day 1

i believe in AA they always tell the story of every day can be your first day or something of the nature, i dont consider myself an alcoholic by any means, i dont crave drinks, hell to be honest i dont even like the taste of beer or liqour, i do ike the taste of my blackberry wine but thats another story (speakng of which i need to get to bottling that stuff and if anyone is free i need some hands).
what i do like about drinking is loosing my inhibitions, letting lose and letting the me that feels caged up in screwed up societal norms free
and i definitely dont think that drinking is all bad, ive seen a lot of great things come from the good times with it, i do think there comes a point when people start relying on drugs or alcohol though, a point where they put more faith and let things center around the substances and not around the community and fun they are trying to use them to help flourish.
i think its a shame that we have developed a culture where people feel that they need that crutch in order to open up, in order to communicate, to feel emotions, to not feel emotions, to express theirselves, to let their spirtis be free, to dance, to love, to let their souls live freely...
and im not saying by any means that, that is everyone, some people do find their peace, and are willing to openly do things much better than others without it, but in general our society and created an environment where those things are usually only socially acceptable in those situations revolving around having the excuse of inhiberiation as their jumping point,

digressing, why is this day 1? well coming off an amazing high that was my summer / fall i was living it up in the world, i had a internal peace i had found in my soul and it was guiding me places id never dream of being, i had met an amazing angel who liked the parts of me that i liked, and who made me want to be better at those parts, she made those parts shine... i had been diving back into my writing and music, i had put together some great works that even impressed myself, and hell i was on the caribbean playing drums with michael franti on a ship playing with a family full of complete strangers who found a moment of peace and harmony with the world, my life was amazing.... and is still,

but the crazy high of the wave was bound to crash, and when it did it crashed hard, coming off of a date with my lady friend one evening i could tell she was really pulling back and i was fearing i was loosing her, i sat there one night watching sons of anarchy, when i recieved a call from my nephew, he has had troubles with drugs and the law for quite some time, and it was obvious in his voice that he was back at it, but it was also obvious that he was reaching for help, i talked to him for a bit, tried to help him get some motivation and guidance, but i knew in my heart he needed, and i needed to do more, but my mind was on my own problems and i selfishly didnt do what i knew needed to be done, a few days later i get the word that he had been in an accident, no one hurt, but most likely drug or alcohol related, and most likely sending him back off parole and possibly to jail, and it just crushed my insides as i could hear the sound of cries for help in his voice from the day that he had called so clearly repeating over and over and ....

and i began my downward spiral, i lost all that peace i had had with the world, i got mad at myself, and started a tyrade of self punishment, i said / did some things that ended up pushing the lady friend farther away, and then realizing this i started reaching out harder and harder to bring her back, and completely scared her all the way away, meanwhile i was wallowing in my own self pitty and anger to much to keep up with my exercise, and my healthy eating completely went to shit, i was not sleeping well,

meanwhile life decided that wasnt enough for me to deal with and i get a message from out of nowhere on a friday afternoon that one of my best friends and mentors growing up was found dead in his house from an apparent heart attack, this was a superman to me, a person who had many flaws, but a person who was always there when i needed them`, he was the comfort of knowing you had a 4am phone call saying he man i just fucked up bad, and he would show up with whatever you needed, be it a hug, a huddle, a gun or a shovel, you knew he was always there, and now he wasnt... and i know that sounds like a selfish statement, but it was truly what i first felt, scared to not have that safety net anymore, and this man also represented to me proof that people can change, he had really turned around his life, was committed to his family and was doing so much more than just running around and reaking havoc like we used to do so well, and to just know that something like this could happen so fast, scared me, angered me, and pushed me farther into the negative energy path that i was falling down....


i was spending to many nights turning to the bottle and asking it to help me solve my loneliness, which it never seems to do, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and id say that was likely the case for this month, intensifying bad energy by piling on more bad energy, i got myself very sick with a sever sinus infection, followed by a stomach infection, and when i finally started feeling better i rejoined a gym got myself an amazing workout one morning, decided to go meet some friends after since i was feeling great and they were at the bar watching the basketball game,


had a few beers there, tasted so good as i was thirsty from the workout, they decided to go bar hopping, i joined, and many beers and 7 hours later it was what should be the end of the day, but instead i wanted to go fill up the lonely hole that was in me, so i ordered rounds of shots, drank some redbull and got my buddy to go downtown, where i seemed to be hell bent on causing havoc and doing more harm to myself, i dont remember much from the night, the one thing i do remember is that i was just compounding that negative energy throughout it, it wasnt the positive vibe that im used to riding, and when i knew i was in that mood, i should have never let myself go out and try to drink my way out of it,

so that brought me to doays hangover, and todays realization, or todays rationalization, or better yet todays allowing myself to see the obvious, that i need to uncompound all of this negative energy, i need to detox my soul of the negative that has inhibitited it, i need to clean out my body, and i need to get right between my own head and my soul, i decided to get back to my old goal of learning to dance sober, im going to challenge myself to a month long detox, filled with lots of exercise, lots of healthy eating, lots of time spent with myself and my fiddle, and lots of refocusing on getting right with my soul,

luckily i picked the shortest month of the year, and im heading to new orleans on the 28th, so ill set that as the date for when i can break back out of this commitment, and reward myself, and ill challenge myself to spend a month cleaning up after the mess ive made inside and outside of myself, its going to be a challenging month, but im going to keep on writing, keep on retrospecting

post from here forward will be more direct and more to the point of the day, i just felt the need to rant out the full path of what brought me here (this time) and where i am trying to go with this journey, its going to be an interesting experiene to say the least, filled with lots of challenges, but i will persevere and hopefully learn a lot from this, and make some positive changes that i can use to help not only myself but others around me as well, my goal here isnt to stop partying, to stop going out and having fun, my goal is to instead learn to let myself do that more often without hiding being the cloak of intoxication, my goal is to let my soul find a way to shine outward and to clean out the negative that has infected me, my goal is to get healthy in all aspects, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually
and my goal is to share this experience with those i love so that others can learn from the lessons that i will be teaching myself....