100

I have 100 days clean today.  Coincidently enough, this is my 100^th blog that I have written.  Susan says I should end my blog here.  She says I am too wordy in my blogs.  She asked me if I was writing a novel.  Perhaps.  Maybe not a novel, but maybe it could be a book someday.  I don’t know.  For now it is a blog.  I’ll try to keep this one short.

I have now written 100 blogs.  97 of those blogs were posted on MySpace.   I posted blogs on MySpace from September of 2006 until September of 2010.   I took about a year and a half “break” from Friday, March 13^th, 2009 until July 25, 2010.  I switched my blog to BlogSpot three blogs ago.  It has been a nice change.  It is much easier to post on BlogSpot than it is on MySpace.  Plus, I have heard MySpace referred to as an abandoned amusement park, and it seemed my readership was declining.  It was a good home for the blog for a while, but I like BlogSpot.  I guess I like the link to FaceBook also. 

My life has become somewhat of an open book over the past few years.  This doesn’t mean I share all of my insanity in this blog – believe it or not.  My addiction was pretty insane.  In fact, I believe I started writing because I heard rumors that that there were rumors about my drug-using activities.  I know that some people close to me were concerned and some people knew some of what was going on.  When I started hearing about these rumors, I decided that I wanted the information to come from the “horse’s mouth.”   Whatever the rumors were, they probably couldn’t come close the in insanity of my reality. It also occurred to me that whatever was going on out there was so amazing to me that I had to share about it.  I also thought that perhaps someone might hear something from my experiences that could help them in his or her life. I thought maybe it could help someone who was struggling in life to have hope.   I thought it might help a young person to not follow in my footsteps.    I once wrote a blog called “After School Special” to discourage young people not to follow in my footsteps.  Finally, I really just needed a place to let go of all I had been through.  I had lost my dad a couple of months earlier and was pistol whipped on the street at 4:00 in the morning a week prior to my first blog.  That’s pretty much how this all began 100 blogs ago.     

I stopped writing about a year and a half ago, in part, because Susan said I was worrying people.  The other parts were that I was just so hopeless and I seemed to have lost my spiritual connection.  The insanity was becoming common place to me.  I was insane.  I also thought it wasn’t really helping to keep telling people, “I used again…”  When I started writing this blog in 2006, I truly believed I would never use again.  I had just gotten pistol whipped and ended up in the emergency room.  That was pretty scary and I believed I would never use again after that.  I did not however work a program of recovery.  But, I lived a good life and I was grateful to be alive.  I started getting honest about my reality.  I started writing this blog.  I eventually relapsed and in time, my insanity convinced me that you all knew everything about me anyway, so all I had to do was be truthful about my reality and I would be set free.  The truth is, full disclosure about my reality to others has not always worked in my favor.

I also imagine that a lot of people figure “Oh great, the junkie found God.”  Well, I actually found the devil.  It seems God found me.  I felt I needed to share about this amazing universe and this great force I seemed to have stumbled upon.  Still, I have lost my spiritual connection many times and failed to live in a “Good Orderly Direction” because of my using.  For the past 100 days, however, I have lived the “Good Orderly Direction.”  I have prayed so hard every day that God relieves me of the obsession to use.  So far that prayer has been answered.  This doesn’t mean I don’t struggle at times, but the gut-wrenching obsession that leads me to tunnel vision, and eventually relapse, has not returned.

 I have 100 days of recovery under my belt.  This is the longest I have ever gone while working a recovery program.  I know I had 90 days at least once in the past while working a recovery program.  I think that was in 2004.  I stayed clean for over 3 months by writing this blog.  I also got about 4 months clean by selling my photographs and writing this blog.  (I am not certain the exact amount of days because I was not counting them).  My work helped to keep me clean those record four months, so did this blog.  However, I did relapse.  After relapsing about two and a half years ago, I started attempting to get clean with recovery because I didn’t want to lose everything I had worked so hard for.  I lost a lot of it.  For the past two and a half years I have really struggled.  The longest I stayed clean was 57 days while in an inpatient rehab program.  After failing at that, I had little hope that I could ever stay clean.  I really wanted to stay clean more than anything in the world, but really had no idea how this was going to happen.

This recovery business is hard work.  Nothing good comes easy.  I am grateful that I have a disease that I can work at, however.  At least getting clean is a possibility.  I do believe it to be a disease.  It has all of the characteristics of a disease - that’s for sure.  I just have to take my medicine in the form of recovery.

My 100^th day clean was nice.  It rained.  It has not rained here for many months.  In fact, the rain reminded me of my using days.  The last time it rained, I was using.  It doesn’t really rain in San Francisco from the months of March or April until November or December.  It rained a lot earlier this year.  I was out in that rain a lot because I was using.   In fact, I found a flyer in my rain coat pocket today that one of the Sixth Street Community Guides gave me.  After seeing the flyer, I remembered pathetically sitting on the corner of Sixth and Mission Streets when the two Community Guides approached me and offered me some water.  They also made some suggestions for me as far as shelter and rehab.  They wrote down some addresses and phone numbers for me.  About a month ago, I saw those two guys and told them that I was doing much better now and thanked them for their help and concern.

Front and back of that flyer

This is the first time I have ever counted my clean days to 100.  I have looked forward to this day.  It has been a hard day in some ways, but it feels really good.

Top of the World

For some reason I have always had a fascination with tall buildings and big bridges.  I have always loved cities and the vibe that comes from them.  I have gotten to see most of the large cities in this country.  I went to many of them because the Grateful Dead was playing there.  Sometimes, I just went to them because I wanted to see them.  I love to travel.  My favorite cities are New York and San Francisco.  I like Chicago.  Los Angeles has grown on me since I have lived in California.   I used to visit South Florida often.  Miami is a beautiful city.  Seattle is a pretty cool city.  I of course have a special place in my heart for my home town of Cincinnati.  And being away from it has changed my view of that city – in a good way.

When it came down to it, San Francisco or New York was where I really wanted to be.  I ended up in San Francisco.  The weather is much better here than in New York.  I also love the mountains and bay here.  Perhaps it is the people and the liberal attitude that I love the most about this city.  I still wouldn’t mind living in New York someday, though.  I imagine we’ll end up back in Cincinnati someday – hopefully downtown. There is just something about the infrastructure, architecture, makeup and the vibe of cities that I love.  I love being in big crowds of people.  I love riding subway trains.  I even like the craziness a city offers.

When I was young, I couldn’t wait to go to the top of the Empire State Building and The World Trade Center.  I was fortunate to get to do so.  I loved going to Soldier Field, Madison Square Garden and RFK Stadium to see the Dead.  I thought the east coast was much better than the west coast. 

I didn’t think I would ever want to live in California.  In 1995, I was going to propose to Susan at the top of the Toronto Skydome, the tallest structure in the world at that time, but Jerry Garcia died and the show we had tickets to in Toronto was, of course, canceled. 

After that, I set my sights on New York City - Time Square to be exact.  I had heard that you could rent 30 seconds of time on the jumbotron and I was going to propose by way of video message.  I found out that they quit doing that not long before I had planned to do so.  I still thought New York would be a great place to propose.  It was, of course, going to be a surprise.  I have a history of overdoing things in life; Susan, however, was worth it.

Back then, Delta Airlines had this program called Delta escapes and you could fly to your choice of 8 or 9 cities for about 4 days over a weekend for anywhere from $49.00 to $199.00 round trip.   The cities were selected by Delta one week in advance.  I was planning on going to New York when a friend who was living in Montana at the time called me and said he was going to San Francisco for the weekend.  It just so happened that San Francisco was a Delta Escapes city that weekend and I thought, “I’m sure there is a great place in San Francisco to propose”.  Plus, she won’t suspect anything if we are meeting Scott.  Oh yeah, Susan had told me she would never fly.  I gave her the tickets and told her they were an early Christmas present since it was the month of December.  She was very excited to go to San Francisco – not so excited to fly.

We stayed in Chinatown that trip.  I ended up proposing to her at the top of nearby Telegraph Hill.  Telegraph Hill is one of the highest points in the city and has beautiful 360 degree views of the city.  From the top of that hill one can see downtown with a great view of the Trans American Pyramid, the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.  It is also the hill upon which Coit Tower is built.  It is located in the North Beach neighborhood.  North Beach is San Francisco’s Little Italy.  Being one of the highest points in the city, we had to walk up some steep hills.  I was walking fast as usual, perhaps even faster than usual since I was a little anxious about the proposal.  Susan asked me, “What’s wrong with you?  Slow down.  Do you have a rocket up your butt?”  It was very romantic.  In the end, she said “yes”.  We walked down the hill and ate at Sam’s Pizza.   That area has a special place in my heart. 

Jerry was gone, but, we saw Bob Weir and Ratdog at the Warfield Theater that first trip.  We now live about two blocks from The Warfield.  We got engaged in San Francisco.  Part of our honeymoon was spent in San Francisco.  We also stayed in Napa Valley, Pismo Beach, Long Beach and San Diego.  It was a nice trip down the California Coast.  We really fell in love with California, especially San Francisco.  We visited about ten times before we finally moved here.  Every time we visited, I loved going across the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was so amazing and beautiful.  I loved going over to the Marin Headlands and seeing the view overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco  and the San Francisco Bay.  It’s the view on the album cover, Dead Set - the one with the skeletons sitting in the Marin Headlands.

Dead Set

Back then, I could have never in my wildest dreams imagined what was in store for me in San Francisco.  I have no idea how many nights I spent out by the Golden Gate Bridge.  I never dreamed I would spend any.  I spent many.  The area west of the bridge on either side of the waterway known as the Golden Gate is very remote.   It is where the San Francisco Bay opens up to the Pacific Ocean.  It consists of beaches, cliffs, Eucalyptus forests, caves, tunnels, trails, wild animals and gun batteries built over the last century or more to protect our country against attack.  I spent many nights in these caves, gun batteries and tunnels or deep within the thick brush in these areas.  It was a perfect place to escape from people and use drugs.  I saw so many things out there that I can’t explain.  Years ago, I decided the New World Order was controlling the weather, creating landslides and could cause earthquakes to create Tsunamis.  I used to watch “the boats” that lined up along the coast do their “experiments”.  I was of course insane, but some really weird things occurred while I was out there.  One night I was in a slow moving landslide that started just after I watched sparks fly down the coast.  That night, the city appeared to be gone, to me.  I could not see the lights of it.  I thought there had been a huge earthquake.  I wondered if Susan was okay.  Then, I thought that that maybe I was dead.  It was a strange night.  There were many strange nights out there.  I have written about them in the past and I may write about them in the future.



Me in the Marin Headland a few years ago.  I use this photo on my business card as part of my logo these days.



Gun Battery in the Marin Headlands

The one thing that was always there was The Golden Gate Bridge - the bridge that I had watched countless documentaries about.  It is a bridge that loved ones bought me books about.  It is the bridge that my dreams were based upon.  People thought that bridge couldn’t be built.  Eleven men died building that bridge.  That bridge seems to have taken on life of its own.  Over a thousand people have chosen to end their lives on the Golden Gate Bridge.  In my darkest times, I thought I might end my life in the woods out by that bridge.  I wasn’t planning on jumping.  For my own sick reasons I’d rather not discuss, I thought I would cut my wrists to end it all.  I sometimes even carried razor blades in my backpack.  The truth is, I knew I could never go through with it.  It was just too final.  I didn’t want to hurt Susan like that either.  Still, I sometimes feared that I might somehow go through with it if I was really out of my mind.

The Golden Gate Bridge was supposed to represent beautiful things to me.  It made me think of all that this city was supposed to be to me.  It made me think about how I got my dream job out here.  It made me think of how I was living in this beautiful place.  It made me think of Susan.  I saw dozens of shooting stars while out there.  My wish was always the same.  “God, please let me quit using this drug.  Please let me live a normal life with my wife”, who I always cared about – even when I was out there for days at a time losing my mind.  I use to see couples walking down the beach holding hands.  This made me so sad.  I cried so many times out there.  I wasn’t here to live that sick and insane life.  I could not get out of the insanity however.  I could not stop using.  It’s hard to explain why, but once I am in the grips of my addiction it is hard to escape.

I spent most of my time out there a couple of years ago.  More recently, I rarely had the energy to make it that far.  I found myself under docks, in railroad tunnels and in alleyways - anywhere to get away from people.    My using takes me to dark and disgusting places. I even used in port-o-lets sometimes.   I would sometimes use at home, but I didn’t want to do this either.  On one hand I wanted to be home where Susan was, on the other, I didn’t want to be around her when I was that fucked up.  Sometimes, she kicked me out.  She was trying to protect me from myself.  On the rare occasion that I had enough money, I would rent a room in a cheap piss-in-the-sink hotel for a night.  These places can be pretty disgusting and scary.  A couple of times, I had people I didn’t know just walk right in on me in the middle of the night.  These rooms are very basic.  They have an old dirty bed and a sink.  One time there was actually a painting on the wall of one of my rooms.  It was a painting of telegraph hill.  However, it was from a time before the city was here.  It was just an empty hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay.  The city was gone again.

I left the ICU a little over 3 months ago and insanely enough, used drugs again.  I don’t really remember being in or leaving the ICU.  I have vague memories of standing with a walker at the hospital, eyeballing the exit.  I have vague memories of a good friend coming over to our house to help Susan convince me to not use again.  I have vague memories of Susan chasing me down to Sixth Street at 5:00 in the morning.  She told drug dealers, “Don’t sell him drugs, he just got out of the ICU!”  She asked cops to arrest me.  She told prostitutes, “I didn’t ask you for your advice” when they criticized her for trying to have me arrested.  She was trying to save my life since the doctors told her I could die if I used again.  My clearest memories began in a familiar place – in the woods out by the Golden Gate Bridge.  I could barely walk.  It was there that I looked down at myself and saw all the tape on my arms and body from all the monitoring equipment and I.V.’s they had me hooked up to at the hospital.  It was there where I called Susan a couple of times and began negotiating my return to recovery.  She told me I could not come home until I got help.  She had spent a week by my side in the ICU and could not take my using anymore.  She had locked me out again.  It was for my own good.  It was for her wellbeing as well.  She did meet me at the BART station and bought me some Gatorade and food to help prevent my sodium levels from dropping again.  I wandered around this city and started getting help.  I stumbled into multiple rehabs, free clinics and friends in recovery’s homes.  After this, Susan let me back in and helped me, which is what she was always willing to do.  Perhaps I’ll tell the ICU story in more detail someday, but I guess I covered a lot of my departure from it.

I have been clean ever since.  It is a short time, but I do believe in my heart it will stick this time.  I will have to work at my recovery every day. I now have the willingness.   Since I have been clean, I have done some amazing things. As I wrote about in a previous blog, I toured the new bay bridge that is under construction.  We went out on a boat underneath it and then we went out on the bridge itself.

New Bay Bridge Construction

Susan and I on the new Bay Bridge deck.

I have made so many new friends. This is something I have not really done for years because of my addiction. I do have some street artists’ friends, but I abandon them too when I am using.  My recovery friends really mean a lot to me.  I have spent some quality time with them in my recovery.  Some of them I met in my previous attempts at getting clean, but never got really that close to them.  They always told me to “keep coming back.”  They were there for me in those hard early days.  I have become much closer to them.

I have also met some new friends in recovery.  In my rehab, I have spent a lot of time getting to know fellow addicts who do not have a lot clean time like me.  We are getting clean together.  One of my new friends invited us to his mother’s home on Telegraph Hill to watch the Blue Angels perform this past weekend.  I have always wanted to get some shots of the Blue Angels from this vantage point with the Trans American Pyramid, the Bay Bridge and Coit Tower in the shot.  I got some nice ones of all three. 

The Bay Bridge

Coit Tower

Trans American  Pyramid

It was nice to have my head together when the Blue Angels were in town.  I always get better photos when my head is together.  I also got to sell my photos for the first time while they were in town.  My first day back to work was on Saturday.  In the past, I would gear up for selling.  I would print a lot of Blue Angel photos, go to the lottery held the day before to get a space on Beach Street, where I intended to sell, and then relapse that night.   I have had a pattern of self destruction in the past.  This time, I did all those things and kept it together.  The lottery for Justin Herman Plaza, the plaza I wanted to sell this time, is held on the same day at 6:00AM.  Right as I turned off my car to go to the lottery I heard the verse from that Alanis Morrisette song, “You won the lottery…”  I thought that might be a good sign.  There were probably 150 people there for about 100 spaces. There was a wine tasting event scheduled that day that used 20 spaces in Justin Herman Plaza, reducing the usual 120 spaces available down to 100 spaces.  Because of this, I thought I might not get to sell on my first day back to work and completely prepared myself for that possibility.  I actually kind of expected it.   I drew number 14.  I got a good space.  I only sold a couple of blue angle pictures, which is less than most Saturdays, but it was a great day overall.  It was just nice to be back at work.  I even got some nice shots of the Blue Angels from the area while Susan watched my booth. 

Ferry Building and Bay Bridge from Justin Herman Plaza

My booth set up Saturday

Just being back to work is nice.  I am only working (out there selling my photos) part time – three days a week for now.  I now have a good recovery foundation.  In the past, I was always in such a rush to get back to work and would end up neglecting my recovery and then relapsing.  My addiction is pretty serious.  It has been really hard for me to stay clean.  I still struggle today, but I work pretty hard to stay clean.  The rewards are coming.

The best part is spending time with Susan.  I really appreciate that time more than anything else.  I was clean and had my head together for her birthday and our anniversary.  I would encourage anyone who takes the little things for granted in life – not to.  I have in the past.  I try not to, now.  I am trying to remain grateful every day.  Having yet another chance at life has given me this willingness to stay clean and a lot of gratitude.

I have talked in previous blogs about one particular really cool event that was coming up in my life.  It happened.  I said that the photographs would say it all.  They won’t.  They won’t because I had to sign a waiver agreeing that I would not use them commercially or post them anywhere on-line, including facebook.  Last Tuesday Susan and I got to ride a little elevator to a height of probably 720 feet to a little room where we climbed another 20 feet up a ladder to an even smaller room which had yet another ladder that was about 6 feet high.  Once we climbed that ladder we found ourselves standing 746 feet above the water way known as the Golden Gate.  We were standing on the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Since I could not post the photos, I thought I would try to create an image with words.  (I probably over-did it). 

I was really looking forward to sharing those photos, but I will, of course, honor their request not to post them.  Susan has some good connections these days.  However, she was not able to get permission for me to use the photos.  I was hoping I could sell them, but I can’t.  It is not even about selling them for me.  It is more about sharing that vantage point and our experience through my photographs.  I was able to email them to family and friends.  The photos are pretty telling of the experience, however, they still cannot fully capture what it was like to be up there.  Living it was pretty amazing for me.  It was truly one of the best highs I have ever had.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime event for me.  I truly felt like I was standing on top of the world. 

  It was a beautiful day.  It was a little hazy, but the visibility was still very good.  It was windy and pretty cold up there, but that was expected.  If you stood on the right side of the tower, out of the wind, it was very pleasant.  The views were absolutely beautiful. 

There is a very narrow walkway on the outside of the towers.  The walkway is nothing more than a metal grate allowing you to see 746 feet straight down to the water.  I am okay with heights, but being out there certainly had my stomach tingling.  I was proud of Susan.  Normally, she won’t even walk all the way across the bridge on the street level and considered not going up to the top at all.  I think she knew what an opportunity it was and when the opportunity arrived, she not only went up to the top, but also walked a little ways out onto the really narrow grated walkway around the towers and beneath the main cable.

The grated walkway from below

None of it would have been possible if I were using.

Life may not always have such amazing events in the future, but I know it will continue to get better.  I don’t mean to describe my insanity in this blog too often, but it has been my reality.  A reality I must never forget.  When I consider using, I must play the tape all the way through to remember where using takes me.  It is said that with addiction, you pick up where you left off.  I have relapsed enough times to know this to be true.  I left off in the ICU, so I don’t have much further to go.

I also like to remind myself of the gifts of recovery.  I get to do some amazing things when I am clean.  While going to amazing vantage points and taking photos is great, just living life is nice, too.  I like it when Susan and I walk Phil or take a bike ride.  I like making us dinner.  I like waking up clean.  I have tried to say a prayer, asking for guidance and giving thanks each morning.  I also do this at night before I go to bed.  I look forward to living my life clean.  I hope this blog becomes about that and only that.  I never want this blog to become the rollercoaster of my life as it was in the past.  I quit writing this blog for over a year.  Perhaps I will fill in some of the blanks in the future; perhaps not.  There’s not much to say about those days.  They were pretty pathetic.  Still, those days had their moments because I can look back and see that I was on my path toward getting clean.  Still, I’d rather be where I am today.  I guess I’m starting to babble so it must be time to end this blog.

It seems this blog is read mostly by my friends and family.  But, I have picked up a lot of new readers since switching this blog to BlogSpot and connecting it to FaceBook.  I was hesitant to do this.  But, I received some really nice support from people who started reading this blog.  Thank you.  It means a lot to me.  I was a little nervous about sharing all of this insanity to a new group of people. 

Anyway, what I am trying to say is the waiver I signed allows me to email my Golden Gate Bridge photos and use them for non-commercial purposes.   I have a pretty large email list of friends and family that I send photos to on a fairly regular basis.  I sent them the photos from atop the bridge.  If you are reading this and would like to see some of the photos, feel free to contact me via email and I will forward that email to you.  My email is dbeaty127@yahoo.com.  If you found this blog and we are not friends yet, let’s be.  But, please do not post them anywhere!

My Recovery Comes First

“My recovery comes first” is a concept I struggled with over the past few years.  It is not that I wanted to continue to use drugs.  It was usually that I just wanted to get on with my life, enjoy myself and spend time with Susan – rather than going to rehab and recovery meetings.  It seems every time something really bad would happen to me, like an infection or an injury or something that would send me to the emergency room, I would say to myself, “I’ll never use again after that!”

I didn’t use for a while most times.  Sometimes I would stay clean by writing this blog, which I believe kept me accountable for my actions.  I also worked as a street artist.  Doing that is something I truly love.  I also found photography as a result of my struggles with addiction.  Sharing my photos seemed to help.  Addiction certainly caused me to look at the world much differently.  I already enjoyed being a tour guide of sorts in life, so photography allowed me to share the things I see - the way I see them.  My addiction certainly introduced me to some new places.

I really started to believe in the existence of something beyond my understanding while “out there” in my addiction.  In the beginning it was The New World Order.  In time, it became God for me.  There was just way too much going on out there for there not to be something.  I often referred to it as “The Universe.”

When I was first introduced to the program of recovery, I did hear the word “God” a lot and wasn’t to sure what to make of it.  It seems I have always believed in God in some way, but I wasn’t going to rehab to find God, I was there to get clean.  Well, I never stayed clean long.  For me God is an integral part of my recovery - not so much the mystical unknown that I seem to connect with in my active use.  In some ways, that may even be some kind of dark force or evil.  However, I believe God has a way of using evil in God’s favor.  God is pretty amazing in my estimation.

The part of God I struggled with over the years is the “Good Orderly Direction.”  When I am using, I am not living life in a “Good Orderly Direction.”  I am also not helping others or being available to the ones I love.  I believe these things are important to The Universe.  When I was really caught up in my addiction, I always thought to myself, I am certain of God’s existence, however I don’t believe in God.  Because for me to believe in God meant I would have to live with “Good Orderly Direction,” something I do not do when I am using.  For me to believe in God, I have to be clean.  When I am clean, I live life in a “Good Orderly Direction.”  When I am clean, it is important that I live life with the spiritual principles of honesty, open-mindedness and willingness.

I seem to lose the spiritual connection that the universe really needs when I am using drugs.  I seem to be connected with something of a darker nature, which to me wasn’t all bad.  I’m not saying I want to go back to those dark days.  I believe those days were ultimately getting me to a better place in life.  I can certainly appreciate things that I have.  I have also developed some skills along the way.  I am hard working, creative, resilient and now, appreciative.  I also seem to have discovered something beyond my understanding in my addiction.  These characteristics don’t necessarily get me anywhere in my active addiction.  However, they can be valuable when I am clean.  Having this belief in God and living right for a short time has really done so much for me.  I’m sure life will only get better as I remain in this place by working my recovery program.  Doing so not only helps me stay clean, it helps me live an overall better life.

This is why my recovery has to come first.  Without recovery, I have nothing, including life.  This was true even when I was, of course, alive. It now seems to have taken on a new severity since I literally stopped breathing 3 months ago and ended up in the ICU for a week.  I thought I might write about this event and the past year leading up to my ICU visit, a time period that I didn’t write about in this blog.  I’m still not sure that I will, however.  The simple truth is that I was in a seriously dark place at times.  There were some beautiful times as well and some times that I learned from.  However, ultimately the darkness of my crystal meth addiction ruled my life.  To me, that drug in a syringe was the ultimate evil.

Throughout the past few years, it seems I was able to hang on to some hope and pray to God many times to get through the darkness.  I’ve heard it said, that “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”  I kept going.  I nearly died.  It seems Good will prevail for me.  I really did always try to be the best person a crystal meth addict could be.  I really did care about people and I really wanted to quit.  I really wanted to be successful in life and I really wanted to be there for others – some day.  I always wanted to get my life together and then help others.

I now know that recovery allows me to be there for others – including myself.  People always told me, you have to do it for yourself.  That felt so selfish to me.  Being selfish is something I was trying not to be since that is what I am when I choose to use.  Sometimes it seems that I had no choice but to use.  It is such sick place to be in life.  For me, it was the most mind warping, tricky maze to navigate.  Hitting the deepest bottom yet gave me an opportunity to become incredibly willing to do whatever it takes to stay clean.  I once heard it said that, “you hit bottom when you stopped digging.”  Well, I hit many bottoms and kept on digging.  So much so that they almost had to start digging for me.  This meant that recovery would have to come first.  I became willing to put aside everything and do anything to stay clean. 

In the past I did not want to go away to rehab.  This time, I asked to.  In the past my rehab program suggested I go to inpatient.  This time they suggested I do outpatient.  Apparently they saw a change in me.  They saw that I was working a program the day I got there.  The ICU event changed everything.  I don’t remember being there, but I do remember the days following.  They were some of the hardest days of my life – and I’ve had some hard ones.  I think the thing that touched my heart the most is my beautiful wife, Susan.  It was so hard on her and she was so good to me.  I don’t want to get into the ICU story right now, but it was a really hard time for her – probably even harder than it was for me.  Once the reality of this sunk in, I told myself it had to end.  No matter what – it had to end.  Recovery has to come first.  Without it, I have nothing.

In the past, I always wanted to get back to work or spend time with Susan.  I value these things.  Thankfully, I have gotten to spend more time with Susan since it was not necessary for me to go to inpatient rehab as suggested in the past.  In fact, she is a part of my recovery.  She joins others and me in recovery in many of the activities - activities I avoided in the past because I would have rather spent time with her.  She has always been good for my recovery, but she cannot be everything to me.  It is not fair to her. 

I did decide to put work aside this time, as had always been suggested in the past.  In the past I would get about half way through my program and decide I wanted to work a couple of days a week.  I usually ended up putting recovery on the back burner and the inevitable would happen. 

I have embraced recovery this time around and have managed to even integrate my work into it.  There are a lot of creative people in recovery, which has opened up new opportunities for me.  I displayed my photography at a clean and sober event last weekend.  I have two more such events coming up in the next month and I am also permanently going to display my work at a fixed location where recovery meetings are held.

Next Monday, I get my street artists license back.  I’ll probably start working at the end of next week.  I would have started earlier, but I have some awesome photo opportunities coming up next week that will not allow me to get back out there and sell on the regular days I plan to sell.  I am going back to work because I graduated from my program – which is what this blog was supposed to be about all along!  I have entered that program at least ten times.  I made it through the first phase, day treatment, at least four times.  This means I participated in the IRP phase at least four times.  I graduated (or coined out as we call it) from IRP once.  Yesterday!  I feel good about it, but recovery doesn’t end.  It simply changes.

This is the front and back of "the coin" I received for graduating.  I put it on my key chain as another reminder to help keep me clean

Actually, I will still be going to my rehab three times a week, one hour a day.  I will also go to recovery meetings at least 7 times a week.  Still, this is a lot less than before.  However, recovery is basically a part of my life now.  It has a lot to do with the way I live and the choices I make and the things I do.  So even if I will technically only be doing 10 hours of recovery work per week, it will be much, much more if you count the other outside activities I will participate in and the hours upon hours I will spend with others in recovery.  With this foundation I have, I also believe that my work will be able to take its place in my recovery program.  Work was helpful for me to stay clean in the past.  I just have to limit how much I work.  Balance is what seemed to be missing.  I will have to limit the hours I work going forward.  Recovery will always have to come first.  If I have to leave my work to get to a recovery meeting, I will.

In fact, this is how I have been living life for the past 81 days.  A perfect example is football.  Anyone who knows me knows I love it.  I was really looking forward to being able to watch football games this year since I have been clean.  I saw most of them last year, but I was caught up in my addiction for most of the NFL season.  In the past, I have been so caught up in my addiction, that I was nowhere to be found on Sundays.  One year, I was in inpatient rehab and could not watch the Bengals play.  We have the NFL ticket, so I was really looking forward to being clean and watching the Bengals on Sundays.  I had my recovery-meeting schedule set so I could do so.  Then, the night before the first game of the year, I was asked to speak at a hospital.  My first answer was, “I don’t have enough time clean to do that.”  My second thought was, “The Bengals play tomorrow.”  However, when the person who asked me to speak said, “No, you would be perfect.  You have a great message,” I knew I’d be missing that football game – at least the first half of it.  It was just as well, since the Bengals were losing 31 to 3 at half-time!  Plus it was a very rewarding experience for me to speak at the hospital.  I am really glad I did.  I even took my dog, Phil, and everyone loved him!

Tonight, I was watching the Reds game.  It was the bottom of the eighth and the Reds and Astros were tied at 2 runs each.  If the Reds won, they won the Central Division.  I had to leave to go to my first night of Phase 2 rehab at Kaiser.  Recovery comes first.  The Reds won while I was in rehab, but I got to watch all of the highlights when I got home.

It feels good to have made it this far.  I trusted my counselors and others in recovery as to what I should do.  I believe I have a pretty strong foundation and will be able to enjoy life and my work once again.  I have already enjoyed life more than I have in quite a long time.  While in many ways, these past 81 days have been hard; they have been very rewarding and beautiful, too.  I always say, “Using is easy, but it makes life so hard.  Not using is hard, but it makes life so easy.”  This is true, but it seems that not using is becoming easier as time passes.  Life is much easier these days by doing the hard work it takes for me not to use.  I show up for my recovery every day.  I trust my program and those who advise me.

There is a spiritual connection for those in recovery.  So many people were there for me in those early, really hard days.  Their presence gave me the sense that the hell was over and that I could stay clean.  It made me want to be a part of recovery.  I always loved the people in recovery, but I struggled at times to feel I belonged.  Now I feel I do.  I enjoy being a part of my recovery group.  Now, I want to give to others what was so freely given to me.  I know there is a spiritual connection in recovery programs.

I believe there is a spiritual connection at Kaiser, also.  I use to sit in my back room tweaking with the lights off.  Susan would be watching T.V. and I would always hear that commercial that said, “Kaiser Permanente, Thrive!”.  It seemed this was always where I belonged.  The best example of the universe guiding me toward Kaiser was the time we went to L.A. to see the Price is Right.   I had recently begun hearing voices.  I had talked to the Devil and he was telling me to “come on down” earlier in the week.  Finally, the people on my roof were freaking me out too much and I asked Susan to get me out of there.  She pulled the car up to the front door.  Something fell on our car from our roof and we were off to L.A.  Actually she took me to the middle of the dessert – Joshua Tree.  On the way down, the devil was in my head the whole time.  At one point, we were going up and down hills and the radio station we were listening to kept going in and out.  Every time we went downhill, the song, “Highway to Hell” by ACDC would tune in.   I can’t remember the song that tuned in when we went uphill, but it had something to do with heaven.  So it went back and forth between heaven and hell.  When we got there, we ended up at Skull Rock, which was of course the devil to me.  We were going to camp but it was hotter than hell.  We decided to get a hotel in nearby Palm Springs.  I spent a couple of days in a hotel in Palm Springs, while Susan and Willy (our first dog) shopped, then we went to the Price is Right.  It was a very crazy few days.  On the way home, I was really freaked out about the people on my roof and prayed to God for answers.  Just then I looked up and there was a semi truck whose trailer read in huge letters, “Kaiser Permanente – Thrive”.  Well, I think I went back to Kaiser after that, but continued to struggle with completely surrendering to the program.  I always seemed to pray my way out of a mess, get out, and say “Thanks a lot God; I got it from here.”

Kaiser is a really good program.  It is the first of its kind and is literally at the cutting edge of addiction research.  I am fortunate enough to attend the very first one ever.  They are starting to pop up all over the country.  Kaiser is the only outpatient program in the state that a person can collect disability for attending.  They really seem to understand addiction and have sympathy for addicts.  They treat it like a disease and are even able to convince the ones who actually have the disease that it is just that.  As addicts we tend to be harder on ourselves than anyone.  They teach us how to treat the disease.  I am very grateful for Kaiser.

I have been in and out of that program a lot over the years.  This time, I did everything that was suggested - no questions.  My first time through Kaiser, I collected disability.  All the other times, I did not since I am self-employed.  I always used to think, “Why do I have to get these slips signed to prove I am going to meetings?”  I would only be fooling myself if I weren’t.  Or, I also thought to myself, “Why do I have to get drug tested?”  I would only be hurting myself if I lied about this.  I always understood why, but being an addict, I seem to have a natural rebelliousness about me.  Or, sometimes I just didn’t feel like going to a meeting.  This time I went even if I didn’t feel like it.  This time I got my slipped signed.  I went to two meetings a day – every day.  There were two occasions when I couldn’t make it to two meetings per day, so I went to 3 the day before.  Regardless, I went to 14 a week as required to collect disability, even though I haven’t been collecting disability.  It’s what was asked of me.  I was never asked to show my slip however.  I simply told myself this time around that it was like a quarter of school.  I had done that before.  It was an investment in my future.

All of my slips from this time around

I graduated yesterday.  I got to sleep in for the first time in two and a half months this morning.  It felt nice.  I had to go to the bank to deposit a check, so I decided I would walk Phil downtown with me.  It was a hot and beautiful day in San Francisco.  I ended up spending the day walking around the city, taking photos and meeting a friend (from recovery) in North Beach for lunch.  I even went shopping and bought Phil his Halloween costume.  I really felt good today.  The best part was when I went to Kaiser tonight and was asked the question by the lady behind the counter, “Are you here for Phase 2?”  I got to reply, “Yes”.

Phil's Halloween Costume for this year.

Downtown

Trans American Pyramid reflecting in "pond"

Trans American Pyramid and Sentinel Building

 St. Peter and Paul Church from Washington Square Park

Coit Tower from Washington Square Park

Trans American Pyramid Looking Down Columbus Avenue

Ally in North Beach