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.    

Gateway To Nowhere

              I've heard that alcohol is not a gateway drug. I figured it must have been someone who either had never had a problem with addiction or someone in the middle of addiction who started this romor and rumor is what it is. you have to ask yourself what lead to the problem in the first place. If, as most alcoholics do, the reason for drinking in the first place is to cover up something such as pain, loneliness, a feeling of no self worth , or fear believe me when I say it will not be long before alcohol will not be enough. It's like covering a hole with a thin blanket and as the storms come and the wind blows sooner or later the blanket starts to tear and small holes appear. As we try to cover these holes we just can't keep up with the storms and larger and larger holes begin to appear and when we realize the covering we are using is no longer strong enough we reach for something stronger. I am the hole, Deppression is my storm, drugs and alcohol is my blanket

             I often wonder how many of those society classifies as addicts are people suffering from mental illness. The bigger question is how many of them are even aware they suffer from mental illness. I had no idea I suffered from depression until my primary care physician told me and no idea how severe until I visited the Mental Health Facility at the VA.  My next question would be if they did know and found a treatment that worked would they still be addicts. I mean if you filled the hole would you still need the blanket. How many people go through 12 step programs and rehab programs that only repair the blanke and does nothing to fill the hole. I have fallen off the wagon so many times I finally stoped trying to get back on. Was afraid I'd get run over by one of the wheels.
           I remember when alcohol was no longer enough to cover the hole. I started with pot and was snorting coke before to long. Being high was the only way I could go out in public and have what I thought was a good time. I believed what I was doing was normal because all the people I was now hanging around with doing it. You know, going along with the crowd. I know now that the people I was hanging around with werejust as messed up as I was. People who were lonely, people who were afraid of life. I think the thing that attracted me o this crowd was the fact nobody asked questions. If I went to a party and sat in the corner by myself nobody would ask any questions. I think the ዎርሰ day in my life was the day someone introduced me to crack cocaine. What I thought was bad was about to get a whole lot worse. Depression is a master at hiding behind alcohol and drugs ad I believe it is depression that opens the gate. Depression is the gateway that leads to nowhere.
          
               

Sometimes Dark is Ok

        I often wonder how I would react if I was every to wake up and find myself normal again. What is normal anyway, maybe i am normal and everyone else is nuts. I don't know if normal is something to wish for or something to hide from. I watch all the NORMAL people walk around everyday and ask myself is this what I used to be like. I guess the saying, you never know how much you miss something until you loose it. It's the freedom from fear that I miss. I was watching a show on TV about the deeps of the Pacific Ocean and they showed these fish with these huge eyes. These particular fish live at the bottom of the ocean and over time have mutated to be able to see in the dark of the deep ocean. They said if one of these fish were to make it to the surface they would not be able to survive. They have lived in the dark so long they would not be able to live in the dark. I wonder if I have that same problem. Have I lived in the deeps for so long I will not be able to survive if I ever make make it to the surface. Do I cling on to the dark like and old friend because it has been with me for so long.
        Sitting in that dark, smelly bar for the first time I remember thinking to myself , is it always this dark in here? What a perfect description of life, walking out of a nice, warm, sunny day into a dark den of sadness. have you ever walked into a small local dive and really looked at the faces of the people that frequent the place. Faces filed with loneliness, hurt, and pain hiding behind alcohol and drug created smiles. What makes us believe that alcohol and drugs will make better will make all the pain go away. The crazy part is that we keep trying over and over again even when we know it does not work. I thought if I drank enough my fear of crowds would disappear. I forgot to mention that in a very short period of time my fear of standing in front of a crowd turned into a raging fear of any crowds. I found myself avoiding any gathering of humans without even realizing what I was doing. It was at a Super Walmart at 2:30 in the morning that I realized what I was doing. I was doing my weekly grocery shopping and I stopped and looked around and noticed I was practically alone. I had never done any shopping at 2:30 in my life. At first I thought it was my new found fondness for beer that was the cause. Later I would discover it was something much worse.
       

Who Turned Off The Light

           It was like one minute I was standing in the light, a warm comforting light much like standing in a warm bright sunlight on a clear spring day. The next minute it was like someone turned off the lights and I was standing all alone in a deep unpreventable darkness. A darkness that reminded me off one of those carnival shows they have at the state fair every year. One of those tents where you walk in and all of a sudden it gets so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face. One day I was living what I thought was  good life, a good job, active in my church, surrounded by many good friends or a least I thought so at the time, we'll get to that later, then the next minute all gone. One moment living in a good home the next sleeping in the back of my car. One moment a good job the next standing in line at the soup kitchen for my daily meal. One moment spending all my spare time working with my beloved church the next spending all my time at the local bar, on the days I could scrounge up enough money for beer. It didn't actually happen that fast it only seems that way now.
         Funny how days that seem to last forever always seem to have flown by 2 days later. When you find yourself afraid of every thing that moves not because you are actually afraid of them but because you are afraid of living. The hardest thing to express is fear. Fear of life is even harder. Some days I find myself so afraid that if I walk out the door something horrible is going to happen. Hard to understand being so afraid of dying you become to afraid to live. When I first discovered something was wrong on the inside of me I had no idea what it was or who to turn to. As I said earlier it was at a prison ministry and a christian youth group that fear first raised its ugly head. My wonderful friend seemed to take pride in telling me that I must have done something wrong and this was Gods punishment. An old preacher I used to listen to in my youth used to say God save me from the Christians. I now understand what he was talking about. The bad part is what I didn't know was things were only going to get worse from here.
        Memory is something that always amazes me. There are so many things about my life that I do not remember. I do remember however the first day I walked into that small bar on pass road. For a long time I thought that was the day every thing started to go bad. I blamed myself over and over for all the things that would follow and to some extent I still do. I am not now nor ever have been one to try to lay blame on everyone and everything but myself. As I have learned more about my condition and become more educated about mental illness I can look at myself in the mirror now without hollering at myself. some days are OK and some days are not, but I now know what the root cause is and take medication. Tomorrow We will continue on this journey into yesterday. My therapist tells me that this is good for me and I figure what harm can it do. See you guys on the morrow.