Chapter 11

We stand in silence.

Anticipation.

I have felt this feeling a thousand times. The painful but exciting feeling of waiting for a dealer to hurry their ass up.

Craving.

Today there is five of us waiting. Who knows how many will be here tomorrow. I look around at the other four and wonder who it is that keeps telling people about the caffeinated coffee.

Only one pot.

I have to get here a little earlier tomorrow.

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Today in lecture we have a guy that actually is a stand up comic.

An Alcoholic stand up comic. It hits me as a little strange but what the hell. I get a little humor to start my day.

I sit with most of the guys in my small group.

Jerrod is a guy my age who has been to rehab before. He really is rubbing me the wrong way. He is one of those guys that you can see right through the act. He is a compulsive liar.

Aren't we all.

Adam is a tall kid that is very soft spoken. He has a wife and a couple of kids. To hear him talk about his kids is both heartbreaking and wonderful. Being an addict and alcoholic with kids around is a whole other ball game. I thank God that I never had kids when I was married.

Eric, my roommate is sitting with us. Then there is Bill. He has half of his head shaved and there is a big half circle of stitches on the side of his head. He is always out of it. Crazy. I think he has had some sort of brain surgery. He is doing his stint here and then going directly to jail for breaking into drugstores for pills. When the police caught him he had a pillow case full to the top. He is impossible to figure out. Mostly because they have him on so many detox drugs.

After the lecture we all go downstairs and head to the courtyard. I look at the chalkboard and see that my brother has called me. I wish someone would have gotten me out of the stand up show. I would have actually enjoyed the cry much more.

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Group is always interesting. We talk a lot about ourselves and our fearless leader Adam calls us out on our bullshit. We each have certain things we have to read each day. One of us reads the little motto we have about anonymity.

First rule about Fight Club...

We don't talk to anyone else outside our group about what goes on or what is talked about. This helps people feel safe.

Someone then picks a passage out of the Big Book and we go around and talk about what it means to us or how it relates.

We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals- usually brief- were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

That is the pain of it. Right there. What Eric just read was the pain and confusion of every addict and alcoholic. We lost the CONTROL. I am trying to figure out if I ever HAD the control.

I have never really looked at the progression of my using. I know that I started young but it isn't like the day I tasted alcohol in 4th grade I just became a raging alcoholic. I didn't start packing a pint in my lunch box.

It was different.

It was a very slow progression for a long time. I was an athlete in High School. Team Captain of the soccer team. All American boy. I didn't want to lose that by getting caught drinking. So I didn't drink that much in High School. I smoked pot.

So much easier to hide. I learned early that drinking was a hard habit to hide.

I had an older brother that liked to drink in high school and I had to listen to him argue with my parents about it when he would come home. I didn't want to have to go through that.

I think I only really got caught once. I can't really remember.

I know that Andy and I stole a fifth of vodka from his parents and went to the high school. I was a freshman and he was still in 8th grade. It was a Friday night and there was a dance. We drank most of that fifth with a couple other guys and jumped around like idiots on the pole vault mat.

I decided to go to the dance.

I was more than a little drunk. My sister was there and she tried to tell me to go home.

Then I ran into our vice-principle. She KNEW I was drunk. She just told me to go home. She liked me. My brother had been a popular athlete that had just graduated, my sister a 4.0 student and member of the National Honor Society.

Slack.

Always cutting me slack.

This same vice principle would catch me smoking pot at school my Junior year and do absolutely nothing about it.

I wonder if things would be different for me now if I would have had more consequences.



Over any considerable period we get worse, never better


I stumbled home that night from the dance. I ended up walking into my closed garage door and making way too much noise for my parents not to know something was up. They sent me to bed.

Have to be more careful.

Have to stick to weed for now.

The one thing I do know is I need SOMETHING.