self
i am a capricorn and don’t believe in astrology, but it’s hard to argue with the correspondence between myself and my zodiacal archetype. capricorns are supposed to be ‘practical and prudent, ambitious and disciplined, patient and careful, humorous and reserved’ on the good side, ‘pessimistic and fatalistic, miserly and grudging’ on the flip side. on pretty much every count, i am a perfect match, at least in my own self-view. from an early age my mother called me ‘morbid’ for my fascination with death, the occult and all things mysteriously forbidden. my peers have always described me as old beyond my years, stodgy even. and there is no doubting that i am, even at my most hopeful, an utter fatalist.
however when i began using intoxicants in college, much of that changed or seemed to. i discovered another aspect of my personality, a fun-loving, care-free and utterly uninhibited alter-ego my friend martin dubbed ‘the drunk lover.’ i am not the first to realize the transformative power of intoxicants. poets forever have written of it. some in praise and others in condemnation. & almost every religion mysteriously forbids or discourages it.
after college i moved to los angeles and discovered strong cannabis and began yet another love affair with my forays into self-denial. not only was i the Drunk Lover, i became the High Philosopher. when i was not high, i was scheming on how to get there. only when i was blazed did i feel at ease with the world. had the prudish, pleasure-fearing adolescent i’d once been met me then, he would have been apalled.
but as everyone who has walked that road seeking absolution knows, intoxicants deliver nothing ultimately. a peek into the heavens is all you get at best. only the truly determined, the utterly convicted, finally find It. and if you abuse your window of choice, it grows increasingly murky, granting fewer and fewer glimpses into the light. finally there is nothing but you and smoke in the dark.
my innermost self struggled continuously to break my chain of dependence, my addiction. i have “quit” so many times the word has lost its meaning. it was not until the birth of my son that i believe my soul truly began to unfetter itself. because of my son, i had to get a “real” job – one that i could not quit on a whim, one that challenged me and frustrated me and required me to tread or drown. because of my son i was married and acquired a spouse who depended on me. because of my son i was forced to confront my own selfishness for the first time and go beyond it. not just a window or a door, my son’s birth became a new path to walk.
only recently my substance use has dwindled to nothing, but not because i quit. i haven’t. quite the opposite. it’s just that for the first time in a while i’ve started to want to be sober. i want to be completely present all the time. i want to pay attention. i don’t want to wake up ten-years from now and get a status report from the Drunk Lover or the High Philosopher. neither of them is reliable. neither of them accomplishes much.
the only thing is, the more my self comes back to me, the more i realize that all the problems and issues i had before i went under are still here, waiting to be addressed. sure, i’ve changed, but not in all the ways i’d hoped i would have. my temper is short sometimes. i am very picky about things being a certain way. i desire perfection in people and things. these are the very things which always separated me from others before. i cannot understand frivolity. i see only the end of things, their ultimate rest. i am attracted to the things other people would rather not talk about and they are all that i want to discuss. i chastise my wife for doing nothing more than she has always done, leaving her perplexed at the new person who has suddently occupied her happy-go-lucky husband’s shoes. it’s not her fault. she hasn’t changed i don’t think. it’s me. whatever that means. it’s me.
