Hey Dr. Phil! We are not “Idiots.”

Mentally ill? For most of recorded history the treatment was barbaric. Labeled as witches, we were burned at the stake or weighted down and thrown into icy water. If we floated we were “guilty.” Fished out and sent to said burning stake. Sink to the bottom? Well then we were “innocent”… and dead. England saw […]

And it begins like this…

I’m taking a whiz in an inappropriate place again. Apparently five plus years of sobriety have done little to suppress “the world is my toilet” viewpoint that I subscribe to. Tonight it’s the side of a forest-green Waste Management Dumpster behind a Fry’s supermarket. The street sweeping company I drive for has sent me to […]

Live Your Way into Right Thinking?

I write this at my own peril. My wife—she who wears the pants, skirts and most of the dresses in this relationship—took great exception when I told her what I was planning to blog about. She didn’t explicitly forbid me from blogging on this topic, but the implication was that if I went down this […]

Can Chores Keep You Sober?

Alcoholism runs strong on my mother’s side of the family. Though she has never imbibed—she being the white sheep from a rather colorful herd—I’d blame her for carrying the drink-till-I-puke-blood gene if I was prone to playing the victim card. Regrettably, in an era in which fully grown little boys and girls wear their victimhood […]

Vodka Made My Clothes Fall Off

Oh that my more horrific drunken escapades could have sufficiently chastened me that I would dare not pick up a drink again. Oh that I didn’t have to work steps, make meetings, get into service and otherwise maintain my spiritual condition so that I might get my daily reprieve. But such is not my lot. […]

Ideas of Reference

Nothing is more disheartening than making resolutions that are broken by January 3rd. For this reason I didn’t even begin my list of resolutions until Fall. This way, I can look at my behaviors and say, “I haven’t done X yet, maybe this is the year I won’t do X at all.” In making my […]

The Games Children Play

So one might ask what it’s like for a bipolar alcoholic to be involved with rearing children. Well, Breanne, my eldest daughter, only tried to send me to prison once. I often wonder if it was intentional. She was only four. It’s hard to gauge the motives of those little buggers when they are that […]