I’ve got to have some wood nearby to knock on – but I’m going to say it. I’m finally happy. For the first time in longer than I can really remember I am actually enjoying life. Everything just seems….right. That’s not to say I don’t have to fight through the struggles of daily existence. I think we all deal with that each day. But I seem to be back to the place I was eight years ago when my World was on its axis and spun properly. It’s been quite the path to get here, and by no means an easy journey; but definitely a worthwhile one.

The first thing I had to do was struggle, and I mean scrape and crawl and drag myself, through an addiction to alcohol. Without doubt it’s the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I can’t tell you how many times it would be easy to just have a beer, grab a six-pack or go out with friends. But that’s not who I am anymore. I wrestled with that Demon and I’m glad to say I beat the Devil, as Kris Kristofferson says. It’s taken a ton of commitment, some great friends, and a paradigm shift to make it happen. I may still occasionally stumble or fall, but I’ll fight back onto the wagon and hold on for all I’m worth.

The second thing I did was reprioritize my life. When I sat down and thought about what was important to me there was no question about what was atop the list – being the best dad I can be for my children. Somehow, someway, for some reason my ex-wife decided to let my son move in with me. Maybe she thought he needed his father around. But it’s more likely she probably saw that I was the one who needed him. And having him here has changed everything. I revel in the role of dad. We get up and go swim, play baseball, read books, play video games; do the kind of things all boys should do with their fathers. It’s making me a better person by the minute. It seems like the more parenting I do the more I learn about myself and change for the positive. Commitment, patience, morals: The lessons are everywhere I look.

Lastly I’ve really fallen back on my spirituality. My particular flavor is Buddhism. But hey, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. – you have to stick with what works best for you. My faith really grounds me. I find myself recognizing the moment so much more often and embracing those precious seconds of here and now. It’s wonderful after drinking so much of the present away. The Buddhist tenants of skillful thought and meditation are things I use all the time now. I find when I approach life in such a manner the rewards I receive are ten-fold. But you don’t have to take my word for it. No matter your faith, really apply it to your life and let me know how things turn out. I believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

But most of all I credit my family. I have the most amazing parents a person could ask for. They watched the roller coaster called My Life over the past 10 years or so and stood by, offering guidance (or a well placed kick to the backside) when I needed it. The saw me at my worst times; drunk and belligerent, in a court for DUI, screaming at my ex-wife and are now seeing me at my best. It’s only possible because of their love, devotion, dedication and hard work. I owe them a debt that can never be repayed. But I promise I will try and take all this positive steam and put it towards being the kind of person, and living the kind of life, that makes them proud.

And too all my friends who have kept me afloat on an unrelenting sea of depression and self-loathing, thank you for your patience. I really have far better friends than I deserve. If it wasn’t for you there’s no telling where I might be. I use to overvalue socialization and I allowed it to run my life. I cut my losses and hunkered down with a small group of true friends – and I am constantly enriched and blessed by all of you.

Lastly I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my ex-wife. Even though things didn’t work out in our lives as we hoped and vowed that day almost six years ago, you’ve been patient, kind, and continued to support and tolerate me through the hurdles of our divorce and now raising children. Many women would have gone bananas over the monkey business I caused. But you have been and always will be my friend. And to say I am thankful for that is perhaps the understatement of my life.

I never knew so much good could come out of something that at the time seemed so bad. But as Norman Ollestad said, “Now I realize inside each turbulence there is a calm; a sliver of light buried in the darkness.”

It’s so tough to be bipolar. It’s harder than any war I fought or any battle I won. The highs and lows are more than you could even imagine. It’s as if your life is a roller coaster and everyday is a hill. One minute on top of the World admiring the view but the next the depths of depression; just waiting for that inevitable climb back up. But this ride never ends. It just goes on and on.

It’s amazing to me; I’m surrounded by happiness and what should make a person’s life fulfilled; a loving family, amazing children, incredible friends. But none of that makes a difference. One day I feel as if I’m finally on the path towards happiness. Then my brain switches, and I’m drowning in a sea of despair and unhappiness. And I think to myself – God please just let the ride end. There’s no worse torture than knowing and seeing what you want in your moments of sanity, but being unable to grab them.

It’s a vicious cycle fueled by self-medication, prescription drugs and my own mind. But I just can’t get hold of it. The mind is so powerful. I’ll make awful decisions; lose loved ones, damage relationships, damn near lose myself. But like a song on repeat the cycle continues. I want to stop it…but I can’t.

And here I am again today; after a day of bliss – of mania as a Psychiatrist would tell you – back on the low end of the spectrum. Wondering why I’m here, what my purpose is. It’d be so easy to disappear into nothingness. Life would be so much easier that way. But I can’t bring the shame of that unanswerable question upon my children and my friends. I can’t leave them asking why.

So I sit…a prisoner of my own mind: one day alive and moving 100 miles per hour, the next a recluse hardly willing to leave the bed. I don’t expect anyone to understand it. But it’s who I am. It’s the life I was born into. And one day I fear it will take me into a blackness that never ends.

When we’re young we often feel invincible. We do wild and crazy things; never have hangovers; can function on little or no sleep and somehow manage to look good through all of it. Over the last two weeks I’ve watched as many of my friends lose their lives. The truth is we want to stay young forever; but we don’t. Every decision we make has repercussions that are felt now or later. There are certain lifestyles that aren’t safe to live anymore.

Jake and Misty were old classmates of mine that have left us over the last couple of weeks. I’m not sure what happened to Jake but Misty committed suicide. Both losses really blindsided me. My high school classmates were almost all still alive. I guess that made it easy to still feel young. Although I hadn’t see Jake since high school I had spent a fair amount of time with Misty since I left the Air Force – although not recently. It really reminds me how fragile life can be: Here one second gone the next.

If you’ve read anything of mine in the past you know I have battled for years with alcoholism and depression. My on again off again problems with drinking never scared me that badly because I always considered myself young and invincible. But as the last two weeks have shown me; I am not. It’s almost as if the Universe is warning me. Well, I am listening.

“Death is not the end of who we are. It is only a brief pause in the endless cycle of our lives. Each of us is a spirit that cannot die.”

I hate that I had to lose two friends to wake up and really see what’s going on around me and what I have been doing to myself; but sometimes it takes a swift kick in the ass. And that’s what I got. It’s so eerie and uncomfortable that as I was writing a blog Thursday about nearly committing suicide a friend of mine was doing that exact thing. I’m not great at reading between the lines – and thankfully this time I don’t have to. It’s time to start living right.

I’m thankful for the lesson I’ve learned from these tragedies, but I sure wish I could have learned them some other way. There are so many left behind; sons, daughters, parents, brothers and sisters. I wish I could have done something to help before it was too late. Now they’re just memories. To say they will be missed by many is an understatement.

As a Buddhist I hope your journey is a safe one; that your Karma from this life helps you get closer to enlightenment and that we meet again in the future.

As a recovering alcoholic I have an interesting outlook on alcohol. It scares the hell out of me. It’s so prevalent in our society. Maybe that’s because we make it so taboo – whereas in Europe it’s something that’s always around. I’m not really sure. But what I do know is this; it’s inescapable.

It’s been the biggest challenge of my life to try and stay sober. It’s like the worst itch you could imagine, and trying to not scratch it will drive you crazy. What makes it worse is how inescapable alcohol is in these United States. Watch a football game and count the beer ads. Stop at a convenient store and just look at the signs on the door. Go in your local grocery store or try to eat out and see if they don’t offer you a drink.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not for the abolishment of booze; there are lots of people who drink and can handle themselves accordingly. But I do find it strange that we have done away and regulated so much of the tobacco industry but not alcohol. I’ve never heard of anyone smoking to many cigarettes and beating their wife, or going on a smoking bender and then crashing their car and killing an innocent family. Aren’t we being unduly harsh on the lesser dangerous drug?

Is it all about money and lobbyist? Does common sense not win out? At the very least what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. They should be regulated in the same manner. I’m not questioning the dangers of tobacco. But it’s a struggle to quit when everywhere you look all you see is alcohol. We are inundated by it. And all those ads do exactly what they set out to – make me crave it. It’s a curse to not be able to put your disease out of sight or mind for even a few minutes. And it’s a battle I will fight everyday for the rest of my life. And that’s exactly how these companies like it.

Warning: This drink has been know to cause sore buttholes with no recollection of how it happened.

Today officially makes it so long since I drank that I can’t even remember when I quit. I think that’s a good thing – I sure as hell feel better, but sometimes I sure do miss my old friend. Yes, I feel about 10,000 times healthier and better – and yes, I have lost a ton of weight – and yes, I have managed not to go to jail or have any run ins with John Q. Law – so all in all, I would say this little experiment in sobriety is going quite well. Everyone once in a while though, when life really kicks me in the twins I just have the strongest desire for something….I think tequila.

Of course, my arch nemesis (Mr. Jose Cuervo) hasn’t really done much to help accomplish things in my life. If I was looking for liquor that has ever benefited me I guess it would be Peppermint Schnapps (don’t even ask) – but honestly, I don’t need holes punched in my man card for walking around a University of Alabama tailgate party sipping schnapps. That’ll get your ass kicked – at least in this part of the country. I couldn’t imagine sitting in jail with murderers and rapists and being asked what you are in for:

“Open container – peppermint schnapps. This is my second time”

I would either never, ever shower in prison or absolutely refuse to use any kind of soap product I could drop. That’s almost as bad as going for littering. In the prison hierarchy, certain crimes just don’t win you a lot of respect. More specifically anything that involves a liquor frequented by women, crimes involving animals and the case of the robber who tried to knock over a store and left his phone number with the clerk so he could give it to the manager and have him call him back to open the safe.

I actually don’t need – and will not – drink again. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta – a sober one anyway. But life has been trying to push me around a little bit lately and I always seem to want to fall back to that old pattern. I have taken to replacing alcohol with a new vice – Diet Mountain Dew. I can’t tell you I get as buck wild juvenile as I once did, but it seems to work quite well. It was suggested I could drink near-beer (that’s the non-alcoholic brew), but again, I like my man card clearly stating that I do in fact have an “Ankle Dangler.”

Life is testing me like it does everyone. But alas, every day comes and goes and I am still here, mountain dew in hand. They should sell this stuff by the keg. It’d help scratch that itch. Of course, the Splenda hangover would be awful. But I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my anal virginity in the big house or waking up next to a complete stranger with a sore crotch. Ah, the good ole’ days – now that I think back about some of them, they don’t really sound all that good at all. What the hell was I thinking? Beso mi culo, Jose Cuervo. Verta a la verga!

My life - one hour, one minute at a time.

Life never ceases to fascinate me. The fact that I can wake up feeling one way, and just a few hours later everything has changed, baffles me. I never really know what to expect or what’s going to happen. Maybe that comes with being sober all the time. Perhaps this is just a new phenomenon to me. Maybe I’m just getting reacquainted with something that everyone else is already aware of. The how or why isn’t really important I guess, just the fact that it happens is staggering to me.

Take today for example. I woke up in a great mood – as I do most days, realizing the future is right in front of me and every step I take dictates the path I’ll travel. I ended up spending lunch with my ex-wife. Now I know that sounds strange to a lot of people – and believe me when I say I get a lot of flak about it. But it’s important to me to remain friends with her. That’s much easier said than done, though. Today was a great example of that. It was not a good lunch. It was essentially me paying for us to argue in public. I try not to fight, but it’s difficult to be friends when there’s so much history – good and bad. But that’s a process we’ll work through for the rest of our lives. As long as we can work through problems, differences of opinion and resentment, I think we’re headed the right direction – for us and for our kids. Anyway, I’m rambling.

Needless to say I left lunch in a very bad mood. I stopped on the way home and bought beer. A very bad move. I didn’t drink it though. I sat it in the floor and looked at it. What those bottles represent to me – there’s nothing positive about them. It’s a means of escape – and much like I’ve been doing for many years, I wanted to just escape and find happiness in the bottom of an empty bottle. But for some reason I didn’t.

For whatever reason, instead of drinking I decided to check my email and spend my time doing something else. I was floored at my inbox. I had multiple messages from folks, some old friends and some I hope to be friends with in the future – people that just read my blog. They were wonderful. It really put my life in perspective. There was a Russell of the past, and there’s Russell today. And I was dangerously close to slip-sliding back to where I didn’t want/need to be. It touched me to know there are so many people reading and enjoying my blog. I truly appreciate all of you.

Tucked away in those emails though, was a note from someone in my past that is so special to me. I have spent years looking for this person. I am so happy to have them back in my life. As I sat there and looked at these beautiful messages in front of me and the alcohol behind me – I realized the difference an hour can make. Every decision we make has consequences – not just for us, but the people around us as well. And I sincerely thank you all for your decision to read my ramblings and watch me stumble through this crazy thing called life – one hour, one minute at a time.