One More Game

I was pretty gross today and by “pretty gross” I mean totally gross, and unfortunately my repulsive behavior felt pretty great.


I never showered and on days when I don’t shower, I always feel a certain film of yesterday that has no place on today. Woke up late, around ten again, and we were off to the park for some coffee and a croissant. (I have four more days of Vegan cheating and then 2017 will be a year of staunch militancy.)


From there I took our car to the shop to fix the AC and cabbed back home. Mairin stayed at the park with the kids for longer than we all expected, so I was home alone for much of the afternoon. I finished The One and Only Ivan and started the latest Zadie Smith book. This was the highlight of my day and the most productive I would be.


The rest of the day was all sloth and gluttony. At one point I popped a giant zit, twice, and was shocked by its contents. Too much information? Sorry about that, but you can’t tell me that you have never been grossed out by the contents of your body. Life ain’t always instagram filters- sometimes you are disgusting.


Made the kids a late lunch and we all lazed around the house for a while, before I went back and picked up the car. A lower than we expect cost had us all pretty happy.


Then Mairin took the kids to a friend’s house and I was alone again. The sun was setting and it felt fine to re-enter the world of The Division on X-box.


As a new adult gamer, I can see the lure and addiction these games have for our middle school kids. If I didn’t feel guilty or know any better, I could easily spend hours in the narratives of these games. After an hour of trying to secure the police precinct in Brooklyn, I gave up. I couldn’t seem to secure the parking lot from those four rioter, looter, zombie types.


Then I did what I have been wanting to do since 1992- I bought Madden 2017. Yup, I am a teenager again, and oh boy have the graphics changed. I went through the training camp and practice and then got killed by the Chiefs. Of course I am Derek Carr and the Raiders. Then I had a pretty resounding win against the Broncos.


So for people keeping score, my day:

• woke up
• ate
• dropped off car
• read
• slept
• picked up car
• played The Division
• played two games of Madden

Then the kids came home. Got their eyes on Madden and Kaia made some good play calls and Skye actually threw a TD to Crabtree.


Since the kids ate out, I ordered one of my final McDonald meals. The four day window is closing fast. There will be zero McDonalds in 2017, not even fries.


Playing video games and eating fast food- if this is not the American Dream, I don’t know what is. It felt great and lazy and full of sloth. But it is not something I would want to maintain, but I can see how people become obsessed and entranced by it. A steady diet of sugar and salt and a dopamine enduced escape from reality- that is a scary combination.


I’ve got big plans for 2017 in terms of productivity, so I need to come up with a structured plan for how I will contain my X-Box habit. This will have a profound effect on how the kids interact with it as well.


At the moment, it is new and shiny and exciting so we are all gorging a bit, but I am sure I will need to set some pretty strong boundaries for anyone who picks up a controller. As an educator, it has been eye-opening to jump into this world. I can’t believe I was able to stay away for so long.


For you gamers out there, how do you set boundaries? When and how often do you play?


And if you are gamer or a sports fan in Singapore when are you coming over for a Madden game?


It is 10:22pm…one more game won’t kill anyone right?

I Am Sick

USA! USA! USA!
LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!


Killer mosquitoes attacking pregnant women, progressive elites, thanks to police and veterans, jobs, shrinking middle class, freedom, bureaucracy, Lucifer, change, elite media, god bless America.


Hillary bad. Trump good. Hillary bad. Trump good. Hillary bad. Trump good. Hillary bad. Trump good. Hillary bad. Trump good. Hillary bad. Trump good.


I must hate myself. Oops, I did it again.


It’s a sickness, this politics- this need to look into the abyss, hoping there is an answer. I mean why else would anybody watch Ben Carson call Hillary a worshiper of Lucifer? How else can anyone stomach Chris Christie build a 17 min “case” against Hillary? You have to be a deranged addict to watch Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. And Tiffany Trump and Donald Junior? I am sick and I need help. I even watched the founder of Muslims for Trump guy lead a prayer.


I space it out with some Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers (he is doing some amazing work on Closer Look) but once again I mainlined the RNC tonight and I am left feeling dirty and gross.


Nothing new. Same old lines and lies and pandering. Same old party tricks and politics. The delegates sit bored and slack-jawed like drunken clowns in their funny hats, occasionally roused awake for a wave of chants and fist pumping. At least the nazis had a sense of urgency. These people look to be hopped up on pain killers and Mountain Dew, but alas I digress. This is not a game of name calling, lest I be called a politically correct progressive elite.


The funhouse of mirrors that is America is staring into TV Land, unsure what the hell it is seeing. The reflection looks somewhat familiar, but twisted and menacing. The strobe lights are pumping as we try to assure ourselves that this is just a bad trip. The sun will rise again, we tell ourselves, and a new day will clear our collective head. Look deep into your own eyes, America, and don’t lose the thread. You are better than this. We are better than this. I am better than this.


Until tomorrow night, I will lay bleary eyed and somberly clutching my blanket, praying for the light.


…


Today-


Breakfast with Heather and Sean. More crabbing and tide pools with Kaia. A short hike through Whatcom Falls Park. A movie. Dinner at a great brewery with Sean and Molly and well, you heard about the rest.


Summer rolls on and the moon is full.

Complexities of Change

I don't know how to start this post. I don't want to make it a bigger deal than it is, but seeing as I have written about drinking and addiction on this blog so many times in the past- here, here and here and probably a bunch more, I feel the need to make some kind of statement, if only to myself to make what I am about to do feel real.

Today marks my ten years of sobriety. Not a drop of alcohol in ten years. If I were a different man, I might celebrate with one of these:

Maybe I would thank god for granting me the serenity for knowing what I can change and what I can't change and the wisdom for knowing the difference. But before you start congratulating me, let me say that on this momentous ten year anniversary, I have decided to start drinking again.

I am serene and I understand the complexities of change. And I can assure myself that I have changed. I am no longer that angry, reckless, self-destructive person sniffing out oblivion. I am a middle-aged school teacher with two kids who might want to occasionally enjoy a chilled glass of white wine with friends during a pool barbecue. Or a beer with my wife as we enjoy a veggie burger at a waterside restaurant. Perhaps, a smooth Scotch, well because it tastes good and that is what most adult can do. Enjoy a drink.

There is no fear of a demon. Or some downward spiral into chaos. Most people can have a drink or two and simply live their lives. I want to be one of those people.

I've used and abused alcohol in many different ways in the past. For reasons I have come to terms with, I needed escape in my youth, and alcohol was my one way ticket to blackout land. I used to say, "I don't understand why anyone would drink if their main intention is not to get drunk." For me there was never one or two drinks. It was always-drink until everything was gone. Vomit. Black out.

Moderation seemed absurd. But now, it makes sense. I want to give it a try. This is not some spontaneous decision. I have thought about this anniversary for months, and I have set up some basic parameters:

1. No more than three drinks.
2. No drinking alone. 
3. Drunkenness is not the goal.

So many people have supported me in my sobriety, that I feel I am letting them down, and who knows? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I will quickly realize that I really do have a real drinking problem and that I will not be able to maintain my three simple rules, in which case I will need to quit completely- this time for life.

But I would like to think that time can change us. And with age comes wisdom and happiness and our desires wax and wane and are better controlled by our impulses.

I am not planning some big event, and I am actually a bit nervous to pull the trigger, but I am now opening the door to say that next time I am out to dinner or with friends, I might order a drink. I will sip it slowly and enjoy the fruity after tones and the clanking of the ice. I might enjoy a Mojito with friends as they celebrate some joyous event. Not because I want to get wasted, but because I feel that I am in control.

Will keep you posted. Stay tuned.

The Voice

Sometimes, more often than not actually, I think that maybe after eight-and-a-half years of sobriety, I might be able to throw in the towel on the teetotaling, and enjoy a nice robust Chardonnay with the rest of the civilized people of the world when I go out to eat dinner on a river in the fading glow of a well-spent day. Or maybe, I too can "grab a cold one," with the other parents as we watch our kids frolic and swim in the pool with the pregnant South East Asian clouds simmer overhead threatening rain.

But then I think about what I just did to that bag of Salted Kettle Potato Chips, And I think again. 

image by appleswitch

I'm laying in bed, my fingers covered in grease, half the bag gone before I take my first breath. I hear that all familiar voice over the tender crunching of chips, "Man these are good. Can we eat them faster? There is no point in stopping now, there are not enough left for a satisfying session next time. You are more than half way done. Just finish the bottl...bag."

Addiction is about that voice. The one that pretends to be you, but really is only manipulating you to do the things you know you shouldn't. It's a familiar voice no doubt, one I hear every time I over indulge on anything: chips, batch of cookies, a vegan chocolate bar. I have never been able to moderate or negotiate with that voice. It's all or nothing.

As my vices dwindle with age, I am left wondering why I have to abstain entirely from the things I want. How do normal people just have a few chips? Or one or two glasses of wine, without the need to inhale, annihilate, devour, and.....see, just talking about it gets me excited. 

Perhaps my problem is that I know the voice too well. We have been through so much. He has saved me from many a painful realization, all the while making dousing me with shame and regret. Food for me, as of now, is harmless, so I will quell the voice with a bag of chips now and then, but I am still distrustful with the glass of wine on the river.

Sometimes at a party, while getting my wife a glass of wine I will discretely smell the aroma wafting from the glass. Fruity and light, the glass lightly moistened with condensation. It smells like a tart fresh apple with a hint of pear and, is that..... yes some pineapple sweetness. That is when I hear the voice, "You could drink that entire bottle in one sip like a cool Snapple and just be getting started." 

I hand the glass to my wife and reach for a cold glass of water and think about later in the night when I will binge on a bag of chips. Keeping the voice satiated once again.

Rearview Mirror

Human emotions seldom function in isolation. I can't seem to find an apt analogy, but I see webs, ladders, perhaps colliding particles? Maybe somethings to do with tables and chemistry. I never seem to feel any one singular emotion at a time. There is always the blending from one emotion to the next. Sometimes they form bonds and move about us as compounds. Some light and airy, others heavy metals we can never seem to discharge.

I first began to notice the complex collision of emotions when I was eight years old.  Must have been the weight of these compounds that caught me by surprise. It started with shame. Even on its own much too heavy an emotion for a child to deal with, but this shame activated guilt, which quickly ionized into pain and fear. Even as my young heart was trying to contain this immensely volatile compound, I realized that it was merely a catalyst to a much more combustible bond of emotions-- anger and pain.

I buried this unstable chemistry within myself for most of my adolescence. No matter how heavy and confusing and painful it became, I felt strong enough to absorb it on my own. Because even then I was beginning to feel that the pain could transform into strength and the anger into the foundation of my personality. I was creating a defiant independence that would help me become the man I am today.

Three important things happened when I was seventeen. I found friends I could love and trust. I found alcohol. And I was finally able to release some of my pain, anger, fear, guilt, and shame. I realized that I no longer had to carry it all by myself. On those endless drunken nights beneath the moonlight, I told the others what had happened:

When I was eight years old my parents separated. It was traumatic and confusing.  I was too young to see it coming, and so had no idea of the cause. Like most children of divorce, I am sure I partially blamed myself. My dad moved into another apartment with his cousins. Two brothers who I knew as family friends. I can't remember if I was ever given a choice of who I would live with, but I stayed in our house, in my room with my mom. We would get a Spanish roommate named Pillar.

That same year, while I was in third grader in Ms. Wonder's class, I would spend some weekends at my dad's new place. For some reason, inexplicable to me now, I slept on the couch. I remember many nights falling asleep to MTV, Here Comes The Rain by The Eurythmics a song that remains a memento of those nights.

On some nights, it happen more than once, but I cannot tell how many times, the cousin would come in the darkness and touch me. He would lay next to me. Kissing me and forcing me to touch him. It was in this darkness where I first learned shame. I guess it was the beatings made me wise. I couldn't breathe, holdin' me down. Hand on my face, pushed to the ground. Enmity gaged, united by fear. Forced to endure what I could not forgive. After sometime, I told my mom and it stopped. He disappeared. There was some court dates. I saw someone. I think. It was vague and scary. Then it was finished. 

Some time later, my dad would accidentally drive our metallic green Volkswagon Bug off a cliff somewhere on Highway One. He would break his ribs, shoulder, neck and spend months in a hospital in Sebastopol. He came home to a new apartment and his parents wearing a halo.

He was not the only one who was broken. My childhood ended that year. I seem to look away. Wounds in the mirror waved. It wasn't my surface most defiled. I find it so strange to think that my daughter is only a year away from how old I was when all this happened. I cannot begin to think how she would handle any one of those traumas, let alone all three. I have done everything I can in my life to make sure she never has to feel the weight of my emotional chemistry.

But I felt it. For a long time. Even after I told my friends. I carried this secret with me everywhere I went. It wasn't just inside me anymore, it was me. A tumultuous battle between shame and anger. Soon I would begin to explore blame and for the longest time I assigned blame to everyone I could- my parents, the cousin, the world, and eventually myself. Why didn't I stop him? Say no. Stand up. I must have liked it I told myself, causing more shame. More guilt. This had to remain a secret. It had to be my fault it happened and so no one could ever know. My friends knew and that lightened the load, but no one else.

A few years later, I found a counselor. Someone who could voice these emotions. Who had been there. Felt the pain. Been abused. Been the victim. Had the scars, and had not only survived but was now telling me that the pain actually helped him. That the anger, the sadness, the shame all of it was not my fault and that if I could tap into it I could become a man.

I saw things, saw things, saw things, saw things: Clearer. Clearer. Clearer. Clearer. It was as if, there was finally a voice to the silence I carried with me for most of my life. I gather speed from you fucking with me. Once and for all I'm far away. I hardly believe, finally the shades, are raised. Saw things so much clearer. Once you, once you were in my rearviewmirror...

This was the voice of vindication. Of a rage so profound even though it was tempered and searing. It would bring the earlier emotions to a boil and break them down only to build them up again into something new. This music was proof that I would not only survive, but I would flourish and grow. I would shine. I would love. Myself. Once and for all I knew I would be okay.

It was this song, this music, this band that saved my life and allowed me to become who I am today. This is no hyperbole. To this day, I feel my core shake when I hear these songs. Go ahead. Take a break. Watch the video above.

It's funny to this day, beside my few close friends and my wife, I have never shared this story with anyone. There is still the taboo of talking openly about abuse. There is still the shame of exposing one's trauma to the world. A fear that someone, somehow might blame the brutal victimization of a child on the child himself.

But here is what I have learned: These emotions, shame, guilt, anger, pain, sadness were never meant to be carried alone. They are too dark and heavy,  too dark to let fester beneath our skin. Abuse can create great artists- Bukowski, Cobain, Elliott Smith and many more, but the average person is not doing himself any favors carrying the burden alone. There is a sense of relief that comes from letting go.

People sometimes commend me on being honest in my writing. Which is funny, because I have always kept this back. Afraid. But I finally felt it was time. Not because I want your pity, but because I hope that this revelation, this release might help someone else gain strength.

I chose to make my way through the trauma on my own. I struggled through so much anger and pain and alcohol and whatever else to get to where I am now. I don't regret a thing, and I know everyone needs to find their own way, but perhaps someone out there reading this might not feel so alone. Someone might listen to Rearview Mirror and exercise their own demons. Someone might choose to write away their suffering and turn sadness into art.

original image by Paul Watson

Remember that art in general and writing in particular gains force by how it empowers both the producer and the viewer. The powerful part of writing and sharing is the connections created, the communication it fosters. This post has helped me lighten my load. I have been able to unburden myself and finally let go of my shame. It is an amazing feeling to watch into dissipate into the Internet.

So please, if this post has moved you, if it has empowered you, or helped you in anyway, please share some thoughts in the comments. We are not alone in our pain. Also, if you think there is someone in your life who might benefit from some of what I have shared, please feel free to pass this post along.

Life is beautiful because of the pain and the sadness in it, not despite it.

Last Note: I want to thank my parents. I know they are very sensitive with what I share online and I know that this might freak you both out a little bit, but I wanted you to know how much I love you both and I no longer blame you for anything. Although, I wrote about these traumas, I had an amazing time growing up and I love myself, the life I have created and the person I have become, and I could not have done it without you and all your love and support.

Why Don't You Drink?

Have you ever not done something that most people do? Have you ever made a choice that was contradictory to most cultural customs? Have you ever felt the need to explain your choices to  everyone with whom you eat and drink ? Have your choices become the center of attention at nearly every meal? Well let me tell you; it sucks.

I get it. People are interested:

What? You don't drink? Anything? Wow! I couldn't live without wine.
What? You don't eat meat? Not even fish? Wow! I couldn't live without bacon.
What? You don't eat dairy? Not even cheese? Wow! I couldn't live without cheese.

No. Nope. I don't. I don't drink alcohol of any kind. I have been vegetarian for some time now, nearly ten years and I recently, after reading Eating Animals, chose to become vegan. 

Once the shock abides and their pity wanes, most people want to know why? Why would anyone choose such an austere life choice, one devoid of such comfortable habitual safety blankest as food and booze.

How do you live?
What is the point?

I can see it in their eyes, as they nervously take a sip of their drink and gnaw on a chicken wing or some other flesh. I often try and cobble together some kind of philosophical clap-trap, but the truth is that they are not looking for reasons; explanations are not what they want to hear. They do not really want to know why I do not drink or eat meat or dairy. They just want to be assured that their choices are still okay. That somehow, what I am choosing to do, does not in anyway affect what they choose to do.

I often feel that my choices are made to seem so abnormal, borderline hysterical really, that any defense of them will only make me feel like a pompous douche-bag. I mean who wants to hear the real reason why someone would give up alcohol after a lifetime of drinking when they are having a good time at a bar? Who wants to consider the torture and murder of billions of sentient beings when they are sitting down to eat them?

Yet, they ask. Perhaps their morbid curiosity wants to watch me stumble and fail in my reasoning, so as to prove that their choices are the right ones and mine the bizarre. If I could really answer their questions, it would sound something like this:

My childhood wasn't a sad one. There were moments of joy. I am sure. Many of them. My parents loved me. I loved them. I had enough food. Money. Toys. Food. Attention. I was happy. I am sure.

And so but when I look back why does it feel so grey? Why does it feel alone and empty and wanting? Yearning? Addictive? Perhaps it was the fact that I was from a far away land. An immigrant in a land of wealth. Wearing the wrong shoes. Donning the wrong style. Perhaps cuz I usually felt wrong. Maybe it was the divorce. Or the car accident? Or the business. Or the darkness that is seldom mentioned in public.

Whatever the case, this emptiness was replaced with a low-grade rage as early as I can remember. Stewing. Rumbling. Boiling. I can remember feeling the manifestation of this anger from when I was eight. Third grade. From that time, I carried this anger and emptiness with quiet servitude, like a feral animal that I could control but feared. It morphed into various forms:  disdain for teachers, pity for peers, and a disgust with much of what I saw. Carrying this wrath gave me comfort until I leashed it with alcohol when I was fifteen.

By the way, wouldn't this be a great chat to have with someone at a bar, when they are drunk, teetering in place?  

Junior year two things changed. I found friends and we drank together. We got lost together. We escaped together. We found each other.  Friendship, indignation and alcohol were the perfect elements for a new compound that would fuel me for most of my life. I didn't have to carry the wild animal  anymore. I could unleash it on society. And he could do anything he pleased. He was invincible. He had no fear and no expectations.

He took the anger and the lonelinesses and the angst and mixed it with booze to create: passion and personality and charm and attitude. He scoffed at authority. He pierced his flesh and inked his skin. He devoured books and music and women and life. His appetite was insatiable. His outrage morphed and changed into the pleasure and joy and bliss found only from a drunken escape into oblivion.

I have no regrets about my life in my twenties in the nineties. I needed alcohol and it helped me. It helped me break myself down and rebuild new possibilities. My life was not all like the shower scene from Leaving Las Vegas. There were moments of indescribable perfection. There was love. There was work and writing and a degree and travel. There was learning, so much learning. There was growth and building and evolving. The anger dissipated, but the booze remained.

This new world and the identity who inhabited it was no longer escaping, he had moved into a life dominated by blurry lines and comfortable drunkenness. The fuel that had ignited my re-birth had become an embalming fluid. I had navigated through a lonely angry tunnel, but found myself in a boring drunken light. What next?

I searched in the only place I knew. Moved to Africa and looked at the bottom of bottles. Met Mairin, but kept looking in New York and Malaysia. Alone in rooms with wine and Leonard Cohen. I was becoming him. My dad. I had learned of clarity, of mediation, of life and focus, but the wine was all I had ever know and so but that is where I went. I had dressed my identity in being that guy. The alcohol, as far as I was concerned had saved me from myself. It had created me. Who could I be without it?

Then, just like that, the choice was easy. We were having a baby. I saw my dad. Drunk. Happy. Drunk. Angry. Drunk. Present. Drunk. Loving. Drunk. Distant. Drunk. Whatever he was for me, and he was many things, he was/is a loving and devoted father. He inspired me. Taught me to be a man. Taught me to be myself and to question and to be kind and to be creative and to be myself but he did it all through a haze of drunkenness.

The most important lesson he taught me, was that I would not be drunk around my kids. Whatever baggage I carried as a father, would not be further weighed down by the weight of alcohol. That's it. I quit. That was seven years ago. Not a sip. Not a drop.

My journey brought me here. There is much to be said about sobriety, but who knows if you are even reading, or if I have any energy left. Maybe, the next time someone at a bar asks me why I don't drink, I can pull this post up on my phone and have them read it.  Or maybe I will just let them roam in their own drunken head and contemplate their own journey. 

People Before Politics

I’ve written before about my addictive personality, and I am finding myself in state of gradual relapses with one of my most dangerous vices. The craving for this drug is one of the hardest highs to kick. I swore that I wouldn’t follow it this time around. Keep my nose clean and away from the hype. I would refrain from following election results, no listening to speeches by Obama and getting frustrated by his empty propaganda and contrived promises.

I would ignore the emails I get from the Nader camp, as even I am starting to get annoyed by his ineffective campaigns. But then I found out that Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress in California against Nancy, I am the biggest sell-out in politics, Pelosi.

I could feel my blood pumping at the thought of this woman sneaking into Congress. No one person can effect change in halls of the US Senate, but one person, this person in particular could make it very hard for people to go on business as usual.

To have Sheehan in Congress, standing up or issues like these, would be a godsend for the third party independent movement. If you are a Californian progressive and you are tired of business as usual, then please support this campaign. I have become so jaded that when people start to talk about how, “Yes, we can,” Obama bullshit I just look the other way and say I don’t believe in American Democracy anymore. But this, this campaign gives me hope. I am vstill ery doubtful that the corporatocarcy will allow someone like Sheehan to get anywhere near the US government and their big money goons, but the addict in me would love to see her try.

And by the way, apperenlty someone is trying to tap her phones! COINTELPRO anyone?

Follow the links, read her blog, get involved. Oh and if you are around, see if you can watch Ralph, Sean Penn, and Tom Morello rile up the crowds for real at the DNC, away from the shiny TV spots and Pepsi Center.

Three Years

Today marks the year year anniversary of when I stopped drinking. I would hope that by this stage I would have stopped keeping track of the days, and to an extent I have, but it feels good to know that it has been three years.

I can't imagine ever drinking again, the idea of unleashing that beast no longer feels scary, but unnecessary. I was very nervous about how I would deal with my identity as a non-drinker when I first quit, but it has been quite easy. I have written a lot about addiction here, so I have nothing more to add, no profound insights on sobriety. I just wanted to state that I feel certain I have made the right choice, for all the insecurities and angst I display here on this blog, I am sure not drinking is the best decision I have ever made in my life.

Addiction Redux

I just finished reading A Million Pieces by James Frey and it has left me gutted. I did not and do not care about the publicity surrounding the accusations of its factuality, his dealings with Opera, or the unfortunate involvement the book had with the American media hype machine.

My two best friends read the book; one claimed that Frey’s memoir was one of the top five books he has ever read (he has read some great books), and the other friend ordered that no one was allowed to even mentioned the name Frey in his presence because the books was so appallingly bad, that it made him psychically sick. I was meant to be the tiebreaker. I succeeded and I failed. I am left gutted. I am empty. I am complete. I read this book looking for something. I am not sure what that was or if I found it, but I know that it was vital I read it.

I hated the first two hundred pages. Anthony was right and for a while it appeared that together we were winning. Frey’s gimmicky prose grew tiresome and downright boring. His self-loathing, perhaps because it hit too close to home, was irksome in its persistence. Page after page of choppy dialectical sentences about fear, hate, Fury, rage, redemption, were miring me in a pit of hatred toward Frey. I often found myself bored by his hopelessness. What I was not realizing at the time was that he was spiraling the reader to the bottom. Once there, Frey carefully directs us back into the light.

The second half of the book explores Frey’s personal strategies towards not only overcoming his addictions, but overcoming them on his own terms. His struggle demonstrates that if we look inward and harness our individual power to connect with simple truths and choices, we can bring about change in our lives.

Readers of this blog know that the topic of addiction is a very personal one for me. In my last post I claimed that perhaps we are all addicted to a variety of things in our lives, but what Frey’s books showed me was that this view may not necessarily be true. Normal people do not face the struggles he does, that we do. Our addictions are not only with drugs or alcohol, but also with the constant struggle of addiction itself, the constant need to consume and annihilate the world, to use it up, the constant need for more more more. I can relate to this hunger in a very real way. I was never addicted to crack, never slept in the street, never lost my job or family, but I have sat in many a dark room alone contemplating my demons. Frey paints a very vivid and relatable world of what it feels like to be a prisoner to addiction. The constant battles we face, giving into and resisting temptations.

Nothing beyond desires exist. Intertwined within my mind they think we are one, but I know they control me. We argue and yell, threw bottles against walls, as if rage were a practical remedy. Let us be. Let us not need. I am gone. Empty eyes stare, but reveal nothing. When did you become my enemy?

In the novel, Frey often talks about his battle with an uncontrollable Fury. He explores the roots of the Fury and finds them sprouting in his childhood. An ignored and misdiagnosed ear infection results in two years of agonizing pain for the two-year-old Frey. His cries are ignored and as a result his therapist feels Frey developed a sense of abandonment and pain. Coupled with an addict’s genes, it is not a far reach to see how his life spiraled to rock bottom. Frey himself argues that addiction is a series of choices, and that we cannot blame childhood trauma or poor genes for our addictions, but reading the book made me examine my own rage, and I tried to track its source.

My search led to some places that even I keep private, but I realized that my childhood was one long scar still healing. This self-exploration made me see the various traumas in my life and how they led me to be so angry and self-destructive. Filled with suicides, abuse, exile, and loneliness it is a surprise I didn’t end up homeless or in rehab. I did however, see a pattern develop in the types of people I gravitate toward. Through Frey’s words I began to hear a repeating voices of my heros:

Elliott Smith
Eddie Vedder
Kurt Cobain
Anthony Kedis
Hunter S. Thompson
Henry Miller

Any one of them could have been the narrator of A Million Pieces. All scarred. All healing. Some fight on. Some quit. But we all share the pain of the struggle. In our words, my own, Frey’s, Smith’s and the rest, we hope to find solace and peace. I hope through these words you find peace and understanding as well.

Like Frey, I pride myself for moving past my addictions or better dealing with them on my own terms. I still feel such guilt and shame for not being able to fully “appreciate” everything I have. I know I have a great life. I know I am strong. I know I am doing “well.” But the doubt and the pain still exist. This is the nature of the struggle with addiction. Nothing is ever enough.

He uses the iChing and I turn to Zen. The fact that they are very similar philosophies reassures me in the power of their simplicity. But that is for another post. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is dealing with addiction in any form, or for those of you that want to better understand the mind of an addict. The prose can become tiresome, but give it a chance and see if it can open some doors and shed some light for you as it did for me.

Whether the story is true or exaggerated is a moot point. Fiction is designed to help us better understand the world and our role in it. This book does just that!