Brotherhood of Depravity By Joe S. Thomas

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At first I suppose I saw it play out around me…  Next, I became older, thought it seemed cool and tried it myself…  Didn’t care for it…  Time went on, anxiety and panic attacks showed up in my life and relentlessly made me feel insane and unable to live a somewhat normal life…  Depression reared its ugly head due to all of these things combined and I reached out to it as medication after failed attempts of going to doctors to find out what was wrong with me…  Alcohol, my savior for a while…  Alcohol, the family curse that I wasn’t aware ruined so much in the past…  Alcohol, the elixir that lied to me just enough to tell me that I was special, cool, unlike anyone else and able to do things without that pesky conscience of mine rearing its self righteous fucking head so much…  Alcohol, the liquid garbage that brought me to my knees and made me understand that nobody ever wins that battle without severe scars…  Some physical, some mental, but all of them still with me even as I type this out this very moment and I have been sober from alcohol for so many years that I can’t remember the year of my last drink…  

Just before beginning my true stint as an alcoholic at around fifteen years old, I’d decided to move in with my biological father, an alcoholic, Vietnam Veteran and his second wife, an alcoholic, privileged, school teacher who was a “Karen” before people knew what “Karen’s” were…  She looked like Doris Day, but could drink like Charles Bukowski…  I’d come home from either school or a day of skateboarding, I can’t quite recall, but I know I walked into the house to find her lying nude in a puddle of blood that was pouring from a gash in her forehead…  Apparently she’d passed out and hit her head on the ceramic sink on her way down…  I’m not sure why she was nude…  I was scared shitless and tried to call my father at his office, but to no avail…  I decided to leave the house and stay gone until I came back and saw that my dad’s car was parked in the driveway…  I did just that…  When I did come back to the house not a word was said about this incident…  My stepmother had a bandage on her head, but not word one was ever spoken…  I have no clue if she remembered me coming into the home to find her or not…  If I were a betting man, I would say she didn’t…  Alcoholism is so gross when it allows these behaviors to continue on unchecked and are not even spoken about…  Especially when it involves what I was, a damn child…  This is just one of the many stories stuck in my head involving members of my family and eventually even my own battles with the bottle…  

I just finished reading a writer named James Brown’s book The LA Diaries ; A Memoir…  I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone and it’s damn well worth reading, but it took me back to times in my life that are never far away in my mind…  They are triggered so easily…  Especially when I read of a fellow alcoholic and the battles that they have also fought…  It’s a brotherhood of depravity that I’m not proud to be a member of, but I am indeed a member…  

I never used AA,NA or any of the programs that are available to the addict…  I’m not saying I’m a tough guy or that they are even bad to use, I suppose I’m just too antisocial to jump through those hoops…  Fortunately, when my life got good and fucked up, somehow I pulled myself out of the muck and was able to stop drinking on my own…  To be quite honest, I couldn’t take the hangovers and the feelings that came with them one more day…  So I stopped…  I no longer have any desire whatsoever to ever put alcohol to my lips again and for that I am grateful…  Some people aren’t that fortunate…  People such as James Brown’s sister.

James’ sister went to AA and remained sober for 4 years…  You would think that she just might have it licked…  Hearing her story reminded me that nobody ever truly has it licked…  One day, she went to a movie with her husband, left the theater, went across the street and bought a bottle of liquor after those four years of complete sobriety and went to drink it in a park nearby…  As she sat with the bottle a man approached, she was feeling loose and offered the man a drink…  He took one and also raped her…  After this and many other incidents I don’t want to ruin if you’d like to read the book she went back to her alcohol problem with a vengeance…  This led to many more problems with her husband and the rest of her family…  Ultimately she decided to take her life by jumping off of a ledge over what is known as the LA River leaving her daughter without a mother…  

I guess I’m writing this to let people know that there’s absolutely nothing good that comes from alcohol…  Not one damn thing…  In fact, it’s ruined more lives and taken so many things from otherwise good people that I get depressed as all hell just dwelling on it…  Somehow, I escaped…  I can’t really explain how or why, but I also know I’m not foolish enough to ever think I have it licked…  Ever…  I know better than to drop my guard or think I could ever win that fight…  I’m just not that tough…  And neither are you…  Take care friends…