vicadin/vicodin/hydrocodone

  it had been a natural high for quite some time
  a trip to the dentist.
  a root canal. the initial anasthetic.
  the prescription for 8 vicodin. 
  but i had a prescription.
  my wife has a prescription, but i had stayed out.
  a few months later i broke a rib.
  a prescription for 30 
  then they cut me off…
  but get this and this is an i shit you not
  godshot
  my wifes prescription was screwed 
  instead of sending her 30 
  they sent her 300.
  it was obscene.
  the electricians came
  we had to empty the furniture 
  and they were easy to find
  it was on
 there were days i took 1
there were days i took 5
objectively speaking
more than 1 is a waste
 until i confessed to the wife

i’m an addict and i share
who i really am
i went on still
she doled them out 
i was lifting weight
i hurt my back.
i got my own prescription
GOt MY OWN FUGGING PRESCRIPTION
 just emailed it in
once a week
30 vikes
and was it ever on
 i was dreaming and dialing just now
my grandsons voice was there
 he called me “great grampa”
and i said “hey boy”
in that funny voice that he liked
 his mom took the phone from him
and it was on
i woke up and grabbed a beer
i started drinking again
i started drinking again
the thing is my self esteem
and i still have the prescription but
the drinking cut the vicodins
vicadins down to size 2 a day
i began a 1 a day regimen
but on the second day i crashed
i’ll bet i took 3
or 4
today i took 1
fuck

breathing

  i have a job its a filthy job its hard to describe but i like it.
  trailers have tires that grind in an asphalt yard. the grind powders the tires like so much rubber esspreso.
 i work there in the grind and i give it a lot of help whipping trailers to and fro i am a spotter a hostler i drive a goat an ibex.
  every couple of hours if find a restroom and wash my hands and arms and face. it takes a while.  i force myself to wash in a slow languid fashion.
 i breathe to slowly wash. i learned to breathe at the dentist office he was preparing my number 18 molar for a gold crown. it took a while he and his assistant working in my mouth and my body and mind met and found a little stash of panic somewhere.
  i breathed out. and i was alive and i inhaled and was still breathing.
  i was a cool day but i could not see my breath. i was all flannel and jeans with my black mane and my innocent brain walking down a street in cottage grove, oregon. it was 1970 something and she was smoking skank ass weed on the covered front porch of a big old house as the rolling stones echoed “wild horses” inside.
 those were the days of recognozing pedigrees and we both new utopian seekers when we recognized the pedigree.
  we got so slant eyed stoned and were all wide ass smiles in the rain with a frisbee at the old folks home where there were wide stretches of green grass to run in laugh in slide in.
  old folks yelled from their balconies and and authority figure of some kind appeared and that was the funniest falling over laughing joke of the month.
  she had a grey vw bus with a trunk on the front…you know..the kind of trunks that elephants have.
   dunno what happened. just lost intrerest in each other when that one day could not be found again. i kept breathing and i really hope that she did too.
  
  

a call from an old friend

he said i never was his friend. no one from the tenth grade had treated him well. he was in the lifeboat that jesus provided.  he was selling something. my liver has seven pockets that contain dead parasites and i need epsom salt and olive oil and grapefruit juice and i will poop pellets from my liver and i will live longer and his diabetes went away. i told him i was a confirmed athiest. confirmed. i went to athiest class the way some folks take karate. his giggle had a hysterical quality and we said goodbye. he just wanted me to understand that he knew we were never really friends and that jesus would save me and that i needed to join the radio shack club that would dissolve the parasites in my liver.
                    jesus help me. i never knew.

dudes shitting and beating off

 i was going to call this blog relapse, but i wanted to pull in some viewers. you sick bastards.  its a kind word. relapse. and though the dogma dictates that “resentment is the number one offender”, i dont believe that it was resentment.
  it was emotional pain. one more disappointment.
  now i know that “one more knife in the back” sounds like resentment, but it sure feels like pain.
  i’ll skip the details of the origin of the pain, but i’d like interested parties to know what its like to start drinking again after 5.5 years.
 i had fantasized about cognac for years. it was cognac that i purchased on the night before memorial day. my wife was up when i got home and talked me out of drinking it.
  the following morning a phone call prompted me to complete the mission. i told my wife that i was heading for the riverbottom, a place i once frequented during a homeless episode eighteen years earlier. she asked me to drink at home. 
  the cognac was awful. i remember it being an aquired taste and no doubt i had lost the aquisition.
  i chugged what i could. i got drunk. i shit in the backyard i really did. pulled my panties down an grunted out a couple of turds that a skunk or possum finally ate. i’m using an educated guess here.
  let me assure you at this point that staying sober for any amount of time is a labor of love. an aquired taste, if you will. if you be alcoholic or addiction oriented. i’m a man. my wife calls all underwear panties, so if you’re beating your meat with visions of some lovely young lady pooping with beautiful grace, put your pecker away. i’m fat. i’m short. i’m a dude. yeah, i guess thats why i have a wife, but you cant be too sure. 
  let me also make the point here that i believe aa meetings are group therapy. leaving the group has had an impact of monumental proportions. its not just that i’m drinking, it is the lack of the group that i feel a need to express.
  i drink while i write. i’m writing this in short bursts at night while drinking. i’ve just finished one “fat tire”. its a beer. i’m not sure it was around when i used to drink. sometimes, when i’m at work, i can taste a fat tire. i’m gonna have some jim beam now..hang on.
  ok, five days after the cognac incident i bought a pint of jim beam. it was much better to drink and i drank it straight, on the rocks.
  i figured a pint was about right. it seems i drank and dialed that night. a version of “gin and juice” on a friends voice mail. i found out days later. 
  i know my stated intent was to illuminate relapse. i know that i’ve been distracted and wandered down corridors and tangents, but this is how my mind operates. i’m getting to it.
  a pint of whiskey proved to be way too much. a half pint was the next experiment and it too, was too much. it lies somewhere between 4 and eight ounces. the magic. and then throw in a fat tire or two and……….well tonight its been 4 ounces of jim beam and i’m working on my second fat tire. this should do just fine. i have a cramp in my forearm from typing.  
  lets get this posted and continue……………

lukanola

  it began as words like this story i was gonna write
a cosmic dj taps into some batards head 
channels the words the bastard would like to have said
  i have other ideas
 everyone from the past is shrinking
but for the most part others scream
  i’ve gotten a bit better at choosing who i associate with
  the true wealth of MY life is the people i’ve come to grope
grasp grok geekle guffaw with
dont you deal another blow to my faith. orbit in and tell me you are there. make me richer make you richer i will not betray you
i will give you the keys to my trust
the upper hand
  i’ll give you names
dates details
  just give me a little trust
a little credit
you take the keys
i the wealth
                          jim beam

lexapro

  i’d been sober about 6 months and was experiencing anger. its pretty common. i saw a doctor about my blood pressure and mentioned the sobriety, the anger. she told me about a pill that might help. lexapro. she said maybe my brain wasnt getting enough seratonin, something along those lines, and that i should take this 20 mg pill. i did.
   i mellowed right out. it was cool. i gained about 30 lbs. this is the price you pay i guess. that was 5 years ago.
  about a year ago i began cutting the pills in half. my wife looked on in horror. she and my mother has secret conferences.
  it all worked out.
  i should mention that i saw another doctor who asked me why i was on anti depressants. i didnt know i was. i didnt know how difficult and dangerous it could be to quit taking them.
   anyway….a couple weeks ago i began drinking again over some emotional pain that i was having. it just went on too long. i figured since i was drinking again, i could stop taking the lexapro.
  yesterday i woke up with a serious hangover and a devastating case of depression to boot.
  i dumped out the booze this morning. it always ends with dumping it out. finishing the bottle never ends it for me.
 i took a 20 mg lexapro just now. i figured its a bad time to go off the reservation. i almost called the mental health clinic this afternoon.
 i’m not of of those maniac depressives. just a run of the mill alcoholic that got mixed up with (ssri)’s? anti depressant seratonin reuptake inhibitors. and booze. and speed years ago. and an alcoholic web that has me trapped like a fly. dont get me wrong. i’ve been happy for a good portion of the last 5 years. just not lately. maybe today is my new sobriety date.
  wouldnt that be something? i’m gonna get off this lexapro too.
    just wait. 

off the wagon

its kinda like what they say. 1 drink and then its ticking like the telltale heart. the bottle on top of the fridge. i tend the garden on a gift of a day off and my wife comes home from work expecting a corpse on the couch.
 i used thick branches to border my beans. its very artistic.
 i’m awake and she’s happy. i enjoyed 2 ounces of jim beam while i sweated the new but familiar alcoholic sweat. i moved dirt, weeded, created borders and mowed the front yard.
the funny thing is the day after drinking. the tailgaiters arent so close. the buttwads just ruin their own lives, my iq drops and my insight wanes.
  bruce cockburn articulated it well…. the clarity of light, vs. the charity of night. its a barnburner, and for years i supported the clarity of light.
  it wanes like the moon. right now its the charity of night. my wife went to bed angry. dont they all eventually. its my shit now.
  i’ve seen too much. its my shit now.