Fyi...
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Join Date: Jul 2002
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Fyi...
Drunks
by Jack M.
(edited for clarity by Anonymous)
We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later… when somebody complained about the smell.
We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide and we probably didn't know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.
We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, distended… and there was nothing they could do.
We died in jail cells never knowing whether we were guilty or not.
We went to priests.
They gave us pledges.
They told us to pray.
They told us to go and sin no more, but go.
We tried and we died.
We died of overdoses.
We died in bed.
We died in straitjackets in the DT's seeing God knows what… creeping, skittering, slithering, shuffling things.
And you know what the worst thing was?
The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.
We went to doctors and they gave us stuff to take that would make us sick when we drank… on a principle so crazy that it just might work.
Or maybe they just shook their heads and sent us to dry out at places like Dropkick Murphy's and when we got out we were hooked on paraldehyde… or maybe we lied to the doctors and they told us not to drink so much, “just drink like me.” And we tried and we died.
We drowned in our own vomit or choked on it, our broken jaws wired shut.
We died playing Russian roulette and people thought we'd lost… but we knew better.
We died under the hoofs of horses, under the wheels of vehicles, under the knives and boot heels of our brother drunks.
We died in shame.
And what was even worse was that we couldn't believe it ourselves that we had tried.
We figured… we just thought… we tried and we died believing that we hadn't tried; believing that we didn't know what it meant to try.
When we were desperate enough - or hopeful or deluded or embattled enough - to go for help, we went to people with letters after their names and prayed that they might have read the right books that had the right words in them… never suspecting the terrifying truth that the right words, as simple as they were, had not yet been written.
We died with a shotgun in our mouths or jumping off bridges… and everybody ‘knew’ it was suicide.
We died under the Southeast Expressway with our hands tied behind us and a bullet in the back of our heads… because this time the people that we disappointed were the wrong people.
We died in convulsions; of "insult to the brain."
We died incontinent, in disgrace, and abandoned.
If we were women, we died degraded because women have far more to live up to.
We tried and we died… and nobody cried.
And the very worst thing was that for every one of us that died, there were another hundred or another thousand of us who wished that we could die; who went to sleep praying we would not have to wake up because what we were enduring was intolerable… and we ‘knew’ in our hearts it wasn't ever going to change.
One day in a hospital room in New York City, Bill W. had what some call a transforming spiritual experience and he said to himself, “I've got it!”
(No, you haven't; you've only got part of it)
“And I have to share it!”
(Now you've ALMOST got it)
He kept trying to give it away but we couldn't hear it. Some of us refused to hear it.
So we kept trying and we kept dying.
We died of one last cigarette, the comfort of its glowing in the dark.
We passed out and the bed caught fire.
They said we suffocated before our body burned.
They said we never felt a thing.
That was the best way, maybe, that we died… except sometimes we took our family with us.
And the man in New York was so sure he had it that he tried to love us into sobriety but that didn't work either. Love confuses drunks.
So he tried and we still died… one after another.
We got his hopes up and we broke his heart because that's what we do.
And the worst thing was that every time we thought we knew what the worst thing was something happened that was worse.
Until a day came in a hotel lobby… and it wasn't in Rome, Jerusalem, or Mecca or even Dublin, or South Boston.
It was in Akron, Ohio, for Christ's sake.
A day came when Bill W. said, “I have to find a drunk because I need him as much as he needs me.”
(NOW you've got it)
After all those years, the transmission line was open.
The transmission line was finally open.
And now we don't go to priests; we don't go to doctors; we don't go to people with letters after their names.
We come to people who have been there.
We come
And it only can get better with time.
Blessings,
Vinnie
by Jack M.
(edited for clarity by Anonymous)
We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later… when somebody complained about the smell.
We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide and we probably didn't know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.
We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, distended… and there was nothing they could do.
We died in jail cells never knowing whether we were guilty or not.
We went to priests.
They gave us pledges.
They told us to pray.
They told us to go and sin no more, but go.
We tried and we died.
We died of overdoses.
We died in bed.
We died in straitjackets in the DT's seeing God knows what… creeping, skittering, slithering, shuffling things.
And you know what the worst thing was?
The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.
We went to doctors and they gave us stuff to take that would make us sick when we drank… on a principle so crazy that it just might work.
Or maybe they just shook their heads and sent us to dry out at places like Dropkick Murphy's and when we got out we were hooked on paraldehyde… or maybe we lied to the doctors and they told us not to drink so much, “just drink like me.” And we tried and we died.
We drowned in our own vomit or choked on it, our broken jaws wired shut.
We died playing Russian roulette and people thought we'd lost… but we knew better.
We died under the hoofs of horses, under the wheels of vehicles, under the knives and boot heels of our brother drunks.
We died in shame.
And what was even worse was that we couldn't believe it ourselves that we had tried.
We figured… we just thought… we tried and we died believing that we hadn't tried; believing that we didn't know what it meant to try.
When we were desperate enough - or hopeful or deluded or embattled enough - to go for help, we went to people with letters after their names and prayed that they might have read the right books that had the right words in them… never suspecting the terrifying truth that the right words, as simple as they were, had not yet been written.
We died with a shotgun in our mouths or jumping off bridges… and everybody ‘knew’ it was suicide.
We died under the Southeast Expressway with our hands tied behind us and a bullet in the back of our heads… because this time the people that we disappointed were the wrong people.
We died in convulsions; of "insult to the brain."
We died incontinent, in disgrace, and abandoned.
If we were women, we died degraded because women have far more to live up to.
We tried and we died… and nobody cried.
And the very worst thing was that for every one of us that died, there were another hundred or another thousand of us who wished that we could die; who went to sleep praying we would not have to wake up because what we were enduring was intolerable… and we ‘knew’ in our hearts it wasn't ever going to change.
One day in a hospital room in New York City, Bill W. had what some call a transforming spiritual experience and he said to himself, “I've got it!”
(No, you haven't; you've only got part of it)
“And I have to share it!”
(Now you've ALMOST got it)
He kept trying to give it away but we couldn't hear it. Some of us refused to hear it.
So we kept trying and we kept dying.
We died of one last cigarette, the comfort of its glowing in the dark.
We passed out and the bed caught fire.
They said we suffocated before our body burned.
They said we never felt a thing.
That was the best way, maybe, that we died… except sometimes we took our family with us.
And the man in New York was so sure he had it that he tried to love us into sobriety but that didn't work either. Love confuses drunks.
So he tried and we still died… one after another.
We got his hopes up and we broke his heart because that's what we do.
And the worst thing was that every time we thought we knew what the worst thing was something happened that was worse.
Until a day came in a hotel lobby… and it wasn't in Rome, Jerusalem, or Mecca or even Dublin, or South Boston.
It was in Akron, Ohio, for Christ's sake.
A day came when Bill W. said, “I have to find a drunk because I need him as much as he needs me.”
(NOW you've got it)
After all those years, the transmission line was open.
The transmission line was finally open.
And now we don't go to priests; we don't go to doctors; we don't go to people with letters after their names.
We come to people who have been there.
We come
And it only can get better with time.
Blessings,
Vinnie
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