Getting my head out of the smoke and into the Cloud

I originally started this site in January of 2018 to play with some cloud technology. I setup an EC2 instance on Amazon and did all the necessary things to install WordPress. I had lots of high hopes for the blog and things I could write about, but primarily I started to use it to track my massive list of New Years goals (featured below). Just like any good New Years goals I started the blog off with enthusiasm providing updates to the public, for god knows what egotistical reason, on how I was doing with these tasks. It seemed to be going well, I wrote some blog posts, then in true New Years resolution fashion, I dropped off completely.

So what happened to me? Among the various goals I had set, which included a myriad of health, creative, social, and financial orientations; was a goal of “unassisted sleeps”. The premise of an unassisted sleep is basically as it sounds, you fall asleep without the use of drugs or alcohol the old fashion way the way your dad did it before he walked up hill both ways to and from school.

I learned previously that I cannot drink alcohol like a normal person and stopped completely for some time. After a brief 6 month stent of pure sobriety I had taken to smoking pot in place of drinking alcohol. I no longer had to spend time wondering what happened the previous night? Who had I offended? And questions like “Is this my blood or is that just wine?” no longer existed. And that’s just the uncomfortable short term social problems, not to mention the long term health risks of drinking yourself horizontal every night, and the completely disparaging sense of self-pity that makes you choose between bullet and bottle. Getting high provided the ability to take the edge off at the end of the day and go to sleep while not ending up in messy situations. For me there are four stages of being high. They are relatively predictable and don’t end in such a mess.

Okay so what does this all have to do with unassisted sleeps? I planned for 200 days in 2018 to have an unassisted sleeps. Actively tracking substance use, or its inverse in my case, gave me some insight. I set out to limit my drug use to 54 percent of the year. According to this website, which I did not double check for accuracy, tells me that this goal would allow me to get high every weekend, holiday, and 51 work days while still being within the parameters off success. There was only one problem, I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t even want to make it. I started to describe my relationship to my goals like being in a tunnel. Even though I set out to be ambitious in 2018 I always felt like my aims were floating out in the distance overhead not only out of reach, but this tunnel would never take me anywhere near them.

I can’t fully remember the order of events, but I had made mention of this notion of difficulty I was having to a friend. I mentioned that I started having thoughts about stopping entirely for a little just to see what I would be like. She mentioned that she was quite happy to hear me say that because she felt that I was just smoking my life away. In fact she had recently said that exact thing to a mutual friend of ours when they inquired about me. When I asked her for what made her say that she told me about a day we had spent together. I took five edibles before a float in a deprivation tank and she spent the rest of the day baby sitting me. I remember taking the edibles and that we had plans to go to the float. I don’t remember anything after that. I couldn’t tell you what we did the rest of the day, how we got there, how we got home, or how much care or attention she had to give me to ensure I was safe. I was completely absent.

The above information didn’t shock me. I wasn’t surprised this was my behavior or that my friend had gone out of her way to take care of me. My friend didn’t present this information in a malicious “get your act together” tone. The comment was made purely as a reaction to my own statements. With all of that said there was still a bit of shame in being 33 years old and still outsourcing my personal well being to someone else. To make my existence their responsibility. It’s a feeling I was all to familiar with from when I was drinking.

All things considered though there really wasn’t a terrible outcome from all of this. I was putting the pressure on myself to complete these goals and despite my friends concerns she wasn’t broken to pieces over my condition. Maybe it was just better to take a break from all of this and go catch a movie.

Later on that day I went to see a movie at a local theater near my apartment. I didn’t have any particular film in mind. I looked at the listing of movies quick and picked the next film coming up soon. I had about 40 minutes to kill so I went next door to a book store. I decided I needed to take it easy. I was always trying to ready heavy philosophy books and psychology books. While I enjoyed them I thought it might make sense to pick something up that was light and easy. I wondered around a bit wondering how I would even find such a thing. Just as I was having this thought I saw exactly what I was looking for. It was a greenish blue book and on the cover was the comedian Russel Brand. Perfect, Russel Brand is a comedian. I immediately assumed the book would be his light hearted and funny biography. I picked it up immediately without looking at the title and walked to a chair where I sat down and began reading it.

Where do you start reading a book? The introduction seemed right. I turned to it and began. I managed to get through the entire introduction before my movie. The book started pretty heavy for a comedian. It was a lot of build up about imminent death and everything he had ever done wrong. As it turns out I really hadn’t been tracking what was going on at all. Once I completed the introduction I turned the page and it said in big bold letters “The Twelve Steps”. They had been referenced several times in the introduction, but just now it started to dawn on me that these were some random set of steps a comedian slapped together, these were The Twelve Steps proper. I immediately slammed the book closed and looked at the cover. The book was titled “Recovery”. FUCK! I had completely by accident picked up a 12 step book. I opened the book back up and turned to the first chapter. There it was “Are you a bit fucked?” It was at this moment I realized I had to buy the book. I walked up to the store clerk, made my purchase, and exited the shop.

Finally, I made it to the movie. No more conversations about where my life was going. No more books asking me if was a bit fucked. Just zoning out into the story on the silver screen. The movie I was seeing is called Dark Days. Like I mentioned before I picked the movie because it was coming up next. I didn’t put a lot of thought into what I was about to see. As it turns out the film is about people living in an abandoned section of an Amtrak tunnel. When interviewing some of the residents as to why they would choose to live in a tunnel instead of being on the surface one of the replies caught my attention. “In the summer it’s not too hot, in the winter it’s not too cold. The cops don’t fuck with you, the kids don’t fuck with you. It’s crazy but once you’re down here you get used to it.” I started to realize that this is almost exactly how I was describing being high all the time. Being high was protecting me from elements of life. It protected me from feeling too much or going out into the world where I’d have to face other peoples reality. All my goals were still there floating overhead but I had gotten used to being down in this emotional state. It was a sliding sense of comfort.

After the culmination of a friend basically saying “you aren’t managing your life.”, a random book asking me “Are you a bit fucked?”, and a movie depicting a metaphor I was using to describe my life with actual addicts living in a tunnel I decided the next day maybe I should read on in this book Recovery. The next I went downtown and with my book and a mushroom cap to a diner where I often eat breakfast. I read probably first few chapters of the book and one of the things it impressed upon me was how selfish I am. I thought about my friend having to take care of me. I thought about how I’ve treated her in the past in different scenarios and it seemed true. I knew I had a drinking problem I was addressing. I just wasn’t drinking but only because I was getting high everyday. This was all some heavy shit and I was uncertain so I decided to eat my magic mushroom and go get in a float tank. (Maybe it was the float tanks all along.)

I decided to contemplate whether or not I should get sober, completely without any mind altering substances as backup, while in the float tank. I remembered some things I’ve read previously about attempting to cut out drugs and alcohol for one year if you think you don’t have a problem. I decided that this would be the best course of action. I would make a commitment to get clean for a year. I would try to be a less selfish person along the way and somewhere in the back of my head I prove to myself that I don’t have a problem.

When I got out of the float tank I had come to several realizations. I made my particular resolution around getting clean for the year and still high on mushrooms I left building where I did my float. I walked down the street for a bit going to a bike station when I noticed that there was a lot of noise. Cheering and music. All at mid day. Instead of heading home I decided to follow the noise. As I approached I saw that all of society had turned into a green glob, this was particularly vivid while I was still tripping. It was St. Paddy’s day, I had completely forgotten. There was a parade through town and everyone was hammered. Somehow, despite my current state, my recent resolution made me feel like Jonah walking through Nineveh. I wasn’t even down from my mushrooms yet, but I was already self righteous about my choices. Christ did I have a lot to learn.

As it turns out getting clean is hard, really hard. It’s just a full sense of exhaustion and anger running as hard as they can in separate directions. It took a lot for me to not lose my shit most days. I wasn’t accustom to dealing with my emotions which seemed particularly riled up. I was bitter at work and in my personal relationships. Even though I thought I was proving something to myself I must have known I was screwed. I followed the advice given the “Recovery” book and found a location where I could get help and enlisted their services.

After the first week without substances I couldn’t believe what I was doing, this was the dumbest stupidest choice I had ever made. After the second week I really started to question “Am I really doing this?” And after the first month I was amazed that I had made it at all. After two months I was starting to lose my mind. I genuinely felt like I’d rather be dead and my life was starting to collapse around me. Despite this difficulty, as miraculous as it was, I carried on through what was a pretty bitter series of events. Some of my relationships started to fall apart. Not only was I miserable, but I was making people around me miserable to. My therapist assures me that’s normal. “The first year of getting sober often shakes out unstable relationships.” Without getting into all the ugly details what I can say is it wasn’t until the eighth month that I started to find some relief, like I was coming up for a breath of air after holding my head under water for as long as possible. After that eighth month threshold I started to feel and realize that I was starting to get better.

So here I stand on the other side of that resolution. I have completed my year clean. I learned a lot in that year. First was that I definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, have a problem. If I didn’t this process wouldn’t have been difficult at all. Second, is that the process I went through to make it a year clean had rapidly and immensely improved my life and still continues to today. While before I felt like I was in a tunnel staring up at my goals now I feel like I’m more aware of what I want and not just randomly wasting energy chasing this or that. I’m focused and aware of what is going on in my life and more capable of handling what’s going on.

And that’s what happened to me and why I dropped off. Because that process of recovery that Russel Brand talked about can be a real bitch. It’s hard and exhausting and it didn’t leave too much energy left over for me to chase all my unrealistic goals. In the end though I’m better off having a new direction that impacts what is hopefully the rest of my life than a year of ego driven accomplishments.

Now, I’ve started back into the my blog. I migrated from a smaller AWS instance to a better suited server. I’m back to reading about encryption keys at 3am and hopefully writing more again. In short I now have an opportunity to get back to pursuing the things I love and for that I’m grateful.