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.
Itâs all either tremendously seedy or unfathomably smug. I donât hate the city, but going out at night really feels like going into a sewer with a lot of hungry rats.
âŚa simple attempt to inject humour into my digestive plight. I might buy one for my birthday⌠as long as itâs non-allergenic. My avatar too is reflective of current mood⌠in both persona and posture.
After such historical infamy, you would think that it would have gained it by now⌠along with a touch of glamour.
Oooh, whatâs the unfathomably smug set like? as we all already know what seedy is.
Thatâs cities for ya⌠so you just gotta know what kinda sewer youâre going into, as it will always be a given that they are there and therefore unavoidable.
I bet it is, especially my stomach. I was starting to develop some serious stomach issues near the end there, and I know my stomachâs thanking me now. Yet another reason not to go back.
So again, this not only symbolizes my quitting of drugs and alcohol, but is instrumental in keeping me off drugs and alcohol. Iâve basically branded myself with a statement: I will not do drugs and alcohol. So I canât just go back now.
Itâs not quite the original drawing:
But Iâve 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 Iâm happy with his work.
So far Iâve 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 isnât taking this seriously.
I have this hanging up on my bedroom wall. Itâs to remind myself of all the reasons not to do drugs and alcohol (and itâs not exhaustive⌠thereâs about 5 other reasons on the other side). Note my number 1 reason: Cassidy & Kaden, my two children. â 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:
âDo you guys notice any difference in me before I quit the drugs and alcohol and now?â
Cassidy: âMmm⌠no, not really.â
Daddy: âDo you guys feel maybe I hurt you when I was on drugs and alcohol? Like I was abusive?â
Cassidy: âAbusive? What do you mean?â
Daddy: âWell, some people on ILP think maybe I did you guys harm when I was on drugs and alcohol or that I was abusive.â
Cassidy laughs: âWho thinks that?!?!â
Daddy: âArc does. Some other guy named Pedro. But sometimes itâs true. Some alcoholic or drug addict parents end up abusing their children. Arcâs mom was like that. But she thinks itâs 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 wasnât like that with you guys.â
Kaden: âWell, we WERE, daddy!!! You were a TERRIBLE daddy!!! You were just sooo terrible!!!â â He said it with a huge grin on his face. He likes to joke around like that.
Iâm also reminded of something Cas said to me the other day: âYouâre an awesome daddy.â
Me: âOh yeah? Whyâs that?â
Cas: âBecause when I jump into your arms, you catch me and you hold me.â
Me: âYeah? Other daddies donât do that?â
Cas: âNo, most of them say theyâre too tired, or too busy, or some other excuse. But you donât.â
Now just in case I have inflicted irreversible damage on my kids and weâre all in denial about it (as Arc and Pedro are bound to point out), Iâm going to schedule a visit to my sonâs therapist probably sometimes in October. Sheâs a child psychologist who would know the signs of abuse in children, maybe even due to alcohol or drug addiction, and Iâm going to ask her if sheâs seen any signs of that in Kaden. Iâll report back with the results.
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 didnât 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 shouldnât 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 Iâm 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, Iâll go through the motions, but I feel uncomfortable about going back there. I went to check it out, see what itâs like, but I donât think itâs 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 itâs like, to see if itâs for me, but no intention of committing. Iâll post an update here once I go.
I also found my energy specialist (a naturopath), but Iâll report more on that later.
As I said last time, I intended to pay a visit to my sonâs therapist to ask if sheâs noticed any signs of abuse whether drug/alcohol related or otherwise. I went yesterday. She emphatically said no. Sheâs 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 itâs obvious that we put our childrenâs 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 itâs the mother bringing them in and the father never comes for a visit. While my ex and I donât go at the same time, I try to make the occasional visit, and she tells me Iâm 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, Iâve 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 didnât quite feel like a fish out of water. Doesnât mean itâs a policy. Maybe next meeting will be all about diving into peopleâs stories.
This wonât 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 doesnât think itâs 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 isnât motivation enough, maybe she is.
My book is done! All three volumes are available online here and here.
Woopie!!!
So why post this in this thread?
Because, my friends, because! If anyoneâs 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. Whatâs 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 drugsâyou know, rare and exotic kinds, ones no oneâs ever heard ofâI was sure to satiate my curiosity before July 1 with the usual suspectsâcocaine, ecstasy, acid, mushroomsâthe 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 thereânaturally grown and produced in a labâand theyâre discovering new ones every day.
So a year after July 1, maybe a year and a half, I might end up going back to drugsânot alcohol, not caffeine, not cannabinoidsâthis time around knowing how not to get addicted⌠but in all likelihood not. You see, this is only a formality of my plan. Hereâs where the other phrasing comes inâthe one that goes, âI give up all drugs and alcohol foreverâ â Thatâs the one Iâve really been going with. Itâs 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 âa year, maybe a year and a halfââas of December 5, it is officially one more yearânot 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 Iâm trying to achieve here. Giving up drugs and alcohol is part of a larger goal of âletting goââletting go of unhealthy attachments. Drugs and alcohol were one of them, my book was another. Why is my book unhealthy, you ask? I wouldnât call it âunhealthyâ per se, but itâs 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 âselfishâ 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.
Itâs 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. Youâre 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 youâve been on. Itâll help you succeed and when you succeed, youâll realize how much I knew before you did and how stupid and idiot your gloating and laughter has been. How false your smugness.