NALTREXONE IS A HELL OF A DRUG

LANGUAGE WARNING LANGUAGE WARNING. 

READING THIS AGAIN I REALIZE IT IS A CLUSTERFUCK OF TIME. (I WARNED YOU!) SO IF THINGS SEEM LIKE THEY SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED BEFORE I GOT POPPED FOR A DUI, IT'S BECAUSE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. I JUST EDITED IT AGAIN TO BE PERFECT AND I REALIZE TIME IS NOT MY FRIEND. IT WASN'T FOR THOSE 2 DAYS IN PRISON EITHER... I HAD BEEN DRINKING PLENTY BEFORE MY DUI, I JUST HAD TO DRINK MORE TO KILL THE WANT OR NEED FOR THE HERB...

MY APOLOGIES, BUT ENJOY...

After many years of smoking the herb and enjoying every goddamn minute of it, I had to find a way to stop doing it.  At 26, I had just been released from prison. I had just been popped for a DUI for a second time and had to be urine tested every month or so for probation for what… a whole year or two. So, even though I hung out with a few of my buddies who enjoyed the bud too, I realized I needed something to crutch me up on my broken soul. This crutch though could not be used against me in terms of my probation, so I turned to crack. And when I say crack I mean alcohol.

Crack is a hell of a drug. And when you crack a new can the aroma is intoxicating in and of itself. The hops and fermented sugars had such a bouquet that THAT makes my mouth water now just writing about it. I friggin’ love beer. I love it. I LOVE it. It woke me up in the morning, gave me lunch in the afternoon, and helped me sleep at night. And if it was a weekend, forgettaboutit. I could get out of work at 3:30PM and start drinking at 3:31PM Friday and by Monday morning I had been up and down in so many blackouts I didn’t even realize it was a work day. But I’d still get up, down 2 beers, hop on “the hog” (my bicycle), and ride into work. Sometimes I’d ride home at lunch and have a quick 4 beers in 10 minutes of lunch time I had at home just to feel level for the rest of the workday. This wasn’t all the time, but sometimes I’d feel like I was on the brink of death and -- forget oxygen -- beer was the saving grace of the day.  Although I wish I had succumbed to the beer sickness.

Every crack of that 10oz can would be so often in a work night or weekend that I’d develop bruising on my index and middle fingers. So forget writing. I had to find a way of opening my cans with something else. I had been using traditional methods... spoons, among others. I think at one point Marlboro was giving out aluminum cards that were the size of credit cards and doubled as bottle openers for your birthday (smoking had its privileges beyond cancer), and I used that card as a can opener as well. It fit perfectly under the tab and presto! No more finger bruising for the boozing.

I’d show up at a friend’s house and get 4 beers out of the fridge and place them in front of me. Other patrons at the gathering would ask if I was afraid of my beer getting cold, and people that knew me would answer for me. “Don’t worry, they’ll be empty before temperature matters…”

I had small can coolies fitted inside 12oz can coolies for the pony beers. Some alcoholics wouldn’t think about that, but I had everything planned out. I had beer math so I’d get the best value for my buck, and even would buy three cases of the 10oz beers at a store across town to save 15 cents. Hey, a dollar is a dollar, not thinking of gas costs back then. . . 

I remember going into the “Beer Zoo” off Rt. 22 and standing behind a man and his lady and they had been discussing why anyone would buy pony cans of beers:

“Look at those little things! That’s ridiculous!” he’d muttered under his breath… “I don’t know how or why any stupid folks would pay for that, let alone look respectful drinking a 10oz beer.”

Not being one to back down from a word war (find me a drunk who isn't), I asked what they were about to pay for their 30pk of Coors Light versus my pony cans…

“$25” he said.

“$25? Now THAT’s ridiculous!!!” I said.

He looked at me peculiarly as if to say “prove it”…

So I broke out my beer math and showed him that for three 24pks of 10oz beers, I was paying 29.97 (9.99 each at the time) which was 5 bucks more than he was for his 30pk of 12oz beers, and in fact that 5 bucks was essentially paying for another 30pk of beer. Ounce-wise it was the same thing. Beyond the price, the smaller beers stayed colder than the 12oz beers due to the amount of time it takes to drink them and get new ones from the fridge.

The man looked at his lady and took back his 30pk and came back with three 24pks of 10oz beers.

“Thanks, man!”, he said, “You’re the shit!”

“No”, I said, “I just feel that way. But now you know why we stupid folks buy the pony cans.”

 It seems like I am glorifying the drinking of beer to oblivion and beyond, but in fact being drunk isn’t the greatest feeling in the world. A lot of times in fact I wished I hadn’t drunk so much. I never really slept on beer, but I certainly blacked out plenty of times.

There was the time I climbed a peach tree half naked. The time I went downtown thinking my wiener was longer than it was, or at least peeking out of my jeans when I started to urinate. The time I lashed out at my cousin’s now wife because he loved her and wanted to hang out with her (understandably) more than me. (she’s been a knockout since at least 8^th grade…and she even kissed me… long before I lost it on her… we had some great times but its my own fault I am not one to keep many friends…)… the time I told some Puerto Rican guy that my other cousin’s wife had tremendously huge breasts right in front of her. The time I yelled at my friend’s baby’s momma telling her she’d never be his bride (I was right on that one but at the time it wasn’t the right thing to say.) The time I yelled at a man walking his dog telling him his dog would kill my cousin’s dog, and in turn the man said he’d kill me. The time I locked myself out of my friend’s house then broke back in and caused a fistfight, one of 2 in my life with that same guy (RIP Kev). The time I mooned my aunt’s Haitian mother. The time I got arrested falling asleep at a red light. And not learning my lesson, I got DUI arrested less than 6 months later. The time I fell asleep at my buddy’s house in a tent and woke up naked with my clothes all around the yard. The time I almost got beaten up making fun of a short dude. And all those times were with other people. Most of the times I hated was just being alone and dealing with another night having to drink to feel regular.  I wondered most nights where my life was, where it was going, and why I was still here. I couldn’t kill myself,  i didn't have the balls nor the shaft to even get it out of my jeans, so I figured the best thing I could do was shorten my life so I could die early. Who wants to live to 90 or 100 when some poor asshole had to wipe your poor asshole in a nursing home? in my 20s, i thought 35 years was long enough to live.

It was fun, ridiculous, embarrassing, off-putting, friend and family losing, and seriously fucked up all in one.

All this demise happened in about 5-6 years of HEAVY consumption. it wasn't one or two a day, it was fifteen or twenty 12oz equivalents a night 

One day I went into my doctor’s office and told him I needed to quit. If you’re going to be honest with anyone, don’t let it be your parents, wife, husband, children, or friends. Let it be your doctor. My drinkin buddy was in a weeklong rehab program due to trying to kill himself and even he said “hey, maybe you ought to slow down…” This is the same guy that after court ordered meetings would pick me up and bought me a six pack of beer. I was in rehab for smoking, I kept telling myself. But now years later, because for some reason rehab didn’t take… I knew I couldn’t just slow down, so it was either continue or quit. So my doctor gave me some naltrexone. He told me it was for heroin addicts but most research said it worked on alcoholics too.

So my end date wasn’t set. But the opportunity to do so was there. I had the prescription in my medicine cabinet for about 3 months. During that time all the signs kept appearing… I even remember Christian Slater on a talk show admitting he had quit drinking on October 29^th, my birthday. I figured if he could do it… then I cracked another beer.

Not long after that though, one night I smoked a little and decided to take a half a pill with my 16+ or so beer regimen that evening.

As much as I miss drinkin, it was the best stoned or otherwise drunk decision I ever made.

When I woke up I had to think about where I was because I couldn’t move. It was 2/28/2009 and I woke up on my best friend’s birthday a new man.

But I couldn’t move.

Literally I was a mummy in my own bed. I looked down with my eyes and all I could see were my hands with pointer fingers pointed down to my feet, as if you made fun of a retarded person.

But I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t talk or walk, I was paralyzed but for my eyes. So I laid there. What the fuck else could I do? I tried moving my arms so I could at least listen to the radio… to no avail. In my bedroom at the time thankfully there were ceiling tiles with impressions of holes within them. They made patterns on the ceiling, and went from counting ceiling tiles to counting holes in each tile. I made patterns of steps and crosses and blocks and whatever came to my head with a bunch of 12” x 12” squares staring back at me. I was obsessed with making something out of nothing and it seemed to work out for the best.

But I couldn’t move.

 After two hours (it felt like, it could have been 7 seconds for all I knew) I just finished my game of fake tetris and decided to try moving again. My toe moved even though I was trying to move my finger. I figured it was a start. So slowly but surely I started moving, and now the right body parts were corresponding to the neurons’ signals being fired at them. A finger. A leg. A tongue. I made a sound. I could hear it.

“ok”, I thought, “time to get a drink.” It was morning after all. That was breakfast.

I sat up and as if arms grabbed me and threw me down on the bed I fell backward with force. Woah, this naltrexone was a hell of a drug. And I only had half a pill.

Slowly I rose from the mattress / open casket I was on and got to my feet. I went to the fridge full of whatever was in Marcellas Wallace’s briefcase (the light was blinding) and beer and for the first time I didn’t want one. It was wall to wall beer and none of them were for me. I drank a sip of water and feeling woozy, I took a leak. I looked at my glassy eyes in the mirror, opened the cabinet and took the other half of the naltrexone, and went back to bed.

Later my phone beeped. It was Mike. The text read “Lets go out tonight drinkin… Its my birthday!!!”

I didn’t want to disappoint him. He was turning I think 31, I was 32 at the time so that would be right. So I replied “I can’t man. I’m kinda doin’ something.”

I inadvertently gave him a birthday gift that day. He was probably pissed that day, but I was gonna be around a while longer and we’d celebrate his birthday and my quit date the same day for some time to come.

“what are you doing?”

I couldn’t reply because I had started the whole pill of naltrexone to put me to sleep that night still with a full fridge of beer.

So the next day I woke up and could move. I could talk. I could turn on the radio. I was oh-khey. Every time taking the pill you felt a little dizzy and sort of moved outside your body but for the most part I had no withdrawal symptoms. I didn’t have to go to meetings. I didn’t have to find jesus or jesus’s little helpers cause I didn’t like children in a sexual way the way priests do.

Nobody was “saving” me… but me.

Another day went by. Then another. Then I had to invite my buddies over to drink my beer. Unbeknownst to me or them, it was a going away party for them. Little did I know… this was the desertion of the alcoholics. I remembered the part of the lesson I had to take in my court-ordered few weeks in outpatient rehab program at Gaudenzia on Second street. This was the natural order of things. Your “friends” would go away, but those who stuck with you were the ones to keep. I had one or 2 left out of the 10 or so I had. And they proved the rehab program lesson true. They’re still my friends today. Not to say my alcoholic friends aren’t still my friends, but more like acquaintances now. My best drinkin buddy lost his girlfriend and fell off the deep end and nobody knows where he is now. But those who stuck by me thru the weird naltrexone moments are still here today.

Three years. Three months. And 21 days later.

DAMMIT! I WANT A BEER! JUST ONE I SWEAR!

But I can’t. The streak would be over, and I couldn’t handle the disappointment in myself…

One day at a time. . .

III

MICKEY N CHEECH

so when i was a youngish 20-something, i went through the THC phase. it took a 2 day, 6'x6' concrete and cinderblock roomed, top bunk nap to snap me out of it, and i miss those days like nothing else. a dream to me would be to walk out of my house, tend to my green garden, and sit outside and smoke a joint without worrying about anything... maybe i should move to seattle where that dream is a reality. but here in 1870s Pennsylvania, its still kinda frowned upon.

during this THC phase though i had plenty of seedy seedy bags and i sifted them and pinched them and allowed the seeds to accumulate on the floor. and in my young post-teen years, my bedroom didn't get any cleaner. from laundry to trash to the day's purchases would end up on the floor and never leave it. but i knew where everything was. i can't say anything has really changed nowadays at 35, i just have a bigger expanse to throw stuff around now. but the place was a small room, like 10x14' and i had a foot of insulation from my own floor, let alone the second floor below. the bed was in one corner of the room and from the bed there'd be a small path through the filth to my computer chair on the other side by the window. when sitting in my chair, the 27" CRT TV was about 2 feet in front of me on the tv stand where my stash would hide, but there was a path from the chair to the door as well. the door itself was made in the 1900s so it was strong, and it had to be because to get into the room you had to bumrush the door to squeeze through the opening before the landfill pushed the door back closed.

i'd smoke and think about what i was going to do in my life, everything from figuring out how to fix all the worlds problems, what women would be right for me, organize a front to legalize maryjane, and of course do none of it and just smoke and watch more tv in my office chair. the only responsibility of the day was getting more MJ. and mentally it was the greatest time of my life, mostly because i forgot about my life previously, and nowadays, i don't remember much from the THC phase. so my twenties were lost to the sweet smell of numbing happiness.

i miss those days.

depending on if it was an election season or not, smokers know this as dry time, the great great stuff would come through my lungs and make me hallucinate so that i was seeing mice on my floor. but those who smoke know it doesn't make you hallucinate, it just makes you feel good. that realization of reality happened during one of my sessions and i actually saw the pet rodents. yet they didn't startle me. they just became something else to watch when there was nothing on tv. over the week that they lived with me, they did something for me. . .

a friend stopped by and we smoked a blunt and he said "what is that?" pointing at the one corner of my room where you could see the hardwood floor. i said "that's the floor!"

"no no no" he said "there's a pile of something over there..."

upon further review, it was a perfect pyramid of seeds piled by my little buddies. they sifted through the landfill of my floor and beyond ruining countless clothes, they found seemingly all my seeds from the years of bags i had let fall on the floor, and piled them as if they were civil war monument cannonballs. egypt gets too much credit for the pyramid shape anymore.

but it was remarkable. and funny, of course.

"that''s the craziest thing i ever saw!" he said. i agreed, and obviously it was amazing cause 10+ years later i am still thinking about it, and now writing about it.

but then came the demise of Mickey n Cheech.

i saw where they were coming in and out of my room, and using the natural path under my door where the smoke~barrier towel didn't reach left a mousehole of space. i placed a glue trap on the outside of it. by morning i was in mourning, yet placing mickey's face hard into the glue so he'd suffocate quickly was more humane than putting a hammer to his head. and the next night, it was cheech's walk to the chamber. he also found himself stuck like a deer in headlights, unable to move from the sticky tile from hell. a peep was in fact the last thing i heard of him before going to sleep.

brutal? yeah, but the fact was this: they had it made in my room for a week. if there was a mouse heaven, my place was it, plus they were able to enjoy the fruits of the earth and enjoy a bit of THC themselves. when they got hungry, they could munch on the crumbs of munchies i had left on the floor, then go back to the pile of seeds to get hungry again.

and no, after weeks, months, the pile remained. i think i finally vacuumed it up just before my parole officer was to check my room out just after the 2 day nap in the cinderblocked hell that was Dauphin County Prison.

beyond the mice and THC, drinkin became a whole completely new animal. and so became the new numbness of my later 20s. . . those realities of horror stories may come out. they may not. but i can surely say smoking is BEYOND less harmful than drinking. its downright as natural as oxygen. we humans even have cannabinoid receptors in our brains.

coincidence?

or evolution?

to heck with monkeys, maybe we evolved from mice.

III

UPON READING ANOTHER POST…

...it was suggested to me to try something new. I am not all in for it just yet, but I was asked to expand on a few things I stated in the mom n dad / finger 11 post. It was asked that I provide links to another post from the original and I am not completely sure I know how to do that. As if I was Wikipedia for my own tales.

So you get this post for now…

as stated in previous posts, I have basically 2 best friends. One is a cousin, the other I consider a brother. But my cousin naturally I have known all my life, and was not only asked to be his best man over all his other friends and family (really? Me? I guess…) but also asked to be the godfather to his (currently) only son nick. Its one of those things that keeps me hangin on to this planet, even though death is the cherry on top of my continued depressed years..

Of course I am talking about jonny mac. MR. Jonny joke himself. (Now I gotta expand on that but I am not sure how they all went over the years. Basically a jonny joke had a start, and an end but no justification between them. If I have to edit this I will, but for the most part, you’d get a setup and a punchline with no interconnectedness between them. (interconnectedness is a word apparently. I think it was a Gatesism they let MSWord have.) for a horrible example: "what did the duck say? Give up? Spam and Beans!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha…." We all were kids once. But his were those jokes of legend.)

We have had some crazy fun times over the years. The most innocent of times to the daringly “how the heck did we just get thru that space between that truck that just drove by us and that parked car on that road past gramma’s on the right that is now one way the other way” street… the road trips. The sneeze-cough at yacco’s… mmmmm yacco’s!.... the bug we both saw screaming at us right before it slimed the windshield… “why am I yelling”… watching me run anytime… and watching me run on video after punching jmac on the football field… among other millions and millions of times we had. We just “get” each other and have a fun time about ourselves.

But in fact the most innocent were the funniest, well, to me:

“the spaghetti incident:”

We went to the salvation army (I’m prolly wrong, maybe it was saint stephen’s or somewhere else… but I wanna say salvation army in Harrisburg or maybe it was st pat’s cathedral basement, but the place is irrelevant) with my aunt rita for a spaghetti dinner. The spaghetti was great, but it had quite the soupy sauce, making it slippery as a banana skin on an oil slick.

As I, at maybe 5 or 6 years old, was walking back to my seat from the buffet line, I slipped the levelness of the plate to the right a bit and you’d have thought I was on a ship at sea the way it went flyin', splattering all over the linoleum tiled floor. I felt horrible, as aunt rita had paid with her own money to take her nephews out to dinner and lo and behold, mine was on the floor. I started to clean up and jonny mac was behind me.

He decided to help clean up the spaghetti dinner on the floor with me, aunt rita, and assorted other folks. But as he did so his levelness of his plate was teetering as well, and off the plate it went. It was as if he said “here, folks, you go clean mine up, I’m gonna help pete.”

They gave us new helpings and it was great pasta, but its one of those memories I’ll never forget.

“peeing over the car / 5 minute fart ride from jersey”

My family is tremendous. Lee huge. Tremendously huge. My father is one of 14, and for whatever reason, whether visiting or vacationing (giving the parents a vacation, rather) we were in mount holly, NJ at my uncle mike and aunt patty’s house. Patty is the first born of the 14, and she was as stern as they came for aunts and uncles. She was one you didn’t wanna mess with for every reason under the sun, and I had a slight fear of her for years. People in the family may say that was a lie, that I shouldn’t say that because she has since passed away, but in my case its my opinion of her and as awesome as she was, she always had a stick up her ass. One time as a child, once, I remember her with a heart. I cried at her house from being homesick and she let me call my mom as if I was getting the last call from prison. And she held me telling me it was ok. Other than then, she was “one of those aunts”.

In general with people like that, they tend to marry their opposite, and in fact uncle mike couldn’t be more unlike aunt patty. He was fun. He was the one in the family that you expected a birthday card from, yet his was homemade from ammunition, err, pics of you he had stored on his 35mm stealth camera film he had taken over the year. And each year it wasn’t as much fun awaiting your birthday until you got that card in the mail. And each one was funnier than the last. The guy made the first cast of Saturday night live look like the local improv group in batswanaland. He was a phenom of comedic writing and talent, and he is still dangerously funny on email today. What he comes up with you just don’t know where it comes from, but you know who wrote it without looking at the email address. He has a thought process and style all his own, not just on paper, and I love him dearly.

(his comedic emails got me into writing, so all these blogger deals are his fault!)

But like the “angry rule” of bruce banner’s, don’t get him drunk. Unless you have the steel toe of kara (hear the tenor and bass angels singing now? “aaaaAAAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA The. Steel. Toe. Of. Kara… coming to a theater near you…”) to bring him to his knees… another story entirely. (I guess my uncle was right, I need a hyperlink or two to go along with this blog, ehh??? Choices choices…)

Uncle mike was given the task of driving jonny mac and I back to Harrisburg when we were 6 or 7, maybe younger. In fact possibly younger. My memory is slightly lost, but we were kids nonetheless. And as kids on a 2 hour ride back home, you need to use the restroom here and there, more often than your adult drivers. And what fervor and rigor our urine used to have. I guess it’s like a hose. The smaller the pinhole, the stronger the stream…

We pulled over along the side of the highway and jmac and I let loose. We arched our backs back, held our little wieners in hand (in 30 years, weren’t they supposed to grow or something?) and streamed all over the side of the grasses of the highway. Not just down, oh no… we peed up. High. Like touching the clouds high. And it rainbow-arched, for all the passing cars to see, and of course for uncle mike’s stealth photo opportunity. Yes, this exact moment was captured on film. Where the pic is I have no idea, or do i…? I really don’t. I wish I did cause right here would be the most appropriate place for it in perpetuity.  

We laughed and chuckled about it and piled back into the car.

-----this particular story may be an amalgam (thanks movie “parenthood” for that word) of other trips we took with uncle mike but for me the 5 minute fart and peeing higher than the car sorta fits together in my memory. The aforementioned human map could probably point out which mile marker it happened on, but that’s jonny.-----

And so the car ride rolled on. We both musta had something gassy to eat along the ride home, or back in mount holly, because the ride back was one of those rides you never forget (again)

One of us farted.

Naturally the windows had to be cracked due to the now green hued air in the car. It was poisonous not just to the lost nose hairs, but if that gas had gotten out, it would have looked like the aftermath of Hiroshima… Oppenheimer would have been impressed with these farts.

Once the clock hit 4minutes, 59 seconds, the second later the other farted. And naturally the windows had to be rolled down again. It was literally like clockwork.

From the front seat you heard “roll ‘em down… jeez’s chr - what the heck did you eat? ok… now roll ‘em up…”

And 5 minutes later on the nose, pun intended, yet literally as well…

“roll ‘em down” … … …

This was a 2 hour ride. I am not sure the car manufacturers tested the handles of their windows as much as mike’s were tested that day, but to say they had a workout was an understatement, all the while jmac and I were laughing hysterically in the back seat. . .

When we finally arrived at gramma’s house to meet up with our parents, our faces looked like the clock faces of a certain Salvador Dali work. And our arms could compete with Arnold Swartzenegger for the  Mr. Olympia competition due to the fact that the windows had to be cranked in those days.

So there you have it.

A pinprick of times I have spent with my cousin.

And of all the times I remember, I laugh at those early ones the most. Evidently, 30 years later, I remember them fondly as if it were yesterday.

“and now {I cry} for those innocent days”

III