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Alcoholism and UCSB

25 Thursday Oct 2018

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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.

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

Three Words

28 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Love, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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When I was young, I heard
and saw a lot, listened—took
it in, used my senses to try
to be the best I could be.

Sort of a win before life began,
something the humble guard
as theirs to be, open-minded,
a sponge in the open sea—

God overhead, faith within
the soul, but this was before
the words crashed upon my
mind’s eager shore, yours too.

Mom was nice, but sometimes
I was passed on to other laps
and arms, thought they were fine,
growing up now I heard three

Words.  I heard them, but I did
not feel them or want to
repeat them; I needed more
evidence but in vain I searched!

It may have been Grace that
pursued me, Senator Klobuchar
on the Judiciary Committee—steady
truth, still not in my diet.

I nearly passed out, then teetered
on a jacuzzi ledge, smoked out
on pot, lit up with flammable
liquid in my veins—

I avoided the three words, the
feeling in them, maybe because
my super fun and amazing dad
never used them.

“I love you” was whined into the
wind by a loving, conflicted mom
who canned Dad on a dark night
of confusion, not long after Dad

gave me his last sip of bourbon
to drink, the same room reporting
“Divorce”—despite Jesus’ teaching
against its very existence.

God help us, was not yet prayed,
but off to college I went full of
love—but Backed Up, like a troubled
sink, I threw my guts up on the seat.

Anne Devereux was all I wanted,
tennis on the circuit—no one listened
we discriminated against children
I’m just another weak heartbeat.

God, help us was not prayed, because
the need not peaked, not yet at
bottom the alcoholic I’d become
sought answers elsewhere, namely

in grades at school, trying to be cool,
all a cover-up over love for Anne
and Mom, all a cover-up for the lies
I told myself to tell other lies that

I was not lying when I said I only
had a beer, when I had three, and for
me at 90 pounds that was quite a buzz,
a mini-suicide, love walking away

from me, the next girl Melanie, a JJ
in there, maybe a Marne, Allison in
Summer, all an avoidance of telling
the Wife of my Youth

“I Love you.”

Three words, hard to learn, harder
to say, so when my AA sponsor said
them to me in 1996 without needing
to hear them back from me,

I felt something I could not brush off,
it was unconditional love, something
he learned at home but more in AA.
Weeks later I said, What the hey?

And I started to say the words, three
of them to express the love I feel
for life and you.  Three words to
bring the love revolution out of

the sad alcoholic closet and into
the open, below the big bright blue;
God above, faith in our spirit, the
shine all around the moment we

clean the street off, tell the truth,
ask a higher power into the mix,
and tell Anne how sorry you are
you did not tell her how you felt.

Back then was back then, and
here we are living in the stew and
stink of the pain of past wrecks.
But we rise for another day, turn

wine back into water, study
even further than our teachers
suggest!  Be the best we can
possibly be, with or without a

big cross tatted on your chest.  To
believe in a big world and universe
and to play a small but impassioned
part is to live toward peace of mind.

To say “I love you” key to indeed
living truthfully and ably from the heart.

Screwing Up

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Love, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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Do we get a second chance?

Romance, a thing of the past,
growing up sagging parts at 30,
life is lived between five and twelve,
then shoots down the ladder of
never-never.

What if you drank alcohol at five years
old on Dad’s lap?

What if you fell in love with
a girl named Anne in Third Grade?

Then never told her until you were
in your middle twenties, a part of
a twelve step group that honored
truth, needed truth, and gave you
God for your troubles.

Love is a fifth of vodka in the face
of the ignorant.  We come out of Mom
not knowing a thing, perfect bliss
minus the hellacious rush of light
and reality felt the moment we
breathe.

“Let me back in!” is not an option
as you keep breathing, if healthy.

I stayed in the hospital for two weeks,
a blue baby—they helped me to
breathe, and what did they think
at home?

The devil is all around us, we live
on the dragon’s back, wide the path
to destruction—you cannot change any
of it!

With a lion’s roar you win some ground,
but tell her you love her.

If not, you’ll be like me.

Writing about love on the lonely
sea, the dock of doom cluttered with
broken sails, amends and promises.

I was rude instead of honest;
I found fault in her eventually!

I SCREWED UP!

Can you ever go back to third grade?
I’d tell her I loved her.  I’d ask her
to play tennis.  I’d take her to the
movies…

But no; I was with the devil since
five, bourbon on Dad’s lap, he and
Mom pretending at divorce while Jesus
just shakes his head!

Man can never separate what the LORD
God has bound together, so Anne:

I’m sorry.

Bound now to bedevilment and alcoholism,
to girls, gals and chicks who treat me bad.

I could have married Anne, but no
I had to fail!  The poet’s tale!

What could I write with the wind of
perfection behind my back; I’d be, sadly—
not a writer at all.

I’d be closer to a “doctor”—a know-
it-all…

I’d be something I was not; “God” has me
just where he or she wants me:

Writing Truth, fiction, lies that supply
the counter and cupboards of jokes and
stories to tell our children.

Warnings to not drink flammable liquids;
to always be true, grab a god first, as it
helps with the courage to be you…

And tell her again and again that you love
her.  Again and again that you love her.

Again and again that you love her; making
up and making amends that you love her…

I screwed up.  I…

Still love her.

Turn Around

27 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in Cosmic, Creation, God, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Universe

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Before time began, we were ordered
but not yet delivered—the point of
sale hot and hairy with the friction
of moving bodies through space.

One “day at a time” was created by
faraway forces, all in perfect harmony
with a divine plan—the mystery impossible
to penetrate, the more pondered,

the more lost in that… space…

Truth comes to us late in life, sometimes
after horrible events, always when
we least expect

After the conditioner wears out,
blood instead of shampoo on the
bathroom floor, vomited mess.

We were sure war was good and manly.
We were sure men should be strong.
We were sure sports were good to play.
We were so sure college was important.

July 4th exploded in our face.

We saw the light, when we read a
real deed to the land to find it more
native than white—to have stolen
property a curse on everything in
civilization we do.

Perhaps that is why we, not the
native people, so often curse, cuss
and spite our walk on concrete.

***

Turn around.  Look back, when it’s
safe, tell the truth; start with strangers
if you must, and swim toward the next
real thing, peace of mind the chime on
fourteen bells of alarm so alarming
you’d rather silence it than tend to the
fire burning all around you.

Burning earth, driving cars, helicopters
playing more war in my “city” stolen
because our British forefathers thought
it the only way to live.

A bible?  A bound set of papers with ink
on them?

Could it ever compare to the waterfall?
The river?  The mountains, the valleys
of gold in morning’s light, saunas for the
sun if the desert catches it just right,
lick it up bright—

I call this life crazy, but I’ll ‘til the wheels
come off live it, it’s my right.

To swing around the sun a hundred times
a goal of sum;

Dogs and cats more honest in fifteen,
some birds to sixty, disease a myth of
the rich, while the poor continue as
the prophet said, blessed with the meek

The sorrowful now under feet with a key
to heaven easily won, take a peak.

Thunder to roll, God by another name as sweet,
this is or is not a game played by at least
some far off unfathomable beings.

Maybe green, blue, fat or small, maybe
E.T.

The native chiefs knew, but many of
us just wanted to thump our book;

both point to the Great Mystery.

The Summer of Blackout and Throw-Up

20 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery

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The Summer of 1984 started in 1983, of course,
all paths that led to my insanity laid out and
carved by then.

I was twelve, going on thirteen when everything
was not as it seemed, blackouts and throw-up
becoming routine.

Nothing worked, when it came to reporting
my feelings!  I loved her!  That girl in third
grade, my dream!

But I lacked the words in a house about
to “divorce,” no one listening to the wise,
rebellious Nazarene rabbi,

who said “man cannot separate what God
had bound together,” and so we went our
separate ways—

Love, peace and happiness on one side,
trading “up” we thought for more, so
wouldn’t it be fun to

Have two Christmases?  Two homes?
Two codes by which to live, two lives
in one, distinct and yet same?

We were split down the middle, alcohol
a great religious or scientific riddle, “God”
if you will or won’t

standing at least for unknown creating
and moving… God needed by Need itself,
the atheist using other words

to mean the same exact thing!

***

Anne in third grade was good enough,
and Mary said that was a sure “feast,”
but lack of truth

festering in the pit of Bourbon and water,
psychotic sips taken because a commercial
or mother or father

thought it was okay, and pitched the flames
into our very best days…

Anne was good enough, but I lacked the words.

Sorry, indeed, I was bound for a hell of
my own sad making! From Anne I went
to plan B, then C, then D, then all the others
doing the same thing!

Lying and loving, lying about loving, not
telling them of my feelings but getting
darn good at alcohol drinking.

Barf. That and blackouts, like the one during
the Mexican world cup of 1986.

Peeing on my friend’s couch, being awakened
in the middle of the sleep by sister’s
friends, laughed at because I was small,
immature and two years from puberty.

Proverbs and Malachi warned against certain
things, among them not treating the wife of
your youth well.

To deal treacherously with her was to curse
your life, and make all clear wins a steady
blur; pastimes like baseball only hiding the
love for an hour or three.

God a word sung but nothing good without
meaning!

Bill Maher and the atheists—I love you—
a rose by any other name as sweet, so bitter
leaning, the journey back to youth,

all our adult plays and words so futile,
as we look at Grandma, give her a hug
and say good bye.

Grandpa surrounded by loved ones with a
tear in his eye!

This, if not a place in the clouds could
certainly be eternal life!

Never have to die…

***

Movies and tennis, trips to a beach
with friends.  I didn’t know I was a serious
talk with one person away from a
spiritual awakening!

I had to almost die, before the choice
is made to live—not because you have to,
but because you want the love you find
when you discard the lies.

Every dance in ’84 was one away from Anne
and the wife of my youth.

Cursed I write this song; cursed I seek a
better home; cursed I walk along, penitent
and aware of my horrible sins of putting
myself and my fears ahead of God and his or
her will for me.

Alcohol is a False god.  Kills more people
spiritually than physically, but then again they’re
the same thing, the worlds collide in the mix
of pain and joy, the rainbow after the rain
our path to the sober and sane!

Feel that!  Yeah, feel the pain!!!

We have a path to Heaven not by our
actions but efforts; imperfect we reach for the
thing babies reach for, Creation smiling,
ourselves powerless over the next caress,
hurricane or frilly red dress.

We purge our old life in the memory of
sickness on the ground, picking up the
pieces of the mess of messing around.

Rich kids, poor kids, the only thing that
matters our commitment to being as
little kids!

Heaven is the gate in front of us, open
when we halt our advanced studies of
love and hate. Look up…

Give and love today…

Before it is too late.

Lifting the Shroud

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in Awareness, Enlightenment, Native, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Politics

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We grow up unaware—

Especially those of one silver
spoon-fed table or another, it’s
not about the money or ease only,
but about the hidden pool of
vomit under the Christmas tree.

Alcohol is a good hider.  Wealth,
too, anything like “false gods” and
false hopes that lock us in or
addict us to something untrue.

We curse a lot, those especially
from the east who came west
to steal native land.

They did not curse, the natives,
the first peoples living simply
with God on the ground, Nature
their supplier, one day at a time,
a task or two to do.

Nothing ever changes, but if you
try hard enough, you can leave
the human race.

It starts slow, by setting sail from
a homeland without first checking
motives with a decision-helper like
prayer, meditation or even the
advise of respected elders or
medicine men without the dangerous
medication.

Peace was there, but adventure lacked
and the disease of more, of wanting
to be famous and rich—

pervaded until in armor we showed
up to take a land by force.

Cursing we brought with us, disease.

Ingratitude for the land—nothing was
good enough until we could bring
gold out of it for money, it seemed.

***

None of these thoughts occurred to
us, who went to private schools,
played in private sports clubs,
sought junior championships in
sports, and cursed our way to
apparent blessings like college
(false god) and other ways to live
apart from God, nature, and the
healing ground.

***

We laid cement down, crushed
the glorious rocks to pebbles to
pave our walk.

We burned Earth, traveled fast
past most of our senses’ need
to express or feel, so that unaided
by alcohol or drugs we could enjoy
life on its terms—

just as it is.

We were clueless.

Holding trophies and prizes up
against our ancestors’ lies, the
lies told to native people, slaves
we kept to build our lives.

And we kept going, because to
go back now seemed like an
impossible work, unless…

Unless you found Alcoholics Anonymous
or some other program that okayed
and even encouraged a look back
to make amends for wrongs done.

We look back enough, see and admit the
faults, that glorious destination
called Peace of Mind awaits a quick
jaunt back to fix, apologize, maybe
even return to the homeland to
stop cursing, start blessing
ourselves and this one life given
to make a crooked childhood straight,

the path to Heaven’s gate.

I Like Life

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Life, Nature, Peace, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery

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Just as it is.

It needs not our sour rot,
the grape is better than the
wine—a reason they call war
trophies spoils,

the disease of more plundering
the till that is perfect as is,
Lao Tzu’s quiet, uncarved block.

I like Life!

Sunshines and rays against the
mist making ready rainbows of
our worst rains and pains…

I like life!

Just as it was; God, Higher Power
the mantra hated by an atheist,
his or her right but look not to
altered states—

Put up a fight!!

Do not say good bye until true
fatigue sets in, the eyes close
in a smile—

Good night!

I like life, citizens of Rome, nothing’s
wrong until we think too much,
adult games forgetting that philosophy
that to get to heaven (peace of mind)
one must be like a child.

I like life—

Calm in the middle of strife.

The worse thing that can happen
often out of our control, ask
the powers above for Wisdom,
be like King Solomon and grow
very old!

Not 100 years like today, but
hearken back to the Old Jews’
day.

“He was 946 years old, and was
gathered to his people.”

I like life!

Sunny, rainy, put up a fight!  Sing
song, God, good, no?

Rain.  Sunshine.

Bow.  Rainbow?  Fine—the end?

no.  Beginning?

Always

Redemption

28 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Amends, Blog, Blogs, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Redemption

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A song of chains precedes any
of freedom.

We must state our cause, stake
our place in goal and dream

before the winds of change make
us more than we seem,

the perfect beings that for days
and weeks of life cannot

be supported—even the strongest
beams, gone are the memories

of the true line, until instead of
the flammable drink,

we humbly on paper or screens
opine!

God give us a soul, a season, a path
under foliage and civilization’s
litter on the head of first peoples and
nations we in Europe so arrogantly
bestowed.

Could it be that we escaped a way of
life over there, in our old world, only
to force that way on this American land?

I sound mad, but am only trying to report
the problems with the sound

above our homes, the helicopter hell
and siren fort—

1607 the British in armor seeking fame,
riches and glory.

We may have gotten them; but at what
cost?  And is there any going back to
make amends, to balance things,

to redeem our forefathers who often
forgot to slow down, breathe, and thank
God for our land before stealing more?

There must be, if the slave song
can make us free.

The Truth

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poetry, Truth

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Things are whether we call them
such or not; words inappropriate
vessels for the Truth.

And yet, when we try, and at the
right time these symbols hit the
spot, music in time.

We cannot tell our own true story
and feelings until the room is safe—
we’ve been hurt before,

so sometimes back off at the moment
to secure ourselves from further harm.
Seek ye, and ye shall find

was spoken by a teacher who preached
“gospel” from the old English “God-spell,”
stories about God,

“good” and true requisite, the evidence
of truth being the oneness you feel
or don’t feel, the thing

wins or loses, you know truth when you
read or hear it, most of the time!  We
lie when afraid, when running

and hoping everything will be all right
if I can just get by this tricky moment.
Plenty of time for truth…

Just not today?

Hmm, tragedy bleeds a different ray,
golden sunshine at the rain yields
color.  The pain un-

medicated improves, and beyond that,
the thrill of overcoming becomes its
own high-level joy, so…

Go for it.  Tell your journal first,
if you’d like, but find that safe room
and tell the truth.

Be a safe pair of ears for someone else;
advocate for truth, but you must seek it
first!  It may mean you enter

a place you have fears about entering,
a 12-step meeting, a spiritual retreat,
where the schmucks there

don’t appear to be “doing” anything!!
What a bore!!  You look for a basket, a way
to achieve and score.

The rug will be under your deception as
long as God wants it there, but when it
is pulled, go with it,

and come down to where I kneel, it’s
fun to not only feel, but to report the
feeling, band together

with your brothers and sisters in truth,

and sing.

Wide is the Path

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Nature, Philosophy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Religion

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The narrow to “heaven” is a hefty
mount, a lofty walk and a harrowing
drop—

the leap it requires of faith, fasting
and prayer?

Atheism, wordlessness, meditation
and just being there?

Hard turns, listening, being, breathing?

A rose by any other name as sweet,
brevity the soul of it, god or Shmod
you decide what to call that which
yields its famous bliss—

words ascribed to it in English
being “Peace of mind.”

It’s hard to have a firm view, open
up, and listen wholeheartedly to another;
but to do so allows a soul to advance
toward childhood,

life a journey of return to learned
senses without words, then a
departure of body leaving spirit
and words, ideas which never die
no matter how many killed in the
name of “National Security.”

Wide is the Path to Destruction,
and Many are On It.

Some call “Jesus” religion; I do not;
I call the Son a Sun, the art of war
being to never wage it.

The true artist restores peace when
out of alignment, moving on without
celebration, without declaration of victory,
for a combat yielding injury is never
cause célèbre.

Tend to those injured, and start to
glimpse the road less traveled, build
your rock, ascending and secure, on
the bed of weedless sunshine providing
no rain to the cowards, no judgment to
the fallen, no gifts to the barren;

It is dry, the valley of history, with
all its un-amended sins and mistakes.

If you stop reading and talking long
enough you see the rainbow in the rain;
the end of pain,

The coming of solace for the argument
that Higher Power must exist.

Why not call it God?

Because that word offends those abused
by those who would use a Name to harm.

So fall.

Let the words go, and let Mom embrace
you after we demolish the concrete,
find the stones, the path back

to Nature.