GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #598: CHOCOLATE

 A lot of you know I'm diabetic. I came to it a little differently than most, though. I don't eat sweets. I don't eat cake or pie. No chocolate. No candy. Nothing. I got to this place because of the sheer massive amount of Coke I drank for most of my life. However much Coke you think that is? You're not even close to half of what I drank in those days.

People always look at me weird when I say I don't like chocolate. It's just not my thing. I'll have it every once in a while, but for the most part I don't care for it.

A while back, while I was still in IOP, one of my fellow addicts said that since he quit drinking he also can't stand chocolate. He asked us if we'd ever heard of something like that. I had heard the opposite, actually. I was warned a couple of times that if I ever quit drinking, I would suddenly become a chocoholic.

Here I am on my 187th day from my last drink, and holy shit. I love chocolate. I have no idea how this happened, but I find myself buying Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (the Big Cups, no less) all the time. I stopped and got a couple of packages on the way home from work today. I also get Snickers with almonds. Also, I get Hershey's with almonds. And every once in a while I'll get a Mr. Goodbar.

Holy shit, this is horrible news for a diabetic like me. I've gone through a lot of my life not eating chocolate. And not even caring for it! I force myself to not indulge myself on most days, but when I have the following day off from work? I can't help myself. On those days that I don't get anything, I miss it. For the love of fuck, it actually bums me out.

I gotta do something about this. At least when I was drinking my blood sugars were low. I didn't really eat much of anything back then, and the booze didn't have sugar in it. Is it possible that quitting drinking made me less healthy?!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #547: MY FLASK COLLECTION

I love Justified.

 So I've been packing all my shit for my inevitable move, and over the weekend I discovered my flask collection. That was my 93rd day free of booze, and this is my 96th. What the hell am I going to do with these things?

During IOP one of my fellow addicts talked about finding a bottle of booze not too long after this person's first sober day. This person talked about not knowing what to do with it and not wanting to pour it down the sink because, hey, that cost money. At least it can work as a gift, right? I'm the same way, so I think about that story a lot mostly because it is entirely possible that while packing my shit I will find a hidden bottle. I had a bunch of them squirreled away throughout my bedroom for a rainy day. I'm pretty sure I drank them all, but what if I didn't? Would I be able to do as my friend did? Would I be able to pour it down the drain?

I honestly don't know. It hasn't come up (yet), so maybe I'll never know. But the closest I've come is finding those flasks. None of them had anything in them. They didn't tempt me to go out to the liquor store, either. BUT! I did open them and take a whiff at the insides. Holy fucking hell, I miss drinking. I'm still not feeling any cravings, but the smell brought back memories.

What am I going to do with these things? I have a pretty sweet Justified flask. I know I'll probably clean it out and give it back to the friend who gifted it to me. The others? Do I just throw them out? Some of them were gifts, too. Or maybe they're worth something? I don't know what the market is for stainless steel. Probably nothing, right? Do pawn shops take this sort of thing?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #544: PRAYER

 I loved The Young Pope. It was a very thoughtful and blasphemous story, and I miss watching it. If you missed it, it's about Jude Law's character, who I would consider a Satanist, becoming Pope and the debauchery that kind of thing leads to, but there is one scene that I think about often.

In fact, here it is. Take the three minutes to watch it. I'll wait.

I think I was at my last IOP meeting when this scene came back to me. You know I'm an atheist, but I try to be as open-minded as possible. The older I get, the more I realize that the universe is a very strange place. Anyway, we were talking about prayer, and I couldn't help but think of Jude Law talking about the nature of such an act, that it shouldn't be a wish list but a reflection.

I like to meditate, and I like to reflect. For the former I do my absolute best to not think about anything. I'm rarely successful, but that's what I'm trying for. The latter is a very different sort of beast. I think about things. I turn them over in my head. I seek understanding. I reflect.

And in a way, in just such a fashion as Jude Law mentions, I suppose I do pray. I'm not waiting to hear God whispering to me. More likely it's my subconscious that will do that. But yeah. During that IOP meeting I realized that in my very backwards way, I do pray.

Weird.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #535: AT LONG LAST

This is my first night without my regular IOP meeting. I kind of miss it, yeah, and I certainly miss the people who attended with me, but I have to do a lot of stuff I put on hold, more or less, so I could do IOP. I got to meditate gtoday for a full session, which was very nice. I went pretty deep, too. I'm very relaxed as I write this now.

More importantly I got a shit-ton of writing done, and it has been a long time since I did that. It felt very good to feel the words flowing out of me at full force instead of the tiny gasps stolen from a couple of minutes here or there.

I'm actually pretty surprised at how good I feel now even though my world continues to crash around me. I still have to worry about my car, which may or may not be totaled. And there is the looming prospect of homelessness. And a bunch of other stuff that I'd rather not talk about right now.

At long last I had a great deal of time to myself with very few tasks at hand. And it felt really fucking good.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #534: SCHOOL'S OUT

 To be read to the tune of this.

A few of you have heard me talking about my three 3-hour IOP meetings since I got out of detox. Yesterday, on my 76th day without booze, I attended the final one of those. Not bad for a guy who had decided, during detox, that he was going to drink on his 44th birthday. Not bad at all.

I remember when I first heard about the meetings, and it bummed me out a bit. I really didn't want to lose nine hours a week to attending, but I committed to it because I thought it would be an important part of my recovery. It turned out to be true. In all honesty I'm kind of surprised that I got through it. But it's quite an achievement, I think.

I remember my first meeting. There were four of us, and it was the host's first group. I'm the only one of those four who got through to the end. It always makes me feel bad when someone attends a lot of these and then suddenly disappears. You hope for the best but you always think the worst. I felt especially bad when my roommate from detox stopped going. His act of kindness upon meeting him helped me get through this, especially those first few days. I was morose. I was shaking like a paint can at Ace Hardware. I felt downright miserable, and he was the first person I met there on the same level as me. He was cheerful and gave me a vigorous handshake, and I couldn't help but think, "How the hell is he in such a good mood? He's only been here a half an hour longer than me."

I'm glad I got to tell him how that helped me. I hope he's doing well out there. I hope all those who stopped attending are doing well. Who knows? Maybe they just went to different IOP meetings.

There's a part of me that will miss those meetings. There were a lot of great people there, and I'm glad I got to know them. But IOP has to end at some point. It's not meant to be a long term treatment. Eventually the baby bird has to learn how to fly, and I hope I do a pretty good job of that.

This is my 77th day. I told myself that I would stop counting the days after IOP stopped. I thought it was a bit morbid at times, but I've decided to keep going. I want to see my high score continue to go up.

Sorry if this GF column was overly cheerful. My regularly scheduled misanthropy will resume next week.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #530: DRUG DREAMS?

 So I've been going to IOP meetings for a couple of months now. Those are the 3-hour meetings I go to three times a week in my attempt to stay away from booze. The first thing we do is check in, and each of us goes over a checklist of things. One of the questions is, do you have drug dreams? They include alcohol in that, as they should. It's the PAWS part I almost always say no to.

But over the weekend I had a pretty strong drug dream. I dreamed that I was at a bar with friends, and I did what I always do at bars: I drank. A lot. Then, after a while, I remembered HOLY SHIT! I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THIS! The first thing I thought about, in my dream, was having to admit that I'm no longer on my winning streak. Remember how last week I talked about how rare it is for me to feel shame? I felt a deep shame in this dream. I thought, how could I show my face at my IOP meeting on Monday?

Intellectually, I know that I can do that easily. If you slip up, no one shames you. Yet at the same time I have this sense that if I did say, whoops, I'm one day from my last drink now, that my peers would be disappointed with me. Which wouldn't be the case if I did show up, by the way. As long as you're there, you're showing that you want to be better.

So it makes dream sense, but also at the same time, I think dreams do mean something. Nothing supernatural. Just a mishmash of shit that's moving around in your head. I'm pretty sure I subconsciously felt that I didn't want to disappoint the others in my IOP meeting.

That's probably a good sign, right?