Me? What makes you think I could be an alcoholic?
A. Daniel Bodine
desertmountaintimes.com
EL PASO—Hee, hee. I couldn't help but laugh Thursday when the Times here carried a business story about how everybody's favorite whiskey, Jack Daniels, is clanking the cash registers with sales of its new honey-flavored brew. My brain simply exploded. Oh, honey, po-leeze let me have some Jack Black Sweet!
“Jack Black”-and-water (or cola) is to alcoholics what the finest snorting cocaine on the market is to Oscar de la Hoya—a terrible bout to be reckoned with! “Pobre sito!” And now they're putting honey in it!?
The famed boxer's “Coming Out” this week especially about all his drug problems over the years (all the Spanish TV stations) had my wife with her crying towel. You don't understand the 12-step program, I told her. He's getting it out; doing what he's gotta do. To stay alive!
That alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease beyond medical technocrats' finest spins is still incomprehensible to many. De la Hoya was straight up though; he'd been to the other side of the mountain and scraped with the demons. He knew the tenacity of it.
Next week, Tuesday, will mark 19 years of sobriety for this ol' yaahoo here. Like all of us other AAers there was a time when I easily would've laughed at you--Told you it's impossible!—to think someone could go that long without getting drunk. But thanks to the program and those who work it, however, I can now go down the road a ways and come back. Safely. And proudly.
A friend in Presidio invaluable to me my first few years or so was someone I'll call Domingo. Invaluable to me my first year particularly. When I often was having to play a straight-faced role as judge to some wild-faced, angry drunkard on one hand; knowing in ways I was just another drunk like him on the other.
I was maybe 8-9 months into sobriety at one point once I remember, struggling, and facing my first out-of-town trip for the weekend. After a Thursday evening meeting Domingo spoke to me aside. And reminded me just what the program was all about. In doing so he possibly saved my life. Or at the very least, saved me from many more years of agonizing drinking.
“You're going to want to drink when you get to El Paso,” he said. “It's probably going to hit you Big Time. Whenever it does, wherever you are, just remember this: Tell yourself, OK, I'll drink.
“It's that simple. Give yourself permission to drink...But make it later. Has to be later. FIRST, tell yourself, We've got to make an A.A. contact first. That's all there is to say: After we make an A.A. contact!
“Then, after you say that, get to a phone. Call somebody! Me, someone else here, an AA chapter there in El Paso (there are many of them), just make that call!”
It's a four-hour drive from Presidio to El Paso, and another four hours back. As people get older, those drives wear you out. I had a doctor's appointment sometime midday Friday at the Veterans' Hospital. Dreading the long drive back, I checked into a motel room. Had decided I'd stay and relax thru Saturday, and go back to Presidio Sunday sometimes early after noon, say. That was checkout time.
Had plenty of reading material with me, besides the daily newspapers; a good TV in the room; nice restaurant next door. What more could you ask for to unwind a bit, huh? Would be quiet. Away from the phone ringing and the deputies asking me to come to the office.
Aw...But there was one thing more I needed. After coming back from the V.A., I noticed it. I'd forgotten to bring enough cigars in my shirt pocket for the extra two days. Holy cow! How could I have forgotten something that important, huh?
I wasn't about to get comfortable in the room before I solved the smoke problem, so I went out for a few minutes. This was along five or 5:15 in the afternoon. About a block from the motel there on Montana Avenue was a convenience store. I'd noticed it earlier. It would have cigars. I walked to it.
When I entered, the counter was immediately on my left, maybe running half of the west wall. Some soda fountains and such picked up after that and took up the space back on to the corner, the northwest corner, where the floor-to-ceiling glass freezers on the back began.
With vertical, glass doors on them, the freezers (full of mostly drinks) then swept all the way eastward across the back wall to the northeast corner; and then back up the east wall to the front. I'd noticed it all with a quick glance while entering. All of that was just periphery stuff, on my right. I hardly even paid any attention to it.
I saw the cigars behind the counter. Had a box of my old standby's, El Producto, and I bought a handful. As I was taking my change, putting my wallet back into my pocket, I'd ever-so-slightly turned my body in a clockwise motion, toward the right; and the person behind thus eased up to the counter beside me on the left, to be waited on next.
But as I continued moving slightly in this partial, clockwise pattern, I suddenly froze. My first step out of it had placed me directly in the line of fire of a gillion cases of the most sparkling, inviting beer only God himself could ever have created; and placed them there especially for me, He did. Sweet it was, of him. And yep; that was my moment. Big Time.
Never could I recall later how long I actually stood staring at that wall of beer in the glass cases, but I doubt it was more than 2-3 seconds. I must have lunged after that. Toward the beer garden.
My next consciousness, or awareness, was this thumping movement on my right shoulder. It'd been feint for the longest time, it seemed, in whatever deep hole of thought I'd stepped off into; and gradually had grown harder; and I was becoming more aware of it.
Until it wasn't a thumping movement at all but a tap, an increasingly sharp tapping movement. Someone behind me was tapping me hard on the shoulder!
All of my energy—ALL of my energy, my focus—was being spent attempting to pull one of those damn glass doors with the big icebox handles on them from the wall, off its hinges!
That was the scene as I slowly slipped back into awareness: My standing there confronting that wretched door, with my hands gripped hard and fast on each side, actually attempting to pull the hinges out. I wanted (no, needed) that door removed from my path that bad! It was blocking me from the beer!
And the guy behind me was angry. Whack, whack, whack on my right shoulder. Whatever brand of beer that was behind that door he was wanting it, too! Get out of the way, you idiot! he must have thought.
As soon as I stepped back, of course, he opened the door and reached for his beer. But not before glaring sideways hard at me—a “What's with you?” angry look.
There was a crowd of people who'd gathered in a semicircle around us, too, wondering if they were witnessing some stupid jerk attempting a daylight heist. And staring, of course.
I wasn't embarrassed or anything; alcoholics usually aren't. I was only aware this bad scene was happening. And that I wanted that beer behind the door.
Then in my lapsed thinking, sure enough, Domingo's words came at me: You can get it later. First, make a contact. And I thought instantly of a telephone.Why I didn't go back to the motel room I don't know. Other than I felt it was an emergency, I guess.
But the store had a phone and a phone book in front of it; I quickly found an A.A. number to call; and was given directions to where I could find a north-central El Paso group—about a mile away; meeting in 15 minutes, it turned out. Thank you, Domingo.
I soon found the meeting and walked in; introduced myself (Hi, I'm Dan; I'm an alcoholic.), and commenced to tell the story of the glass freezer door with the stubborn hinges. And that I was away from home for a couple of days and sure was thankful all you guys and girls showed up here today.
When I finished there was a polite applause. And I sat down, feeling a huge weight had been lifted from my chest. And then I listened to some real problems.
It's a scenario not unlike that one that's been played out every day in many thousand different places around the globe every since the Great Scorekeeper started tallying, “where two or three (of you) gather in my name...”
Why drugs aren't legalized to curb a swelling inferno of violence and lawlessness I don't understand. Just another way American exceptionalism must run its course, maybe.
But I do understand how corpocracy and radical capitalism minimalizes folks; and how Jack Black is permitted and even cheered to make it even sweeter. Haah!
Now we're cooking, baby! Now we're cooking!
– 30 --
We're always glad to hear from readers. Log in with a first name and an email address (just to be legit) to make comments, or write Dan at dan directly at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment