From One Raven's Eye

Page 7

Hi. Howdy. And Hello. So how have things been with you?

Say, have you ever woke up, looked out into a drizzly sky and couldn't remember for sure whether it was morning, noon or night? Have you ever had to lay still as a stick for a day and a half because the sound of your eyeballs moving or the grass growing hurt your head? Have you ever tried to drink coffee from a cup that kept ratting against your teeth? Coffee that tasted like broken teeth sliding down your throat? Have you avoided looking into the eyes of friends afraid to see a smirk there over what a fool you'd been again?

If you can say yes to any of these then you probably share similar memories as I do from those drinking to excess days. It was the same knowledge of liquor's men work that caused the chiefs in negotiating the treaties to ask that alcohol be banned from their still-to-be-created reserves. Apart from knowing drinking has been a problem amongst us for awhile, now there is not much more I can say about the subject with any certainty.

The question probably comes down to, why did I, my own Whitedog, Ojibway, variety, type, self end up getting overwhelmed by drink in the first place. Because my mother left me? Because the way of life that made us more sure of ourselves left her? Because the parts necessary to deal with our problems left us? Or we left them? Who knows. Maybe it's a mix of personal plus big picture reasons. Whatever it is, the full weight of all that ends up resting on each of our already burdened shoulders. Is it any wonder individuals get knocked to their knees or flat on their faces from all of that?

It's been ten years now since my last drink of anything resembling liquor. I took my first serious nip at age eighteen. In those five years I messed up a university education and my first relationship with a person who cared for me back then. I went to jail, made a fool of myself countless times, I threw up on my shoes a lot and on about 260 different Sunday morning made up my mind to quit for good.

Why and how that last time I decided to retire from my end of the booze business has worked out this long, I can't say for sure. I'm just very, very thankful that it has lasted so far.

Other people who are smarter, tougher and stronger than me are still going round and round in that maze of sanity and life threatening days.

Once you get there, there are no guarantees you'll stay out for good either. A guy who first sponsored my mom in A.A. had been dry for twenty-two years. A couple of summers ago he took a drink and has been at it ever since.

Sometimes that old thirst creeps up in my throat, not so often these days but every once in a while. Then I have to do some serious self counselling, serious pacing, or fall into a serious sleep until that crazy notion passes. At other times just thinking back, or catching a whiff of the stale stuff on somebody's clothes or their breath is enough to get my stomach shivering and my body aching remembering what those days were really like for me.

One thing that really bugs me is the reaction I get from other people when they find out I don't drink. The reaction ranges from a shrug, to hostility to awkward silence.

Some people have said to me, "so what's the matter, you can't handle your drinks or what?" Or, "Don't you know how to have a good time?" Other people just avoid me

in social situations like I'm a walking condemnation of the fact that they still drink.

To those who ask, I just say that I must have drank up my share of whatever pleasure there was in it. Other times I say it's because I just got tired of making myself sick or stupid, and usually both.

To the hostile ones I react back with anger. Part of that is due to the fact that it's hard to admit that I was too weak to deal with something better than I did. It's still hard for me to put it that way even to myself today. Facing up the barefaced fact is part of dealing with it, though. Yeah, so it's true. I admit I can't handl my drinks but then again my drinks don't handle me anymore either.

There are lots and lots of Indian people out there who are successful drinkers, however. Successful in the sense they can enjoy themselves and not get carried or dragged away. All I say to them is "way to go." Might be a good idea to keep one stern eye on yourself, though, because liquor can be mighty sneaky, addictive stuff."

To the rest of us fighting the bottle's pull from inside oneself or from a distance, let's try to remember the difference between us is never more than one sober day.

Well that's it for this week. Thank you once again for your kind attention. Oh yes, one last thing. Doesn't it seem to you that we are all sort of like mirrors for one another. We can't really see ourselves except how we show up in each other. If that's so then as we go along, smiling away we're more than likely to have a smile reflected back. Well, sounds like it's worth a try anyway.