Last call

Spellbound by music I saw my life unfold in the lyrics of my favorite songs.
If I thought drugs or alcohol could enhance my emotional contact with the world then music was always part of the equation.

I never had the gift of a good voice or even a basic sense of rhythm, I didn't learn an instrument and couldn't dance but the feelings were intense and I committed totally to the experience... on the inside.

When I became acquainted with the Dire Straits song 'Your Latest Trick' in the late 80s, the lyrics 'It's past last call for alcohol', sent a chill down my spine, fear of running dry! The rush for last drinks was ingrained in my DNA. Threat of supply being cut off was a grim reality. The writing was well and truly on the wall for me for a long time before last call actually meant THE LAST CALL! 

I may have overshot my last call by a couple of years but, rock bottoms are like that, you get more chances to experience the worst, until the very end and there is nothing left but Korsakoff's or Death. 
I stepped off the train before it hit the wall.

On this day 24 years ago I was offered a second chance at life. I put my hand out and an opportunity was presented to me freely with a handshake. I was welcomed into an exclusive club and assured there are no fees! I'd already paid the price of admission!

Music was fundamental to my emotional survival as a drinker, it also created the matrix of my emotional vocabulary, how I related to the world was directly related to the music I listened to. Music was like a surrogate emotional coach. It was all highly emotive and lacked maturity, but the feels were strong.

In sobriety I found I could no longer listen to much of the music I related to and relied on for many years. New tunes had to move into the space that bands like Pink Floyd occupied. At least until I had some time under my belt. 

Someone introduced me to Ted Hawkins... Rough and Gritty in your face alcoholism and misery! As brutal as he was the music spoke to my sobriety. I got it. I discovered lots more music that related more to my recovery than to my addiction, music can be like that. You find meaning from listening, new connections are made, new understanding. A new reality.

Right around the corner tonight is a Latin band, with dancing girls... I may move that way some time. But tonight I am sitting in my own space, enjoying a healthy meal I made for myself. Sitting alone in my own space. Just feeling the simple joy of taking one sober breath after another and knowing that I could have missed the whole thing!

Grateful for the comfort, grateful for the pain.  

If we see each other in 2020, I'll save a smile for you, maybe we can play a new tune and with confidence take the next step that calls the living to dance.

Grateful for: Trees

Billy Goat Plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana)

Fan (grateful for)

today I'm grateful that I've got a ceiling fan. When it's hot I can have a shower then stand under the fan.

Gratitudefulness

(disclaimer: the following post is not advocating cold turkey withdrawal from prescribed medication nor is it an informed opinion on the effects of any particular drug/brain affecting chemical)

Lists!
I don't particularly go for lists... In fact I think quite often, too much importance is put on lists.
Generally I don't write them or hold to them...

Not really into lists...
Chances are my name is on a few... lists..

I always forget to take the shopping list.
I come home with the wrong stuff.
My wife writes lists. She wrote the shopping list... I forgot to get her stuff...
I reckon I coulda done with that list

I'm pondering the idea of starting a list.

My mate Rod kept a list.
They had him locked up but Rod  bailed
Heavy metal psych ward stupor is a fate worse than death he said.
Apparently Lithium is a heavy metal.
He had a heavy metal in his veins and he didn't like it.

They pumped the metal into his blood and it fused with his brain,
He couldn't catch airplanes. He said the stuff set off the security alarms...
I still don't know if that's actually true or if he imagined the alarms. Either way he developed an elaborate series of counter moves to avoid known danger spots...
Rod reckoned he had some very strange ideas in his head which he learned to isolate from what he was sure were his actual thoughts (I don't know how he managed to do that but he prayed a lot.)

Would I recognize the difference between rational thoughts and some hallucination caused by a combination of naturally occurring chemicals in the brain mixed with the highly toxic concoction used de- crazy a mad man?

Anyway Rod decided the stuff was killing him, so, Rod bolted. He travelled by land with the Lithium fog closing on him.
Paranoid withdrawal, fuel stop munchies no grog, no ganja joints or fags... no paracetamol no coffee maybe not even any chocolate! Rod did hard core detox on the road! He alighted (Southern Town) on a wing and a prayer and by the gift of God's grace he arrived in the north of the country alive and unscathed.

Rod was mad! Stone cold sober mad, mad from the cure and mad from the disease. I don't think you can't puke that stuff out and enema's won't help either... I wondered if it actually leaves at all... does it rip out chunks of your mind when it goes?

Rod threw himself to the mercy of the God of drunks and mad men and he survived...
and every day of his troubled survival and the life he salvaged he wrote a list. The list was helping him to get better. It was a special list, not of events or activities or things to do or things to get... It was a Gratitude List!
Rod took the list very seriously. One day when we were both living at the Rainforest retreat he showed me his list. His list was in a thick book and it's pages were full! His list kept him sane. Every day of his recovery he added one new thing to his gratitude list!


DAVID'S GRATITUDE LIST

11/11/15

SHOWER.

It's the buildup every day I get home hot and sweaty. In my home I have a shower. I am grateful for my shower. I let the water run a few moments to get the hot water out of the pipes and soon a lovely coolish stream of water comes flowing out of the shower rose. I stand under it and let it was the sweat and grime from my body. When I step out of the shower I feel human. Having a shower with running water is a blessing. I am grateful.

Gratitude list

After a much needed conversation with some equally baffled individuals yesterday we staggered across the subject of gratitude. That wonderful attitude that is able to keep self centered obsessions and depression at bay.

So the subject is raised and I feel this awful retching inside... I don't want to talk about Gratitude! I want to talk about tearing down empires and smashing through illusions and stepping on users... The conversation continued and for the first time in longer than I can remember I couldn't think of anything I felt grateful for... (I am in a Bad way!) I kept my mouth shut fearing I might burst into profanity...

Anyway by the time I went to bed last night I couldn't help feeling grateful for all kinds of things. On my way to work my mind started drifting back to my youth and childhood. I noticed a clumsy kid trudging along to school, head down he stumbled over a fallen branch on the footpath. Then I remembered how much I hated School! I really hated it! I remembered how I felt belittled, humiliated, scared, stupid, clumsy, unwanted....
Then an amazing thing happened, I was filled with gratitude!

I looked straight at that kid as I rode along beside him. I felt sorrow for him (Hey maybe he likes school! It doesn't really matter, in this story he's only a projection of myself at that age!)

GRATITUDE LIST

1. Today, All day, I was grateful that I am not studying and I don't have to go to school! Ha! I am 42 years old and still overjoyed by the prospect of not having to go to school! Having returned to study as a mature age student and even without all that teenaged angst I am now more certain than ever. I don't like school!
2. I am also grateful that I'm not a whale!

Thank you.