn't fool anyone anymore. I did want help and the next time my social worker stopped by to check on me I didn't bother trying to sober up or hide all my empty vodka bottles. I knew I was in trouble and the only was I was going to get sober was to go back to the hospital to be detoxed again.
I just continued doing what I always did while living there, smoking meth, drinking vodka and tweek'n out on my little electronic projects. Got into playing a couple of video games too. The two people that Mark left there would come to my room and we would party while I kept tinkering with my electronic crap. Any tweeker will tell you that there's something about electronic junk that seems fascinating when your smoking meth. I can't remember how long they stayed there but it seemed like maybe a week. One day Jim (I'll call him Jim cause I can't remember his name) ran out of meth and asked me if I could get him some. I said sure, so I called up this dope dealer I knew and an hour later he shows up with a teener. A teener is 1/16th of an ounce. I brought it downstairs for Jim and we were going to smoke some only Jim didn't have a bubble. A bubble is a glass pipe you use to smoke meth with, I think I explained all that in one of my earlier posts. By the way, if your reading this and want to read the whole story you've got to go back maybe ten or so posts where I started telling this story, it's kinda long but a lots happened to me since I was last actively posting to this blog.
Anyway I went upstairs to get a bubble and and all of a sudden there's a loud bang at the kitchen door, followed by more consecutive loud smashing bangs and then I heard someone yell, “this is the police open up”. We were being raided by the cops and it seemed like it took them about ten seconds to smash the kitchen door open. I was standing in the hall upstairs with the bubble in my hand. At the end of the hall is a bathroom and the door was open so I took the bubble and through it as hard as I could into the bathroom. The pipe shattered in the bathroom and by the time I turned around the cops were storm troop'n the house. I stepped back in my room and didn't bother closing the door. I didn't even have time to sit down when a couple of cops charged in my room and started yelling at me to get down on the floor. They had their guns out and they were pointed right in my face. I was kind of expecting this was going to happen one of these days so I never kept any shit in my room, just alcohol. They handcuffed me and brought me into the living room where the girl had been all along. They made us sit on the couch together and I was worried about Jim downstairs, I had just handed him a teener and I wasn't sure if he was smart enough to get rid of it quick enough. A couple minutes later they brought Jim upstairs and had him sit on the couch along with me and his sister. The place was swarming with cops, I would guess maybe fifteen of them. I just sat on the couch with my mouth shut. Jim's sister was drunk and was giving the cops a little shit now and then. Telling this story is making me nauseous. They wouldn't let us watch them search the house and they tore it completely apart. They trashed the whole place and took a bunch of stuff. I guess it was stuff on their stolen property list. They were there looking for both drugs and stolen property. The whole raid was because of Mark getting busted with a truckload of stolen property. The cops got a search warrant to search his place of residence for more stolen goods and while they were at it they were searching for methamphetamine and paraphernalia. They didn't find any drugs or paraphernalia but they did find a lot of stolen property. I think they were there for a little over two hours and they left. They left with the stolen property but didn't charge us with anything. So the raid was over and the house was completely trashed. I needed a drink and I had one, a big one. I was thinking that they could have arrested me because I was the only one there that actually lived there. I was really surprised when they gave me a copy of the search warrant and a list of items they confiscated and then just left.
I called Mike and the dude that brought the teener over after the cops left. I called the dope dealer to find out if he didn't have an encounter with the cops as he left the house. He said no, didn't see a thing. I don't think we were set up but the cops were probably watching the dope dealer too. What would be a better time to raid the house than just after he left. I put my room back in order and that's it, I just left the rest of the house as the cops left it. Jim said he threw the teener in the water softener so we went to check for it. The cops had looked in the water softener because the lid was off, there was no salt in the water softener, just water. The teener wasn't there, it would've been floating on the water being in a tiny zip lock baggy. I didn't know what to think about that, either Jim was bullshitting me or the cop that found it kept it and didn't say anything. I'm thinking the cop took it for his own use. All this time Rick is still in the psych ward and Mark is in Jail. Mark is a convicted felon and I don't think he'll be out anytime soon. A couple of days went by and nothing changed. Then the bitch from hell shows up, Mush and she says she's moving back in. She's being really nice to me but wants Jim and his sister to get out. Actually she say's that her mother wanted them out and she wasn't nice about it. I just went back to my room and continued getting fucked up. Jim and his sister left and I stayed there for a few more days by myself. Mush and her boyfriend stopped by every now and then moving their shit in. I guess they were moving back in, that meant I was moving out. I didn't know where I was going to go but I knew I wasn't going to stay there. Mike would stop by every now and then and we would get high together, then one day while leaving the house he got pulled over on his bike. Mike got arrested on his warrant and off to jail he went. I spent a few days getting totally toasted trying to figure out where I was going to go next. Rick got released from the psych ward and we hung out for a couple of days but the whole time I was trying to figure out a way to leave. I didn't have a car and that made it tough, besides I was toasted most of the time and once again I couldn't stop drinking. Every time I looked at Ricks sister I would get pissed but there was nothing I could do. Finally I reached the end of my rope and I called my old AA sponsor and told him I needed help. I told him where I was and told him I needed a ride to the hospital to detox. I hadn't talked to my old AA sponsor in about a year and a half, just before I fell off the wagon and got into all this shit. He said to sit tight and he would come get me and we both knew where I was going, back to the hospital. I was pretty fucked up when he got there and I had a fresh bottle of vodka. We sat and talked for a few minutes and I continued drinking. Then we left for the hospital, I didn't take anything with me, we just walked out the door and got in the car. I didn't want to go to Regions because I'd been there too many consecutive times in the past few months. I wanted to go to Fairview Riverside so that's where we went.
I had really hard time detoxing in the hospital. I was dope sick and detoxing from alcohol at the same time. Once I was detoxed I was put in the psych ward again and this time the doctors petitioned the court to have me committed. I had to go to court for the commitment and the sheriff picked me up at the hospital and drove me to court. I'm not even sure what court house I was in but the judge gave me a stay of commitment which is like being on probation only maybe a little worse. In my case it was a good thing. When you get on a stay of commitment they assign you a social worker and you have to cooperate and comply with the social worker's recommendations. When they thought I was well enough to be released from the psych ward I was brought right to Theo1 for MICD (mentally ill chemically dependent) treatment. I'd been through treatment there before as you know if you've read my earlier posts. While I was in treatment at Theo1 I had to go to court for that DWI I talked about earlier. Actually I had several charges and I think I got lucky because they combined all the charges into one and gave me ten days in Jail and two years probation. While I was in Theo1 I fucked up and smoked some weed with another dude going through treatment there. I knew they could UA me any time but I'd never been UA'd there in the past. The next day after smoking the joint they UA'd me. I told them right away that my UA was going to be dirty and by some weird coincidence they UA'd the guy I smoked the joint with at the same time. I don't usually believe in coincidence and I'm thinking someone saw us. I don't know why but the other guy didn't want them to know we smoked together so I lied and told them I had smoked it with someone else. I don't think it really mattered who or where only that I was in treatment on a commitment and I got caught smoking weed. It was a little weird because I've been in a similar situation in the past and I ended up in front of a judge getting my commitment extended for another six months. This time nothing happened, they told my social worker about it and they just let it go. I guess smoking a joint was kind of mild compared to what I was committed for. They let the other dude go too, no consequences. Then one day this dude asked me if I wanted to snort some methamphetamine and this time I said nope. He went ahead and did it and once again he was UA'd a couple days later and got busted again. This time he was kicked out, I just know if I would have snorted some they would've UA'd me too. It was like they had ESP or something.
I completed 45 days of inpatient treatment at Theo1 and while I was there I was able to find an apartment in St.Paul. My social worker turned me on to the place because they didn't require credit checks. I checked it out and they rented me an apartment with no hassles. I rented the apartment a couple weeks before I was released from treatment. When I was released I was transferred directly to jail. I don't like jail at all but I can endure it. The worst part of doing time in jail is dealing with the guards. It's like most of them are on a real power trip. Ten days is a cake walk and it was over fast enough. I was in Hastings again and this time I had a place to go so I called a cab and went straight from jail to my new apartment. That's where I am right now as I write this story. I've been here since like mid September 2011. When I moved in here I had nothing but a small duffel bag and a backpack. I had left the duffel bag here before I served my jail sentence and that's all I had. An empty apartment with two bags and a couple changes of clothes. I also had an old beat up TV and a play station2. I had bought them for fifty bucks from another guy in treatment and had also brought them to my apartment before I went to jail. First thing I did was call a cab. I went to Walmart and bought a cheap lawn chair and an air bed, then to the liquor store and I bought a bottle of vodka. I just thought I deserved a drink after everything I had just went through. For me it was the wrong thing to do.
When I got home from Walmart and the liquor store I had a drink and started unpacking my bags. My apartment has a pretty nice walk in closet with shelves in it so at least I had a place to put my clothes. All I could think about was all the stuff I had lost in the last couple years and now I had to start over again, only this time I was really going to get sober and stay that way. The bottle I bought was going to be my last. As I was unpacking my stuff I noticed that the jail had given me my Trazadone but the rest of my medication wasn't there. Uh oh, I can't afford to be off my meds, every time I've stopped taking my medication it's ended up in disaster. I just know the guards at the jail did this on purpose, they are the biggest fucking pricks on earth, way worse than regular cops. I figured there was no use in trying to get my meds back from the jail and the kind of meds I take require a prescription from a psychiatrist. I had enough meds to get me through until I found a new psychiatrist but now I didn't. I went off my medication and that bottle I bought led to another and another. I ended up right back in the same boat, I couldn't stop drinking. It's not very easy to get an appointment with a psychiatrist and when you do it's normally at least two or three weeks out. Well, I was drinking again and I didn't even bother trying to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. The first month of my drinking I was able to sober up enough for my appointments with my social worker and my probation officer. Then it got so bad I couldn't sober up at all. I really wanted to be sober, I just couldn't do it, I would get sicker than hell when I tried to sober up. It wasn't long before my kitchen counter was covered in empty vodka bottles and I couldn't fool anyone anymore. I did want help and the next time my social worker stopped by to check on me I didn't bother trying to sober up or hide all my empty vodka bottles. I knew I was in trouble and the only was I was going to get sober was to go back to the hospital to be detoxed again.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
More Stupid Behaior
Simon Says:
I'm feeling a little stupid now and justifiably so. I had just been released from the psych ward a couple days earlier and here I was back in. I was depressed, anxious and tired. I wasn't looking forward to explaining myself to the doctor but he was pretty cool and I would just have to tell him the truth. I made some poor decisions and drank too much alcohol again. I needed something other than alcohol to deal with my anxiety. They gave me ativan to detox me but then refused to give me any benzo's to help me deal with the anxiety. I believe this protocol is way fucked up but there's no arguing with doctors. When you're stuck in the psych ward you just do and take what they want.
I knew I lost my phone but I could still check my voice mails so I got on the patient phone and dialed up my voice mail. I was glad I did because there were two messages that I was particularly interested in. The first was from Kathy, believe it or not she ended up back in the psych ward at Regions where I was. Only I was on the fourth floor and she was on the fifth floor. The hospital was aware of what happened at the Hovander house and had put us on separate floors on purpose. The other voice mail was from Rick in AZ. He had heard what had happened to me at the house. He wanted Mush and Mark out and me in. I never missed a rent payment and was always on time. I called Rick and told him everything that had happened at the house since he took off to AZ. He said he was going to call his sister and Mark and tell them to get out and I could move back to the house and I would have it to myself until he got back and we could find another roommate to rent the other room. I told him I wasn't sure about moving back and I had no idea what I was going to have to do as a result of me ending back in the psych ward again.
The thing I was most interested in was the fact that Kathy was just upstairs and had no idea I was on the floor below her. I knew the phone number to the floor above and I called it and asked for Kathy. She got on the phone and I told her where I was and that everything would be OK. We were thrilled again, that after everything that had happened we ended up in the same place again. I would see her once and awhile when she would come downstairs for Occupational Therapy group which was held on the fourth floor every day. She was only participating in the group so that we could see each other momentarily. I couldn't join in the group because each floor has it's own groups but we could see each other in the hall. We still didn't know each other that well and I guess the attraction was a physical one and the Hovander incident did give me some insight as to her mental condition but that was when she was drinking. She seemed fairly normal sober and we talked on the phone a lot and continued with our plans to get an apartment together. Neither of us knew where we were going from the psych ward but we were still going to make it work somehow.
Meanwhile I kept in touch with Rick and he was keeping me posted as to the situation at the house. He said he had given them a few days to move out and their rent wasn't an issue because they hadn't payed it. I still wasn't so sure so I called Ricks mother who had an interest in the house because she was a cosigner on the lease and needed to make sure the rent was paid just as much as Rick. She told me that yes, Mush and Mark had been given a deadline to get out of the house and I could move back in as soon as they were out. I trusted her because she was in her early 70's and seemed like an honest person to me. I had met her many times while living there. I was still a little skeptical but I was hoping things were going to work out. For me the best case scenario was I'd get the place to myself and I could have Kathy stay there with me until Rick got back and then we could find an apartment together as planned.
I think I was in the psych ward for about two weeks again and then released the same way as before. This time I was going to go to a different transition house in South St.Paul. This place was called Maureen's house and it's run by Guild. Gild is an organization that helps people suffering with mental illness and chemical dependency. I stayed there for a few days and kept in touch with Rick on a new phone I bought. He told me that Mush was moving out of the house and should be gone by now. His mother confirmed it and I believed them. My social worker didn't want me to go there and wanted some kind of confirmation from my landlord (Rick) that I could move back there and everything was cool. After talking with Rick my social worker agreed that I could go back to where I had been living. Rick asked me if I could send him the rent for the next month and everything would be cool. I hadn't moved back in yet but I was convinced that Mush and her boyfriend had moved out and I had no problem with sending Rick the next months rent. I waited another day and then I went to Walmart and sent Rick a moneygram for the next month's rent.
I asked my old girlfriend to give me a ride back to the house in Blaine and she was cool with that. So I packed up my duffel bag again, checked out of Maureen's House, and headed back to Blaine. I didn't have my key for the house and Rick had told me to just crawl through the window to get in. There was a window that was always left unlocked in case anyone ever lost their keys. When we pulled in the driveway the place seemed deserted, no vehicles in the driveway and the front door was locked. I told my old girlfriend to just leave and I was going to have to break in through the window, I would call her later. I climbed up on some garbage cans and opened the window and climbed in. The window opened into my old room and I was surprised to see it had been completely changed. All my things were gone and there seemed like someone elses stuff was in there. The door was closed and I thought I heard something but wasn't sure. I opened the door, walked down the hall to kitchen and the house seemed quiet with no one around. Then I walked into the living room and I was surprised to see Mush, Mark and some other chick sitting in the living room smoking meth. I had been fucked over again. First thing Mush say's is you aren't welcome here and you'll have to leave. I told her that she wasn't supposed to be staying there and that Rick said she had moved out. All she said was that Rick wasn't there and she was in charge of the house.
I didn't want to argue with them so I just left and headed back to the transit station to wait for a bus. Along the way I called Rick and told him what had happened and that I wanted my rent money back. He was pissed off and had me call his mother to find out why Mush was still in the house. I called her and she said she had no idea that she was still in there and she didn't know what to do. Mush was refusing to leave and along with her was Mark. Truth is they had no where else to go and Mush was being stubborn about letting me back in. Don't forget that these are all meth addicts I'm dealing with and meth has a way of twisting the mind into all kinds of bizarre behavior. I'm no exception, allowing myself to get fucked over every time I turn around. I walked to the transit station and was waiting for the bus when this guy Mike and his girlfriend drive up and say I should go with them. Mike is Ricks good friend and Rick had called him and told him the situation. Rick asked Mike to help me out until Rick could get a flight back to Minnesota. Rick was going to fly all the way back just to kick Mush and Mark out of his house. I knew Mike a little because he would come to the house a lot and he was a meth addict too. Well, once again I didn't have a clue where I was going to go, maybe back to Maureen's house but I just wasn't sure and Mike was asking me to go stay at his place until Rick got back from AZ. OK, and I got in the car. Mike was actually a pretty cool dude for a meth addict and he made me feel at home in his house while I was waiting for Rick.
Mike and his girlfriend didn't work real jobs, their thing was taking old broken things and repairing them in their garage to sell. The house wasn't actually his, rather it was his girlfriends handicapped brothers house and they stayed there rent free and she would take care of her brother in exchange. I helped them work in their garage as a way of paying for my stay there. I had stopped drinking because I didn't want to offend them. They didn't drink but they smoked a lot of meth and had a lot of friends that were the same way. My experience is that people that smoke meth don't normally drink alcohol. They're not drunks and they really don't care for them. Alcohol has kind of an opposite affect from meth and they just don't have any desire to drink. For me it's a little different, my drug of choice is alcohol but I do like meth as well. I like repairing things and I'm pretty good at it. I also am fairly good at using computers. They had a lot of stuff to sell and they were always getting more stuff in exchange for meth. I gotta say that I actually enjoyed staying there and I met a lot of new people. We smoked a lot of meth everyday and were constantly selling something to make more money for more meth. I turned them on to Craig's list and Ebay as a way to sell some of the shit that they fixed up. We made a few sales and I pitched in now and then to buy some meth. Mike and I seemed to become pretty good friends, at least for the duration of my stay there and until I ended up disappearing. It took Rick a whole month to make that flight back from AZ. The whole time I kept in close contact with Rick and his mother and they assured me they were doing everything they could to get Mush out of the house. They didn't trust Mush and her boyfriend either and were afraid that they were going to strip the house of all the fixtures and copper wiring to pay for their addiction to meth. They had been known for doing that in the past. I was doing just fine at Mikes and willing to wait but when it started approaching a whole month I started getting nervous and started pressuring Rick and his mother to do something. Rick flew back as promised and sure enough he kicked Mush and her boyfriend out. I moved back in. Mush and her boyfriend had taken all my stuff with them. Somehow Mark was able to convince Rick that he was just going along with Mush because he didn't want to get kicked out himself. Mark was allowed to stay so everything kinda went back to normal.
There was one problem though. Rick didn't have a good experience seeing his old girlfriend in AZ and it had driven him crazier than he was before. His old girlfriend had turned to prostitution as a way to pay here own rent. Rick didn't say anything at first but eventually it all came out. Mike would come over and hang out a lot more now that he knew me better and was good friends with Rick. One thing I failed to mention about Mike is that he had a warrant for his arrest due to a probation violation. He had failed a urinalysis test and skipped out on court, just like I had done when Mush called the cops on me. Mark's dope dealing business wasn't doing too well and he ended up losing his drivers license because he didn't have insurance on his truck. He was smoking up all his profits to and trying to play the big shot dope dealer. Things were going downhill for him and he ended up selling his truck. The cops were watching the house pretty closely still and I even got pulled over leaving the house on a bicycle on my way over to Mikes house one night. They searched the crap out of me, they had me take my belt off and my shoes and searched me pretty good. They were looking for meth and gave me a lot of shit and asked me a hundred questions. Finally they let me go on my way, I rode around for awhile so they couldn't follow me. When I finally figured they gave up following me around I went over Mikes. I was still hanging out at Mikes helping him out in his garage. Mike was getting more and more paranoid about the cops because he didn't want to get arrested on the warrant and the cops were watching his house just as much as they were watching Rick's. You just didn't want to come or go from either house with any drugs on you or you were taking a big risk. I don't know how the other dope dealers were always coming around both houses without getting caught but hey did. For all we knew any one of them could have already been working with the police but even though paranoid we bought meth. I didn't really care, my DOC was alcohol but occasionally I bought some meth.
Mark was scamming anyone he could to make money and one day he showed up with this guy and his sister. He was banging the girl and conning them both out of money. I was just minding my own business but I knew what Mark was up to. Rick had gone completely manic and ended up in the psych ward for awhile so me and Mark had the house to ourselves. Mark was using Ricks truck to get around and he took off in it leaving this guy and his sister at the house. She didn't smoke meth but was a drinker like me and her brother was just the opposite. Mark had been gone a long time and the next day this chick shows up at the house and tells me that Mark got arrested for driving with no license as well as having got caught with the Ricks truck full of stolen property. Mark had been bringing a lot of strange shit to the house lately but I never gave it a second thought. I guess it was all stolen shit, Mark had turned into a burglar to supplement his income. A couple of days went by and I let this guy and his sister hang out at the house. She couldn't drive because she was always too drunk and her brother didn't have a drivers license. They were afraid to leave the house because they would probably get pulled over. She had to sober up and it didn't seem like that was going to happen anytime soon. There's a lot more to this story and I'll pick it up again in my next post.
I'm feeling a little stupid now and justifiably so. I had just been released from the psych ward a couple days earlier and here I was back in. I was depressed, anxious and tired. I wasn't looking forward to explaining myself to the doctor but he was pretty cool and I would just have to tell him the truth. I made some poor decisions and drank too much alcohol again. I needed something other than alcohol to deal with my anxiety. They gave me ativan to detox me but then refused to give me any benzo's to help me deal with the anxiety. I believe this protocol is way fucked up but there's no arguing with doctors. When you're stuck in the psych ward you just do and take what they want.
I knew I lost my phone but I could still check my voice mails so I got on the patient phone and dialed up my voice mail. I was glad I did because there were two messages that I was particularly interested in. The first was from Kathy, believe it or not she ended up back in the psych ward at Regions where I was. Only I was on the fourth floor and she was on the fifth floor. The hospital was aware of what happened at the Hovander house and had put us on separate floors on purpose. The other voice mail was from Rick in AZ. He had heard what had happened to me at the house. He wanted Mush and Mark out and me in. I never missed a rent payment and was always on time. I called Rick and told him everything that had happened at the house since he took off to AZ. He said he was going to call his sister and Mark and tell them to get out and I could move back to the house and I would have it to myself until he got back and we could find another roommate to rent the other room. I told him I wasn't sure about moving back and I had no idea what I was going to have to do as a result of me ending back in the psych ward again.
The thing I was most interested in was the fact that Kathy was just upstairs and had no idea I was on the floor below her. I knew the phone number to the floor above and I called it and asked for Kathy. She got on the phone and I told her where I was and that everything would be OK. We were thrilled again, that after everything that had happened we ended up in the same place again. I would see her once and awhile when she would come downstairs for Occupational Therapy group which was held on the fourth floor every day. She was only participating in the group so that we could see each other momentarily. I couldn't join in the group because each floor has it's own groups but we could see each other in the hall. We still didn't know each other that well and I guess the attraction was a physical one and the Hovander incident did give me some insight as to her mental condition but that was when she was drinking. She seemed fairly normal sober and we talked on the phone a lot and continued with our plans to get an apartment together. Neither of us knew where we were going from the psych ward but we were still going to make it work somehow.
Meanwhile I kept in touch with Rick and he was keeping me posted as to the situation at the house. He said he had given them a few days to move out and their rent wasn't an issue because they hadn't payed it. I still wasn't so sure so I called Ricks mother who had an interest in the house because she was a cosigner on the lease and needed to make sure the rent was paid just as much as Rick. She told me that yes, Mush and Mark had been given a deadline to get out of the house and I could move back in as soon as they were out. I trusted her because she was in her early 70's and seemed like an honest person to me. I had met her many times while living there. I was still a little skeptical but I was hoping things were going to work out. For me the best case scenario was I'd get the place to myself and I could have Kathy stay there with me until Rick got back and then we could find an apartment together as planned.
I think I was in the psych ward for about two weeks again and then released the same way as before. This time I was going to go to a different transition house in South St.Paul. This place was called Maureen's house and it's run by Guild. Gild is an organization that helps people suffering with mental illness and chemical dependency. I stayed there for a few days and kept in touch with Rick on a new phone I bought. He told me that Mush was moving out of the house and should be gone by now. His mother confirmed it and I believed them. My social worker didn't want me to go there and wanted some kind of confirmation from my landlord (Rick) that I could move back there and everything was cool. After talking with Rick my social worker agreed that I could go back to where I had been living. Rick asked me if I could send him the rent for the next month and everything would be cool. I hadn't moved back in yet but I was convinced that Mush and her boyfriend had moved out and I had no problem with sending Rick the next months rent. I waited another day and then I went to Walmart and sent Rick a moneygram for the next month's rent.
I asked my old girlfriend to give me a ride back to the house in Blaine and she was cool with that. So I packed up my duffel bag again, checked out of Maureen's House, and headed back to Blaine. I didn't have my key for the house and Rick had told me to just crawl through the window to get in. There was a window that was always left unlocked in case anyone ever lost their keys. When we pulled in the driveway the place seemed deserted, no vehicles in the driveway and the front door was locked. I told my old girlfriend to just leave and I was going to have to break in through the window, I would call her later. I climbed up on some garbage cans and opened the window and climbed in. The window opened into my old room and I was surprised to see it had been completely changed. All my things were gone and there seemed like someone elses stuff was in there. The door was closed and I thought I heard something but wasn't sure. I opened the door, walked down the hall to kitchen and the house seemed quiet with no one around. Then I walked into the living room and I was surprised to see Mush, Mark and some other chick sitting in the living room smoking meth. I had been fucked over again. First thing Mush say's is you aren't welcome here and you'll have to leave. I told her that she wasn't supposed to be staying there and that Rick said she had moved out. All she said was that Rick wasn't there and she was in charge of the house.
I didn't want to argue with them so I just left and headed back to the transit station to wait for a bus. Along the way I called Rick and told him what had happened and that I wanted my rent money back. He was pissed off and had me call his mother to find out why Mush was still in the house. I called her and she said she had no idea that she was still in there and she didn't know what to do. Mush was refusing to leave and along with her was Mark. Truth is they had no where else to go and Mush was being stubborn about letting me back in. Don't forget that these are all meth addicts I'm dealing with and meth has a way of twisting the mind into all kinds of bizarre behavior. I'm no exception, allowing myself to get fucked over every time I turn around. I walked to the transit station and was waiting for the bus when this guy Mike and his girlfriend drive up and say I should go with them. Mike is Ricks good friend and Rick had called him and told him the situation. Rick asked Mike to help me out until Rick could get a flight back to Minnesota. Rick was going to fly all the way back just to kick Mush and Mark out of his house. I knew Mike a little because he would come to the house a lot and he was a meth addict too. Well, once again I didn't have a clue where I was going to go, maybe back to Maureen's house but I just wasn't sure and Mike was asking me to go stay at his place until Rick got back from AZ. OK, and I got in the car. Mike was actually a pretty cool dude for a meth addict and he made me feel at home in his house while I was waiting for Rick.
Mike and his girlfriend didn't work real jobs, their thing was taking old broken things and repairing them in their garage to sell. The house wasn't actually his, rather it was his girlfriends handicapped brothers house and they stayed there rent free and she would take care of her brother in exchange. I helped them work in their garage as a way of paying for my stay there. I had stopped drinking because I didn't want to offend them. They didn't drink but they smoked a lot of meth and had a lot of friends that were the same way. My experience is that people that smoke meth don't normally drink alcohol. They're not drunks and they really don't care for them. Alcohol has kind of an opposite affect from meth and they just don't have any desire to drink. For me it's a little different, my drug of choice is alcohol but I do like meth as well. I like repairing things and I'm pretty good at it. I also am fairly good at using computers. They had a lot of stuff to sell and they were always getting more stuff in exchange for meth. I gotta say that I actually enjoyed staying there and I met a lot of new people. We smoked a lot of meth everyday and were constantly selling something to make more money for more meth. I turned them on to Craig's list and Ebay as a way to sell some of the shit that they fixed up. We made a few sales and I pitched in now and then to buy some meth. Mike and I seemed to become pretty good friends, at least for the duration of my stay there and until I ended up disappearing. It took Rick a whole month to make that flight back from AZ. The whole time I kept in close contact with Rick and his mother and they assured me they were doing everything they could to get Mush out of the house. They didn't trust Mush and her boyfriend either and were afraid that they were going to strip the house of all the fixtures and copper wiring to pay for their addiction to meth. They had been known for doing that in the past. I was doing just fine at Mikes and willing to wait but when it started approaching a whole month I started getting nervous and started pressuring Rick and his mother to do something. Rick flew back as promised and sure enough he kicked Mush and her boyfriend out. I moved back in. Mush and her boyfriend had taken all my stuff with them. Somehow Mark was able to convince Rick that he was just going along with Mush because he didn't want to get kicked out himself. Mark was allowed to stay so everything kinda went back to normal.
There was one problem though. Rick didn't have a good experience seeing his old girlfriend in AZ and it had driven him crazier than he was before. His old girlfriend had turned to prostitution as a way to pay here own rent. Rick didn't say anything at first but eventually it all came out. Mike would come over and hang out a lot more now that he knew me better and was good friends with Rick. One thing I failed to mention about Mike is that he had a warrant for his arrest due to a probation violation. He had failed a urinalysis test and skipped out on court, just like I had done when Mush called the cops on me. Mark's dope dealing business wasn't doing too well and he ended up losing his drivers license because he didn't have insurance on his truck. He was smoking up all his profits to and trying to play the big shot dope dealer. Things were going downhill for him and he ended up selling his truck. The cops were watching the house pretty closely still and I even got pulled over leaving the house on a bicycle on my way over to Mikes house one night. They searched the crap out of me, they had me take my belt off and my shoes and searched me pretty good. They were looking for meth and gave me a lot of shit and asked me a hundred questions. Finally they let me go on my way, I rode around for awhile so they couldn't follow me. When I finally figured they gave up following me around I went over Mikes. I was still hanging out at Mikes helping him out in his garage. Mike was getting more and more paranoid about the cops because he didn't want to get arrested on the warrant and the cops were watching his house just as much as they were watching Rick's. You just didn't want to come or go from either house with any drugs on you or you were taking a big risk. I don't know how the other dope dealers were always coming around both houses without getting caught but hey did. For all we knew any one of them could have already been working with the police but even though paranoid we bought meth. I didn't really care, my DOC was alcohol but occasionally I bought some meth.
Mark was scamming anyone he could to make money and one day he showed up with this guy and his sister. He was banging the girl and conning them both out of money. I was just minding my own business but I knew what Mark was up to. Rick had gone completely manic and ended up in the psych ward for awhile so me and Mark had the house to ourselves. Mark was using Ricks truck to get around and he took off in it leaving this guy and his sister at the house. She didn't smoke meth but was a drinker like me and her brother was just the opposite. Mark had been gone a long time and the next day this chick shows up at the house and tells me that Mark got arrested for driving with no license as well as having got caught with the Ricks truck full of stolen property. Mark had been bringing a lot of strange shit to the house lately but I never gave it a second thought. I guess it was all stolen shit, Mark had turned into a burglar to supplement his income. A couple of days went by and I let this guy and his sister hang out at the house. She couldn't drive because she was always too drunk and her brother didn't have a drivers license. They were afraid to leave the house because they would probably get pulled over. She had to sober up and it didn't seem like that was going to happen anytime soon. There's a lot more to this story and I'll pick it up again in my next post.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Crazy Story
Simon Says:
I was released from the psych ward and the social services people wanted me to go to the Hovander House which is a big house near University Ave and Snelling. It's a place they put homeless people as a temporary place to stay while they find them another place to live. I never considered myself homeless, I just lived in hotels when I was looking for new places to live. Only problem with that is I can't seem to stay sober living in a hotel. Hotel's are lonely places and for me my anxiety disorder really flares up when I stay in them. I'll drink alcohol for relief. That always leads me deeper into depression and the anxiety that goes with it. I know to anyone who hasn't experienced anxiety attacks and depression this cycle is probably very hard to understand. I even have a hard time imagining it when I'm well. Anyway, I agreed to stay at the Hovander House (which is a good place) for awhile, just until I could find a new place. Hovander House is kinda like a sober house, you are welcome to stay there as long as you don't drink or use drugs while your there. The amazing thing was Kathy was also going to stay there and she was going to be moving in the next day. We were both thrilled about being able to stay there together while we could look for that apartment we had talked about in the hospital. The next day came and with it came Kathy, we kinda pretended not to be friends and they ended up giving her a room directly across the hall from my room. You are pretty much free to do and go where you want while your staying there as long as you follow a few simple rules. Well, Kathy and I violated the primary rule, we went for a walk to the Walmart on University Ave and on the way there we stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka. I knew this was a crazy thing to do but Kathy really wanted a drink and I figured we could probably get away with it as long as we were cool about it.
We had a few drinks along the way to Walmart and by the time we got there Kathy was starting to act a little fucked up. Now I'm the kind of drinker that can handle a lot of alcohol and act fairly normal unless I black out and start doing dumb shit. I've got to drink a lot of alcohol to black out like that but it happens. Kathy on the other hand can't handle much alcohol before she starts doing dumb shit and I had no idea. I just met her a week earlier and I had never seen her under the influence. She was acting a little tipsy but not too bad by the time we got back to the house. We were just going to sneak in and and we wouldn't even have to see the staff. We got to the door and it was locked, I guess we were out about ten minutes past the curfew so we had to ring the bell to get in. The only thing I was worried about was the odor of the vodka and the bottle we were smuggling in. We got in alright and everything was cool. I put the bottle in the bathroom in a really dumb place. We wanted to hide it in the bathroom so we could both sneak a drink once and awhile. I put it in the garbage can under the trash liner and figured that would be cool. Kathy and I sat together on the couch upstairs in the TV room, there wasn't anyone else there and we had a few hours few hours before we had to shut down the TV. I didn't know it but Kathy had to go in the office with the nurse yet and take her night time medication. We had started kissing and making out a little and the nurse walked in the room to get Kathy for her medication. We got caught making out on the couch and Kathy had to go downstairs to take her medication. By that time I knew she had drank too much vodka to go talk to the nurse and I knew we were in trouble. The nurse turned off the TV and asked Kathy to go down to the office. The party was over, I went to my room and waited for Kathy to come back upstairs and tell me what went on. She was downstairs for what seemed a long time and when she came back up the nurse was with her. It looked to me like the nurse brought her back upstairs to make sure she went back to her room and right to sleep. I fell asleep and in the morning I got up early, went to the bathroom, checked on the bottle of vodka and oh shit. During the night someone had changed the trash liner and the bottle was gone. Now I knew we were really in trouble. A little while later I was asked to come into the staff office where I was confronted about drinking the night before. Kathy was still sleeping and I had no idea what she might have told them the night before. I just denied knowing anything about any drinking and they told me that Kathy and I were going to have to leave. They were real nice about it and they said we could take all day to move out. When I went upstairs Kathy was getting up and I gave her the bad news, we were being kicked out. She started crying and I told her not to worry, we would just get a cab and get a hotel room. I told her that they wanted to talk with her and she went downstairs. I started packing my stuff and bringing it downstairs. I didn't want to stay there any longer than I had to. Kathy got into an argument with the staff and things weren't looking good. I helped her pack up her stuff and brought it downstairs and when the staff realized that we were going to leave together they told us that they couldn't allow that to happen. I just ignored them and called a cab and while I was hauling our shit out Kathy was arguing with them and I told her to just forget it and lets go. She was acting a little crazy and this was turning into a big scene. The staff told me that they weren't going to allow her to go with me because she was unstable and vulnerable. I said we were going anyway and I told Kathy to stop arguing with them and just come on. I had a cab coming any minute and it was too late to stop us from leaving. We went outside and were waiting for the cab when the cops rolled up. Kathy was acting crazy and I could see this wasn't going to happen. Then the cab rolled up. The cops told Kathy that they were going to be taking her somewhere and she was refusing to get in the squad car. I started loading my shit into the cab and the cops told me to take off. There was nothing to be done so I got in the cab and as we pulled away I could see the cops trying to force Kathy into the squad car. That was it, I was bummed out but there's no arguing with cops unless you just want more trouble.
I would have got a hotel room if Kathy would've been able to come with me but now I had another idea, I was going back to Rick's house and stand my ground. All my shit was still in that house and my rent was paid up for another week. I had the cab take me to Blaine and I felt pretty confident I was just going to tell Mush to go to hell. I had been to court for my warrants so she couldn't call the cops on me again, I had paid the rent and I had every right to stay there at least until the rent was had expired. I wanted to get my stuff too, I had left two lap top computers along with all my clothes and some miscellaneous junk. On the way there I bought another bottle but I didn't drink any of it until I got there. I got to the house and knocked on the door and Mark answered it. Mark asked me what I wanted and I told him, he reluctantly let me in. I just went in and took a chair at the kitchen table, Mark just went back to his room and I knew I was going to have to deal with Mush next. She was downstairs where she was living and while I was waiting I cracked open that bottle and had a few drinks. A few minutes later Mush came up the stairs and started freaking out on me. I told her my rent was paid up and I had the right to stay there for another week. She was acting hysterical and then she went back downstairs and came back with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend tried to physically throw me out but that didn't work. Finally they left me alone and headed out to go do their scrapping work. They collect scrap iron to sell to scrap yards. I went in the living room to watch TV. It was late morning/early afternoon.
I drank the rest of my vodka later that afternoon. I also smoked some weed with Mark and two women that were hanging out at the house. A couple hours after Mush left Mark said she called him and said that she had cooled off and she was cool with me staying there for the rest of the week. By 10:30pm I was toast, tired, sleepy from the vodka and not feeling all that great. It had been a long day and I was just spent. Then the phone rang and it was Mush. I didn't talk with her but Mark said that she was coming back to the house and she was determined to kick me out. I was really tired and sure didn't feel like dealing with that bitch and her fucking boyfriend again. I was just being toyed with. Mark took off, I guess he didn't want to be around when she got there because anything could happen. I stuck around for awhile, lost my resolve and left on foot with my duffel bag. My phone got lost somehow during the argument we had earlier and I left without it. I would have called a cab but I didn't have a phone and there was no bus until the next morning. I was drunk and stoned and I started walking towards the transit station where I was going to wait for the morning bus and get the hell out of there. I decided to cut through the woods which was stupid because I didn't get too far. It was too dark and I couldn't see shit, after a little while I was exhausted. I found a little clear spot, used my duffel bag as a pillow and crashed out. First time I ever did anything like that but I was still drunk and didn't care. In the morning I got up sick, I was having a major anxiety attack. Waking up in my clothes in the fucking woods didn't help. I continued walking to the transit station and caught a bus going back to the cities. I didn't know where I was going and I was sick. I don't remember all the details of how I got there but I ended up back in Regions, in the psych ward again. Stay tuned.
I was released from the psych ward and the social services people wanted me to go to the Hovander House which is a big house near University Ave and Snelling. It's a place they put homeless people as a temporary place to stay while they find them another place to live. I never considered myself homeless, I just lived in hotels when I was looking for new places to live. Only problem with that is I can't seem to stay sober living in a hotel. Hotel's are lonely places and for me my anxiety disorder really flares up when I stay in them. I'll drink alcohol for relief. That always leads me deeper into depression and the anxiety that goes with it. I know to anyone who hasn't experienced anxiety attacks and depression this cycle is probably very hard to understand. I even have a hard time imagining it when I'm well. Anyway, I agreed to stay at the Hovander House (which is a good place) for awhile, just until I could find a new place. Hovander House is kinda like a sober house, you are welcome to stay there as long as you don't drink or use drugs while your there. The amazing thing was Kathy was also going to stay there and she was going to be moving in the next day. We were both thrilled about being able to stay there together while we could look for that apartment we had talked about in the hospital. The next day came and with it came Kathy, we kinda pretended not to be friends and they ended up giving her a room directly across the hall from my room. You are pretty much free to do and go where you want while your staying there as long as you follow a few simple rules. Well, Kathy and I violated the primary rule, we went for a walk to the Walmart on University Ave and on the way there we stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka. I knew this was a crazy thing to do but Kathy really wanted a drink and I figured we could probably get away with it as long as we were cool about it.
We had a few drinks along the way to Walmart and by the time we got there Kathy was starting to act a little fucked up. Now I'm the kind of drinker that can handle a lot of alcohol and act fairly normal unless I black out and start doing dumb shit. I've got to drink a lot of alcohol to black out like that but it happens. Kathy on the other hand can't handle much alcohol before she starts doing dumb shit and I had no idea. I just met her a week earlier and I had never seen her under the influence. She was acting a little tipsy but not too bad by the time we got back to the house. We were just going to sneak in and and we wouldn't even have to see the staff. We got to the door and it was locked, I guess we were out about ten minutes past the curfew so we had to ring the bell to get in. The only thing I was worried about was the odor of the vodka and the bottle we were smuggling in. We got in alright and everything was cool. I put the bottle in the bathroom in a really dumb place. We wanted to hide it in the bathroom so we could both sneak a drink once and awhile. I put it in the garbage can under the trash liner and figured that would be cool. Kathy and I sat together on the couch upstairs in the TV room, there wasn't anyone else there and we had a few hours few hours before we had to shut down the TV. I didn't know it but Kathy had to go in the office with the nurse yet and take her night time medication. We had started kissing and making out a little and the nurse walked in the room to get Kathy for her medication. We got caught making out on the couch and Kathy had to go downstairs to take her medication. By that time I knew she had drank too much vodka to go talk to the nurse and I knew we were in trouble. The nurse turned off the TV and asked Kathy to go down to the office. The party was over, I went to my room and waited for Kathy to come back upstairs and tell me what went on. She was downstairs for what seemed a long time and when she came back up the nurse was with her. It looked to me like the nurse brought her back upstairs to make sure she went back to her room and right to sleep. I fell asleep and in the morning I got up early, went to the bathroom, checked on the bottle of vodka and oh shit. During the night someone had changed the trash liner and the bottle was gone. Now I knew we were really in trouble. A little while later I was asked to come into the staff office where I was confronted about drinking the night before. Kathy was still sleeping and I had no idea what she might have told them the night before. I just denied knowing anything about any drinking and they told me that Kathy and I were going to have to leave. They were real nice about it and they said we could take all day to move out. When I went upstairs Kathy was getting up and I gave her the bad news, we were being kicked out. She started crying and I told her not to worry, we would just get a cab and get a hotel room. I told her that they wanted to talk with her and she went downstairs. I started packing my stuff and bringing it downstairs. I didn't want to stay there any longer than I had to. Kathy got into an argument with the staff and things weren't looking good. I helped her pack up her stuff and brought it downstairs and when the staff realized that we were going to leave together they told us that they couldn't allow that to happen. I just ignored them and called a cab and while I was hauling our shit out Kathy was arguing with them and I told her to just forget it and lets go. She was acting a little crazy and this was turning into a big scene. The staff told me that they weren't going to allow her to go with me because she was unstable and vulnerable. I said we were going anyway and I told Kathy to stop arguing with them and just come on. I had a cab coming any minute and it was too late to stop us from leaving. We went outside and were waiting for the cab when the cops rolled up. Kathy was acting crazy and I could see this wasn't going to happen. Then the cab rolled up. The cops told Kathy that they were going to be taking her somewhere and she was refusing to get in the squad car. I started loading my shit into the cab and the cops told me to take off. There was nothing to be done so I got in the cab and as we pulled away I could see the cops trying to force Kathy into the squad car. That was it, I was bummed out but there's no arguing with cops unless you just want more trouble.
I would have got a hotel room if Kathy would've been able to come with me but now I had another idea, I was going back to Rick's house and stand my ground. All my shit was still in that house and my rent was paid up for another week. I had the cab take me to Blaine and I felt pretty confident I was just going to tell Mush to go to hell. I had been to court for my warrants so she couldn't call the cops on me again, I had paid the rent and I had every right to stay there at least until the rent was had expired. I wanted to get my stuff too, I had left two lap top computers along with all my clothes and some miscellaneous junk. On the way there I bought another bottle but I didn't drink any of it until I got there. I got to the house and knocked on the door and Mark answered it. Mark asked me what I wanted and I told him, he reluctantly let me in. I just went in and took a chair at the kitchen table, Mark just went back to his room and I knew I was going to have to deal with Mush next. She was downstairs where she was living and while I was waiting I cracked open that bottle and had a few drinks. A few minutes later Mush came up the stairs and started freaking out on me. I told her my rent was paid up and I had the right to stay there for another week. She was acting hysterical and then she went back downstairs and came back with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend tried to physically throw me out but that didn't work. Finally they left me alone and headed out to go do their scrapping work. They collect scrap iron to sell to scrap yards. I went in the living room to watch TV. It was late morning/early afternoon.
I drank the rest of my vodka later that afternoon. I also smoked some weed with Mark and two women that were hanging out at the house. A couple hours after Mush left Mark said she called him and said that she had cooled off and she was cool with me staying there for the rest of the week. By 10:30pm I was toast, tired, sleepy from the vodka and not feeling all that great. It had been a long day and I was just spent. Then the phone rang and it was Mush. I didn't talk with her but Mark said that she was coming back to the house and she was determined to kick me out. I was really tired and sure didn't feel like dealing with that bitch and her fucking boyfriend again. I was just being toyed with. Mark took off, I guess he didn't want to be around when she got there because anything could happen. I stuck around for awhile, lost my resolve and left on foot with my duffel bag. My phone got lost somehow during the argument we had earlier and I left without it. I would have called a cab but I didn't have a phone and there was no bus until the next morning. I was drunk and stoned and I started walking towards the transit station where I was going to wait for the morning bus and get the hell out of there. I decided to cut through the woods which was stupid because I didn't get too far. It was too dark and I couldn't see shit, after a little while I was exhausted. I found a little clear spot, used my duffel bag as a pillow and crashed out. First time I ever did anything like that but I was still drunk and didn't care. In the morning I got up sick, I was having a major anxiety attack. Waking up in my clothes in the fucking woods didn't help. I continued walking to the transit station and caught a bus going back to the cities. I didn't know where I was going and I was sick. I don't remember all the details of how I got there but I ended up back in Regions, in the psych ward again. Stay tuned.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Despair
Simon Says:
I was held in Anoka County Jail for two or three days and then transferred to Dakota County where my warrant was issued. Because of the number of charges I had against me and my failure to appear in court for them I was sure I didn't have to worry about going anywhere for awhile. I only had about $300 and that wouldn't be enough for shit. It would be a couple of weeks before I got paid again and I was thinking that by the time I got out of jail I would have enough saved up to find a new place and move on from there. I was only in Dakota County for one night and the next morning I had to go to court to have my bail set and scheduled another court date to deal with all my arrest charges. You get assigned a court appointed attorney and you get to talk with him for about five minutes before you go in front of the judge. There was about ten of us lined up to see the judge and I was in the middle somewhere. I was waiting for my turn and this judge was letting everyone out on their own recognizance (OR for short). That means you get out without posting any bail on condition that you show up for your next court date. By the time it was my turn he had released everyone before me on OR and I was a little worried because I didn't want to be released. I didn't have anywhere to go, with Mush still at the house and the court order preventing me from going back to my apartment. There was no way I was going to be released without bail, it had been about a year since I ignored all my other court dates and they were not going to release me. I've had DWI's before and almost every time I had to post bail. Given the fact that I had been brought in on a warrant I was expecting to have to post bail. The judge released me without bail. I was fucking shocked, now what was I going to do? It was like mid April and I didn't even have a coat. An hour later I was changing back into the clothes I was wearing when I got arrested and they were returning my property to me. All I had was my wallet and cell phone and it was cold and windy out. At least it wasn't early February and 10 degrees below zero. I guess things could have been worse but at the time I couldn't see it.
Out the door I went along with about ten other people. Most of the others had rides waiting for them or had one coming. I'm standing outside smoking a cigarette with no clue what I was going to do. There was three of us with no ride out of Hastings, one of us was a woman and she easily caught a ride with someone. It boiled down to two of us stuck in Hastings. The other guy had a place to go in St.Paul but no way to get there and he didn't have any money. That's the fucked up thing about having Hastings the location of the County Court and Jail, there is no public transportation out of Hastings. I've been stuck there a few times but this was the worst. I tried calling Mark for a ride but he was siding with Mush and wouldn't do anything for me. Mark didn't want to get Mush pissed at him and get kicked out of the house himself. I had friends but I had disappeared for over a year and couldn't call any of them out of the blue, besides, I didn't have anyone’s phone number and where would they be giving me a ride to?
I had to do something so first thing I did was head for Walmart to get some smokes and a sweater or light coat. Like I said, I had about $300 and I couldn't just stand around in front of the jail release door freezing my ass off. The other guy tagged along with me, he didn't know what to do either, I told him he could hang with me for awhile until we figured out how to get back to St.Paul. I guess I had enough money to call a cab out to Hastings and go to St.Paul but I had nowhere to go in St.Paul either. I was kinda thinking that if I helped this other guy out he might be able to help me find a place to stay in St.Paul when we figured out a way to get there. It was just a thought and I needed time to figure something out. I wasn't feeling very well either, I was detoxing from meth and alcohol at the same time. I really needed a drink so I could think a little clearer. My anxiety meter was pegged and a drink was what I needed. After getting a hoodie and some smokes at Walmart we headed for the liquor store and I bought a liter of 100 proof vodka and a liter of coke. I don't remember this guys name so I'll call him Joe. Joe and I went around the corner and took a hit off the bottle. Then we went back in the liquor store, borrowed their local phone book and looked up a hotel and found a cheap one. There is no cab company in Hastings but I found some kind of sober ride service and called them. The sober cab showed up and took us to the hotel and I got a cheap room. I just needed a few more drinks to settle my nerves and a warm place to think.
We finished off that liter fairly fast and I sent Joe out to get some more, a 1.75 liter this time. After everything I had been through in the last week it didn't take long for me to crash out. Got up the next morning and registered for another night and kept on drinking. I still had no idea what I was going to do when my money ran out but the alcohol was numbing my mind and kept me from worrying about it too much, I just didn't have any options, whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I fell asleep for a few hours and when I woke up Joe was gone. He left my booze but he took my phone and I had no idea where the hell he went. Fuck, I needed my phone, it was all I had left. Now I was starting to panic but kept drinking, there was no way I was going to stop drinking until I ran out of money. I started calling my cell phone with the land line phone in the room. I must have called it 20 – 30 times before that motherfucker finally answered it. I just acted like I was stupid and asked him to get back to the room because I needed him to go get some more vodka. He came back and I got my phone back, sent him for some more vodka, then I chased his ass out. I know he probably was trying to hitch a ride out of Hastings and couldn't get one so he was stuck with nowhere to go and he couldn't come back to the hotel because he had stole my phone. He was happy to come back and do a liquor run and have a place to stay for the night. I don't know where he went and I was too drunk to care. The guy was a homeless guy from St.Paul and he knew how to survive. I had enough money to last me a couple more days but that was it.
I had a couple of old girlfriends and I still had their phone numbers on my phone, I was desperate and started thinking that maybe I could convince one of them to help me out. I started to send them text messages and they responded. I couldn't get myself to tell them how desperate my situation was so I was kinda trying to get one of them to come out to Hastings and have a drink with me and then maybe I could figure out something from there. I had told them what hotel I was staying in and the room number. I was pretty saturated in alcohol and I don't remember exactly what I had said to one of them but we kept exchanging text messages for quite awhile. I had her on the phone when there was a knock at my door. I figured it was Joe coming back to apologize or something. When I opened the door it was the cops. They were doing a welfare check, my old girlfriend had called the cops and told them she was worried about me. She knows I have major depressive disorder and had been hospitalized for suicidal thoughts in the past. Hell, I met her in group therapy for people who've had suicidal thoughts. Funny thing was one of the cops told me everything and was about to leave when he spotted a couple empty vodka bottles in the garbage can. I guess I can act pretty sober when I have too. Now he wanted to check my BAC just to see how much I had been drinking. I blew close to a 4.0 and I was loaded up in a squad car and brought to Region's Hospital. Once again I was detoxed in the ICU and then put back in the psych ward. I guess you've got to be crazy to drink that much alcohol and in a way I was trying to drink myself to death. They know me by my first name in the behavioral health wing of Region's Hospital.
I was in the psych ward at Region's for around two weeks which gave me time to get paid again and now I wasn't too worried about where I would go. I could always live in a cheap hotel for awhile again, but I sure didn't want to and social services didn't want me to either. I guess I was kinda happy I got put back into the hospital because I don't remember being too depressed. It solved my problem of getting out of Hastings and gave me a place to stay while I waited to get my next paycheck. I wasn't even angry with my old girlfriend, in fact she came to visit me there and took me out so I could smoke cigarettes for an hour. She came to see me a couple times and brought me candy bars and pop. I met a couple of other women while I was in there and ended up making plans with one of them. Actually the three of us were making plans on renting an apartment together and in the end there was just the two of us. Her name was Kathy and she was a former stripper and still hot. She was also an alcoholic, just a different type than me. We got to be pretty good friends in a week or so, there just ain't much to do in the psych ward and it's nice if you have someone you can talk with. We talked and talked and then made plans to get an apartment together when we got out of the hospital. Everything seemed to be getting better again which is the weird way things seem to go, from one extreme to the other, back and forth over and over. I'm not sure where I'm at right now, but one things for sure, it's going to change. I guess I feel like I'm somewhere in between pendulum swings. I know my anxiety level is pretty high but I'm sober. Anxiety is a major part of my problem and I'll get back to that stuff when I finish my story.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Methamphetamine Abuse
Simon Says:
Alright, so I went from living in a hotel in St.Paul, isolated, drinking heavy, smoking crack to a sober house and now at this point in my story I just rented a room in a house way up in Blaine. I thought I found the ideal substitute for alcohol, methamphetamine, and I was hitting that pretty hard right from the start. I still had that warrant out for my arrest and transportation was a big problem, especially out in Blaine where the bus only runs back and forth from the cities twice a day during the work week and not at all on weekends. I was satisfied though, had a place to live and what seemed like an unlimited supply of meth. My new roommate Rick used meth too, only he's what I call a banger. He would smoke it but his preference was to mix it with a little water and inject it directly into his veins. Rick seemed alright early on but gradually his psychosis became more and more apparent. I ended up meeting a lot of people at Ricks and all of them were meth addicts. It wasn't long before Mark left the halfway house and rented a room at Ricks too. Mark started dealing meth again and I was able to get it anytime. I started hanging out with Mark all the time and I would go with him when he would make his deals. Rick didn't want Mark dealing meth out of the house so we had to do a lot of driving around. Eventually Mark just said fuck Rick and he started selling the shit right out of the house. There was a steady flow of people coming through the house and I was high all the time. I kind of justified my use because I wasn't drinking and alcohol was my real problem. In fact I felt pretty good that I was able to not drink for so long. Alcohol always had me feeling sick and at times my stomach wouldn't allow me to drink easily. I would get so sick I couldn't drink anymore and then I had a problem. Meth didn't seem to make me sick at all and for some reason I never got what they call dope sick, but then again there were very few times when I couldn't get more meth.
Rick had some definite mental problems probably from banging so much meth. I didn't notice it right away but he gradually became more comfortable around me and started acting like a goofy retard. The first couple months I lived there he wasn't around very much and when he was he would be sleeping. This guy could sleep for days at a time and on the flip side he could stay up for several days without sleeping. The last few weeks I lived there I don't think I ever saw him sleep. He was manic and banging away, the longer he wouldn't sleep the goofier he would get. There were many times when I stayed up for days at a time but eventually I would crash out. Seemed like I only needed to sleep for a few hours and then I could stay up for a few days. I would get enthused about doing some of the weirdest things and do it for hours on end. I guess my biggest thing was taking apart and playing with old electronic junk. I would sit in my room for days playing with old computers and anything electronic I could find. I liked taking apart old cell phones and collecting the parts. It was like meditating, my mind would get focused on something and I wouldn't even give a thought to any of my problems, I didn't care. Eating was something I wasn't interested in either and I lost a lot of weight. I would eat only because I knew I should, I never felt hungry and sometimes it was a real effort to eat, I would do it just to get it done.
In the back of my mind I knew I couldn't just keep living like this forever but I didn't seem to care, it just went on and on. Then things did start to happen. Meth addicts are the most paranoid people I ever met. The legal consequences of getting busted with meth or the paraphernalia are serious, but the chance of getting busted are slim unless your selling the shit or hanging around with known meth addicts (known to the police). I guess I was guilty of all the risk factors for getting busted. The cops knew the house I was living in was a drug house and everyone that went there was an addict. I was just stupid and didn't really care. No one trusts anyone but yet activity continues to go on. A few months before I moved in, the house had been raided by the police and they found paraphernalia and a small amount of methamphetamine. So everyone was paranoid when they would leave the house because the cops were always watching the place and pulling people over to search them. If someone did get busted with methamphetamine, the cops would make deals with them to turn in other users. Anytime someone got busted they were out of the loop because you just couldn't be sure if they made any deals with the cops to save themselves. The only problem was knowing when someone got busted, you just never knew. The cops have task forces out there whose only function is to find and bust methamphetamine users and dealers. So it's no wonder where the paranoia comes from. No one dealt with people they weren't sure about and if they did they were very careful. I just didn't care about much anymore and I wasn't afraid of much. I fit in and all I cared about was my little electronic projects and I kinda got into making glass pipes, they could dub as incense burners and they're perfectly legal as long as they haven't been used for smoking meth. The residue left in them can get you in big trouble so everyone was paranoid about carrying around used meth pipes, they were always getting smashed and thrown out. I would sit in my room for hours making new glass bubble pipes with the idea that if I got good at it I could sell them. You can buy them at tobacco shops and they're sold as incense burners. Five or six bucks for a piece of glass that ain't even worth a buck. Anyway I was going to sell them for half price if I ever got good at it but I never did.
I guess everything started changing when Rick's sister showed up one day. By this time I wasn't thinking right anymore and Rick's sister was a real bitch. She and her boyfriend got busted and her boyfriend was in jail and she got out somehow. They got kicked out of their place and had been living in their van when they got busted. The cops confiscated their van and she had nowhere to go so she ended up moving in. We got along great at first, staying up all night smoking and talking, she seemed normal compared to her goofy brother but I was wrong about that. She didn't show her true colors for a couple months. I was probably acting a little goofy myself because I started drinking again along with the meth. Rick had a girlfriend that supposedly just got out of prison in Arizona and he was going to go see her. She had been in prison for eight years and he had been waiting for her to get out. Truth was she had gotten out of prison a year earlier and never told him. Rick was all excited about going to AZ and he had all kinds of ideas about how things were going to be great. He was acting goofier than hell and the rest of us living in the house were glad he was going to AZ for awhile because he was driving us crazy. He acted like a retard and was always broke and trying to borrow money and cigarettes and never repaying. Always promising shit and never coming through, just a pain in the ass to live with, so I was thrilled that he was going to see his girlfriend and kinda hoping that he never came back. His sister could take over the house and things would be just fine. Don't get me wrong though, Rick and I got to be friends only because I could put up with all his bizarre behavior and I really didn't care as long as I had a place to live and I could drink and smoke meth. Seemed like I could handle the alcohol a lot better while under the influence of meth so I started drinking more and more, back to that bullshit. Alcohol changes everything and my personality with it, problem is I'm the last guy to notice it. Well everything turned upside down when Rick left for AZ. Things went alright for awhile then Rick's sister started thinking she was in charge of the house, she wasn't even paying rent and she turned out to be a real bitch.
Ricks sister's nick name was Mush and I had made the mistake of telling her about the outstanding warrant for my arrest. Mark and Rick both knew about it so she would've probably found out about it anyway. I was pretty fucked up all the time and I guess I started to irritate Mush and Mark but I was paying Rick rent and I didn't think I had anything to worry about and I didn't think I was acting strange anyway. I had a couple of knives and they needed sharpening so I bought a ceramic knife sharpener and as with any meth user got carried away with sharpening knives. We had a whole drawer full of kitchen knives that were so dull they couldn't cut butter. Well I made it my project to sharpen all the kitchen knives and there were quite a few of them. I guess meth addicts shouldn't play with knives around paranoid meth addicts because I guess Mark and Mush started freaking out. They asked me to stop playing with the knives because they didn't feel safe and they wanted me to give them my personal knives. I told them they had nothing to worry about and I wasn't going to give up my knives. Mush kept insisting and I said no way. Then she said you'll have to move out if you don't give in and I said fuck you. “I pay my rent to Rick and you ain't in charge of anything”. She called the cops knowing they would show up and arrest me on my outstanding warrant. That's exactly what happened. Next thing I knew I was sitting in the Anoka County Jail thinking it would be a long time before I got out. I'm going to continue telling this story because it's helping me remember some of the stupid shit I've done in the last year or so and I want to update this blog. There's a lot more to this story and it's all real. If you want to read the whole story you'll need to go back a few posts and start from there. I think what I've been doing is pretty bizarre, looking back, but it's just the life of an alcoholic addict.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Cross Addiction How it Happened
Simon Says:
I go directly from the ICU to Fairview Riverside's Lodging Plus Chemical Dependency Treatment Program. I've been through this program twice before so I know what its all about. It used to be called St. Mary’s treatment program. Not sure why they changed their name but I do know it's called Lodging Plus because technically it's not an inpatient treatment center, It's Chemical Dependency Treatment with lodging. That's got something to do with the insurance, someone is making more money or paying less money. Anyway you get billed for both the treatment program and then separately for the lodging. It doesn't matter, in reality it's inpatient treatment. A short program, 21 days. The one nice thing about the place is they provide a smoking area outside and if you ain't in group therapy you can go out and smoke all you want. It's not a locked down program either, you can go anywhere in the hospital you want and outside as long as you stay on campus. That's cool in the summer but this time around it was winter; I spent last Christmas in this treatment program.
I was a total ball of nerves when I went in there, like a continuous anxiety attack. I felt like I had a million things to worry about and I had just recently stopped getting phone calls from Vicki. I just kept thinking that if Vicki would call me everything would be cool. She never did and it was a year before I saw her again. I don't know why I fell for her so hard but I'm sure it had something to do with the condition of my brain at the time. I was in a major depression and having this anxiety disorder on top of it. Thinking back now I don't know how I made it through. I was on the edge of having a major nervous breakdown. I needed a drink or a hit off a crack pipe but neither was going to happen for the next 21 days and I was melting down. I kept to myself as much as I could and gradually I began to feel better. I never felt good but at least I stopped feeling like I was going to explode or something. The thing about me is I never want anyone to know when I'm freaking out and that just makes me freak out more. You have to remember that I had just spent four months isolating myself in a dumpy hotel and now I was supposed to sit in therapy groups and talk about my feelings. I was a nervous wreck for the first 10 days or so. I was practically begging for some benzo's but that's rarely allowed in treatment.
Eventually I got to know a few of the guys in my therapy groups and it seemed most of us had the same primary concern. That was where did we go from there. I couldn't go back to that hotel because I knew I would probably die there. I stayed at that particular hotel because it was the cheapest one I could find in St.Paul. I wasn't even sure I could go back there because of the condition I left the place in and I had already been hauled out of there in an ambulance and brought to Regions hospital once before. It seemed like most of us in treatment had managed to wreck our lives to the point where we had nowhere left to go. There was a certain sense of camaraderie amongst those of us looking for a place to go when we were released from treatment. The only place left for some of us to go was into a sober house where the only two requirement for living there are sobriety and rent. There are other rules too but they seem minor when it's cold out and you need a place to live. The rents are normally lower because you are just renting a room in a house along with other alcoholics and addicts. At first it seemed like there was a shortage of sober houses with vacancies but then at one point they started popping up everywhere. I really didn't want to live in a place where I'd be under constant scrutiny and if anyone suspected you might be using drugs or drinking; you would have to submit a urinalysis. Produce a positive UA and you would have to move out immediately. With the only other options being a homeless shelter or a halfway house I was happy to find anyplace at all.
Well three of us found a newly remodeled sober house in St.Paul not far from Como Park and were accepted as the new residents. We had it all set up so that on the day of our release from treatment we could move right into the sober house. With the housing problem solved we could start focusing more of our attention on our addiction problems. At least it was a big sense of relief for me. One of my new buddies in treatment opted for a halfway house because he couldn't afford to pay rent, that was Mark who ended up playing a big role in the rest of my story. I guess I'm telling this story more for myself rather than anyone else. Trying to recount what this last binge cost me and how I ended up here where I am now. I know that the way I'm posting this story on my blog puts each posting is in reverse order of the big story so I'm trying to make each post like a story in itself.
The last week or so of treatment went by fairly fast, it's the same routine every day with a little change in the schedule on the weekends. Next thing I know I'm being released from treatment and headed for the sober house. I remained in contact with my daughter throughout treatment and she gave me a ride to my new residence in St.Paul. At the same time I was getting out of treatment my daughter was preparing to move to California for a new job. She moved there about a week after I moved into the sober house. I was the first one in the house and the other two guys moved in the next day or so. I was sober now and had a decent place to live and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. One of the minor requirements of living in the house is you had to get a job. Since I was on disability and could afford the rent without a job they wanted me to get a volunteer job somewhere so I started looking for one. I never realized that getting a volunteer job is almost like trying to get a regular job. I finally found one but I got kicked out before I started it. I wasn't the first to get kicked out, I was the second. I can't remember the name of the guy that got kicked out first but he got booted out for using something, I think it was crack or meth. It was the third guy in the house that turned him in for staying out all night a couple times without telling anyone he had something preplanned. That led to his getting the boot. The snitches name I won't forget because he got me kicked out too. The guys name was Dick. He still owes me $50 too.
This is where Mark came into the picture. You know we all had every intention to stay clean and sober it just didn't go that way. Mark moved into a halfway house not too far from the sober house where I was. We had all became friends in treatment so it was only natural that we started hanging out with each other since we all lived in close proximity of each other. Mark was a former methamphetamine dealer and he went to treatment and into the halfway house to save his marriage. His wife demanded he do these things or she was leaving him and taking his kids with her. Anyway that was his story. He and I got to be pretty good friends, he was coming over to the house most days and hanging out. Mark had a truck so we were going to AA and NA meetings together and just doing regular sober stuff together. I met his wife and kids and everything seemed to be going cool. Then I guess I started hinting around that I'd like to try out some meth some day because I just can't drink alcohol. I was serious too, I was afraid of alcohol but I'd never tried smoking methamphetamine before and I did want to try it but I was saying it in a passive way. Well then the inevitable happened, one day we got some and smoked it. Then we did it again and again and pretty soon we were smoking it every day. I ended up buying a scale so we could divide the shit up. Mark started selling the shit again so we could smoke for free or at least less money anyway. I liked it, I could get high and actually be more productive as apposed to alcohol that always ended up making me sick as hell. I was looking for a new place to live because I knew Dick was suspicious because me and Mark were hanging out a lot and never inviting him to come along. I was actually in the process of negotiating the rent on a room in one of Mark's friends houses when the day came that Dick caught me sitting in my room weighing out some meth. He didn't knock or anything, just came charging into my room to see what I was doing like he already knew. He assured me he wouldn't say anything to the house managers but later that day I got a call on my cell phone informing me that I was to move my shit out of the house the next day and that I couldn't stay there that night. I kinda just took it in stride because I already had another place to live where I wouldn't have to worry about using. I stayed there that night and the next day I went to the sober house with my new roommates van and moved all my shit out, which again wasn't that much. My new roommates name was Rick and this is when the shit really hit the fan. Of course that's a whole nother story which I'll start telling in my next post.
Self Destruction
Simon Says:
Well anyway, Vicki was never really into me, she just found me convenient. Took me for a few bucks but we had fun. I imagine I'll hear from her again if she really needs something but I'm through with that. Too bad because I liked her a lot, finally found someone who liked to get fucked up like I did but everything when we both sobered up. I guess that's all we really had in common. I still like her but there's no future in our relationship, at least not if we are going to stay sober and that's my plan right now.
Like I said, I ended up in Regions psych ward several times while I was living in that dump of a hotel, the “Economy Inn”. I lived in that damn hotel for almost four months. Spending all my money on alcohol and crack within the first two weeks of every month and then suffering for two weeks until I got paid again. I was lonely, I missed Vicki, and I was scared. I would be so broke for two weeks every month I had to walk to Dorthy Day's to eat and couldn't even afford smokes. Dorthy Day's is a homeless shelter where they feed you for free, it's right across from the Excel Energy Center and was about a mile walk for me. It was getting to be December and I didn't even have a warm coat, I would freeze my ass off when I would walk to the shelter to eat. I would get so depressed I could hardly get myself to walk down there but I knew I had to eat something. I lost a lot of weight and knew I was sick. As soon as I would get paid I would start all over, get as fucked up as I could until I ran out of money and go through it again. I was getting so fucked up I would hallucinate and then when I would sober up because of lack of money I would shake so hard that I couldn't even hold a glass of water up to my mouth to get a drink. I couldn't stop myself from this pattern of slow suicide. On top of all this shit I didn't go to court for my DWI and assault charges and there was a warrant out for my arrest. Vicki would call me once every couple days for awhile and she could tell I was sick, don't blame her for disappearing on me.
I had totally isolated myself, no one associated with me knew where I was or what I was doing. I had lost my phone and bought a new one with a different number. The only person who knew my phone number was Vicki. I didn't have computer access so I wasn't answering any emails. I just totally dropped out of sight for about five months. Every time I saw a cop I would freak out because of the warrant for my arrest and the possibility that I had been reported as a missing person by my daughter or my parents. One day I was at Dorthy Day's eating and I met a homeless woman who was eating at the same table as me. I was sober enough to get fed (they won't let you in if you're drunk or fucked up) so I could at least talk, even though I was having a hard time hitting my mouth with a fork. I guess I was having a moment of clarity as they say in AA and I felt I had to make contact with my daughter and let her know I was still alive. I asked the woman who’s name was Missy if she knew where a library was so I could use a computer and send my daughter an email. She was nice enough to take me to the Public Library which wasn't that far of a walk. I got to use a computer and I sent the email. I can't remember what I said but I just wanted her to know I was still alive and I gave her my new phone number. I didn't get a call from her but the next day I went back to the library to check my email and she had responded with her phone number. My daughter was about to get her PhD from the University of Minnesota and she had to defend her thesis to the faculty at the University as a last requirement. She knew I was sick and I wouldn't be able to attend the ceremony. I wasn't even invited because she knew I wouldn't be able to make it. I was so depressed I wanted to commit suicide, for real. It seemed my whole life was upside down and it was. A week later I got paid again and I resumed my pattern of self destruction.
Something was going on in my mind because during a black out and I was always blacking in and out of consciousness I called my daughter and asked her for help. I knew I was going to die if I didn't get some help and consciously I didn't care. I really don't know why I called but I did and a little while later she showed up. She gathered up my things which didn't amount to very much and she brought me to Fairview Riverside Hospital on the UofM campus. I had so much alcohol and crack in me I didn't care what was going on. She brought me in through the ER and they put me in the ICU (intensive care unit) to detox me. I think I spent at least a week in the ICU and they detoxed me with ativan which made detoxing fairly painless. From there they put me in there chemical dependency inpatient program which I had been through twice before. I think I just wanted to get out of the rut I was in living in that hotel and Dorthy Day's because I wasn't done yet. I made it through their 21 day treatment program and that's where I met this guy named Scott. This binge wasn't even close to being over and I'll carry on with the story in my next post.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Alcoholic relationships
Simon Says:
Vicki and I got a hotel room right across from Regions Hospital. We didn't waste any time getting back into the bottle. We had a lot of fun as usual, making all kinds of plans for the future and drinking a lot. Drinking way too much, and then one morning I woke up and Vicki was gone. I guess I had blacked out and had kicked her out. I didn't remember a thing, all I knew was she was gone and I kept waiting for her to come back but that never happened. A couple of days later I got a phone call from Vicki and she told me what happened. We got into an argument and I told her to leave. She had no where to go and she almost jumped off the Robert street bridge. Instead she went back to Regions Hospital and checked herself into the psych ward where she was calling me from.
She was in the psych ward for a couple weeks and she was committed. Social Services put her into a long term treatment program (90 days) and then from there into a halfway house for women in St.Paul. That's where she is now and it's been over a year. She's convinced that if we got back together we would start drinking again and she's probably right. I went on drinking among other things and I just recently found out where Vicki ended up. I went to an AA meeting in downtown St.Paul about three months ago and there she was, we talked a little, she borrowed a little money from me and I haven't seen her since. So much for alcoholic relationships.
I haven't been doing so well, been in the hospital several times, treatment twice and got committed myself. I've done all this since Vicki went into Regions that night from the hotel.
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