Tag Archives: alanon

Thank You

Leave a reply

VINCE

My leg finally feels better. I haven’t done anything to risk re-injuring it and I kind of feel like a bum. Tomorrow I will go back to the gym and get back to my routine, although I won’t be playing any more competitive sports. Too risky for me at this point.

15 meals and a wake up. One of several ways we measure time here. Five days left of prison. Soon there will be no more bars, no more yelling (by prisoners), and no more sex offenders. There are no fences at boot camp. Of course there would still be escape charges if one were to leave without permission, but people seem to want to stay over there.

Sometime during our second week there, I’ve been told, we will be out in the community doing volunteer work. It’s going to be quite the change.

—

Ten meals and a wake up. I suppose the real wake up starts at boot camp. I have been in contact with a couple like-minded people who left one and two months before me. Both said they have really enjoyed the change. These two, like me, are going for the right reason: to positively change their lives. And they both live in St. Paul, so I will have some friends in recovery when I get out. Very important.

That’s what I lost when I left Florida. My group. My allies. The people I grew up with as an adult. I never got it back and I slowly let that become my excuse for using again.

—

Six meals and a wake up. It’s Sunday night and I’ve been having sort of a tough time coming up with things to write about. So I decided to take this time to thank all of you who have been following this journey and those who have commented on this blog. My mom and I knew from the get go that this was going to be powerful stuff, and it takes a fair amount of courage to write it down knowing it can be seen by the masses.

Thank you for letting me let it all out. It has helped me transform into a new man. Six months ago I really wasn’t too sure about this boot camp idea. Even after two months of sobriety I still wanted to be part of “the game.” I was still writing to and talking to all the old characters, setting myself up for disaster. Now I haven’t written or called anybody other than family and a couple guys that are in boot camp right now, for the right reason.

The Send Off

Leave a reply

VINCE

There are so many bad choices I’ve made in my life. But I am ready to break free of my old habits. Nine days until I commit myself to positive change, 189 days til freedom.

—

My second to last court appearance in June last year was a contested omnibus hearing where I finally decided to just make a deal. I was sick of my life and ready to go to prison. It happened a little faster than I thought it would, as I’ve written before.

I left the courtroom knowing that I had eight days left of freedom. Instead of using that time productively I went about my usual routine. Little did I know there was a plan in the works to leave me broke and broken.

Three days before my sentencing, I was robbed at knife point by three people that I thought I knew. They cornered me in a room and told me to empty my pockets, waving around a very short and wide knife.

You may not think of that as too much of a threat. But a person wielding a one-inch knife is ready to use it more quickly than a six-inch knife because it wouldn’t likely produce a fatal wound.

So I emptied my pockets and the one with the knife sucker punched me in the eye. As I turned around he punched me again, in the same spot. That really hurt.

They all called me some names and then left. Their goal was to steal my truck and leave me stranded but fortunately the ignition was broken, and they could not figure out my homemade tweaker [meth user] ignition featuring a light switch for toggle and a doorbell button for the starter switch.

I got up. In a daze I walked to the bathroom. I had a huge black eye. My nose was bleeding and my ego was shot.

They took about $1,000 combined money and drugs from me. It was all I had. But even that didn’t stop me. Nothing ever really did. I knew then that I needed to be locked up, in prison or chained to a radiator, it didn’t matter. I knew I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. My name is Vince and I’m an addict.

—

ANNE

I received a postcard from Vince. Between it and him writing, “I’m an addict,” I felt hope for him for the first time in 10 years.

Hola,

One week away! I’m looking forward to a new life. Again.

Thank you so much for all your support, and hard work. It must be tough at times. I love you very much and I’m happy we have become so close.

Love,

Vince

But was it real? There’s an old joke:

Q: How do you tell when an alcoholic is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

Vince writes about how many days til boot camp…how many days til he’s free…then he can start to change his life. I’m a firm believer that you can change your life now, regardless of whether your circumstances. That work can only be done inside your head, using cognitive behavior therapy, meditation, and other techniques. If you don’t know how to do it, as I didn’t for many years, you’re stuck. Physical fitness and self discipline are great, but I really hope this boot camp thing helps Vince figure out how to rewire his “stinking thinking”, as they call it in AA.

Free Will

Leave a reply

ANNE

Vince has written about how he doesn’t believe in any god. I used to. For 50 years I never doubted God’s existence; I guess that’s called faith.

I was a seeker. I didn’t assume that, because I was born into a Catholic family, attended Catholic schools, and lived in a Catholic neighborhood, I would always be Catholic.

I spent my teens investigating other faiths and converted to one when I was 18. I’m not trying to be coy by not naming it. Once Vince is out it’ll be no big deal. I belonged to a congregation, went to services every week, and put Vince through religious school, much to his displeasure. I wasn’t a happy clappy bible banger. My congregation is as liberal as they get. Yes, I’m still a member, even though I don’t believe in a god.

Since my dad had died young, I had no problem believing in an invisible father figure who would always be there for me.

Problem was, He wasn’t there for me. For 50 years, I prayed. I tried the begging, pleading prayers and the grateful, worshipping ones. I tried shutting up and listening, aka meditating. But I never heard anything. I never got any answers and never felt comforted. People said, “you have to be patient,” and “maybe God’s answer is ‘no’.” I was well aware of how we contort our logic to make sense of God. For instance, how athletes thank God when they win but blame themselves when they lose.

Then one day, when I was 50, my belief in God just went poof! and disappeared. It was like a light switch had been flipped off. What a relief! I no longer had to try to shake answers or love out of a being I couldn’t see or hear. I was free to pursue or not pursue whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to wait around for a sign from God. If it didn’t work out, I could analyze what went wrong, figure out my part, if any, and do it different next time.

Soon after my faith evaporated, I read the old classic novel Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, which is about an abusive relationship. This passage jumped out at me and summarized how I felt: “He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked god he no longer believed in him.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to say everything is due to my effort, like in the old Rush song, Free Will. It’s easy to be smug when you’re a millionaire rock star. The fact is, we live in a world with constraints like race, class, intellectual and physical abilities, bad luck, good luck, etc.

Another great mind, former professional wrestler, Navy Seal, Minnesota Governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura, got into hot water for saying “Religion is a crutch for weak minded people.” I wasn’t weak minded all those years. I’m a very intelligent person. I just think I needed a father figure and I had been steeped in the Catholic life up until age 18, where questioning God’s existence just wasn’t done.

This new development did throw a wrench in the works for me in my Alanon meetings. Alanon is for families and friends of alcoholics and addicts. I attended weekly meetings and “worked the program”, as they say. Alanon, like AA and the other 12-step groups, uses the term higher power interchangeably with god—and everything depends on believing in one. In my group, people only used the word God, and spoke of God, personally, like he was kindly uncle. I kept going for a year but it finally bugged me so much that I quit.

I’ve written in previous posts about believing that human connections are the key to spiritual growth and inner peace and a feeling of belonging and all that jazz. Vince is counting on his sober friends to keep him sober, and I think he’s on the right track.

Outed

Leave a reply

ANNE

In a previous post I mentioned that Richard Branson, the British airline and media tycoon, has taken on US prison reform as a pet cause. He (one of his PR people, I’m sure) has a blog about it, so I posted a comment thanking him and pointing him to Vince’s and my blog in case he wanted a firsthand account of what prison life is like.

I happened to go to Linked In about 15 minutes later, and there was my comment to Richard Branson, complete with the photo of me with my jailbird son! Linked In? Not exactly the social network I would choose to share such a thing with! I zapped the post.

Little did I know that, during those 15 minutes, a coworker had seen the post and not only shared it on her Linked In page but also on Facebook. She is a super outgoing person; one of those people who has exceeded her maximum number of connections on Linked In. I’m not Facebook friends with coworkers, so I don’t know how many Facebook friends she has, but I think it’s a safe bet that they number in the thousands.

And she is Facebook friends with coworkers. So at work on Monday, coworkers started emailing me and stopping by my cube to say they’d read the blog—including my boss.

All of their feedback has been positive and supportive, and several have confided that they have a brother or son or someone in prison, too.

I figure that for every person who has talked to me about it, there are 2-3 others out there who have seen the blog and for one reason or other are not going to let on that they’ve read it.

I checked the blog stats for the first time ever, and saw a gigantic spike over the weekend. Vince and I had been building a steady readership in the dozens, and suddenly —Kaboom!—there were thousands. And because my coworker and I work for an international organization, Vince and I now have double digit readership in Armenia, the UK, Australia, Senegal, and Kenya.

I loved knowing that strangers in Armenia were reading the blog, but it turned my stomach to think about certain family members reading it.

I talked to a friend whose son has also been in prison. She reminded me that the whole point of the blog is to fight the shame and silence around imprisonment and addiction.

I kept getting overwhelmingly positive feedback. I talked it over with Vince, and he said, “Go for it, Mom. Post it on my Facebook page.” I was okay with that. Then he said, “But you have to post it on yours, too.”

Gulp. It felt like the right thing to do, but also scary. I called my mom to tell her she would see a photo of Vince and me on Facebook, and that the blog it led to contained swear words and unpleasant things. I don’t think she really understood what it was all about but at least she wouldn’t be taken by surprise. My sister already knew Vince and I were blogging because I’d shown her the first post where I mention she has cancer and had asked her if it was ok to publish. I called my cousin and my brother, who both said, “Just go for it.”

I unfriended some people who weren’t really friends, then hit the plunger.

Vince and I don’t have that many FB friends but my niece, for instance, has nearly a thousand and she shared the link immediately, as did a few other people. When I got up the next morning, there were dozens of comments and also texts, emails, and phone messages. The most common themes have been: 1) this is courageous; 2) it’s refreshing to read someone being “real” online; 3) you have important stories to tell; and 4) you made me cry and you made me laugh out loud.

Mission accomplished! Now all we need is a corporate sponsor so I can quit my job and work on this full time. I have a feeling it’s not gonna be Bob Barker, Inc.

The Creep

1 Reply

ANNE

Ouch. That Eminem song … so many ways I could go with that.

—

When I was in Istanbul in November, there was a guy from the Philippines in my meetings. His name was J.P. Morgan. No, J.P. Morgan is not a Filipino name. His father had changed the family name in hopes that it would bring prosperity. It didn’t.

I happened to be seated next to J.P.—John—on a dinner cruise the first night. I thought, “Oh no, trapped on a boat for three hours next to this guy—what could we possibly have in common?”

But then we started talking and by the end of the cruise I was calling him “son” and he was calling me “mom.”

John’s father was an alcoholic who had left the family when John was small. John was pimped out at the age of 10, sold to strangers for sex until he was too old and no longer desirable—19 or 20—and he began pimping out younger kids in order to make a living and survive.

By the time I met him, John was Vince’s age, had recovered long ago, and ran a recovery program for street kids. Here we are, talking about his “River of Life” program.  To prostituted young men, John has become their idol, big brother, and mentor. Everybody, including notorious gang leaders, listens intently to John and follows every word he says.

JP Morgan

John and another sex worker had had a son together. He was a teenager now, and John was doing his best to keep tabs on him, though the mother was an addict and moved around a lot.

I asked John if he thought that kids being raised by single mothers was the biggest reason that kids got in to trouble. He looked squarely at me and wagged his finger. “No. It is not the mothers. It’s the fathers.” Alcoholic fathers. Abusive fathers. Fathers who gamble away their paychecks. Fathers who leave.

—

On Vince’s first birthday I called to invite his father to have cake with us, and he said he was too busy with “business.” A drug deal, in other words. I never saw him again, except briefly in a crowd.

From time to time I would ask Vince if it bothered him that he didn’t have a father. “Let’s just call him The Creep,” he said once, and we laughed and I never really got an answer, if he had one to give.

Vince never asked about The Creep. The Creep’s dad had been a barge worker and his mother was a telephone operator who had grown up on a reservation. They lived in a dilapidated farm house in Rush City filled with cigarette smoke and no heat and large bowls of bite-sized Snickers and a big-screen TV. The Creep and I visited his grandmother once, on the rez. She lived in a tar paper shack without indoor plumbing or electricity.

I never mentioned to Vince that the Creep had been a drug dealer from a small town who didn’t have a car or a phone, a high-school dropout who worked as a clerk in a gas station. A guy who aspired to nothing more than hanging out with his friends, drinking and smoking pot, laughing and telling stories about drinking and smoking pot. I never mentioned any of these things because I didn’t want Vince to be influenced by them, if he harbored some unconscious admiration for The Creep.

The Creep had had a son with another woman before I met him, and went on to father four more children. I got $103 in child support once, but that was it.

—

I’m not trying to shift blame; after all I must have had a far stronger influence on Vince since I was there 24/7 for 16 years, right?  I don’t spend all day analyzing and angsting over why Vince is who he is.  But for every Vince, there are 10,000 more like him in prison, in Minnesota alone.  I’m sure they all derailed for a different mix of complicated reasons, just as I succeeded despite a complicated mix of factors that should have kept me down.  If someone could figure it all out, they would deserve to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Babies

We Are Who We Are

Leave a reply

VINCE

We Are Who We Are

My brain is so easily distracted.  My mom emailed some of my older blog posts and I saw my list for a perfect mixed tape.  Well, I simply must make another…Tangerine, Led Zeppelin; Blinded by Rainbows, Rolling Stones; One More Cup of Coffee, Bob Dylan.

One particular song reminds me of me and some parts of my relationship with my mother: Headlights, by Eminem.

[Lyrics not shared here due to copyright issues.]

Ashamed of Ashamed

Leave a reply

ANNE

Did you know it’s possible to feel ashamed of feeling ashamed?

Well it is. A couple times, Vince and his friends came to St. Paul for the weekend and stayed with me. They brought everything one needs for an overnight:

BoozeCigs

And since I live in a nonsmoking building, they smoked out in front of the building, or took their home-rolled cigarettes and a cooler full of beer up to the roof and played poker up there. I would bring up a platter of food—hard boiled eggs, olive tapenade, crackers, some fruit—up to them but they wouldn’t touch it.   Once I bought four kinds of sausages at Whole Foods, figuring they were meat eaters, but they wouldn’t touch them–too froo froo.

Vince took his shoes off inside my door, as he had been trained to do from childhood:

Shoes

This is where the shame came in. Here I was, living in what was billed as a “luxury” apartment building, and my son wore shoes like this. And then I felt ashamed of feeling ashamed.  Of being such a snob.

Whoa! Time for a cute kitten photo!

kitten

(Did I mention I do kitten fostering for the humane society?)

Anyway, another time we all went for sushi—Vince’s and my all-time favorite food. And he couldn’t eat it. He had to leave the table to be sick, and then I noticed that his abdomen was distended and my bubble of denial that he was “just drinking” was burst.

I had attended the family program at Hazelden, I knew the medical symptoms of chronic alcoholism, including liver disease.

—

A number of people have said to me that it must be kind of relief that Vince is in prison. At least I know where he is, he can’t drink or smoke, yatta yatta. Yeah, these things are true and they are good, although drugs and alcohol can be had, even in prison.

All I can do is keep my focus on myself—examining my embarrassment and guilt over that embarrassment, forgiving myself for being human, for having feelings, for having mixed feelings.

Lauren, Ralph Lauren

Leave a reply

ANNE

In some of Vince’s posts it sounds like I abandoned him.

But during the seven “fun” years, as he calls them, when he was “only drinking,” I did visit him every couple of months.  Remember, it’s a two-hour drive to Fountain / Lanesboro, so each visit meant a six- to eight-hour day or staying overnight. Mondays were his only days off, so a visit usually involved taking a day off work, too.

I hope I don’t sound defensive. It’s just interesting, and very common in families, that our emotional impression of events is so different.

At first, right after his relapse, visiting him was so emotion-laden that I might weep in the car most of the way home. The first time I saw him after six months of not knowing where he was, after his meth bender, I was shocked by his appearance. Gaunt, hollow eyes—they even appeared to have changed color from brown to almost black. His clothes looked as though he had just survived a ship wreck—torn and filthy. He was 27 but he looked 10 years older. Someone passing by asked him, “Hey Vince, who’s your date?” He didn’t like that.

I asked him if I could buy him a pair of jeans and he said, “Sure mom, but they have to be Lauren—Ralph Lauren.”

It was always the same routine. He didn’t use email or Facebook or talk on the phone; communications was solely by text. So I would text and ask if such-and-such a weekend would be good for me to come visit. Half the time he wouldn’t reply. Then I would text again a few days later, and a few days later, until finally I’d get a text back with him saying he’d dropped his phone in the river but he would love to see me.

When I arrived in town it was always awkward. He was usually working so I would have a burger and a beer. I always had the impression that he wished he could escape from me—to go use? I don’t know. He didn’t want money from me; he never asked for money and, after all, he was working full-time. When he lost his job I might take him shopping for clothes or buy him a contact lenses refill so he could see, but I never gave him money.

Wrench

We would go agate hunting. He would show me the home-made raft he and Seth had built out of empty industrial-sized ketchup tubs and duct tape. We’d go to the Amish market and make fun of their eye glasses, which were all the same steel-rimmed, round, and always smeary. We camped on Seth’s land with their group of friends. Vince would toss a ball for his dog, Willie, or play catch with one of his friends. One time someone had won a meat raffle and Vince roasted it all over the campfire and I gorged myself.

Bluebell

I would show up in my Mini with my Emporio Armani bags and my Murano glass beer bottle opener I’d bought in Venice.  These were almost like protective shields, as if they declared (again), “I’m not one of you hillbillies!”  (A friend in London works there and is my source for these sturdy plastic bags which are great for camping.  I am way too cheap to actually buy anything there.).

Seth talked nonstop, but Vince would say barely 20 words.  There was never any animosity, just an elusiveness. Who was he? What did he want in life? Was this it? Did he ever date? Did he wish he had kids? Would he ever go back and finish his degree? Did he ever think about buying a house?

BeardedOne

If I couldn’t contain myself and asked one of these questions, he would deflect it with a joke. When I left, he would hug me and say, “I love you mom.”

It got easier as time went by. And, I have to admit, once I gave up my vow to never drink in front of him, we all loosened up a bit.  Alcohol, such a time-honored stress reliever.

I came to feel proud of Vince.  He worked, paid his bills, paid taxes, had friends, had fun.  He seemed to have overcome the drug demons and was only drinking moderately.  Well, moderately for him.  For the umpteenth time, I was lulled into thinking it would stay this way forever.

VnMe

Prison, Prison Everywhere

Leave a reply

ANNE

There’s this phenomenon where, if something’s on your mind, it’s what you see everywhere you go. That’s how this prison thing has been for me. Why did I never notice before how the word prison comes up all the time, everywhere?

I open my little neighborhood newspaper and there’s a story about a local guy, a recovering addict who spent time in prison, just published a book called “Sobriety: A Graphic Novel” (Hazelden Publishing). The next week, there’s a story about a local woman who just published “A Mother Load of Addiction“. When her children were young adults, people would ask what they were doing. “I would say that my daughter was at college at St. Thomas and my son was at St. Cloud.” What she did not add was that her son was not at St. Cloud State University, but was serving time at the nearby state correctional facility for a drug-related holdup.

In my Sunday paper there’s an article about an old law that requires drug dealers to buy a tax stamp from the Minnesota Department of Revenue. Inside editorial by a judge who writes about mass incarceration, “There’s a problem, yes. Is it proof of racism? No. Are there solutions? Yes, but they shouldn’t involve an end to punishment.” The following week there’s an article about prison phone reform. “They’ve got the monopoly, so they charge whatever they want,” said one Minnesota mother, struggling to stay in touch with her imprisoned son.” Not me, but it could have been. Today there was a question in the advice column from a woman worried about her mom’s ex-con boyfriend being around her 18-month-old daughter. The columnist’s advice? “When it comes to baby proofing your house, I would put access to ex-cons at the top of the list.”

I turn on the radio in my car and it’s Back to the 80s day with Grand Master Flash’s White Lines (Don’t, Don’t Do It): “A street kid gets arrested, gonna do some time. He got out three years from now just to commit more crime. A business man is caught, with 24 kilos. He’s out on bail and out of jail and that’s the way it goes.” It’s a great tune, by the way.

I go to a party and everyone is laughing about the show Orange is the New Black. I’ve only seen the first season since I am old-school and still get Netflix DVDs. Hilarious! people say. Yes, it is funny, but not so much when you have an actual loved one behind bars. I didn’t see the end of the last season coming…it was really upsetting.

A local university announces it has a law professor named Mark Osler who has been chosen to join a team of experts screening 18,000 prisoners who applied to have their sentences commuted through Obama’s new drug clemency program.

I go to the Arrow Awards show. This is an hour and a half of British TV commercials and public service announcements that have won awards for creativity. Most of them are hilarious and I look forward to this bit of escapism every year. But then there is this one, where an ex offender is talking to a potential employer and you can hit the “skip” button.

I pick up a pile of old New Yorker magazines in the business center of my building—I like to cut out the cartoons and mail them to Vince, although they don’t always get through. In one, there’s a very long but fascinating article about the “alternatives-to-incarceration” industry. This is where private companies get paid to hound people who’ve failed to pay their parking tickets, for instance, piling on more and more late fees and fines until they’re on the verge of losing their homes.

These are just the prison references I come across in my home life. Work offers many more.

Sunny Day, Everything’s A-OK

Leave a reply

ANNE

I visited Vince again, for his birthday. This time a friend went with me and we made a day trip out of it. Stefanie brought a couple big bags full of toys and books that her granddaughters had outgrown, and handed them out to the kids in the prison waiting room, which I thought was touching and brilliant. The kids couldn’t bring toys into the visiting area, but they could play with them until they had to walk through the metal detector and the sea of bars.

Vince and I had a good visit, again, then Stefanie and I drove around, got turned around and lost a couple times, and discovered a nature preserve where we went for a long walk. It was a beautiful warmish day. I had brought a couple beers in the trunk and we hung out in a field and each drank one, and I smoked a cigar.

Below is a screen shot from the Minnesota Department of Corrections from their manual for families of incarcerated people. I just happened to find it about six months after Vince was locked up. I am listed as his next of kin / emergency contact or whatever in the DOC system. How hard would it have been for someone to send me a form email with a link to this?

kid

Some of the information would have been really useful, like knowing there’s an email system where I can send messages to Vince for 10 cents. Other tips, not so helpful, like the one about buying a cell phone with the prison area code so calls are cheaper. A friend of mine, whose son was also imprisoned, did this and then they transferred him without notice to another state and she was stuck with a second cell phone and call time she would never use.

I’m a highly resourceful person with unlimited internet and phone access. I have time to figure things out. But what about the mom who is now raising three kids by herself and working full time? No more second income or child support once the man is inside. Maybe no health insurance, car, etc. Certainly no help from a partner, if the guy was any kind of decent partner before he was arrested. I read the whole manual, finding some encouragement in the fact that the DOC seems to get how significant imprisonment is to a family.

It’s not just about locking up a bad guy, as they are so fond of saying in the media. It’s about all the people affected by it. If you’re interested, here is the Tip Sheet for Parents, the Tip Sheet for Incarcerated Parents, and believe it or not, the Sesame Street Handbook for Children Ages 3-8.

It would be funny if it didn’t involve real children. As a child who was lied to about the whereabouts and cause of my dad’s death, I appreciated the tip that encourages parents to talk openly about how the other parent is in prison, and to take the children to visit. This is because children will fill in any blanks with their imaginations, and what they imagine will be worse than the reality. I wouldn’t go that far—the reality is pretty awful and our society wants it that way because it’s punishment—but I am a big believer in being honest with children.

Now the section on Dating an Offender, that’s hilarious. Unintentionally so, but still. I know, I know; if I was dating an offender it wouldn’t be funny.

Dating an Offender

“If you are dating someone in prison, it may be difficult to really get to know the inmate. You may be the offender’s only connection to the outside world. The offender may lean on you more so than if you were dating on the outside. Therefore, your letters, visits, and telephone communications become very important to the offender. The offender may also depend heavily on you to send gifts, money or to do things you don’t really want or can’t afford to do. Try not to let the offender put pressure on you. Don’t focus only on the needs of the offender and don’t feel pressured into taking care of only his or her needs. Be sure to find time for yourself and keep a proper focus on your own needs and feelings. When you communicate with each other, try to talk about your past and your goals and hopes for the future. A more balanced relationship will help you decide if you want to maintain it after the offender is released.”