I Got Friends in No Places

Probably one of the most common traits you will find among those who have drug or alcohol problems is a lack of any serious friendships or social attachments outside of family members. The reasons for this are multifaceted and unique to the individual to some degree, but over time you still learn to pick up on some commonalities. In my humble opinion, most of this phenomenon is tied to the fact that the level of self deception one must engage in order to function as a drunk or an addict is such that the deception of others is inevitable collateral damage. As a general rule, people do not like being fucked with in this manner, so they bail on us in short order, and who can blame them? 

The true tragedy comes to those who are not so easily deterred, and this typically comprises those who love us. This is nearly always either our family members or significant others, who most of the time knew us long before we had substance problems and therefore see the silver lining that is invisible to the average person. It is this memory of us being "normal" that these folks cling to, in the hopes that we may someday again embody this same archetype. That being said, even family does not have limitless patience. In my own personal experience I was extremely lucky. My family put up with levels of deception, dishonesty, theft, etc. that I can't imagine anyone would endure. I know I probably wouldn't if the situation were reversed. It has taken me years and years to attempt to repair the damage I caused, and even to this day most in my family still view me with a degree of (quite justified) suspicion. 

I now shower my family members with extravagant gifts for Xmas, their birthdays, etc. but this is really just flawed thinking on my part, no different than a step-parent who is trying to buy the affections of a child. My Mother enjoys a Sunday morning phone call from me to talk about my week a million times more than she would me buying out her wish list on Amazon, but I still do it anyway. So why do I still do it? I am awful at self analysis, but I think part of me is trying to show off my level of relative affluence as a defense mechanism. As if to say "Hey [insert family member here] I am rich, so therefore I have to have my shit together, otherwise who in their right mind would pay me so much money?" 

This type of behavior has everything to do with me attempting to convey an image that is far removed from reality. The other day I got to thinking and I added up the total seating in my apartment. When you factor in my dining room table, sectional, love seat, patio furniture, bar stools at the kitchen breakfast bar, and various others, there is seating for approximately 30 people in my home. The reality is that other than a few random one night stands here and there, nobody other than the apartment maintenance guy has ever set foot in my apartment. Now granted that some of this might have to do with a culture of consumerism that has managed to gain a foothold on most people's brains, but I think the larger issue is that I am all about image and outward appearances, even to myself. 

These days my alcohol and drug use is far subdued from what it once was. I am a somewhat functional and contributing member of society on most days after all. What has not changed is my lack of any close friends or females that stick around longer than a week or so. Since I can't, most of the time, blame my love of booze and illicit substances for this discrepancy, I then have to ponder what is it about me that has lead me to this bizarre version of "normal".  I tend to think that because I am a somewhat shady character that I may always be suspicious of others intentions as well. Females that I have met either at bars or from various forms of social media have often tried to "reel me in". What invariably happens is that I end up ignoring their calls and texts and sooner or later they give up. At this point I will then revert back to introverted mode where I do little other than work and come home. Eventually I will get lonely and put myself out there again and the process repeats itself. Many guys in the world might do this because they fancy themselves a player, but that is not really my situation at all. I derive no enjoyment from the thrill of the hunt. At the end of the day I suppose my biggest fear is that they will eventually discover the real me and then I will be forced to deal with real rejection before I get an opportunity to reject them first. 

As for friends that have no level of romantic involvement, my clients seem to fill this void in my life. Some of the people at the office criticize me for being so "buddy buddy" with those I do business with and suggest I instead keep them at arms length. I have summarily rejected this position. The great thing about clients is that I do not have to see them very often, so there is no real time to develop a serious friendship, thus no risk. We can hang out, and talk shop, and party, and then the next day I am on a plane back home only to see them again in maybe a month or so. It's sort of like a single serving bromance in most cases. 

Do I still sometimes long for the days of young adolescence when I had numerous "best friends" who knew every facet of my life backwards and forwards? Of course I do, and I think every human being on the planet does to some degree. However, the reality is that I am deeply flawed individual that may never have the ability to form these types of relationships ever again. My coping mechanism for this has been outlined above. As irrational as it might be, it has managed to keep me somewhat sane up to this point. 

In short, my friends. I walk alone. 

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The Traveling mAd Man

Frequent travel is an unfortunate fact of life within my current work related capacities. As a guy that formerly had difficulty getting one of my restaurant managers to fork over the cash for an extra work shirt, having a company spend thousands upon thousands of dollars flying me all over the USA is quite the change of pace. 

Initially when you first start working in a "real" job, the prospect of work travel sounds quite sexy and appealing. Getting to see other parts of the country and meet new people and clients could not possibly be a bad thing right? And for awhile, it's not. You can impress your friends on social media with check ins and photos from various exotic locations, which is always cool. You can also, assuming your clients and company expense account permits, stay in the nicest hotels and eat at the best restaurants. Hell, stick with it long enough and you will eventually end up on the winning side of rental car company fuck up and end up driving around in a hundred thousand dollar luxury sedan for a few days. Another nice perk is that you will rack up frequent flyer miles like crazy. It won't be long and you will be able to fly almost anywhere you like for free when you want to travel for vacation or a long weekend. What could possibly be the downside? 

The downside that is obvious for most people is pretty much a non-factor for me personally. I have no wife, kids, house with a picket fence, etc. waiting for me back on the home front. This is typically the biggest complaint that frequent work travelers have. Furthermore, the fact that I do not have any serious attachments to my city make me the ideal candidate for being a road warrior. Nearly anytime an issue arrises when one of us is needed out of town, I am the default choice by both the company president and HR. The company president because I am so skilled with client interactions and defusing potentially volatile situations, and HR because they have booked me so many times they can have me out the door and on my way to the airport in a few keystrokes. 

If you are traveling more than 3 times per month for any length of time however, I think you will find that it will start to wear on you. Dealing with airports all the time is the most obvious factor that will begin to get on your nerves. Major US airport hubs are a total nightmare on multiple levels. Sometimes it seems like you will be spending half your life waiting in lines from here to China for check in, security, etc. Airport jobs are also government jobs most of the time, meaning they often hire the lowest common denominator for staff. These are also often people that just love to make the life of a suburban white guy in a business suit total hell. "Yeah, I totally get it Shanekwa, you hate your job, and you hate me for making you do it". This is a scenario that will be played out on a far too frequent basis and it would try the patience of a day care center employee. 

You also have to factor in that air travel, in and of itself, just wears your body out. Being shoehorned into the confines of a coach class seat for hours at a time makes your body feel like shit, and just about the time it starts to recover, you are back on a plane either heading back home or heading somewhere else. It's like being in a perpetual state of being mildly hungover. 

Living out of a suitcase in hotels all the time, even top shelf ones, also becomes annoying. You will start to long for your own bed, your own refrigerator, and your own life outside of going from airport, to conference room, to hotel, rinse and repeat. You will find yourself becoming increasingly more irritable the longer you stay on the road. As I highly suspect that many of these blogs will be typed from the road, the perceptive reader will likely be able to tell that my mood is altered for the worse. 

Then there is the ever present problem of any work you leave behind back at the office is also not going anywhere. In fact, it begins to pile up exponentially as new projects come online. Now granted you can work on some things from the road, but after spending all day in conference rooms talking a mile a minute, the last thing you will want to contend with when you get back to the hotel is more work. I pretty much only deal with critical issues when I am on the road, and even then only begrudgingly. Speaking of critical issues, it seems like those always miraculously seem to materialize when I am away from the office. It could be smooth sailing for weeks but the second I step on board a plane it's as if the entire world comes crashing down in short order. 

As for partying, here is where it is really a crap shoot depending upon the clients you happen to be visiting. If these are a group of guys that you have built up a relationship with (and I am pretty chummy with my clients), they are going to want to take you out and show you a good time while you are in town. What constitutes a "good time" for most of the execs in my line of work is akin to a fraternity house Friday night. We advertising folks like to party. Sports bars are typically the bill of fare for normal nights, but if we just nailed down the details of an arduous quarterly media buy, then I would not rule out strip clubs til the wee hours of the AM and medicinal levels of alcohol intake. This makes life a bit of a challenge when you are an old school drunk like myself. I do not exactly need much in the way of encouragement to throughly embrace my dark side. I am proud to say that in all but a couple of instances I have managed to keep it under control, but there is always the ever present tendencies within me that are just itching for the opportunity to manifest themselves. I try to retain those types of benders for industry conferences and conventions, as opposed to client visits, and that is a topic that is diverse enough that is deserves it's own blog entry. 

I am fortunate that I have yet to run across any clients that have been into drugs, or else I could probably land myself in far greater levels of risk.  Since I am nearly always in a town where I know almost nobody, my ability to score is obviously nil, but I am sure at some point one of my clients is going to break out a bag of blow and want to go to town. It is at this point we will see what I am truly made of as to my ability to "maintain". 

I have, on a couple of occassions, sought out the services of backpage.com or craigslist personals when on the road to hook up with some female accompaniment, but fortunately I am normally too wore out to go that route. 

So many exexs out there have managed to ruin their careers while out traveling. A man much wiser than I am once said that "careers are rarely made with business travel, but many are lost". I try to keep that in the back of my mind anytime I head to the airport. I am fortunate to have a pretty damn good gig going on for myself these days, and the only person that can ruin it is the same one I see in the mirror every morning. 

Rehab is for Quitters

Most people that know my full background these days, which, btw, is relatively few other than close family members, often ask me about my experience with alcohol/drug treatment and rehabilitation programs out there. These days there is certainly no shortage of these services around, and they run the gamut from an AA meeting in some depilated hovel in the ghetto, to resort style setups overlooking the beaches of Malibu.  In my own personal experience, all I have to reflect upon is emergency room detox for alcohol and a handful of AA/NA meetings that I attended for rather random periods of time.  Ill start with the hospital.

As to alcohol detox, this is probably one of the most excruciating processes known to man, and actually one of the only substance detox processes which has the potential to be life threatening. I have pulled it off both in personal agony by myself at home, as well as in a hospital setting. Going to any ER is never a fun process and it becomes increasingly more awful when you have not drank in about 6 hours and your body is on the verge of seizing. 2-3 hours is not an uncommon wait if you are in a larger metro area, and trust me when I tell you that reflecting on this experience is probably one of the best deterrents out there to getting out of control with alcohol. When the intake staff does finally bring you back, you are made to give up all your belongings which are put into a large sack and locked up. After making you throw on one of those tie around gowns with your ass hanging out, you are thrown in a bed while a nurse takes your vitals. If you are really in detox, it will not be difficult for the nurse to pick up on, as you will be wicked disoriented and your blood pressure surging. Eventually, an MD will pay you a visit and then prescribe you some drugs after a basic evaluation.

Lorazepam and it's cousin Diazepam are the substances I have the most experience with. As a guy that had never taken any kind of Benzo before these experiences, it hit me like a freight train. It is almost like magic. All the racing heart, generalized discomfort, and paranoia laced existence you were living with before will slowly drift away as you become entrenched in an almost zombie like state. This is, of course, the very point of these drugs. Your central nervous system is going haywire because being drunk is it's new "normal", so without it it goes into panic mode. The benzos make your CNS an almost non-factor because it is so subdued. As a result, you relax.\

How long you stay in the hospital is entirely dependent on how fucked up you were when you arrived, but in my most gruesome experience they turned me loose on the morning of the 3rd day. They will leave you with a prescription for your benzo lifeline, as well as instructions for either getting yourself into AA or enrolling in a program through the medical establishment. Fight the tendency to just shallow a bunch of the benzos and pass out. You are going to need these as a maintenance tool for at least a couple of weeks. It will go a very long way in making you not so paranoid that you can't be in public without freaking out.

For those that can't go to the hospital to detox, either because of money or other circumstances, you have both my sympathy and pity. I will not sugarcoat anything as you are in for at least a week of pure hell, and with none of the drugs to incapacitate your CNS, your body is going to be putting you through some serious hell. Be prepared for nasty cold sweats, uncontrolled shaking, mild to severe delirium, and massive paranoia. You are also not going to be sleeping hardly at all either. I was up for almost a week during one of my particularly nasty home detox sessions. There really is no good way that I have discovered to endure this process. You pretty much just have to ride it out and try to keep your mind occupied. Just like going the hospital route, the level of severity you endure is entirely dependent on your condition prior to detoxing, but you can expect to start feeling a little better after the 3rd or 4th day. 

AA and NA I have both been a part of at certain times in my life. There is a tremendous divergence of opinion as to both the efficacy and ethics of these programs. Considering that I no longer attend either, I would think it is safe to assume I am not an advocate, but then again, I have seen more than my fair share of people that have seen tremendous success with these programs. AA buys into the "disease" theory of alcoholism, meaning that alcoholism is a product of either chemical or biological processes which causes the subsequent behavior. The problem is that there is very little medical evidence out there to support this belief. It's not like pneumonia, for example, where a lab culture of your lung tissue can confirm a diagnosis. AA's whole mantra over being "powerless over alcohol" assumes that free will is out the window and that the bottle of Jack has all the control. Regardless of it's medical acceptance, some people need strength in numbers to kick the habit, and also activities to occupy their time that do not involve drinking. In this context, AA comes through in shining colors. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, chances are high that you will find an abundance of meetings nearby to check out and meet with others who have similar issues. If you happen to live in a larger city, you could foreseeably spend damn near an entire day in meetings if you were so inclined.  The sheer fact of discovering that you are not the only dumb shit drunk on the planet in and of itself is rather comforting. Also, for sheer entertainment value, you will run across many highly fucked up people that will make your situation seem like a trip to Disney World by comparison. Some of the stories I heard across AA tables were so outlandish I am not sure I believe them, and still others (especially from the females) I feel were told for sympathy value, but entertaining nonetheless.
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My main problem with AA and NA is that after a period of time it starts to become incredibly boring. It is mostly the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, again ad nauseam. After you get to the point where you have memorized most of the basic precepts and the commonly performed meetings, you are going to be bored out of your skull in all likelihood. Granted you can assume an enhanced role by leading meetings or attending one of their events, but all this does is delay the inevitable onset of lame. In my case, I ran into a couple of situations that made my tenure at AA extend beyond my typical couple of month tenure. In one instance, an older gentleman took me under his wing and took a particular interest in me (what AA calls 'sponsorship'). In another, there was a female involved that I was fucking every waking moment for months. The girl involved AA situation ended up spanning a little over a year and only ended when I moved away for school. It just goes to show you the unparalleled power of the vagina. Hell, if things had turned out differently and I had not have moved, I would probably still be plugging that girl and attending meetings religiously. 

So if there is a moral to this story, I sure can't figure out what the hell it might be. Truth be told, I still drink and occasionally do drugs. That may not be the conclusion you were hoping for, but it is true. I certainly do not consider myself "powerless" over alcohol as AA touts. On occasion, I will have a single beer with coworkers after work and call it a night. Sometimes I will hang out with clients and not drink at all. And on still other nights I might have a business convention out of town and go on a 2 day bender. There is very little rhyme or reason as to how or why I throw down. It just sort of happens. 

I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably always enjoy getting fucked up, and I most assuredly enjoy it too much at times. Instead of total surrender, my philosophy today has led me to keep things under control based upon my highly advanced knowledge of my tendencies. These are tendencies that (obviously) took me a VERY long time to hone in on. Am I playing with fire there? Yup, sure am, and I have had to call in "sick" to work on numerous occassions when recovering from an epic bender. However, the longevity I have managed to maintain in my current career, as well as my subsequent promotions has probably given me a false sense of security that I have it all figured out. Yeah, I don't and I never will. I never intended to start this blog to offer addiction advice, only to relay my personal experience with as much candor as I can muster. 

Cheers!

Days Gone By

You will have to forgive me for titling this blog after what a perceptive reader would recognize as the initial episode of "The Walking Dead", but considering the subject matter this blog will likely cover, I feel this is both ironic and metaphorical. Or, at least, the best I can muster under the circumstances. I am far from a literary genius.

So I just turned 40, which I am told is a milestone that causes many people to lament and reflect. That said (and I admit we all feel our personal situation is unique) my path to this juncture in life has been anything but ordinary. Like many men in contemporary society, I have the mentality of a teenager, and my emotional development, what most in contemporary society would call emotional intelligence, never really developed in a meaningful way. In short, I might as well still be 21, mentality wise.

I just now have a career that a reasonable person could consider to be a "real job". For nearly all of my 20's and 30's I was resigned to relatively meaningless tasks for work with the service industry occupying a good 90% of my probably 30 jobs over this time period. I made several attempted forays into the educational space, with very limited success. I would do OK for a semester or two, then alcohol, drugs, women, or some combination thereof would derail me and I would be back to waiting tables or tending bar. I would often profess to those around me that I was still in school part time just to make it appear as though I was somewhat cognizant of my future.

I did manage to have a few independent living spaces over this roughly 2 decade time period, sometimes interrupted briefly with stints back in my parents basement, either when I had burned one too many bridges with the people I was staying with, or else I managed to piss away all my money and get myself evicted. Eviction is always an interesting process, and perhaps a topic for a future blog.

What was interesting about this period in my life is the steadfast resolve of my family to hold out hope that I was not entirely a lost cause. I ruined more than my fair share of holiday's and special events in my family over the years. I could go the modernized PC route of things and blame these events on addiction, but even now I am far from convinced that booze or drugs completely robs people of free will. I pretty much knew exactly what I was doing, I just did not care about the consequences. Gratification was what I was after, by any means necessary.

One important social fuck up that derails even the most dedicated partier that I managed to avoid was getting a girl pregnant or to be otherwise tamed. I have known many people over the years who were pretty much like me as far as mentality, until a pregnancy and subsequent child support smacked them back to reality, or they fell head over heels (at least temporarily) and they were scarcely heard from ever again. As for me, I had one what I consider to be serious GF all the way back at age 18. When that went sour, and by sour I mean it fucked my world up beyond description, I was never able to recover. From that point forward females pretty much just became a means to an end for me. Much like alcohol or drugs, they became just another avenue for temporary bliss. As to the pregnancy derailment? Trust me when I tell you that I have had more than my fair share of scares. I just somehow have managed to always dodge the bullet and my dice roll never landed on craps (that I know of anyway). I did have one girl so convinced that she served me with papers and I was forced by court order to have my cheek cells swabbed for DNA analysis. The female is question was calling me multiple times daily to rub it in my face. She was sure that she had me, and to be honest I pretty much thought I was fucked too. Though when the results came back and I was not the father, I am only partially ashamed to admit that I called her in one of the more vindictive moments of my life to profess "fuck you and your kid". Yeah, I am pretty sure I am going to hell for that one.

So what brought this unbelievable train wreck that is my life to a halt and a sent in new direction? I really can't identify a specific cause, but I can identify a basic timeline when things made a decisive turn for the better. I was on one of my stints in my early 30's when I was living back with the parents for another basement stay and I decided that I might want to give the educational system a try yet again. Try being a dude in your 30's taking classes at a junior college. It's a very soul sucking experience indeed. Because I was living with the parents at the time, it kept my otherwise booze and drug filled evenings relatively tame. I was taking a math course as a required gen-ed and I ended up bonding with the teacher and doing outstanding in the course. In subsequent semesters, I took only mathematics as my electives and I devoured one course after another. Trigonometry, calculus, differential equations, etc. all quickly feel to my brain. For whatever reason, I seemed to have a natural ability for this, though I must admit this seemed odd considering that back in high school I hated math and could barely pull a D. I drew so much attention from the faculty that when the time came to transfer to a 4 year university, I had the glowing recommendations from the mathematics department, and schools that were almost begging for me to enroll. So, skipping a few steps for another time, that was the turning point in my life. I have since gone on to achieve a masters degree, and I now work in the marketing sector and make well over 100K a year.

What has always annoyed me is that had I of just followed this same path when I was 18, I would be a roughly 25 year old guy right now pulling down this kind of money and I would be in the drivers seat for a life of relative splendor. I have since moved far away from my hometown, where my notorious reputation is known to nearly everyone to a clean slate where people only know me as the professional they see before them.

That being said, I have a story to tell about the life I lead before, how it has effected my present, and how it will shape me as I make my way into the future.

I am basically a 40 year old child, with only a rudimentary memory of the days gone by.