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hi friends. sorry for my perpetually shifting image these days. it seems my blog design is in just as much flux as my own sense of self, or maybe more. i have been trying to move closer to a design that i think accurately reflects this blog. just tonite it came to me that this blog is almost completely about being authentic and real. the real me is just into the words. i like pretty colors and design but this blog is not about any of that. it is just about my thoughts and my growth. so, here is the new old blog back. i hope it is palatable and, more importantly, i hope it is readable...

that said, tonite is super bowl sunday. i have many thoughts on this night all of which surround the loss of a dear friend of mine to suicide the day after a super bowl sunday binge gone all wrong. i dont think i've written before about my friend dave and how his death impacted me. dave was probably the most attractive man i have ever met. handsome. blonde. blue eyed. charming. a talented writer, artist, and musician. that his life ended early is all wrong, that it ended early because of crack cocaine is still devestating to me.

how dave ended up addicted to crack while many around him seemingly recreationally used was beyond me at the time. recently i have learned more and understand the mix of genetics, actual use, and social stressors that add up to equal addiction. i still remember wondering if it was ok for him to drink after coming out of rehab. i still remember thinking it didnt make sense and then hearing that he never was an alcoholic. of course we know that it was alcohol that made it so easy for him to go back to using probably marijuana and then, of course, crack.

for my part i will say that the end of dave's life may have served to help save my own. his story stayed with me thru many nights and helped me pass many trays of cocaine along--i drug i later thought may have taken me out forever if i had not already decided i would not allow myself to not learn something from his death. when i first went to AA it was his face and image that i saw in the young men who sat in the back and went in and out of the rooms.

the way i remember dave is playing the guitar on my parents deck, summertime, hot night, in pink polo button down, tan, blond hair falling over one eye, sleeves rolled up, khaki shorts--impossibly inviting. this was maybe before the crack cocaine or before i was aware of it. i think of him, of the life he could have had. of how i laughed at his stories of going to AA meetings and then out for a drink. at how he wrote me from his first rehab when i was in college and i lit a cigarette and made a gin & tonic to read the letter. the letter said that they told him that he had one of the worst crack cocaine addictions that they had ever seen. i think he was 21 at the time.

me and my friends we all drank together, basically lived together, watched each other go up and come down. i ask myself how did we miss this? then i remember that we never really saw it. we saw what he wanted us to see. the smile, the tan, the guitar. the disease, the cravings, the withdrawals--the pain...that is what people hide. they hide it because we have taught them to. the shame of addiction and, maybe, mental illness continues to keep people from asking for help and from talking about what is really happening to them--until we cant help but see it and then it seems it is often too late.

part of this blog is my attempt to encourage people to talk about addiction and recovery--not just for themselves but for the countless people who might benefit from learning they are not alone and there is hope. for myself, i'll keep on keeping on. one day at a time until i make it to the promised land. this ones for you dm--we miss you. xxk