2-28-21: I was going to lead with a clever quote from Casino Royal about loyalty being more important than money (which just happened to be playing at my gym, which allowed me to practice one of my more positive addictive habits in place of more destructive ones), but then everything changed. I may appear to be the physical manifestation of health and moderation (with my freaking amazing 45-year-old washboard-ripped torso), but looks can be deceiving, something to which my abused (internal, actual) stomach could testify, if it could speak in words to you instead of pain signals to my nervous system perceptible only to me.
I’ve tried to be honest with myself and others more than most for most of my life, and it never felt quite right admitting to be a common alcoholic at the hundreds of AA meetings I attended before actually making the singular decision never to drink again. I knew I had a problem, and I knew alcohol was a part of it, but I always considered it to be more of a symptom of more serious issues than the issue itself. And I was right. It just took me twenty years to figure out what it was, and a few more to do something about it.
“Because my name is Jim, and I’m an addict, not an alcoholic.” The following is an abbreviated list of my past and current addictions in order to prove my underlining point.
- Comic books, baseball cards, video games (overcome before college)
- Alcohol (2000 through 2020)
- Pot (mental dependency, 2015 through 2021)
- Self-loathing, regret, rage (my earliest memories through 2020…still pop up occasionally)
- Gluttony and sloth—my entire life, all I’ve got left, and I fell off the wagon today big time!
This morning was difficult, but I persevered through some unexpected technical difficulties relating to yet another auto-pay bill finally reaching its tipping point, and denied one too many times from my once primary credit card that was canceled on me. The card itself was in good standing, but one of my many creditors must have a bit more sway than the rest and got it canceled on me. That was a super-sized-serious blow to my ego a few months ago when it happened. And it took all of my willpower and Zen Bible Study to not let the old wounds of my recent past cloud my ability to deal with them today. And yes, it was a struggle but, by remaining calm, I got it all taken care of before leaving for my regular 11 AM AA meeting. But this was my first Sunday meeting in months, since I had been up north for two months all by myself, and attended the 2 PM meeting last Sunday that led to bowling so, combined with my stressful morning and months away, of course I forgot that Sunday was the only day of the week when they so cruelly changed the time to 10 AM. And I wasn’t alone. The table leader even called attention to the fact that three people arrived for the nonexistent 11 AM meeting. But as on edge as I already was, as much as I needed that meeting more this morning than usual, it was the fact that I was so utterly and completely ignored, as if I were a ghost able only to witness the events around me with no ability to be scene or interact with them. Once again, I was treated in the opposite way I would have treated anyone else in my situation. Once again, I expected others to treat me in the way I have and would treat them. And once again I was let down by a group of people who had seen me twenty times more often than anyone else in my life beyond my roommates.
Already dancing with depression, already dealing with a dreadful dose of too many unexpected things going wrong piled on time of the big wrongs, and now the traumatic memory of why I felt forced out of my old church after a dozen dedicated years of service and building relationships reawakened by the dead-eyed dolts I thought—if not actual friends—at least polite enough not to treat me like an outsider after all the meeting we’d attended together? With “home group support” like that, it’s a damn miracle that I don’t need their support to not drink, because they’ve done more to make me want to drink than obtain.
And yes, I know I’m accusing everyone and everything else for my problems and shortcomings. I’m well aware how it sounds like I’m complaining, but there is a fine line between venting and complaining, and I’m walking it. But if I can’t express how I feel in my own freaking blog, where can I? And if you didn’t know how I felt, you wouldn’t have the context to understand what came next.
No, I was not tempted to drink. But dear lord did I want to smoke so much pot so badly. And the only reason I didn’t was because of that stupid drug test I’m forced to take in a few weeks to get my license back. And the fact that I’ve been sober over a year and pot had nothing to do with my original offense just made me that much angrier at the injustice of it all. So, what else could I do but work my already punished muscles—screaming for mercy for days for a reprieve of even more lactic acid buildup—then eat myself into a food coma in front of the TV for hours on end. Because even though exercise is good for you, and the food I ate was healthier than you’d understand even if I listed it for you, a true addict can take even healthy habits to such an extreme as to turn them into another form of abuse.
It was like getting the phone call from my Bramble Bunny, my ex-fiancée, the love of my life, back in 2015, confirming our worst fears; that our best friend had finally successfully killed himself. And when I started drinking that night, I didn’t just drink to escape, I drank to punish myself. I didn’t consciously want to die, nor did I feel any responsibility for his death (long story, but I’d done more to save then almost anyone) but I don’t think I would have cared if I did. And I drank and drank I did and when I couldn’t drink any more, I drank some more. And when she came over the next day to check on me (as she was with the family all night), she was terrified she had lost the two most important men in her life back-to-back.
But I no longer drink, and I couldn’t smoke pot, and I still don’t have any mushrooms, so food was my only escape. The reason I bring up the worst night of my life and a really bad day is not to directly compare the two in terms of cataclysmic devastation, but only in terms of my understanding my addictive coping mechanisms. The scope was miniscule, but the thought process was identical. Because after eating a very large healthy meal, full to the point of discomfort, I knew I should have stopped eating, and I also knew I wasn’t going to stop. So, I ate more and more until my stomach really started to hurt. I knew I was on the verge of vomiting from food gluttony the same way an alcoholic knows the same from booze. I waited a while, letting my body deal with the only abusive coping method left to me, knowing that I should go for a walk on this unseasonably warm winter day. I knew the walk would make me feel better. And then I started to eat even more just like I kept drinking even more back then. Because I’m an addict, because food was my only option, and because (not even subconsciously, because I was fully aware of it both times) I wanted to punish myself for failing my best friend then just like I did myself today.
Why punish myself when I’ve come so far and achieved so much after enduring so much suffering and coming out the other side better for it? Because I felt—and still do, as I rage type just like the bad old days—that all of my “progress” was a delusion. If it was real progress, why did I succumb to feeling so bad in the first place? And why did feeling so bad make me punish myself in such a self-aware, self-abusive manner?
The good news is that I think I have an answer. The bad? I’ve typed too much today already, it’s almost dark, I’m ready for that overdue walk, and I’m still a bit too disgusted with myself to think clearly enough to write well enough to even keep my own attention, let alone some theoretical future reader I still feel I need to validate my recovery to. (HA, like I have readers😊)
-Zen-
You want to know the only thing that was able to break my trance of self-pity, and inspired me to at least write my feelings rather than continue to eat them until I puked up enough nutrition to feed a pig for a week? My addiction to finding symbolic references directed to me personally from God. (And if you didn’t think I was crazy before…wait, admitting to you I was “crazy” was one of the first things I did, so what am I worried about? And when one worries, one suffers twiceJ)
In the fantastic life-lesson-laden Showtime show finally available on Amazon, Billions, a main character was ambushed with exactly 127 lawsuits. Not 126, not 128, but precisely 127. When I turned it off, I noticed the show was rated 27xx times. The movie at the gym starred 007, and this just happens to be page 7 of the Word document I use to type this blog in before cutting and pasting it. I know what you’re thinking, “if you look for patterns closely enough, anyone can eventually find anything.” Yeah, I know all of that. But this goes so far beyond statistical improbability, it becomes statistical impossibility. And it goes so, so much deeper than just this. And even if it is all in my head, so what? If I feel like God speaks to me in numbers, like 7, 17, 227, and 527, so what? All I want to do is to help people and help myself; to love people, God, and myself. I want only to replace my own bad habits and addictions with good ones and do the same for you.
If nothing else, I’m admitting not just how far I’ve come, but how far I still need to go. God helps those who help themselves, and I want to help myself by helping you. I think I’m ready for that walk now.
My Ever-Lurking Dark Rage Has Returned; but This Time is Different
3-2-21: Like a recurring comet—predictable, observable, inevitable—the depression side of my bipolar disorder has arrived. I’ve sensed it for some time. My ability to sleep over seven hours a night is the first sign. The increasing difficulty and perceived near-insurmountable nature of my tasks and chores is the next phase. Finally, the instantaneous rage—quivering muscles, tendons taught—when things do not go fairly or according to plan, becomes uncontainable.
I was going to write about how watching 2010’s fantastic Shutter Island, my new gym’s “movie of the day” in the theatre cardio room (I love how I can match the unpredictable nature of directly to my own personal life), for the third time, affected me in a way it never had before. Without spoilers, the main character is tasked with solving a case at an asylum for the criminally insane and, shale we say, things do not go according to plan. But this time I watched it with the fragile mindset of someone accepting the reality that he will be clinically depressed for the next unknown period of time, and with bipolar disorder for the rest of his life. And I figured out a way to “hack” my own brain. But at what cost?
I can’t imagine what it must be like to suffer from more serious mental disorders, the kinds that leave you on the streets or get you locked up and/or drugged out of your mind, just as you can’t really imagine what people like me go through but, unlike studying it in school or reading books or watching videos, this lesson takes place in real time and is interactive. And you just may learn more about functional nutrition than you ever thought possible as a fun side effect. Or you’ll read it for the eventual nutrition advice, and learn about bipolar disorder. Either way, you’ll learn, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and I’m self-aware enough to know that none of that will likely happen because that would require an audience of readers, which I may never attract in the first place. See, I’m not delusional about my success, just…well…my entire future!
Watching that movie from my new mentally ill perspective, I was theoretically able to identify with the delusional reality some characters created for themselves as unconscious coping mechanisms in a way I wasn’t before. They say once someone is labeled crazy, nothing they say can be believed, even if it was a bad diagnosis to begin with. They also say (in AA as well) that one can’t hope to cure oneself with the crazy or alcoholic mind, because the mind is the problem to begin with. While it took me twenty years, I believe I did “cure” myself of alcohol abuse, and it took a few incredibly brutal years to come to grips with identifying, accepting, and dealing with my bipolar disorder, and I think I did that to. I managed to cap the highs and raise the bar on the lows.
Most importantly, when a healthy person catches a cold, she never thinks she will have that cold for the rest of her life. It sucks having a painfully soar throat and plugged up nose and all that, but whether it takes a few days or a few days longer than that, she will get well again (as long as it’s just a cold). But during that cold, all she can do is manage the symptoms as best she can, hope her health improves soon and, when it does, feel grateful for the reminder of how great good health feels.
The same can be said for depression in terms of bipolar disorder. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, and there are positive habits I can commit to every day that will mitigate the bursts of rage and hopelessness, but no matter how terrible it feels, I know with an absolute certainty—as long as I don’t get run over on my bike ride today and perish— “this too shall pass.”
Even as I write these encouraging words to myself, constantly reminding myself of what I know—what you know—what is known, I would have been unable to write them yesterday, especially after the shit I went through. And if I had allowed myself to write, you would not have wanted to read it. And I would have written it with trembling fingers, screaming obscenities for every typo. And I doubt it would have made me feel better. What would have been accomplished?
But I’ll tell you what I did accomplish yesterday.
- Attended AA meeting
- Cardio at the gym
- With Herculean effort and bitterness in my heart, got my two roommates and my roommate’s brother to get letters required by the state to attempt to regain my driver’s license notarized.
- I did not drink alcohol, smoke pot, or even eat myself sick like the day before (still too much though)
- I still recorded my “Zen Bible Study”
- I still prayed
- I still attempted to meditate, although it was cut short because my roommate’s unbelievably deleterious snoring (he needs a machine, and I can’t convince him) drove me into yet another state of rage, and I slammed my door so hard I almost broke it around midnight.
I felt it necessary to include that last part because I didn’t want mislead you into thinking that I was actually “healthier” than I am. I did all of the above with great effort. When I’m manic, everything is simple and/or enjoyable. But that very same action/positive habit becomes incredibly difficult during depression, it is proportionately more important to complete them. I may have failed my “27 Breaths” meditation because I only made it to 13 controlled, measured breaths before I snapped in rage, but I succeed in that I even attempted it when I absolutely did not want to. And I had no idea I was going to write about that specifically. And of course, I cold have lied. But lying about stuff like that is like cheating on your golf score when you’re playing by yourself. I mean, come on, bro!
The point I forgot to make about the movie is how certain I am of my own future success in business, romance, everything, most of the time, how doubtful I am about it when I’m depressed, and what absolute reality of my situation really is. I often think and say that I “think about everything all of the time.” I used to think just as much, but most of it was lamenting regrets and feeling sorry for myself and wishing almost everything in the world wasn’t so wrong and how I would fix it if given the chance, but how I’ll never have the chance because I could never figure out how to harness my brain’s abilities to actually improve my own life, rather than make myself that much more miserable. But once I finally gave up my regrets and accepted God into my heart on 5-27, all of that changed.
When I “think about everything all of the time” these days, I’m actually planning out realistic goals for my future and detailed plans on how to achieve them. But depression distorts all of that to such a degree that all I can think about is the statistically probability of achieving even a fraction of my newfound life’s purpose, verses my mind playing a new survival trick of convincing me of how great things can be if I just…yet never actually do. The same way I completely repressed sexual abuse when I was four and suffering from erectile disfunction for the next twenty years even though there was nothing biologically wrong with me. Or repressing the fact that I’m “on the spectrum” for even longer, wasting so much of my mental bandwidth that I suppressed my own intellectual potential like a computer with a background virus wasting half it’s processing power. Or residing in an asylum, yet believing one was just going about one’s typical daily routine. I was “smart enough” to realize that “perception is our only true reality” as a child, long before I heard the concept from anyone else. But I was also “smart enough” to hide parts of actual reality from myself for decades. So, what is the truth? What is actual reality? Reality is what we make of it!
But guess what? I can almost accept that. Because, unlike the delusional characters in the movie, I am 100% non-violent, I give compliments and make strangers laugh every day I leave my house and, even if I fail to achieve my most outlandishly lofty pursuits, as least I’m happier than I used to be. But that’s absolute worst-case scenario. And once again, I’ve written too much.
I have redefined the notion of success in my life to match my condition. My personal standards are stratospherically high when I’m manic, and just as low when I am just as low. And anything short of that would just be…crazy.