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garoteOur landlord lives in an apartment situated between our house and the street. Since his apartment was originally the garage, we share a wall with him and his front door opens onto the same walkway as ours. We all live just a block away from the worst part of Santa Cruz. For months the neighborhood has been trying to drive away a drug dealer who hangs out on the corner, but the police haven't been able to catch him in the act.
Despite this, we almost never lock our doors - front or back. The opaque wooden fence keeps most passer-by from wandering in, and when the occasional salesman or traveler comes around, the landlord usually hears them through his open door and pounces on them. In fact, the role he plays is a lot like that of a guard dog. He knows all the neighbors, including the owners of any property being rented. When their parties get too loud he calls in a noise complaint, and when they park oversize trailers or RVs on our block, he threatens to have the vehicles towed off.
It's a different renting situation than I'm used to ... usually the landlord keeps as far away from his or her ramshackle tenement as possible, hiring managers to police it, repair it, and drive renters in and out like cattle. Perhaps owning rental property embarrasses them - like owning slaves embarrassed the more scrupulous plantation owners of the old South - but positive cash-flow for sitting on your ass is the American Dream, and any of us would leap to take their places.
Our landlord disposes with some of his income by going on vacations to South America for weeks at a time. A few months ago he returned from one of these trips with big plans to buy an apartment building down there and leave the country permanently. He's good enough at wheeling and dealing to pull it off, but it's a huge move, and he'll probably decide that it's too risky. In the meantime he arranged another vacation, to investigate the idea some more. He informed us that he'd be gone for a week, and asked us to feed Kitty while he was away.
The day after he left, I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw a scruffy looking man standing on the porch in our backyard, dragging on a cigarette and scrutinizing our garden. I was alarmed, since the only way for a stranger to get there is to walk up the driveway, around the fence, and along the length of the house. Before I could walk out to meet him, he flicked his cigarette onto a floorboard, ground it with the toe of his shoe, and stepped off the porch. Since he had to pass by the front door in order to get anywhere else, I strode over to the front door and flung it open. There he was, halfway across the front yard. He stopped and looked up at me.
Feeling tense and annoyed, I asked, "Who are you?"
"Oh, uh, hi," he mumbled, and walked over and offered me a limp handshake. "I'm Colleen's boyfriend."
Just then a woman showed up in the doorway of our landlord's apartment - our garage - and introduced herself as Colleen. I'd seen her around a few times before, when the landlord had hired her to cut the grass in the yard. (At the time, I got the impression he was finding some honorable way to help her make a little money.) Colleen declared that while the landlord was gone, she would be "watching his place for him". She and her boyfriend, that is.
"I see," I said. "Okay then." We made some small talk, and I shut the front door.
A while later I heard a knock at the door, and when I opened it, Colleen was there, wearing a pink bikini bathing suit. Some time in the past she must have been a very attractive young woman, but years of hard living had left unhealed bruises and meandering blue veins up and down her body. Her eyes were half-open and she was swaying slightly. It was the middle of the afternoon, and she was head-over-heels drunk.
She told me that she was speaking on behalf of her boyfriend, who apparently felt dishonored because I gave him such a nasty look when I met him in the front yard. I told her that I had reacted naturally to the presence of a stranger on our property, but now that I knew who he was, things were okay, and I wasn't angry at him at all.
Colleen restated her case as though she didn't believe me, then her speech became muttering and she trailed off. She looked down at herself, and appeared to realize that she was dressed strangely for the weather - which wasn't very hot - and shrugged her shoulders as though she'd forgotten why she was there. She turned around, stepped down from the stoop, and disappeared into the apartment. I closed the front door.
The week passed on - Colleen and her boyfriend stayed out of our way, and stayed out of the back yard. I occasionally met them as I was walking back from work. They used the supplies in the laundry room indiscriminately, which forced us to take ours inside the house. Their cigarette smoke drifted in the front windows, so we shut them.
Then, six days later at about midnight, I was sitting in the living room hacking when I heard a terrific shouting match erupt in the apartment. It was the landlord. He had come home from the trip, and boy was he angry. "GET OUT!" he was shouting. "Get your things and get out of here, right now!"
The shouting continued for several minutes. I considered calling the police in case things got ugly, but as soon as I had the thought, the landlord yelled that the police were already enroute. A few minutes later I heard a car starting, and a minute after that the landlord knocked on our door. I walked over and opened it.
"Have those guys been there this whole time?" he asked.
I sighed. "Damn it, I should have known they were there without permission. I should have contacted you. Yeah, they've been there for the whole week."
He was furious. "I'm gonna go find them. I'm gonna go kick their asses." He jumped down from the doorway and lunged into his apartment, then continued on down the walkway, clutching the keys to his truck in one fist. As I closed the front door, I heard the truck start, then roar down the block and turn the corner.
The next day I left the house to walk to work, and passed by the garbage can. It was overflowing with trash bags, stuffed full of empty bottles, pizza boxes, cigarettes, and litter. While I was at work, my housemates got the full story, which they repeated to me over dinner.
Colleen and her boyfriend had ransacked and trashed the apartment, gathering up about six hundred dollars in cash. They spent most of that money on booze, covering the tables, the floor, and even the bed, with empty bottles. The smell of all these bottles airing out was toxic, and combined with the flat sting of dozens of smoked cigarettes into a one-two punch capable of triggering an instant migraine headache. Over the course of the week they had mixed other things casually into the mess, including old food containers, soiled laundry, and prophylactics. Of course, they had no permission to be there.
When the landlord returned home, they were asleep in his bed. He shouted them awake, and while they all argued, Colleen and friend gathered their possessions and most of their clothes and ran outside in their underwear. They dove into the boyfriend's car and disappeared, leaving the landlord to clean up the mess. He went driving around downtown, too angry to stay at home, thinking that at least he could get the plate number of their car. He couldn't find them. Later on he called a detective, and discussed the odds of tracking them down.
"Well," we all thought. "That's the last we'll see of those two."
But apparently the landlord made peace with the girl, weeks later. She got back on speaking terms with him. Then something new happened, involving her and one of his friends. As I was sitting in my living room scanning papers, he stood outside his apartment door and called her on the phone, and I overheard the following:
"Don't call me any more. Don't come around my house. Your game doesn't work anymore. When you're drunk, you lie, and manipulate. ... Listen, girl. Nobody wants what you got. ... No, my friend doesn't want to talk to you either, you robbed his house. You charged a hotel room on his card."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, you were drunk at the time. ... 30 days? You haven't had 30 days in a year. If you were to check in to rehab, I'd be the first to call you, but instead you're hanging around with this loser, not doing anyone any good. You need to ditch that guy. ... Hey, you have a life in Felton, remember? You have a guy there who would take you in, and a nice house, and a nice dog. But you don't feel good about yourself, so you don't go."
"Oh, yeah. You're too cool, you're better than everyone else, you're don't need to play by the rules. Hey, so go ahead. Drink and die. ... Your mom's moving away, your sister's moving away, you're going to be all by yourself with that guy. ... Well you show up drunk and you make them uncomfortable! ... Instead of getting better you're getting worse. ... You might as well be dead. I'm done with this conversation, but I just thought you should know how I feel. If I was you, I'd get your ass back into rehab. You're gonna end up fucking killing yourself."
He walked back into his apartment.
For most of my life, I remained blissfully ignorant of just how hard life is for alcoholics - the drinking kind, and the non-drinking kind. Now it seems I have a front-row seat to the action. My landlord is the non-drinking kind, and he's part of a support group that tried to help Colleen. I carry a genetic predisposition for addictive behavior, but I've never been drunk in my life ... so I don't know how to relate to most of what I see. I can only rummage around in my brain for similar feelings.
There's a saying that goes, "The rich will do anything for the poor except get off their backs." That's how my living situation feels. I'm on good terms with the guard-dog landlord stationed out front, but if a month comes when I fail to pony up my share of the rent, my ass will be out on the curb a couple of days later. That's the bottom line.
I wonder if there should be a similar saying for alcoholics. "An alcoholic will do anything to be functional except stop drinking." I wonder how many of them spend their sober time - self-imposed or involuntary - eagerly counting the days before they can try to ease alcohol back into their lives, one drink at a time. "All I need to do," they reason, "is keep the habit small, so I can remain functional. This time," they lie to themselves, "It will work, because I'm strong. If it doesn't work, it's a relapse - but if it works, then I've conquered my habit. I can live, and drink, at the same time."
But it always becomes a relapse. You don't conquer a habit by learning to live with it. You conquer a habit by STOPPING. Colleen's apparent solution to this little logic error is to run away from anyone who knows it, and instead hang out with people who share her dream: Having a life that includes the pleasure of being drunk. As often as possible, come what may.
What can you do, what can anyone do, about a person who has decided - beyond rationality, inside their emotions - that the one thing they must have, more than anything else in life, more than any relationship, or thing, or accomplishment, ... is intoxication? What if being sober makes them angry, terrifying, and depressed, and they're deathly afraid of showing that weakness, because it makes them "unattractive", or makes them a burden to someone else? "We'd be happier if you stop drinking!" people declare, and they want to reply, "Yeah but if I was sober right now, I'd carve out your intestines with a butcher knife and throttle you with them. Then where would we be?"
Or maybe it's failure. Maybe they live each day saddled with a crushing feeling of inadequacy, that even their best efforts will fall short of some distant victory where all their repressed self-esteem magically awaits. And a quick blast of alcohol turns the pain from a 10 down to a 5.
Ultimately, I guess I just don't know what's inside their heads. How can I understand what it's like to live in desire of intoxication, when sober is all I've been my whole life? I sit and think, and try to puzzle out my role. How can I possibly help? I don't want to waste everyone's time being an "enabler". At the same time, I don't want to add emotional pressure. But I don't want to sit and do nothing.
What can I do?
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 06:12 am (UTC)i'm impressed that you thought so much about that week -- i'd been blocking it out, i think.
moo.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-27 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 02:37 pm (UTC)I'm not so sure that it's simply a self-esteem thing, although that must eventually play a part. I think it has more to do with being unable to cope with adult life. It's clearly not a "decision" to choose intoxication -- it's a choice to flee from the difficulty of living in the world, and intoxication is really just the path of least resistance, the easiest thing to do. I think the emotional attachment to their intoxicant comes later, once they've really fucked everything up and it actually _is_ the one real pleasure in their lives.
To speak only of alcohol, though -- I have extreme difficulty being sympathetic towards people who can't control their usage of alcohol. This is probably the one really strong conservative streak that I have. It seems to me that those people have basically failed at being adults. 95% of people who use alcohol control themselves, exercise judgment, and do not become addicted or otherwise overly dependent on this pleasure. In other words, they act like good, responsible adults. They are capable of going to the pub with some friends, having dinner and a beer or a few, and leaving it at that. This group includes virtually everybody I know.
But that other 5%, the people who just can't handle reality (much less drink) is very offensive to me. I have a hard time agreeing with the notion that addiction to alcohol is a physiological disease -- my instinct is to want to grab one of these people and tell them to grow the fuck up, to stop fucking up their lives and everything and everyone around them, and to stop blaming their ethical failures on a substance or a behavior that has been conveniently defined for them as a "disease," which would be beyond their conscious control, were it an actual disease. In my opinion, those who can't handle booze at all, should avoid booze completely.
By the way, the fact that many former alcoholics _have_ succeeded in overcoming this weakness rather argues for the notion that this is _not_ a physiological disease. Since when has it been possible to overcome a flu simply by deciding not to be sick anymore? It just makes no sense to me.
hrrrrmm
Date: 2005-09-22 09:53 pm (UTC)I buy in to the whole "genetic predisposition" thing because the basic mechanics of it sound reasonable ... Like an Irishman burns more easily in the sun than an Indian, alcohol grabs hold over an alcoholic more completely. Whether they're less able to fight back, or just less inclined to fight back, is almost splitting hairs, since either way it's a tougher ordeal than what others face. And whether it's psychological or physiological, both problems are clearly on the inside, so it's obvious who's to blame.
Consider this, though - if one approaches it as a physiological disease, with a genetic component, (like high heart attack risk, or cancer risk, or even sunburn) then the methods for dealing with it are different. For one, there's no question that it's a risk that will NEVER go away. So the only solution is perpetual vigilance. Also, charitably offering to lighten their load so they can focus their energy on dealing with it becomes "enabling" - because you can instead assume that whatever free energy you've granted them will probably be consumed by booze. Instead your choices are: Intervene to physically separate them from the drug, talk to them, convince them that they personally must decide to stop, ... and if they still want to keep drinking, dump them, and hope they survive to come back.
What disturbs me about all of this, is that there are some creepy parallels between an alcoholic's desire for alcohol, and the typical human's desire for sex. Society wants to have sex both ways - as a serious relationship component, and as a casual expression of physical pleasure. Some very religious people struggle fiercely with sex, and manage to avoid it almost entirely, at least on a physical level, but the rest of us generally accept our fate, and allow our loins to yank us this way and that as we walk down the road of life. It's just part of being human, we rationalize.
But some of us are more in thrall than others. The generally accepted attitude (though not necessarily the correct one) is that for women, sex is something they can take or leave*. For men, it's something they have an overriding compulsion for. Objectively, sex is totally ridiculous. It's people jumping on each other, wiggling around, and sticking little bits of themselves into each other. That could easily describe a bar fight, or a game of Twister. Yet we MUST make it a part of our lives, ALL of us.
So if the roots of our common sexual physiology can bloom into a zillion unique fetishes and obsessions ... Why couldn't there be a similar effect - however accidental - between some people and alcohol? If a young boy can be driven from his home, his family, his hometown, and get beaten like a dog the whole way, yet still be unable to exorcise his desire for hot gay sex, ... what hope does an alcoholic have?
*( While writing this, I mistyped it as, "for women, sex is something they can take or lease". LOLx0r.)
Re: hrrrrmm
Date: 2005-09-23 04:37 pm (UTC)That's exactly what I mean.
The idea of genetic predisposition seems perfectly reasonable to me also. And it also seems reasonable that certain factors, such as one's basic tolerance for alcohol, might be inheritable. But that doesn't mean I buy the explanation. Frankly I think that many more alcoholics are made from this whole stupid culture we have of "addiction is cool," which romanticizes fuck-ups and addiction. How else can one explain the attraction of cigarettes, for instance? There is no point in smoking a cigarette other than to satisfy an addiction to them, or to appear 'cool.' Not surprisingly, many alcoholics are also smokers ... well, addiction is cool, isn't it?
From what I've seen, 'genetic predisposition' amounts to a cop-out for most if not all of the people who like to bring it up. I know at least three families with one lone alcoholic or crackhead in their midst. If there really was a genetic component with _those_ people, then why wasn't grandpa a slobbering drunk back in his day? Why don't two or three cousins have problems? Why is it just this one guy in the family who can't handle booze, and everybody else is safe wielding a beer at a picnic? (I do have specific examples in mind, so I'm not just spouting hypotheticals here.) Those people aren't genetically predisposed; they have emotional problems that we can't fathom. You can be sure they don't try this explanation out on their families...
That's not to say that genetic predisposition can't possibly exist. Of course it's possible. I just think that most boozers live in a world where, if they trot out a pseudo-scientific explanation for why they're not to blame, it'll buy them a bit more time to indulge themselves before everybody writes them off again. Again, my basic reasoning, and I think it's logical, is that since people are indeed capable of avoiding drink and drugs and living without them, people who have a problem have no excuses and no one to blame but themselves. What they need to do is take responsibility for their own lives. Hence the heavy emphasis in recovery programs on needing to "want to stop." I don't see any other explanation that cuts through all the bullshit and explains all the available data like that one does.
As for those people who say they drink because Dad drank ... the term used for every other unhealthy behavior in the world is "following a bad example." Why should this one be any different? I just don't buy it.
As for sex ... this last part just confuses me. There is only a superficial similarity between the craving for sex and the craving for a drug one is addicted to. The need for intimacy with another human being is a basic appetite, and is not identical with craving the high of an orgasm. Presumably you meant the latter, and the lengths to which people are willing to go to make their orgasms more intense?
Re: hrrrrmm
Date: 2005-09-23 09:29 pm (UTC)Your point about culture is a good one too ... Addiction is dramatic, and teenagers must have drama, but the two don't necessarily have to intersect the way they do: Something keeps cigarettes hip and cool, while pipe-smoking and cigars languish in relative obscurity, and I don't think it's their relative powers of addiction. (BTW: Speaking of foul industries, I know you don't go to the movies much, but you might want to check out the film "Lord of War".)
The comparison I was making between sex and alcohol was my attempt to make sense of this creeped-out feeling I get when I think about the possible ways that genetics influences addiction. I think it's the pessimist in me speaking up. Isn't it true that, if being an alcoholic is a life-long condition that sets in and never goes away, it's similar to sex past the beginning of puberty? If we don't get sex, we get all wonky. Is this the fate of alcoholics who swear off alcohol? Are they doomed to eternal wonkiness?
Maybe the outlook isn't universally bleak, and just depends on the specifics of the individual ...
Trent Reznor in a recent interview:
Re: hrrrrmm
Date: 2005-09-25 09:54 pm (UTC)This economic aspect is true of fine tobacco as well. To seriously enjoy pipe smoking, first one must spend $50-$100, minimum, on a pipe -- and we haven't even started talking about the required accessories and the tobacco itself. Cigars are more accessible, but even then, a single cigar, if it's worth smoking at all, rarely costs less than $5. To buy these luxury items, one must typically seek out tiny, well-appointed specialty shops which don't tend to advertise. (They don't have to because aficionados seek them out.) And naturally, there are accessories, all but indispensible, that are associated with cigars as well. By contrast, cigarettes are as ubiquitous as soda by the can -- for that matter are often bought in the same stores as the soda -- and all you need to light one up is a paper match.
There are really two schools of alcohol and tobacco use, here -- the majority is interested primarily in the drug effects, and the small minority is primarily interested in the sensual experience. Personally I belong to this latter group. I really love a good cigar, but that doesn't mean I like all tobacco products. My ardent wish is that cigarettes might disappear from the face of the earth. As with cheap booze, the sole effect they have, as far as I can tell, is to harm people without giving them anything deeply beneficial in return (e.g., unmitigated pleasure, an opportunity to relax and reflect for an hour or two, etc).
Also
Date: 2005-09-22 02:40 pm (UTC)Re: Also
Date: 2005-09-22 08:41 pm (UTC)Re: Also
Date: 2005-09-23 03:06 pm (UTC)Re: Also
Date: 2005-09-23 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 08:58 pm (UTC)I know that I am exactly the same way. I had never been drunk in my life until last weekend. Now I *KNOW* that I will never drink alcohol again. It was far too pleasant and I know I would just keep doing it. It would change who I am and ruin my body and mind.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 09:52 pm (UTC)As the night went on, I treated the drinking like a science experiment. I sat and obeserved how I felt and how I thougt my perception of the night was being changed by the alcohol. While I don't remember many of my observations or conclusions (which I'm sure seemed brilliant and earth-shattering at the time) I do remember that the music got much much better the more I had to drink. That was, of course, until the performances ended and the repetitive-techno-DJing began. Even drunk, I couldn't take the aural assault. A friend I met at the party agreed and we sat in my car until we sobered up so I could drop him off at home and drive myself home. Honestly, I probably wasn't completely sober by the time I started driving, but I sure thought I was. That's another reason never to do it again. It was a very interesting experience, and I'm glad I've finally gotten it out of the way (I'd always wondered what drunkenness felt like) but I don't think I'll be doing it again. To that point, though, I had relished the fact that I'd never been drunk. One more honor point I've lost. Oh well.
Fortunately for me, most of my encounters with mind-altering substances have been negative enough to completely turn me off to them. Pot makes me angry, as in murderously furious at people I know and love, dangerously so! I'll certainly never do that again either! Mushrooms make me stupid, disoriented, and annoying, and the hallucinations are abstract yet disturbing. Never never again.
What all of these experiences have taught me is that I was not meant to ingest things that have such powerfull effects on my mind and body. Good/bad food is powerfull enough.
I think I'll stick to nutritious food and water from now on.