Last night I had one of my favorites - a home made milkshake. Or, as I like to call it, ice cream soup. I put scoops of ice cream in a bowl and instead of sprinkles or whipped cream, I pour milk over it and mush it up. Then I slow scoop eat it because I want the taste to last forever. Or at least for the length of the movie I was watching. Which invariably never happens. One taste and my eat buds are demanding a bite every 3 or 4 seconds.
I remember my father said something once, like when he was younger he wished he could drink Nehi Orange Soda forever. It was probably one of the only times I felt like I wasn't a reluctantly adopted alien. The rest of the things he said like "be better, do better, do your chores, get better grades, go to college, get a job or get out" were just foreign concepts too far over my head for me to comprehend. But that soda thing. Yeah, I got that. I want it to last forever.
As I was feeling the cold iced milk crystals dissolve on my tongue and tasting the sweet flavor of the ice cream, I started to think about all the sugar my body was going to have to try and figure out what to do with while I slept. If I slept. And what long-term affects would this have on my body. Then I got a little resentful at my body because I needed it to get the message that after all these years Ice cream was a staple and it would just have to adjust. I know. I know. It does. Just not in the way my sugar fiend would like!
“Bad teeth, Diabetes or gaining weight”, three things come to mind first as there were hammered into my memory brain cells for more years than anything else as long-term affects of too much sugar. So, yeah, the body adjusts but there is a cost. How high depends on the person and a bunch of other factors. For me, though, looking in the mirror I can say I’ve been shelling out the chunky bucks to the tune of I look like someone snuck in and replaced me with a little stone-aged dinosaur!
To be fair to the ice cream clan it wasn’t just the sugar. I had a years long romantic affair with alcohol, other drugs and cigarettes. I loved them. At least I thought I did. And I thought for the most part the feeling was mutual. But, like most people, I came to see I was in a battle for life. They wanted to take mine and I wanted to keep it. Since, like viruses, they don’t have lives of their own, my winning just meant they go back on the shelf as if nothing had ever happened. While I am left to pay the cost of the battle.
Long-term affects. The thing about these substances is that they can land as trauma on the body. Repeated trauma, has a impact on body, mind and soul, PTSD being one of them. Quality of life is affected. A price extracted. Every now and then willingly, but most times not.
Most of us users treated our bodies like I did my ice cream soup - demanding that it adjust to the copious amounts of whatever the drug of choice, and that includes adrenaline inducing situations as well. I remember a long time ago a friend lent me their car and said it was low on gas and to be sure to use unleaded to fill it up. At the time I was not car savvy and I was going through an emotional time and not paying attention as I stopped to put gas in. I put some dollar amount and went to start it up and it started then died. I couldn’t get it too start up again. I had put leaded in an unleaded tank. The car, unlike our bodies, just wasn’t having that.
That is an amazing thing about us. Our bodies, minds and souls have a tremendous ability to adapt to some really funky shit. I’ve thrown leaded into my unleaded only tank many a time and got up the next morning, chewed a few aspirins and headed out to do it again.
One of the nice concessions drugs tend to make, at least they did for me, is they allow us to not see reality, as it, as it is unfolding right in front of us. Selectivly. Some things pop right into consciousness and other things take as long as it takes. I was aware of how much money I had in relation to what drug or how many drinks I could afford but not the cost, down te road, of not having said money to pay rent or buy food.
When I first cleaned up and quit cigarettes my body started to gain weight. At the time I was a 29 to 30 in. waist. I see picture of me back then and I looked like I was starving. But back then I swore I was overweight while at the same time feeling like having such a skinny waist was special. It was a weird combination, a distorted sense of reality, now that I think about it. It reminded me of a song the Temptations sang called “ball of confusion”. Except it wasn’t the world it was me and a lot of the people I hung out in dark and dirty places with.
Thinking about my ice cream soup I also remember my parents trying to tell me about too much sugar, about alcohol abuse, to stay away from drugs and sex (Omg! Sex too…What?). How does one teach these lessons to kids in a way that meaningfully translates into them avoiding an opioid overdose? Of course, most kids do, they manage to avoid the Jack daniels life tour altogether. So it’s hit or miss. This isn’t really about that though. It’s a side thought. Somewhat related but the gist of this is - the cost one pays to play.
Many years after sobering up I am still being made aware of debits that were made from my physical and sanity account when I was insanley trying to run things in the way I thought they should be run. “If only life would let me drink like I wanted and if only I could drink like James Bond”. I mean, why couldn’t I just snort coke like a regular gentleman?
I’ve sat in many rooms with many people just like me. People who met their own versions of Mephistopheles, ready to make a deal , but no real comprehenson as to the true cost of the deal. I vaguely remember watching Dr. Faustus with Richard Burton a thousand years ago. He wasn’t a happy camper and did what any one of us would do in his situation - sold his soul to the devil for some knowledge of good and evil. Some wealth and pleasure. I remember how he was the man, got all the goods and the beautiful woman too. But when the devil came to collect he wept and moaned and gnashed at teeth.
I can relate. I remember one day I had an epiphany. I really wanted to live. But then I thought about all the times I laughed and scoffed at death, daring it to come as I tossed back shot after shot, pill after pill. Even angrily and with much maudlin drama wishing death come knocking at my door. Then I thought about how repeating something over and over can make it manifest in one’s life. I got a moment of panic. Oh God I did not mean it. I was high. I didn’t know what I was thinking or talking about. I really wnt to live. live. Live. Live. Live. Live. (Is that Mephistopheles laughing in the corner?).
Long-term affects. The cost to be the boss. Unlike Faust a lot of us have get gifted with second chances. A kind of do over. A higher court intervened, put the elevator down to hell in reverse, put a hold on the contract. A hold that would stay as long as certain criteria are met. Continuously. For the rest of one’s life. A day at a time of course.
So I guess maybe this is about acceptance. A process that unfolds with every breath. Every new set of 24 hours. It was a bit of folly to expect that doing what I did for as long as I did would have no consequences. About a year before COVID I ended up in the emergency room. I ws having excruciating pain trying to breath. I was told I had blood clots in my lung and pneumonia. A deadly cocktail that, by the grace of God, I am hear to talk about. One of the things I discovered when being shown an x-ray of my lungs was that there are a couple of small blank spots on them. The Dr. said there should be little white specks there. The result of the smoking. It made sense now why I just could not jog. Long-term affects.
Another long-term affect I am just coming to be aware of us a condition called persistant deppressive disorder. I have been deep down in this for a longer time than I would like to admit to. Years of wasted efforts trying to fix what I thought was wrong come to mind. Some of the work was valuable and needed. But most if it did not hit on the right issue - like mowing the grass cause the roof is leaking. Also I don’t remember very many men talking about having depression issues. Mostly women. So the idea that this was a thing that could apply to me was mysogynistically too far fetched to consider. “I am man, hear me roar. Even from the kitchen floor…” Until it wasn’t.
Finding this out has been somewhat of a relief. I can’t tell you haw many “meetings” and treatment modalities I inflicted on myself in my effort to try and fix me as if at any moment the right button would be pushed and I would hit enlightened nirvana. I can relax a bit more now. I have a more grounded personal health and growth regimen fine tailored to what is actually in need of some adjustment.
I am still meeting the critera that keeps the hold on the soul for sale contract. Mephistopheles is a patient collector. I can never forget that. I guess personal experience is a crucial element in the teaching process. There are just some ice creams I cannot eat. Not because someone told me not to, but because I tried to. In fact I can’t be in the same room with some of them - the attraction is just too powerful - and I can’t expect them to avoid me because they know what they do to me.
So what’s your ice cream? What’s that thing you need to avoid because of the impact on you and your life? What is it that you should not be in the same room with?
Knowing and taking action on that knowing. That’s acceptance. And acceptance is still the key…