One “YES” answer: BE AWARE. You may have or you may develop a problem with alcohol or other drugs.
Two or more “YES” answers:Indicates you have problems with alcohol and/or drugs and should seek help immediately.
Your "YES" answer total: 16 out of 20
I would have liked to have seen Betty Ford drunk. I bet she was entertaining, staggering around the white house buck naked, cursing and pissing on herself. I would’ve loved to have been there for her intervention. Did she cry? Did she grab a knife and try to stab somebody? Did they have to drag her kicking and screaming? Did she plead? It’s never a good thing when a group of people sit you down and tell you have a problem, that you’re no longer pleasing or acceptable. That you’re embarrassing. It’s like telling a fat actress she has to lose weight. There’s going to be drama. I never liked that word rehab. I guess because I don’t like rules. The addict in me: I feel as if rehab is where they send you for reprogramming like a cult. I feel like its social lobotomy, dressing up the pit bull in a cute costume. What was the real problem?
Everybody is doing it. Rehab. It’s like the new diet. If you get too out of control just go to fat camp. Brittney cuts off all of her hair in an emotional breakdown, so they send her to rehab. That guy from Seinfeld drinks too much and uses the “N” word. Mel Gibson. Isaiah Washington. Nicole Richie. Lindsey Lohan. It’s so celebrity. Rehab is the new anger management.
I’ve been to rehab; in the ghetto they call it jail. I was arrested for DWI. And it wasn’t located in the majestic mountains with private rooms and personal chefs. The handcuffs were cold and hurt and the jail cell cramped with twenty people and one working pay phone. A week in jail and whatever you did you’re promising GOD and all your relatives you won’t do it again. It was no need for group circles to talk about problems because the jail guard carried a gun and like beating up on complainers. The day I made bailed, I never felt so free. I pushed past the jailhouse door and the sun was shinning. I was never going back to that hell. I AINT GOING BACK TO JAIL. I didn’t stop drinking. I just decided to move to a city where I didn’t have to drive. In jail there’s no such thing as rehabilitation-- you just learn how not to get caught next time. What was the real problem?
To rehabilitate. To make whole again. What if I was never whole? What if I always been a fuck up? What if I was always broke? They say its to restore to good condition, operation, or management, as a bankrupt business. I like that definition. I’m broke? So I asked my therapist: “Do I have problem?” That was never an easy question to ask. I was asked: “Do you want to get sober” Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t imagine a sober life; I mean not needing something to take off the edge. How would I have sex? I don’t like looking them in their eyes. I was molested. I can’t stand intimacy. How would I be social? Most people get on my nerves. I can’t smile. I'm so fucking angry. I feel so down, sober. I need something. What’s the real problem?
90% of people who enter rehab usually go back to using within weeks. I tried to stop drinking so many times. I will never forget my first AA meeting. I will never forget that crazy ass weekend that lead me to my first AA meeting. I hated those people. It was like night of the living dead. They looked so broken. I didn’t want to be one of those people. I thought being an alcoholic was romantic. I thought it was a witty downfall. I thought of Ernest Hemingway, James Frey, and Rock Hudson. Whitney Houston or that Nicholas Cage movie. I thought of celebrities. But it wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t nearly as far gone as those people. I wasn’t drinking shoe polish or rubbing alcohol. I felt safe but I wasn’t. I wasn’t a celebrity. I was a poor black man. I didn’t have the money for Betty Ford.
Yet I knew, If I kept fucking up, my rehab was going to be jail again. That’s what happens to poor black people with problems, we don’t get book deals, we get a jail cell. Our family abandons us. It’s like slavery, the minute you complain about it, or the ghetto, black people don’t’ want to hear the story. They just want to survive. I’m so tired of surviving. My family don't accept my phone calls anymore because I got tired of surviving. I wanted to talk about the beatings. I wanted to talk. They don't want to talk to me.
And I tried to stop drinking so many times. I stopped after I kept getting arrested for stupid shit like stealing chicken wings at a 24 hour super market. I was going to stop after I crashed a friend’s car into some drag queen’s car after we gotten into a fight. I’ve been so crazy. Some think its so entertaining, but its tragic. I was going to stop after I had to pass out on a pissy mattress behind a dumpster because I was too fucked up to make it home. I was going to stop after I got on a bus and my dick was out and I didn’t know it. I was going to stop after my ex put me out of the apartment. I was going to always stop but what was the real problem?
It was the failure I was fighting. When you say you’re going to stop drinking it’s like telling the world you’re going to go on a diet. They are going to watch your every move. If you decide at dinner to go for the dessert, somebody is going to say something. It’s that failure I was fighting. That need to be perfect. That need to be the fucking "victory" story. So many have gone on Oprah and said they were sober, gotten sober like Marc Jacobs and now he’s back in Rehab. Robert Downey Jr. have claimed sobriety so many times. Oprah herself has gain and lost weight so many times. I’m not going to lie again. As an addict I’ve only known lies. I’m not going to lie again. I need honesty, like Jesus. LOL.
I thought it was the alcohol. I would have to fear the alcohol and there was a liquor store on every corner in my neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine going out to eat again and not order a cocktail. I thought I was fighting the alcohol, that it was the enemy.
The real problem, for me it was about enough. Growing up, there never seemed to be enough. Daddy got himself killed when I was five, so there never seemed to be enough time. Mama got addicted to drugs and abandoned her three kids to the system, so there never seemed to be enough hope or love. I grew up in so much poverty—spiritually, emotionally and financially. There never seemed to be enough government cheese or fried bologna. I’M STARVING!
Every addict has there click. It’s that switch of the light. For me with sex, I want it to be completely dark. I don’t want to see myself. I just want to feel. I don’t want a shape. I just want the pleasure. And I can’t stop until I feel full. I can’t stop until I feel overloaded. I can’t stop until I’m saturated. I’m always afraid I’m starving. I’m always afraid. I’m starving. Starving for attention. Starving for love. Starving to exist.
That’s the disease. It was never about alcohol. I would just replace it with something else. My disease is that I’m hungry. It’s like I have spiritual tapeworm. I can never get full. It’s not about the drugs. It’s not about the sex. I need to eat. Every time I look in the mirror I see anorexia. I hate that bitch. Why can’t I get full?
So I asked the counselor: “Can you help me be full. Can you help me free?” What I learned was that there’s good addiction and bad addiction. I was always going to be an addict. Childhood is so powerful. We spend the rest of our lives getting over our childhoods. I was a starved child. I was molested for years. I don’t remember being happy as a kid. I don’t remember feeling pleasure without hiding it because someone was waiting to destroy it. So when I feel good, I want it to last. I’m greedy.
I had to learn that spiritually and emotionally I was obese. I was drowning. Others couldn’t see it because I wasn’t physically overweighed but I was overweighed like trying to swim in deep water with dead weight. I wasn’t healthy. I didn’t care about the vanity. I don't FUCKING care about being pretty anymore. I'm dying. Can't they see i'm dying. I wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t sleep. And I was alienating myself. I was losing friends. I was losing respect. I grew up to be jsut like MAMA, an addict whore. A suck your dick for some attention. I was an embarrassment. I was picking fights. Anything to feel. Anything to feel. I was starving. Anything to feel. Burn me. Beat me. Make me bleed. Please kill me.
But I so feared the failure. I tried so many times. So many fucking times and I failed. It was so frustrating. But it wasn’t about the alcohol, drugs or sex.
I had to learn to look in the mirror and not see that starving kid. I had my own blog. I wrote a book. I had cool friends. I was loved. But did I believe it?
So I asked the therapist: “Can you make me believe in love when it’s always failed me?”
I don’t want to be rehabilitated. I don’t want rehab. I don’t want to go back to pretending.
And I’m sorry Mama. I’m sorry Sister. I’m sorry grandma, telling you, you’re going to hell. I know now I went about it all wrong. When I took my first drink and felt that warm happiness, I thought it was food. And when I was at the club, and some guy told me I was cute, I thought that was food. And all that sex, so many men, I thought that was food. But I could never get full. I couldn’t understand it. I was so damn cute. I followed the rules. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get full.
I hate rehab because it’s spiritual and it reminds me of my childhood god, forced down my throat, and didn’t allow questions without a backhand slap. My childhood god failed me. The hell and family I was born into failed me. I didn’t need to be rehabilitated, I needed a reincarnation. I was always broke. There was nothing to fix. It all just needed to be burned. My entire life needed to be burned down like the fire I set to my grandmother’s house when I five years old. I needed to change the chemistry.
Yet, I knew I couldn’t be afraid of the failure. Rehab is like an exorcism. I GOT DEMONS. I will always struggle with the addiction. I remember when I first tried to lose weight. I went to the gym and cut down on my eating, but every time I stepped on the weigh scale, I didn’t’ feel good enough. I thought losing the weight would make me good enough. I had ask myself, why wasn’t I enough before.
Every time I try to quit drinking, doing the drugs, being promiscuous, I have to ask myself, why wasn’t I enough before. What is my fantasy of sobriety? Will I be enough? And when the next person don’t applaud or give me the love I think I need, will I just run back to the bottle, sex, drugs?
I have to love that addict. I have to love that person who passed out on the pissy mattress and cried all the way home. I have to want to give him a hug, clean him and tell him it’s going to be okay. It’s not the end of the world. Rock bottom is not the end of the world. Death is the end of the world. I don’t want rehab. I want to be REALIZED. Like i told my sister, i don't know where i'm going, i can only tell you how i got here.
I went through hell. I deserve it to be REALIZED. I deserve honesty. I’m not pretending anymore.
I had to teach myself portion control. Life wasn’t going to be just salads and fat free. I could still enjoy but understand limits. Some addicts, after they stop, they become societal anorexics. They overdose on their sobriety and become reborn Christians or finger-pointers. They still don’t love themselves. They still never learned to love the addict within. It never goes away. That hunger, it never goes away.
I was a great addict. I was a great hustler. I was just eating all the wrong foods. It’s funny, I used the analogy of Soda: all that artificial ingredients they put in soda, never makes a person full. They could drink soda all day and not even know it. That’s like drugs. It’s not supposed to make you full. The food doesn't make you full. It's learning to stop. It's learning to live.
It’s not the alcohol. I’m fighting myself. I’m fighting the delusion I can’t get full. I’m fighting that eight year old in me crying in the mirror, wanting to be somebody, be beautiful. BUT I am somebody. Somebody is reading this. Somebody is seeing my soul. I AM SOMEBODY. Funny, it’s that eight year old who is the addict and he is so fucking convincing to a thirty year old. Such a smart kid.
A home cook meal from grandma makes me full. Water makes full. My lover lying in my arms on a lazy Sunday makes me full. Seeing something I wrote, makes me full. Sometimes I need to get away from it all. I need the silence. That why I do rehab. I need to exercise the demons. They don’t go away. The demons they never go away. I tried the 28 days of sobriety. I always failed. The most I made it was probably 7 days. But I need that failure. I needed to try to be better.
So with rehab, no longer afraid. So I keep trying. I keep failing. I not afraid of the failure anymore. I was an “A” student so I always been afraid of a bad grade. I’m not afraid anymore. I keep trying. And I’m not doing it to get some applause or encouragement. Because with addiction, what happens after you fail? I always have to pick myself up. I always have love me again. And I will keep loving me. I will love that damn addict. I will believe in him, because one day he will get it right. I don’t care who leaves. Everybody has their limits. I don’t. I have to love me. I have to survive everybody; who gives up on me. I’m not giving up on myself. That’s the problem with addiction, what happens after you fail? That’s the real fucking problem. That I’m a failure, and I’m cool with that. That I am weak, and I’m cool with that. Somebody is always calling me, telling me about the new drug and I’m weak, so what happens after I fail? I’m not a role model. I’m just a kid. WE are all just kids. When did the fuck we grow up? I’m not afraid of the failure. Next week I will try to be sober again. And then the week after that I will do it again. And I will keep trying, because I can’t give up. That’s my new addiction. I can’t give up. I will keep trying. I’m not afraid of the failure anymore. I’m going to beat this. I’m going to win.
I have to or die.
