normansrant

Phil Hits Bottom
The varieties of experiences "hitting bottom" are extraordinary. Some people go fast and hard, some young, some older. For me, it was a long, slow, inexorable descent.
Some people have said I had a "high" bottom -- whatever the hell that means. I heard a woman say her bottom was so bad, she didn't even make her bed every morning. To me, that sounds like a "high" bottom...
...but no bottom is "high" if you're the one sitting on it.
I like a couple things I've heard. Alcoholism is an elevator going down -- and you can choose to get off at any floor! Another guy put it this way: we need to raise the bottom to where we are.
What all the bottoms seem to have in common are the emotional and spiritual components. Whatever our outward circustances, we all seem to have shared complete emotional despair and spiritual bankruptcy.
There was a famous airline crash in 1989 that I've often thought of as a metaphor for me hitting my bottom. In mid-flight, a DC-10 lost all of its control surfaces: rudder, ailerons and elevators, along with the tail-mounted engine. The pilots, through ingenious improvisation, managed to keep the plane aloft, and contrived to steer by varying the thrust in each of the two wing engines. They were able to get the plane in position to attempt a landing at a deserted airport in Iowa.
There's a graphic, horrifying video of the final moments of the flight. (It was replayed endlessly on TV, but DO NOT click the link if you have any qualms about risking nightmares.) One of the remarkable things about the video is that as the plane approached the runway, by all appearances it looked like a normal, everyday landing of an airliner. I would never guess that anything was wrong, let alone that the plane was completely out of control.
And the plane almost made it. At the last moment, a wing dipped and hit the ground. The plane burst into flames, cartwheeled and broke apart, and burning wreckage careened down the runway for many long horrible seconds.
(As an aside, and where my metaphor breaks down: more than half the passengers and crew, including the pilots, survived that plane crash! The brilliant, heroic conduct of the flight crew has become a textbook case of "resource management" in handling a crisis aboard an airliner.)
By all outward appearances, there was not a serious crisis in my life. I had a job, a career, a home, a family. It looked like a routine flight, heading for what looked like a routine landing. In truth, I was out of control. It was only by ingenious improvisation (which we alcoholics are famous for) that I could maintain the appearance of routine normalcy, using every last ounce of my focus, attention and energy. My life was, actually, a highly stressful emergency, not at all a routine flight.
I feel like my long, slow, inexorable, out-of-control descent into alcoholism finally came to an end when I hit bottom last summer, like that plane hitting the runway at the end of its flight. Now I've got this flaming wreckage tumbling across the bottom. The old-timers tell me the first year or two of sobriety is hell -- I guess it takes that long for the wreckage finally to come to a stop, so rescue operations can begin in earnest.
Some days the best I can do is not drink for today, remember that I'm still in the wreckage, and trust God that this, too, shall pass.

ENOMINOUS KUOTES
The more I try to escape it's grasp, the closer I get dragged in. People have been talking, and talk is cheap. If it were to happen, she would have to do the intiating (spelling?), because I have been convinced that she does not feel the same way.I dunno why people tell me these things.
They ask if I have a crush. I said yes. They say "Why don't you do something about it?". I say "She does not feel the same way about me."They say..."You will grow on her" -Maripa"It's bound to happen." -Ashley"Are you going to fuck her in the ass or what?" -Geo
I try to not think about these things, but coworkers are bound the to dig into my heart until they find the juicy details. Everyone wants to know about everyone and I wish they would stop because everytime they ask it makes me think about it.
Therapists say supressing feelings is wrong. Say what they will, I am not repressing, I'm keeping them to redirect them someday.

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"They think there's something wrong with you."
"Huh?" I have to say, I was even more baffled at that point than I have been in the last few days.
"Not mentally wrong... I didn't mean it like that!"
"Ah. So, it's wrong as in...?"
"They just think there's something wrong with you. I don't really know what, you'll have to ask them."
"And how do you propose I do that when I can't get more than three words out of any of them?"

That was a bit of a stumper for all of us, sitting around a small table in some random pub we'd wandered into (attempted girls' night out... unexpectedly cut short by a woman I shall refer to as Extremely Drunk Random Bitch Lady ).

Conversation wandered elsewhere, e.g. whether or not Miss Tuesday and my Psych teacher had actually had sex or just a quick grope (we decided that he probably wouldn't want to lose his job, but she had almost certainly tried it on with him)... but I couldn't help but wonder exactly what it is that people think is wrong with me.

I've checked in the mirror and I still have just one head. If I have rancid breath or terrible body odour, I'm sure that the girls would have mentioned it when I asked. So the only thing I can really come up with is this:

They think there's something wrong with me because I'm a little bit sensitive right now after just experiencing a major trauma.

Actually, it's not just that. I think that the reason they're being all distant over my sensitive-ness is that I am sensitive about something that, let's face it, is very trendy and alternative and splashed all over the TV right now.

But it shouldn't really matter. If someone had just lost a sibling, for example, you wouldn't spend your lunchbreaks discussing the lovely family outing you had with your own sibling. Common sense and sensitivity, right? Just because something is extremely cool at the moment doesn't mean that everyone should ignore the fact that someone is a little bit uneasy about it - either avoid the subject altogether or talk about it when that person isn't present.

But there's absolutely no excuse for treating that person as though they've just dropped in from another planet (even if, in my case, that is half-true).

To be perfectly honest, I've experienced better treatment from some of the bullying asswipes at my old high school.

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