2 months--no drugs or alcohol

Cool.

…one would have thought otherwise.

Is Soho Amsterdam no more? or was it ever was?

Hey Mags, I’ve been meaning to ask: what are those gold capsule supposed to represent?

I guess the prostitutes take too much of the business. Still, Id say it should appeal a much larger segment of the actual population.

Im not aware Amsterdam ever had enough glamour to have a quarter deserving that name.
It’s all either tremendously seedy or unfathomably smug. I don’t hate the city, but going out at night really feels like going into a sewer with a lot of hungry rats.

…a simple attempt to inject humour into my digestive plight. I might buy one for my birthday… as long as it’s non-allergenic. My avatar too is reflective of current mood… in both persona and posture.

image.png

:laughing:

After such historical infamy, you would think that it would have gained it by now… along with a touch of glamour.

Oooh, what’s the unfathomably smug set like? as we all already know what seedy is. :laughing:

That’s cities for ya… so you just gotta know what kinda sewer you’re going into, as it will always be a given that they are there and therefore unavoidable.

Today’s September 1st baby! Two months and a day–longest I’ve gone without drugs or alcohol (well, except when I was a kid).

I bet your body’s lovin you? :slight_smile:

I bet it is, especially my stomach. I was starting to develop some serious stomach issues near the end there, and I know my stomach’s thanking me now. Yet another reason not to go back.

I finally got my tattoo touch ups today. Check it out:

(Please try to ignore the back hair!)

So again, this not only symbolizes my quitting of drugs and alcohol, but is instrumental in keeping me off drugs and alcohol. I’ve basically branded myself with a statement: I will not do drugs and alcohol. So I can’t just go back now.

It’s not quite the original drawing:

But I’ve learn something about the art of tattooing: not any drawing is transferable. Sometimes, you gotta let the tattoo artist customize it to best suite the purpose. Several things come into consideration: the shape of your body (where the tattoo is going), the thickness of the lines, how the color will fade over time, and generally what looks good as a tattoo as opposed to a drawing on paper. But in any case, my tattoo artist certainly captured the essence of it and I’m happy with his work.

So far I’ve spent a lot of money on this transition in my life. Almost $1000 for the tattoo, $2000 for the Dale Carnegie course, $180 every visit to my therapist… quite the investment for someone who isn’t taking this seriously.

I also wanted to show everyone this:

I have this hanging up on my bedroom wall. It’s to remind myself of all the reasons not to do drugs and alcohol (and it’s not exhaustive… there’s about 5 other reasons on the other side). Note my number 1 reason: Cassidy & Kaden, my two children. ← So again, not very serious.

I also had a talk with my kids the other day about how they like their dad before and after the drugs & alcohol. I asked them:

“Do you guys notice any difference in me before I quit the drugs and alcohol and now?”

Cassidy: “Mmm… no, not really.”

Daddy: “Do you guys feel maybe I hurt you when I was on drugs and alcohol? Like I was abusive?”

Cassidy: “Abusive? What do you mean?”

Daddy: “Well, some people on ILP think maybe I did you guys harm when I was on drugs and alcohol or that I was abusive.”

Cassidy laughs: “Who thinks that?!?!”

Daddy: “Arc does. Some other guy named Pedro. But sometimes it’s true. Some alcoholic or drug addict parents end up abusing their children. Arc’s mom was like that. But she thinks it’s the alcohol itself that makes the parent abusive. The alcohol can exacerbate the abuse but usually an abusive parent is abusive for a much deeper reason, something that was there long before they started drinking alcohol. In fact, the alcohol is usually more a symptom than a cause. But not all alcoholic or drug addict parents are like that. I hope I wasn’t like that with you guys.”

Kaden: “Well, we WERE, daddy!!! You were a TERRIBLE daddy!!! You were just sooo terrible!!!” ← He said it with a huge grin on his face. He likes to joke around like that.

I’m also reminded of something Cas said to me the other day: “You’re an awesome daddy.”

Me: “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

Cas: “Because when I jump into your arms, you catch me and you hold me.”

Me: “Yeah? Other daddies don’t do that?”

Cas: “No, most of them say they’re too tired, or too busy, or some other excuse. But you don’t.”

Now just in case I have inflicted irreversible damage on my kids and we’re all in denial about it (as Arc and Pedro are bound to point out), I’m going to schedule a visit to my son’s therapist probably sometimes in October. She’s a child psychologist who would know the signs of abuse in children, maybe even due to alcohol or drug addiction, and I’m going to ask her if she’s seen any signs of that in Kaden. I’ll report back with the results.

ra ra

what is the connection between these two pictures and this thread?

:laughing:

Good stufflings.

So I checked out an AA meeting Friday night. I was awarded a coin for lasting 3 months! Everyone thought it was a huge deal. And I guess it was, but I think they thought so more than I did.

What was it like? Meh… it was all right. I didn’t really feel like I fit in. Everyone there had much more grueling stories than I could ever tell. Stories about going to jail, about bring caught in a cycle of drinking themselves silly every day just to get over the hangover from the previous day, of isolating themselves from their families, about rehab and detoxification. My alcoholism was never that bad. My weakness consisted of sometimes telling myself: gib, no drinking tonight, and then failing, going to the liquor store to buy 100ml of whiskey. Sometimes, not all the time. Overall, I felt like those guys at the meeting were at a whole other level of addiction than I was.

It made me feel like I shouldn’t be calling myself an alcoholic. Maybe I never really was.

One of the heads of the group said he was going to call me sometime this week. Not sure what he wants to talk about, but I’m sure it will involve encouragement to come to the meetings regularly or to keep in contact with him or other members. I might have to go into some detail about my experiences, my intentions, my condition, etc. which is fine, I’ll go through the motions, but I feel uncomfortable about going back there. I went to check it out, see what it’s like, but I don’t think it’s for me.

Now there is another program: the SMART program (Self-Management and Recovery Training). Check it out: addictioncenter.com/treatme … -recovery/. A friend recommended it. She said it was a more hands-off and non-religious approach to recovery. I intend to check it out in the same vein that I checked out AA… just to see what it’s like, to see if it’s for me, but no intention of committing. I’ll post an update here once I go.

I also found my energy specialist (a naturopath), but I’ll report more on that later.

As I said last time, I intended to pay a visit to my son’s therapist to ask if she’s noticed any signs of abuse whether drug/alcohol related or otherwise. I went yesterday. She emphatically said no. She’s seen a lot of troubled kids and she knows the signs of abuse. She said with confidence that she had no reason to suspect my son was being raised by an alcoholic or drug abusing parent. I had never told her about my problem with drugs and alcohol until yesterday. She said my son is just a difficult child by temperament, and that his hot temper is most likely genetic.

In fact, she thinks my ex and I are very caring parents and it’s obvious that we put our children’s needs well ahead of our own. She told me in cases where the parents who bring their children to see her are divorced or separated, usually it’s the mother bringing them in and the father never comes for a visit. While my ex and I don’t go at the same time, I try to make the occasional visit, and she tells me I’m one of the rare fathers who actually bother.

So that puts that one to rest.

Oh yeah, that guy from the AA meeting? Never called.

Perhaps you were just more of a high-end social drinker…?

Since (being able to) going back to weights, I’ve practically gone off alcohol, so substitutions we find pleasurable/enjoying, or in my case… re-substitutions… of which there are still very few, resolve the need for recreational use of social drinking etc.

Went to a SMART meeting. I liked it a bit better than AA. If AA is about relying on others because you are powerless to do it yourself, SMART is all about self-empowerment. They give you the tools to change yourself. Tonight, we talked a bit about strategies for changing your thought patterns. Unlike at the AA meeting, no one there really got a chance to tell their stories, so I didn’t quite feel like a fish out of water. Doesn’t mean it’s a policy. Maybe next meeting will be all about diving into people’s stories.

This won’t be a regular occurrence, but I might go again. And not just because I liked it a bit better than AA, but because I know a girl there who I really, really, really like. Unfortunately, she doesn’t think it’s a good idea for us to date (for reasons I will not disclose), but she seems to like me anyway, and I really enjoy being around her. So if going for my own sake isn’t motivation enough, maybe she is.

I wonder if Arc would approve of this.

My book is done! All three volumes are available online here and here.

Woopie!!! :banana-dance:

So why post this in this thread?

Because, my friends, because! If anyone’s been paying attention, you might have noticed that sometimes I say that my drug abstinence is permanent, other times a year, maybe a year and a half. What’s permanent is my decision to abstain from the three categories of addiction: alcohol, caffeine, and cannibinoids. But strictly and formally speaking, my plan has always included a release valve. After a year, maybe a year and a half, I would return to my decision to quit drugs and alcohol and consider whether I wanted to experiment with other kinds of drugs–you know, rare and exotic kinds, ones no one’s ever heard of–I was sure to satiate my curiosity before July 1 with the usual suspects–cocaine, ecstasy, acid, mushrooms–the only one I regret not having had the chance to try is peyote, but I sadly accept my losses. But there are plenty of rare specimens out there–naturally grown and produced in a lab–and they’re discovering new ones every day.

So a year after July 1, maybe a year and a half, I might end up going back to drugs–not alcohol, not caffeine, not cannabinoids–this time around knowing how not to get addicted… but in all likelihood not. You see, this is only a formality of my plan. Here’s where the other phrasing comes in–the one that goes, “I give up all drugs and alcohol forever” ← That’s the one I’ve really been going with. It’s just not formal. So in all likelihood, in a year from July 1, maybe a year and a half, my decision will be not to experiment with new and exotic kinds of drugs, to stick to absolute abstinence all together and forever.

Now then, what does that have to do with my book? Well, I no longer half to say “a year, maybe a year and a half”–as of December 5, it is officially one more year–not a bad estimate if I do say so myself (you know, Dec 5 of 2019 will be almost a year and a half from July 1). Dec 5 was the official day I completed all 3 volumes of my book.

This is important to my goal and gives you all a larger picture of what I’m trying to achieve here. Giving up drugs and alcohol is part of a larger goal of “letting go”–letting go of unhealthy attachments. Drugs and alcohol were one of them, my book was another. Why is my book unhealthy, you ask? I wouldn’t call it “unhealthy” per se, but it’s been a distraction for me, something that sucked a lot of time and energy from me that could have been, and now can be, put towards more important things. This was the same for the drugs. I now feel like there are no more “selfish” attachments in my life. I will experience one year of what this is like, and see what I can do with my life sans unhealthy attachments and selfish distractions.

I bet it’s a nice book, though.

Good read, Eternal Warrior. What’s it from?

It’s from the ass-kicking that I gave to so many other things after they fallaciously gave me the ass-kicking they thought that I deserved.

As in, I actually wrote it myself and came up with it myself. You’re still struggling. This is where you fall down and go boom and when you begin to realize just how little you actually succeeded in getting off drugs and alcohol because you went about it the wrong way. This is when you begin to realize how right I was months ago and where your failed success gets seen for what it is. Will you redeem yourself by the time your life is over? Certainly, especially since there is no way for you to take back this current course of idiocy that you’ve been on. It’ll help you succeed and when you succeed, you’ll realize how much I knew before you did and how stupid and idiot your gloating and laughter has been. How false your smugness.