Hmmm, interesting e-mail. It's like the conversation of a person who is very hungry, where they start describing all kinds of food they like, how their mother used to make brownies, their favorite restaurants, and so on. Except with you, it's all about alcohol and drinking in one way or another. So what's with the no-drinking policy? What made you decide to do that? It sounds like a good thing, but it also sounds from the first paragraph like there's enough unpleasant stuff coming out that it will be hard not to give in to the pressure inside you saying "Start drinking again!"
I am going to be Mr. Therapist Without Credentials for a moment here and say the obvious, that the drinking sounds like a coping mechanism to insulate yourself from some stuff about yourself that you don't like. But once you stop drinking, you're still left with that stuff you don't like, so it's tough. On the flip side, I'm sure stuff you don't like happens because of the drinking, so you're kind of in a bind.
I have been reading a book lately called Self-Therapy, by Jay Earley. I have never been much on self-help books, though I did enjoy the self hypnosis books we read for awhile when we were kids, not that they ever got us anywhere. My mom read a lot of self-help books, and they never helped her much. But I'm enjoying this one a lot. It actually seems to be useful. In the course of my meditation, I had been coming up with a sense of all these "voices" or "characters" inside of me. I was actually getting to know these beings, and giving them names, and I was trying to understand what they were saying and what they wanted. I mentioned this to a guy I know and he told me there was a whole book that talks about that sort of thing.... this book, Self-Therapy. (Actually, I think there are quite a few books on this subject right now... I guess the methods they are talking about are sort of the "in" thing in therapy these days. Normally, I would reject it on those very grounds, but I figure I can use all the help I can get). It reads like your typical, hokey self help book, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Read this book and maybe you'll get to know the parts of you that are keeping you from doing what you want to do, and the parts that are making you feel bad about it, and all the other shit that is probably turning the interior of your life into a house of horrors. That's what was going on inside me, at any rate, and probably still is, but it seems to be better. The alcohol is probably something you've needed to cope with all that, just like they've been giving soldiers amphetamines to help them out with their duties in Afghanistan. I just ordered a copy of the book for you online. It'll be sent to your Kings Beach address. Read it or not, as you like.
I wouldn't have remembered the name of the Corpse Grinders, but I tracked it down with a google search, with search words something like "cat food movie eating dead bodies." Actually, I don't remember seeing A Clockwork Orange in Monterey with you. When I was in Monterey I wasn't working at a donut shop, by the way, I was working at the Round Table Pizza... a very up and coming job for a guy with a bachelor's degree in journalism. I do remember the movie, though. A few months ago, I had an eye appointment, and the eye doctor rigged me up in a machine that was very much like the apparatus in Clockwork Orange where they have the guy's eyelids pried open and they are messing around with his eyeballs. It was horrible. I'm surprised I didn't pass out in that doctor's office. He is a very jokey guy. Every single thing he says from start to finish is some kind of supposedly humorous comment, which doesn't mix all that well with having your eyelids propped open and your head strapped into a giant helmet while a jokester is coming at your eyeballs with a strange little tool, saying "This isn't going to hurt at all."
I'll be interested to hear how the baby's baptism went.
--edward
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