Quitter

So, just this morning I posted on Facebook that I wish I had a job where I had to write something new every day. I still feel that way, but I wish I didn't have to do it at 10:30 at night. The only downside to having a really full life is that my life is really full. I haven't stopped all day. So now I'm here trying to thing of some way to entertain you and I've gotta tell you – I got nothin'.

But you know what I do have. Something I wrote when I was high about writing every day. I haven't posted anything from back then in a while and I think y'all might find it amusing to see how different my brain was back on Halloween 2006 (which is when this was written). Technically it's not a repost because it never made it to the blog. Not because I didn't think it was any good (I actually CTM'd – chuckled to myself – a couple of times while reading it just now); it never made it to the blog because I never finished it. In fact, it just stops. And I'm not going to add anything. So when you get to the end, well that's the end. Enjoy.

Bitch!

Tonight, I'm going to give you a taste of what my days sounded like at the end of August and the beginning of September in 2007. You may think I'm cheating because there won't be a whole lot of writing involved, but after two very long days in a row (one awesome, one frustrating), this is all I've got tonight. And it's a blog post I've wanted to write for a long time.

Always a Place

I hardly know what to say. I know that tonight I'm going to sleep sober for the 1827th night in a row; I also know that's a friggin' miracle. Oh, and I know I didn't come close to doing this myself. ADD alert – I just noticed that my sobriety date is 8-27 and today is the 1827th day. Cool, huh?

I must have cried a half dozen times today. Thank god I'm not one of those queens that wears makeup. I would have looked all Tammy Fay Baker and shit – because a couple of them were on the verge of being ugly cries. But in a good way. I'm really overwhelmed with gratitude by this. I think I'm supposed to be saying things like, “It's just another day.” And “We all only have today.” But what I feel like, “CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT?? I'M FIVE!”

August 26, 2007

I’m in San Francisco this weekend, for the very first time sober. Lots of strange things happened whenever I was here back in the day. One time I smoked and drank so much on the first day here I lost my voice for the rest of the weekend. That was an interesting visit. So this trip is not really like any of the ones before.

What did happen tonight was I ended up at a meeting in a room that was strikingly similar to the studio apartment I was staying in the last time I used crystal meth, five years ago this weekend. I was sitting there tonight looking around as the memory of that last night came back vividly – not in a bad way though. In fact, I was really grateful to be having the flashback (which was good because the topic of the meeting was gratitude).

2012 US Open -- Women's Preview

As I was making the video to go with this post, I realized that after this tournament Kim Clijsters will be gone. I know she retired once before, but I'm pretty sure it's for real and forever this time. She made the statement that she her body won't let her play the way she wants to play anymore. I feel ya girl! Getting old sucks and she plays a game almost as physical as Rafael Nadal.

With Kim retiring and Venus Williams only good for two or three wins a tournament now, I'm down to rooting for Maria Sharapova and hoping Sabine Lisicki can learn how play on another surface besides grass. Honestly, it's pretty depressing. But we still have one more chance – however slim – to see Kim and Jada holding up the US Open trophy, so let's get on with it.

2012 US Open -- Men's Preview

The Olympics sure did crowd up the schedule. Usually by the time the US Open rolls around it seems like Wimbledon was ages ago. Thanks to the fact that they essentially played it twice this summer, it seems like it was just yesterday. Anyone who showed up to the blog today looking for more wacky adventures of psquared will have to wait until Saturday for that to resume. Men's draw analysis tonight, women's tomorrow.

I'm not as excited about the Open as I usually am. I'm not sure if it's because how quickly it seems to have gotten here or what. But on we go anyway. I'll try to make it as “me” as always. You'll notice that the player's home country is in parentheses. There is no reason for that except that when I copied and pasted the list, that's how I got it. I listed all 32 seeds, but I'm sure you'll figure out quickly who I'm not impressed by.

ReTox

When I got out of detox (see The Crucible, Part III – Reality Check for the story story of how I got there -- strangely enough, I still have never written the story of what happened there), I was high again within 24-36 hours. I knew I needed to get sober (for a while), but I also knew that there was no way it was going to happen without something way more structured than a four-day stint in detox. I was still in Philly that first day, so I went downtown to meet with some counselor or something. I don't really remember the details, but there was some place the people at the detox hospital told me I had to go within 24 hours of getting out of detox.

Doctor Smiley Surferdude

After almost 1500 words last night, how about a shorty tonight. I've had a ridiculous headache all night and apparently the cortisone shot that the doctor gave me in my elbow yesterday caused something called cortisone flare. We'll get to that in a moment or two.

First off, friggin' ADD strikes again. I had this whole plan laid out that I would wait until the middle of September to go to the doctor because I knew when I went I was going to have to stop working out for at least a couple of weeks (turns out it's longer). I have a couple of trips coming up and being a gay man, I certainly didn't want to have to stop working out until after all my gay travel was done.

COPS! Part 3

The one nice thing about writing every day is that it's easier to just write the Part 3 to a blog post trilogy the day after Part 2 instead of waiting three months like I did between parts 1 and 2. This was my final attempt to “turn myself in”.

[About the song: I always thought it was more than coincidental that Addicted was on the album

 she released when my drug use was escalating and Sober was on the album 

she released the summer I got sober. But it was ironic that I used to play this song over and over 

on my iPod and not have any idea I could have written it.]

COPS! Part 2

Reminder: sentences in italics are the voices.

OMG! I finally remembered the third cops story. In fact, the third story is actually the second incident chronologically so I'm going to tell that one first.

This happened the day before the voices chased me out of NYC to Philadelphia. I'm not going to tell the story of that whole saga, just what happened toward the end. If I ever decide to write that whole post, this saga will be featured prominently near the end.

What Was I Just Doing?

Well, it took this long but we've finally come to the night where I just don't have anything to say or any excuse to not say it. What does that even mean? In other words, I have no good reason to not write a blog post tonight (like being at Disneyland for 16 hours) but really I have very little to say.

That's not completely true. There are some things that I could probably write about if I wanted to stay up for two more hours and really work on something. But I'm exhausted, it's been a pretty long day and I have a ridiculous headache. So, staying up until two in the morning isn't really an option right now.

Psquared Can't Be Still

Over the last couple years (if you've read my blog that long) you've probably learned a lot about me. I guess the first thing is that I'm willing to reveal a lot (not all) about myself pretty easily. But a couple other things you might know about me by now are that I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) that is more than just a little bit difficult for me to manage and that I just forgot what the second thing was. Hold on. I'll read the first two sentences and it will come to me. Oh, right. I have a Facebook obsession. Come to think of it, you might only know that if you're my friend on Facebook. Now I'm not completely sure I've ever made that clear on my blog. Whatever. Let's move on.

PvD, PvD, PvD!!

Tonight's post is all about the song. Five years ago tomorrow marks the infamous “PvD in Central Park” debacle. If you read my blog regularly, you know the story of what happened when I decided to go to the Paul van Dyk concert in Central Park in August, 2007. If you're new to the blog or just don't remember, you can read about it here: Phree or here: Saturday in the Park. Yep, that's right. There are two separate blog posts about it (August 26, 2010 and August 14, 2011). That's the awesome part of having ADD. I just keep doing things over and over because I don't remember I've already done them.

It Takes a Village, Part Two

Last night I wrote about my first two sponsors. Tonight, as promised, I'll tell you about the other three. It's amazing (and a little magical) to me how incredibly different all of the guys are and still each of them was exactly what I needed at that point in time.

When B told me he was moving, I became pretty frustrated. I was feeling like the universe was really trying to make my recovery difficult. In three months' time, I had lost two sponsors and had a potential sponsor snatched away before I even got the chance to ask him. Clearly, I just wasn't supposed to have a sponsor. This is the way addicts think. Oh, it's hard. I must not be supposed to do it. And they was my outlook on life for all the years before I got sober. I had this notion that the easiest thing was always the thing that was “meant to be”.

Right Back At Ya Makayla

I saw this picture at the zoo over the weekend and the first thing I thought was, "He looks just like Makayla." It wasn't till I got home that I realized his name was Silver. How awesome is that?

Silver appears as unimpressed with Makaya as she was with Silver.

This doesn't count as today's post. I just wanted to put it on my blog.

It Takes a Village, Part One

I was planning on writing this post later in the month, but since I gave my sponsor his 15-year cake tonight, I think it's appropriate to do it tonight. In the just under five years I've been sober, I've actually had five sponsors. I know people who have had the same sponsor for eight, nine, ten years. I also know people who have gone through sponsors like Kleenex. I guess I'm somewhere in between. But I feel really blessed to have had (and still have) each of these relationships. So, tonight is dedicated to thanking them and letting you know a little bit about what each one of them gave me. In the interest of anonymity (and because I don't feel like coming up with five suitable pseudonyms), I'm just going to call them by their first initials (with a number to distinguish between the three Cs) – C1, B, C2, C3 and T.

Illogic Model

You would think that if you heard voices all the time, in the most impossible places and situations, your brain would figure out that it was a delusion and you'd be able to move on from it. Wouldn't you? Somehow that wasn't my experience with drug-induced auditory hallucinations. The more far-fetched they became, the more I found shreds of logic to convince me they were real.

Moments of Clarity

People in recovery often talk about their moment of clarity – that moment when they knew it was over and they couldn't keep going on the way they were going. I had one final moment of clarity the morning of August 27, 2007 and it was pretty simple, almost mundane. It was something along the lines of “OK. If this wasn't fun on Sunday night, how the hell is it ever going to be fun on Monday morning.” And with that, I took my stuff and headed off to my outpatient program to really start trying to be sober.

But that was just the final moment. I had several other moments along the way – both small and large – that culminated in that moment. And they were things that may or may not seem like they would have been significant, but I held on to them. And I continued to think about them as I spiraled downward. These moments I believe were the universe laying the groundwork for what was to come. The way I always describe it in meetings is, “God speaks to us where we are, in the language we understand.”

I'll Remember

Sorry about yesterday. We left for Disneyland at 6:30 am and when we got back at 11:30 pm there was just no way that anything was getting written. I drove the last 50 miles home at 90 miles an hour. I figured if I was going to fall asleep at the wheel it didn't matter whether I was going 65 or 90, so I might as well gamble on making it home before I nodded off and killed us both. Don't get me wrong. I don't have a death wish or a disregard for my life; I was just seriously exhausted from running around two theme parks for 12 straight hours and didn't have any real choice except to do everything in my power to get us from Anaheim to San Diego in one piece. Mission accomplished. Anyway, what it means is that I won't be 31 for 31 this month. There are other obstacles coming up along the way – trip to San Francisco, my five-year birthday (which I'm planning on celebrating in LA), the sober round up I'm on the committee for – but I'm going to do my best to be 30 for 31 at the end of the month. The good news is that the old me would have just given up because I wasn't perfect. Now I realize that the real victory is not letting the setback completely derail me. So on we go.

The Tale of The Chocolate Party

The next couple days are going to be shorties because I have a friend here from out of town and I gotta get up at 5 am to go to Disneyland.

One of the things I used to like to do before meth was have parties. None of the other drugs really ever interfered with that. In fact, pot and ecstasy often facilitated the process. I remember getting stoned with one of my best friends in Philly (well, we did that every day so it's kind of hard to forget) and going to see the movie Chocolat. If you are not a recovering drug addict, I highly recommend seeing Chocolat stoned. It was awesome.

Spanglish

How about one more short post about Schmoo? What the hell? We were together two-and-a-half years and good or bad, every day was interesting. The ingredients were just too perfect to not create masterpiece after masterpiece. What have we got here? Two giant egos on two smart guys who both think they're never wrong (and even when they know they're wrong will try to convince you that they're not). Add Schmoo's absurd storytelling ability – every story had three completely separate arcs that would all dovetail together like a Seinfeld episode just at the point where I was screaming, “What the fuck are you talking about?!” Stir in his impeccable timing with tossing out some fractured idiom or syntactically bizarre gem right in the middle of a vicious screaming match. Then top with literally pounds of methamphetamine.

Context

I saw a link to a Huffington Post article today that is about a letter a man sent to his gay son, “disowning” him. I feel like I need to add a little context to this. It’s a shame that hurtful things get said and even worse when they get put into writing, but to take a snapshot of one moment in time and broadcast it can distort reality. And every day when I open my internet browser I see more and more people distorting reality, either for personal gain or to promote their cause or their beliefs or their politics. ENOUGH!

I came out to my parents in 1990, about a week before my 26th birthday. To say it was traumatic for me understates it along the lines of “getting run over by a train is painful”. I literally pissed myself in my sleep the morning I was going to tell them.

Drinking Like a Gentleman*

When I first got sober, I was certain that the only substance I ever abused was crystal meth. Even when I finally started listening to the counselors in my outpatient program and agreed to stop all of it – the beer, the pot, the pills – I was only doing it to placate them. In those early months, I vowed that one day I would drink again because I had no problem with alcohol. Maybe I would smoke pot occasionally as well, because again, I had that under control.

It's a Wonderful Life

I have to take a little break from “what I was like” tonight. See, I'm exhausted. But it's the beautiful kind of exhausted that comes from having a full and wonderful life. So, I just want to write a little bit about this weekend and how my life is wonderful.

Schmoopie

I covered this way back in December 2009 in the post Yours Truly?, but since it's unlikely that all the same people still read my blog (and because of what I'm about to write about this exact subject), it bears an updating. When you write about things that happened to you years ago – especially when you were high for many of the years in question – there's always a certain degree of how you remember it involved. That would be true for anyone I think. For me, in addition to that, there is the question of how I remember it today. There are certain things that I've written about on this blog that I might remember differently if I were writing about them today. And there are things that I'm going to write about this month that I almost certainly would have recounted drastically differently in the first couple years of my sobriety. And then there is just the variable of my mood when I'm writing. When times are good and I'm feeling grateful, my memories of how things occurred and what they meant take a more upbeat and hopeful tone than when I'm barely dragging my ass out of bed and struggling to get through the day.

Don't Stop Me Now (or Ever)

Fortunately for me, my idea of writing every day just means that I post it on my blog before I go to bed. Good thing, because there's little chance this will be written and posted before midnight tonight (**actually, I'm posting this at 11:50 pm so I guess I made it). It's only day three and I'm already fighting myself to actually sit here and type words. Plus, I wasn't all that pleased with yesterday's post and now I'm certain I'll never write anything good ever again.

I'm also going to do it a little backward tonight. Instead of picking the song and then writing about the memory or ideas it invokes, I'm choosing my topic first and with any luck I'll find a suitable song to attach to it by the end of the post. The reason for that is I have a list of almost 30 songs selected for this month (almost 30 because I figured more would come to me during the month) and not one of them struck my fancy tonight.

Charlie's K-ngels

So, just to give you an idea of what to expect as we go through the month, I plan on using an instruction from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous as my guide here. In the chapter How It Works it directs us to tell our story in a particular manner: What we were like, what happened and what we are like now. So that's my loose outline for my posts this month. Some posts may not have anything to do with my addiction and recovery, but for the ones that do you'll be seeing posts about those things that happened before about 2006 in the first third of the month, things that happened from mid-2006 to mid-2008 in the second third of the month and then things that have happened since 2008 in the final third. As I said, that's a loose outline. I may realize that I have more to say about one portion of my life than another and I'll adjust accordingly. But for the next ten days(ish), you'll be reading about the pre-terrifying times.

When It Was Good...

About the songs: The songs I'm choosing for these posts aren't for entertainment or enjoyment really. You may enjoy some of them. But they are here for context. Good, bad or downright dreadful, some songs got their hooks in me by evoking powerful memories or by bringing to mind people or places that I love (or am terrified by). Those are the songs I'm using this month. You don't have to play the videos, but I think the posts might come to life a little more if you play the song in the background while you read. Enjoy!

There's something that I've heard a few people say in 12-step meetings that really rings true for me. “If you think my problems sound bad, wait until I tell you about my solutions.” That about sums up my entire life before I got sober. It is certainly true that I've encountered some difficult problems in my life. It's even more true that I made just about every one of them worse with my brilliant plans on how to solve them.