Very Important People are Expensive

I've been test-driving used cars for the last week, because the 2014 VW Beetle I've had for less than two years is starting to give up the ghost. At some 65,000 miles, she's starting to show signs of wear. The tires have a nice shine to them, and not in a good way -- in some spots you can barely see the tread on them. The driver's side window sticks. The right side blinker is gone for some reason, and there's a ding on the rear fender right under my "I 💕Cavaliers" magnet. What can I say? She's been a fine car to me, reliable and dependable, but the love is gone and I want a divorce. I'm fickle that way, and I'm sure she'll make someone else very happy. 

It's been quite a search, having now driven a number of small, fuel-efficient vehicles with a relatively small carbon footprint that won't break the bank. There are any number of options when it comes to transportation, even for schmucks like me who hover at the brink of poverty. 

Which brings me to today's news:

Here's a guy who probably can't understand why he's being sacked for simply chartering the Space Shuttle to a luncheon that was being held all the way over in Adams Morgan. He's a very important man, and he was in a hurry. Damn the Price, as they say. The cost is not an issue.

It would be one thing if he was the only one, but he isn't. From John Nichols, over at The Nation: 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has for some time now been the subject of inquiries into his transportation abuses. Even as Price was going down, The Washington Post was reporting that “EPA’s Pruitt took charter, military flights that cost taxpayers more than $58,000

Yes, yes, I know Scott Pruitt is also a Very Important Person. But it would be nice if the cost of his air travel somehow translated into some discernible benefit to the environment his agency is charged with protecting. Oh, wait...

Hurricane Harvey flooded more than a dozen Superfund toxic waste sites when it devastated the Texas coast in late August. An EPA report predicted the possibility of climate-related problems at toxic waste sites like those in Texas, but the page detailing the report on the agency's website was made inactive months before the storm.

The Environmental Protection Agency's 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plan warned that those in charge of cleaning up Superfund sites should explicitly plan for more rain, bigger floods and "increased intensity of hurricanes." Based on earlier EPA climate change research, the report authors recommended that the agency change how it protects people from toxic chemical releases as sea levels rise and storms get more severe.

The report was removed from the EPA website when President Trump took office in January — it last appeared on the site the day before his inauguration.


But wait, there's more! Just when you thought this was one or two isolated incidents, a couple of bad apples in Trump's otherwise sterling cabinet, Nichols reminds us of these doozies:

Then there’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the billionaire Trump appointee who in August flew his new bride to Kentucky on a government plane so they could watch solar eclipse from a prime spot at Fort Knox. Reports about that flight led to a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general.

 In September, it was revealed that Mnuchin had asked the White House whether he could use a government jet for his summer honeymoon in Europe. Mnuchin, who eventually withdrew the request, claimed that he simply wanted access to secure lines of communication while celebrating his third marriage.

All of this under the auspices of a president who in his short tenure has already racked up a bundle. Remember this from back in February? 

You'll forgive me if this all seems a little heady to a working stiff who's just trying to scrape up enough dough for a little 4-door hatchback. And bear in mind, these are the same assholes who are trying their best to sabotage healthcare for millions of working Americans. 

Christ on a cracker, but these bastards should be in jail. 

Is... Is that... YES! Someone is finally following this shitty BLOG...!

DING! DING! DING! And the door prize for first-ever follower to this here shitty blog goes to none other than Beemo1!! (Not counting yours truly, of course. I finally followed my own blog because I'm just that narcissistic, and because dammit someone has to read it.) Anyhoo, welcome aboard Beemo1, and thanks for the follow. May our days be filled with endless mirth and merriment as we travel down the crabby path of joyless sobriety forever. (It's not that bad. Really, it isn't.) Meanwhile, just know that it is well-informed readers of distinction such as yourself who make the hours of toil at the keyboard worthwhile. Please don't go away.

Crabby Affirmations

Fate whispers to the drunk, "You cannot fix the problem."

And the drunk whispers back

"I am the problem."

Can you overdose on Orajel...?

You know how it is when you're on your way to work but you've got a tooth that's killing you (my fucking dentist, don't even get me started) so you stop at the drug store and get some maximum strength super-duper Orajel, and then, back in your car you try to open it, but the little tip thing is sealed and apparently it's made of carbonite and you don't have anything as useful as a pin, or a pair of scissors, so you decide to bite the little fucker off, and you bite, and you chew, and gnash at it with bared fangs, and suddenly, without warning it EXPLODES and now you've got a huge gob of it in your mouth and you might puke, but then your whole face is going numb to the roots of your hair? Yeah, it's kinda like that. 

It's a little like snorting coke, but without the high. 

Honest Feedback

Someone on twitter said this shitty blog is depressing and now I can't stop crying. Fine then, sonny, here's one from the way-back machine to brighten your day:

You're welcome.

In Which I Ruminate on Love, Marriage & Family at 3 AM

It's 3:30 AM, a time of day when no normal person should be awake. I'm not normally given to insomnia, but here I am. Not sure why I'm in my living room at this hour, with the lights down low, the dogs curled up next to me on the couch. Why am I awake? Am I worried about something?

Why no -- aside from my health, my job, my bills, my aging parents, my hurricane-prone house, my car or my marriage, I haven't a care in the world. 

Not worried. 

Yeah so, about that "marriage" thing. I put it in quotes because, you see, it isn't actually a marriage. Oh, it was supposed to be eventually. We always acted like it was, more or less, and after 32 years together it had always walked and talked and felt like a marriage. But it wasn't a marriage, not literally, because until a couple of years ago we weren't allowed to be married. (btw, I'm gay. Have I mentioned that I'm gay?) 

Anyway, both of our families long ago came to see us as a couple. We're "the uncles," as in, "Are the uncles coming for Easter this year?" or "The uncles sent me a birthday card!" 

Kinda like this.

We've watched all the little nieces & nephews grow up over the years, and now we're watching all the little grand-nieces & nephews grow up. I'm Uncle Crabby to those kids and I am, indeed, a better man for it. We're one big happy family, except that... well, we're not, actually. Family, I mean. Not quite.  

Because, see, once it finally became legal for us to get married, once all the shouting and the grandstanding by the repugnant Kim Davis's of the world had died down, once the dust had more or less settled on the whole gay marriage thing, and after most of  our longtime friends, other couples like us, started finally putting on that ring, I went to him and asked when we were finally going to do it too. 

And he said no. 

Not just like that, not like OMG what are you thinking, of course I'd never marry you!!! It was more like layers of equivocation: We shouldn't rush into anything (after 32 fucking years), it's a big step, there are legal issues, financial issues, etc and etc and etc. In short, there are considerations... 

And now, as my relatively newfound sobriety gradually allows me to see reality for what it actually is, I'm left to realize that maybe three decades of pattern-drinking wasn't the best way to woo someone to marry me. I just always assumed that we would when the time came. (And let me just say for the record, no, I did not stop drinking in an effort to entice him to say yes. Still, a big part of why I quit was for the sake of our relationship, whatever that is now. Anyway, shut up all of you. It's complicated.)

Which leaves me here, at 3:30 AM, with the hard truth of how my behavior has impacted this relationship, and how close I'd come to completely fucking it up. And how lucky I am to still have him here, and for my extended family on both sides. Because the fact is, I'm the only drunk among us. Tea toters, every one of 'em, and as frustrating as that can be to a drunk, it really helps in my determination to put it down and live a free and sober life. I don't want to be the drunk uncle anymore, a goal we all share, and I'm really very grateful that they somehow still find me lovable and still somehow want me at the table with them. 

Anyway, talk amongst yourselves, I'm suddenly a little verklempt...

Random Thoughts While Waiting for this Goddam Light to Change

No, I do not suffer from road rage. I just don't understand the logic of having a stoplight at a huge intersection that turns green for exactly 4 seconds, is all I'm sayin... 

Random Thought

For better or worse, I've always been defined by what I do. Seems weird now to be defined by what I don't do. It's like looking at one of those old photo negatives of yourself. Damn, I'm uglier than I thought... 

Why, yes...

...I do tend to filter everything here through the lense of my own experience. 

Why Recovering Cannibals Get No Love

In which we ruminate on this morning's news:

Do cannibals get enough kudos for not eating other people? Probably not. The world may be filled with tasty, succulent people but avoidance of devouring others is one of the benchmarks for normal human behavior. When the recovering cannibal confides to us that he hasn't eaten anyone for 40 days, we're not likely to award him a medal for his restraint. The most we're likely to offer is a condescending, "That's great, I'm so proud of you."

I'm finding the same is true for giving up booze, or cigarettes, or [insert your addiction here.] You don't get points for not getting smashed and telling your boss she's an ugly cow at the office happy hour. You don't get kudos for not getting your third DUI. You don't get any extra love for not eating someone's liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. You just don't. 

Never mind that you've hit the 30-day mark without being shit-faced drunk. The fact that your hands don't shake this morning is not going to win you any prize. Because, while the fact that you didn't wake up in your own vomit may be a major victory in your own personal olympics, they just don't hand out medals for it. You don't win a trophy just because you're not totally fucked up for a change.  

Here's the thing about giving up a life-long vice:  No one gets it. Oh sure, they approve, they support you, they want the best for you. But if they're not addicts, if they haven't actually gone through it -- those times when you're jonesin' for your next hit, when you can feel the cold sweats starting, when you want to give in to your old patterns of behavior and the voice in your head says, c'mon, just this one last time, it's not hurting anyone if they don't know about it, and when you maybe call your sponsor or get your ass to a meeting, but you somehow manage to just NOT FUCKING DO IT, you break that pattern if only for that one time, that one moment and it exhausts you, like you've run a marathon, but you won, goddammit, you didn't do it and you're a fucking rock star for having gotten through it -- welp, your normal peeps just won't get it.    

"That's great," they'll say. Or, "Wow, I'm proud of you." And then they'll say something like, "Can you set the table?" or "We need to pay the electric bill." 

They won't get that every fucking day is it's own white-knuckled triathalon of avoiding your old liquor stores. They won't get why anyone would want to be drunk at 8 AM. They have no comprehension of what it means to be an addict, because they are not addicted. It's not their fault. Being normal is normal to normal people. It's their starting point. 

Which is why, despite my deep and abiding issues with AA, I still go to meetings: Because despite it all, those people get it. They get it, right down to the cellular level. I go because there's a lot to be said for simply being around other people who understand what you're going through. 

Blog Update #6,452

I've added a brand spanking-new "Hey, follow my shitty blog!" button to the right. You're welcome. 

My phobias are my friends!

Looking back, it's probably okay that I've had a life-long fear of needles. 

You call that a gun?

I swear this picture reminds me of nothing so much as the "cowboy-queens" I used to see in the country western gay bars back in the day. Good times, good times...

Roy Moore pulls out his tiny gun.

PS, not to make the obvious phallic inference, but I've seen bigger cigarette lighters. 

This has to stop.

Is it asking too much that we not violate the sanctity of our most sacred food traditions?

I'd be just fine if the whole pumpkin spice train rolled right off the nearest cliff.

Just what the country needs...

...Another jesus-freak in the Senate. THANKS, ALABAMA! 

In fairness, it's not like Luther Strange would have been much better. The only silver lining is that Trump's guy lost, so there's that. (Also, I noticed it wasn't long before President Dotard was fervently scrolling through his tweets to expunge the record. Luther? Luther who?) 

Funny...

For someone who spent decades sucking on a bottle and blowing smoke in happy toxicity, I have an odd reluctance to start new medications. Like, suddenly NOW my body is a temple?

In Which I Ponder Our Peculiar Standards of Outrage

The magic Twitter machine reminds me that it was at this point in his presidency that we all lost our collective minds because Barack Obama put mustard on his burger. 

"This is an OUTRAGE!"

Good times, good times. Remember how we all laughed and laughed at that tan suit? And who could forget the scandal when he put his feet up in the Oval Office? Or that time when the right-wing scandal machine forced him to hold a "Beer Summit" because he'd offered up some tepid commentary on the white cop who arrested a black man for breaking into his own house. 

Remember how everything was going to be "Obama's Katrina Moment?" 

Well, that was then. Fast forward to 2017, where we now have a president who's twitter-obsessed with NFL, while Puerto Rico sinks into the sea. If ever there was a real life "Katrina Moment," this is it. Don't even start me on the petty "Rocket Man" taunting of a crazy dictator who happens to be armed with nuclear weapons. 

Times change, right? Where we once reeled with shock and outrage over the president's choice in condiments, we now blithely go about our lives while the world teeters on the brink of annihilation.  

We've become, if not complacent about the man-child who currently occupies the WH, resigned to his behavior. We expect it of him now, the way we expect our drunk uncle to pick a fight over Thanksgiving dinner, or our meth-addicted nephew to steal money for his next hit. Sad, infuriating, but whatayagonnado? We're too tired to make a scene right now, or call the police, or stage an intervention. Tough love is just so extreme, y'know? 

But sweet Jesus on a stick, sometimes it's a wonder we aren't all slobbering drunk before noon. 

I'd be a millionaire...

It's 5:00 somewhere...

If I had a dime for every person I've heard sneer at "day-drunks" while sucking on their third Blood Mary, just sayin...  

As if Monday mornings aren't shitty enough...

I have to be at the fucking dentist at fucking 8:00 this morning because my fucking life doesn't already suck enough. 

Relax, this won't hurt a bit...

I hate going to the dentist, loathe it with every fiber of my being -- however, being an adult and wishing not to lose my fangs, I must go. I will go, and now I hate everyone and everything and sweet merciful death cannot take me too soon. 

Whatever. Leave me in my misery. I'll just note that there are days when it isn't easy keeping up the sunny disposition for which I'm widely known...    

UPDATE: I survived, but not before the dentist jammed an ice pick through my upper gums so deep it cracked through the top of my skull. 

"Did that hurt?" He asked. Why no, doctor, I always start my morning shrieking in agony. Doesn't everyone? 

Fucking quack. I don't know why I keep going to him. At least I still have my movie star smile. 

Blog Update #1,473: Push My Buttons!

You may see a few of these annoying Blog Updates over the next couple days with me announcing changes, new gizmos, formats, etc. as I figure out what they are and what they do.  This blog is still a work in progress, after all, and I'm a slow learner so shut up all of you.

Anyway, since the occasional comment was apparently too much to ask from you lazy ingrates, I've gone ahead and added those dippy little reaction buttons under each post. They're quick!  They're easy! They'll help me get a sense of whether not there's anyone here, or if I'm just talking into the void. So if you can spare a nano-second, maybe one of you could actually lift a finger around here and click a button now and then. And of course, now that I've made it easier, you're still free to leave comments.

Sheesh, it's not like I need constant validation or anything.

You're losin' all your highs and lows, Ain't it funny how the feelin' goes away...

This is an excellent version of The Eagles timeless classic. Wanted to post the original, but fucking copyright laws, whatayagonnado? Anyway, you're welcome.

HYBD?*

* Have You Been Drinking!?

Blog Updates: NEW TAGS! EASIER COMMENTS!

Just a heads-up to all of my loyal readers (all one of you): I just spent the last gazillion hours tagging every post I've ever made to this here shitty blog. This makes it easier for you to find, and not bother reading, my articles, insights and general piffle. You're welcome! 

Also, I figured out why it was such a hassle for people to post comments, and fixed it. This will make it easier tell me what a brilliant writer I am or, failing that, to leave snarky comments about not quitting my day job. Try it! It's fun! 

Does the GOP Need an Intervention?

Does the GOP need an intervention? Because I'm watching them engage in the same self-destructive behavior with this misbegotten Graham-Cassidy bill that I see in most addicts. They come back to repeal Obamacare again and again with all the compulsive behavior of any other addiction. Undoing the signature piece of domestic legislation bearing the name of the Black Man in the White House -- "Obamacare," which has expanded healthcare coverage for millions of Americans, many of them for the first time -- has become the GOP's obsession.  They just can't help themselves. They can't stop. Killing Obamacare is their fix, their high.


Is healthcare repeal a gateway drug...?

It started innocently enough. A repeal effort here, a quick reconciliation act there. But it started becoming a regular thing in 2011 after Republicans gained control of the House. They'll never forget the wild rush they got from their "Repealing the job-Killing Health Care Law Act." It was fun, and no one got hurt. And in 2013 when the House took another hit off the Repeal Pipe, a good time was had by all. There was that unfortunate government shutdown, but c'mon, it was fun man.

But gradually, their addiction to Obamacare began to escalate. By early 2015, the GOP was showing clear signs that it had a problem, with the House logging its SIXTY-SEVENTH Obamacare repeal act to the record. Still, it was no big deal. That had control of it. They could stop anytime they wanted, really, they could.


I'll just raise premiums this one last time.

Now here we are, 2017, and things are clearly spinning out of control. The GOP is having to take more and bigger hits off the pipe to get the same thrill. It isn't enough to slash medicaid funding for sick children, it isn't enough to raise premiums by tens of thousands of dollars for people with pre-existing conditions -- no, they only got that old head-rush by entirely ripping healthcare coverage away entirely for tens of millions of people who would no longer be able to afford it.

They've become that friend you're watching deteriorate before your eyes, the one who shows up drunk, starts shouting obscenities at your neighbors and passes out on your lawn. Just last March, the House announced the draconian American Health Care Act. In July, the Senate took a hit off the same bong and announced they would write a BETTER version of the bill, and unveiled the worse Better Care Reconciliation Act. It was a total buzz-kill when the bill failed and the neighbors called the police to report loud music.


Repeal & Replace is over, I really MEAN IT this time!

Oh, tt got better for awhile. Like all addicts, the GOP seemed contrite the morning after. They promised they'd stop, or at least limit repeal efforts to weekends, and then only with "skinny repeal." But it just wasn't as satisfying, y'know?  

Now here we are again, with the GOP in a full-blown relapse, lit to the gills at the thought of ripping healthcare away from literally tens of millions of their constituents. It's not normal. It's not rational. Hell, I don't think they even find it fun anymore. They just can't stop.

2018 is coming. It's time for an intervention.

Drink up.

Please shoot me in the face if I ever become one of those ex-drunks who force others to tip-toe around my  sobriety. It's fine with me if you have a drink with dinner. Hell, have ten if you want. It won't trigger me, okay? If anything, watching you get plotzed will only make me glad it was you this time and not me. 

I hear it's nice there...

Not even 6 AM yet and my hair is already on fire. Fuck it, I'm moving to Nambia.

I'm Always the Last to Know...

Tears of anguished grief are gushing from my face at the news that this craven harpy is finally dead. How had I missed this until now!? Really, someone should have told me. Or maybe they did and I blacked out. Whatever the case, it's good to know she's still making endorsements from Hell. 

I've Got Crabs.

Hurricane Irma dropped a lot of debris on our yard, which we've mostly gotten picked up. The exception is the bajillions of land crabs that now populate my lawn. I'm not sure if they washed up from the intracoastal, which isn't far from where we live, or if they simply fell from the sky as a precursor to full-blown apocalyptic doom. Whatever the case, they're everywhere. 

For awhile I was seeing them on the roads, skittering for their lives to avoid being squashed beneath my uncaring tires. Before they're squashed, they look like this: 



They're actually kinda cute in a creepy 8-legged, big-clawed, crabby sort of way. They wouldn't bother me all that much if it weren't for one minor problem: My dogs love them.

Have I shown you my dogs? Cavaliers. They're cute, they're fluffy, and since we have two of them, they look like adorable little twin book-ends. Here's one of them enjoying a root beer:

 

Anyway, it turns out that two-weeks-dead land crab is a delicacy in some dog cultures. Who knew? The result is that what used to be our serene, early morning pee-walk with our precious little Fluffy and Muffy has turned into a snarling death match to see which of them can find the first clump of rotting, stinking crab flesh and sink their choppers into those oh-so-satisfying crunchy shells. 

This of course necessitates wrestling the little bastards to the ground and prying open their little jaws of death long enough to dig the fetid morsel out of their throats. Usually while screaming 'DROP IT DROP IT DROP IT," to little or no avail. 

Oh, and you get extra points if the crab is still somehow miraculously alive and fighting for what's left of its life. All of this at 5 AM before most civilized people have opened their eyes, but all in a day here at Crabby Manor. 

The Problem With Monday Morning...

Is that it comes too early in the week.

Rinse Cycle

It's a sad commentary on our culture that someone can spend months in the service of a corrupt and dangerous administration, lying blatantly and repeatedly, and resigning in shame and humiliation...



...Only to be instantly rehabilitated into someone awesome simply for showing up on the Emmys.

Whoa dewd, rough nite...?

Sunday Morning Navel Gazing as The World Burns

The Twitter Machine reminds me that the world is ending.  Look, I know we have a psychotic, narcissistic game show host in the White House with his small orange fingers twitching on the nuclear launch codes. I get that the endless stream of monster hurricanes that keep battering our coasts are only going to get worse, and that in a few short years those of us in Florida will be up to our asses in seawater. I realize half the country is literally on fire, and that our kids are being taught evolution is just a "theory," and that wages have been stagnant for the last 40 years, and that we're all just one cancer diagnosis away from bankruptcy because Congress is trying to take away what little healthcare coverage we have. 

I get all that. But is it too much to ask that I just be allowed to sit here for a minute with a quiet cup of coffee while I watch the squirrels tear my back yard apart? 

Really, is that asking so much? 


(By the way, have I mentioned I hate squirrels? Greedy little bastards.)

Awhile back someone on Facebook made note of the fact that I wasn't posting my epic rants anymore. They were some doozies, I'll admit, usually posted while I was shit-faced and at my bombastic best. Entertaining, I guess, but also an extension of my toxic state of mind. 

See, I was always so right about everything -- and so righteous in my rightness. As if I could somehow solve the world's problems by virtue of my wrath, if only I could state it strongly enough on Facebook or post the right scathingly witty meme on Twitter. Social media is great, don't get me wrong. I still love to snark at the absurdities I see online. But in the end, it doesn't change anything. 

And for now, it doesn't have to. I can't fix the world. It's enough that I sit here with my coffee on a quiet Sunday morning, watching the squirrels in my yard. Trying to fix myself. 

Awake

Funny, I never realized I'm a morning person until I quit the booze.

What's Your Sign?

Laughing my ass off at this because I'm a horrible person.

Is that... Is that A COMMENT!?

DING-DING-DING! Door prize for first-ever comment on this here shitty blog goes to none other than CrankyOtter! I must admit, I do rather appreciate his handle (is it possible we're distant cousins?) Whatever the case, we've crossed a quiet milestone here and celebrations are in order. I raise my glass of sparkling non-alcoholic grape juice to one and all. Now talk amongst yourselves, I'm a little verklempt.

In Which We Ponder Hurricanes, Family Dynamics and the Stigma of Antabuse

So, the Crabby household survived Hurricane Irma, but not before packing two cars with six crabby people and two crabby dogs and getting the hell out of town, whereupon we shacked up with a crabby relative in crabby ol' Georgia, land of confederate flags and enormous statues of Robert E. Lee carved into otherwise unremarkable mountains.

We had planned to hunker down and weather it out, so to speak, and dutifully shuttered the windows and filled the bathtubs. We're Floridians now, dammit, and we're not afraid of some piddling little Category 5 windstorm. It wasn't until we sat staring in dumbfounded horror at the images coming out of Barbuda that we dropped our Shirley Temples and our Virgin Maries and fled for our lives. I mean SRSLY, look at these pictures:



Not to sound churlish, but who the fuck ever heard of Barbuda anyway, until it was wiped off the map? Thoughts and prayers for the people of, etcetera, etcetera, I'm just sayin that without those pictures we might never have fled.

As it was, we returned days later, our nerves frayed to the breaking point by a week's worth of extended family disfunction, only to find that the storm's dreaded "eye-wall" had shifted west, leaving us relatively unscathed. Again, thoughts & prayers for those affected, but I wish now that we had stayed put and to hell with the eye-wall. Is all I'm sayin.

It will surprise no one that there were moments a-plenty when I could have used a good stiff drink or three. Like when my sister-in-law, not ten minutes after our arrival, opened our conversation with "So, are you still taking the Antabuse?"


Well, thank you VERY MUCH for asking an embarrassingly personal question before I'd even set down my sleeping bag, and yes I am, and no, it doesn't make me an uber-drunk, and anyway why is all my fucking personal business even a topic of discussion in this family? To which the S-I-L got all huffy and played the "well EXCUSE ME me for caring" bullshit card, upon which the slamming of doors and other hilarity ensued. (Okay, it wasn't like that. I'm actually very fond of S-I-L, and she's one of the few people whose opinions in most regards I regard as infallible. There were no grouchy exchanges, no slamming doors, but when she asked if I was still closet-smoking, I lied and said "No, of course not!" Because damn it, stop asking.)  

Anyway, it may come as a shock to some people that I take the Antabuse. I don't volunteer the information because I don't really want to talk about it. This is not because I have anything to hide -- god knows, at this point the entire fucking world knows I'm a drunk, albeit one who's determined to remain an EX-drunk even if it kills us all. I'm not, god forbid, ashaaaaaaamed of it, having, it seems, little capacity for shame. No, the reason I don't want to talk about the Antabuse is because people jump to all kinds of weird and bizarre conclusions about the stuff, and about those who take it.

Example: I was sitting in yet another useless AA meeting one day when I let slip that I was taking Antabuse. The drunk chick who had just spent 20 minutes recounting how she'd lost her job, her kids, her house, her spouse, and who had just described in steaming, technicolor detail how she had hit rock bottom and climbed out of a gutter soaked in her own vomit, looked at me and said with a straight face, "Wow, you must be really fucked up."

Or the drunk who proudly acknowledged to me that he's been going to AA twice a day for 30 years, but piously and without a trace of irony explained that he doesn't believe in taking Antabuse "because it's just a crutch."

Which made me think of this:



Anyway, the Antabuse stigma is so great that many pharmacies don't even carry it. After moving to another state a few years ago, I went to re-up my scrip. The pharmacist looked puzzled and announced that they didn't have any in stock because no one had ever asked for it before. I'm apparently the only person in a 100 mile radius who takes it.

Really? SRSLY?

My experience with Antabuse started when I first entered rehab a number of years ago. It was a requirement of being in the program. I thought it was overkill, but the fact is that it worked. This is because Antabuse operates on a very simple principle: It makes you violently sick if you drink while taking it. As in, pounding head, puking sick. It doesn't make the cravings go away. It doesn't help with the anxiety, or the shakes, or the underlying reasons why you drink. It doesn't affect your mood, or treat your depression, or help you focus on achieving your long-term goals. It simply makes you puke your guts up if you drink.

Which, in my case, was enough to stop me from boozing. It shut down my own internal dialogue about how I could still kinda-sorta drink a little if I just moderated it, (which never worked), I could still enjoy an occasional beer if I kept it to weekends (which never worked), I could still somehow get away with it because it would only be this once (which never worked). Addiction for me has always been about that internal dialogue, the games I play, the lies I tell myself. Antabuse removes all of that shit from the equation, because I physically cannot drink with it.Which frees up my inner resources for other things, like cleaning up after a hurricane and writing this shitty blog.

Anyway, think whatever you want about it, or about me. I'm now officially out of the closet with this. I don't plan to take it forever, but for now it helps keep front and center the conviction that I Can Not Drink Any More.  And until that notion takes full root in my psyche, I'll keep doing what I'm doing, crutch or not.

All Roads Lead to Rome. Or Something.

Look, all I'm saying is that AA is one tool in a toolbox full of tools. It's not the only tool, or even the best tool, so for fucks sake stop telling people that OMG YOU HAVE TO USE THIS TOOL!!! 

Please. Just stop it. I know more people who have quit drinking without ever setting foot in a meeting than people who attend regularly. My point is that there are many roads to sobriety, what works for one may not work for everyone. Decreeing that anyone who doesn't follow your path is destined to failure is just dumb and counterproductive, so just kindly STFU.