I bought The Next Frontier Emotional Sobriety I & II a few weeks ago. Not really. It was more like 2 weeks so a few wouldn’t be correct. Point being. I began reading it (a few weeks ago), and truly began reading it yesterday. I am only on page 8 right now and the passage is “Spiritual Agony.” I look for precision in diction and syntax—a personal issue I have—and the definition of Agony is the following: Extreme physical or mental suffering.

This story, and I’ve only gotten to paragraph 3, includes 3-4 day blackouts, and other countries and hangovered mornings, and…

Someone called me today, and I had this extensive connversation about “you should see [the drink] in all of the contexts it stood. It was your boyfriend, your boss, your friend, your best friend, etc. And, of course because we share our ESH (experience strength and hope) I told her mine. I also said I cannot place this substance that ruled my life in a bottle, though. It started everything. I was a child I have no idea except that by the age of 9 I was very conscious of drinking sangria to go to sleep, and doing it hiding from my mother (as best as I knew how at 9). The whole “Off to the Races” happened, too. And it was not with alcohol. But it solved the same issue. It was painful. Taking LSD on a dare at the age of 15 with your best friend who was a “veteran” and the one who dared me (I would pay money to see [her] on that!) was not fun. But I did it. I don’t remember doing it much more after that. But I did smoke a lot at one point, did “drop” various X-pills at another, and did do a lot of what to me seemed like the most reasonable drug of all since I was abl to be coherent while doing it. I mean, when you start IVing cocaine there is an issue. The possibilities of overdosing were immense. Cocaine is an anesthetic, but whoever thinks that any drug is ever clean is not living on this planet.

Going back to the book, I thought of when I decided let’s try this LSD thing, but let me try to make it for myself instead. There was much more to be found on the Internet in the early 2000s than there is now. I wouldn’t know because I try not to do much of anything unless for work-related purposes. I remember the Hive, and a bunch of actual chemists and kitchen-chemists trading secrets on how to make your own MDMA. “Bee” and “Junior-bee.” I remember the articles I would read, how much research I would do prior to trying it. I read Buddhist monks go to the Himalayas on MDMA to meditate, and I think to myself I want to try that. Back to the LSD. I wonder what in the world I was thinking. I was “tripping” for a whole week, because I made the stuff at my friends house (with flower seeds), left it there to harden (they were meant to be gel-tabs—they never hardened, though—and would go daily to tap my fingers a few timnes, dampen my mouth, and “Off to the races” I went again.

I don’t remember where I was, or what I was doing, but I think it had to do with South Beach, Rolling (on an extasy pill), and never getting off of that that tipped me over. There’s that God-sized hole they talk about in the rooms. And it’s true. No one knows, though, it’s “God”-sized what they’re trying to fill, but there is something missing and it always resurfaces. They talk about the “Spiritual Malady.” Completely. I am an alcoholic and addict because I do not know how to have a “God” or “Higher Power” in other words. I do not know how to let go. I do not know how to have faith. I am terrified shitless of people, places, things, situations because I am so scared that I have to live this life that I know nothing about. I do not know how to be human. I do not know how to be waiting, and hoping, and feeling overwhelming love, and devotion, and at the same time not think “is everything okay” “are we fine” “are you okay” “can I do anything” “what do you need?” I do not know how to do that. It’s living life in a way that I think is right, which never is, that makes me think that being an asshole is the right way to get things done. That saying It’s my way is the way to have people like you. And all that other stuff we all do because we learned it befoire we got to learn that being kind and loving and sweet and caring was the easier softer way. Not to get hurt, no, te get anything and everything you have ever wanted. In the end, the moment [your] defenses go up the person beside you will have theirs up even higher. Who wins now?

I am conistently reminded “I have a Step-1 Problem!” Yep. I forget that I have no power over anything. I am in this world by myself and only for you. The moment I think I am here for me is the moment I literally start getting miserable. Tell me that time you got arrogant how good it felt and how much you took with you? Go just a little further, to the end of the night, to the next morning, to the thoughts you were avoiding. Tell me now that you think about them why did you avoid them to begin with and how does it feel now that you allow them to show their face?

This is why I take the program seriously. It is like becoming vegan. I got healthier, my pallete got broader, I started cooking better, I even get to feel special at times if I need to take it there. I don’t miss the drink. I don’t miss the drugs. I don’t miss the hangovers. I don’t miss the rolling until 5am EST to sleep for 1 hour to go to some morning sports event at 8am EST to be asking myself who are these people and when was the last time you slept? “No thank you I do not eat chicken wings for breakfast.” Who is who and what is what and no the worst thing you can ever do while taking any pill is drink alcohol—you’ll OD quickly actually—stand next to the water fountain all night instead.

Those experiences are not funny, romantic, enaging. They’re ridiculous, life-altering, heartbreaking. They’re broken cracked shattered pieces of life. We don’t close doors, we move forward, we walk through them, but if and when we look back, they’re still right there ready to sting the life out of you if you dare go near them ever again. And this second time around, they know you better, they hurt you better, and they stay longer better, too.