Shortly before going into the Army, I decided I would drink mostly for social reasons. Halfway between the 14 week long Armor Training at Ft. Knox Ky, we were given PX privilages and we all got sloppy drunk. One huge Jamaican from New Orleans did the coolest thing I ever saw. He would rip the tabs off one side of a six-pack, pick it up in both hands and run it back and forth across his lips like a giant harmonica hardly spilling a drop, slam it back down on the table and give a deep laugh like the voodoo guy in "Live and Let Die!!"
While I am not condoning drinking, this is how even the straightest of the straight got back into it. Once I got out, my drinking increased to the point where I would drink say 10 kamikase's on 2-4-1 night along with several beers and have to sleep on a bench by a park because I got lost from seeing double and could not read the street signs, or find a phone booth to call a cab. By the time I was 23, alchohol did not affect me as much as it used to. I slid into a terrible depression and ended up homeless and working out of day labor. My family blamed it on alchohol, but it was really deep seated mental illness that had been with me since childhood. All the alchohol use had been was a last ditch effort to try and change my brain chemistry so that I could feel 'normal.' My grandfather, a man I love dearly, with only a third grade education, saw through all the bullshit Straight had taught and helped me pull myself together. He built me a crude apartment in the attic on a house across the way, that he owned and charged me a very affordable rent and aside from having to shoot an occasion citrus rat with a pellet gun, it was a damn good living.
I got it together enough that I was driving a 6 year old Firebird just 8 months later. It got to the point where I had outgrown the apartment, so I found a nice garage apt in Old Northeast. I still drank, but it was moderate, with a little pot smoking thrown in. A 28 gram baggie would last me about 10 days. The pot actually helped me to drink less. I was working at a very dangerous tool & die plant at the time.
The owners had converted a bunch of machinery for stamping car parts and they had not been properly set up by qualified workmen. Pressbrakes were failing every day and I almost got my hands smashed on several occasions. There was an employee there that was fighting to start a union, a big article in the St. Pete Times, and all my neighbors were suggesting that I quit. With all the stress going on, my long dormant mental illness flared up once again, only this time, after nearly 26 years, I finally got the help I deserved. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began Lithium Treatment immediatly. I responded so well that I returned to work so whacked on Haldol, that all I did was destroy parts for 3 days until it wore off!! I still drink occasionally, but I am very responsible with it, and I don't want to go back to working day labor and the hellish existence of my early 20's.
