The Hay's In the Barn and Soon to be On Fire.

Running

6 days and a wake up until I run the New York City Marathon, and I was so excited that last week I ran....  not at all.

Well, I ran 3 miles. I am tapering to heal up fast and furious, but will run at least two times this week to fire up my neurons.  Once again, I am mocking the marathon beast, throwing tiny little 30 mile week pebbles at its eye. Either way, the hay is in the barn, and soon it will be on fire. Boo-yah!! Can't wait for the weekend. And no Hurricanes in the forecast. 

Writing 

I have a couple of new pieces of flash fiction hovering around out there. Both of them a bit bizarre and with a Halloween theme.

There is a Dark Carnival project going on at the blog Pen and Muse. My submission is pretty good if you like that sort of stuff: Wicked Smart Carnie

Chuck Wendig puts on a weekly flash fiction contest at his blog TerribleMinds. This week, the challenge was to mish-mash together genres.  I put some science fiction and zombie apocalypic slasher horror in a blender and this is what came out: "A Day At the Park"

Salty Running is one the coolest running blogs around with frequent updates from different flavored spices. They are sponsoring a Paperback contest giveaway! Check it out here and win.

Lastly, I will be at the grand opening of the new Running Fit store in Ann Arbor on Wednesday, October 30th from 6 to 8 pm signing copies of On the Lips of Children.  The store is on the south side of Washtenaw near Platt road. 

...and Chasing the Dragon

Last week I was invited by one of my past professors to take part in a panel of recovering addicts and alcoholics to speak with a University of Michigan social work class. This was the second year I did it, and it was very powerful. A few spoke who were in college, living in the dorms, and only recently sober (and by recent, meaning 9 months, which, when you are an addict, is a damn miracle.) Others were those who worked in the field and experienced great calamities during their days in college in Ann Arbor.  Addicts in recovery, much like runners, speak their own language and listening to them talk is both soothing and inspiring.

So glad to have such a whirlwind of experiences right now, but, when this hurricane passes I need to catch my breath. For now, I have miles to go before I sleep.

9 Reasons Recovering Addicts Run

An excerpt from my book Chasing The Dragon: Running To Get High,

$2.99 for Kindle, $6.99 for paperback

Nine Reasons Recovering Addicts Run

1. You Only Get What You Give
Distance running by its nature lends itself to the addictive personality, if there is such a thing, of rewarding those who blast past barriers.  It not only rewards but demands the obsessive brain, the kind who go to a 5 dollar 'all you can drink' keg party and ask for 10 dollars worth.  It’s the metaphorical potato chip that, once it’s on your taste buds, lights up something deeper within you that craves for more.  

Yes, addicts can be cowards, immature, fragile, obnoxious, and so on (it’s an ‘in’ group thing, so I can get away with saying that) but lazy is one thing they are not.  Maybe lazy when it comes to responsibilities, sure, but not lazy when it comes to getting what they want.  There is nothing more industrious, more creative, or more persistent than an addict trying to get high. Waking up with unexplained bumps and bruises, not a penny to your name, barely able to see through blood shot eyes, vomit ready to project out of you at any moment, and afraid to make eye contact with another human being. Yet still, an addict is pulled by powerful forces to will themselves out of bed, get out the door, scrounge up some money in some creative (albeit often times illegal) ways, and travel as long as it takes to get what they want.
You think a bit of muscle pain or discomfort is going to stop us from hitting the road and taking a run?  No way.

2. Spirituality.
Running can provide the needed spiritual awakening to help an addict stay sober. Running just seems to make all of your atoms spin a bit faster, unearths previously hidden parts of yourself, and allows a connection with something deeper. Yes, this is partly due to the physical explosions of endorphins and cannabonoids, but the result is an overall sense of well-being and feeling of peace with your place in the universe.  Compare this spiritual awaking with the spiritual despair of the last stages of addiction. As the consequences of addiction escalate, a loss of meaning to live is often the result.  That is why spirituality is crucial to recovery. 

They say religion is for those who don’t’ want to go to hell, but spirituality is for those who have been to hell and don’t want to go back.  Running and facing the challenge of pushing yourself to physical extremes provides a sense of harrowing hell and then ascending. It’s the biblical notion of a descent, and then ascending to yes, feeling like you are sitting on the right hand of God at the finish.  During some euphoric moments of a run, I feel fully connected to the universe, doubts of a higher power are erased, and I understand my place in the universe at these moments. And it's pretty darn beautiful.

By the way, if you subscribe to or read the 12 steps of AA, spirituality is the whole reason you work the first 11.  The steps say not a word about staying sober; they only speak to having a spiritual awakening. Once you experience the thrill of such an awakening, the despair of using would taste too bitter.

3. A Solitary pursuit in a communal environment- 
Solitary and communal. Running is both of these. It offers alone time and an inner exploration unlike none other.   “I run as I dream – alone” I like to quip, paraphrasing Joseph Conrad from the Heart of Darkness. Yet the communal nature of a group run, and even more so, starting a marathon with 40,000 other runners, and then seeing them near the end, at mile 23, is a feeling of primitive yet transcendent connection. We are all psychically connected in those moments, and the primal nature of the event has stripped down the artificial barriers between us. The feeling of being one with others around me during these moments is not unlike using psychedelics.

4. Keeping an edge
When you are using, sober life seems so boring and like a curse. Of course, once you get sober, you realize there is not enough time in the day to do all the things you want to do.  But, you still need an edge, and despite the stereotypical geeky cross country runner in high school, runners have an edge since their brain and heart go to some unique places, and discomfort becomes a whole new comfort zone. Drunken wasted exploits are replaced by stories of amazing workouts.  A strung out addict is a sad, silly cliché, where as the ultra-marathoning tattooed-up runner doing 80 miles a week with self-made body armor of muscle is truly one who lives on the edge.

5. Emotions and expressing them. 
 Most addicts are emotionally stunted. We can’t express fear or joy or insecurity or talk about things.  But running, even though it isn’t verbal, has always been an expression of feelings for me.  There is nothing that vents rage and anger like a good set of intervals. Nothing. And nothing that provides a sense of joy as a nice ten mile trail run. Running brings me to an emotional catharsis such that I cry at the end of every marathon.  It both expresses emotions and polishes them up.   Witness the end of any marathon, and you’ll see the spectrum of emotions squeezed at of every human who makes it across the finish.

6. Health: 
Our bodies are pretty ravaged and have been punished by too much and not enough, so running is one way to start being good to them.

7. Ego-maniacs with an inferiority complex ---   
Yes, we've done some rotten things, sacrificed our ethics and made choices that are shameful, so in order to live with ourselves, we tend to have inflated our ego and lied to ourselves about who we really are in order get by. The worse we became, the more lies we had to feed ourselves about who we really were, and this usually means artificially building ourselves up. But deep in our heart we feel less than, inferior, scared of others since we've always felt they had some secret gene that made them know how to live in ways we never learned. Inside the haughty ego is a core of shame and worthlessness.

Running balances this out. It checks your ego since there is always, always somebody faster – and you will always be humbled by a run. Yet you feel incredibly triumphant inside, and never inferior because you have conquered, you are a warrior now, you run like a beast and have found new strength and new hope. This leads to the affirmation of....

8. You’re good enough, You're strong enough, and God dang it, God Loves You.
 Yes, you are worthy--- this seems so Stuart Smalley, but running makes us face ourselves, prove ourselves, and every time we win one of those little battles – either to get out the door and put in a few miles, to hit a certain mileage split, or to qualify for the Boston Marathon, it affirms our existence. We’ve stared into our selves, listen to the voices of doubts and self-fears, but heeded naught yet instead responded to something higher.

9. The persistent need to get high
The bottom line is, a Recovering Addict still needs to get high.  Difference is, one form of getting high is cheap, is killing you, will hurt your loved ones, and is not going to work anymore, while the other will bring you to a higher place of your higher self.  Yes, I still want to chase the dragon down, sometimes catch it, ride aboard and soar above my existence for a while, but I would also like to return from the ride in a better spot. Drugs and alcohol never did this, but the highs through running often provide what the addict was truly looking for in the first place; Physical strength, emotional expression, spiritual well-being, and a deeper connection with oneself and others.  Recovering addicts are just on a different side of the ‘getting high’ Yin-Yang.

STRAY on Amazon

The Jade Rabbit on Amazon

It Was 20 Years Ago Today

“They flutter behind you your possible pasts
some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost
a warning to anyone still in command
of their possible future to take care.”   Your Possible Pasts, Pink Floyd

 It was twenty years ago today that I took my last drink.  It was rum, of all things, and I had probably 4 or 5 shots before feeling it gurgle right back up, burn my throat, and I hurled the battery acid into a sink.  Then it was off to detox, where the sobriety, this time, stuck, and I’m 20 years sober as of about 9:17 a.m:. 

I want  to try and avoid too much sentimentality, (I've already written lots here) and it would be impossible to sum up the myriad of thoughts and significance of this, but not to post on it would just seem wrong.

 Yes, it is both the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but really, it’s also the easiest. You just have to get out of the way and let it happen. It wanted to happen, needed to happen, and all it took was reducing the self-pity, resentment, selfishness, insane ways of thinking, self-will run riot, and all those things that make us alcoholics so annoying. I say reduce not eliminate, since to think they are gone is to forget the humility upon which the doors of sobriety swings, but now my life is sprinkled with kindness and joys and rich treasures that, ironically, I was seeking in my substance use but never found.

Sobriety comes natural to me now, and I have a quiet unwavering confidence it will persist, but Yes, I still want to drink, still can taste beer when I see it, still wait for the sting of Gilbeys Gin or cheap vodka when I drink a squirt, my body still reacts to witnessing drug use on the movie screen, and I still think people who walk away from a half-empty drink are crazy. And as I write this, I can still feel my addiction in my gut. Or any time at all, I can summon up the feeling. Easy as being conscious of your left elbow, I can turn my consciousness to the addiction inside me. I can make my mouth water in seconds thinking of a drink.

This thought scares some people but comforts me. I know who I am and what I am, so don’t’ have to pretend I can drink like normal people.  When I have nightmares of a substance using dream and a relapse (which I still do) I wake up grateful, since, nope, I’m still sober, and Yep, I know I wouldn’t enjoy that.

The hardest part about sobriety is living in reality all the time.  All the time.  Most folks, when faced with the need for stress relief or to relax, have the option of a drink. Not me, I lost that option. So, I’m stuck in the realm of reality and having to find alternate ways to to escape. One of the cliché’s is that SOBER is an acronym for “ Son Of a Bitch Everything’s Real”

So now I lean hard on my diversions, or my ‘supplements’ which I prefer, and fortunately, I now have a ton of different options to get me high.   My diversions haven’t always been healthy, and my life in sobriety has been stranger than addiction, but I now cling to my running highs, my imagination, writing and reading and watching things that still give me a sense of wonder, make me go “damn” “awwwww”, or “wow” and fulfill me with a spiritual and emotional high. .

Yep, I’m getting high all the time now.  If they could bundle up a pack of  my runner’s high,  I’m sure it would be a top seller at the local dope house. Twenty years ago it was my hands that were getting me high, grabbing whatever substance they could and putting them into my body, but now it is my legs, carrying me through miles of runs at different speeds and through all sorts of different states.

That’s part of why it was soooo cool to run the Ann Arbor Marathon last week, to go back to the city where I learned so much about life.  The school work was easy compared to what I put myself through.

And despite not getting stoned anymore, I certainly still think “stoned” thoughts.  I remember fearing that I would lose my edge if I got sober, that I would become like everybody else, who I was convinced were boring and cliché and faked being happy. When I opened my eyes and looked closer, I realized that it was me, the sad, pathetic drunk, who was the stupid cliché, and that to live stone cold sober is to have a sharper edge than ever.

There are so many things that deserve the credit. For one, the Big Book of AA that proves people from the 1930’s really can understand me.  So many counselors, recovery folks, and even obscure things like songs and snippets that I turned to.  Yes, a cold pop that replaced the beer in my crotch, which seemed to be needed for that car to go forward, I send my thanks your way. Ten cents extra at a time.

Without my wife I would have never tapped into my sense of adventure.  No way do I finish 1 marathon, much less 13, without her. When I met her, she had already  been swimming deep into the pool of endorphins, and I dove in head first. And no way do my children have the same joy in their lives without her that I hope will prevent them from turning to substances the way I did.

So, I sit here today waiting for an angel to visit me, like Clarence from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but instead of answering the question “what would it be like if I never lived?” I’m going to ask “what would have happened had I never gotten sober?” I had been hospitalized a handful of times, bleeding internally, pancreatitis, shitting blood, and always on the verge of a seizure or DT’s.  I am always curious about that death that would have happened had I continued.  It was a very possible past.

Instead, I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.

  (I turned comments off for this post and not pimping my book as usual here. Not fully sure why. Well, I do know why, it's just too difficult to explain.)