Booze In The News

With the World Series before us (alas, no Yankees), this morning’s New York Times reports that Major League Baseball has made what I would consider to be a significant step toward cracking down on the unnecessary glamorization of alcoholic debauchery.  Specifically, victory celebrations must not only limit Champagne, but also offer a non-alcoholic version.  Beer and other types of alcoholic drinks are banned and teams are (the horror!) no allowed to take drinks onto the field.

Texas ranger teammates of Josh Hamilton, their most valuable player contender, have elected to douse the slugger with soft drinks instead of Champagne.  This out of respect for Mr. Hamilton’s sobriety following a past of drug and alcohol abuse.  Say what you will (as the other players have, it seems, kept a stash of the hard stuff aside for their own separate celebration), but I think this is pretty darned nice of them.

It’s too bad that, according to Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, baseball has always had its share of men “who are serious alcoholics.”    Ken Burns, the historian and documentary filmmaker adds, “From the earliest days, alcohol abuse was a huge destructive force” in the game.

It’s very difficult to change attitudes and perhaps it’s as hard in sports as anywhere else.  But showing respect for a recovering alcoholic like Josh Hamilton, however reluctant or even disingenuous, is at least a base hit.

I’m Back. Him? Not So Much, I Guess.

I’m not at all certain what’s come over me the past few months.  I guess that the easiest (and, perhaps, best) answer is simply that I really got into the swing of things with my new job and all that.  Seems that in my Previous Life I had a lot of time on my hands and not much motivation or ambition to find ways to fill it.

Whatever.

I’m motivated to jump back in today on account of another “milestone” of dubious import.  It happens that today would have been the second anniversary of Program sobriety for one of my former (“ex”) sponsees.

Make no mistake about it, I am in a good place today.  I’m sober, vertical, neither in jail nor in the hospital.  I still have a sponsor as well as a sponsee who is doing very well.  Still, I remain haunted.

Here’s a reprint of my post from a year ago today.

By my reckoning today marks the one-year anniversary of a friend’s first face-to-face encounter with “recovery.” It may well mark his first anniversary of “sobriety.” You see, I don’t really know, since he suddenly shut me out a couple of months ago. In fact, it was exactly two months ago – on his ten-month anniversary – that we last spoke. Which is why I have trouble using the word “sobriety” in this context. My friend may well be free from the bottle, but from my vantage point, I can’t detect genuine sobriety.

I can’t help but believe that sober, mature people simply do not, without justification and explanation, close the door on people who care about them. It is, of course, entirely possible that I did indeed do something to prompt my friend’s choices and behaviors. I’ve racked my brain trying to figure it out and to prepare to atone, but I just can’t uncover anything and nary a clue has been forthcoming.

Intellectually, I can completely sympathize with my friend. Maybe the Program isn’t for him, maybe sobriety isn’t for him, maybe he doesn’t even have a drinking problem. Whatever the case, it’s likely that — at the very least — I symbolize something that he seems to need to forget or avoid. Perhaps it’s as simple as that.

However, try as I may to avoid self-centeredness in all this, the fact remains that I have been, well, devastated, by all this. I’ve been totally thrown off my game and rendered sporadically restless, irritable, and discontent. I know that I am a good friend and that God has a plan in this, but I don’t like it one little bit. I am hurting. It’s gotten better with time, but it hurts and hurts deeply.

For now I will accept being his friend in absentia. (Let’s pile on the Latin: perhaps even as persona non grata.) I will continue to pray for this fellow and his family, just as I will pray for the serenity, courage, and wisdom to handle my grief – and thereby remain willing and able to help others — with some small measure of grace.

East End Fun – Week of August 28

Here’s an intriguing tale from the Southampton Press (26 August 2010):

Village police arrested Ms. April M. Vickers of Riverhead, New York, at 12:44 a.m. on Sunday, 22 August.  Ms. Vickers was obstructing the flow of vehicular traffic on Miller Road (a quiet little lane, almost a cul-de-sac; not much traffic at a quarter of one in the morning) by stopping her 2008 Mercedes Benz in the middle of the road, repeatedly honking her horn and shouting obscenities.

Police further reported that Ms. Vickers told them she was missing a $100,000 yellow diamond ring that had been in a box in her purse at the time of her arrest.  Police told her that there was neither a ring or a box in her purse.  Ms. Vickers maintained — at the time, anyway — that the officer pinched it.

Ms. Vickers, age 30, who was in possession of four different New York driver’s licenses a the time, was charged with aggravated DWI.

And … reports the East Hampton Star (26 August 2010) … Victor Sojos was charged with second-degree burglary, along with other offenses, when they were summoned to an East Hampton residence on 14 August to investigate a suspected prowler.

Mr. Sojos was discovered naked in the backyard of the complainant’s house, sleeping under a child’s play set.   He was covered in feces.

An earlier search of the home revealed a pair of jeans and a baseball cap, both also covered in feces.  On top of the jeans, police found a paycheck made out to Mr. Sojos.

In a surprising twist, police reported that Mr.Sojos was, brace yourselves, “highly intoxicated.”

Where’s the Booze in the Story? – Part I

The following caught my eye while reading the paper on my way out to the East End on Friday afternoon:

According to the East Hampton Star (19 August 2010), police were called a week or so ago after a woman allegedly attacked outdoor lighting fixtures with her high-heeled shoes.  A vigilant employee at the tony Palm restaurant on tony East Hampton’s tony Main Street told police that Amy Paul of Harrison, New York, became, well, upset when she was told that she would have to wait for a table to accommodate her ever-growing party.  (The horror!)  Ms. Paul’s reservation was scheduled for 9:30, but she did not arrive until 9:55.  The party had grown to four additional people than she had made a reservation for that night.

The police report notes that Ms. Paul, a fully-grown 57 year old  woman, first ripped pages out of the hostesses’ reservation book, then took off her shoes and began breaking outdoor lightening fixtures with them.

East Hampton Village police were unable to locate Ms. Paul that evening, as she fled the scene in a white 2008 Mercedes Benz.  Police did, however, attempt to contact her through a country club in her hometown.

Persistence paid off, ultimately, and Village police were able to contact Ms. Paul’s representative who entirely addressed the unfortunate situation by suggesting that she would contact Ms. Paul’s corporate office to arrange for restitution for the damages.  It would, apparently, be like nothing untoward ever happened at all.

The representative indicated, according to the Star, that Ms. Paul was “away on a boat and did not have cellphone service.”

One Step Beyond Denial

Brave On

The soldier is convinced that a certain interval of time, capable of being indefinitely prolonged, will be allowed him before the bullet finds him, the thief before he is taken, men in general before they have to die.  That is the amulet which preserves people — and sometimes peoples — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in certain cases allows them to brave it without their actually needing to be brave.

Proust, Marcel — Remembrance of Things Past: Within a Budding Grove (1919)

My Take On It …

The amulet of what we generally refer to as “Denial” is about as powerful as any talisman or (dead) rabbit’s foot as we’re likely to find.  And it does indeed preserve us (our families, our loved ones, any number of others) until such time as it doesn’t.

If we’re lucky, however, we one day, suddenly perhaps, are struck with the realization — the conviction, really — that this folly is going to kill us if we don’t burn it to the ground at that very instant.  Then, all of sudden, we’re just plain ready to grow up.

How About One With Training Wheels?

As it turns out, according to the New York Times (8 August 2010), bicycling while intoxicated is not explicitly illegal in New York.  In Oregon, on the other hand, it seems that pedaling under the influence can result in the biker losing his license to conduct an automobile.  (Seems like some sort of legislative glitch since the BeeWii dude doesn’t need a driver’s license to hop back on the seat.  Oh well.)  Out in South Dakota, where men are men and sheep are scared, bicycling while intoxicated is expressly excluded from the drunk-driving statutes.  The ladies and gentlemen in Pierre reached the conclusion that the legal availability of unpowered conveyances (including, I guess, Razor scooters, Big Wheels, and unbroken ponies) gives the intoxicated but still clever public a number of viable options for legally striking out for the homestead.

Anyway, biking in New York is dangerous enough under the best of conditions.  Some 225 cyclists were killed in accidents in the city between 1996 and 2005.  The city health department conducted blood-alcohol tests on the no-doubt squashed and mangled, pulpy bodies of 176 of those unfortunates (Why not all of them?  Who knows?) .  Eight-four of the test were deemed valid and, of those, 18 of the dead were found to have been drinking prior to their little accidents.

I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but I think it’s safe to say that poor judgment by drunkards is not limited those holding the keys to rolling means of transport sporting combustible engines.

Dateline London – Mid-Life Promises

My Take On It …

To be more precise, I’m in the old city center of Dorking, in the verdant but now Summer-dry Surrey Hills to the south of London.  I set down at Heathrow the other morning at 7:05 and made it over this way on the M-25 in plenty of time for my old “mate’s” second wedding ceremony and celebration. 

What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that life does go on and even improve dramatically long after the age of thirty.  True friendships and true friends reach some kind of state of maturity – this long after classmates and roommates and drinking buddies have been forgotten and you’ve both moved on (or not, in some cases).  It’s seemingly impossible to predict which early friendships will withstand the test of time.  In general, I’m in favor of shooting the dogs early and clearing one’s life of those folks who are either unhelpful or, worse, dangerous in one way or another, but I’m not convinced that twenty-somethings are in any condition to make educated, rational decisions in this regard, so you’ve got to be careful before pulling the trigger at any moment prior to independently-verified emotional maturity.  

Anyhow, Lance is now once again a married man.  (He has also supplemented his family of two nearly-grown daughters from the first marriage with a nearly-grown step-daughter and a toddler and an infant which pre-dated but did not precipitate this union; my buddy is arguably insane.)

The ceremony was touching and solemn in a fashion that reflected it’s divine recognition by a God with a healthy sense of humor.  The reception that followed in the garden and then moved to the casually elegant tent (pitched in the broad horse yard of the couple’s country lodge).  There were toasts by the best man, the brother of the groom, the brother of the bride, the father of the groom and, lastly, the groom himself.  All the men welled up and, with a trace of embarrassment or shame, cried real live tears.

In my experience this just never happened at all those weddings I attended in my twenties and even in my thirties.  (I will cop to having been socially lubricated at those earlier weddings but, still, it was invariably the male relatives of the bride who shed tears in those hotel ballrooms, country clubs and American Legion halls.  Relatives of the groom were just thrilled to have the guy reporting to some other authority and finally moving out of the basement.  The groom was generally just shell shocked and, if anything, sporting a shit-eating grin – certain that his astonishing coolness had delivered him into a world of milk, honey and consensual sex on demand.)

Well, I think that Lance in love – adult, mature, gentlemanly, thoughtful love.  This kind of love is firmly rooted in friendship and in reality and hard-earned experience.  In his toast to his new wife he explained how the last twenty years or so had seen him first succeed on many fronts and then how – somehow – he had lost his way and reluctantly (and not without a fight) surrendered to an inner dissatisfaction and malaise and gained a willingness to say, “It’s not what I had in mind, but this is as good as it’s going to get.”  He had been a knight and dashed hopes rendered him a footman.

In Lance’s case, a good woman restored his hope and his passion.  Even prior to marriage, they started building a life together.  They brought a neglected farmstead back to life.  He resurrected his joy in cycling and shooting and laughing.  He didn’t mention it but I’ll lay odds on the probability that Lance’s ever-deepening maturity and adjusted perspective will serve him well in the event that his important financial position up the motorway in the City of London should somehow evaporate or some other serious disappointment rears its ugly head.  That is a gift that will never be presented to a resident of Guyland.

Following a late night on the farm, capped off by a round trip drive to Heathrow to deliver my brother and his wife in order that they might make a just-past-dawn flight home to Hamburg, I woke this morning a quarter past ten.  I assumed I would be up with the chickens, but a light drizzle kept the sun from doing its duty.

I splashed some water on my face and dashed off to a British support group meeting.  I circled the targeted church, quite confused, several times (keeping always, miraculously, to the left side of the road and maintaining decent composure on the roundabouts), wandered around the medieval structures for a while and, to my great relief, found the meeting.  I was a bit late but the meeting was touted to be an hour and a half meeting (typical here, I’m told), so that was okay.

The meeting was moving and emotional, no doubt at least in part on account of the thoughts and feeling that coursed through me yesterday.  (More about the meeting itself in a later note, perhaps.)  The meeting ended with a reading of The Ninth Step Promises.  Amongst those Promises:  We will lose interest in selfish things … Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.”

Once again, perfect.  Just perfect.  But that Promise will not be fulfilled in Guyland.

Trust me on this one.

Yours for the Asking

Grace

Any recovering alcoholic who has found the way to sobriety can help lead a fellow sufferer toward relief from this hopeless condition, just as [my friend] Gianna led me.  But attempting to explain to someone who has never been exposed to alcoholism how recovery could possibly work seems only slightly less difficult than trying to convince an alcoholic in denial that death, slow or fast, is around the corner.  Many courageous thinkers have tried — doctors, therapists, sober alcoholics — and yet, only a person who has experienced grace can understand how a destroyed life can be turned around.

Jones, Kaylie  –  Lies My Mother Never Told Me (2009)

My Take On It …

A fellow I met a couple of months ago is today celebrating the completion of his first year of active undrunkenness.  This, too, is an amazing thing and something that only recovering alcoholics can truly understand.  Cheesesteak Jim is a walking, talking, functioning miracle.  Grace happening and then evolving into a full-grown miracle is really the only explanation.  Cheesesteak and innumerable other guys (and gals) just exactly like him who have — against all odds — hit the one year mark and beyond gave up hoping for miracles and came to rely on them.

I heard from another drunk who is commemorating her 34th year of sobriety today (and here I choose the word sobriety purposely since I am going to assume that these few 24s under her belt quite likely render her at least somewhat sober rather than merely undrunk).  What an unbelievable achievement.  How can a person who once depended on the solace of alcohol (whether a little dependence or a lot doesn’t matter in the least, nor does quantity) suddenly become capable of doing without his or her dear friend for 34 years?

Both the “oldtimer” (Beth didn’t look particularly old; I guess she put the plug in the jug when she was in middle school) and Cheesesteak are appropriate role models for the newcomer.  Neither is more important or significant in this regard than is the other.  The newcomer (and here I’m thinking of Frank who managed to put together a couple of weeks and is now back in the game with three days, as well as Andreas who has something like forty-eight days and who sounds as though he was absolutely struck sober and who may well be a younger, faster, more attractive version of Bill W.) can learn much through listening to both the oldtimer and to Cheesesteak.

Beth and Cheesesteak are both rank amateurs and part of the beauty of the program is that indeed any recovering alcoholic can help lead a fellow sufferer out of this hopeless condition.

 

 

Pedro and Progress

I’m pleased to report that my new friend Pedro has completed his first week at sleep-away rehab camp over in Pennsylvania.  When I heard he had agreed to accept the chance to save his life and his family, I wouldn’t have been at bit surprised to learn that he had jumped out of the car somewhere on I-80.  Kind of a morning-after buyer’s remorse deal.

Even when Pedro initially accepted the challenge he made it patently clear that he was really only going for a test drive – that a short introductory course of four or five days, maybe a week at the outside, was the better plan.  Of course we all know that really, truly sick alcoholics and addicts need a month or so of simply being undrunk before than can even start to engage in any hard work.  Still, the idea of a short program was undoubtedly better than no sober idea at all.

When I trundled off to rehab five and a half years ago I was certainly not particularly keen on the notion of a month-long stay.  I figured that it was a possibility — however remote — but it wasn’t my plan.  As it turned out, I didn’t stay for a month; I designed my own personal Wildcat Executive Program and checked out after only fourteen days or so.   Well, I guess I was ready to get sober and through the grace of God the short form rehab program worked for this drunk.  Knock on wood.  As of today, anyway.

Anyhow, Lad left a message this afternoon to the effect that ol’ Pedro is getting it together and is currently voicing a commitment to stay in residential treatment for at least another three weeks.  He’s scared shitless just thinking about the damage that his drinking and drugging did to himself, his family, and his career.  The wreckage that Pedro has left in his disgusting wake is, no doubt, considerable.  I reckon that three weeks or so before he has to face that and begin to deal with it is nowhere near enough for his taste.

On the bright side, a little rehab and a lot of recovery will provide some extremely useful tools that will permit Pedro to begin the arduous journey out of his prolonged residence in Guyland.  At least he has a chance — ten days ago I would have laid serious cabbage on Pedro being dead — yes, dead — of multiple organ failure, a horrendous “misunderstanding” in a Harlem shooting gallery or, at the very least, a stupendously gory slip and fall.  I’m glad that Pedro put it all down on Hope.

Butt Brains

 

My Take On It …

I often hear about and from people who are said to have their heads up their butts.  Research indicates that, as with certain other tricks relating primarily to auto-fellatious endeavors, this is quite likely physically and anatomically impossible.  At least for most of us.

But, anyway, this begs the question of whether one can actually have his (or her) actual brain in his (or her) butt.

In grammar school I recall hearing from Paul Laraby or some other emerging wise guy that some dinosaurs relied on a brain that resided in the creature’s butt.  Or perhaps even further away from the commonly-accepted location and in its tail. 

So I’ve done it little middle-aged poking around.  I tried to locate Paul, but I think he’s in prison at the moment.

A lot of people apparently think that this remote (or, possibly, second) brain theory centers around brontosauri.  Those are the ones like Dino on the Flintstones.  You know, sort of like big, long-necked reptilian Dachshunds.

Turns out that it wasn’t the brontosaurus that supposedly had two brains – thus permitting it to simultaneously and legitimately hold two contradicting thoughts at one time.  Rather, it was the stegosaurus, the one with the bony face, protective plates and sweet spikes running up and down its back.  Paleontologists have discovered that there was a big enlargement in the stegosaurus’s spinal cord at the point where it passed through the pelvis.  The stegosaurus, it turns out, had a lame, quasi-Republican excuse for a brain in its head.  The cranial gizmo was around the size of a walnut –  only 1/20th the size of the mysterious butt organ.  There was initially some speculation that the creature needed some sort of contraption to keep the caboose in check while leaving the frontal organ to guide – oh, I don’t know – foraging and conversating.

I’m extremely fond of this notion as the double-brain phenomenon would go a long way in explaining a lot of what I see going around these days.  Unfortunately, brilliant scholars (probably at the University of Wyoming – “The Princeton  and Stanford of Wyoming”) have ascertained that the big, butt brain was probably just a highway interchange where a bunch of tubes and such gathered together just prior to meeting up in the spinal cord.

I hope you find this helpful.