Musings of an Ex-Drunken Bastard

    Most recent studies tell us that religious people are no less or more moral than non-religious people, but religious people are more susceptible to feelings of guilt and shame when immoral deeds are done. Not to deny religion -- recently I have opened my eyes to certain offerings of religion that are difficult to find elsewhere, such as closure -- but, when do we shift from the fear based country we currently are, to the knowledge based one we possibly need to be?

     I strongly believe that we need better, more educated teachers in oppressed areas. Teachers who can reach our children. Maybe if that were to happen, men would be capable of finding reasons and ways to find control through means other than violence. Maybe men could find ways to let go of their need to control. Maybe people could find this will. Maybe humans aren't innately non-violent. Maybe by understanding why stereotypes exist, oppressed groups of people could find reasons and ways to break down existing stereotypes. Maybe people could learn that stereotypes must exist, because of our human nature and its need for patterns. Maybe people could learn about the human nature of mimicry, they could start finding positive examples to mimic and escape the harmful ones. Maybe people could consider that stereotypes in general don't need to be abolished, for they can't be. Maybe people could reform stereotypes into something positive. Maybe these questions and the inferred knowledge is some of the stimulus we need.

     Are powerful people ever going to help the oppressed? Why would they? What do they have to gain? Is the human species altruistic by nature? What do powerful people have to gain by changing systems? Are they the way they are for a reason? When you listen to enough ivy league professors argue how critical thinking is now absent in the most sought after academic facilities in the world, it's difficult not to question why? Does the system exist for wealthy children to perfectly inherit the same power their parents and those before them have established? As much as I question how unsustainable our systems are, are they sustainable for the wealthy? Maybe if oppressed people are taught critical thinking, that thinking will proliferate through America's existing edifice? Maybe critical thinking has to spread from the inside out? Maybe the powerful will have no choice but to see why such disparaging stereotypes exist? Maybe they will be forced to question if it was their fathers before them whom erected such stereotypes? Maybe they'll question of they are the existing oppressors? Maybe they'll see how they are the suppressors? Maybe they'll be forced to question how despicable this wealth disparity is? Maybe they'll be forced to tough questions? Other than it being black men, impoverished men, and mentally unwell men, instead of only black men; how is prison any different from the slave trade? Have we ever progressed? Are we currently regressing? Maybe these will be difficult questions for powerful, old, white men and their kin.... but is their any other choice? As it stands, they refuse to ask them. It's time to question these things elsewhere.

     How do we fix this fear based system to a knowledge based one? Maybe we ask the question: why? Maybe we do so, like children -- we always ask "why?" to everything. When we don't know, we ask somebody who may. If a person tells you that there is right and wrong, and that's it -- you ask "why?" You ask, because "just because" no longer suffices as an explanation. How is "just because" any different from religious cannon? How is it any different from fear based thinking, with an unjust prison representing hell? If, on the other hand, a person proceeds to elaborate about why -- if they escape this binary thinking, possibly referencing the great Bertrand Russell and his views on realistic subjectivity -- then, maybe, just maybe, we let it suffice. Even then, maybe we don't. Maybe we don't let it suffice until we know that people feel a longing to empathize with those who suffer. Maybe we don't let it suffice until it doesn't take a video of an NFL player hitting his girlfriend for us to know that violence is wrong. Maybe it doesn't suffice until all we have left for sensationalism is distaste and a turned eye. We must always ask questions. Maybe by doing so, we can figure out why so much violence happens in the world, and instead of trying to fix it once it's trendy enough, we can prevent it from ever happening. Maybe there's no right or wrong answer, but I do believe there are more questions.

I have no identity. I have never had an identity. I spent all my life yearning for what I perceived other people to have, that of which I did not.

Maybe we are all dependent on something, whether it be a person, our labels, our ideologies, and so forth. We are all dependent on something. Dependency is an inextricable piece of our biological make.

To all the people striving for sobriety, they will tell you to not be dependent. They are wrong. We are all dependent. What the counselors should have told us, was to build a dependency on something we can safeguard against threat. Build a dependency on something you love. Your well being is predicated upon it. Build a dependency on something that doesn’t cause harm to others, so you will never have to loathe about the identity you have created. And, in my advice, become a Renaissance Person; because a contingency plan is a decidedly intelligent thing to do.

Your ‘identity’ will be threatened. It might not be intentionally threatened, but it might be intentional. Either way, it’s not your fault. It’s theirs. Maybe it’s nobodies. I’ve seen it happen all my life, and you’ve seen it happen all of yours. It’s what happens. It’s happened to me too many times since searching for my own answers. Every time my pending-identity is threatened, I protect it with dear life, because I’ve never had one and I've always wanted one. I've always needed one. Maybe this is why so much of my life has involved clinging to other people’s identities? Maybe this is why, when that identity was gone and my biological needs were, once again, unfulfilled; I so recklessly used substances, in attempts to delude myself into believing I didn't miss the identities I never rightfully owned? Maybe this lack of identity is why so much of my life has been spent vindictively? Maybe this is why I have, so many times before, recklessly questioned and threatened other people’s identities? Maybe this is why my questioning has never boded well for other people’s recovery? Maybe this is why so many young people who inherit identity (reference list of child actors), also turn to fake, unsustainable substances? Maybe. Nevertheless, what you will find is, it doesn’t matter who is at fault, because fault is of no concern when you have solutions to problems. One year, seven months, and six days later, I still act on this old behavior; yet I keep searching as honestly as I can for solutions. Nobody is telling you it will be easy, but it is worth it. I find solutions now... solutions that don't promise my untimely demise.

It is of my opinion, you build an identity beyond the label of ‘sobriety’. Recovery in this country is not easy. With how stigmatized it has always been, people will too regularly threaten your recovery. One should never feel embarrassed or ashamed by the thought of their addiction, we are all addicts - the factor that differentiates us from the rest, is the ungodly amount of un-expungeable proof, making it seemingly impossible to conceal the truth of our inherent addiction. But, if you are not comfortable with calling yourself one because you feel it will detract from the identity you need to find -- then don’t. The most important thing is, you become addicted to something else -- something that evinces the strength of will. Never become too comfortable, complacency is the deterioration of one’s identity. Allow your will to grow strong enough to overpower the discomfort you shall, one day, direly need. Allow yourself to become a victim of your biological needs, because, otherwise, you will unnecessarily construct your own victimhood. If you don’t become a victim to your biological needs, your path of non-discovery will be destructive, and it will resultingly create victims out of the people you love. Once you allow yourself to fall victim to your biology, you will find you were never a victim at all. You will find that you were nothing more than lost. Maybe foolishly lost, but nothing more than lost. Fortunately for you, the best way to find something is to first lose it. Seek for something. Anything. It will come, maybe not immediately, but it will come. It may not yet feel real, but you will make it real. If you allow it, one day your identity will become tangible enough for the world to see.

Many years ago a man forged a hole where a hole did not belong. A life, a soul, a moral and hopeful being was lost when this hole was forged.

One week. All it takes is one week for the man to be stricken and even possessed by the complacency, the numbness, the disconnect, the dirt, and the shit that this man used in an attempt to fill the hole that he forged so many years prior. He’s a man of everything or nothing; when the balance in his life is absent the man falls, and he falls hard. It’s not the things that he doesn’t know that hurt him; it’s the things he thinks he knows. Who is God to this man? Fighting for a fair life in what feels like a senseless time. What is fair? The man could better understand his life when he was young. When he was young he cried and he did so often; he cried from the high expectations he held for himself, he cried because he loved himself, and he cried because he loved others without any expectations. In return those people loved him. A fair trade off in a less inebriated time. The man continued to cry, but until recently his tears tasted of Johnny, and they tasted of Jack, and they tasted of Tanqueray. During the time that these flawed aromas permeated from his tears the only thing that was fair in his life was his skin. Even that was blotchy and hued red in the morning, and it shook when dawn broke, only subsiding by the way of a bottle. Maybe life is fair now, for his skin no longer trembles in the morning. In a mere week of laziness and forgetfulness everything could instantaneously revert back to the way it was before. To “outsiders" he may appear normal, he may even appear normal to himself. But he hasn’t picked up a pen or a pencil in a week. The inspiration fades as do the realities of his past. Inflicted by a disease, he is now forced to do the hard thing and remember hard times, he is forced to understand his emotions, and he is forced to relate to others. The man is forced to once again have expectations of himself and himself alone. Anything other than this will lead back to his previous life of self pity and blame. Responsibility scares the man but he is self preserving by nature and responsibility is his only hope. Responsibility is his only hope of not finding himself slumped over an oak barstool that is increasingly saturated in whiskey stained rings with each passing night; or find himself dormant in a bed that more so resembles a coffin than a resting place. To most people, rest ensues the opportunity of new beginnings; to this man, rest is an exposure to the vulnerability of falling once again. The stories of others induce memories of his own loneliness. They remind him of the way he would hide in crowded rooms and behind deflected answers to the questions he was asked. He is forced to remember the lies he had told and the accusations he had made of others; never defensive for the sake of himself, instead he was defensive on behalf of a bottle. Tasting the tears he sheds now, he tries to remember the lingering effect of the tears from before, the tears that tasted of Johnny, and Jack, and Tanqueray, and so many other undisclosed perpetrators. He remembers it all with no reservations. If anything is forgotten or sheltered, the hidden agendas and ulterior motives will once again prevail and his life will once again follow the baseline that uses alcohol as it’s sole intent. If he doesn’t remember, it’s not a matter of possible relapse, but instead a countdown to the inevitable suffering that he will face. Infinitely more difficult to remember than his own pain from before is the pain of others. The family that needs him, the friends that love him, the women that had fallen for him; all that they will have left if he falls is a distant memory. None of them can help because none of them understand. They would all quit drinking at the drop of a hat if it meant him subsequently stopping, but it is of no use. None of them drink. Often they have a drink, sometimes they have ten drinks, and sometimes they have twenty drinks, but none of them really drink. Not the way he does. Nonetheless, he will not fight this monster alone. The family and the friends may not be nearby, but he is not defeated. There are others who have been as lost as he. Through them and through the help of something greater he can be found. Through them he no longer has to hurt himself or hurt the people he loves. Through these people he can live the life he wants. These people are different than the people back home, they have been raised in a place rich in history and that much richer in God. Although the man cannot understand this because home is different than this place, he can still relate. He is accepted by these people because everybody is accepted by these people, they show know prejudice. God may not save this man, but these people will remind the man that he, himself, is not God. With this he will be humbled, and he will be saved. So long as the man remembers the things that he does not know, he can be saved and he can live a life more purposeful than the life he lived before. Never again does he have to live a life of remorse, and self pity, and shame. Through these people he no longer has to elongate the suffering more than he already has. One week passed and the man remembered what he does not know. He saw the people and he listened to their words. The words were carried with him through one more day, this day being even more sober than the last. The more austere and painful the words are; the more vivacious and sincere his tears are that follow. The man doesn’t always smile, but his tears no longer taste of dishonesty, and therefore he smiles more than he did before, even when he doesn’t smile.