So, I have this minor lingering ‘thing’ (that would probably be addressed if I had ever gone to rehab or NA… but then, this blog wouldn’t exist, atleast in this manifestation, if I had) that plagues me and prevents me, in part, from easily sliding back into the human race.
Like, what the fuck do people do? As leisure and all of that?
The way I see it, this issue has developed and built upon itself in a slightly exponential manner via a few channels.
a. Relative sobriety, for me, meant that I needed to find substitute behaviour. The aforementioned substitute behaviour would have been work. Work for work’s sake. Very ‘meth’, if you will. Meth behaviour without methamphetamine. This, in itself, is very suspect. Though I might add the physical quitting of the actual using of the meth is far and away the largest step in the correct direction. …or atleast, that’s what common sense seems to dictate. And furthermore, I just need to add, I am naturally very inclined toward repetitive, action-oriented meth-like behavior in general. Some might classify this as slight OCD, I might (read: do) classify these people as retarded.
Okay, back to why this is suspect… I began working at a new place, but continued doing things that I’d been doing my entire professional time in Hollywood. …things that I could do with my eyes closed, both-hands tied behind my back …oh, and high on meth and drunk on white wine. For more detail, see: ‘this took a bit more planning…’ And this may seem a bit backward, but I had been doing these Hollywood assistant-type things, at this point for about two years high and drunk. Yeah, there were about two years before that where I wasn’t. But I wasn’t very good, either: shy, learning and really just unaware of everything. And so, I was sincerely afraid that I wouldn’t be able to continue to do these things in the way that I’d finally learned to do them (communicate on the phone, blahblahblah) if I wasn’t. …high and drunk. So, it became a very focused effort to get to work on time and do my job as well as I could. Plus, one thing at a time, man… I mean, I didn’t even know that I’d be able to function in any sort of human capacity in general without the glory of intoxication.
And it may strike a longer sympathetic chord when I remind one of the fact that Hollywood is Hollywood (behind the scenes business-ness or not)… meth makes you skinny with minimal effort. When one’s only expenses are meth and 2 buck chuck… the money that would have gone to food now goes to cute, funky clothing and highlights. And not to digress too much, but the alcohol drops one’s normal filter and heightens one’s warmth and humanity and certain degree of no-holds-barred honesty while meth acts as a strange but directed filter on the ‘normal’ filter that alcohol dropped. Then meth brings forth the stagnant ideas floating around the brain while the alcohol soothes the anxiety that the meth ideas bring forth. It all balances out in a way that, on paper, seems like, “why bother doing any of this?”.
I can’t say anything to this other than “try it”.
So, in the end, I was obviously able to do my job. And because obsession is rooted in fear and I am me… it, like most things, became a highly ritualized no-brainer. But a highly ritualized no-brainer that I lived and died by. I came in early (imagine that) and stayed late. I did nothing else. …well, except for the court-ordered weekly DUI alcohol program that wasted my money and ate my soul for three months. But after this, it was seriously almost three years of nothing but work, weekend hibernation, work… you get it.
Toward the end of my Hollywood tenure, I did become more comfortable in my own skin and thus went out just a bit; slightly dipping a toe here and there back into the land of eating disorders not-otherwise-specified… oh, and drinking half a bottle of white wine a night, after work. All mild stuff (not excusing any of the behaviour)… but it is what it is. I was milder in my self-destruction and older in my time-line. So, as it goes, the intoxication became less absolute, dramatic and spiky… and more the equivilent of a bud light or something absolutely… slow and exquisitely mundane.
…to be continued. (I mean, because you can’t just have an a.) that way).
