The Loss of Innocence

I am an alcoholic/drug addict who just so happens to be in recovery. Meaning I abstain from booze and drugs, one day at a time. It also carries with it (in my opinion) a responsibility to change the old behaviors that got me to that destructive place and make amends for the chaos/emotional destruction I brought down on others. First and foremost on those people who happened to care about me the most, followed by employers and other friends....

As I have frequently mentioned in other posts, I also tried to take my own life. I came very close to succeeding and spent a great deal of time in the hospital recovering from the attempt then in the Psych wing of the hospital where every shrink under the Sun tried to stick some psychological label on my ass! Bi-Polar, Depression and the like. And they medicated me to the point that I was basically a zombie, yep the old Thorazine shuffle, walking around the psych ward in my robe and slippers mumbling: "chedda, chedda, chedda..." Needless to say I didn't make a lot of progress that way!

Over time and through a ton of therapy it became obvious that any real psychological issues I was having could be traced back to my addiction and that I wasn't mentally Ill. But of course that did not mean I didn't have some very deep, dark emotional experiences lurking just under the surface. I'll get to those in a minute...

But first I had to get off all the psych med crap they had me on and that wasn't easy. Plus all the folks on the Psychological side shrinks, therapists started telling me and my family that I was headed for trouble by getting off these meds. Don't get me wrong, some people need them, no doubt...but I knew that my issues were addiction related. I had spoken to a lot of different people and I hadn't made that decision alone...And this was occurring almost a year after the Suicide attempt so it's not like it was a hasty decision. I also needed the help of my psychiatrist to help wean me off the psych meds because it's downright dangerous to just stop taking them...

The last couple of days I've written 2 posts that I thought were going to cause some problems because deep down I knew they were about some very, heavy shit that had happened to me. Of course nobody noticed except me, haha! Isn't that the way it always goes?! We think "this is awful, I can't say this...what will people think?!" And nobody reacts at all...the drama was all in my head.

But I will say if anyone reading today really wants to try and get to know me read the posts Giving It Away and The Whisper of God...

Both of those post came out of nowhere and that seems to be how the deepest most difficult subject to me seem to happen now. I didn't sit down to write about those things yet...there they are. I take that kind of spiritual "nudge" very seriously. Just like now, I've felt compelled to mention these two little babies again.

The Whisper of God has actually become one of my favorite posts because it captures the essence of some of the "other" things that have haunted me for years. Some of those very same things that have an incredible power to affect me today, many years after those events occurred. It's not always what happens to you when things go terribly wrong in life. No, it's also about what you lose in the process...

Anyway, I thought I'd throw those back against the Blog Wall and see if either of them happens to stick...