My Back. My Monkey.
by Heater Case
I cleaned up my act to reflect my newly turned leaf. Six months after my arrest, I was due back in court and the day almost came and went without me being called forward. My parole officer looked over the crowd several times and, I guess, she thought I wasn’t there.
The day was coming to a close and I went up to her little side cubicle to ask if she forgot about me. I hardly opened my mouth before she gasped, “Oh my God.”
She went up to the bench and animatedly whispered to the judge, gesturing back at me several times. I exceeded whatever they were looking for and they dropped the charge.
After the mandatory AA meetings and Drunk Driving Classes, I tried to maintain ways of Bill W. I started seeing a special sobriety inclined therapist and I counted on her as my sponsor.
I wasn’t drinking (or drugging) but I just never felt like I belonged in sobriety culture. When I traveled cross country for three years I went to meetings in all kinds of places. I was amazed at the ‘war stories’ shared by members in every chapter I visited.
To this day I think the Big Book and the Twelve Steps are wonderful. But, to this day, I still can’t get the Serenity Oath straight.
I continued to never feel whole. I was a dry drunk.
The feeling of not belonging began to seep into the rest of my life. I was a low key nervous wreck. I never knew what to say to people other than upfront pleasantries and cliches. I was an introvert acting like an extrovert and people weren’t buying it.
The years on the road led to a year in Los Angeles, and then to Boston and a short first marriage. I felt like I was losing control in slow motion. I couldn’t relate to people or things because I couldn’t relate to me.
Somewhere along the way, I realized it had been years since I did cocaine. Not only had I lost the urge, but the concept felt as undesirable as snorting Comet or Ajax. No fond remembrances, no wistful missing the sensation.
Funny, on a side note, I never came across what others perceived as an obvious coke head. We were supposed to be rail thin. Nope. All the people I knew gained weight. Why? Because we’d string ourselves out for days on end until we crashed and stayed in bed for days, alternating sleep with stuffing our maw with pizzas and whatever else we could get brought over.
To this day, I have not had the slightest urge to do coke again.
Back to being a dry drunk.
By the early 2000’s, I was fed up with this fugue, this schtum. The pent-up anxiety was at high tide. There was finally an incident (doesn’t matter what) that stressed me out so badly that there was nothing to say except, “I need a fucking drink.”
And, Sweet Jesus, it felt so good. The clouds parted and angels sang. Well, maybe just one cloud and one angel, but I felt a calm come over me like I had not felt in a decade.
So, for the last twenty some odd years I’ve been a drinker again. Maybe it’s with age, maybe it’s the lifestyle that I have now fashioned for myself, but I go through long spells without booze. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I can have one if need be, and lots of needs ain’t been.
But all this is not what I came here to talk about.
Cigarettes. Sweet Jesus on a cracker, cigarettes.
I smoked from High School on. My lunch money wouldn’t make it past the candy store on the corner of my block. They didn’t care so much back then.
Since then, I have been from shit poor to flush with cash and back again a dozen times. Don’t forget all that cocaine money I had. But there were times when I had to go for days without eating. There were times when I was on food stamps and I would wait for food stamp day so I could walk twelve blocks to the dollar store and purchase a loaf of bread that I’ve been dreaming about.
I once ate dog food for a couple of days.
I had a job lined up, but it wasn’t for a couple of months. I figured things might get pretty bad before they got better so I bought some dog food on purpose to see if I could stomach it. I mixed it with some egg noodles from the dollar store. I didn’t get any of the famous name brands. I went right down to the bottom shelf and got the cheapest generic dog food I could find. If I was eating dog I wasn’t going to put on airs.
So many times I went spelunking into the couch cushions and frisked my closeted winter coats for change. Smoking was always the priority, even if only enough for a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers. I never had luck getting shopkeepers to sell me ‘loosies’. People think I’m a cop at the worst times.
As the saying goes “Quitting is easy. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
Over the years I tried the patch, the gum, the inhaler and whatever else was supposed to work. I’ve never been able to be hypnotized, so scratch that.
I would look through real estate sections and my first thought was always where I would smoke if I lived there.
Every addict has their ‘works’, their equipment, and I was no different. In recent times I had it down to the science of a can of American Spirit Yellow, a rolling machine, a box of filters and a yellow plastic cigarette pack that looked like the waterproof wallets they sell in sporting goods stores and on cruise ships.
When other people might have put out their clothes for the next day, I was rollin’ up tomorrow’s box of butts.
I’m a writer. I’ve been a writer for longer than I can remember. Stage, screen, television, radio, books, articles, poetry, lyrics, speeches and ad copy (the last two are basically the same) have all been filled with the offspring from the loins of my mind.
I don’t need a half bottle of scotch poured into a lowball glass and a skull covered with the drippings of a still burning candle to write. But the idea of trying to write without a pack of smokes on my writing table? That is heresy of the highest order. That is a betrayal of grit, grime, typewriter ribbon smudges, going without eating and not knowing if it’s day or night. Like the salting of Carthage, it’s making barren the compost that is the rich dark breeding ground of words plastered together in a thousand different ways.
C’mon, Muse, at least coffee and cigarettes. I can work with no less.
You’d think a triple bypass would make me quit. Nope. That’s a story for another time. No heart attack. I just went in for a test and didn’t come out for a week.
No, I didn’t walk out of the hospital and light up on the curb. It took about two months. Two months was the turnaround time until I was back in business.
By then, I don’t know if my resistance to toxins wasn’t what it used to be or cigarettes got stronger. Probably both. With each first deep drag, I could feel the ammonia, the cyanide, the insecticide, the rat poison, the carbon monoxide and all those other goodies coursing through my veins. But it’s like being a shipwreck survivor and the only other thing that washes up is a family size box of Ex-Lax. You know what’s going to happen, but you are so hungry. I’d get nauseous and dizzy. I’d start to lose the feeling in my legs. I managed to par the experience down to twice a week. One on my way to see my therapist and one when I left. I even got that down to when I left her office.
Then my therapist moved away and, suddenly, I no longer had a reason to smoke.
I recently had a doctor’s appointment during which a medical assistant, who I guess still smoked, asked me when does one stop wanting a cigarette.
I told her the truth, “Never. You will never stop wanting a cigarette at least once a day.”
To this day, I still have one cigarette a year. Maybe two.
“Uh oh,” you say, “That’s the slippery slope right there! At that rate, he’ll be smoking a pack a day by the year 9318!”
Try describing a nicotine fit to the untainted.
I once defined it as being Clark Kent and you’re in an elevator full of gorgeous women. They're all gushing about how awesome Superman is. You so badly want to tell them who you really are.
Sometimes I entertain a pipedream where the fourth wall of my apartment rolls up like a garage door. There's are a camera crew. There's a guy who is kind of between a game show host and Chris Hansen from To Catch A Predator.
“Well, it looks like you’ve learned your lesson," he says, "Here’s all your cigarette and cocaine money back.”
During my short marriage, there were times when we were in synch but most of the time we weren’t. But there were times when we lovingly took care of each other. I tried going cold turkey and I thought I could relieve urges by venting. It was a lot of grunting things like “You. Cannot. Believe. How. Much. I. Want. A. Fucking. Cigarette. Right. Now.”
I swear to all things to swear on that the following is true.
During one of my ranting spells, she looked at me and said, “How about some pussy instead?”
I paused.
Then I looked at her and said, “I don’t think we can keep it lit.”
She went up to the bench and animatedly whispered to the judge, gesturing back at me several times. I exceeded whatever they were looking for and they dropped the charge.
After the mandatory AA meetings and Drunk Driving Classes, I tried to maintain ways of Bill W. I started seeing a special sobriety inclined therapist and I counted on her as my sponsor.
I wasn’t drinking (or drugging) but I just never felt like I belonged in sobriety culture. When I traveled cross country for three years I went to meetings in all kinds of places. I was amazed at the ‘war stories’ shared by members in every chapter I visited.
To this day I think the Big Book and the Twelve Steps are wonderful. But, to this day, I still can’t get the Serenity Oath straight.
I continued to never feel whole. I was a dry drunk.
The feeling of not belonging began to seep into the rest of my life. I was a low key nervous wreck. I never knew what to say to people other than upfront pleasantries and cliches. I was an introvert acting like an extrovert and people weren’t buying it.
The years on the road led to a year in Los Angeles, and then to Boston and a short first marriage. I felt like I was losing control in slow motion. I couldn’t relate to people or things because I couldn’t relate to me.
Somewhere along the way, I realized it had been years since I did cocaine. Not only had I lost the urge, but the concept felt as undesirable as snorting Comet or Ajax. No fond remembrances, no wistful missing the sensation.
Funny, on a side note, I never came across what others perceived as an obvious coke head. We were supposed to be rail thin. Nope. All the people I knew gained weight. Why? Because we’d string ourselves out for days on end until we crashed and stayed in bed for days, alternating sleep with stuffing our maw with pizzas and whatever else we could get brought over.
To this day, I have not had the slightest urge to do coke again.
Back to being a dry drunk.
By the early 2000’s, I was fed up with this fugue, this schtum. The pent-up anxiety was at high tide. There was finally an incident (doesn’t matter what) that stressed me out so badly that there was nothing to say except, “I need a fucking drink.”
And, Sweet Jesus, it felt so good. The clouds parted and angels sang. Well, maybe just one cloud and one angel, but I felt a calm come over me like I had not felt in a decade.
So, for the last twenty some odd years I’ve been a drinker again. Maybe it’s with age, maybe it’s the lifestyle that I have now fashioned for myself, but I go through long spells without booze. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I can have one if need be, and lots of needs ain’t been.
But all this is not what I came here to talk about.
Cigarettes. Sweet Jesus on a cracker, cigarettes.
I smoked from High School on. My lunch money wouldn’t make it past the candy store on the corner of my block. They didn’t care so much back then.
Since then, I have been from shit poor to flush with cash and back again a dozen times. Don’t forget all that cocaine money I had. But there were times when I had to go for days without eating. There were times when I was on food stamps and I would wait for food stamp day so I could walk twelve blocks to the dollar store and purchase a loaf of bread that I’ve been dreaming about.
I once ate dog food for a couple of days.
I had a job lined up, but it wasn’t for a couple of months. I figured things might get pretty bad before they got better so I bought some dog food on purpose to see if I could stomach it. I mixed it with some egg noodles from the dollar store. I didn’t get any of the famous name brands. I went right down to the bottom shelf and got the cheapest generic dog food I could find. If I was eating dog I wasn’t going to put on airs.
So many times I went spelunking into the couch cushions and frisked my closeted winter coats for change. Smoking was always the priority, even if only enough for a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers. I never had luck getting shopkeepers to sell me ‘loosies’. People think I’m a cop at the worst times.
As the saying goes “Quitting is easy. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
Over the years I tried the patch, the gum, the inhaler and whatever else was supposed to work. I’ve never been able to be hypnotized, so scratch that.
I would look through real estate sections and my first thought was always where I would smoke if I lived there.
Every addict has their ‘works’, their equipment, and I was no different. In recent times I had it down to the science of a can of American Spirit Yellow, a rolling machine, a box of filters and a yellow plastic cigarette pack that looked like the waterproof wallets they sell in sporting goods stores and on cruise ships.
When other people might have put out their clothes for the next day, I was rollin’ up tomorrow’s box of butts.
I’m a writer. I’ve been a writer for longer than I can remember. Stage, screen, television, radio, books, articles, poetry, lyrics, speeches and ad copy (the last two are basically the same) have all been filled with the offspring from the loins of my mind.
I don’t need a half bottle of scotch poured into a lowball glass and a skull covered with the drippings of a still burning candle to write. But the idea of trying to write without a pack of smokes on my writing table? That is heresy of the highest order. That is a betrayal of grit, grime, typewriter ribbon smudges, going without eating and not knowing if it’s day or night. Like the salting of Carthage, it’s making barren the compost that is the rich dark breeding ground of words plastered together in a thousand different ways.
C’mon, Muse, at least coffee and cigarettes. I can work with no less.
You’d think a triple bypass would make me quit. Nope. That’s a story for another time. No heart attack. I just went in for a test and didn’t come out for a week.
No, I didn’t walk out of the hospital and light up on the curb. It took about two months. Two months was the turnaround time until I was back in business.
By then, I don’t know if my resistance to toxins wasn’t what it used to be or cigarettes got stronger. Probably both. With each first deep drag, I could feel the ammonia, the cyanide, the insecticide, the rat poison, the carbon monoxide and all those other goodies coursing through my veins. But it’s like being a shipwreck survivor and the only other thing that washes up is a family size box of Ex-Lax. You know what’s going to happen, but you are so hungry. I’d get nauseous and dizzy. I’d start to lose the feeling in my legs. I managed to par the experience down to twice a week. One on my way to see my therapist and one when I left. I even got that down to when I left her office.
Then my therapist moved away and, suddenly, I no longer had a reason to smoke.
I recently had a doctor’s appointment during which a medical assistant, who I guess still smoked, asked me when does one stop wanting a cigarette.
I told her the truth, “Never. You will never stop wanting a cigarette at least once a day.”
To this day, I still have one cigarette a year. Maybe two.
“Uh oh,” you say, “That’s the slippery slope right there! At that rate, he’ll be smoking a pack a day by the year 9318!”
Try describing a nicotine fit to the untainted.
I once defined it as being Clark Kent and you’re in an elevator full of gorgeous women. They're all gushing about how awesome Superman is. You so badly want to tell them who you really are.
Sometimes I entertain a pipedream where the fourth wall of my apartment rolls up like a garage door. There's are a camera crew. There's a guy who is kind of between a game show host and Chris Hansen from To Catch A Predator.
“Well, it looks like you’ve learned your lesson," he says, "Here’s all your cigarette and cocaine money back.”
During my short marriage, there were times when we were in synch but most of the time we weren’t. But there were times when we lovingly took care of each other. I tried going cold turkey and I thought I could relieve urges by venting. It was a lot of grunting things like “You. Cannot. Believe. How. Much. I. Want. A. Fucking. Cigarette. Right. Now.”
I swear to all things to swear on that the following is true.
During one of my ranting spells, she looked at me and said, “How about some pussy instead?”
I paused.
Then I looked at her and said, “I don’t think we can keep it lit.”
