This is a big one so all the Content Warnings. But this post WILL make you smile (eventually), so please read on ❤ ~
I also made a audio clip where I read the post ~ All the emotional warnings…
Today is 1000 Days since I last drank alcohol.
3 Winters ago I was dying. The slow attempt to end my life that started in my late teens was meeting its natural conclusion. I was sick, anti-social, filled with fear and regrets about my life and my choices. I was angry at the world but more angry at myself that I was throwing my life away and letting everyone around me down. I know there’s something special about me, something others have noticed too. It’s a special kind of spark that could brighten other’s lives but also a special kind of pain that lives deep inside me, the kind of pain comedians and transpeople have, an incongruency. My world has never spun the full 360 degrees, my rotation is off kilter and people notice that too. I suppose everyone feels this way, though I’ve acted on it by living a very unique, wild and adventurous life.
It’s 3 years later and I’m fit, healthy and successfully managing my mental health. I’m still a bit of a mess I admit, I think for a long time I was trying to cure myself when in reality you just learn to manage. Some trauma never heals, some debts can’t be repaid, some losses are never recovered, you just deal with it and keep living. Surviving. My wrists are always going to hurt when it gets cold and i’m never going to stop being sad about Emma… but what am I going to do, spend all day worrying about stuff I can’t change? I have a life to live, bears to snuggle!
I still strike my own path and take risks, I have put myself well out of the mainstream by now and that lends to challenges… My life will never be free of hardships and loss, we just (ideally) get better at dealing with reality, with mortality and pain, you face it and focus on what matters, instead of masking it with toughness or by blurring your senses. I built some serious walls in my life and while they’re never gonna come down, I can work on building doors.
Nothing about ME has changed since I stopped drinking, I just stopped being such a self-destructive asshole. Alcohol enabled me to be a bad person, I’m still apologizing to strangers for things I did a decade ago at some con… The one saving grace of my alcoholism was that I isolated myself. It was probably worse for me and my recovery but at least I hurt the least amount of people, I have always tried to maintain a “Do No Harm” mentality in my life so I removed myself from other peoples lives, I was a disaster and being my friend was a terminal condition.. Alcohol gave me the capacity to reenact the emotional abuse I grew up with, but as the 3rd/4th/who knows generation of abused folk, I refused to keep the cycle going. Instead of blaming and/or becoming my alcoholic stepdad, I wanted to cut the ouroboros in half.
Some text on this theme I published anonymously a while back about the cycles of abuse… Link to Text
So to end the cycle of abuse, I hid. Most everyone I loved was dead or as messed up as me, I didn’t feel anyone would miss me. I stopped taking hormones and making art and my life became the pursuit of sleep. I had a shitty job and was drinking a 12 pack of light beer a day, I was constantly sloshed. I had been a “functioning” alcoholic since my teens/early 20s and have a long history of all the drugs, I won’t get into it but I was a little psychonaut for a while and if it’s on the Code or from a little black satchel I came across it at some point. Luckily I think my common sense is the only thing that let me survive, I managed to do some very stupid things in a somewhat safe way, and stopped doing the really bad illegal stuff a long time ago. It was the hiding that scared me the most, I never underestimate what’s going on behind people’s eyes, you never know who’s at their breaking point.
My charisma has relieved me of some accountability in my life and I’d like to think i’m a smart person who just does dumb things. I’ve lost close friends to ODs, accidents, violence, jail, cancer, suicide… I have a lot of weight to carry, a lot of guilt for lines jotted or drinks poured. As my friends group shrunk and the person I loved most passed away, my career and work started to fall apart and I fell really hard, I moved out of LA and threw my career in a blender and mixed it up with whatever came in a plastic bottle. If I’d have stayed in LA any longer I would not have made it out, there’s less little black satchels out here.
I became a self-hating robot who ran on nicotine, alcohol and granola bars. I was the worst kind of silent alcoholic, I’m sure I was occasionally suffering from Alcohol Poisoning, just no one knew or cared enough to take me to the hospital. Yet I was always trying to get better, I spent a decade in a cycle of “today’s the last day”, which led to constant over-consumption etc, constant disappointment. How many posts on this blog are “THINGS HAVE BEEN BAD BUT THEY SURE ARE LOOKING UP!”? Including this one. I had plenty of moments of clarity followed by staring right back into the abyss.
That cycle of failure was exhausting, everyday I was reminded I was hopeless, out-of-control, chained. It consumed everything with money being the least of it, my whole life revolved around that next tall can of Bud Light. And I know getting drunk on light beer sounds silly but that’s alcoholism, it’s not drinking to get drunk, it’s drinking to blur the world and a constant drips needed to keep things glossy, lest you have to face reality… Reality is the hour in morning before you start again, the one you spend shivering on the bathroom floor.
But again, I won’t get into the dirty details… see Malkovich in “Burn After Reading” for the best representation of silent alcoholism on screen imo, read Alan Carr and get professional help if you’re able. Listen to Paul Baribeau. I’m not far enough away from it that I have any solid advice on quitting or feel comfortable even talking about it. It’s all still pretty fresh and someday I hope to help empower other people in recovery but I need to let my wounds heal first. Diff strokes for Diff folks too, I quit cold turkey because that’s me and how i’ve quit other things. I have experience white knuckling withdrawals and counseling/AA/NA etc just isn’t for me, I have trouble relating. But with that said, experimenting with those things did help me on my path, so give everything a chance.
I weaned myself off alcohol over 4-ish months knowing that quitting alcohol cold turkey and DT’s can be very unsafe. I didn’t want to goto a hospital for reasons…. And I never stopped being an alcoholic, I just quit drinking. I plan to hold constant vigilance even 50 years in, I have zero temptation and don’t feel at risk etc, but I know I could be right back to where I was if I don’t keep that mindfulness that lead me to getting off alcohol. Though I am confident that even if I was trapped in a bunker full of liquor, I’d not crack bottle one. I like who I am without it. And not once have I felt like I wanted to go back to drinking or even do it “just this one time”. I’ve escaped it and the euphoria from that achievement is my preferred intoxicant.
My stop was planned, I was tired of waiting for some massive event, likely be my death or a stroke/heart attack, to be the thing that finally makes me quit. I worked through it, I was a complete zombie for months… it’s interesting to go back and read my posts from that time, reaffirms how good I was at “faking it”. I don’t think I even mention quitting in those posts, I’m sure you’ve read a post of mine at some point and thought “that girl is dying inside”. Not really the emotions I want to evoke, but it’s been true. I guess I don’t mention it much because I was tired of telling people I was quitting, you hear that so many times and you lose faith in the person and in turn the person loses faith in themselves. It was something I needed to do, and thankfully I had some wonderful people in my life and online cheering me on. Thanks friends ❤
About 8 months after quitting I started my StayKinky site, started to get back into making videos and things have gotten good. My last big hurdle was quitting nicotine which I did over 2 months ago ❤
“I’ve been let down by the people that I love, but I will not let down the people who love me.”
It’s the edge of 2021 now and i’m happier and healthier than i’ve ever been, legitimately.
Short Little Life Story: Growing up my mom took in old or sick dogs and give them end of life care, my childhood was a series of dead dogs. I was a sad kid, I was small and bullied until my teens and once I started to get some confidence, I face exploitation. My parents got divorced at 7, was a computer wiz kid until a bully shattered my wrists, had an abusive stepdad from 7-17 then never saw him again, was in love/groomed by a 40 year old at age 14 until I became an adult and realized how wrong the whole thing was, completely lost interest in mainstream acting or mainstream anything because it’s all about control and exploitation, learned to not trust people who seek power over others. My life has seen so much cruelty that I won’t even touch on here, the fact that I can be this positive and self-actualized and not a quivering mass of fear and pain is incredible. I’m glad I made it through. END
One of my best mates from those Wild Years is getting married soon and I’m going to the wedding out West, we’ll both be years clean. He’s got a wonderful Fiancée and didn’t stop being the great guy I knew all those years. The idea that these two hopeless dope fiends grew up to be dopeless hope fiends is not something I would have guessed at 22. I won’t speak for him, but I’m certainly happier than I could have ever imagined back then. It’s a cliche, but neither of us thought we’d live past 27 and were trying to self-fulfill that prophecy, bottle by bottle. But here we are in our 30’s in 2022, with VR and everyone’s got Tricorders, and we’re both looking and feeling great with big happy futures ahead of us. It’s incredible, we fuckin’ made it.
I wasn’t really in the mood to write something so introspective today, I feel like chasing a golden retriever around or doing some fun editing stuff, but I wouldn’t have gotten 1000 days in if I didn’t make myself sit down and think about stuff now and then. I’m too excitable to meditate, so I write. This blog saved my life, the process of telling my story (even if it’s a sanitized version) has really helped me put things into perspective, helped me heal. Thanks to everyone who’s supported me, cheered me on, and encouraged me to be my best self. I’m still around and want to make my friends and fans proud 🙂
Thanks for reading. I’m not much of a crier but I’ve got a tear running down my cheek thinking about where i’ve been and where I can go. I’m so glad to be alive and want to make you all proud of me 🙂 Thanks for everything 🙂
StayDiapered! 