My name is Randall. (This introduction story gets strange in the middle.) A tale of substance abuse, mental health, punk rock and philosophy.

I don't care if you like me (but I want you to).


Why are you on Steemit? I was lured in for two main reasons: 

1. By the promise of cash for contributing quality content.

2. To consume quality content. 

I, like many, have become disappointed by Facebook. It's a good tool for keeping in touch with people. Beyond that there isn't much utility. The content you view is based on your friends (as well as paid advertisements). Fortunate are those with a plethora of talented and articulate friends. What I've found in the world is that those people are few and far between. On the whole the majority of humanity leaves a lot to be desired. Many folk's contributions are insipid at best. These "friends" also comprise your audience. I may pour hours into some of my writing or photography and what do I get in return? A couple of likes from people who mostly likely didn't even finish reading the essay because it was longer than a few sentences. Previously I have never been motivated to look elsewhere in the world of social media. Facebook has the monopoly on people I know. It is an obvious choice. Steemit provides and incentive in the form of our culture's primary motivational force... money. 

  I'm a smart and creative individual, or so I was told all throughout my childhood. The frequency with which people say those kinds of things decreases with age. Those labels seem to apply to the bloggers and contributors on this new platform, but that is where the similarities end. My educational and occupational background are lackluster. I never officially graduated high school. I attended my local community college but never received a degree. I was always an exceptional student. In spite of that I left academia for financial reasons and having no faith in the system. I had no interest in going into debt for a piece of paper that would not guarantee me any degree of financial success. I am certified for nothing, qualified for nothing. 

I spent approximately a decade working with beer. I delivered beer to dive bars in bad neighborhoods for seven years. I learned a great deal in that time. Most of this knowledge and experience to be attributed to the owner, a shrewd man named Donny. Tis all a story for another time. What I will say is that kegs are heavy. Moving objects that weigh approximately 165 lbs. was no small task for a young guy being 20 lbs. lighter than that myself when I started. There are many things you learn working for a beer distributor that you won't learn in a class room. I did my graduate work in "beer studies" at a retail location for another two and a half years. Instead of volume, this joint specialized in variety. I have ingested hundreds of different beers/ales, including some of the holy grails of the the beer world. Beyond beer, I studied liquor in my free time. I leaned towards a variety of whiskeys and cocktails. In this decade I came to know about what it is to work, the kind that produces sweat. 

There was another passion in my life dating back to junior high which may explain much of my underachievement. Drugs. I started smoking pot at the tender age of 13. I can't clearly remember when I became a daily smoker, but it wasn't long after being initiated. The region I grew up in (generally referred to as the Monongahela river valley, south of Pittsburgh) has been awash with drugs for all of my life.  Being a minor in such an environment facilitates the procurement of illicit substances to a far higher degree than that of alcohol. Additionally it's much easier to hide a pocket full of drugs than it is to hide a case of beer. My alcoholism didn't develop fully till a good bit after turning 21. By then I was already a substance abuse veteran. Psychedelics, namely LSD, was one of my favorites. It gave you the most bang for your buck. Sure I could acquire various pills and other drugs, but pot and acid were my staples. It wasn't until "adulthood" that I obtained a true reverence for psychedelics. This concept was understood, at the very least on the primal level, from day one. 

Another layer to add on top of this, which is crucially important, is punk rock. Around the same time as my introduction to drugs came my introduction to punk. This would have been the mid 90's. I remember the first punk cassette I purchased that really opened the door. It was Punk-O-Rama Vol. 1, put out by Epitaph. I recognized the names The Offspring and Rancid and I wanted more of that ilk. To make a long story short. I got my first mohawk in 1998 (which hair style I have yet to give up on into my thirties). I got my first drum kit in either 2000 or 2001. I graduated from being a punk to being a punk rocker. I've been playing in punk bands for 15 years now. Don't call me a drummer or ask me drum questions. I'm just a guy who plays drums in a punk band. I never bothered to learn how to play properly. Beyond the music of punk rock comes an important aspect. The philosophy. I'm not talking about anarchy or sophomoric anti-establishment views. I'm referring to individuality. 

Yet again there was another critical concurrent activity occurring in my life during this. Writing. English had always been my worst subject. My aptitude was for math and science. I struggled with the arbitrary nature of language and its usage. However, I was always in love with ideas. Since a young age I was preoccupied with the big questions. What is the meaning of life? What is reality? I kept journals exploring these topics from about 1996 on. I also included many of my drug stories for flavor. The primary goal remained finding the answers to the big questions. I've always felt this was my purpose in life. The answers I was provided by science, namely physics, were not satisfactory. I was raised Catholic and had long since turned away from that as a feasible solution to any of life's great mysteries. It was in Philosophy 101 that I found a new direction. I was fortunate to have a good teacher. He didn't hammer us with Plato and Aristotle (although they were mentioned). He didn't even bother to grade our papers. Through an act of wisdom, he acknowledged that there is no objective way to measure someone's comprehension of philosophical concepts. Thus we were graded on attendance. It wasn't so much any of the material that I learned there helped me in any way. It was the acknowledgement that philosophy was going to be more fruitful in providing me some of the answers I was looking for, than say physics would be. 

Who did all of these elements create? About two years back, I was an underachieving, intellectual beer snob who was writing for no audience beyond myself and playing drums servicably for an obscure ska/punk band with a very precarious mental disposition due to nearly two decades of drug abuse. Then came the tipping point. I was in my kitchen when the most unsettling feeling I have ever known began to creep up on me. A short while earlier I had a phone conversation with my mother who was living out of state about how I intended to begin publishing my notebooks as a potential supplemental source of income. I planned on releasing them unedited to show the progression of my thought just as a Jackson Pollock painting was a record of his actions took to create the piece. I attempted to shake the feeling by going about my business. I tried to wash some dishes. The sickness and distress grew. I tried to drink a beer, even though it was a bit early for that. The feeling progressed and transformed into a presence, not one that I could perceive visibly but palpable none the less. I don't know what this thing was... a god, the devil, a spirit, some sort of alien or inter-dimensional traveler, THE God... for it didn't identify itself. What I felt was a rapidly increasing discomfort with being in my body. It made me want to snuff it. I was not ready to die and I began to bargain with the phenomenon I was experiencing. The deal we struck was that I would destroy my notebooks and in exchange I would be permitted to live. Right then and there I took my notebooks to the backyard, doused them in gasoline and set them ablaze.

To digress a bit... these books were my most valuable possession. They were the culmination of everything I had worked for over the previous 18 years. They were the record of that journey. Contained within them was my explanation of and foundation for my existence. They were, in my view, my only opportunity towards making any significant impact on the world or human society. I held these books in such high regards that I valued them more than any of my social relationships. I also valued them to the point where if some one had destroyed them or stolen them from me I would have been motivated to the point of murdering that individual. I was obsessed. I had my priorities all fucked up. These notebooks had to go. This force or presence which came to me was extremely malicious. In retrospect it did me a huge favor. It took the threat of my life or my sanity to rid myself of this now toxic possession of mine. 

Things did not snap back to normal. Following this incident I suffered from a variety of symptoms. I began experiencing high levels of anxiety, which had never been a problem for me before. I had difficulty reading, where words would jumble or move on the page, sometimes looking like nothing more than gibberish. Reading difficulties spilled over to writing to the point where I was afraid to write, particularly in pen. I couldn't jot down anything more substantial than a grocery list and when I would, it had to be in pencil. I was terrified to drive. Many of my thoughts were delusional and other worldly. The most extreme symptom, though not the most frequent was full blown hallucinations. 

This disruption in my functioning led to some serious changes in my life. I quit my job at the retail beer distributor. The commute became more than an inconvenience. The symptoms I was experience were compounded by being in public. To lose your mind in private is one thing. Losing you mind with an audience is another. I don't think anyone picked up on the changes unless they were really close to me. From the outside all appeared normal.

I entered mental health treatment. Upon my first visit I was a bit weary. I knew I needed help but the situation was so bizarre. The two staff members at the counter had said things like, "I must be going crazy." and different variations on that theme repeatedly. They must have said the word "crazy" at least six times between the two of them in a short span of time. I thought that to be very unprofessional for people working in mental health. And the way they looked at me was unsettling. It gave me the impression they were viewing a cross between a famous movie star and some kind of grotesque monster. Or perhaps they saw me as a long dead relative. Suffice it to say, I was relatively satisfied with the treatment I was given, with one exception. The facility initially had me seeing just a therapist and told me it would be months before I could see a psychiatrist. Talking to a lady about my "problems" wasn't easing my debilitating condition. I was convinced that I needed medicated to restore some of my lost faculties (which was a bold admission considering that I don't believe that pharmaceuticals cure any mental condition but merely treat symptoms). I had to drop the "S" word to expedite my appointment with the psychiatrist. I was having suicidal thoughts. I hadn't mentioned them to this point because they weren't one of the primary obstacles that I had been dealing with. 

The psychiatrist proved to be extremely useful but not in the way I had anticipated. He was a pretentious dick, much like myself. That gave me a bad taste for his opinion but I laid my feelings aside because I was humbly looking for help. At this point I was willing to accept assistance from anyone who was offering. He had a two fold prescription for me. One was a daily dose of Seroquel 100 mg  before bed time. The other was to never drink or do drugs again for the rest of my life. As it turned out the second half of the Doctor's orders was all I really needed. He insisted that I enter a 28 day rehab. I fought him on this. I said, "How about I just quit?" He was not convinced by this argument but I was able to prove him wrong.

I had previous experience abstaining from substance abuse in the past. There had been at least a few bouts of sobriety mingled into my nearly two decades of daily drinking and drug usage. The most notable of which was approximately a year before this. I had gotten dumped from my second long term relationship. The end came as a result of me saying words which once spoken can never be retracted. To this day I don't know exactly what it was that I said. I was blacked out on whiskey. In the wake of this it was obvious to me that my alcoholism was to blame for the end of the relationship. I made a deal with myself. I quit drinking. I told myself that I could resume drinking once I had completed a month of complete sobriety. I wasn't solely referring to intoxicating substances. I included all drugs including nicotine and caffeine. As icing on the cake, I threw in a couple extra vices such as eating mammals, pornography and the internet. TV was not included because it isn't a big part of my life. Watching some Pirates baseball helped me through that period. This 30 days of asceticism (dubbed by my father as, my time at the monastery) wasn't meant to be masochistic. It was a penance in it's own right. I had hurt and lost the one I loved as a result of boozing. I felt a need to atone for this transgression. I decided to use this time for some serious introspection. I wanted to find out what I love about life that didn't involve alcohol, drugs or sex. My life revolved around those vices and I wanted to see what was left to living without them. As it turns out there are some great things about life which I'll be glad to share in subsequent essays. The point of this tangent is that I was capable of laying off of drugs and alcohol sans rehab. Additionally I was let in on a secret upon the conclusion of my mental health treatment. The dosage of Seroquel (which maxed out at 200 mg) was never high enough to enact it's anti-psychotic properties. It was a placebo the whole time. 

There was a six month period of chaos that was effectively my rehabilitation process. I was unemployed and circumstances had forced me into a new home (a tax delinquent/abandoned property owned by a not so close relative) just before winter set in. To make the new house livable (for it began with no utilities) and to afford it's upkeep took every last ounce of energy I had. I enrolled at my local assistance office. I received food stamps (SNAP), energy assistance (LIHEAP), and  Medicaid. The food stamps were supplemented by trips to the local food bank. I was relying on a wood burner for heat, for the late southwestern Pennsylvania fall is already cold. Luckily my aunt's love of animals motivated her to repair the oil furnace, to ensure warmer conditions for the pair of rescue pit bulls that had entered my life. The medical assistance covered my mental health treatment in full. 

I didn't feel healthy enough to regain full time employment but I was required to take some under the table part-time jobs to keep the roof over my head. Was I a welfare cheat? Sure. Would I have survived otherwise? Sure, if I would have had the dogs put down. There was nowhere to take them. I had to make this situation work. At this stage of the game I was pretty busy. I was cutting wood from the property with a borrowed chainsaw for heat. The $1,000 granted from LIHEAP was not enough to cover the cost for this particularly brutal winter. Otherwise I found enough part-time work to make ends meet.

Let's get one thing straight. I didn't do this all on my own. Many people helped me in my time of need. This situation was like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and hoping someone would catch me. My friends and a few relatives caught me. There were some big favors I was asking. Electrical work, plumbing, moving. How was I able to mobilize 10 or more people to help with serious work (four or five made some of the largest contributions)? My character served me well. Throughout my life I've been an honest person. I wouldn't go as far to say I'm nice. I actually get offended when someone calls me nice. It makes me realize that they don't know me that well. Courteous on occasion, I suppose. Primarily rude. I've always been there to help others. I'm the kind of guy who would share what he's got, though it may not be much. I'm the kind of guy that shows up on moving day. As for lying or deceit. That is unfathomable. My credibility is one of the best things I have going for me. 

I'm not in close contact with the people I've grown up with (except for the band).  However, I've never crossed anybody (except for some ex-girlfriends). Most of us are still in the same region. Come to think of it, nearly all of us are. More than a few have already passed on. Those of us who are still alive create a strong cast that can accomplish much when the time comes. This is one example I like to use for the concept of community. Another example that leaps to mind is the music community I have become a part of. There is an impressive network of support in the world I live in. 

It was in March of 2015 that one of my earliest contacts from our musical community suggested an employment opportunity. I wasn't sure if I was ready to hold down a real job again, but there wasn't any other feasible options available. I was extremely skeptical because of the nature of the job. It was one of the largest companies in America. I had little to no experience in an office environment. With my back against the wall (for to say money was tight was an understatement) I reluctantly began the application process with his support from the inside. 

I got the job. I won't discuss the employer. Primarily I don't want my personal life to have any impact upon my lively hood. Also I don't like the concept of having my character defined in any way by my employment. Conversely, if I achieve my goal of becoming a self supporting author, I will proudly mention that when the opportunity presents itself. In the meantime I have a decent entry level position in a huge corporation. It pays my bills. I get an inside look at the underbelly of something I was raised to despise. 

I gained lasting sobriety for the first time in my life. I'm a few months shy of two years. I don't miss anything about drinking. I wonder how I was able to survive while I drank. There isn't enough hours in the day to accomplish what I'd like to without it. How did I get anything done while drinking? There's some guys in AA who say the urge to drink never goes away. Fuck them. They are doing it wrong. You need to put in the effort to change your life in such a way as to remove the elements which would motivate you to drink and/or use drugs. Most bad things that happened in my life were a direct result of alcohol. I can live without it. And the money!!! On the cheap, booze was costing about $300 a month, by staying out of bars n@. Drugs were even easier to quit than the booze. As I had mentioned much earlier, my system is shot. I'm burnt out. Weed was causing me panic attacks. Quitting that was a breeze. LSD is most likely what had triggered my encounter with the ominous presence. I'm pretty sure I'm one trip away from losing my mind completely. I almost didn't come back from the last one. I've altered my lifestyle and environment to the point where sobriety is the welcome norm. 

There's something important to be noted about sobriety. Being sober doesn't make your problems go away. It does make you more prepared to deal with them. Some problems require money. You've got more money when you don't drink. Some problems require action. You got more time and wits to deal with things without booze. Possibly the most important benefit is prevention. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Without booze I create far less problems for myself in the first place. 

I still have one of the dogs. Her name is Pinky. She's a real sweetheart and dumber than a bag of hammers. I doubt I'd have ever voluntarily became a dog owner. Some choices make themselves for you. These last few tumultuous years had many surprises in store for me. I have no regrets throughout the process, especially not my sweet little mama. She's one of my current foundations. 

Otherwise I'm what you'd call a "normal" healthy law abiding citizen. In my leisure I read. I lift weights. I dabble with photography. I'm still a cigarette smoker and a coffee snob. Being a recovering addict such as myself, one doesn't give up ALL drugs. Just the illicit and intoxicating ones. 

To anyone who made it to the end of my tale, thank you! This is a brief overview of my life. This was an attempt at being succinct when describing myself. I've got some wonderful stories and memories that really put some color on this framework. I will explore plenty of anecdotes in my future works. If you enjoyed this essay look forward to my future contributions in philosophy and photography.