HomeHome Flag of Vermont Flag of the United States of America
home
Giving Up Alcohol
Might not have been the first step of my recovery, but I would be dead now if I had not stopped.
October 19, 2010
By Anonymous


This article has been viewed 1664 times.

Drunk guy sleeping next to bottle
In the heart of an alcoholic, it's always 3 o'clock in the morning.

"You have an eroded soul." When I heard that, I did not know what my sponsor meant, but I thought it sounded bad. Today's struggle is finding the focus to face sending payments to the IRS and State of Vermont on back taxes I owe from 2004.

Plugging the jug saved my life, that is what sucks about it. I am scheduled to spend the majority of my waking hours for the rest of my life confined to a 9x9-foot cell , euphemistically called a "cubicle," to distinguish it from a cell with a locked door. At work, we are trusted to stay within our cells without being locked in. Outside my cell, it is better than prison, based on what people who have lived there tell me. I am happy accepting their word, not wanting to learn the hard way.

My read of life is riding a raft in orbit around the sun. The raft is crowded. All resources either are spoken for or fought over by massive economic and military pressures. It seems like the best thing I maybe can do for the world is transform to dust, making way and fertilizer for the slightly smaller population left behind.

I think people will fly to new planets. We might have come from another planet already. Scientists have found evidence for the building blocks of life on Earth in its primordial stages. However, scientists have not been able to repeat the steps of making those materials into life. No one even has a clear theory for exactly how it could happen in nature.

A very smart person I know pointed out that if we were to send ourselves to another planet, light years away, we might send ourselves in the form of some slimy DNA type of substance that could survive a 1000-generation journey to another fertile planet. Given everything we know, how do we know such a scheme is not exactly what brought us here to Earth?

Great thoughts, worth at least a Nobel Prize for whomever thought it up. I don't know exactly where that smart person I mentioned got the idea.

So what's this all got to do with not drinking? Nothing, really. Not drinking consists of not drinking. It has nothing to do with anything else.

However, being as that I am one who practically never can leave well enough alone, I worry about finding the next planet we need, straightening out Barack Obama and the US Military Industrial Complex, not to mention the money I have been unable to muster for support of my children.

So, I go to AA to clear up my stinking thinking. But I am not going there tonight.

My last drink was October 9, 1994. Stopping saved my life. Now I need to survive the prison of the workplace. What I really need to do, if I can, is work my way out of the prison. I was out for awhile, back in the days I did not pay my taxes, but they caught up with me and are getting the taxes I rightfully owe.

Well, to be completely honest, payments on those taxes has been kinda spotty. The great news is that starting tomorrow, my pay from prison will go automatically into my bank account, from where I can direct automatic payments every 2 weeks, when I get paid. Seems like I should have had this setup 20 years ago. Better late than never I guess.

I am grateful I don't drink today. I am going to have to start darkening the halls of AA once I get that cash flow going to the taxes.

Actually, I heard many times that the meetings need to come first, before anything else. I think that is a good principle. I admit to being a hypocrite.

Talk to you later.

end article marker
    POLITICS
co-edited by RIGHTEOUS REGINA THE REPUBLICAN and DAN ALLEN

"If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont." - Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States

2012 Election
Answer to President Obama

President Obama's people sent email asking what it would take to inspire me to contribute to his campaign. Here is my answer: call my brother, Sam, and do what he says about health care.
By Dan Allen

Budget Stalemate
Why 'Taxes' is a Dirty Word

Conservatives are still reading President Bush's lips.
By Christian Science Monitor

Truth Matters
The research found that actually we often base our opinions on our beliefs ... and rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept.
By Bill Moyers

Transcript
Budget Address

"I am committed to making the painful choices today that will help ensure that we are not back here next year making drastic cuts."
By Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont

Vermont Government Workers
2011 Kicks Off Loudly

Governor Peter Shumlin plans to fund the existing state work force, while simultaneously filling only half the positions that become vacant through retirement, voluntary furloughs, and a hiring freeze.
By Dan Allen

Rights for Dummies
Foodstamps and Soda Pop

beautiful bountiful bulgar wheat
Government-mandated meals of bulgar and kale for people on long term welfare is humane, if you ask me. We might as well start thinking about new standards, while our economy rewinds to the conditions of the 1800s.
By Dan Allen

New Regina Riddle
Rove, Shumlin, Appointees


By Righteous Regina the Republican

Everything
It's All About Money

Guy with a lot of money
From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent. Real incomes for the majority of Americans have stagnated or declined while work hours and insecurity have increased, along with debt. Wealth has accumulated, but in very few pockets, leading to inequality not seen in more than 100 years.
By Dan Allen

Election Night
RRRtR Emerges on Election Night!

CHANGE is what we need and it needs to be a Conservative edge to it.
By Righteous Regina the Republican

Trickle Down Economics
By Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan Triumph
These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike.
By Ronald Reagan and Dan Allen

Net Neutrality Dying
Big Media Pushing Others Off the Internet

Little sites like this one will still be on the internet, the way USENET and TELNET are on the internet: where normal people will never find them. Democratization of public communications is at its pinnacle now, and looking downhill into the future.
By DemocracyNow

Message to Vermont Taxpayers
State Employees

Vermont Seal
Thanks to Vermont taxpayers, state workers have a better deal than Asian sweatshop workers. How long will this last?
By Dan Allen

Asian Sweatshops
Slaves Keep Prices Down for Americans

sweatshop anguish on worker's face
Hourly wages below a dollar. Firings with no notice. Indifferent bosses. Labor brokers that leech away months of a worker's hard-earned wages. Americans justify the system.
By Jonathan Adams and Kathleen E. McLaughlin, GlobalPost

Vermont Proposals
What kind of state can we make?
By Dan Allen

US War Criminals

vtdigger logo
War criminals
GW Bush's admission in his memoirs, that he authorized water boarding, puts a burden of international law on the United States government to prosecute.
By Dan Allen

Balancing the Budget
Fix Democracy to Fix the Deficit

Use worldwide instant communications to take Democracy to a fantastically effective, fair, intelligent form, not feasible when we started self government.
By Dan Allen

American Collapse
Democracy Dead

The economy is in the hands of corporate swindlers and speculators.
By Chris Hedges

Wall Street
How Brokers Steal a Penny per Trade

vtdigger logo
Traders
Traders using high frequency trading programs collect a quarter of a penny rebate for every transaction they make. They're not interested in making a gains from a trade, just collecting the rebate, 4 times per stock purchase.
By Dan Allen, adapted from Graham Summers

USA vs. Taliban
Just Back from Taliban

The Taliban are gaining in popularity, gaining in strength. The leadership of the Taliban acknowledged the targeted killing campaign of senior Taliban leadership has been successful, but they say that it's producing new generations of increasingly radical leaders.
By Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley, Interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzelez of DemocracyNow.org

President Obama
Owned by Banks and Military Industrial Complex

Pentagon owned by Wall Street
Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the Military Industrial Complex has gone unheeded. As a result, the President lacks the power to create the change promised in the 2008 campaign.
By Dan Allen

Native Vermonters
Native is Relative

We're all African, so in a way, none of us are native to Vermont.
By Dan Allen

Google
Email Search

Funny how Google web search is so awesome, but searching Gmail is not so easy.
By Dan Allen

Blessings
Warm Light

orange foliage leaves Vermont
Blessings in your direction.
By Dan Allen

Recovery Story
Giving Up Alcohol

"You have an eroded soul." When I heard that, I did not know what my sponsor meant.
By Anonymous

Everyday Heros
Montpelier Health Center

The administration crew at Montpelier Health Center is finer than a Swiss watch, more powerful than 8 men working together.
By Dan Allen

VTDigger
Nobody Else Does It

vtdigger logo
Josh Larkin and Anne Galloway set the standard for Vermont's in-depth print reporting, provided you see the internet as print.
By Dan Allen

Discussion
How Honest Is Vermont?

Message board discussion from 2007, informal look at Vermont corruption compared with other states. Low development may mean low corruption.
By city-data.com

My VSEA Activism
Objectives


By Dan Allen

Banksters
Goldman Sachs College Scam

Goldman Sachs Social Club
Goldman Sachs Social Club, New York City
Goldman Sachs is the majority owner of a group of for profit colleges, tying our youth into debt for over-priced education.
By Mother Jones

Bernie's Contest
Rules

500 words or less that explains your ideas for fair and responsible ways to approach these challenges.
By Dan Allen

facebook  home contact about privacy