Pearl Harbor Baby

December 7, 1941. A quiet Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Warplanes swarm out of the sky, spraying machine gun bullets, dropping bombs and cold-steel fish that go swimming toward undefended hulls. Splinters are flying like shrapnel from the beautiful, highly polished teak decks of the peacetime U. S. Navy. My Uncle Walt sits in a deck chair watching the carnage unfold, his trauma just beginning. A fire control specialist, his long-range guns sit idle. At this range, a baseball bat would be more useful. 

In Asia and Europe, Alpha-squared monkeys, driven by power-hungry demons, out to remake the world in their own image, the deaths of millions of people considered only in terms of cannon fodder, have cut deals they don’t intend to honor in the long run. George would later sing, “watch out now! Take care beware of greedy leaders, who take you where you should not go…”

Back on the Mainland, millions of young lives are about to be uprooted. Young couples, moving slowly towards matrimony and a family, suddenly have to either give up their dream or rush into marriage. 


Less than two months later, a child is conceived.

Thirty-something years later the child lies reading. Hungover. Glued to the mattress. Again. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich falls from his fingers. Ugly thoughts threaten his “wall of denial,” but fail to topple or even breach it, beyond a muddy thought, fated to be drowned in the evening. Again.

“How many millions died that I might live? What have I done with this precious gift of life?”

Nearly a decade later, a small hole is punched through the formerly impenetrable wall, reality begins to seep in and the child now 42,  is given a second chance to earn that precious gift. 

First Bike Ride of 2016

I returned from running errands just a few minutes before five on an unexpectedly warm (forty degree) January afternoon, with sunset still a half-hour away. Sensing an opening after the recent cold snap, my legs started sending urgent emotional messages to my brain that translated as “we need to move it or lose it!” My lungs quickly added to the “noise,” chiming in with “we need a workout too! Mucous is building! Con-biotics finding a haven! Cough, cough…”

I knew the temps would be rapidly falling, so I decided to put on my leather jacket against the chill, covering it with my bright hoodie of the sort city street-workers wear in hopes of being visible over the glare of cellphone screens. Since I was in a hurry to beat the dark, the jacket’s zipper took the opportunity to balk.

Why do I have ten dollar hoodies I wear all the time, with zippers that outlive the fabric, but the (brand name) jacket I wear only in real cold weather, is already on its second zipper? Just another of life’s little mysteries, I guess.

Ten frustrating minutes later, in rapidly fading light, I’m wheeling my bike over the patch of ice at the end of the driveway. After a series of snow storms, I knew I was speculating on the ride-worthiness of the streets, but I live at the bottom of a south-facing hill and could see pavement all the way to the top of my block, before the street levels out for three blocks, then rises again, getting a more direct ice-melting hit from a sun riding low in the southern sky. 

I figured I could settle for some High Intensity sprints, up and down my block, if nothing else, but when I got to the intersection, I could see paths of pavement zig-zagging onward and went to check it out, after walking my bike across the small ice sheet there.

I crossed some more heavily traveled and, hence less-icy streets, but at this time of day, they were clogged by office workers, fleeing the confines of their cubicles. I continued on uphill, at least giving my lungs a mild challenge. Within a half-mile I was getting tired of picking my way through the icy patches remaining where the street was lined with trees. The setting sun no longer revealed thin layers of black ice and I started to question my judgement.

My left thumb turned into a fairly reliable “barometer” years ago, when a two-foot stretch of ice suddenly turned my forward motion sideways and down. My instant reaction to stick my arm out to break my fall put the brunt of the impact on my thumb. The lingering image of the ground rushing up at me convinced me that ice and two-wheeled vehicles are a bad combination.

Surprisingly, unless you know me, it wasn’t the fall that was the immediate cause of my vow to actually quit riding in slippery conditions. I had to start with a promise I’d be more careful. It was an uphill ride in an icy slush, where I had to focus on pedaling at a pace that wouldn’t make my rear wheel lose traction that convinced me that continuing in the face of difficulties isn’t always a good trait where addiction, even to exercise, is concerned.

A person addicted to Alcohol and Other Drugs will spend years revisiting life’s slippery spots, like old using-friends and places, avoiding the “dry pavement” of a new life, leading to recurring problems like lost jobs, utilities (even cable!) shut off, evictions, shrugging off legal consequences that mere mortals would blanch at, yet plowing on, undeterred. And that’s what I like about us addicts: we persevere! We pressed on with the using anyway, sure that each arrest, lost job, broken promise to kids and so on, was merely a fluke.

What makes that line of thought especially dangerous, is the fact that there is often a grain of truth to the grounds for that classification. “If I hadn’t decided to go for ‘breakfast’ after the bar closed.” “If it wasn’t for that small patch of ice that caused my car to swerve and gave the cop grounds to pull me over…” True, but how about if your BAL hadn’t been higher than your effective IQ? Or when you extracted your license from your purse that baggie was easily visible? Or the cop fearing the amount of second-hand smoke emanating from your open window might cause him to fail a random UA?

The fact is, there are a million possible flukes and the real “fluke” in all this is that we managed to stumble through that minefield without attracting unwelcome attention any more often than we did.

Bottom line for this bike ride was that I have learned a little something. I turned around when I encountered a wider sheet of ice, picked my way back downhill, even more carefully in the dim light, and settled for a disappointing 1.17 miles. A far cry from the seven miles a day I needed to average to reach my goal of 2500 miles for the year, but leaving me with a healthy body to use, in the 352 days left, to make up the shortfall.

Little Linda Big Smile Big Heart

At my wife’s hometown memorial service that I arranged for those who couldn’t travel 500 miles in the winter, a woman that I didn’t know showed up. She had just seen the obituary announcing the service, but had a previous commitment and couldn’t stay, so she had written a letter.

I read the letter to the assembled friends and family, choking back tears only so I could get through it. One year later, I read it out loud again at a “grandchild reunion” I set up in the park Linda played in as a child. I warned them I might cry, not because the letter itself was sad, but because it reminded me what a wonderful person we had lost.

The seven-year-old that looks a lot like Linda did at that age said, “tears of joy?” I replied “yes,” but didn’t include “and sorrow for what might have been.” I gave copies of the letter and her memorial program to all her grandchildren, the seven-year-old making sure her mother tucked her folder away carefully as it was starting to rain.

Linda's grade-school friend wrote:

I moved to Highland Park when I was in first grade. That was when I first met the little girl with long blond hair who had only one arm - her name was Linda. It was the middle of the school year and I was shy, but here came Linda with her big bright smile and I had a new friend. We went all the way through high school together, but it was the early years that I remember most because that is when Linda made one of the biggest impressions on me that carried through for the rest of my life.

When you’re young your parents teach you not to stare at someone who might be different than you. I think most people with disabilities, especially children, tend to be shy and try to avoid being noticed. When I first met Linda, I did notice of course, that she was different than me, but I didn’t care because she was so much fun to play with. She was always laughing and being silly just like the rest of us at that age. After a while I just kind of forgot that Linda was different than me. We played on the playground and when it came time to play a game that required holding hands, Linda stuck out her short little arm and I held on just like it was her hand.

In those days, prosthetics were fairly new. One day Linda said she was going to go someplace and get a new arm. She was excited and so were her friends. When she came to school that first day we weren’t really sure what we would see or how we should act. Linda was beaming and made it so easy for us. She showed us how it worked and everything she was learning to do with her new arm. Now when we played we held her hook. Years later, as technology improved, she got a new arm that had a hand with fingers that moved. Again she went through the demonstration for everyone to show us what she could do.

What Linda did for me as a young child was to teach me that some people are going to be different from me, but they are still people. They deserve to be treated just like anyone else and they all have something to contribute to the world. I don’t think Linda even realized how wise and brave beyond her years she was. I don’t think it even occurred to her that she was one of the different people. But because of Linda’s zest for life, her smile, her laugh out loud attitude and that kind of unwritten law that everything must be fun, I learned to be more tolerant and patient and to have a little empathy and maybe even be a little protective, if need be, for someone who might be a little different than me.

I never told Linda how special I thought she was or how she taught me such a valuable lesson of life and I am truly sorry for that. There is a little one-armed angel up in heaven now whose smile will forever send beams of sunshine filled with love to all who knew and loved her. I consider it a privilege to have had her in my life, if even for a while.

Pete says, “ditto.” (Ghost, the movie)

The Difference between Love and The Hangover

More on the “acute” hangover that only lasts a week in another post, but “The Hangover” is forever.

In August of 1971 I had shaken off the physical effects of my alcohol and speed run, bounced back from the loss of the relationship that was a casualty of that spree and feeling mighty “frisky,” if you know what I mean.

I was just a year into my 14-year-long Marijuana Maintenance experiment, so I wasn’t “sober,” but I thought I was. After all, when you drink and speed, bad things happen. When you smoke marijuana, “nothing happens.” And that, of course, is the problem.

I was approaching the end of the pound of the best weed I ever bought until Hawaiian produce entered the mainland market, so I had quit sponsoring the “all-day rock and roll shows” (Stewart, R), in the apartment below me and was just hanging at home with my new BFF. A knock on the door didn’t change just my plans for the evening. It completely altered the rest of my life, right up to this minute.

I opened the door to find an acquaintance standing there with two attractive females. One of them smiled and the other two people sort of grayed out. He had brought them by in hopes of getting high before the three of them went on to the State Fair. I hadn’t been to the fair in ten years, but I suddenly had a powerful urge to check it out.

Two weeks later I was living with my smiling enchantress. You can get more on that in my long-awaited (by me) memoir, but we had two consecutive “Summer of Love-Winter of Discontent” affairs, before we reluctantly gave it up and didn’t rekindle the flame again until 1990. Around Fair time, come to think of it. We were married by that Thanksgiving.

As you can imagine, when two addicts reunite, love does not conquer all. I was five years into recovery. She stated that was her goal as well and promised to abstain, but made no commitment to a program to make that happen. My experience running the Detox/Halfway House notwithstanding, I found this promise credible. A million-candlepower smile is “a blinding sight to see” (Donovan).

Twenty-one years of intense love and bad craziness ensued, culminating in her two-year decline and death from liver disease, murdered by “the usual suspects.”  

Again, the emphasis: Addiction is a medical diagnosis and not a moral judgment. She was a wonderful person, with a terrible affliction.

She passed away in 2011, leaving behind children, grandchildren and the relationships that had developed among them, now interwoven with my life as well.

Lacking any legal responsibility, I could walk away from my “accidental family,” but a simple “thought experiment,” of the type beloved by Einstein, quickly put that notion to rest. My inconvenient mammal brain is not going to allow me to enjoy my freedom from responsibility to that family, especially the young grandchildren and the new greatgrandchild.  

Adding to the personal attachments I developed with her extended brood, I am haunted by my years of assuring fed-up people that they would not abandon a family member with, say, pancreatic cancer. Likewise, they may come to regret turning their back on their addict, now a zombie that only looks like their loved one, who has been left silently screaming inside. I don’t want to turn a deaf ear to my own words. I try to minimize hypocrisy in my life, even when the chickens have come home to roost and are defecating all over me. 

Fast forward (an essential habit to master in recovery, BTW):

My commitment to FINALLY starting the blog I’ve been planning since the day I first saw the word “weblog” was firm as December, 2015 began. Then a Pearl Harbor Day car wreck, involving two of my family, put the rest of my life on hold. I was haltingly moving toward liftoff for my blog when my days were suddenly dominated by phone calls and paperwork from several insurance companies and medical appointments to haul injured bodies to. My brain was overwhelmed from keeping track of it all, as their battered brains and bodies (no seatbelts!) crippled their own ability to care for themselves.

In keeping with my M. O. of either ducking the issue or forcing it, I counted down to New Year’s Eve day and hit “publish” on my blog.  

A month had passed since the wreck and I was comfortably slipping into denial of my initial fear that “the usual suspects” might again have had a hand in the latest disaster. Then, just as the insurance/medical issues were beginning to die down, the other shoe dropped and I was now dealing with the legal system. Gathering meds to take to the jail, gathering money to post bond for one and composing a letter to the judge outlining the reasons the person with a Missouri accent was not a flight risk and did not require a huge bond to prevent him from heading south.

Or, as I like to say, “just another day on South Jackson.”

And, all this, my friends, is just one more symptom of “The Hangover,” the lifelong effect of ever having had an active substance disorder. Every bad event and situation in my recovering life has been caused or made worse by the twenty-five years that I spent chasing, but never catching, the first ecstatic high and the illusion of freedom that was the always-just-out-of-reach bait, leading me across the trap door that dropped me into the pit of addiction.

A pit that included failed relationships, time lost, never-to-be-regained, with the grandparents, parents and siblings in my own family, a zig-zag tour through education and jobs, breathing dust during my sheetrocking era that has left behind nodules in my lungs, years of a BMI in the “obese” range with cholesterol measured at 450 during a rare checkup, periods of near starvation that were probably nearly as bad for my health, life in a spiritual vacuum, a precarious financial position in my retirement, years after treatment spent feeling my way out of the brain-fog and cutting through the web of lies I had told myself to justify my using behavior, living even today with an uneasy feeling that something from my past is going to ambush me still. After all, it always has.

During periods of high stress, I’ve had my regrets that I answered the door the first time and knocked on her door nineteen years later, but I would also regret missing the good times with her and this accidental family of mine. I’m never going to live a regret-free life.

If I fix my roof too soon, I’ll regret spending the money. If I don’t fix it in time, I’ll regret spending money repairing damage to the structure. If I do my “due diligence,” make the best decision I know how to with the information at hand and avoid impulsive behavior, I can minimize my regrets and avoid the avoidable ones. Number one on that list would be using any drug, anytime, anywhere, for any reason.

I don’t want to leave the impression that my last relationship was a net-negative experience. My rather unsentimental father referred to my marriage as “the icing on the cake” of my recovery and sweet it was in the good times. I was 48 years old when I married, childless and without any thought of having grandchildren, a condition alone that would have made all the difficult times worth the price.

The piece I was working on for tonight, before the time bomb left behind by the Pearl Harbor Day wreck exploded, “Evenings with Jason,” describes a high point of my life in 2015. Words cannot do justice to the experiences of watching all of them as infants, beginning to open up like little flowers, drinking in the magic of the world around them. As soon as I master putting pictures on the blog, I’ll share one from an otherwise bleak day recently that says it all. For now, I’ll just say that addictive tendencies aren’t the only inheritable traits. Smiles-that-blind are also there to remind.

And I won’t forget to present the convincing evidence, gleaned from the stories gathered in interviews and interactions with over a thousand clients, that hangovers do last a week and do include more than a headache. 

About Blog and About Me moved to substack blogger folder for editing

About this blog:

I intend to make recovery fun with lists and contests that lead to a point that supports recovery. Alas, until my memoir hits the best-seller lists, I can only offer “recognition” for winners.

The first list will ask for synonyms for drunk or high, as in “I was ‘wasted’ last night.” And, yes, there is a point to that list, which will emerge from the first contest: identify the common thread among the items on that list.

I will post every Saturday evening at a minimum, probably more often. Do the email thing if you want to be annoyed by notifications that I have posted something new, or just check every Sunday.  

About me:

More details later, but for now: I am a 73-year-old widowed great-grandfather and an addict in recovery since 1985. My only active addiction, besides music and writing, is to my mountain bike, which I put 2130 miles on in 2015. My brain is “80% song lyrics.” I have been in recovery for 30 years from a 25-year run on beer, speed and weed. Anyone can have an off quarter-century. Although I was unaware of it when I began to self-medicate in 1960, I have had lifelong issues with anxiety and depression.

I recently retired as a licensed addiction counselor in good standing, after 21 years in my last job, facilitating the outpatient treatment group, while working part-time as a college Speech Communication instructor. Before coming to Pierre, I provided mostly individual counseling in my first paying job, before returning to be the Director of the Detox/Halfway House where I had served my internship the summer before.

My Guiding Principle is “there is no solution; seek it lovingly.” Core Guidelines include “when you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” Core Beliefs include “addiction is a Brain Disorder, and I have it.”