Scratchism

The Bible has a lot of rules in it. "Thou shalt" this and that, thou shalt NOT do even more. One could view the Bible as if it were an Owner's Manual, follow these rules and you'll never break down, keep these fluids at the right levels, check these items often and everything will be fine. For some that is just fine, that is safe. God said "don't" and you know, that's good enough for me; when the Creator of All Things says "don't", I listen. Uncle. Problem is, for most of us that isn't enough.

I was raised with this mentality, I was raised in the Assembly of God Church, whatever that meant. To me it meant "we didn't". I remember as a child saying the phrase "it's against my religion" a lot. At that point I prayed whomever the recipient was of this phrase would let it go and not ask the next question, which invariably led to another sentence I hated: "Well so am I and I do." Because, I never really knew what to say after that.

A lot of guilt took place inside me, a lot of anxiety. Fear was a motivator and good for that I was told, That's the Fear of the Lord. Amen to that, Amen to the Straight and Narrow.

Well Fear is a terrific motivator! Until of course, the consequences you feared so anxiously decide to not manifest themselves at all. How could I go to a movie and not be struck immediately by lightning? How is that possible!? What else can I do, what other boundaries can I push? What other non-truths have I been told?

At 23 it was time to find out. And find out I did. The world was wide open and it was time to push the boundaries, it was time to see just which rules could be broken and if the consequences occurred; were they really all that bad?

So obviously the logical next step was to move to LA. If you want to know how authentic Italian food is made you go to Italy. If you have a passion for ice fishing, you go to Alaska. If you want to know about sin, you go to the source, you know? I moved there with the a U-Haul full of success, promise, and what would come to be the most mocking of words: potential. What I left with three years later was a severe drinking problem, physical scars, emotional trauma, inevitable bankruptcy and a criminal record. I could go on, but you get the idea.

But I wasn't dumb. I realize at this early stage of the story one already has plenty of facts that do not support my claim to intelligence, but I was. I was intelligent and charming and when I wasn't drinking, you probably never would have guessed that I ever had. My intelligence led me to believe that I could research myself out of any predicament, I could read a book out of any problem. Here's why:

I hadn't skied since I was very young, I wasn't good at it and I don't do things I'm not good at, as a personal rule. Living next to world-class mountains could not budge the fact that I had had a sore time of it at age 9. I'll go with you, thank you, but I'll be next to the fire in the Lodge. With a book. Well, when you find yourself at the top of a mountain, surrounded by black diamonds you really must reexamine those life rules and at times, come up with new ones. The one I came up with after finding myself staring down a white cliff was that I could do this, I could place this leg in the same position as that persons leg, push in the direction that person pushed, command the posture of a skier and fool the mountain into letting me down. I did, and I excelled at it, much to the bewilderment of the jokers that fooled me into going to the top and most of all to myself.

I had just proven to myself that I could do anything I set my mind to, I felt empowered! I found my Secret Weapon, my Lasso of Truth and my Spidey Sense! It was my brain, it was my Intelligence. Huzzah!

When you're Clark Kent walking around smugly you have this attitude that whatever happens you always have this secret weapon to fall back on. You know that there is nothing that can come up that you can't handle, because obviously, you're Superman. Well that also makes you very lazy because you know that when you unleash the Weapon, all things will change and they will change for the better, and they will change fast. So you keep the Weapon to yourself and guard it away and you tell yourself that it is not time, the world is not ready, Gotham, or wherever, couldn't handle the massiveness of the Weapon. Basically, you lie to yourself. You lie to yourself to the point that you believe your own lies and you live on false hope. Then the day comes when you pull out the Weapon and what you've got at the end of your arm isn't all that massive and when you pull the trigger nothing happens and your world falls apart.

When you live with false hope and that hope gets dashed you live in a precarious state, and when life becomes fragile and ridden with anxiety you do what it takes to sleep walk through it. I drank. I blacked-out after a few drinks, everywhere. Parties, bars, on the street but most often at home by myself. Who I thought I was, who I wanted to think I was and who I actually was, were three completely different people. You may need to read that last sentence a couple more times because it's kind of important.

What I knew, and what I wanted to think I knew were two different things. What I knew was that there was a God. I KNEW this, I had felt His presence many times and those times were GOOD, they were VERY good. But what I wanted to think was that I could do Life on my own. I wanted to be in charge of myself and I sure as hell didn't want to pasture my life in one place (the suburbs) like those Christians I'd grown up with. I knew that I knew this and it sucked because everyday I got up and determined myself to contradict it. I was a person who needed this person, Jesus, in my life and yet I resisted Him every chance I got. Nothing is more weak than needing, especially when you need another person. Even the word is whiny, need, need. I don't even like typing it.

Let me tell you, when you are one thing and you want to be another; when you resist who you are fundamentally, you are going to be miserable.

There's a scene in the movie "The Rules of Attraction" where one of the characters describes the "Ching!" moment. She says she's always searching for that moment that the lightbulb just pops on, the sun shines out of the sky and "ching!" you figure it out; "it" being whatever you're needing to figure out. I searched endlessly for that Ching! moment in my research of alcoholism. Remember, my Weapon was my intelligence and I determined that I would research the Ching! out of my disease. The closest thing I could find comes from my wine-stained copy of the book The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure by Chris Prentiss. Now this is a boastful title, which is what drew me to it. Someone figured it out and by god, they were going to share it:

"Alcohol is just a quick and easy way to change ordinary, everyday reality from unbearable to bearable. All it takes is a short trip to the liquor store and a few drinks. People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating "alcoholism" as if it were a problem, when it has nothing at all to do with the problem. They might as well be studying "scratchism" for people who have a chronic itch.
Suppose you had a chronic itch and scratched it regularly throughout the day. Would you have "scratchism"? Would you be a "scratchaholic"? Of course not. What if you had a constant headache, and to cope with it you took aspirin several times each day. Would you suffer from "aspirinism", and would you be called a "aspirinaholic"? More important, if you sought help for treatment of those ailments, would you be treated for "scratchism" or "aspirinism"? Of course not; you would be treated for the underlying conditions that led you to scratch or use aspirin - perhaps poison ivy or stress."

CHING! Great... ching... now comes the hard part...