Nothing much happening around here lately except real life, work, sleep, eat, repeat. I did get the brakes fixed on the SUV over the weekend, changed the oil, and spent about three hours detailing the inside. It looks brand new. I took my wife out to dinner Sunday night to Red Lobster where I had the Maine Lobster, you know, the ones in the tank when you walk in the door, and it was fantastic. Joyce had steak, she's not a big seafood eater. Other than this brief respite, she worked all weekend at her job and I worked all weekend on the vehicle, so we were both pooped out last night and had to be up early this morning. We crashed out when we got home. Exciting huh?

Anyway, some of you know my journey through addiction, some of you do not. I was looking through some old writings and found something I wrote a few years ago in the midst of a terrible war with alcohol, one of the many addictions I wasted my life on over the years. Reading it again after all this time is cathartic and scary, knowing I was once in the grip of the bottle. It is quite graphic, but maybe someone will read it and understand the destruction of addiction.

******My hands are shaking so badly I spill half the brandy intended for my fifth glass all over the kitchen counter. I think of wiping it up but can hardly stand much less wait another second to raise the drink to my waiting lips, the familiar burn coarsing my throat and for a second I almost spit it out but with an icewater chaser am able to keep it down. I am on my fourth week of obliteration. I haven't showered in days and my body odor stench almost makes me sick. I am afraid to look in the mirror, I know I won't know the man looking back at me and for that matter I don't want to know him anymore. I haven't eaten in over a week, even the smell of food makes me want to throw up.

What am I doing to myself? I haven't a clue, truthfully I don't care anymore.

This morning, well I call it morning but it could have been any time of day, I awoke lying on the floor of my kitchen. The first thing I notice is the coldness of the tile against my cheek, the stench of vomit pooled beneath my head. I try to raise myself up and I knock back to the floor, my head banging the tile, pain shooting through my jaw. I can tell it's daylight from the reflection of the sun off the white refrigerator a few inches from my sight, blinding me to the half inch pile of grime underneath. The putrid air begins to make me retch but my stomach is empty and I heave over and over my body twisting in misery every move painful in my joints, bones, muscles, even my skin hurts. I am sick. Too sick to move. But I've gotta move to get another drink to take the sickness away. The reason I'm sick is what I need to stop feeling sick. Such undeniable irony......

I slowly and laborously pull myself up by the counter edge and reach for the half empty bottle, slide back down to the floor, tilt the bottle and let the brandy run directly into my stomach, not even waiting to taste it. I cap the bottle and inch my way over to the couch in the living room, crawling like I'm underneath electric wires in alcoholic boot camp, pull myself up and over onto the cushions, my head swimming as I lie there like a limp dead body, twisted and contorted and numb and sick.......my hands tremble violently on their own, I can't stop it.

Later, when I venture out in public for a fresh bottle of poisoned heaven, the only time I go out of the apartment, and actually make it to the liquor store over the railroad tracks three blocks away, I know the cashier thinks I'm just a drunk. She's right. Yet she patiently watches as I fumble around, hardly able to retrieve the bills from my pocket for payment, and when I do manage this seemingly easy but difficult task my hands are like two hummingbirds flittering here and there, and I drop the money haphazardly on the counter because I can't still the shaking long enough to courteously hand over the money like a gentleman.

She won't even look me in the eye anymore. I know I smell, I look like hell, but I'm so caught up in getting the bottle to the house the long three blocks away I'm not even ashamed anymore.

100 proof vodka, here I come. ******