Tag Archives: Drinking

Lyme Disease Sucks…Or COVID? Or…Huh?

I don’t even know where to start. The last post left off with my second night in the woods questioning everything about life. And this post is written from the comfort of our living room, and although things still aren’t alright or back to normal, they’re a bit better than they were two days ago.

I’d like to think my past week would make a really rivienting story if I could have peace long enough to piece it all together. As an example: after my second night — this post here — I experienced cops at 8 a.m. (one with a fucking AR-15 by the way), ended up in a mental center, found myself wandering through the woods with a friend drinking beers, calling into work, getting sick, being tested for COVID, and being unable to return to work until I get my results. Despite being back home my life still seems to be in a downward spiral where I can’t grasp onto anything.

So…what was I writing about? What day is it? Oh. Friday. Friday, yes. I came home Tuesday night and set my tent up in the yard. The cops earlier that day gave me 12 hours to get the hell out of the park and I planned on doing just that. My wife apparently panicked when I sent a text saying the cops found me and I was being hauled off to a mental institution and this was enough to muster her effort in helping me pack my shit up and move out. So after two days in the woods I was back home. In the yard, but back home.

Glossing over everything, because I’m not sure of it all anyways, I was back at home, drinking, talking with my wife into the early morning hours of Wednesday. I felt bleak, but hopeful in a way: I was back home at least I’d have the occasional company, but then something happened around 1 a.m.: I felt like shit. I instantly became achy and got the chills. I felt strange and off and I couldn’t stand another night in the tent. It wasn’t cold out but I had a chill I couldn’t shake and basically begged to sleep inside. She was loving and caring enough and I didn’t have to really beg but I was so miserable I felt like I needed to beg. I couldn’t take another miserable night in the tent alone, especially with the aches and the chills.

Inside I started to overthink. I had a strange bite on my arm and assumed it was a tick bite. Or a spider. Whatever. But then the thought of “Lyme disease” popped into my head, I Googled it, and then started to panic. Each of my symptoms fit those of Lyme disease to a tee. Worst of all was the symptom of “confusion” or “slow thinking” and everything seemed to fit that as well. I felt strange, I felt funny, and I felt a way I couldn’t even explain. I felt off and slow and stupid. Everything felt as if it was happening in slow motion and required much more effort than usual. I couldn’t even move my arms to pick up a PS4 controller and it took minutes of dedicated effort to do so. At the time I was totally convinced: I had Lyme disease. Because I got bit by a goddamn tick. Because I was living in the woods. Because I panicked and moved out on Sunday. It’s what I deserved and was fitting. If you act like an idiot, stupid things happen to you.

Somehow I managed to sleep a few hours and awoke totally conflicted at my situation. Did I have Lyme disease? Should I see a doctor? How did all of this work with COVID? And what if I had COVID? I had no idea what to do. Eventually I decided to ignore the possible Lyme disease until I showed more symptoms — swollen joints, constant aches, and a bullseye shaped rash — but thought it was proper enough to get a COVID test just to be safe. Just to protect others. To do the right thing. Luckily, we have a testing center a mile away from our house so it was a quick drive there.

The test took about 15 minutes. I filled out a form on a clipboard and then had a swab shoved up my nose for 15 seconds — the longest 15 seconds of my life! — and then I went back home. But what to do about work?

I wasn’t sure what the UPS policy was about COVID and sickness — and I didn’t feel good at all — so decided to call my full-time supervisor to ask for some details. He’s a good friend and I feel like I can tell him whatever is happening, so elaborating on my Lyme/COVID/woods story didn’t feel too awkward. He didn’t know what the policy was so referred me to a lady and gave me her number. I told her my story and she gave a very simply and straightforward recommendation to me: no work until I got the results back.

And like that my already rocky life was flipped even further upside down by not having work to go to. I love routine. I love having a plan and something to expect from my day so this indefinite lack of work totally threw me off at a time where my life was already thrown off balance. Hell, I was looking forward to work just to have some purpose to my life and that was cut out from underneath me.

So now what? Well, I’m drinking. Heavily. Each day is an alcohol fueled mess where I’m just trying to grasp onto anything — alcohol included — just to keep myself together. I know it’s wrong, I know I’m totally fucking up, but I just want something to do to keep myself distracted. I don’t have work anymore and I don’t have routine. So I drink. Just pissing away minutes, hours, and days until I get my results back where I can have some structure to my life, where I can have some routine to rely on. I don’t feel too bad about it because I know I’m not making excuses or deluding myself at all — this is a problem and this is how I’m coping and it’s not sustainable or healthy — and I know I’ll pull myself together eventually. Despite my endless pessimism when it feels like I’m drowning in the waters of life I still know that I’ll make it. I’ll get through. As shitty as this phase is I know it’ll pass and I’ll be fine.

So today. I don’t feel sick at all. Kinda achy, but nothing special. No COVID cough. No bullseye rash on my arm or body. And I feel even more like shit. I overreacted. I had a COVID test and admitted it to my supervisor. I’m off work until I get results. I feel like I’ve gamed the system to get a free two weeks of vacation for being dramatic. I know in my heart I did the right thing — I was sick, I was tested, and I admitted it to my work place — but I still feel bad about it all. I feel like I’m fucking over my coworkers, being an even lazier and useless slacker than I usually am. Just completely worthless and useless and lazy. And that’s where I am today. Time to crack open another beer…

Here I am, another victim of COVID even if I am an indirect victim of it. I’m out of work, and tossing that on top of my marital problems only makes the week one of the worst weeks I’ve ever deal with. In the meantime I’m doing random pointless things to pass the time until my life pieces itself back together, most of which is drinking: unapologetic drinking to cope with life. I’m living on a very basically level where I’m just trying to survive the next day, and that’s it. This is another bleak blog post, but trying to be positive, the past few days has been quite the adventure. An adventure through hell, but an adventure nonetheless.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing.

Or my Facebook page ~~where I don’t do much of anything at all~~ which I deactivated and the link doesn’t go anywhere now. Check back later though!

Drunken Writing Sucks

Long Distance Drunk

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“Hang it up now or never, hang it up again
Doesn’t seem like anything you’re saying or doing or doing is making any sense
Long distance drunk, long distance drunk…”
– Modest Mouse

As stated somewhere, I only drink on Sunday. This has been working wonderfully nearly two months into the year. I get to satisfy my inner alcoholic and give him something to look forward to while not forcing myself to be a really good person and be sober all the time. It’s rough being a raging alcoholic that drinks every day and it’s also rough being perpetually sober with no way to temporarily escape life. One drinking day a week seems like the best solution for me, at least until I slip and fuck up my entire plan.

Sunday, a friend of mine needed some help moving furniture at his mother’s house. This happened around noon and naturally we like to unwind by grabbing some food. We went to Old Chicago around 1:30 p.m.; this was way too early to start my Sunday drinking, but what the hell else are you supposed to drink at a restaurant while talking to a friend you haven’t seen in a long time about really heavy stuff? Water? Juice? Coffee? Hell no. I purchased a big 22 oz IPA that sported a whopping 7% alcohol by volume. This was basically like 2.25 Regular Beers and of course I ended up drinking two of these over the course of an hour: 5 or 6 beers by 3 p.m. (To make the math simple, I’ll consider these two 22 oz IPAs 5.5 Standard Beers.) What a start to the day.

I’ve always had bad experiences being drunk all day but couldn’t seem to recall why these days were so bad. This was probably because I was miserably drunk and had some memory impairment from it. I knew I was signing myself up for another completely drunk day by starting so early, but surely there wouldn’t be any problems, right?

The problem with drinking is that sobering up is the worst feeling in the world. You feel tired, slightly nauseous, and end up yawning every few minutes. You don’t even have to drink a lot to feel awful; one or two beers makes me sleepy and lethargic. I notice my mood is usually shit as well. You toss some caffeine into the mix to offset the sleepiness and then you get an awful jittery feeling along with a hefty dose of anxiety. It’s terrible and I cannot sober up while awake, it’s one of my unwritten rules in life. When I start drinking, drinking will occur until I go to sleep. Considering I go to bed around midnight (or even later) once I started drinking at Old Chicago I knew I was signing myself for another totally drunken day. And I knew it was a bad idea; some part of me recalled that being drunk all day was a terrible idea that made me very uncomfortable, but I couldn’t grasp the feeling clearly enough for it to matter.

We left Old Chicago and I decided to stock up on beers at the gas station so I wouldn’t have to do it later. Usually I drink a six-pack on Sunday, but since it was 3 p.m. I’d have to get quite a few more beers to make it through the day. For some reason I thought a 12-pack would be “safe” enough (safe from running out of alcohol too early in the day) and was able to talk myself down from a 15-pack. How many beers did I think I’d need to survive the next 8 hours?

I made it home about an hour later and was already feeling the awfulness of sobering up. I went outside to “put air in the car tires,” which wasn’t a lie, and ended up sitting in my car shotgunning a few beers for 20 minutes. I had two and felt somewhat better. This brought my Standard Beer Count up to 7.5.

We had to take the kids to Red Robin for their birthday. This was around 5 p.m. and I was feeling good. I was drunk again, fending off the hell of sobering up with those few beers shotgunned quickly while hiding in the car. One of the step-kids was inside putting makeup on as we all waited for her in the van (she’s always makes everyone late) and I thought shotgunning a third beer was a fantastic idea! That would ensure full drunkenness until we made it to Red Robin, which had an ample supply of beer. Things were looking up. Standard Beer Total: 8.5.

At Red Robin I order another two heavy-hitting 7% IPAs that tasted awful. Standard Beer Total: 14. I don’t even like IPAs, they just have a really high ABV percent so sign me up for a few of them. Struggling through the second beer was where things really started to go downhill. It was a challenge to finish it with each sip making my stomach turn, but you can’t leave undrank beer at a restaurant! I was drunk, like stumbling around and slurring my words drunk, but didn’t feel good anymore. I just felt tired, lost, and kinda confused. Like I had no sense of time or anything and was floating through life in a haze or something. Time didn’t make much sense and looking back at the day just seemed like a blur. Usually more beers clears these dirty feelings up, but on the verge of being unable to function I didn’t have much choice: sober up and feel burned out or drink more and pass out/vomit somewhere and feel like total shit the next morning.

We went to drop one of the kids’ friends off and I was playing some music that for some reason just slapped the shit out of me emotionally. There I was riding shotgun in a van full of teenage girls totally crying over a song I was listening too. It was beautifully embarrassing and I didn’t even care. And surprisingly I still don’t care about it; I have zero regret about my actions. I’m an emotional person and the music speaks to me, okay?!

We get home and I had another beer. (Standard Beer #15. I didn’t think to tally these up Sunday — not that I could anyways…math is hard when you’re blasted drunk — and I’m glad I didn’t. Oof. 15?!) Wife cut my hair. I wanted to take a shower to clean away all those annoying hair clippings so I hauled two more Icehouses upstairs and pound those down while I listen to more music. Standard Beers #16 and 17 — shower beers! Shower beers are some of the best beers, but not the ones on Sunday. They just weren’t doing it for me.

Life was really cloudy by this point and it was only like 10 p.m. I have an outstanding goal to publish a chapter in my Morrowind Fanfic story every Sunday; this was the singular thing I had to get finished. Luckily I had the story completely written and the only real challenge left was to edit and post it. Somehow I realized that there was zero chance this would get done because editing while drinking — let alone being legit drunk — was a terrible idea. I’d have zero ability to edit the story, clean up grammar, and decide if it even sounded good. Looking back it makes perfect sense because I could barely walk without assistance from the walls or talk properly. There was no fucking way I could edit a story in my state. This only made my mood worse too, so I laid on the floor feeling miserable, confused, drunk, but also not really drunk or enjoying myself. Just a miserable drunk feeling. Heartburn, lack of motivation, feeling like a failure from my inability to edit a fully written chapter because I drank the entire day away. And to really wallow in my self-hatred I played the song I cried to hours earlier and ended up crying again to it. Jesus Christ, was this my life?

In my state I finally realized why I don’t do this day drinking thing: it’s terrible. The last time I recall was in the summer where I had a case of beer and was drinking the entire day away. I thought grilling out was a good idea and I vaguely recall standing outside grilling while my dad was visiting while I tried to drink away the exhaustion that kept creeping up on me. Not actually enjoying grilling or cooking but just trying to get the damn thing finished to where I didn’t have to do anything. Total laziness and exhaustion. It’s hard to explain but Sunday cleared things up for me. Drinking all day is a terrible idea. Drinking for a few hours where you pound a six-pack is great — it always puts me in a good mood — but trying to drag it out into a perpetual drunken state does not work. In some ways I think no one is meant to feel that good all the time, as if your mind is worn out by being too drunk and happy. After about five or six drunken hours you feel exhausted, tired, and depressed, and eventually reach a point where more alcohol doesn’t improve the situation. So that was my weekend. Sounds fun, huh?

Introspective Drinking Sucks

A few nights ago I was sitting on the steps outside drinking and was having a great time doing so. I got into my head and realized a few really important things that should’ve been obvious but due to the intricacies and difficulties of actually knowing yourself weren’t that obvious to me until I had a few drinks. I also thought it might be fun to list them as sort of a rough “to-do blog list” for 2020 because each one has quite a bit of baggage to unpack. In total I could probably write about seven blog posts about the topics below, especially the ones involving artistic expression and personal fulfillment, and the ones that struggle to ask, “Who am I? Really?” They are:

I can’t comprehend that people actually care about me. More importantly I don’t know what causes me to be this way.
I don’t know if flying or flight instructing is the correct career choice for me due to the lack of artistic expression.
Artistic careers take a fuckton of effort, way more than I thought. Do I need to go all-in on artistic creation or can I do it as a hobby? To be a writer, do I need to ignore all other jobs/careers and write nonstop or can you forge a job out of a hobby?
I doubt any possible success at an artistic career (like writing/blogging) because I believe I have no talent in it. Even knowing that inherent talent is bullshit — it’s all practice to be good at something — I still can’t get my brain to accept it. It’s the same as people caring about me: I know I have talent but something in my brain won’t accept it. And I don’t know why.
Everything I do makes perfect sense to me for the most part. And everything anyone else does makes sense to them. People don’t act irrationally outside of a few exceptions that are probably like less than 1% of the human race. No one has anything to explain to anyone, and I’m included.

Phew. I don’t even want to elaborate on anything currently because they’re all headache inducing. I also have to state that when I realized these things I had a totally neutral state of mind; there was no depression or happiness or any emotional context to them; it was just me being totally honest with myself. But what I do want to elaborate on here is what got me to realize these things: alcohol.

The introspection that I’d gotten the other night is what mostly drives me to drink. The deep meditative state that you sometimes get. Sadly, and kinda proving my point here, is that this is a rare thing indeed: I’ve only achieved this state one other time while drinking that I can remember. One of the problems with alcohol being shitty is in how uncontrollable it is. I have no idea what mood I’ll be in when I actually get a few drinks in me.

A good example is tonight. My original plan was to have a few drinks and start pounding out blog posts/stories. It’s taken a total of seven drinks to get me to type this with the rest of the night being totally pissed away with me being distracted with random things like YouTube and video games, and this is how drinking always works. Some nights you piss hours away playing Kerbal Space Program. Some nights you set off drinking in a good mood and find yourself with crippling depression thinking about how you could possibly carry on with another day. Some days you get balls-deep into a six-pack and find that ideas come out of nowhere and you start on a marathon session of writing despite being exhausted. Some nights you believe a bike ride and a naked swim in the river is just the thing you need to do. Some days you sit on the porch and have deeply introspective thoughts that lead you to areas of your psyche that you never knew existed. The truth is you never know what you’re going to get and that is shitty indeed.

Drinking Sucks: 10 Reasons to Not be a Drunkard

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Lists of ten, top-ten lists, or whatever you want to call them kinda suck in their own right, but I want to write one anyways. It seems fun, clickbaity, and will be a challenge putting together ten individual items to discuss here. Since my slew of vacations and my mental meltdown I’ve had one hell of a time with alcohol, and in a way I think I’m writing this post mostly for myself to get back on track. So what better way to make a “top 10 list” than to bitch about alcohol abuse. So I hereby present to you ten reasons to quit drinking!

10. Save Money $$$

The best motivation to do almost anything is to make money/save money; it’s the driving force behind everything in a capitalist society. Despite this, I put saving money as far down the list as possible. This is due to a few reasons. Firstly, people don’t change addictions based on cash savings; no one would smoke, drink, or shoot heroin if this was true. Addiction is one of the few things that exist outside the motivation to make/save money. Secondly, alcohol is actually pretty cheap! Smoking a pack a day will leave you out literal thousands of dollars in a year. If you are an alcoholic you simply won’t save a ton of money by quitting. The benefit it in everything else.

While alcohol is cheap (and probably the cheapest of any substance addiction you can have) it still isn’t free. Even if you won’t save as much as a heroin-addict would by getting clean, you still are saving a bunch of cash. Consider a six-pack, three-days-a-week sort of drunk: a cheap six-pack can cost about $5 (if you’re not buying utter trash beer that is). This would be $15 a week, or about $800 every year! If you drink every day of the week this cost obviously doubles to well over $1,500. While saving money shouldn’t be your primary reason to not drink, it also shouldn’t be forgotten.

9. Not Be Hungover

Anyone who has drank moderately/heavily in a single sitting should be familiar with the dreaded hangover. I don’t need to explain it too much because if you’re reading this you’re probably familiar with the symptoms: the dehydration, dry mouth, rapid heart rate, anxiety, jitteriness, hunger, nausea, lethargy, light sensitivity, and the pounding headache. I mean what else can be said of the hangover? Sometimes I find music sounds better when hungover, but besides that they’re fucking miserable and horrid affairs. Obviously if you don’t drink, you don’t deal with a hangover.

8. Eat Better/Lose Weight

A serving of alcohol (can of beer, shot of liquor, glass of wine, 5 pumps of hand sanitizer, etc.) has some calorie content to it. This varies greatly, but the fact is that alcohol itself has calories means there is no “diet alcohol” or whatever you’d want to call it. By simply drinking you’re consuming extra calories than you normally would. Consider that a shot of vodka has about 70 calories: six of them would have 420 calories! This isn’t a whole lot but it’s the bare minimum you can get drunk from. A can of beer has over 100 calories (usually) and anything with added sugar is even worse. The fact is if you’re an alcoholic you’re probably consuming a fuckton of calories and probably packing on weight. The term “beer belly” has reasons behind it.

This is considering that you’re not exercising or lowering the amount of food you actually eat. If you’re drinking heavily it probably means that you’re not exercising or taking good care of yourself: in fact I’d assume you’d probably be eating horribly! Everyone knows alcohol, greasy burgers, and fried foods fit together perfectly (shout out to pizza here) and the alcoholic isn’t usually stereotyped as deeply athletic. This stresses the point even further: if you’re an alcoholic you’re probably also getting fatter. So if you quit drinking you might lose weight.

7. Sleep Better

While alcohol can knock your ass out in heavy doses, it doesn’t seem to give you a good night’s rest. Even if you pass out drunk and are unconscious for eight hours you’ll wake up feeling like you only had an hour-long nap. While this might not be detrimental here and there, dragging this shit out for weeks and months of fully-fledged alcoholism, you will end up feeling like shit. Even though you’re sleeping enough your body simply isn’t repairing itself and recovering like it is supposed to. By not drinking, you just rest better and feel better during the day.

6. Stave off Insomnia

This is probably a subset of what I talked about in number seven (sleeping better), but fuck you because this is my top ten list. I can break it down into as many or as few sections as I want! I separated them not only to add more numbers to this top-ten list bullshit, but because insomnia usually occurs a few days after bingeing. Since your sleep quality is trash when you’ve been drinking, when you stop you do get a few days where you’re so tired and worn out that you sleep really well. I’m talking nights where you sleep 10-12 hours and wake up feeling energized and refreshed.

The problem occurs after those restful days. I think, and I don’t really know for sure, this is due to alcohol being a depressant and “slowing your body down” or something. The human body adapts, or tires to adapt, to things; if you’re drinking a depressant your body “upregulates” everything to keep you moving. It’s like the reverse of drinking caffeine, a sort of “inverse crash” or whatever. As your body finds itself without alcohol, you find yourself “upregulated” and your mind just constantly keeps running, especially at night. This is especially bad because you might turn to drinking just to sleep normally. Another downside to insomnia is that you’d think if you couldn’t sleep you’d be awake, but you’re not. Alcohol insomnia leaves you tired, exhausted, and unable to sleep. It sucks.

5. Have a Better Memory/Focus

Drinking puts you into a haze while sobriety clears things up. If you drink a lot, you’re basically entering and exiting hazes daily (or whatever) and this makes reality get kinda…confusing. You start to forget what you were actually doing in regards to life planning/projects you’re taking care of. Take writing a book for example: you need to remember what the hell you were actually writing about to make progress at it in the future. I, like many others, have found that drinking greatly improved my ability to write at the expense of having no idea what I had actually written. This leaves you feeling lost in the grand scheme of whatever you got going on. It becomes hard to tie thoughts together into a coherent project.

I’ve also realized that I’d forget what I’ve talked to people about even if I was sober at the time. Like I’d tell a coworker a story and repeat the story days later without remembering initially telling them. I found myself prefacing every conversation with, “Not sure if I told you this before, but…” just to acknowledge that I was at least aware that I might be repeating myself.

This is related to drinking but I don’t know how to explain its direct relationship to it. Obviously you forget shit when you’re actually drinking, but a general effect on memory seems to exist and is especially scary. Everyone expects to forget shit when drinking, but when this effect spills over into the weeks after drinking it is especially frightening. Quit drinking and you might have a better memory and won’t feel like you’re on the verge of Alzheimer’s.

4. Have Better Teeth

I don’t know if this is really a thing, but whenever I’d go to the dentist for a routine six-month cleaning they’d always ask me if I drank a lot of pop. I’d always say “no” and they’d give me a look of complete and total skepticism. The dentist and the hygenist know exactly what the effects of sugar look like on teeth so they’re the last people you want to lie to about what you actually drink, but fact is fact: I didn’t drink pop hardly at all. I’d have a can of pop once a week, maybe twice, but this wasn’t nearly enough to cause dental trouble. And I’d brush everyday! What the hell was going on here? Why were they looking at me suspiciously like I was telling a lie?

It might be alcohol. As we know, alcoholic drinks have sugar and starches and whatever else and this can’t be good on your teeth in heavy amounts. This is another one of these “I don’t know this for a fact but I assume it’s true” things: drinking probably fucks your teeth up just as much (if not more) as heavily-sugared sodas do. I did tell the dentist/hygienist that I did drink a lot of beer but that I didn’t, in fact, drink soda ever. I mean if they’re going to accuse me of dietary habits that were fucking my teeth up they need to at least get it correct: beer was fucking my teeth up.

3. Anxiety

I was sober for a span of 5 months this year, and holy hell, I didn’t have any anxiety. I mean there was still a background level of anxiety, but it was nothing like the physically-shaking-before-going-to-work style of anxiety that I was used to. This was surprising because being a total alcoholic lead me to believe that maybe I just had anxiety that badly naturally. Sobriety made the anxiety just disappear. It was a slow and easy-to-miss process, but after a few months I’d find myself not worrying as much about stressful upcoming events. I’d still be stressed and worried, but for some reason this didn’t translate into anxiety. You might drink to help relieve your anxiety, but in reality it is probably making it worse. By not drinking you might find that your anxiety slowly vanishes, or turns into something manageable.

2. Motivation

I like to think alcohol works by moving happiness from one point of your life to another, usually from the next day to the present. You drink and you feel better, but you pay for it the next day by feeling miserable. This “sum of happiness” never changes but it’s just shifted around and isn’t a scientifically quantifiable amount at all, but it makes some sense I guess. I think this happens with motivation too.

Drinking for me gets my ass in gear. I love drinking on the weekends and doing dishes, cleaning the house, work on blog posts and stories, and generally just knocking out projects I need to do. The problem occurs the following day when I seemingly moved motivation to the previous day: I’m lazy, uninspired, and don’t want to do a damn thing. This can obviously lead to problems where you drink just to get your motivation back and this snowballs quickly into alcoholism.

By not drinking you can have motivation!

1. Not be Depressed

This one is very similar to #3 (anxiety) in that drinking probably makes a problem worse that you’re trying to cure in the first place by drinking. I think many people have a sort of “background level” of depression and if a notably shitty day happens, they drink to make themselves feel better. But like with anxiety, you end up shooting yourself in the foot because over time drinking just makes you even more depressed where you need more alcohol to feel better. And so on.

And like anxiety it’s hard to notice it happening. Over months and years of periodic drinking you accept your current depressed state as just how things are, and that not drinking can make things worse for you, and even make you feel suicidal. It’s this that keeps drinker hooked and coming back for more with almost zero choice in the matter. While it’s true things usually get worse when you initially stop drinking, hanging in there can prove beneficial.

Months after not drinking your mood is just lighter and you feel better. And like anxiety, it’s hard to realize this and one day you discover that your perpetual depression has just kinda melted away. You stop thinking that people hate you and are trying to avoid you or that everyone talks bad about you behind your back. You stop feeling bad for the shitty state of your life, and with no alcohol to feed the self-doubt and self-hatred, you find yourself making progress towards improving things. I know this might not be true for everyone, but after not drinking I have found zero downside and all upsides to it. And when you find yourself in the clear you wonder why you tortured yourself for so long, because sometimes you realize that life isn’t too bad and in some ways it’s downright enjoyable.

So if you’re a drunkard, maybe consider these ten items and maybe attempt sobriety. It’ll take some effort and it won’t be easy, but usually immensely beneficial things take time and effort and this is certainly one of them. Drinking sucks.

My (near) Mental Meltdown Sucks

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On this blog I try to do proper posts — posts about actual topics/themes — as opposed to the more blogesque type posts of just telling people how I feel. There are a few of those posts here but I try to keep them to a minimum, mostly because I feel that people don’t like constantly hearing how you feel. For example, I try to not be the guy at work that tells people about every miserable detail of his life while constantly whining about the most mundane shit. A conversation is a two way thing and talking about your feelings is very one-sided most of the time. I hate burdening people with it and I feel it also applies to blogging. I’m just some random fucking dude in Illinois so why would anyone want to hear me bitch about things? This is why I try to stay focused on real topics. I think people want to read a directed post about a topic that gives the reader something to relate to, information they might be interested in, or something they will be entertained by. Sadly, I don’t think I’m very good at doing this and that many of my posts are these exact rambly, preachy posts that I despise.

Today I want to write one of these rambly “feelings” posts (It’s my blog so fuck it, right?) mostly because I feel like I’m in the midst of a real metal crisis. Although my mood is slightly better than yesterday, it’s still like a 3/10 if I want to put a value on it. Yesterday I was drunk and seriously considering riding my bike down to the river and tossing myself into the frothy and turbulent water near the dam. It’d say my mood was a legit 1/10 or maybe even a 0/10; I don’t understand how you could feel worse so maybe a zero does make sense here. It was one of those times where you see no real purpose for continuing on. Part of this is surely attributed to my vacation “list of goals” and having accomplished most of them. While my life isn’t “completed” by finishing a few low-tier/mid-tier goals over the past few months I still have nothing to look forward to or to direct my energy towards. It’s easy to limp onto the next day if you have projects to keep you busy and distracted. It seems that I’m in limbo currently.

My mood has improved to where it isn’t blatantly suicidal and I’m to the point of thinking something like “I’ll carry myself through this day, sleep, and then worry about feeling miserable later.” I’m still miserable but I’m willing to fight on through until tomorrow at least, even if tomorrow doesn’t offer anything really. It’s a very basic existence, just taking every minute as it is, and hour as it is, until they all pile up and you find yourself making progress throughout the day. And sometimes your mood even changes for the better if you just give it enough time to do so.

I think why I want to write this post is because others might find some comfort in knowing that others also feel like shit. One of the biggest downsides to feeling like shit is the belief that no one else understands how you feel. Depression is so isolating that you lose sight that everyone else is also human and most likely also feels exactly like you do occasionally. This gives you the feeling that everyone else has it all figured out and is happy, making being awake at 2 a.m. and feeling suicidal even more depressing. It makes your skin crawl. That’s the only way I can think to describe it: it’s an utter and total hatred of yourself and existence that your skin crawls. Like you have on a horrible and ugly costume that you somehow want to rip off of yourself but at the same time it is you and there is no way to escape. Sometimes I just want to black myself out for a few days even though it’s not possible. Just knock myself out for a few days to wait out the worst of it. Even if I do know logically that I’ll feel better in a few days (because I always do), it doesn’t help the awake-at-2 a.m.-and-unable-to-sleep feeling because your skin is crawling at your own existence. Sometimes you just want a skip button for life.

Hence drugs. Or in my case alcohol. That’s my typical skip button along with OTC sleeping pills. Can’t sleep and miserable? Benadryl. Miserable at the end of the day? Drinking. Drinking always helps because it’s like a good friend. That is until it doesn’t help and it manifests itself as a dangerous threat.

“But didn’t you quit drinking boss?” Why, yes I did, but the seesawing of work and vacation the past few months has left me unstable and dabbling with the alcohol again. This week, being my first week back to work with zero vacations left, means I am in the thick of the shit until next year. No escape. No reprieve. And our Christmas holiday shipping season is coming up. Total dread of the future. Yeah, pass me one of those beers right now. Thanks.

And as a side note I agreed (because I’m a fucking moron) to do a really shitty job at work this week. I really like my supervisor and wanted to do her a favor at the expense of my mental and physical health. Claire, appreciate it if you read this.

With my vacations being over I’ve taken up to alcohol as a means to “ease back into work” or some other alcoholic’s justification such as that. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were all drunken days celebrating/mourning the end of my vacation and celebrating/mourning the return to work. I have no idea why I feel the way I do sometimes because it makes zero sense.

Actually going back to work lead to more drinking because of the aforementioned shitty job I stupidly agreed to do. So Monday was another drunken evening (“celebrating my first day accomplishing the shitty task at work”), and Tuesday was a genuinely horrible day. So I drank then. Wednesday, while I initially had hopes of the day being good, spiraled down the toilet so I begrudgingly purchased another six-pack after work and pounded that down even if I didn’t really want to.

This is when I noticed things were going horribly wrong for me. I didn’t really want to drink anymore but I didn’t feel like fighting the urge to not drink. It was easier for me in my stressed/depressed state to drink than not to drink. Somehow those celebratory beers over the weekend turned into something that I needed in some strange sense. I knew I’d have to quit drinking eventually, but I wanted to postpone that day always to the next day, which would hopefully also be stress-free. If this sounds like addiction it’s because it probably is.

Drinking used to improve my mood especially early on in the binge, but by Tuesday and Wednesday even two beers didn’t improve my mood much, and by the fourth and fifth beer my mood was starting to plummet for some reason. Once again my “friend” the alcohol was severely letting me down. I imagine this is how abusive relationships are; at first they’re very loving towards you and over time they start to mentally tear you apart for some evil and unexplained reason. This is exactly what a fucking marathon week of drinking did to me. It was severely degrading the quality of my life in a time period that I didn’t expect possible. I assumed real alcoholics had their lives slowly spiral down the drain over years and decades, not within a week like mine was doing.

So, hence, crisis time! Despite being totally suicidal and creeped out by my own existence and consciousness as described earlier I took a benadryl to just knock my ass out. Just trying to make it to the next day as quickly as possible. To not think for just a few hours until I was in a better mood. I woke up utterly miserable, tired, hungover, and feeling all around shitty. This is where I am currently. I’m at the fucking dentist’s office at 10:45 a.m. feeling just…who the fuck knows. It isn’t a good feeling but it isn’t as bad as before mostly because I’m occupied with something to do. And the more I’ve typed this the better I’ve felt. Toss a few points up to blogging/writing for getting those evil thoughts out of my head, even if it is partly. A friend of mine used to say that writing has some cathartic powers or something and I believe her. When I feel really shitty I have this strange urge to write and giving in usually seems to help.

Once again, why blog about all of this in such a rambly, emotional fashion? Because other people surely find themselves in a situation like this occasionally. The scary part is that logically it’s hard to remove yourself from the mindset. I know that I’ll feel better tomorrow and know that drinking ~~probably~~ caused it, but it’s hard to believe all of this when you’re depressed. I can know I’ll feel better later but that doesn’t help right now when I actually need it. As much as you might feel alone in a state like this, you’re really not. There are countless others who are feeling the exact same way that you are so you’re not alone. I don’t want to say everyone feels like this because it seems that some people are just immune to being depressed, but I think most find themselves here now and again. If people know they’re not alone, maybe that will help. Perhaps doing what I did can help: go write something, find yourself a project to keep busy, just do something to pass the time until your mood inevitably improves. Don’t give into that dismal mindset that tells you there is nothing left for you to accomplish in your life and that you might as well call it quits. And probably don’t fucking drink nonstop six-packs for an entire week straight. Take care of yourself, because near mental breakdowns suck.

The 4th of July Sucks

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It’s that time of year again: the 4th of July. Also more appropriately known as Independence Day for obvious reasons. It was 243 years ago that the Declaration of Independence was signed where we (The United States) basically told England to go fuck themselves because we didn’t need them and their yuppy-ass tea anymore. Americans take this day off work to sweat in the July heat, grill out, and drink copious amounts of beer/alcohol while trying to blow their fingers/hands/arms off with fireworks that may or may not be illegal depending on what state you reside. When you look at what people actually do on Independence Day and compare it to the actual meaning of the day you’ll end up confused. But all of those things are somehow really stereotypically American so maybe it is fitting after all. Maybe July 4th is just a day for Americans to be unashamedly American drinking beer, grilling, and lighting off fireworks that came from China.

Perceived History Sucks

A quick history lesson: nothing really happened on July 4, 1776 besides the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Looking back this was important but the US wasn’t exactly “founded” on this day as most people seem to believe. The battles of Lexington and Concord (the start of the Revolutionary War) took place in 1775 and the Revolutionary War ended in 1783: over seven full years after the declaration was signed! Even more silly is the fact that the modern U.S. Constitution was a mulligan because the prior Articles of Confederation was dogshit and it was ratified in 1790: 13 fucking years after the Declaration. From an actual historical perspective July 4, 1776 — while a big deal — wasn’t as big as a few other key moments in our nation’s early history. I wouldn’t call it “the beginning” of the U.S. of A. at least.

A shirt that depicts the “U.S.A. began in 1776” ideal even if not explicitly stated.

Not that any of that matters because I doubt the average ‘Merican has any idea about what actually occurred 240ish years ago. We drink beer, grill, and blow shit up. Who cares? I imagine the typical ‘Merican believes that July 4 was the day that George Warshington rowed his boat across the Mississippi River, chucking tea overboard, while an eagle flew overhead with a 50-star red, white, and blue flag in its proud talons. He went to Warshington Dee See and wrote the constitution himself with an eagle-feather pen. Shortly after that, Samuel Adams created Budweiser Beer. That’s how ‘Merica really began.

Partying Sucks

Another traditional part of the July 4th celebrations is partying. People usually invite over their friends (or get invited over by friends if they don’t have their own homes) and sit around and drink beer or something. White People usually listen to radio-friendly 70’s or 80’s rock music where the same Motley Crue song you’ve heard 1,000 fucking times is played so you can hear it for the 1,001 time. I’m very glad we live in a more “ethnic” area of town; lucky there isn’t any White People around blasting their goddamn Dad Rock and drinking Budweiser while they wear wife-beaters and american flag shorts.

(I should note that I myself am white and even I hate the typical White People culture. Were fucking stupid sometimes.)

We apparently have quite a few Mexican (or hispanic) families that live near us because we’ve been hearing that typical ethnic-latino music all day today. It’s actually refreshing to hear something other than typical White People music and I can’t help but admire Mexican families for their ability to have real parties. White People parties are usually only like 10 people sitting around in lawn chairs not saying much to one another and it’s borderline depressing. Mexicans play music where the bass (It’s always really uplifting too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a depressing Mexican Party Bass Line) can be heard all over the neighborhood and they always look like they’re having a real party. There’s people swimming and dancing and jumping and smacking pinatas with sticks/bats/whatever and the kids are running around the yard like they’re on crack or something. It’s great to witness. 4th of July is no exception and the Mexican Bass is envelops the neighborhood like the July heat does except that it’s refreshing. It’s kinda ironic in a way that Mexican families pull off Independence Day better than White People do. Somehow I feel more American hearing Mexican Bass Lines on July 4th.

Fireworks Suck

We went downtown where the fireworks shot off are almost exactly the same as they have been for the past decade. I knew this before we even saw them, but nobody had to tell me in advance; they’re always the same thing. There are some small variations but they are minor and I just can’t bring myself to be excited that they made smiley-face fireworks this year. I quit being excited for fireworks when I was about 16 and I don’t see how anyone older than that still enjoys them. Over the people, traffic, and bullshit that they must deal with do these people really enjoy it still?

We parked a half-mile away and started on our hike to our traditional viewing spot; a spot a quarter-mile from where they actually shoot the damn things off. We get as close as possible to the river that splits our city in half, and across that river is where they shoot the damn things off. We can’t sit right next to the river because that is some special, locked-off area that only paying customers are allowed access to. I’ve never understood why people sit there as our free spot is just as good, but perhaps they offer beer or some special crowd experience. I don’t know. Either way we started walking to our traditional spot.

On the way to our traditional spot a few teenagers started following us. One was a really talkative teenager while his friend seemed to only listen; I never heard him say a damn thing. This isn’t notable at all until I really listened to the talkative one: he seemed to say the word “bro” at the end of every sentence like it was a period. I’m not joking, every sentence ended in “bro” and it only took three sentences for me to know something was comically wrong with the way he talked.

“Man, fuck that shit, bro.”

“I do what I want and no one is going to tell me otherwise, bro.”

“Yeah I know, bro! That’s what I’ve been fuckin’ trying to tell you, bro.”

“I know but you’re not listening to me, bro! I said fuck ‘em, bro.”

It happened like that for at least 10 minutes. I laughed my ass off every time he finished his sentences. Making this even funnier was the fact that this “teenager” was really only like 10, maybe 11. He was cussing like a sailor and saying “bro” to end every sentence. People really exists like this? This ~~teenager~~ boy isn’t being ironic? Bro.

“I do what I want and no one is going to tell me otherwise, bro.”
-Some Kid at the Goddamn Fireworks

Anyway, we get to the fireworks and they start on-time at 9:30 after mentioning the sponsors. I’ve never noticed it before but apparently the fireworks (called “SkyConcert 2019”) are broken into three “acts,” each separated by a mention of the sponsors. I don’t know if all cities do this but Rockford, Illinois always has some synced music to the 30-minute firework display, once again called “SkyConcert 2019.” The songs played were the same: the show always begins with the National Anthem, features “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong somewhere in the middle, and ends with the “1812 Overture” by Tchaikovsky. I didn’t even know the closing song was the “1812 Overture” but a quick Google search for “firework finale songs” pointed me right at it. I mean it’s a perfect song for it, but currently it’s too perfect and now just expected at the end. Every firework “SkyConcert” I’ve seen has had this song plopped right at the end. Obviously.

Other typical songs are Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” and a handful of country songs that I don’t know the names of (because I don’t listen to shitty music). Since I was paying attention, I was actually surprised that the second “act” nearly all consisted of Shitty Country Songs, some kinda slow and emotional and others a bit more upbeat. It makes a sad sort of sense though; country music is by default the music that represents the U.S. of A. even if it is trash. I don’t know how this happened exactly, but it sure is shitty.

I was also surprised to not hear Katy Perry this year. This is one of those small, subtle changes that you don’t really notice and is what differentiates SkyConcerts from other SkyConcerts. I guess Katy Perry isn’t big enough to be in firework displays now?

Normally I despise people who take pictures/videos of fireworks, but this is mostly because they don’t account for the unique lighting situations that occur during in-air explosions. They slap their phone onto “auto” and smash the “photo” button and never look at what is actually captured. So you get overexposed and backlighted images that are garbage and people spam this shit on social media for some reason. Anyways, rant over, here is my best picture which looks like an electronica album cover ala Animal Collective.

There were little fireworks, big fireworks that go BOOOOM, smiley-face fireworks, red white and blue fireworks, sparkly fireworks, glittery fireworks, and fireworks that sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal just after milk has been added. The finale sounded (like it always has) like every explosive device they had as a spare standby was lit just to get rid of it with a constant rumbling ROAAAAR over the city for a few minutes. As a naive kid I actually thought they lit off spares at the finale while now I know it is all perfectly programmed to perfection with zero randomness. If anything I get joy out of seeing a firework explode way too low where you know it was a genuine accident because the rest of the show is so damn banal now. It’s cool seeing shit explode, but seeing it year after year so rehearsed and programmed makes it boring.

In Closing

So I went home and drank a Joose and Bud Light Chelada. I really went with Joose because I was in the mood to be as trashy as possible with my drinking today. I wasn’t trying to lie to myself here: I wasn’t happy and I felt dirty and I knew I had to drink as part of my 4th of July duties. Budweiser would’ve been the most patriotic choice, but Joose seemed a natural go-to as it offers 14% alcohol by volume, is cheap, and has a note on the side of the can that states: “PREMIUM MALT BEVERAGE WITH NATURAL FLAVORS….” Premium Beverage my ass, it’s trashy as fuck (I was going to post a photo but even that was too trashy.). But that’s how I’m closing off this shitty holiday. Have a fun and safe 4th everyone even if it is over. This holiday Sucks.

Everything Sucks

All things that Suck, and a few things that are Awesome