Category Archives: Alcoholism

Letter to Someone Considering Suicide

10 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Depression, Health, Men's Health, Mental Health, Poetic Blog, Recovery, Suicide, Women's Health

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Suicidal2

by Bill Watkins, formerly suicidal
3/10/2022

Dedicated to the memory of Robin Williams

***

I would have told Robin just to sleep.  Stop trying to breathe.  Stop doing stuff and thinking you have to do stuff.

What suicidal people sometimes forget is the glory of the “mini-deaths” cleverly built into this life: sleep.  The complete cessation of activity.  The suicidal want to stop, want all thinking to stop, so… STOP!

Complications arise with drug and alcohol addiction.  Next to that, or maybe the same thing, is a bedevilment of negative thinking, insane thoughts—which any human being is capable of thinking from time to time.

There is a snowball forming, and suicidal people might start to believe the lies they are telling themselves that all would be better, if they were dead.  If they took an action to stop the heart and stop breathing… for good.

I was a victim of a suicidal depression that lasted about three or four years.  Parts of it are cloudy still, but I can now sum it all up as:  Alcoholism.

I started drinking Dad’s last sip of bourbon when I was five.  I started drinking the flammable, volatile, toxic liquid on my own with friends by the age of twelve.  I was blacking out on the substance by thirteen.

The above facts were not of interest to the multiple doctors I saw for depression at the end of the last millennium.  They saw and heard some symptoms, started to prescribe me drugs.  One of those doctors is now a recovering alcoholic, but because they missed my obvious alcoholism I sometimes think all of them were either alcoholic, drug addicted or just plain incompetent in the field of mental health.

I forgive them.  Alcoholism is “cunning, baffling and powerful,” to quote Alcoholics Anonymous—a powerful, tough, formidable foe.  I don’t blame anyone for my alcoholism and subsequent suicidal depression, but have come out of it to celebrate twenty years of consecutive sober days to distrust Western medicine in some areas.

They and all of us are fallible!

To the person who is at the time of reading this letter considering suicide, I say: “I love you. Thinking of suicide is a normal response to pain, when the pain builds and builds and sustains over a long time.  Love and accept yourself in this moment, but if you have a place to sleep that is warm and sheltered, be grateful for it and ‘die’ the mini-death that is sleep.  Stop trying so hard to breathe.  Slow down.  Do nothing.

“Do nothing for as long as it takes, with no time limit.  Based on my experience, the good rest and permission to stop will after time become a meditation or dream that makes you want to ‘go’ again.  You might get a vision that is positive.

“As far as managing life through a suicidal depression, stop doing that. Get out a piece of paper after your rest, and write down one or two things you want to do.  Eventually a bucket list (since you’ve been craving death anyway) of passions and activities.  Today, of course, you can only manage one or two of those things.

“Do them.  Love yourself for this one day.  That’s the only day that matters and exists.  If something makes you smile (that is not harmful to anyone, drugs or alcohol), note that and do it.   Repeat it, and follow that bliss throughout your day.  Your day is now your life!

“Note stuff in life we can’t control, like results or the future.  Let them go.  Maybe even consider prayer to a power greater than yourself.  Call it whatever you want to call it.  Just know you’re not in control of everything, and if you let yourself go… if you stop trying so hard and just rest… you’ll find the world continues to spin, and I do believe based on my own experience that positive thoughts and dreams are within us all…

If we wait for them.”

It’s Not the Virus That Kills

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, God, Government, Health, Poetic Blog, Political, Politics, Spirituality

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Virus1

-by Bill Watkins 7/31/2020

Death stats are reported by folks who believe deeply in death.  Physical death.  That’s it, we’re done, the physical is all…  But isn’t there another way to live and see life, death and health?  The spiritual way, one under-represented right now in governments world-wide?

Back when I still believed in the invalid United States of America, I wrote an article entitled “What is Health?” which included Twitter poll results from users, who shared their definitions:

1. Bill Watkins:  “Health is a Peace of Mind, Knowing I did the best I could to be the best person I was capable of becoming in all my affairs.”

2. “Duck,” Anti-Circumcision Activist:  “Health is discovering yourself and feeding your truth.”

3. Online T-shirt Salesman:  “Health means your state of being and ability to function naturally.”

4. Aaron V. from Lake Tahoe:  “Health is natural whole foods, clean water, clean air, a nature soundscape with wildlife, good social relationships, the freedom to explore and then see self-improvement or progress, and having a shelter or sanctuary where one can retreat to and be certain to have all of those things despite what else is going on in the world.”

5 Sonya on Twitter:  “I believe saying ‘I am healthy’ is relative to your own circumstances. For me, I feel health is a state of physical wellness as well as mental wellness. I believe it’s hard to say I am healthy if either one is compromised to a degree where we are not enjoying living our lives. If we are feeling the best we can for our age and capacity – in that everything is functioning as well as can be expected – and we are getting through each and every day with quality of life in tact, even if it has to be aided by medication, then to me that is healthy. If body and mind are still functioning well enough for me to enjoy life, then I am healthy.”

6. College Newspaper Staff:  “I’d say health is a state of being. I think it’s a perceived value of physical, emotional, and mental stability and regularity for each individual person. The achievement of ‘healthy’ will differ from person to person based on lifestyle, availability of nourishment and space, and personality.”

7. Dan R., Twitter:  “Being good in mind body and soul.”

8. Yvonne on Twitter:  “Health is a balance of spiritual, mental and physical well-being”

9. Anastacia on Twitter:  “Health to me means that I’m happy, I am not sick, I can laugh with out being in pain.”

10. Poetry Group on Twitter:  “Health is the harmony of our body.”

11. Carlos M. on Twitter:  “Wellness is a holistic approach to life that includes diet and exercise first with traditional medical care second. ”

12. Ariel B. on Twitter:  “Health is Peace of Mind.”

13. Marion W. on Twitter:  “Time set aside in solitude and/or quietness to grow, reflect, write and decompress.”

And… how about Google?

14. Google:  “Health is the state of being free from illness or injury.”

***

A lot of different perspectives, so why do governments think they can represent us all on this issue?  They stay away from mixing the state with religion, but aren’t they coming across many of our personal, even religious beliefs by putting their hands into such a controversial bowl of heaven keys?

“Peace of mind” is a short version of my definition for health, as it was for one of my Twitter poll participants—something that has little to do with Western medicine’s extracting blood, focusing on the physical, administering drugs.  Core to the Western medical business is core to religion: giving folks peace of mind, that they will heal from hardship.  Religion goes on to speak of heaven, doctors stop at peace…  Maybe those two words and concepts are in some ways interchangeable.

But in neither heaven nor earth will it ever be right to decide someone else’s health path, if that someone is an adult of sound mind.  Who should decide mental soundness?  I’d say, based on my Twitter poll and personal conviction, more people should be involved in health decisions, from different fields of study, and different beliefs.  There is more to heaven, earth, and health than is cooked up in Western medicine’s cake, and it’s time governments recognize that, call out doctors for the fallible people they are.  They have fancy degrees, I concede the hard work that goes into them, but who can say something divine or perfect grants them?

To me health is a peace of mind, knowing I did my best to be the best person I’m capable of becoming—a spiritual concept, borrowed shamelessly from the late, great John Wooden.  “Death” to this humble citizen of Mexico, the invalid United States and someday England: doesn’t exist, if with faith in God you lived a good life.  “No good thing ever dies,” mused Stephen King once upon a time, and I agree.  So why all the talk of “Covid deaths?”  Did those souls not live?  Why not talk about their life?  Where is the gratitude for the air we breathe, for the lives we get to live, for our amazing immune systems?  If this was our last day to live on earth, what would you do with it?  Panic?  Complain about death?  Whine about a virus?

Not me.  The above set of questions reminds me of my old life, one in which I was spiritually dead, playing sports and drinking alcohol instead of loving my parents, life, a woman, and being an honest, honorable person.  There are worse things than physical death…  Among them, a life in fear, and as such out of love—if you adhere to St. Paul’s ideal.  So love life!  Live today!!  Say thanks to what you say thanks to, because tomorrow is a big question mark, salvation for me in peace of mind, something I’ll never get wearing a mask or fearing my fellow man for any reason whatsoever.

Fear is the killer, folks, FDR echoed here…  Fear is the virus.  Inoculate yourself against it by living great days in faith, in love and free of alcohol or drugs…  Thanks for your attention, an open mind following truth as a key to serenity, willingness putting us on the road, proper relations with our fellows and the earth a guarantee for eternal life.  Never death

Nostalgia

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in 1984, Alcoholism, Healing, Nostalgia, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery, Sobriety

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Nostalgia1

Sometimes a wave
of emotion overwhelms,
regret mixed with memory
mixed with pain mixed
with extreme pleasure,
near uncomfortable but
inescapable as passing gas.

Truth shines as rainbows
after storms, but stuck in
clouds are chances lost
to time to do or say the
right thing.  I wish I could
go back and be a true soul
in place of the wet rag I was.

1984, English Beat becoming
General Public, the middle
school dance floor opening
up, everything ready to go
except me.  I’m half there,
half aware, half unsure and
in the end 100 percent alcoholic.

It’s not just about the drink,
it starts with not expressing love.
She was there, I loved her,
I never told her.  She was there,
I loved her and never told her,
it repeats over and over the
great sin of dishonest omission.

The pain, the year, that rain,
the rainbow after, the songs
the dances free of commission—
relationships half engaged like
marriage without consummation,
or love without children, songs
without rhythm beating funeral

marches to the grave like
Longfellow said.  Recovery
is being the “Hero in the strife”—
changing your life, watching you
and it grow away from the past
like survivors from the fire,
it tries to lick you to safety.

Ouch, don’t get hurt!
Nostalgia is a flash from the
past, a time when you faced
a world of opportunity and fun,
was not ready and can only
hope now that once begun
is half done, heal thyself—

Watch Mary Poppins and be
a child, this time the one
that tells the truth and falls
fully in love with the moment
in the dance that years ago
left you that taste of regret.
Now is all, for old age to forget.

Anne

07 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Alcoholism, God, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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Anne1 -- Flower

The first one is blessed by God.  Nature.  Truth.
She comes to you, when you are ready, when
She too, is that part of you that’s ready,
The smile, the joy within finds its way out

And Love springs.

Alcohol as “drink,” un-guided living, the Devil
Himself intervene with love sometimes,
and we surrender it to adoption services, or
Some later date, convenient to the scared

And confused…

Anne was my first crush, and could have been
The only love of my life, and I would have been
blessed—this, if life was not saturated in Alcohol
as “drink,” the Devil playing with us, confusing

and Usurping—

Like the land in America we stole, usurping the
Name of God, Christ, the Bible to steal land from
a Natural people connected to the Great Spirit,
Creation itself forgotten by Europe, Rome,

Book thumps and war.

We killed the Druids and almost their spirit.
Romans conquered themselves, we too—
The English took on the worst of Rome, made
it our own, conquered ourselves and God

in Greed for the Crown.

Anne, meanwhile, couldn’t have sparkled more,
Myself unable to tell her I loved her.  Because
I was a Viking.  And Roman.  And Alcoholic.
And bedeviled.  I thought a flammable liquid

Good to drink.

***

I am a fool, am fooled—was born a drunk,
a liar and a thief.  A violent war monger
un-guided and destined for Hell—

Truth help me.  God help me.  Great Spirit
and Creation forgive me; my father’s sins
are mine, I climb and escape them only
with doses daily of Truth, doses daily of

Love and forgiveness.

Anne lives in mountains, as do I—she there,
Me here, and I cannot make the weather
move her to me, only asking higher powers
to reward willingness for amends and Truth

with Health.

Will I die an example of what not to do?
Will I live to the hilt making amends for the past?
Can my message help the next child, blessed by Love,
But tempted and un-guided on his way to Hell?

Truth, son, will bring you back to Anne…

Alcohol Ads Should Be Banned

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

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Alcohol1

by Bill Watkins, 10/2/2019

Richard Nixon banned Cigarette ads in 1970.  He was aware through common sense and a 1964 Surgeon General study that cigarette use killed a lot of people, and he signed their advertising out of American existence…

Not so with alcohol, C2H5OH, the colorless, volatile, flammable, toxic liquid resulting from fermentation some like to buy and drink.  As with cigarettes, alcohol is a mass killer of human beings, a mass destroyer of public property and very hard to control.  And yet our televisions pitch it to us daily, ramping up during sporting events—whether in prime time or at six in the morning during British football broadcasts on NBC.

The scariest numbers in this are 88,000 and 28.4%.  That first number is how many people in this country die every year of alcohol-related causes, third most of all preventable causes of death, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).  Alcohol only behind cigarettes and poor diet/exercise habits, according to the Institute.

28.4% is the percentage of under-21 viewership of alcohol ads allowed by law, according to the FTC.  As there are about 100 million Americans under twenty one, by current FTC guidelines and alcohol’s self-regulation, it’s acceptable to advertise the buying and drinking of a dangerous liquid to about twenty-eight million young people under twenty-one years of age.

The FTC has no record of how many alcoholics the alcohol industry pitches in advertising every year.  NIAAA claims fifteen million Americans over-18 suffer from alcoholism, over six percent of that age group’s population.  Is it fair that someone struggling with alcoholism, or a sober alcoholic, can tune into their favorite sporting event on TV, only to be hammered with ads that pitch him or her to engage in an activity that could or almost killed them?

Like guns, alcohol is a mainstay in this “great democracy” set up on usurped Native American land.  Europeans brought alcohol, guns, disease, and a bible—used them to control this land.  At what point will we decide to stop, analyze what is truly good, maybe listen and follow what that book taught on God, not killing and heaven?  If Nixon can hit back on a killing substance in 1970, take away some of its power, why not Trump with alcohol?  Just kidding.  But maybe a lawmaker like Amy Klobuchar, who has seen the harm of alcohol up close?

Maybe we can all find our inner common sense, reverse rudders on this crude, usurped land management, ask Native America back, kick out killers like guns and alcohol.  At the least, we can kick out the ads—a precedented step not easy against a Washington alcohol machine, but a needed one to protect America’s greatest resource: our children.

Progress Colonized

11 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by in Alcoholism, History, Poetic Blog, USA

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Bad Flag3

Euphemism is a funny thing,
a disguise like wind in sky,
a subtle turn in the “s” so
one can curses bless

in the face of death, finding
eternal life in lies that keep
you doing harm for material gain
the USA a ruse of gangs.

Peace was a rainbow too cheap
to truly love, the storm on storm
over the years clouding facts
like law schools in countries

founded in native blood, yelling
out “Freedom” while we lock
them up in reservations.
Claiming “ours” that which was

Stolen.

Euphemism comes to bat, over
and over again.  We brought
“Progress,” “Colonized” the land!
Brought farming and farmers

To new land?  It was taken, but
that didn’t matter to the earnest
ignorance that made hail out of snow.
Lie after lie covering a violent sky.

We can always turn around the ship,
Start telling the Truth before we die

The Disease

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by in Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Living with an Alcoholic, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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We miss the pitch, seeing what
Dad or others did, so shiny and
apparently fun, a thought is brewed
and we didn’t know anything else
to do.

So drank the liquid.

***

It burned as it was supposed to
burn, hell’s fire tickling up from
below, the devil agrin with hopes
of diverting another soul from the
focus of heaven’s righteous run.

I think I may have been a Fred
Astaire, a triple-threat, whatever
God wanted me to be… hit that piano,
dance and sing

I’m Free, Mom, look at me!

***

All those things I do now, jokes to
tell, from rooms of Alcoholics
Anonymous and Al-Anon, twelve
step beats a native son to meditate
on things gone wrong—

strike the gong, shhhh, be the truth
when we speak it in the safety net
of change.

Serenity is a’coming, Al-Anon like
a spring dress, all a mess like the
duck beneath the water.

On top we quack and splash for
fun, knowing we can quit drinking
the flammable liquid now.

Alcoholism is quite a disease; listen
to me.

Stop and think.  Do not place anything
into your mouth without first
study.

The crux of malady is the confused
insanity of doing hurtful things;

Bill and Bob wrote another chapter
of the Sacred book, you’re reading
it today—men and women both
equal partners in language we
must improve,

Love to soothe,
and peace that rainbow after the rain
coming to the admitted sick
alcoholic like a beat its groove.

Alcoholism and UCSB

25 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by in Alcoholism, Education, Poetic Blog, UCSB

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One Alum’s Story

UCSB Gaucho Alcoholism

—by Bill Watkins ‘94 

***

Hey Gauchos!

My name’s Bill.  I’m alcoholic; went to school there at UCSB from 1990-1994, had a good time, but should never have been given a degree.  In fact, I should not have been admitted to the school—and in no way should I ever have been given a high school diploma, qualifying me for any university, anywhere.

I started drinking alcohol on Dad’s lap at age five, his last sip of bourbon.  I started drinking the flammable, colorless, volatile, toxic C2H5OH with friends by age twelve, was blacking out on the substance by thirteen.  At that time, I was sub-100 pounds, and sub-five feet tall, a solid two years from puberty.

I was a young alcoholic, a routine law-breaker, liar, but achieved in key areas at a “college prep” in Pasadena, California that somehow impressed UCSB enough to become admitted in the Fall of 1990.  My high school wrongly granted me the diploma first, without knowing who I was—or if they knew, they did not care enough to confront and change my behavior.

If you are reading this and recognize any pattern, or think you may be a problem drinker, I’m sorry—but there is good help, if you are willing to ask for and get it. One needs a safe place to tell the truth in this life, and I hope there is a place at UCSB that is confidential, safe and effective to drop truth without being judged or punished in any way for the dropping.

I had a spiritual awakening at the Betty Ford Center in Palm Desert, California in 1995, a half a year out of college.  For me that meant I told the truth to a group of people for the first time.  My greatest secret that came out that day, was that I had never had a girlfriend.  I was twenty-two, nice looking, an achiever at sports and academics, but did not know how to say “I love you,” or express love honestly.

That is alcoholism, according to Sigmund Freud: a disease of those who cannot express love.  Well, don’t wait too long to turn around, if you have symptoms of alcoholism or drug addiction—if love and its expression is a challenge, or if you look to alcohol as “liquid courage” as I used to do.  In the end I always found in alcohol consumption not courage but belligerence, law breaking begot more law-breaking, carelessness more carelessness, and I’d always wake up feeling cruddy, never any closer to being a proper man, who was honest to the Wife of his Youth.

I threw in a biblical reference right there; see if you can look it up and avail yourselves to some of my poetry, if not included in this newspaper on http://www.travelingpoet.net (my little brain baby).  I’ve written and self-published forty books, love life today, and regret every single sip of disgusting, flammable alcohol.  I think it is not a product, but a lie; please study it before you put it in your mouth or down your throat.

https://www.amazon.com/Alcohol-Bad-You-Bill-Watkins/dp/1540572250

February 7th, 1995

The scales lifted, the eyes clear.

Honesty, finally the truth at
twenty-two given with a tear.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend”
coaxed when the moment was right,
I let down my guards to finally
see the light.

You can’t be helped ‘til you ask
for it.  You can’t ask ‘til safe,
I looked left and right before I
truth supplied and saw that it was all
right—I came out!!!

I was unhappy, even though I had
friends after friends coming to my
bar-b-que party.

I was empty even though the trophies
and plaques on walls increased
and filled—attempted to fill, this would
have to be enough!

Spiritual Awakening—LORD, have me!
Done hiding it was safe to bloom,
and now, no more garden parties,

I separate the happy with the gloom
and see the world in poems—

I did not ask for permission and leave
another world behind: self-doubt, beer,
hollering around death, we put up
our hands at fear.

Trapped no more at Betty Ford
the 7th of February a.d. ‘95
ready to turn the boat around…

Trapped no more you want more
and more so ditch tomorrow for today.

They criticize you and analyze you
as you smile and accept today

***

You Learn to Care

The silver spoon rusts, and caring
departs the farther we find ourselves
away from life.

Poverty is our oldest friend, it is the
state infants find themselves in—
need to need, day to day, all five
senses supercharged and alive,
You used to care!!

To get that back you have to go back,
or forward march if in April you
find winter breezes alerting you
to change for the better.

Bill Murray in his Groundhog Day
learned to care, unlearned his stance
learned on the outside looking in,
resentments formed early in childhood,
defenses raised against abuse.

Our best defenses become our worst
defects as they sit and fester, or worse
yet grow and mold over and over
the petri dish that is Time.

The dust settles for a moment in
hospitals, jail cells, homeless shelters
or repeated groundhog days…

It becomes clear we must change.  Not
to something new but to something old:

Back to our childhood selves, the infant
that with five senses cared!  Was alive
with every movement, curious,
hopeful, asking—honest.

We learned to care, and then the day
turns and we can start over, begin
to live the adult life with childhood
spirit—Congrats, if you see this

The Search for Reason

31 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Alcoholism, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Relationships

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Sometimes the closer you
delve—the farther you are from
the truth.

You must back up to see the forest
from the trees, they say, each
cliché with

elements of truth, so repeated
until there’s a catch—maybe
something

to be used or useful to people.

Often I get upset about what
someone does or says, then
investigate

into a black hole of unknowns;
so much so I start to think that
what could

be going on is above my paygrade,
like a deep problem in the person,
like alcoholism,

day drinking and depression. If
such a thing is going on, you
are liable

to get caught in bigger problems
than you bargained for, you keep
searching

and wind up in a haze of powers
bigger than yourself that have nothing
to do with you.

Approach life and its relationships,
even quick interactions, with small,
light,

gentle intentions.  “Be as this little
child” to get to heaven, said a wise
rabbi once.

Be small.  Be as the child.  Smile,
and never harbor grudges, deep or
dark adult

feelings, knowledge of the apple
eaten bearing its bad fruit—

don’t let it fester, do what the toddler
does, and smile.

Alcohol Baby

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Alcohol, Alcoholism, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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To live forty years in a haze, looking
back on superficial relationships that
crumbled under the slightest strain,

I look for “fault” like the rainbow her
rain, and I stumble on Alcohol, C2H5OH
ethyl, again and again and again.

I think it’s fair to say, that I am an alcohol
baby, am lucky to still be here, but while
some can point behind them to

relationships made, sexual experiences and
love, then to Now at children, grey-haired
husbands, heading toward grandparenthood

and heaven above:

I have my twelve steps, amends to make, no
child in sight, a virgin until thirty-three;
dysfunctional at intimacy, I drank alcohol

instead of expressing each feeling, the devil
within me living and breathing, since that
first fateful sip I wish I never took on Dad’s

lap at five, evil and all bad incarnations of fear
and escape becoming my day-to-day, thinking
all was fine as I stepped up to every sport (a

must-win), girls were not to be tried as the prize
was not in my eyes, everything was an achievement
to achieve, love no place to penetrate,

I convinced myself that tenderness was an unnecessary
dream, I’d get there eventually with the right
mix of booze, the right lie of fools—I had no

idea I was spinning a coil of pain, still uncoiling
today, fifteen-plus years after walking away from
the devil alcohol, what a horrible wreckage my past

is, full of empty achievement and missed love
connections, the glory of the young female body—
missed, maybe forever, as I gray and sag more

everyday.  Time doesn’t wait for the sick, and the
healthy move on to create the next generation of
what we make—let’s hope they stay away from

the flammable liquid that tempted me, let’s
hope they can avoid the suicidal depression that
almost killed me in my twenties; let’s hope

they put God and Love ahead of human doings
and “achievements,” which are nothing without
love and God to fill the cup of certain joy.

Love, sweet love, was not for me when young
and strong, body firm and beautiful—yes I used
to be!!  A body wasted to the alcohol chase,

fear and escape, having the love instinct but
squashing it under fearful feet, I was spiritually
dead, now look around the ghetto where I live,

and have not one single friend from the “good
old days,” because it seems they could handle
a drink or two and have nice families!

There’s no self-pity or sorry at this time, and if
this poem started to sound that way I’m sorry for
the confusion, as I would say that my feelings

on being an alcohol baby are good in that they
reflect proper, healthy Regret, one I can use to
teach any of the next generation I have contact

with, maybe even the children of my old friends
who avoid me, have no time for me, have no need
to pause for as they sign the chit on their

social club bills… Haha, what a thrill, until it all goes
away and you join me when alcohol sneaks
up behind you, keep an eye on your kids but

you first, show an example of what and what
not to do, rethink the drink of colorless, flammable,
volatile liquids, in fact I’d avoid it and feel all

your feelings a ‘natural—even the pain!!  Yes,
the pain, that short term kind, even the nagging
chronic variety.  Better to feel it all, than to run

away into your medicine cabinet, the liquor bar
going down in ecstasy, coming back in double-time
pain, headaches, bad tummy and dehydration—

Joy is dependent on pain’s triumphant overcoming,
so the next time you are tempted to flee your
life for a night in toxic “drink,” steer instead

directly into the storm of your pain, and welcome
that rainbow coming soon at the heels of
victory, joy does not exist without it, let

God instead of lower powers heal you, but in
the end, there’s nothing we can sometimes
do but try to tell the truth, recognize when we

were wrong, try to turn around, do right. Pick
up the disaster debris, and hope