What's the Use

      I remember laying down in the back of the ambulance and starring at the inside of the roof and wondering, what is the use, what is the purpose of living if I was only going to live my life as a alcoholic and drug addict.  You see, life as a alcoholic or drug addict is a life of pain. The biggest problem is that we never realize that the pain is a shared pain. We are so caught up in ourselves and what we are dealing with, we never take a minute to look and see the pain in the faces of those around us. I never realized the pain and anguish that I was causing to the ones that cared deeply for me. I never took the time to really look and see what my life was doing to the ones that loved me. I have come to realize that at some level, at some point in time I had begun to believe that since I did not care about myself, there was no way anyone else could possibly care about me. That since there was no love in my heart for another human being, no human being had any love for me in their heart. It would take a long time before I realized how wrong I was.
      When we finally arrived at our destination I had no ides where I was. I was about to have my first experience in a mental lock-down ward. Now you can set there and try to imagine what it's like and even listen to someone try to describe it, but you will never be prepared for the experience. They took me into this building, took me upstairs and locked me in a windowless room, never letting me off the gurney. I laid there for what seemed like hours staring at the ceiling and trying to count the cracks. I don't think I could have counted all them if they had left me there for a hundred years. The worse part was the smell. It was a combination of vomit. urine and someone that hadn't bathed in two to three weeks. If you have ever been in a port-a-potty that hadn't been serviced for a long time, the room I was in was worse. After a couple of hours of laying there and trying not to breath a large man, I mean extremely obese when I say large, and smelling very much like the room I was in, came in and I had my very first experience with Thorazine.
      Thorazine is a drug given to mental patients to calm them down and give the Doctors and Nurses control over the patients, or so that's what they tell us. It actually is a drug that makes the world stop. Clocks stop ticking, the earth stops rotating, people stop moving, but most importantly the person that has been injected with it stops living. Not in the final, no breathing, heart stopped pumping, stopped living way. In the nothing matters, I'll just set here and stare out the window forever way. Nothing matters, life is on hold, and the world is far, far away. Tomorrow does not exist.

How Far is Tomorrow: Who Knew.

How Far is Tomorrow: Who Knew.:             In The Hobbit, one of my favorites, Bilbo writes a book which he tittles "There and Back Again". He is describing a journey he h...

Who Knew.

            In The Hobbit, one of my favorites, Bilbo writes a book which he tittles "There and Back Again". He is describing a journey he had recently take that involved Goblins, Orc's and Dragons. Sounds just like the journey I have been on these last few years. I stopped writing this blog almost exactly 1 year ago to the day. I discovered that the more I wrote the more vivid the memories became and soon after I started writing about my past experiences with addiction and depression the more depressed I became. Soon after I began this the goblins, orc's and dragons began to show up again and here I am, just like Bilbo, There and Back again. Who knew? When you are lost in depression and you try find your way with drugs and alcohol you only become more lost. Once you start walking the wrong way, convincing yourself you are going the right way, you become more lost, and more lost, and more lost. When I was last here I was writing about my first experience with the VA mental health facility. I sometimes wonder if being in a place like that is easier than living in the real world. The known verses the unknown. At least I know where the monsters are when i am locked up in a mental health facility. In the real world i never can tell where the monsters are going to come from. I never know if what I am seeing is real or am I looking through the lenses of addiction and depression.

           After my last post I found myself looking face to face with the monsters. I had forgotten what they looked like and they fooled me, made me think they were old friends I had not seen for a long time. I soon discovered that they had never left and were waiting to show their ugly heads again. The goblins ( alcohol ) showed up first, and as soon as they had  made their way back in, the orc's ( drugs ) came a'knocking. The problem is that when we let our guard down they know and they know us well enough, that they are able to disguise themselves into something they are not, Old Friends.

           Now, the big guy, the dragon (Depression). The problem with the dragon is that he is so big, so ferocious, that all our attention is so focused on him we forget about what we believe to be the small monsters and that is exactly the way he wants it to be. We watch him with all our energy and while we are preoccupied with his largeness the goblins and orc's sneak up behind us and attack when we are at our lowest point. I have found it amazing how I can go so long without  any trouble, sometimes years, and all of a sudden their I am right back in a battle for my very soul. Sometimes even when things are going good I set and wonder when will it start this time. How much medication do I need to take to keep the dragon in his cave. I have learned that the smaller monsters alcohol and drugs are cowards and only come out if the dragon is loose. I do not know much but I know that I am going to give this another try. Back when I first started writing this blog it was the only light in my life and I hope and pray that light still shines. Till tomorrow.
            

Sometimes Things Aren't What They Seem

          When I first started writing this blog I had no intention of turning it into an autobiography. My intention was to write a few of the things I have gone through in the hopes it would help someone avoid some of the mistakes I made. Somehow however it has turned into a long walk down memory lane, and although some memories are better left alone I can not tell the story of my journey and leave any thing out. The things I have seen and the things I have done will probably shock some people but if it helps them avoid some of the places I have been to, well that's a good thing. When I speak of my alcohol and drug addiction at this point in the story we are still at the beginning which was 15 years ago. I was just beginning my journey into addiction and homelessness and was still unaware that I was suffering from severe depression. I have read and watched on TV stories about depression about drug and alcohol abuse and the homeless and believe me most of the so called experts have no clue. I have traveled the road from Key West, Fl. to Seattle Wa. sleeping outside and in homeless shelters  in from one to another and all points in between. So here we go.
        I remember the ride from the VA hospital to the Mental Institution. It was about 30 miles away and they had some nurse in the back of the ambulance watching me.I guess they thought I was going to try something on the trip but they had pumped so much Thorazine into me I could not take a piss by myself let alone kill myself. I just remember this nurse sating next to me holding a syringe in her hand the whole trip. I guess she thought the sight of it would keep me in place. She was right.  The one thing  remember most about my first trip to the Lock-up as we called it, they lock you on a floor and only you out 2 times a day. Supervised smoke breaks, if you don't smoke you will start just to go outside. Anyway the thing that sticks out the moist was my roommate. He would spend 2-3 hours every night having a conversation with the door knob. One night while he was talking to the door knob one of the orderlies came in and when he opened the door my roommate got mad and jumped on the orderly. I guess he was mad that the orderly interrupted his conversation and went nuts. What I didn't know was that my roomate was a professional kick boxer. About 15 minutes and 20 orderlies later they were able  to get him down and shoot him up full of Thorazine. They took him to the T-room (room were they took people to tie down and medicate) and that was the last I ever saw of him. I heard that they shipped him off to the permanent Mental Institution. They kept me there for two weeks and then one day woke me up and said it was time to go. When I told them I had no where to go they looked at me and said not there problem. Thus begins my journey into the world of homelessness.

Living with Depression - One of Those Days

        Hard to describe what today feels like. This is one of those days when tomorrow seems so far, far away. Had one of those attacks this morning where fear of the outside world took over. It's hard to describe but it feels like the world is on fire and if I step outside I will be burned alive. Every time I get close to the door I feel these small needles poking into my skin, feels like rubbing a Brillo pad across my arm. The new medication my doctor gave me makes me want to get up and move around but does nothing for the depression and the parts of my mind it controls. I have had a difficult time lately with a lack of energy. For those of you not familiar with severe depression and think like I used to, that depression was only when you were sad about something, one of the effects of Severe Depression is a lack of energy, a lack of any desire to get up and accomplish anything. There are also quite a few more problems depression causes both mental and physical but we will not get into them just yet. Anyway my doctor thought it might be a good idea to boost me up a little so she decided to subscribe a new medication that does just that. The problem however, she didn't take into account the panic attacks that seem to come more often these days. So here I am full of get up and go in the middle of a panic attack. Sometimes they will last for 3-4 days, hope not this time.
         Most people think that when you suffer from and attack like this suicide what I think about, to be honest there has been a couple of times when that was true. I've been locked up three times in a psychiatric hospital with my belt and shoe laces taken away from me. The first time they kept me in the emergency room for almost two days before they shipped me off to the loony bin. One thing everyone needs to know about me is I am not politically correct, and I no longer harbour thoughts of suicide.  Now I know the disease I suffer with and accept it for what it is. I understand everyday is a battle and some days are better than others. At the beginning though I was ignorant to my condition and ignorant to Severe Depression and the problems it causes. As I talked about yesterday I had turned to drugs to try to fill the hole that was inside of me and when crack cocaine and meth took every thing I owned and left me standing in the street that cold February night I thought life was over. At that moment in time I looked for life in me and found none. I was a dead man walking around looking for a place to lay down. Thank God for family and friends and a couple of good paramedics.
         When I say crack cocaine and meth to every thing away from me I do not mean to lay the blame on anything but myself. In my journey through the world of the homeless in the United States I encountered to many how blamed everyone and everything but themselves. On the the thing that contributed the most to my trip to the loony farm was my blaming nothing but myself. I believed that if I was so weak as to loose everything to drug addiction I did not deserve to live. Anyone who blow it all just to get high was worthless, or so I thought. I have since learned to forgive myself and although I still blame myself a great deal for how my life has turned out I now know that depression had a lot to do with it. Tomorrow we will get into that first trip to the farm and see the world of the mentally ill from the inside. See you guys there.