Hi my name is Gabe and I love drugs,
I always hated alcohol as a kid up until the beginning of my adolescence because it made my dad change so much. He was a hardworking, honest, exuberant man who I thought of as a pillar of strength. When he drank he got sarcastic, cruel and sometimes violent and I would rather hide from him. Most of the time he would just pass out on the floor face down. Someone would try and wake him up and he would look up dazed with his eyes bulging out of his head from his high blood pressure. I hated that look on his face and I hated his incoherence. I hated how it was his way or no way, even when it came to driving when he was inebriated. Me being too small and my mother being too weak and afraid, we would risk our lives getting in a car with him many times. I remember being in Mexico with only him and one of my friends and we got pulled over by the Federales and he was drunk. I was hoping they would take him in. Anything was better than the fear of a drunken accident, especially on the dirt roads we would drive on close to ocean cliffs. He would always have 40-50 dollars on him expressly for that purpose. He would pay them off and we would be on our way.
I never thought much of drinking myself until I was about to start high school. It was a fun recreational thing I just tried with some close family members. I tried that along with smoking some weed out of a tin foil homemade pipe. The first time I really sparked my love affair with booze was when I was 14 and my dad had a party. There was a “handle” of Jim Beam whisky in the kitchen and I filled a cup to the brim and snuck it into my room with a can of soda. I drank the entire cup and chased it with soda. It must have been at least 6 shots. I picked up my bass guitar, flipped on my amp and proceeded to unleash on the strings. I didn’t care whether what I was playing was accurate or technically proficient; I was in a whirlwind of passion and adrenaline. Nothing else existed but my bass. I was in love with life. My stomach was warm. My skin tingled and I had frequent bursts of energy and a spontaneity I did not know I had. A friend came over and we both continued to sneak shots from the bottle the rest of the evening. It was one of my fondest memories.
Throughout the next year, getting a small $4 or $5 flask of Beam would be the ritual while my friends and I would trek around the lazy beach town of Laguna. In a short time the flask became insufficient to maintain the same “magic” that was captured that one night in my room. First it was that 50mL flask and eventually we needed, I needed, a 750 mL bottle. Throughout the rest of high school I went from drinking on the weekends to trying to remember a day during the week when I did not have one drink. Alcohol was readily available and I could negotiate with my dad about getting “us” a bottle. He would tell me to take it easy but he could not tell me anything. It became a game and I would show him and everyone else that I could drink a bottle of hard alcohol and still function, not pass out, not slur my words and not get sloppy. I could out drink him finally. He would never scare me again. In fact, I would drink till 2 or 3 in the morning on some nights and he would scream at me to be quiet with my friends. I would egg him on to hit me and tell him that he taught me how to be an alcoholic, almost a reenactment of the 80’s drug abuse commercial.
I experimented with every drug I could get my hands on but booze was most accepted. Booze was sold at restaurants. Booze I could buy anywhere because I looked older. I could buy it on the way home from school and get a nice buzz while I did some homework. There were no dealings with dealers, no phone calls, no question of quality. I could easily get a nice Hornitos bottle of tequila or a shitty Popov vodka handle depending on my bank account. In fact I remember many times where I had less than $20 in my bank account so I could use my debit card to use the last bit on a gallon of Popov in the morning. I would make eggs, take shots, get hammered and fall asleep and this was when I was 17.
This monster grew and grew as I aged and found moderate success in the music industry. Alcohol on tour with the metal band was fun but when it came to playing on SNL, having older friends who had connections to harder drugs in NYC and partying with the SNL cast, I finally found the best drug to compliment the “magic.” Cocaine was fantastic with a nice pack of Dunhill cigarettes. I could drink all night and every time I would get too sloppy a nice little rail would get me back up on the balance beam and I could have 2 more cocktails. This would go on until the cocaine was gone; at that point the racing of my heart would have to be calmed down by sleeping pills, straight shots and lots of weed. I could have easily given myself a heart attack.
Never did I feel like I was a disgrace to anyone. I did not care what anyone thought. I still went to the gym frequently after a day or two of recovery and I still had played better gigs than some people have ever played in their entire lives who were twice my age. I felt like I had no reason to slow down other than the rising blood pressure, weight gain, and raw skin around my nose.
Sobriety never really seemed like an option because there was always some way to work around it. I never thought I needed to stop. I could not live without drinking, it was who I was. My friends did not know anyone who could drink more than me and I was proud of that, even when I would disappear, or wake up alongside freeways, or break into cars with some thieves I just met, or ended up in some apartment smoking meth with strangers, you name it. I drank 40’s, did speed, smoked weed, ate an 8th of mushrooms and ate a bunch of ecstasy one night and sitting in the back of a pickup truck in fear of dying still did not stop me from slowing down. I could stop for a few months but after that I would be right back where I was. There was no such thing as moderation because I never *enjoyed* the taste of alcohol, I enjoyed the effects. I would not drink something alcoholic because it tasted good. I drank because I wanted a buzz, otherwise water was just fine. That thing I considered a “buzz” metamorphosed into drunkenness. What “buzz” meant to other people was worthless for my needs. I needed to be crazy, entertaining, spontaneous, super human, scary, sexy, and when I wasn’t drinking I was a watered down version of that.
My path led me to be the middle man to get cocaine for a short time. People wonder how someone can fall into something like that by mistake. Well it goes like this: you have some, you share some with a random stranger who happens to have a lot of money and then they ask you to be their connection. You tell them “no” but they insist. It seems innocent enough by just making a phone call to help out a dude. Then the dude orders a lot, more than you are used to seeing and he gives you a bunch. You then get to do drugs for free. Then you notice how much money you are making someone else and you let them know how much money you have made them. Then they ask you what you want, product or money. You say money and then you are off to the races, you now have a vested interest in moving product. This was short lived for obvious reasons. It is dangerous and frightening as hell, besides friends started disappearing for whatever reason.
About 3 years after that chapter I really started to get dark on my life and my relationship was codependent and hazardous. I hate what I had become and I hate how vulnerable I was when I was drinking. I became oblivious to the untrustworthy people I had surrounded myself with. I had allowed things that no one should have allowed. I looked like a blob of what I was when I was in my early 20’s. I cannot stand the drama I created. I cannot stand the issues that came up that I never addressed in sobriety. I hated having that weight that was 40 lbs of excess fat resting on my chest. I hated having to apologize to people for destroying their property and I hated that I started loving a double shot of vodka first thing in the morning to avoid the hangover. There was always a new day to erase but it needed to stop.
Eventually my tumultuous relationship of drunken chaos came to a head and I made violent angry decisions that rewarded me with a felony if I did not take an immediate plea. I took the plea and my lawyer got my sentence reduced from years to months. Being thrown in jail because of drunken chaos changed everything. To some people jail is not enough to clean up their act but I finally realized that I needed to redefine myself. I lost everything, including the simple option to *walk down the street*. I lost faith in humanity because I felt like I could not trust my friends, my family or my significant other. If you have none of those things you have nothing to lose. I was not sure how I was going to stay sober but I knew I had to no matter what. I had to disassociate with everyone I had drank with previously. I had to avoid social engagements. I had to cut people unworthy of trust out of my life. I had to find a new purpose. I looked forward to getting drunk and getting lots of blow every weekend. I had to look forward to something else. I went to counseling to understand my train of thought and I found out I had mislabeled my feelings. When I was mad I was usually depressed in reality. I rarely attended AA but I spoke with people who had sober time about how I should approach the new life. I found the new purpose in jail because that is where I found the higher power: The human race.
I still somewhat believed in a traditional sense of a deity in jail because that was what I was born with. I saw countless pictures of a Caucasian man with a white robe and beard. His father was the creator of all who had made everything and his greatest creation was us, but we must prove our worth to make it to the place where we can be with him after we die. This made sense when I was a kid but never that much sense. I would get angry as a kid in Christian school when I really analyzed the “Jesus Loves Me” song. “Little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong.” None of it made sense. Why am I weak? Why do I need this random man in my life that I have never met? If I never heard of him and died, would I be punished? If so, why? That does not sound loving. And why would someone kill their son for me? Am I supposed to feel guilty? Why, I was just born. And if he rose days later, what was the purpose of any of it, the death was not final. But if I know about this story and laugh then the hell is final? In what world is this a good idea? It could only be reconciled if I just shut up and “believed.” What kind of manipulation is this? It wasn’t until I forced myself to sit in the darkest most frightening part of my closet that I realized my fears were in my head as a kid. I remember choosing to alter my perception when I was scared in my dark room. Instead of fearing the blackness of my closet, I purposefully climbed into it. I remember I chose to pretend that I was the monster in the dark. I began telling myself that nothing was worse than me. Of course there was but this understanding was the foundation for my emancipation. I could be the darkness and the light. I had it all inside me. After that day I was not afraid of the dark anymore and jail was the beginning of the end of my belief in the man made god I was taught.
Some people claim that I was never an addict because I was able to get clean and stay clean without a program but I beg to differ. As I became more educated from going back to school out of jail, I learned about the human species, evolution, brain chemistry, psychology, and history. My ability to stay sober is based on my occupation with everything life and literally choosing a different path. No, it is not easy; it took a loss of everything that I defined as myself. I refuse to look to a deity in my sobriety simply because of my awareness of the plight of others around the world. I could never and can never believe that an all-powerful, omnipotent being granted *me* the “gift” of sobriety when there are millions of starving children. I would gladly give up my sobriety if it meant starving children would be fed, which would be the only “just” thing to do for anything with that power. My issue with having the mental “need” to ingest intoxicants is an extremely miniscule and pathetic dilemma in comparison to the thousands who recently died of ebola in Africa. Could I ever accept that kind of attitude of self-importance that of all the people in the world who need help, I was given the choice to simply *not* drink alcohol? Could I ever say that my sobriety was more important than preventing rape in India? Really? Absolutely not.
Instead I stay sober because I have found that “feeling good” is what I am addicted to and helping other people also makes me feel good. In my mind and through my understanding of impermanence through meditation, I have already died. With this feeling of peace I can summon a second chance mentality that allows me to use every day to its fullest. It is like being Scrooge and waking up to what you have been taking for granted and having the option to go out and experience all of it. Get a law degree, why not? Get in the best shape you have ever been in, why not? Write a dozen new songs in whatever genre, why not? Pick up Jeet Kune Do, why not? Hug the people who have been there for you when you were at your worst, must do. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and situations. The more responsibility you take for your sobriety, the more doors open. As addicts we are so full of ourselves and what we have suffered. Yes, I think I had the luxuy of being an alcoholic drug addict but it is over now. I do not have that luxury anymore because there is new meaning that I defined. Of course there are still many many problems, emotions, relationships, hardships, successes etc that are part of life but if I face it with a sober brain, I can handle anything and yes, sober communities no matter what they are are essential. I do not attend meetings though other than going to support my dad but I can tell you that I am always glad when I do. I always learn something new and that consistent growth and learning is like a charge to keep grinding. If I can offer any help, I will but sometimes I feel like I am not the most sympathetic person in the world, especially living in South OC where we have an ocean view at the gym. I do understand the pain is relative though and I have students who have gone through more devastating horrible things than most people I have ever known. I try to make myself available to them. Sobriety works when you talk about things and coming up on 8 years I will continue to keep talking. It’s how I stay sober and sane.
I always hated alcohol as a kid up until the beginning of my adolescence because it made my dad change so much. He was a hardworking, honest, exuberant man who I thought of as a pillar of strength. When he drank he got sarcastic, cruel and sometimes violent and I would rather hide from him. Most of the time he would just pass out on the floor face down. Someone would try and wake him up and he would look up dazed with his eyes bulging out of his head from his high blood pressure. I hated that look on his face and I hated his incoherence. I hated how it was his way or no way, even when it came to driving when he was inebriated. Me being too small and my mother being too weak and afraid, we would risk our lives getting in a car with him many times. I remember being in Mexico with only him and one of my friends and we got pulled over by the Federales and he was drunk. I was hoping they would take him in. Anything was better than the fear of a drunken accident, especially on the dirt roads we would drive on close to ocean cliffs. He would always have 40-50 dollars on him expressly for that purpose. He would pay them off and we would be on our way.
I never thought much of drinking myself until I was about to start high school. It was a fun recreational thing I just tried with some close family members. I tried that along with smoking some weed out of a tin foil homemade pipe. The first time I really sparked my love affair with booze was when I was 14 and my dad had a party. There was a “handle” of Jim Beam whisky in the kitchen and I filled a cup to the brim and snuck it into my room with a can of soda. I drank the entire cup and chased it with soda. It must have been at least 6 shots. I picked up my bass guitar, flipped on my amp and proceeded to unleash on the strings. I didn’t care whether what I was playing was accurate or technically proficient; I was in a whirlwind of passion and adrenaline. Nothing else existed but my bass. I was in love with life. My stomach was warm. My skin tingled and I had frequent bursts of energy and a spontaneity I did not know I had. A friend came over and we both continued to sneak shots from the bottle the rest of the evening. It was one of my fondest memories.
Throughout the next year, getting a small $4 or $5 flask of Beam would be the ritual while my friends and I would trek around the lazy beach town of Laguna. In a short time the flask became insufficient to maintain the same “magic” that was captured that one night in my room. First it was that 50mL flask and eventually we needed, I needed, a 750 mL bottle. Throughout the rest of high school I went from drinking on the weekends to trying to remember a day during the week when I did not have one drink. Alcohol was readily available and I could negotiate with my dad about getting “us” a bottle. He would tell me to take it easy but he could not tell me anything. It became a game and I would show him and everyone else that I could drink a bottle of hard alcohol and still function, not pass out, not slur my words and not get sloppy. I could out drink him finally. He would never scare me again. In fact, I would drink till 2 or 3 in the morning on some nights and he would scream at me to be quiet with my friends. I would egg him on to hit me and tell him that he taught me how to be an alcoholic, almost a reenactment of the 80’s drug abuse commercial.
I experimented with every drug I could get my hands on but booze was most accepted. Booze was sold at restaurants. Booze I could buy anywhere because I looked older. I could buy it on the way home from school and get a nice buzz while I did some homework. There were no dealings with dealers, no phone calls, no question of quality. I could easily get a nice Hornitos bottle of tequila or a shitty Popov vodka handle depending on my bank account. In fact I remember many times where I had less than $20 in my bank account so I could use my debit card to use the last bit on a gallon of Popov in the morning. I would make eggs, take shots, get hammered and fall asleep and this was when I was 17.
This monster grew and grew as I aged and found moderate success in the music industry. Alcohol on tour with the metal band was fun but when it came to playing on SNL, having older friends who had connections to harder drugs in NYC and partying with the SNL cast, I finally found the best drug to compliment the “magic.” Cocaine was fantastic with a nice pack of Dunhill cigarettes. I could drink all night and every time I would get too sloppy a nice little rail would get me back up on the balance beam and I could have 2 more cocktails. This would go on until the cocaine was gone; at that point the racing of my heart would have to be calmed down by sleeping pills, straight shots and lots of weed. I could have easily given myself a heart attack.
Never did I feel like I was a disgrace to anyone. I did not care what anyone thought. I still went to the gym frequently after a day or two of recovery and I still had played better gigs than some people have ever played in their entire lives who were twice my age. I felt like I had no reason to slow down other than the rising blood pressure, weight gain, and raw skin around my nose.
Sobriety never really seemed like an option because there was always some way to work around it. I never thought I needed to stop. I could not live without drinking, it was who I was. My friends did not know anyone who could drink more than me and I was proud of that, even when I would disappear, or wake up alongside freeways, or break into cars with some thieves I just met, or ended up in some apartment smoking meth with strangers, you name it. I drank 40’s, did speed, smoked weed, ate an 8th of mushrooms and ate a bunch of ecstasy one night and sitting in the back of a pickup truck in fear of dying still did not stop me from slowing down. I could stop for a few months but after that I would be right back where I was. There was no such thing as moderation because I never *enjoyed* the taste of alcohol, I enjoyed the effects. I would not drink something alcoholic because it tasted good. I drank because I wanted a buzz, otherwise water was just fine. That thing I considered a “buzz” metamorphosed into drunkenness. What “buzz” meant to other people was worthless for my needs. I needed to be crazy, entertaining, spontaneous, super human, scary, sexy, and when I wasn’t drinking I was a watered down version of that.
My path led me to be the middle man to get cocaine for a short time. People wonder how someone can fall into something like that by mistake. Well it goes like this: you have some, you share some with a random stranger who happens to have a lot of money and then they ask you to be their connection. You tell them “no” but they insist. It seems innocent enough by just making a phone call to help out a dude. Then the dude orders a lot, more than you are used to seeing and he gives you a bunch. You then get to do drugs for free. Then you notice how much money you are making someone else and you let them know how much money you have made them. Then they ask you what you want, product or money. You say money and then you are off to the races, you now have a vested interest in moving product. This was short lived for obvious reasons. It is dangerous and frightening as hell, besides friends started disappearing for whatever reason.
About 3 years after that chapter I really started to get dark on my life and my relationship was codependent and hazardous. I hate what I had become and I hate how vulnerable I was when I was drinking. I became oblivious to the untrustworthy people I had surrounded myself with. I had allowed things that no one should have allowed. I looked like a blob of what I was when I was in my early 20’s. I cannot stand the drama I created. I cannot stand the issues that came up that I never addressed in sobriety. I hated having that weight that was 40 lbs of excess fat resting on my chest. I hated having to apologize to people for destroying their property and I hated that I started loving a double shot of vodka first thing in the morning to avoid the hangover. There was always a new day to erase but it needed to stop.
Eventually my tumultuous relationship of drunken chaos came to a head and I made violent angry decisions that rewarded me with a felony if I did not take an immediate plea. I took the plea and my lawyer got my sentence reduced from years to months. Being thrown in jail because of drunken chaos changed everything. To some people jail is not enough to clean up their act but I finally realized that I needed to redefine myself. I lost everything, including the simple option to *walk down the street*. I lost faith in humanity because I felt like I could not trust my friends, my family or my significant other. If you have none of those things you have nothing to lose. I was not sure how I was going to stay sober but I knew I had to no matter what. I had to disassociate with everyone I had drank with previously. I had to avoid social engagements. I had to cut people unworthy of trust out of my life. I had to find a new purpose. I looked forward to getting drunk and getting lots of blow every weekend. I had to look forward to something else. I went to counseling to understand my train of thought and I found out I had mislabeled my feelings. When I was mad I was usually depressed in reality. I rarely attended AA but I spoke with people who had sober time about how I should approach the new life. I found the new purpose in jail because that is where I found the higher power: The human race.
I still somewhat believed in a traditional sense of a deity in jail because that was what I was born with. I saw countless pictures of a Caucasian man with a white robe and beard. His father was the creator of all who had made everything and his greatest creation was us, but we must prove our worth to make it to the place where we can be with him after we die. This made sense when I was a kid but never that much sense. I would get angry as a kid in Christian school when I really analyzed the “Jesus Loves Me” song. “Little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong.” None of it made sense. Why am I weak? Why do I need this random man in my life that I have never met? If I never heard of him and died, would I be punished? If so, why? That does not sound loving. And why would someone kill their son for me? Am I supposed to feel guilty? Why, I was just born. And if he rose days later, what was the purpose of any of it, the death was not final. But if I know about this story and laugh then the hell is final? In what world is this a good idea? It could only be reconciled if I just shut up and “believed.” What kind of manipulation is this? It wasn’t until I forced myself to sit in the darkest most frightening part of my closet that I realized my fears were in my head as a kid. I remember choosing to alter my perception when I was scared in my dark room. Instead of fearing the blackness of my closet, I purposefully climbed into it. I remember I chose to pretend that I was the monster in the dark. I began telling myself that nothing was worse than me. Of course there was but this understanding was the foundation for my emancipation. I could be the darkness and the light. I had it all inside me. After that day I was not afraid of the dark anymore and jail was the beginning of the end of my belief in the man made god I was taught.
Some people claim that I was never an addict because I was able to get clean and stay clean without a program but I beg to differ. As I became more educated from going back to school out of jail, I learned about the human species, evolution, brain chemistry, psychology, and history. My ability to stay sober is based on my occupation with everything life and literally choosing a different path. No, it is not easy; it took a loss of everything that I defined as myself. I refuse to look to a deity in my sobriety simply because of my awareness of the plight of others around the world. I could never and can never believe that an all-powerful, omnipotent being granted *me* the “gift” of sobriety when there are millions of starving children. I would gladly give up my sobriety if it meant starving children would be fed, which would be the only “just” thing to do for anything with that power. My issue with having the mental “need” to ingest intoxicants is an extremely miniscule and pathetic dilemma in comparison to the thousands who recently died of ebola in Africa. Could I ever accept that kind of attitude of self-importance that of all the people in the world who need help, I was given the choice to simply *not* drink alcohol? Could I ever say that my sobriety was more important than preventing rape in India? Really? Absolutely not.
Instead I stay sober because I have found that “feeling good” is what I am addicted to and helping other people also makes me feel good. In my mind and through my understanding of impermanence through meditation, I have already died. With this feeling of peace I can summon a second chance mentality that allows me to use every day to its fullest. It is like being Scrooge and waking up to what you have been taking for granted and having the option to go out and experience all of it. Get a law degree, why not? Get in the best shape you have ever been in, why not? Write a dozen new songs in whatever genre, why not? Pick up Jeet Kune Do, why not? Hug the people who have been there for you when you were at your worst, must do. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and situations. The more responsibility you take for your sobriety, the more doors open. As addicts we are so full of ourselves and what we have suffered. Yes, I think I had the luxuy of being an alcoholic drug addict but it is over now. I do not have that luxury anymore because there is new meaning that I defined. Of course there are still many many problems, emotions, relationships, hardships, successes etc that are part of life but if I face it with a sober brain, I can handle anything and yes, sober communities no matter what they are are essential. I do not attend meetings though other than going to support my dad but I can tell you that I am always glad when I do. I always learn something new and that consistent growth and learning is like a charge to keep grinding. If I can offer any help, I will but sometimes I feel like I am not the most sympathetic person in the world, especially living in South OC where we have an ocean view at the gym. I do understand the pain is relative though and I have students who have gone through more devastating horrible things than most people I have ever known. I try to make myself available to them. Sobriety works when you talk about things and coming up on 8 years I will continue to keep talking. It’s how I stay sober and sane.
