Adventures in Spirituality: The Post Blackout La La Years

Dearest of all possible Friends,

Thank you for not hating me, even after I admitted to having an alcohol problem even after I’d reached a state of enlightenment. 

Rest assured, I was a jolly good-natured drunk 90% of the time. It was only that stretch from ’06-’07 that I was an incoherent dysfunctional slob about it. And it’s of no great advantage to tell you all about it except to show it as a long, extended spiritual black-out. A cop-out. The joy (numbness) I got from alcohol is what I was always hoping to get from (GOD). Drunkenness is a kind of rapture.

I know I’m doing this all wrong—life, personing. And I’m not overly original in what I’m saying here about the ethereal side of us—what college student hasn’t pondered all this in one bacchanalian evening? I just happen to ponder it all the time, except when I’m drunk for 15 years. 

I did, of course, have to find ways to cope without booze, and that’s when it all came back to me—life used to be about curiosity & giving a shit. It wasn’t about deflecting unbearable pain all the time. I became curious to know if I could reconnect w/ some of my old habits & beliefs. And yeah… I could.

I guess since it’s August I’ll wind this series up shortly. I’ll tell you about the Mystic Faire we went to, and how I dealt in a post-alcohol world; then I’ll bring it back around to why I wanted to write all this in the first place—why am I so squeamish about Conservative values and the religions that statistically go with them? And finally I’ll tell you all how I’m doing now. I was on a luge-ride down the tubes for most of the year—did all this soul-searching help at all?

***********THE POST-BLACKOUT LA-LA YEARS********

In July of 2007, I wasn’t counting my sobriety in days, I was counting it in minutes. I was sitting on my hands, hiding my car keys, telling myself “Just stay sober for 10 more minutes…” I literally could concentrate on nothing but “Don’t drink.”

It took about 2 months of that before I was able to allow my mind to wander off on its own. I remember the day it happened—I spent about a half hour NOT thinking about NOT drinking and I thought Hey I’m getting used to this. Then I immediately wanted a drink, to celebrate the return of my mind.

Thru my drinking years, I didn’t engage in much spiritual practice, but there was one thing I did that wasn’t overtly spiritual…yet it was. And that was…SINGING. 

I was a pretty good singer in the 90s but I had little range, so in Y2K I decided I would learn how to sing better! On my own, with no teacher! And I ended up ruining my voice! So I spent many years after that trying to fix it! And that became my ritual, every morning, rain or shine, hangover or no—I would patiently do my ever-so-gentle & reparative vocal exercises. 

In the days & weeks after quitting booze, anytime I felt like flipping out, I would just do a vocal scale, or sing a verse of my favorite song, or make some kind of sound with my respiratory/vocal apparatus, even if it was just a flat dissonant drone that vibrated through me. As the weeks went on, I would spend hours singing & vocalizing to drive away the temptation to drink. It was hard work. Singing properly is a great way to get an aerobic workout, to turn your shallow anxious breaths into long elastic ones.

For about 6 months, this was my sole coping skill. Singing, breathing, feeling the vibration. I didn’t consciously set out to make it a spiritual endeavor, but it became one. I thought of myself as a Tibetan monk doing my throat singing. I felt it was keeping me strong & safe & clear-headed & connected to the world from which I was temporarily exiled.

[Speaking of being exiled, getting sober is definitely social suicide. Or it was for me. I had friends who’d say “Come out with me! You don’t have to drink.” And I would have to say “No. I can’t ‘go out’ anymore. Leave me alone.” And eventually, they would. My social circle shrunk down to single digits. And I was ready for that. I was willing to let “friends” fall by the wayside in order to have a self again.

I realize everyone has their own way of detoxing, and some people do it by immersing themselves in the world rather than retreating from it. ‘Getting out in the world’ was not a method that would’ve worked for me. I had to embrace & love & squeeze my anti-social side, which I’d rejected for too many years.]

In the 00s I lived next door to a guy. He was … uh… someone who (I found out) had struggled with his own substance abuse issues. But he dealt with his sobriety & anxiety by being a busy body. By being as loud & engaged in activities as possible. By firing up his weedwhacker or table saw or drill or hammer or canoe sander at the first sign of sunrise. Sometimes before sunrise. 

It was hard enough to live next to him when I was drinking, but when I got sober & monastic, his ever-presence in my life became unbearable. 

After a few months of not drinking, i was able to start writing & drawing again. I didn’t do those things right away because they were former “drinking activities.” Unfortunately, on top of having the neighbor with a power tool fetish, there was also an empty lot across the street which came under construction shortly after I established a sober living routine.

The serene home/work environment I’d invented was destroyed by the noise of progress and gentrification. It was especially challenging for me to ignore the cacophony, since I was trying to create the exact opposite effect inside my head. I won’t go into detail here, but I began to combat the chaos—especially the obnoxious neighbor’s early a.m. racket—in a very creative way.

I’ll just call it The Karaoke War & leave it at that. Again, it was not something I saw as a spiritual motion, but… looking back at it now, I think my whole stretch in that neighborhood was a spiritual growth spurt, from the abstinence to dealing with opposing personality-types—I know I learned a lot about myself from my type-A neighbor, and I could see he was learning a lot about himself from my reaction to him.

He curtailed some of his early a.m. loudness eventually, but he could not change all the way into a Tibetan monk like I wanted him to : )) So, in a decision that was as financially motivated as it was motivated by proximity to incompatible neighbors, we ended up bailing on our home during the mortgage crisis. 

In our new neighborhood there was plenty of noise. it was a different kind of neighborhood—one that valued upkeep and appearance more than we were used to. There was no single neighbor right next door who was making all the noise, but there was always, always someone mowing, chopping, roofing, paving, chainsawing trees…

….and to my dismay, I had become intolerant to any sound that came from an outdoor machine. I couldn’t think or concentrate if someone nearby was making noise. In this new setting, I recognized this as “my problem” ie, I knew the folks down the street weren’t trying to antagonize me with their weedwhacker the way my former neighbor had often purposely antagonized us with his, but I still had the same angry reaction to it.

I was flabbergasted, mostly at myself for having been conditioned to flare up over the commotion of lawn maintenance. I’d conquered the demon of alcohol, now I had to conquer this disproportionate rage I felt whenever someone needed to putz on their property? How, oh how, was I going to do that?

I was going to become a Zen master, that’s how. I was going to teach myself to be calm & serene even in the midst of pandemonium. So, whenever my work or concentration was interrupted by a mower,etc… I would stop what I was doing, I would listen to the noise and breathe…in, out…in, out… and …in the beginning, I would end up cussing & kicking the furniture after about 1 minute of this.

But I kept doing it. I would stop, listen and breathe. Stop listen and breathe, for as long as I could. Then I would stop, listen, breathe & sing. And THEN cuss and kick furniture. I tried to always breathe and compose myself for a few minutes before the cussing & kicking began.

It was difficult. It made me feel…really stupid. Like, how can this be bothering me? How could I be so weak, and sensitive and easily thrown off balance? Was it the years of drinking that made my nerves so frazzled? Or was it something else—for reasons that I won’t get into now, I began to entertain the possibility that I was not neuro-typical. When I looked at the entirety of my life, this possibility seemed to make sense.

As we learn much more about the autism spectrum, I can easily locate myself, and some of my friends, along it. But I could not let that be an excuse for all my misplaced anger. I had to be proactive about it, or be a miserable fuck everywhere, even if I stayed at home. 

So I continued to practice listening and breathing. Listening and…not flipping out. I got to where I could do it for a few minutes, then I’d have to grumble & cuss & turn on some loud music & try to get back to whatever I was doing. I really wanted to reach a state of Zen enlightenment, where I could be surrounded by jackhammers & still be humming blissfully inside. I really wanted to try meditating for hours at a time, like these Masters recommended we all do. But I had to settle for minutes.

And I’m sad to say that my path to Zen mastery was interrupted by an unexpected…psychotic break? I STILL don’t know what to call it or how to describe it, so I won’t right now, but let me tell you… it was intense, and scary, and I needed it to happen to get where I am today…but it sure put an end to any pursuit of Zen mastery for awhile…

It was during this break that i sought help for something that had plagued me all my life, but I never knew how to handle—gender dysphoria. It was on this journey of dealing with the immediate & acute symptoms of a mental breakdown, caused ostensibly by long term suppression of a bigger issue, that my extreme anger seemed to … vanish…dissipate…float away in an endless torrent of tears…

…and then we moved. We bought another house, in another neighborhood, and I started hormones, and got my nervous whatever-thing under control. All this dynamic external stuff uprooted me & airlifted me to a better, less-angry place! I knew it had nothing to do with me achieving Zen masterhood (something I still wanted to do).

And as you know, I had a miraculous, blissful year on hormones in my new home and then…some things happened in the world. Things that shook me up and brought back some of the negative emotions which I frankly thought had uninstalled themselves from my system.

They hadn’t. There they were again. Both the anger and the sadness. The extreme anxiety, and paralyzing worry. The baby tears. the monster tantrums. WTF. I couldn’t have been more disappointed—in the world, in people, in myself, in EVERYthing. From Jan—May 2017 I was cruising downhill so fast, i almost didn’t survive (I’ll tell that story another time, maybe next summer).

The scary thing is—I was trying to blame this year’s downward spiral on “the current administration” but I knew it couldn’t be that simple. Sure this whole government travesty has me shaken—has a lot of people shaken. But it is not the reason for the resurgence of terrible emotions in my body. It’s much more complicated than that.

I worried that it was the testosterone. I’d been warned that the 2nd year on T can be pretty rage-y. But I felt like that was not it alone either. 

The truth is—I do have a lot of sadness and anger. And i process it slowly, like a cow stomach. Like an old Univac computer. I get some data entered and saved and printed and shredded, then I rest for a period, and then more data comes creeping in. I am back in contact with my family, which if you’ve read any of my other summer series, you know must be a huge strain on my precious organic operating system. And it is. I am thankful to be reconnected with my family, and very thankful to the few who are supportive of the changes I’m going through.

But they don’t really understand. They accept it, but probably amongst themselves, agree that I am silly, embarrassing, immoral, just doing it “for attention.”  No one else in my family has gender dysphoria. Or has ever been interested in anything besides sports sports sports/money money money. They are not folk who traffic in emotions or creativity or out-of-the-box thinking. They exist. They stay busy. They watch the game. They are what they do, not who they are. To them, i am a ridiculous fool.

And that’s okay. I’ve gotten used to being the ridiculous fool. It’s not the worst thing to be (though it isn’t great). I would love to just be a normal person someday. But this year I’ve had to face the ugly truth—dealing with the kind of depression & anxiety & rage that i hold inside is a lifelong proposition. It doesn’t just vanish because you move to a quiet neighborhood, or inject the right hormones into your blood.

So how am I still here typing up all this pseudo-spiritual bullshit? What has kept me from drop-hanging off the branches of the big pine tree in the backyard—besides Moonchild’s threat to stalk me in the afterlife if I ever did?

On particularly bad days, when the beast of rage is clawing from the inside, or if I feel the sorrow building like a wave beneath my sternum, I stop, I sit, i breathe, and i clear my mind of anything resembling thought or worry or imagery with a simple chant. That’s right, i’ve returned to my pursuit of Zen mastery. Except instead of external noise, I’m chanting away internal noise.

I returned to doing this in April—which I almost didn’t survive—and it was just like when I first quit drinking. It was hard work. I could barely get through one minute, then the next, and the next without crying or screaming or breaking something. But I persisted!

I’ve never tried so hard to clear my head of all noise. I’ve never been in such desperate need to do so. And it is not easy to control the flow of your mind. It is not easy to not think. Or to notice when you’ve gone from not thinking to thinking non-stop again. And to breathe deeply and gently without filling your lungs and holding it. Inhaling without exhaling is something I do a lot, and I recognize how it makes me feel—pretty shitty.

I worked hard at this meditative therapy through April & May. I was in a pretty foul mood at all times unless I was in active meditation mode. And I really didn’t believe it was working, until one day (May 31) I woke up boiling with anger, then automatically & effortlessly fell into meditation mode. And, like a fast acting shot of whiskey, a calm washed over me. A clarity about who i was, despite what anyone else might think of me. A panoramic view of the whole picture—the macrocosm baring itself to my frontal lobe, then imploding into my amygdala with a laugh. 

I had trained my brain to protect itself from …itself. I had trained it to revert to a safe zone the moment it tried to turn itself into a war zone. I did that by meditating mercilessly for 2 months, relying on no other methods of relief. Just pure mental ballet & gymnastics. And it did work after all.

I did have my dose of Gabapentin doubled but I waited til June, after I’d mastered a meditation regimen. I didn’t want to rely on any kind of medication before I figured out how to shut my head down naturally. And I continue to meditate and breathe correctly and chant, at least for a moment, before i reach for any medication. I would love to never have to rely on any big pharma product ever again, but life doesn’t always allow for one to stop, drop & meditate pretentiously like a Zen master in the heat of the American nightmare.

So yes Friends! June, July and (so far) August have been an uphill trend. And I owe much of that to an ancient Eastern spiritual practice, and a little bit to big pharma. How’d you like them odds???

(Well. I was going to save the How Am I Doing Now for a separate blog, but I guess it was the ending of this particular story, so there you have it. And I think since this was so looong, I’ll tell you about the Mystic Faire next time…

….and give you some new art next time…

…in The Octopus Diary.

But hey!!! Be prepared, because I will be asking for submissions again soon! In fact, start sending them now, before i even post new updated guidelines.