Confront me if I don't ask for help

Trainspotting (1996)
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: I don't feel the sickness yet, but it's in the post. That's for sure. I'm in the junkie limbo at the moment. Too ill to sleep. Too tired to stay awake, but the sickness is on its way. Sweat, chills, nausea. Pain and craving. A need like nothing else I've ever known will soon take hold of me. It's on its way.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Swanney taught us to adore and respect the national health service. For it was the source of much of our gear. We stole drugs. We stole prescriptions or bought them, sold them, swapped them, forged them, photocopied them. Or traded drugs with cancer victims, alcoholics, old-age pensioners, AIDS patients, epileptics, and bored housewives.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Thank you, your honor. With God's help I'll conquer this terrible affliction.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: [narrating] I wished that I'd gone down instead of Spud. Here I was surrounded by my family and my so-called mates and I've never felt so alone. Never in all my puff. Since I was on remand, they've had me on this program, this state sponsored addiction. Three sickly sweet doses of methadone a day instead of smack. But it's never enough. And at the moment it's nowhere near enough. I took all three this morning and now I've got eighteen hours to go until my next shot. I've got sweat on my back like a layer of frost. I need to visit the Mother Superior for one hit. One final hit to get us over this long, hard day.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: What's on the menu this evening, Sir?
Swanney: Your favorite dish.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Excellent.
Swanney: Your usual table, Sir.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Oh, why thank you.
Swanney: Would Sir care to pay for his bill in advance?
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: No. Stick it on my tab.
Swanney: Ah, regret to inform, sir, credit limit was reached and breached quite some time ago.
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: Oh, well in that case...
[hands him some cash]
Swanney: Ah, hard currency. Thank you, Sir. Can't be too careful these days. Would Sir care for a starter of some garlic bread perhaps?
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: No, thank you. I will proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: [narrating] Take the best orgasm you've ever had... multiply it by a thousand, and you're still nowhere near it.
Allison: It beats any meat injection. That beats any fucking cock in the world.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: We called him Mother Superior on account of the length of his habit.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: The downside of coming off junk was I knew I would need to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness. It was awful. They reminded me so much of myself, I could hardly bear to look at them.

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: [narrating] Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

28 Days (2000)
Gwen Cummings: Don't be someone else's slogan because you are poetry

Gwen Cummings: I am having a bad day! The worst damn day of my whole damn life! If it is not too much to ask will you all just back the fuck off!

Lily: Gwen, you make it impossible to love you.

Gwen Cummings: God, I love afternoons like this. You know what's missing in this afternoon? That I don't have a very dry vodka martini with two olives in a chilled glass. God, I miss that.
Eddie Boone: You know, lately I've been lying awake at night thinking of all the dumb-ass things I've done when i was messed up. One night last year, at dinner, I threw up all over my glazed ham. Then I was thinking, "Well, maybe nobody noticed."
Gwen Cummings: I don't think of it as a garnish.
Eddie Boone: Yeah, I'm a winner. Oh, God. You know what the worse one was? For me? My best friend in the whole world. Grew up playing ball, hunting and fishing. One Sunday morning, he walks in on me and his wife in bed. You never live that one down. Tell me one of yours.
Gwen Cummings: Excuse me?
Eddie Boone: What's the worse thing you ever did when you were messed up.
Gwen Cummings: Oh... Uh. I don't know
Eddie Boone: Oh, come on. Give me a couple, I'll pick one.
Gwen Cummings: I don't really remember any.
Eddie Boone: I just told you some stuff that's... you know.
Gwen Cummings: I'm a drunk. Drunks forget everything, you know?
Eddie Boone: Come on.
Gwen Cummings: Why? So I recount the last 15 disgusting years of my life to humilate myself? No thanks.
Eddie Boone: Why not?
Gwen Cummings: Because I don't feel like it. I don't feel like talking about it.
Eddie Boone: What's a matter? You too good for me?
Gwen Cummings: What, are you dense? Did your mom drop you on your head? I said No I don't want to talk about it, so just drop it.

Gwen Cummings: It was the most unbelievable episode. I wish you'd seen it. Everyone was losing their minds. What are you doing?
Andrea: Packing. What does it look like?
Gwen Cummings: You're not leaving for another couple of days.
Andrea: So? I am leaving. Might as well get ready. There's no point in making this room all homey if I'm only going to be here for only, like, 42 more hours.
Gwen Cummings: Come on. There's twenty minutes left til curfew. Let's get some ice cream. Satisify those sugar cravings of yours.
Andrea: No thanks.
Gwen Cummings: You don't have to do this, you know.
Andrea: Do what? How do you know what I have to do? Have you ever left rehab before?
Gwen Cummings: No but I...
Andrea: Okay, but nothing. You've never left rehab before, so you don't know what you're talking about.
Gwen Cummings: True, but I have been a part of some very emotional sing outs...
Andrea: Oh, God. I'm sorry. You sang "Lean on Me" a few times. The stupidest freaking cheesy song ever. Oh well, my mistake. You must know about leaving rehab better than anyone.

Lily: The only thing I told you was how a pain in the ass you were.
Gwen Cummings: well I am a pain in the ass
Lily: Even a pain in the ass needs, someone, to take care of them. I didn't do that, I didn't and, I should have. I should have helped you with your homework, I should have walked you home after school. Sometimes I'd be walking with my friends and I'd see you half a block ahead, all alone. You were so little.
Gwen Cummings: Well so where you
Lily: Yeh
Gwen Cummings: Well, I never asked for help so...
Lily: But you needed it, didn't you. I mean everybody does
Gwen Cummings: Yep... I'm sorry I make it so impossible to love me...
[crying]
Lily: You make it impossible for me not to love you

Gwen Cummings: Yeah, I know I drink a lot, I know I do because I'm a writer and that's what I do, I drink. I'm not like those people out there, I can control myself! I can, if - that - if I wanted to, I could, if I wanted. I can! I can!

Andrea: Just so you know, I wasn't trying to off myself or anything.
Gwen Cummings: Okay.
Andrea: It's just something I do sometimes.
Gwen Cummings: Doesn't it hurt?
Andrea: Feels better.
Gwen Cummings: Than what?
Andrea: Everything else.

Jasper: No one adult human being is happy! People are born, they have a limited amount of time going around thinking life is dandy but then, inevitably, tragedy strikes and they realise life equals loss! The whole point of the game is to minimise the pain caused by that equation! Now some people do it by having kids, or making money, or taking up coin collecting, and others do it by getting wasted.
Gwen Cummings: Nobody gets hurt collecting coins.
Jasper: Everybody hurts everybody it's the human condition!

Gwen Cummings: Why do you want me Jasper? I am such a mess.
Jasper: Maybe I like mess.

Betty: Tonight's lecture: Are you a blackout drunk, or don't you remember?

Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So I've been sober for 42 days, woohoo the crowd goes wild, however in many of the rooms I spend my evenings in there are lots of old folks who have 8+ years of sobriety under their belts. I've been to A.A. before. Once in 2000 after being released from the Dutchess County Mental Health Center, then again in 2002 quickly after my release from the Mercy Hospital Psych ward. Both times I never lasted as long as I have now and when I think back in actuality these 42 days is most likely the longest I've been sober consecutively in a decade. It's weird, in the meetings there are hand fulls of people my age who are mandated to be there for stepping outside the lines of societal acception. That's right criminals. It's hard coming to terms that you have a problem. My problem isn't alcohol. My problem is more. I'm addicted to more. I'm an alcoholic cause it's the most easily accessable. I could go out right now and a grab a bottle and be tanked an hour from now. I'd prefer exctasy though. Out of everything I've used alcohol, coke, acid, mushrooms, pcp, coke, crack, weed, codein, vikatin, ether, sex, and paint thinner. If I could go to the pharmacy or a descently unskeevy unshady drug dealer, exctasy would be the "more" that I'd prefer. I have antic dotes that get me by like when I'm offered something I say I do drink poisen.

I started drinking when I was 14 from greek social gatherings to stealing bottles of liquer from my parents liquir cabinet for camping trips. An A.A. member spoke earlier last week and his words really hit home. He said when we start out drinking it's all in good fun with the consequences being tiny not even noticeable things, however as time passes the consequences get bigger and bigger. Jail time and death being the most notiable. Quick story, a year ago this past May I got out of a moving car doing about 40 km an hour, got off the pavement with my shoulder broken gushing blood out of my face and arm and went home and thought I'd just sleep it off. Thank god my roommate was awake and responsible, I'd probably be dead. As soon as I cross over from slightly buzzed to drunk my cute charming personality turns into a godlike fierce ego trip which is unstoppable. For the past 6 months my drinking and drug use was primarily a tool for escape and escape alone, until finally 3 days in a row, 42 days ago, I just didn't want to wake up, I wished I was dead. It had made my life unmanageable and what good things I do have going for me were no where in sight. I needed hope that it could get better. That there's more to life then self pity for the countless mistakes, that even though I don't have a clean slate, this life deserves a second chance.

I want it to take. Like as much as I have said in the past that you have subconsious baggage that weighs you down, you got a duality of how other percieve you and how you percieve yourself, you have emotions and feelings that run wild at certain times with catalysts, I want to believe you can reprogram yourself. I will soon know that with the addition of drugs and alcohol people like a part of me which isn't me. At least without that addition I know what I'm doing, where I've been, and what I've said. That kind of truth is sobering. I want this. I want to know that there is a real me that's reacting or impacting a real reality. This person is responsible for his actions.

I put the twelve steps up, cause they're repeated over and over again at each meeting I attend. The first step I've accepted as true. Your not allowed to skip steps or do them at your own conveince. So I haven't really come to terms with that power greater than myself. I consider myself spiritual but as for a definition of what or who to pray to in that instance. Furthermore they imply you should ask for help and share your feelings (a truly north american concept) which I'm still struggling with. I pray in the near future that I can let go of not just past experiences that lead to my desire for an emotion numbing thingy to make me feel better but just the control. It's a constant and extremely hard to get a handle on. In a previous blog I talked about Zen. So I might turn to the Buddha to be my higher power and hopefully effectively catch myself when my ego thinks it has or can find all the answers, ideally stop it before it makes frustration and anger and uncontrollable force. In 28 days, Gwenn is forced to wear a sign around her neck that says "confront me if I don't ask for help", brilliant, I can relate.

Earlier today I was watching a documentary called "What the bleep do we know". Again another good foundation for letting go and making something that seems impossible.... possible.