Tag Archives: addiction

Thank You

In real time, Happy Thanksgiving, if you are American. Happy Thursday, if you are not. I have some news items to share at the end of this post.

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Day four in Australia. Day four?! It felt like I’d been here forever, in a good way.

We alighted from our bus for sunset viewing of Ularu. I walked around snapping photos of other tourist vehicles. I have spent many hours in these heavy-duty Toyotas in Kenya and Ethiopia.

There was this crazy sardine-mobile, some kind of motel on wheels. I’m all for budget accommodations, but this beat even the bunkhouse for the claustrophobia factor.

There was this dusty, Mad Max BMW motorcycle.

A group of barefoot Aboriginal women sat on the pavement selling paintings. I felt a sharp, uncomfortable contrast as Meg poured sparkling wine.

But then I was distracted by food. “This is kangaroo jerky,” she indicated, “this one’s emu pâté and this here’s croc dip.”

“The kangaroo is delicious!” I commented. “It’s like venison.”

Heidi didn’t touch it. “I can’t eat it. The kangaroo and the emu—they’re our national animals.”

“They’re animals that can only go forward,” explained Heidi. “Like our country, I reckon is the idea?”

“I guess I wouldn’t want to eat a bald eagle,” I replied. Well, all the more emu and kangaroo for me!

The members of our group began introducing ourselves. Trevor and Gwen had immigrated to Australia from Nottingham, England, 20 years ago. They were here with their 14-year-old daughter, Tiffany. Kris and Melanie, a young Swiss couple, never spoke unless spoken to, so I didn’t get to know them at all. Brenden and Stefanie were another young couple, from Canada. Johannes and Sandra were a middle-aged German couple who took elaborate tripod-assisted selfies of themselves jumping for joy in front of every landmark. Mia and Nora were also German; both were around 22 and they were student teachers in a German school in Melbourne. There was a Chinese couple—father and daughter? Lovers? They stood apart and avoided all eye contact. Another couple, Darren and Kylie, were also a May-December pair. They said their names and that they were from Melbourne, then also kept to themselves.

I spoke with James, a 30-something Korean guy who spoke confident but almost-impossible-to-understand English. He was an out-of-work cook from Adelaide, blowing all his savings on a last hurrah in Australia before going home to an uncertain future. He reminded me of Vince. Because he was a cook, but mostly because there was a soulfulness about him.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it doesn’t involve decorating the house inside and out, buying presents, or any Christmas/Hanuka dilemmas. You just eat a lot with your family or friends, then fall asleep in front of the TV watching The Hobbit for the millionth time.

Thanksgiving is about—as the name implies—giving thanks, and I have a lot to be grateful for this year. As I sit here at my writing desk and look out the window at the grey sky and freezing drizzle, I am grateful for a warm home. I am healthy. I have friends and family. I got to spend a month in Australia! I wish I was there now.

And, some big news: I quit my job last week. More on that later, but I already feel 10 years younger.

And another big development: Vince and I started this blog together four years ago. We just published the first year of the blog as an e-book. It chronicles his time in prison, his recovery, and my ride along with him.

Besides providing insight into why people turn out the way they are, we’ve been told by many readers that it’s just a good read, a page turner. So if you’re looking for something to binge read over the weekend, or holidays, consider buying a copy. Only $3.99!

Breaking Free: A Mother And Son Journey From Addiction, To Prison, To Redemption https://www.amazon.com/…/B…/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_AbI9Bb9K1SXQM

Please feel free to share this on social media, and thanks for reading—we know it can be difficult stuff but addiction and all its consequences, including imprisonment, are a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day.

Elder, Kickin’ It

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This is a series of posts about Belize that starts here.

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In the real world, there is more bad news in addition to all the shenanigans in Washington. Every day there are reports about all the people overdosing on Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid 10,000 times more potent than morphine. The anniversary of Prince’s death just passed; he overdosed on a similar drug, Fentanyl. Carfentanil was developed as a large animal anesthetic. Really? Who takes drugs like that?

Sadly, my dad did. It was his birthday recently; he would have been 81 if he hadn’t overdosed in a Wisconsin motel room nearly 50 years ago, aged 32. He died of a lethal combination of alcohol and Paraldehyde, which used to be prescribed to treat alcoholism. Paraldehyde is classified as a “hypnotic” and has mostly been replaced by safer drugs. Was it an accident or intentional? I’ll never know. What I do notice is how little emotion I feel about it anymore. That’s taken a long time and a lot of work. He loved to travel, so I like to think he would be happy about my adventures.

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After our snorkeling day, we were herded onto the van by Mark to attend a Garifuna drumming performance at the Hopkins Cultural Center. It took an hour for us to drive the mile distance as the crow flies. It was a very dark night. Thank goodness there were potholes the size of bathtubs full of water, which reflected the light from the three streetlights in town.

Eventually we were ushered into a large thatched-roof hut where we waited for our supper. A woman about my age was the cook, and she was obviously working her ass off. She had been summoned on five minutes notice to produce food for 20 people, and after an hour her young adult children served up bowls of hudutu and fry bread. Again, it was full of bones, but we were so hungry we had no complaints.

A 30-something man in a dashiki jumped up on the stage and started shouting into the mic. “Let’s give a hand to Elder Elspeth for the wonderful meal!”

Elder? If she was an elder, that made me one too.

The guy, whose name was Myron, launched into a long, disconnected rant about Garifuna culture. I had read about it in the guide books, and he seemed to be making stuff up. Garifuna is a language and a culture brought by mixed-race slaves from the Caribbean to Honduras, Nicaragua, and British Honduras—as Belize was then called—in the early 19^th Century. I asked a question; I don’t recall what it was because he angrily yelled, “No!” at me and resumed his animated monologue. He seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. He was very muscular—maybe he had ‘roid rage.

Myron went on for half an hour, then two other men joined him and they began drumming and singing manically in the Garifuna language. It reminded me of a pow wow, where the first song is really cool, the second one is good, and then they all sound alike.

Despite it being ear-splittingly loud, I was trying hard not to nod off, as were the other snorkelers. Mercifully the trio only played five songs. Then they jumped off the stage and started selling CDs and passing a hat for tips. It was clear they couldn’t wait for us to get out of there.

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Midnight. One hundred Fahrenheit with 99% humidity. I lay in my bed in the middle of the room, between Trudy and Emily. Our table and chairs had disappeared while we were gone but we were beyond curious about why things came and went.

My Restless Legs Syndrome is always worse when it’s humid. It sounds like a silly condition, but it’s ruined more nights of sleep than any worry or noise or excess of caffeine or alcohol. Just as I’m falling asleep, I get a creeping feeling around my knees and have an overpowering urge to Move My Legs.

Then music started up in the distance, a low throbbing beat. This would last for hours, I thought, as I kick, kick, kicked to the beat.

What We Don’t Know

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One more post about prison stuff, then back to the European travelogue.

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A couple organizations have been pushing legislation that would improve conditions in solitary confinement in Minnesota prisons. We Minnesotans think we’re so progressive, and we are in many ways, but we are one of the worst abusers of seg, as testified to by the letter from a prisoner in my last post. I read the bill and made some suggestions, like that a prisoner’s next of kin be notified when they are put in seg. I was never notified when Vince was kept there for six days. I’m sure the prison system would hate that, because they’d have all sorts of mad moms like me calling to demand what happened. It’s a Republican controlled legislature now, so I’m keeping my expectations low.

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If you think US prisons are bad (and they are), Lynn mailed me an article about UK prisons which shocked me—me, and I’ve written a hundred posts about prison. The link isn’t publicly available, so I’ll recap it for you.

UK prisons are overcrowded and violent. Assaults against guards and other prisoners are way up, there are riots and strikes, and there were 107 suicides and five homicides in 2016.

I assumed the violence was due to overcrowding, which was due to the same forces as in the US—harsh sentences, corporate interests, institutionalized racism and classism, poverty that causes people to use drugs and alcohol and to deal drugs, and an aging prison infrastructure.

Of course it’s complicated and there are underlying causes. But the article attributes the violence directly to new “psychoactive substances” which have “dramatic and destabilizing effects.” They’re called names like “Spice” and “Black Mamba” and they can’t be detected in urine tests.

And this is where I laughed out loud: these drugs are being delivered by drones. Yes, drones! It’s kind of hilarious, until it’s your son, husband, or brother getting knifed in the kidney by someone who’s high out of his mind.

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The US version of The Week ran an excerpt from a Bloomberg Businessweek article which profiled the founder of MyPillow. Mike Lindell is a recovering addict and I give him lots of credit for that and for building his business.

However, all of his products are stamped with “Made in the USA.” Lindell is a big Trump supporter and would probably cheer the cutting of government benefits to the poor, which is interesting since MyPillow has contracts for prison labor that must net them millions.

I know this because one of the facilities in which Vince was incarcerated, Moose Lake, had a MyPillow factory line.

And so MyPillow can stamp “Made in the USA” on every box, and it’s true, but that pillow may well have been made by a prisoner who netted $2.00 an hour.

I can’t find anything anywhere to substantiate that MyPillow benefits from prison labor or even that it operates in prisons. This is the beauty of working inside prisons—it’s a secret!—literally behind locked doors.

I’m not saying MyPillow is doing anything illegal. However it is hypocritical that Mr. Lindell, a conservative, takes government subsidies.

I wrote to the editor of The Week, Bill Falk, and he wrote right back, which impressed me. He suggested I write to the author of the original story in Bloomberg Businessweek, Josh Dean. This should have occurred to me in the first place, but better late than never. So I wrote to Mr. Dean and he responded right away too. I didn’t expect BB to amend his article; I just wanted him to have the additional information. There’s no reason a reporter would ask every businessperson he interviews, “Do you operate inside prisons?” You might think that a “jobs for inmates” story line might be good PR for MyPillow, but Mr. Lindell didn’t bring it up.

Bill Falk also suggested I contact one of my local newspapers, which might have investigative reporting resources and an interest in pursuing the story, since MyPillow is a Minnesota company. Mr. Dean also urged me to do this, and I did. A local editor was interviewing Vince within an hour of me sending the email. Stay tuned.

Incense and Sensibility

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This post is part of a series about living in Dublin and winding up in a brothel in Dubai.

Eddie’s house was so tiny I expected a hobbit to jump out of a closet. The floors were slanted, the stove looked like a toy, and the door hung crookedly off the bath so it wouldn’t be any trouble for him to keep an eye on me in there. I hadn’t been attracted to Eddie in a dark smoky pub, and seeing him in daylight didn’t change anything. He painted a picture of the house sharing arrangements. “I go out every night, and when I come home in the early morning I blast me music and drink a few more pints. It’s my house, so I’ll smoke in it. If you’d like to cook for us, that’d fine with me.”

I observed myself doing mental gymnastics to convince myself this would all be fine. I wanted out of the hostel. The serenity and confidence I had banked in England was gone. The fact that it was gone made me feel like a weakling. I had become a female Woody Allen, worrying, analyzing, fearful, neurotic. I was so afraid of being ripped off that I hid my watch—a Movado—in a zipped pants pocket, then promptly forgot about it and threw the pants in the wash. The watch had been given to me by a jerk boyfriend but was the one beautiful piece of jewelry I owned, and it came out in bits. Stress does funny things to the mind.

I listened to meditations on my MP3 player: “Sense a soft shower of shimmering light …” said the soothing voice, as the woman in the bunk below me hacked a tubercular-sounding cough. I attended meditations at the Sri Chinmoy Centre and went to Alanon. But I just couldn’t shake the anxiety.

Eddie kept saying things which indicated he knew sharing the house would be a disaster, such as “I’d probably end up hangin’ meself when yerself didn’t love me.” Like many men in the British Isles, asking a woman out on a date was not in his playbook, and he wasn’t yet drunk enough to just grab me and snog me. He must have sensed I would have reacted negatively to either approach. We sat at his wobbly kitchen table and he slowly drew me a map of Dublin and advised where else I could look for flats, stalling for time.

I admired his engineer’s pencil sharpener, which he gave me and which makes a great eyeliner sharpener.

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After two weeks I landed a room in a spacious maisonette. It had a living area and kitchen on the first floor (in America, the second floor), and three bedrooms and a bath on the third. I shared it with a French guy who was building a website to help football fans find pubs in real time to watch specific games. He only emerged from his room when his girlfriend, a Canadian, came over. The other flat mate was an English guy who worked for Google. I only saw him once or twice, but several times a week I would come down to breakfast to find a young woman hanging about—someone he had slept with and was done with, but who wasn’t done with him. “So what time does Paul usually get up?” they would ask. Or, “How does Paul like his tea?” I would grumble, “I dunno,” until they took the hint and left.

It took a while with my arm in a sling, but the flat was very nice once I scrubbed it from top to bottom and painted my room, which overlooked some sort of friary.

There was a methadone clinic on the other side; the flat had been burgled recently by an addict who kicked in the door. There was a primary school on the other side of the flat, and Christchurch Cathedral was nearby, so I heard children playing and bells ringing throughout the day.

Things were looking up. I met a Canadian woman at a travel agency who was game to go anywhere. Because, once my anxiety ebbed away, it was time to travel.

To be continued …

Justice, Sweet and Sour

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Summer is over, and so is my break from blogging. In my last post, I listed all the things I was going to do with my extra time: sit outside in the morning with my coffee and listen to the birds, plan a fall trip, and figure out how to publish the first year of the blog as an e-book. Oh—and write a novel.

I sat outside with my coffee once. I am planning a fall trip to Italy, Malta, and Spain. I didn’t write a novel, but Vince and I have started working with an editor on the e-book.

Mostly, I’ve tried to live in the moment. Summer is so brief. There were fun moments. At a family weekend at a cabin, someone brought a Donald Trump piñata (Made in Mexico, appropriately). I fostered a litter of seven kittens which drew visits from friends and family. Vince and I went to the State Fair where, at the FabBrow booth, he insisted he wanted a uni-brow. The makeup artists got back at him by making him look like a community theater actor.

I spent a lot of time outdoors. There were hikes and bike rides, and one day a friend and I spend hours making jewelry down at the river. Other times I packed a book and a beverage and biked to some quiet spot at a lake or the river.

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The big local news this summer was of the killing of Philando Castille by a cop. Castille was black. The cop, Jeronimo Yanez, was Latino. Castille was pulled over for a broken taillight. He had a gun in his glove compartment, and believed that the proper procedure when interacting with a cop was to inform: “I’ve got a gun, and I’ve got a permit to carry it.”

I suppose Yanez didn’t hear anything after Castille said “I’ve got a gun.” Blam! Shot point blank five times and left to bleed to death. Castille’s girlfriend live streamed his last moments on Facebook. I have not watched that video, but hundreds of thousands of people have.

I live within walking distance of the Governor’s mansion in St. Paul, where the inevitable protests took place. Traffic was blocked off by the police for a month and I was kept awake a couple nights by helicopter noise. The protestors blocked off the nearby interstate and either police were patrolling with helicopters or it was news media copters, but they were loud. Not that I’m comparing my minor inconvenience to the Castille’s family’s loss.

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This week marked one year since Vince was released from prison. He is doing so well. He just started a new job in catering, and he’s excited. In a month he will go off intensive supervised release, which means he’ll be able to stay out past 10:30 or go to Wisconsin to visit cousins. Best of all, he won’t have ISR agents showing up day and night asking him for urine samples.

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Another event prompted me to write this post.

In 1989, an 11-year-old boy named Jacob Wetterling was abducted by a stranger at gun point in a small town in Minnesota. He was never found.

Vince was the same age as Jacob. Vince became a Bar Mitzvah, got his first job, moved out, turned 20, had a serious girlfriend, had serious drug and alcohol problems, went to jail, got clean, relapsed, turned 30, moved to Lanesboro, went to prison, got out, and has two years of sobriety. In a few months he’ll be 38.

This week, a man confessed to abducting, sexually assaulting, and executing Jacob Wetterling by shooting him in the head, then burying him—and returning a year later to move the remains. Lying handcuffed in the last moments of his life, Jacob asked the man, “What did I do wrong?”

Vince was sentenced to over four years in prison for drug possession. Because the statute of limitations has expired, Jacob’s killer will get 20 years on a child porn charge. He’ll be a cho-mo—the most loathed prisoner among prisoners. According to Vince, they are also considered a “protected class,” by officials, perhaps to prevent prison vigilantes from meting out real justice.

As the Wheel Turns

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Sunday was Father’s Day in the U.S. Vince texted me at 8:00 am and asked if he could stop by. He had already invited me for brunch, in recognition that I was/am both a mother and father to him. But when he showed up he had a Roku stick for my T.V., and even better, he set it up for me!

And so I was able to watch the new season of Orange is the New Black on my T.V. How ironic, that a year ago he was in prison, and now I am watching a show about prison thanks to him. This coming weekend he will mark two years of sobriety with a barbecue.

So people can be redeemed and restored to sanity. No situation is ever hopeless. Never lose hope, even when it’s all you’ve got.

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I’m going to take a break from blogging for a while. I’ve been posting 700 words every other day since September 2014. The first year, half of the posts were written by Vince, although I did spend a fair amount of time typing and actually posting them.

Now I devote every Saturday and Sunday morning to writing, and each post takes about an hour and a half from blank page to Pending Publication.

Writing, editing, finding photos, researching things like the State of Missouri’s motto—I get into the zone, aka, in the now, and that’s great.

But it’s summer! I’d really like to sit out on my deck with a cup of coffee, read the (real) newspaper, and listen to the birds.

And since I am terrible at just sitting and doing “nothing,” here’s my to-do list of projects I’ve got queued up. I’d like to publish the first year of this blog—the posts focused on Vince’s and my prison experience—as an e-book. That feels like it could be a contribution to reform of mass incarceration, or at least a good read. That’ll take some time. If anyone out there has any advice for me, I’m all ears.

Then, and this may sound grandiose, but I’d like to try my hand at writing a novel. The big, sprawling, character-packed type like Dickens or Tolstoy. Not that I’m comparing myself to them or would even expect to get published. I don’t have a master’s in Creative Writing from Yale, I’ve never been to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, I don’t live on the east coast and I don’t have any connections in the publishing world.

But I think it would be fun. About a year and a half ago, my uncle died. He was a retired English professor and I carted home some bags of classic novels and have been ploughing through them. They’re like crossword puzzles composed of intersecting people and events. These are the old style books that people would collect and display proudly on their living room bookshelf. They are “lavishly illustrated” and have beautiful leather bindings that are, sadly, disintegrating.

So I’ll just publish and e-book and write a novel this summer. Ha ha! Then there’s travel. I’ve been stockpiling my paid time off, and I could take as much as five weeks off at the end of the year. It also looks like I’ll be going to east Africa for work. So where could I go from, say—Ethiopia? India? South Africa? Japan, Myanmar, Australia…so many choices! Trips take a lot of planning, so I need time for that too.

I don’t know how long my break from blogging will be, but the next post may be a report from afar. Have a wonderful summer, or winter, depending on which hemisphere you’re in.

Me, Mom

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Before I continue to the exciting conclusion of the road trip, I am sharing this post from Vince’s blog he wrote for Mother’s Day.

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Mom, I know I’ve let you down. Over, and over again I’ve made a mess of my life and brought both of us shame. There were years where you were unable to explain my whereabouts to family and friends, and times where you yourself didn’t know where I was. I’ve put you through more pain and distress than I care to recall. I’ve not been a son to you for many years, and I have lost your trust far too many times.

But for some reason, you still love me. It’s an unconditional love that I’ve felt nowhere else. Even recently when we didn’t see eye to eye when we lived together, there was never any doubt that you loved me. I wish I could promise that I will never be lead astray again by the temptation and allure of alcohol and the world of drugs, but I cannot because it’s the nature of the disease that I am always at risk of going back. Tomorrow, when we go out on our secret trip to an unknown location for Mother’s Day lunch, I will be repairing some of the damage I have caused. I will be repairing the bond that had been broken for so long as a result of my actions. I have nobody to blame but myself, which leaves only me to clean up the mess. And so far, I think it’s working.

It’s hard work, searching inside myself to figure out what’s been broken for so long. But through writing this blog, attending A.A., and working with a sponsor, I’m starting to change my life. I no longer do these things to avoid going back to prison, I do them because I want to be out here living life and being with my family as much as I can.

Although you had help from some family members raising me for a small portion of my childhood, I know that you were solely responsible for bringing me up and I know that you not only did the best you could without a father present, you truly were an amazing Mother, I just didn’t see it until later in life.

You imparted upon me how to be a good, loving person, and it took me about 20 years longer than it should have to recognize that. The things you showed me are the things I strive to emulate now because I know that they are righteous, moral, and honorable.

It doesn’t get any more honest than that. You were instrumental in keeping me sane throughout my prison term. You wrote to me, sent me money, and answered my calls. Not everybody is as lucky, or has a person that loves them no matter what. You moved just to accommodate me living with you when I got out, and I am so grateful for that. I may not have acted like it when I lived there, but that was because I was ashamed of myself, and I shut myself in my room, and my own little world where I felt comfortable. I’m breaking out of that shell slowly, and I won’t forget that it’s because of you that I’m even out here in the first place and had a warm safe place to sleep. Sometimes it takes a while to realize what I have to be grateful for, but eventually it comes.

Tomorrow is your day, and I’m excited that I have the ability to take you out for the day, and the means to make it happen. I think this will be the best Mother’s Day we’ve ever spent together, and I look forward to many more.

Mom, I know I’ve let you down. But I’m going to make it up by becoming a good son, and making up for all the hurt I’ve caused. I love you, Mom.

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I told Vince, over the sushi feast he had planned, that I appreciated the post. I also told him that by changing his life, he is making amends to me and he never has to apologize for his past actions again.

Jim Crow, Old and New

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This is the latest in a series of posts about a road trip from St. Paul to New Orleans that starts here.

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If you don’t learn something about yourself when you travel … well, that’s okay—I’m not going to sermonize—but I was pleased to learn something important about myself in Memphis.

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In the morning, Lynn and I took a walk along the riverfront, which is beautiful:

We walked back to Beale Street, found a restaurant, and ordered breakfast. We were excited to try southern foods like grits and biscuits. We waited, and waited. You could say this restaurant put the “wait” in waitress. She kept coming by and giving us a dose of another southern treat—calling us “honey”, “sweetie”, and “darlin’” as in: “Your food’ll be up in just a minute, darlins’”

It seemed like half the morning passed away before we got our meals, then we wolfed them down and headed over to the National Civil Rights Museum.

It was difficult to find—there was no signage—but then we turned a corner and there it was, the former Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I recognized it immediately, having seen it a hundred times in iconic photos.

And this was the beginning of learning something about myself, because I got so choked up I had to turn away so no one would see me in tears.

I have been to Holocaust museums in Washington, DC; Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Chicago, and elsewhere, and they’ve been tear-filled experiences too. But then, I’m Jewish. Were my tears only because the story was about my people? That fear—that I only felt empathy for my own kind—was laid to rest in Memphis.

I wiped my tears away but they welled up continually inside the museum, which was one long, sad horror show that traced the abuse of African Americans from slave days up through the assassination in 1968.

There was a large group of school children, mostly African American, going through with docents. I wondered what they felt seeing Africans in chains, the police dogs, the fire hoses? If it was my kid I would want to be on the tour to put my arm around him. There was the usual laughing and fooling around that any group of kids will exhibit, but I wondered if they would have trouble sleeping that night.

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I commented to Lynn, “A coworker of mine at Oxfam used to find every opportunity to mention, ‘the UK never had slavery’ in a superior tone.”

“We may not have had slaves in the country, but we certainly benefited and participated in the system,” Lynn replied as we read a display about how global the slave trade was.

And of course it didn’t end with the abolition of slavery. “Jim Crow” was the system in the southern United States from reconstruction up through the civil rights era in the 60s that kept “negros” in their place. Here are a few of the ridiculous laws from that time:

Really? Checkers!? Who knew checkers could subvert the social order?

Then we marched slowly through exhibits about bus boycotts, lunch counter protests, and strikes. Then there were the cross burnings, lynchings, and bombings by white racists; somewhat counterbalanced by the support of white and other allies (including Jews).

I watched a video about James Meredith, the first black student to be accepted to the University of Mississippi, in Oxford Mississippi. Of course he hadn’t mentioned his race in his application, and when he showed up to enroll all hell broke loose. After weeks of rioting by whites, which resulted in two deaths, he was reluctantly let in, and as Lynn read later, he did graduate and lived a normal life afterwards.

The museum was really well done. There was a second building that explored African American activism post 1968, but after three or four hours in the first building we had to leave.

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Last week Vince and I talked to a group about mass incarceration. One of the audience members referred to it as the New Jim Crow. I agree, although in my opinion it’s about poverty, addiction, mental health, and class as much as racism.

Long Ago in a Land of Spandex

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Greetings from St. Louis. One more day of the road trip, and one more guest post from Vince.

Long Ago, In a Land of Spandex

It’s Friday again, my favorite day of the week. I like my job, but I like weekends more, and at this very moment it’s the longest possible time before more work. This will be the seventh post now on the topic of my career. Or careers. Or lack thereof, uh, yeah. I have no career; I have held many jobs over the years.

At this moment, I’m taking a break from packing my few belongings for the big move. I finally threw away all of my stuff from prison and boot camp. I was never going to use any of it, so I’m happy to toss it out. Alright then, on with it.

After leaving Rochester and finding temporary shelter with a friend of a friend in Fountain, Minnesota, I was given a job as a line cook at Pedal Pusher’s Café in nearby Lanesboro. The owners were a couple with three kids and they all lived upstairs of the restaurant. Looking back, it really sucks to see how things went down. They were kind, generous people who went out of their way to help me when I was down. They even let me sleep in their camper for a while after things went sour in Fountain, and while I waited to find an apartment of my own which they also loaned me the money for.

Lanesboro is a bustling little city full of B&B’s, bike trails, trout fishing, tourists, and spandex, It has a few restaurants too, and they were very busy in the summer. I hadn’t been on a line in some years when I started there, but I picked things back up pretty quickly. Time flew by, I worked hard, and started drinking hard. I also met a new friend that would play a major role in my life for many years to come: gambling.

In the form of pull tabs, I whittled away my pay checks one dollar at a time for months. Eventually, I started taking advances on my pay checks, and very shortly after I started doing that, I started taking advances without their knowledge. This may come as a shock to some people with whom I have not been entirely honest over the years, but I’m letting it all out now. I felt like a lowlife piece of shit, but unfortunately, I just did not care. It didn’t take them long to catch on to me and I was eventually fired for stealing.

Unable to get unemployment benefits, I became withdrawn and moved in with an unenthusiastic friend and his soon to be wife. I sat in that room for a month, maybe two. I wore the same clothes, I ate ramen out of the package, and I cried every day. I was too proud to ask for help. I couldn’t take care of myself, I couldn’t find a job (because I absolutely was not looking), and I was about as close to having a suicidal urge as I’ve ever come. Auspiciously, a very good friend of mine got me out of that trance and back into Fountain where I held a few more jobs.

About two weeks ago, I sent a letter to the owners of Pedal Pusher’s. I told them a lot of what has been going on with me, but more importantly, what was going on with me back then. I asked them to give me a chance to repair the damage I have created, and I included a small token of my sincerity in the form of money. I haven’t heard back from them and I don’t know that I ever will. But I have done my part. At the very least, I have tried to open an avenue of communication with them so that I may fix what has been broken for so long. It was the first of many letters to many people, and with each one, I hope to feel a little more human again.

Time to Make a Move

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Greetings from Oxford, Mississippi! This is a post written by Vince about his move. It will be bittersweet to come home to an empty house.

Time to Make a Move

Just shy of seven months as a free man, I am happy to report that, as a 37-year-old, I am moving out of my mother’s home. Again. Maybe for the fourth time in my life, and hopefully for the last.

I alluded to this in my last post but not before because I didn’t want to get overexcited about it until it was actually approved by my agents. Now it is official, and I can proudly relate this information to you: I AM MOVING! Just two short days from now.

I have written about this move before, but as a failed attempt at leaving the nest possibly too early. I’m moving into a house with two sober guys from the program, one of which I was in prison with, and I’ve worked with for some time. He no longer works with me, but we remain friends. I don’t know the other guy, but he’s sober, and that counts for a lot.

I’ve been to see the house once. It’s small as you can see in the picture, but I’ll have my own room, so it isn’t like a sober house environment. There isn’t a house manager that watches over us, or anybody to give us random shakedowns and breathalyzers. I have my agents for that. This is a step forward.

It couldn’t come at a better time, in my opinion, as I will be moving on to the next phase of Intensive Supervised Release program soon after. That will open up a lot more time that I can spend doing things I want to do like go to more meetings, and spending more time with my family. I am also finishing the last three hours of my community service this week.

It’s all lining up. Everything is going well in so many ways. So I need to be really careful. For somebody like me, good news can be all I need to trick myself into thinking I deserve a reward. Maybe I can go out and celebrate with just one drink, or just a little crack (“A little” crack doesn’t actually exist. It’s an all or nothing drug. For more information, go here). I mean, at this point I’ve built myself a pretty good network of people that I can reach out to if the urge hits me, but it’s always good to layer on the protection.

This disease of mine can also be described as an allergy. When I drink or do drugs, things just go haywire. My body responds differently to them than normal people. Also, my allergy in particular is a little more severe than say, a gluten allergy. Oh, also I don’t believe that’s a real allergy, but I’m not a Doctor. Anyhow, let’s say that somebody with a gluten allergy accidentally ingests some flour. Well, maybe an hour or so later, they fart a little and that causes some slight discomfort or embarrassment. Well, when I ingest a little alcohol, or maybe some meth, my world flips upside down. I can no longer take care of myself financially, mentally, or physically. And this allergy affects others, too. For example, if I smoke crack, you may no longer have a television, and some of your smaller valuables may go missing as well.

Simply put, chemicals make me not give a fuck about you or me. And I’d really like to avoid all of that so that’s why I’ve immersed myself in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m not worried about relapsing because of my new place and my new freedoms, I’m excited to see what I can do with them. And I’m really happy to be able to share this with you people. For you that are new to this blog, I encourage you to see where it all started almost two years ago with just five pieces of writing paper and a 3” flexible safety pen behind the unforgiving bars at St. Cloud Men’s Reformatory/State Prison.