Without chemistry life itself would be impossible

I am mentally ill. I'm sure that does not come as a shock for anyone who knows me.  More like "can I have the obvious for $300, Alex?"...

I have bipolar 2 and major depressive disorder. And while that may be obvious to most... I have been in denial about it for years.  Never really accepting that I had an actual illness.

I have always thought of my depression as some form of personal weakness and the occasional mild mania as me doing my best.  When I admitted having these issues it was just lip service.  I admitted to these diagnoses with no more thought than telling someone my blood type.  I had zero respect for how sick I was.  In fact I didn't think of myself as sick just weak.  I often berated myself for my lapses into depression.  I lacked drive or intestinal fortitude or whatever it is that makes people hugely successful. I was a loser.   Why was I so lazy, why couldn't I just snap out of it.  And then the mania would save me.  I would right the wrongs of my depressed loser self and come galumphing back.

And the Pendulum swung back and forth.  Often keeping me just out of the running...close to success but never really achieving it.   But I could see it.   I understood.  A psychological Flowers for Algernon where I watch myself go up and down every year.   I could stay on the upswing just long enough to achieve some small thing then crash back down and tear it all apart.  Feeling all the while that it was my fault and I was in complete control of all the outcomes.

Truth be told until recently I was up more than I was down.  Just enough in the black to maintain mediocrity... but with the occasional flash of brilliance so I can feel shame for wasting my potential.

The cycle is getting shorter.  The highs are not higher but the lows are much lower.  Sometimes it's debilitating I can't get out of bed I can barely leave the house... sleep eat repeat.  Never too sad to eat it seems can't ever catch a break.

But even when I'm depressed my mind still works so I try to steer into the skid.  Make excuses for my lack of performance...my lack of anything resembling participation.  I call in sick and I think I'm lying.  Im not sick I'm a worthless piece of shit.  I made excuses for my depressed self like the wife of an alcoholic makes excuses for the drunk hubby falling down at a party.

I am full of shame.

Just recently I fell into that trough of pain, suffering and despair... It took me nearly two weeks to acknowledge it as mental illness.  And even then it felt like a lie, like a scam.  I beat myself up for not wanting to go to meetings for skipping group for not doing chores around the house I was just bad and lazy which again fed the furnace running red hot with self loathing.

I'm very lucky that I'm in a sober living environment with counselors and built-in accountability.  There is a lot of freedom here but one can only hide out so long. I spent four days without leaving the house. I got away with that because two of those days were over the weekend. Then someone came looking for me.

My counselor saw right away I needed serious help.  An ambulance was called and off I went.  7 Days inpatient to stabilize my medication.

If the cure works you probably have the disease.  If I didn't think so before I know so now... I have depression.   In the hospital I couldn't get out of bed the first 3 days... the last two days I was cracking jokes and writing new comedy bits.  Medication was the only thing that changed.

So I guess I figured something out... I really do have bipolar 2 and depression.  Real diseases that require active management.  I have a chemical imbalance which is hard to self-diagnose and even harder to self treat. I can't fix the bicycle while I'm riding the bicycle.

Dealing frankly with what's referred to as a dual diagnosis is what has to happen.

Surviving my mental illness and addiction requires outside specialized help and medication.  That and personal dedication to following the treatment plan.

So I talk to people, go to meetings take my medication, let others be involved in my life and fly the White Flag when it gets too bad.

And I know  I've used this meme before but it's one of my favorites.  Its bad to forget your medicine when you got a condition.

I see racist people...everywhere only they don't know they're racist.

Everyday you live in Mississippi is like an M. Night Shyamalan movie or more specifically like a gay clowns hairy ass shitting  in your mouth forever... and I'm white.

To be honest I've lived a sheltered life.

My parents raised truly color blind children.
I didn't hear the  "N"  word spoken with intended racist emphasis by a white person until I was 45 years old.  And this of course happened in Mississippi.

I was killing time waiting for my future third ex-wife to get off work.   Driving around her small town of McComb Mississippi  I saw a barber shop that was open with no one in the chair I thought hey I got time for a quick trim.

"Need a haircut?" queried the guy running the shop.

"Just a trim please" I replied and grabbed a newspaper off the table hoping that if I was reading I wouldn't have to talk to him.

Nope. He started right in.  "Readin the paper, Huh?" He inquired.  "Yep I'm a reader" I responded

To which he said with nonchalance, "So I guess you know we got a nigger mayor."

Now this was... Stunning.  I was truly stunned.   Never in my life had I heard an adult white person use that word in casual conversation.

I had of course heard the word before but never used like that.  In the same tone of  voice one would use to describe the brand of vehicle you drive. "So I guess you know we got a Toyota truck"

Even though I was reeling I thought immediately of something to say.  Usually it's later that I think of the perfect retort.   This was the first time in my life that right thing to say occured to me in the moment.

But before I tell you what I said let me tell you about the mayor of McComb Mississippi.

He was an Air Force fighter pilot and retired a colonel.  Do you know how hard it was in the 1970s in America for a black man to become a pilot?  Fucking hard.  He was harassed, he was hindered, he was hamstrung at every turn. He fought his way through that and retired a Colonel ... AND he was a fucking fighter pilot.

But that's not all folks next he  became the communications director of the American Cancer Society and retired from that.   After a life of service he moved to his hometown ran for mayor and won.  But to this goober, white trash, redneck, barely literate, inbreed,  gap toothed barber... He's just a nigger.

Having set the scene here is what was said....
Barber; "So I guess you know we got a nigger mayor."

To which I said "Oh you mean my future father-in-law?  See I'm getting a trim so I look sharp tonight because I'm taking him out to dinner to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage."

Drop the mic... walk off stage.

He didn't say another word for the rest of the haircut.  I'm lucky I didn't get this:

So I told the story to my future ex-wife expecting shock and revulsion  however she calmly and simply said "oh that barber shop? of course"

I used to get my haircut in Philadelphia at a place called the Opera Barbershop.

It's got Italian guys who cut hair and sing opera. That's my kind of Barber Shop not the racist and bigoted barber shop of McComb.

Racism is common, casual and runs deep in McComb Mississippi. Regular people, people of education,  people who I would assume are not racist routinely use expressions like "he's one of the good ones" or "well you know how they are."

The few years I was forced by marriage to live in Mississippi I developed a litmus test by which I could gauge the racism of an individual.  Here you go... If a white person likes anything that Tyler Perry has ever done they are a racist.   And if you love Madea you might as well join the clan.

Tyler Perry and especially Madea are the essence of Fubu: for us by us.  Aggressively stereotypical  humor which is just fine within the population it stereotypes.   But it should make nonracist white people feel uncomfortable.

When I shared this racism "test" with a black  friend he gave me a huge compliment.  He laughed and said "You know what Skip? You're one of the good ones"

Well you know how I am...

Oh and fuck Mississippi.

Misery lite

That was the daily goal "misery lite".  My best case scenario.  In active addiction, in a bad relationship or a shitty job... the best I could hope for was, misery lite...  Brought to by the makers of misery, misery lite has all the great taste of original soul crushing misery but missing one or two components that make it slightly less than unbearable.

Basically if things were just a little bit worse I would quit or leave.  Or more telling, after I've left a truly awful situation I realize if it had been just been a little bit less horrible I would have stayed... misery lite.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" -Henry David Thoreau.  The truth is I would take quiet desperation all day.

But Q.D. is an upgrade.  The reality is way more hopeless.  Thomas Hobbs, British philosopher and clergymen, theorized that there was no choice but to live in society.   Because life outside society would be, in his immortal pessimistic words, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. In a word Misery... 

Joining society is hard when you're depressed and anxious and miserable.  Making things seem a little bit less miserable can be very attractive.

Enter the quick fix of mood and mind altering substances.

  Going from misery to misery lite instantly. Alcohol being the granddaddy of all misery  modifiers. 

Valium the misery lite of the 60's.

And as a man child of the 80's, for me? Cocaine. 

Addiction is decidedly outside society and therefore, as we recall from the reading, misery. Once addiction has taken hold, just being less miserable is the only goal.  

Trading short-term pleasure for long-term pain has always been the basic tennant of addiction. Hitting the snooze alarm on a bad situation rather than correcting problems at their source.  The easiest way to avoid the pit of misery. 

Silly Silly


Even given all of this knowledge and understanding I fought against the idea of making positive change.  I willingly set up shop in the pit of misery lite.  Because misery lite beats full on misery all day long....and the transformation is often instantaneous... positive  change takes a while but with drugs and alcohol you can feel less miserable right fucking now.  

But with this "solution" the misery gets worse and the need to mitigate becomes more urgent.  Becoming a perpetual motion machine run on despair... my misery kept me sick and my sickness kept me miserable.  

For change to happen the cycle had to be broken. Giving the sufferer a chance to experience some non chemical misery reduction. That's how treatment is supposed to work.   A break from the pit of despair.  An opportunity
to upgrade from misery lite to full flavored Hope.  

That's why I'm where I am.  To get all the way out of misery.  To begin to believe that there exists something better.  

I stopped chugging the misery lite and tried a sip of hope... and to be honest ... this hope shit's not half bad.

With the same chicken every time?

There is a funny story attributed to Teddy Roosevelt. 

When he was president, the story goes, he and the first lady visited a huge Farm.
Teddy was looking at the horses and the equipment the Mrs. was talking to the dairy maids and young women who ran the chicken coops.  The first lady was curious how many roosters in such a huge hen house? The young woman said only one rooster of course.

 Mrs. Roosevelt then asked "how often does the rooster do his rooster duties?"  "13 or 14 times a day" the woman responded, blushing. "Make sure you tell that to Mr. Roosevelt" said the first lady.

When Teddy makes it around to the chicken coop the young woman reports "The first Lady told me to tell you sir that the roster does his rooster duties 13-14 times a day"  "With the same chicken?" quipped the president?   "No, with a different one each time...""Make sure the first lady knows that."

Variety is the spice of life.  I don't think the moral of the story was serial non-monogamy.  I think it's more about if you have to do the same thing over and over again you have to keep it fresh or it becomes drudgery.

If you work out you have to constantly change up your routine.  Not just to make it exciting and thereby something you can do it again and again over the long term. But it also helps you to achieve better results.  You progress faster when you shake things up.

Recovery can be like that.   I am currently in a sober living community and we have a meeting here every night with mostly the same people. 

It can get a little incestuous with the same personalities, the same people sharing; Like recovery karaoke. What we refer to as the "good sharing motherfuckers", recycling things they've heard in other meetings or just invoking religious platitudes, sounding good being the goal.  It's a recovery thing, suspect sharing; "sharing right, living wrong."  It can be discouraging.

Right now I have no choice.  I'm required by the terms of my agreement living here to go to the meeting every evening.  Not a bad thing. I'm building the muscle of just going to meetings no matter what.  Those muscles are weak and atrophied at the moment.  Starting with a simple exercise is prudent.  Learning the skill of finding at least one thing in a meeting I need to hear regardless of the source.

It's a useful skill to develop. However, when I'm on my own and can choose whether or not to go to a meeting I have to go to lots of different meetings to keep it fresh.  A different chicken every time if you will.

I will have a home-group.  One meeting where I have made a commitment to attend every week.  So people get to know you and you get to know them.  Where you build relationships and rapport.

These are the people who have standing to guide... people who can see me, with whom I can build long-term relationships.

Overall success in 12 step recovery also requires keeping it fresh, and as your life gets better hearing the fresh pain of others.  Nothing helps you stay clean and sober like hearing someone who's just come in and how miserable depressed and broken they are.

One main chicken for continuity and then lots and lots of different chickens to keep it fresh.

I'd like to think the chicken story is real and Teddy Roosevelt did say that because that's just bad ass. And so is Teddy, who once finished a speech after having been shot.  He had a bullet in him and still finished his speech... that's a real tough guy.  And he's who the teddy bear is named after. Below is a video of a Teddy bear telling the story.  Spoiler alert in the story Teddy  hates on Mississippi.   Bonus because Mississippi sucks gay, hairy, clown ass.

Drugs are bad, um kay?

Here's the straight dope kids; Uncle Skippy will never lie to you.   The secret truth of the universe is... using drugs can be fucking amazing.

I have done just about every drug there is to do.  From beer to heroin, I have pretty much tried it all.

Aside from smoking tarantula venom and a toxin you lick off actual living frogs I'm pretty secure in saying I've ingested and experienced every commonly known legal and illegal substance used on the planet to alter mood or mind.

And I'll tell you this... if I hadn't stumbled upon the one substance for which I was engineered;  the one perfect drug for me.... I could have taken or left the whole "drug thing"  without a second thought.

Drugs weren't a problem, they were a solution.  Tired? There's a drug for that.  Sad? There's a drug for that.  Need to sleep, there's a drug for that.  Want to know the secret truth of the universe... Well there's definitely a drug for that.

I could have dabbled a little, had fun and gone on my merry way;  Never going to rehab, never had a problem.  And if my aunt had a dick she'd be my uncle, right?

In Eckhart Tolle's The power of now he describes the reason he wrote the book.  He had an amazing experience.  He was suicidally depressed and miserable.  Then one day he had a flash of insight which allowed him to change the narrative within his own brain.  It stopped his thoughts and he attained a moment of peace within himself.  This peace lasted him months and it met all his needs.  He focused this ability, honed it and then he spent years sitting on a park bench completely content; not a care in the world, no worries, no work... no nothing he just existed because all his needs were met.

I know what he was talking about.  That feeling, that peace, that total contentment, all needs being met and the nagging voice of doubt in my head gone completely... it happened to me... the first time I smoked cocaine.

The relief did not last months however; it lasted moments.  But in those moments I knew a peace I had never experienced in my life.

I had never been completely and utterly content before.  But then as in a nightmare, almost as quickly is it came the feeling begin to fade, and as it faded, the depression, pain and suffering filled in the space it left; like a tide  coming in over a dry sandy beach.

Before I could turn around... the peaceful calm, the contentment...was gone and I was ankle-deep in pain, confusion and depression worse than before. 

Actually the pain was even stronger than it had been before the temporary relief of the drug.  Now the need to remove the pain, to return to the calm and peaceful beach... became more desperate than ever.

But that was okay; now  I knew how to get to that beach, my body knew,  my brain new exactly how to make the tide roll out... smoke more cocaine.

So I did. I got back to the beach, but it was not the same.  There was still a little bit of water between my toes and it wasn't as calm... it wasn't as peaceful as I remembered... the pain was mostly gone and it was better but it wasn't the wonderful feeling I had had.... I obviously hadn't done enough cocaine.  I have to try this again ....oh God no... here comes the pain.... its coming right back... how can that be? It's an only been a few seconds.

In that instant I became an addict. And that addiction has haunted, hobbled and confounded me for the better part of 20 years.

I have fought it every way one can.  

Rehab ... relegion... 12 steps... I've read... prayed... meditated...medicated... faked it till I made it... yet it always resurfaced.

Addiction is evil, is the devil, is your mind turned against you, a parasite in your brain, a horrible dangerous life threatening thing.

Drugs are a mine field; you don't know where the bombs are... you don't know if you're susceptible or not. If you are a person prone to addiction and you try drugs it's like playing Russian roulette.

Truth is every time you try any mind altering mood changing substance you run the risk of finding the thing that enslaves you.

That risk is also what makes drugs sexy.  What makes smoking sexy, motorcycles, surfing, skydiving and bull riding sexy...the risk.

But the risk with drugs is horrifying... The risk is slavery, degradation, jails, institutions and death.

I was freed once. I knew.  I was "woke" and still returned to slavery.  Kanye West got it right.  My slavery was a choice.

So now I have all the problems I had before plus an addiction.

Today I fight a daily battle against a return to slavery.  Now every day clean is a day won.

My drug solution is now only a drug problem.  It succeeded in pausing my pain briefly but then caused way more trouble on the way out.

I see it all very differently now. And as I promised at the beginning I will never lie to you.  I leave you with two absolute truths:

1. Addiction is bad; m'kay?

2. Never trust white men in a boat.

And then there were two....

Sometime on the morning September 24th Kelley Florman put a needle in his arm for the last time.  This was his favorite post of all my blogs he was one of my best friends. I could have just as easily been me dead in some abandoned building but I'm glad it wasn't and I hope to live a long, happy life and to think of Kelley often during it.  

I was writing this blog just before Kelley and I both turned 50.  It was occurring to me then how important it was to look after my health.  

So without further ado my self written obituary,  Kelley Florman's favorite post. For you, old Bean!

_______________

Blog posts hint at trouble ahead for dead comic.

By Vernon A. Guidry, III - Staff Reporter 

New Orleans, LA March 18, 2014

The 2013 blog postings of recently deceased, failed comic, Skip Guidry were re- published today.  The blog "Half the man I used to be" at www.skipguidry.com, was a combination weight loss diary and self righteous vegan rant.  Taken down shortly after the would-be comedian's death.  It was relaunched today under the title "Sign posts on the road to disaster".

Skip Guidry
1964 - 2013

Skip Guidry, an unemployed, self styled stand up comedian was found dead in the early morning hours of July 3rd 2013, he was 49.  He was discovered in his apartment an apparent overdose of banned diet pills and fast food.

"This blog is an obvious cry for help" Said Dr. Janice Strong, a psychiatrist who treated Guidry at the VA hospital in New Orleans.  "The signs were all there"

"I could tell he was scrugglin" said Justin Kincaid, long time friend and contemporary of Guidry on the bottom rung of the comedy ladder. "It's all that vegan crap that killed him, the stupid fat fuck" insisted Kincaid "I'll be at the Chuckle Hole in River Bend, NC this Friday" Continued Kincaid, inappropriately.

"I used to click on the page a few times to inflate the page view stats, you know to make him feel better" said an old friend of Guidry's Kelley Florman.  "I guess I should have actually read it"

Paramedics at the scene reported that there was literally writing on the wall.

"He had written BACONATOR in grease on the wall next to him" Said responding EMT Randy Magnum  Mr Magnum is suing the meager Guidry estate seeking compensation for a back injury sustained while attempting to load Guidry on to the gurney. "The fat ones are always on the third floor" Whined Magnum.

"Judging from the empty pill bottles and fast food wrappers in the apartment I'd say he ODed on knock off Trim Spa shipped illegally from Mexico.  That and  a ton of burgers from Wendys" Stated NOPD Detective Chance Boudreaux .  No foul play is suspected. 

A book deal for the blog posts is in the works reports a source close to the dead comic.  

Guidry's 3 ex-wives declined to comment for this article.

##30##

That easily could have happened.   Glad it didn't.  

mainlining the secret truth of the universe

Premium cable drama aficionados will recognize the title as a quote from Rustin "Rust" Cohle; the brilliantly raw, broken, nearly burned out, yet amazing effective homicide investigator played with iconic quirkiness by Mathew McConaughey in the inaugural season of  HBO's groundbreaking police procedural, True Detective.

Wow there's a lot going on in that opening sentence.  I just had to read it again slowly so as to give all the descriptive adjectives their proper weight.  I'm tempted to simplify but that would feel wrong some how so I'm gonna leave it as is... but I digress...

I really enjoyed the character, Rust Cohle in True Decective.   He's broken but has a moral center.  He uses his brokenness to do good in the world.  Broken people make better murder police.    "Maybe the job made me this way or maybe being this way made me right for the job" -Rust

Recovery from addiction is another of those rare occupations in which you can use your brokenness for good.  You can take the things that you're most ashamed of, your worst moments and once you've survived them, you put them in a box and save them gor later.  Then once in a while you get to take one of them out and use it to help someone, to ease someone's suffering.  

Let me tell you the story of how that happened for me.

Tuesday July 3rd 2000 my brother in law, an unrepentant alcoholic, shot and killed himself...in front of me and my sister, his soon to be ex.

Here's the thing; I was clean and sober about 6 months when this happened.  I was doing great.  Good job, great set up in a new town.  My sister was moving to my town, leaving her drunk husband, bringing her 2 young sons to my town so I could help raise them.  I was the golden boy, the family hero.   I was over the moon with joy and I was filled with schadenfreude for my drunk brother in-law.

I loved that my nephews' father was a drunk.  I had been the family fuck-up for so long.  His uselessness was a constant reminder of my new found super awesomeness.  I reveled in his illness.  I offered him only token assistance.  I never reached out.  I wanted him sick.  It served my needs.

Even his death made me look good.  It played to my strengths.   I was the family rock.  Took care of my sister.  Even my father couldn't handle it.  I was happy the brother in-law was dead, happy that he shot himself.  Fuck him! Loser piece of shit.  I was glad of it all.  For a few days...then the adrenaline wore off.  My reverse shock.  Then it hit...the thought...did I help kill him?

I know I didn't kill him but... did I contribute?

Certainly a little bit.  I was not part of the solution. I did nothing to help, even worse I rooted for his failure.

It was a hard soul-searching weekend.  The following Tuesday I was at my home group NA meeting and by then I was a mess.  I was wracked with guilt.  I had made my nephews orphans.  I was the worst ever.  This was the kind of thing that might make me want to get loaded.

I opened up at the meeting I shared my pain I spilled my guts and the group thanked me for sharing as they always do.

Then one of the old-timers a man I greatly respected who had very serious recovery pulled me aside and told me a story.

He said he was married a long time ago and his girst wife was blowing guys  for money at a massage parlor place.   she didn't want to wait for her money that day so he picked her up brought her home and then went back to get her money and then he would take her money and go buy heroin for the two of them.

He did that and when he got home he found out she'd held out on him. She had dope she didn't want to share with him.  But she'd done too much and she overdosed and had died while he was picking up her blowjob money and scoring for the two of them.

At the time they were living in her parents basement she was cold, beyond saving... he was pretty sure she was dead... but before he could call the paramedics he had some business to take care of.  So he sat down on the bed next to her cold dead body fixed his dope and shot up and then called the ambulance.

I love and respect this man.  He is a good man in every sense of the word.  That story helped me so much that day.

 I was thinking I was this terrible horrible unredeemable human being.  And my friend who is a wonderful human being shared with me that he had done something worse arguably.  

But he lived through it, recovered from it, and now today is a respected member of society and a man that I, and many others love.  That's powerful, that's recovery.

He shared with me what would to the outside world be a truly dark secret.  But in the rooms of recovery it was just Tuesday.

I was not responsible for my brother-in-law's sobriety I'm only responsible for my own.

I could have done more and I have done more since.  I have done what's referred to as 12-step work with a vengeance between then and now because of that incident in fact his death is directly responsible for the 16 year sobriety of at least one person... and that person has helped dozens of other people.

When that wonderful thoughtful man told me the story of finding his wife dead and his response to it...when he shared with me that personal Dark Secret... it lightened my load, it eased my path.  

He didn't have to have experienced the exact same thing I did... he just had to be willing to share with me something that was painful that he later came to terms with and from which he eventually got better.

A sponsor once told me the purpose of life is to become of Maximum use to God and your fellow man.

I believe we make ourselves of Maximum use when we are broken in exactly the right ways so it's to fit perfectly into the hole created in the soul of another.

Our scars and jagged edges give us standing with one another.  I can believe I can find shelter with someone who shows the signs of having weathered the storm themselves.

As I prepare to begin a searching and fearless moral inventory I am heartened by the knowledge that whatever is there... no matter how awful it seems to me now.... my inventory will not serve to bolster the resume of a bad person. 

But rather everything both good and bad will serve to strengthen my armor and uniquely equip me for the road ahead.  

My story makes me perfect to help others in a way only I can.  

Without the scars without the broken pieces without the jagged edges that come from a life misspent and recovered from I'm just a blow hard telling someone what they should do.

And really can you trust someone with no scars? Somebody has never done anything wrong? Somebody with no regrets?

It's okay to be scarred, broken and battle-weary.  We're stronger in the places where we mend.