Fast-forward to the Summer before my senior year in High School. I was 17. The drinking age at the time was 18. My buddies Greg and Vince and I decided it was time to start experimenting with alcohol. And I mean experimenting in the literal sense. We got a little bottle of something. I don't even remember what it was. I think it was shnapps or something similarly mellow. We took drinks in a very controlled and deliberate manner, waiting for the effects to kick in so that we could monitor and observe what happened. I waited patiently, until all of a sudden, in a single moment, I could detect the sensation of alcohol intoxication. It was all new. It was completely different from the un-altered state of pure sober reality I had been sensing my entire life until that moment. My world changed forever.

That night was pretty mellow. We got a little tipsy and enjoyed ourselves. The following experiment took place a week or two later. I think it was just Greg and me that time. We were mixing vodka with lemonade. Again, I got an enjoyable buzz and it was a nice experience. The next occasion was a Friday night just after school had started up after Summer vacation. A small group of us got a bottle of Southern Comfort whiskey. We snuck off to an atheltic field behind the High School and started hitting the bottle. This was before drinking actually became an integral part of our social activity. The drinking took place covertly before the social activity commenced.

So we were all hitting this bottle of Southern Comfort, and I was drinking it like it was wine, taking a lot of big gulps. Then we went off to our friend Kathy's house to hang out. Her parents weren't home, so we could just relax and be ourselves. The alcohol buzz started to kick in, and it just kept getting more and more intense. Pretty quickly I realized that the quantity I had consumed had gotten me very, very drunk. I was a mess. The only specific memory I have was trying to undo a safety pin behind my back. I forget why I was trying to do this, but I remember that I lacked the coordination to do it. Then the spins set in. I was sitting on the couch, and it was like it was on an amusement park ride, whirling around endlessly. I was totally imobilized on that couch. I couldn't get up. I couldn't walk. I couldn't move.

Then came the moment I realized I was going to be sick. I had that feeling in the back of my throat, and my saliva glands started working overtime. But I was stuck on that couch. I knew that if I tried to get up I'd fall flat on my face before I'd even taken the first step. I very calmly asked Greg for assistance. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to be sick," I said. "I'm going to need a little help to get outside." Even as trashed as I was I managed to muster up a sense of composure. Greg successfully escorted me outside, where I planted my face in the bushes for probably an hour or more as I puked my guts out. I emptied my stomach pretty quickly. The rest of the time I was convulsing in dry heaves. I had never felt so physically ill in all my life. After a while it subsided and I went back inside, but the rest of the night wasn't a lot of fun. The next day wasn't too pretty either.

While I hadn't considered that third occasion to be an experiement, that was exactly what it was. I learned that night how much was too much, and what it would do to me. Throughout the remainder of my Senior year, I engaged in pretty typical High School binge drinking behavior. I didn't drink very frequently, but when I did I drank to get drunk. I got sick again one or two more times, but I was better at knowing how to safely intake alchol and set my limits.

We were all still underaged at this time, so drinking remained a clandestine activity. It was always a gamble if the liquor store owner would sell to us or not. Usually they did. they weren't as strict back in those days. We tried going to a bar once. All my friends just walked in, but the bouncers must have smelled my fear. They singled me out and asked for my ID, and when I said I didn't have it they wouldn't let me in. That left me at the entrance to the place with all my friends inside. I had ridden with someone else, so I had no choice but to just stand there and wonder what was going to happen next. Finally, after maybe 15 minutes of me standing there alone, the bouncer took pity on me and let me in on the condition that I would not drink. When I got to the table all my friends tried to get me to take drinks, but I didn't. I was good to my word.

Towards the end of the school year, marijuana entered the scene again. I smoked it a couple times, but I never got a buzz. I later learned that this is how it tends to work when people just start smoking weed. It takes a while to build up threshold levels of THC before the psychoactive effects begin. But I never got to that point. I would just smoke it and nothing would happen. After a while I figured it was a waste of time and I just stopped participating. That made my friends curious, but they didn't pressure me or anything. We didn't have our hands on any pot very often anyway.

The Summer before I went off to college I finally turned 18. Most of my friends turned 18 over the course of the school year. Our drinking took place in bars more and more often. My pattern of drinking stayed pretty much the same. I drank to get drunk, but I would pace myself and (hopefully) not overdo it.

Then I went off to college. One of the first nights I was there I attended a campus mixer. It was an official college social function and was being held in a campus facility. To my astonishment, they were just pouring the beer and handing it out for free! I had never seen anything like that before. Alcohol had always been worth its weight in gold to me. That I could just drink as much as I wanted to without having to fork over more dough simply blew my mind. As my freshman year progressed I attended many other college events like this, and many other parties where alcohol was given away for free. The frequency of my drinking picked up, and I had established a proclivity for getting pretty loopy, but I still managed to respect my own limits and minimize the nights I'd seriously over-do it.

Things changed for me one night when a kid on my floor had a pot party in his room. He scored a bag and had everyone in to get all smoked up. I figured that since I'd never been high before that I could just join the party and smoke up, because nothing was going to happen to me anyway. There was a bong going one way, a joint going the other way, and basically just pot being smoked constantly. I was taking hits as they came to me. Then it happened. I started getting high. This was a first for me. I wasn't accustomed to the effects. As soon as this realization hit me I wanted to get out of there so that I could manage this all-new situation in a more private and controlled environment, but I was afraid that it would make me look like I had selfishly only been there for the drugs. So I stayed put. I didn't want to look like a lightweight, so every time something came to me I'd take another hit. I just kept getting higher and higher, but I was still too paranoid to get up and walk out. Finally I stopped smoking and just sat there as the pot continued to be passed all around the room. I was massively stoned. That went on for some time, but eventually I just had to get out of that environment, so I left the room no matter what it looked like. I went into my room and lay down on my bed. My mind was doing 360's at a feverish pace. After about 30 seconds of lying there I'd had enough. I had to get up and do something else. I went for a walk around campus. I was paranoid that everyone I passed was thinking to himself, "My god that guy is really stoned!" I kept walking around and walking around until the buzz settled in a little bit more. Eventually I felt good enough to go back to the dorm. I walked into the TV lounge. "Apocolypse Now" had *just* started. So I sat there and watched the whole thing. By the time it ended I had come down enough that I could go to bed.

Despite this rather abrupt introduction to the world of marijuana, I was interested in repeating the experience. The problem was that I didn't know where to get any, and couldn't really afford it anyway. I would eagerly smoke up whenever it was handed to me, but it was far from a habit.

But one habit I was picking up was cigarette smoking. At that point in time I would have a smoke every now and then. I didn't really enjoy it, but it was something to do. But as time went on I found that I was having a cig more and more frequently. One day I actually went out and bought a pack. It wasn't becoming a hard habit yet, but the progression had started.

Back home I was getting a reputation as a heavy drinker when I was in town on breaks. My tolerance had grown pretty significantly. I could get pretty fucking trashed without getting sick. I would be hung over, but I could bounce back quickly. The very next night I'd be out getting trashed all over again.

Things changed again in my Junior year of college. That was when I pledged a fraternity. I was already a prety hard drinker by that time, so i fit in quite well with that hard drinking crowd. But being in the fraternity environment was like going from amateur to pro. Hard drinking was the culture. Excessive consumption and crazy antics were behaviors that were encouraged and reinforced. Valid social interaction was sublimated with the act of drinking and the culture that surrounded it. I didn't really realize this at the time. I just knew that I had finally found a group of guys whose affinity for the extreme matched or even exceeded my own.

Other things started to change in this new environment. I started smoking cigarettes and pot more frequently. And I started trying out new drugs. One Friday night I was hanging out at the chapter house, and one of the older members named C-Hahn put a little square of paper in my hand.

"Take this," he said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Just take it," he said.

I swallowed it. "What was that, anyway?" I asked again.

"It was a hit of acid," he said casually.

"Oh," I said. "I've never done that before."

The guy played it cool, but I think that freaked him out a little. He thought I was a long-term, hard-core partier. He hadn't planned on baby sitting a first-timer. But I figured that since my reaction was curiosity, not concern, that everything would be all right. It wound up being a wierd night. Other than the fact that I seemed to lose the ability to put together coherent sentences, I would say it was a positive experience. Since there's no way to describe an LSD trip to someone who's never experienced it, I won't try here. The only real problem I had with my first trip was that I couldn't fall asleep. I wound up lying on a couch in the house most of the night with the same wierd imagery running through my head.

The following semester I moved into the chapter house. The biggest change this brought was that I started smoking pot even more frequently, because it was around all the time. One week I actually got high every day. I'd never experienced that kind of frequency before. It was around then that I felt the edge of my cognitive acumen start to blunt. My mind had always been very clear and sharp, but I found I was in a bit of a fog every day. I knew it was because of the pot smoking, but I couldn't or wouldn't stop. By the end of the next semester I was smoking pretty much every day, day in and day out.

By this time I was smoking cigarettes much more frequently. I didn't smoke a lot, comparitively, but I smoked regularly. I was buying my own packs of cigarettes, and when I'd run out I had to go out and get another pack. But one pack would last me several days.

Over the next few years I continued drinking and getting high. I experimented with LSD a couple more times. I also tried mushrooms a few times. I liked that better because the trip was a little milder and didn't last nearly as long. But one night I had a bad experience. It was a Friday afternoon. I'd just come home from classes. I joined a group who was drinking, getting high, and were eating mushrooms. They offered me some 'shrooms, and I gobbled them down. I then proceded to get way too high, way too quickly. That happened every so often. It was just too much too fast, and it would create an uncomfortable, anxiety kind of a situation. I would usually just chill out until I came down a little and then I'd be fine. But on this occasion I had just popped some shrooms, and here I was uncomfortable and anxious. I decided that I didn't want to trip after all, but by then it was too late. There was nothing I could do about it.

When I did start tripping, things got very strange. My buddy Otto, usually a mild mannered and caring person, suddenly took on a more sinister and accusatory persona. He must have been playing mind games with me because he knew I was tripping. It was not what I needed, and kicked me even further back on my heels. Then very bizarre imagery started popping into my mind. It wasn't a visual hallucination. It was all in my mind's eye. But it was strange and disturbing. I saw these odd, fat, sedentary creatures wallowing in sloppy trenches on an alien world that was dark and dreary. They would gasp for air through their exposed gullets that would slap open and closed as the gas passed through the gash-like orafices at the end of their wretched wind pipes.

This was all just too fucking bizarre. I had to get out of that room. I abruptly bolted, but I didn't really know where to go or what to do. No matter where I went, I wanted to be somewhere else. No matter what I did, I wanted to be doing something else. I was on the verge of panic. It was turning into the classic "bad trip." What I really wanted was to just go off and be by myself until I came down a little, but there was a party going on in the house and it was teeming with people. I tried to go for a walk, but it was a cold February day with a driving, freezing rain. After about a block I had no choice but to go back to the house and try to deal with the crowd.

So I went up to my room and lay down on my bed. There were some other people in the room (I was in a triple at the time). But, to their credit, they realized pretty quickly that I wasn't in the mood for company and they left me alone. Finally I had some peace and quiet. But I still couldn't relax. I found myself trapped in my own mind. I devolved into a state of intense and self-critical rumination. I questioned what i was doing to myself, taking so many drugs, and wondered what kind of damage I could be doing to my brain and my intellect. I felt like I was throwing my life away, and squandering the promise my parents had provided for me and nurtured over the course of my life to date. I was in a bad, ugly place, but I could do nothing but lie there and endure it.

Then, rather suddenly, the bad trip started to fade away. It was like storm clouds clearing and the wind settling down. I took a deep breath and realized that things weren't all that bad. Thank God this had only been mushrooms. If I'd taken LSD I would have had another 10 hours or more of mental anguish to endure, but as it was only 2 or 3 hours had elapsed from the time I'd taken the mushrooms. After my mind cleared up a little more I was ready to go back and rejoin the party. Those with whom I had started the evening said that they wondered what had happened to me, and were concerned about me. I said that I'd had a rather bad experience, but that they'd handled it the best way possible, by leaving me alone and letting me come down on my own.

That was a bit of a turning point for me. It would wind up being the 3rd worst chemical experience I would have in my life. And it pretty much marked the end of my days with pshychedelics. Frankly I had no choice in the matter. It wasn't like I made a bold decision to abstain. I was afraid now. I was terrified of having another bad experience. It was no harder to stay away from LSD and mushrooms than it was to stay away from rat poison.

With that unpleasantness behind me, I pretty much got back to drinking, smoking, and getting high. I was having a lot of fun, and my grades were okay, but there was always something gnawing away at me. I knew that this behavior wasn't good for me. I knew I was doing my brain and my body harm. My cognitive acuity had already taken a hit. I was wondering what was next. I could tell I was changing, and not for the better. This was something that had always been a latent concern, but my bad experience with the mushrooms brought it more to the forefront. I felt like I was getting lost in my own drug use, like I was falling further and further. My pattern of use was actually pretty stable, but I feared what the cumulative effects were doing to me. Interestingly, this fear and concern didn't affect my behavior. I kept right on using in spite of my concerns. And I was aware of that. It made me feel even worse about myself.

Fast-forward a couple years. A member of the fraternity who had an apartment outside the chapter house invited everyone over for a day of drinking at his place. It was a pretty typical affair. "Tap it and they will come" was our philosophy. But one guy had some pills with him. He wasn't even one of the druggies in the house. He was a body-building fitness buff. The pills were actually gray-market diet pills. All it really was was caffien, but in fairly high doses. I took one. I don't know why. I was pretty buzzed on beer and was in the mood for further indulgence. I didn't feel any effect, so I took another. I was drinking at a pretty good pace, and I wasn't feeling any effect from the caffien at all. So over the course of the day I kept popping pills. I took one after the other, just because I was drunk and didn't really think about what I was doing.

That night back at the house I lay down to sleep. But there was no sleeping to be had that night. There was enough caffien in my system to get an elephant wired. And by now the alcohol was wearing off. I lay in my bed for hours and hours, stewing in my own juices. My concerns about my drug use came flying back to the surface, exacerbated by the jittery affects of the caffien. I thought that if I were to die that night, and a doctor did an autopsy on me, what he would think when he found evidence of drug after drug after drug in my system. Once again I was questioning what I was doing with myself, but still aware that I was essentially unable to change my behavior.

If all this wasn't enough, there was something else that was bothering me on that particular night. I was president of the fraternity that semester. The next day was our house meeting, and the president of the college was supposed to come by to speak. I knew that after this sleepless night I would look an utter disaster the next day, and be pretty incapable of speaking intelligently. I was supposed to be the face of the leadership of our organization, and I had every expectation that I would present myself to the ultimate leader of the college as an unkempt, vapid, spaced-out, and inarticulate mess of a person. The anxiety was becoming more than I could bear.

I got to the point that I decided that since I wasn't going to be doing any sleeping that I might as well get up and walk around the house for a while. Coming down the front stairs I felt really funny. I felt like I was fucked up on drugs, even though I wasn't really on anything at the moment bayond high doses of caffein. This had been one of my deepest fears. I feared that one day my brain would fall into an intoxicated state with no chemical provocation, and that I wouldn't be able to just wait to come back down again. I feared that I might never come back down again, that I would be in a perpetual state of intoxication, and would eventually become a vegetable. And here I found myself possibly in that state.

I went into the TV room. I still felt all kinds of fucked up. As I shimmied between the couch and the coffee table, I looked down at the slip cover over the tattered upholstery on the sofa. Something was pushing out from underneath. I stopped to look. Then a pair of arms and a ghastly head reached out from the sofa back towards me, stretching the material of the slip cover that it remained underneath. It was like something out of a horror movie. I fell back onto the coffee table, totally freaked out. "What's happening to me?!?!?!?" I cried.

At that point I woke up. It had all been a dream. I never left my bed. I had only dreamed I had. I was utterly exasperated. But at least the sensation of being fucked up without being on drugs had only been part of the dream. And the fact that I had fallen asleep at all was at least a good sign. I felt like I might actually be okay, but this business of the college president's visit that evening was still freaking me out. Thinking a little more clearly now, I wondered if it was even going to take place. I knew it had been discussed, but didn't recall it ever being confirmed. I could be getting myself all worked up over nothing.

I got up and walked to the room of the brother who had arranged the meeting with the college president. I pounded on his door (it was probably 5AM).

"Whaaaaaat........." he groaned.

"It's Toaph. Is the president coming to the meeting tonight or not?" I asked.

"No," the guy answered. "It got rescheduled."

"Cool," I said. "Thanks. Sorry to wake you."

I went back to bed. I could relax now. I actually got a couple hours of sleep. But that had been one miserable, Hell of a night. The whole fiasco wound up being the top worst chemical experience of my life, and the drug that did it was good old fashioned caffiene. From that day I declared caffein to be my enemy.

Fast-forward another year. I found myself back at the same apartment where I had done all that caffein. This time it was a small gathering. And instead of caffein they were doing cocain. This was a first for me. I had never seen it in real life before. My buddy offered me a line. I decided to give it a try. Despite my deep-seeded anxiety about my drug use, I was still open to trying new things. He explained to me the technique, that one should exhale in a direction away from the mirror so as not to blow the powder around, and then stick the tube up to the nose, bend forward, and sniff. I did the line in two halves: one for each nostril. It made the back of my throat numb. But other than that, it didn't seem to have much of an affect on me.

I did a couple more lines that night, and again on a few other rare occassions. I found that the cocain buzz was much more subtle than what I would have expected. It was difficult to identify the specific affects, actually. I didn't feel as wired as I expected to, but I did experience a rather amorphous sense of euphoria. Really what it did was make me want to do more cocain. And I observed that in others. The affect of the drug was not nearly as pronounced as the desire it inspired to consume more of it. And although it didn't give me that wired feeling, it definitely kept me up. But it seemed that this was more from a desire to keep doing lines than it was because I was stimulated.

Cocain became a rare treat. I only recall ever once actually seeking it out. It was at the very end of my graduating year. A bunch of us were going across the border to Canada to a strip club. Canada was preferable because the girls could get 100% naked. I wasn't really interestd in this, but went along because it was a festive outing in which I wanted to be included. I got the cocain ahead of time, and kept it safe in my room. The plan was for me and another brother, a cute and charming lad who had just joined the house, to come home late after the strip club and spend the rest of the night doing lines.

It was a good plan, and it worked well. We got back rather late, but the cocain picked us up and we had a grand old time doing lines all night just the two of us. But in the wee hours of the morning I started getting emotional. I had become quite comfortable in the college life, sequestered away in my fraternal womb, surrounded by an endless parade of energetic and like-minded young men. But it was all coming to an end. I had to leave this comfortable home and the company of all these young men to strike out on my own. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to, but I had to. My college career was over. It was time to move on to the next chapter of my life. This night became my swan song, all fucked up on coke and alone with this new friend whom I'd just made, and whom I now had to leave behind. To the guy's credit he was very patient with me, giving me as much emotional support as he could. If anything I would say that the cocain was a positive element of that experience. It gave me an excuse to spend some quality time with this new young friend of mine, and it facilitated the release of emotions that really needed to get out.

After I graduated and left the fraternity house I moved to Wasthington DC where I lived for a few months. I didn't drink as hard as I used to because I didn't really have anyone to drink with, and at that point in my life I was too chicken to go and hang out at gay bars. I also had no access to weed, so for the first time in a few years I went without getting high for a prolonged period of time. On one night a friend came back from a party with just a tiny little bud. We got so high off that small amount! And oh did it feel good. But that was it. By the time I was getting ready to leave DC for home, I almost started to feel some of my cognitive acumen returning to me.

When I got back home I had to live back at my parents' house for a while. It wasn't the best of circumstances. My substance use pretty much picked up where it left off. I made frequent trips up to my old fraternity house, where I would get massively fucked up for a couple days before I went back to my folks'. It was also during this time that I got my hands on some of the best weed I'd ever had before or since. It gave a good buzz, not too much and not too little, and it lasted for hours and hours and hours. But after a couple bags it was gone, never to be seen again.

That Winter was when I hit rock bottom for the first time, and in fact I've never hit that hard since. It was an ordinary Friday night. I was going to a nearby town to hang out with some of my fellow fraternity alumni who also lived in the area. I drank one flask of Maddog 20/20. That was it. Just one flask. The thing about Maddog, though, is that every batch seems to be a little bit different. Sometimes you get a good buzz off one flask. Sometimes you get plastered. This time I got mega plastered. The problem with alcohol is it makes you loose your judgement. The obvious course of action would have been for me to just crash at this guy's place and drive home in the morning. But my judgement wasn't just impaired, it was altogether gone. I decided to drive home. My friends advised me against it, but I was too drunk to listen. I wish they had wrestled me to the ground and taken my keys, but they allowed me to go.

This is where it gets a little difficult to write, because my memories of my own ridiculous behavior are painful not only to recall, but to put down in words in painful detail.

On the way out of this guys house I saw the beautiful Samoyed dog that he kept chained up outside. It was a peppy, good-natured dog, and I felt so sorry for it chained up all alone out there. Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to take it in my car home with me. I drove off with the dog, and the fact of the matter is that I made it home just fine with no incident of any kind, despite the fact that it was through snowy, slippery conditions. But then something happened. It was an example of how one, tiny event can have serious ramifications. I dropped my car keys in the snow in the driveway.

I brought this dog into the house with me, somehow not waking my whole family. But after playing around with him for a while in my bedroom I came to my senses enough to get him back out of the house. That was when I discovered that I'd lost my car keys. And this is where my judgement slipped even further. I took my parents car. I put the dog in the car and drove clear across town to where my older brother lived. I guess I wanted more company or something. I don't know how late at night it actually was, but his place was dark and locked up tight. I took the dog back to my parents' house.

By now I was coming down a little, and at least had enough sense to get the dog back to his own home. Somehow I decided to take my younger brother's car, which was our old family car (a full-sized Oldsmobile station wagon). I put the dog in and drove to the nearby town where I let the dog into the guy's house. I then got back in the car and headed home. I spun out in the snow at highway speeds, but by the grace of God a big snowbank kept me from going off the road. At the time I felt like I was on an exciting amusement park ride. I just hollared out "Wooo hooooo!", turned the car around, and got back on my way. When I arrived back home I finally passed out in my bed.

From the beginning of my college career, when home over break I would always go out for a night of drunken debauchery with my old hometown friends. I would then wake up in my parents' house the next morning, paranoid that my crazy drunken behavior may have caused some incident to enrage them. But it always wound up being unfounded. I would emerge from my room to find them merily wishing me good morning. After years of this behavior, nothing ever came of it, but I would always still wake up with that same fear. As I did that morning. And like all the previous mornings, I figured the fear was unfounded.

Then my father came into the room. My parents and my younger brother had planned a ski trip for the day, and now the skis, which my father had placed on top of his car but not secured into the racks, were missing. He also noticed some white dog hair around the house.

Memories of the previous night came flooding back into my mind. I remembered the dog, I remembered taking my parents' car, I remembered everything. I felt like I was going to be sick. I made up some cock & bull story about the dog. I don't even recall what I said. And I disavowed all knowledge of the missing skis. My father wasn't convinced, but he left me alone for the time being. I was now on the verge of sheer panic. What the fuck was I going to do? I'd really blown it this time. Really blown it. I couldn't face them. I wanted to sneak out of the house and run away, but there was no way down the stairs and past them. I would have had to climb out the second story window. I just lay there in a cold sweat, shaking like a leaf.

Then my father came bursting back into my room. He had discovered white dog hair in the passenger seat of his car, and he demanded an explanation. This was it. I was busted. I told him to let me get some clothes on and I'd meet them downstairs in a minute. When I came down, my father, my mother, and my younger brother were sitting there like an inquisition panel. I had no choice. All I could do was to tell them the truth. I told them everything that happened. I had no excuse. I had no defense. I had fucked up big time, and all I could do was to admit it and take my lumps.

They were really pissed off at me, but to their credit they didn't make a big scene about it. Honesty is truly the best policy, and having confessed to them, they really had no recourse but to accept that what was done was done. But I felt absolutely horrible. Not only had I lost some expensive ski equipment, but I had totally ruined a day trip that they had been looking forward to for some time. I knew precisely how rock bottom felt, because that was exactly where I was. And not only did I feel miserable emotionally, I had a nasty, painful hangover. It was the worst day of my life.

After giving them ample opportunity to take their shots at me, I had to get out of the house as I simply couldn't face them any longer. I walked out and found my keys right in the driveway. If only I hadn't dropped them, if only I had gotten a flashlight and found them, all this misery could have been avoided. But in a way it was good because it was a wakeup call. I dind't stop drinking altogether, but I did swear off Maddog, and I was a lot more conscious about putting myself in a position where I would be tempted to drive drunk.

A couple days later the police called saying that someone had turned in the skis. I breathed the biggest sigh of relieve of my entire life, before or since. That was an enormous weight off my shoulders. I didn't have a pot to piss in at the time (remember, I was living at home), and there was no way I could make restitution. When the equipment was recovered I felt like I could get on with my life.

Within a few months I landed a job in Syracuse and moved off on my own. I continued my habit of drinking, smoking, and getting high. Alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana had become my big-3 drugs. One of my fraternity brothers was also in Syracuse at the time. We would go out boozing pretty much every Friday night. We had both subscribed to the culture that having fun meant going out and getting very drunk. And his capacity to get utterly, snot-hanging drunk even exceeded my own. We would also make pilgrimages back to the fraternity house on regular intervals, where we would get totally plastered for an entire weekend. After about a year I moved in with an old High School friend, who also had a knack for binge drinking. We fed off each other, and my alcohol consumption remained high. A year after that I moved into a house with two other fraternity brothers who had since graduated. At this point my alcohol consumption even increased, as it evolved into a daily affair instead of just weekends.

Over these couple years I was becoming more compulsive in my pot smoking. I smoked every day. That is every day that I had weed in my posession. When I ran out I really climbed the walls until I got some more. I would sometimes drive all the way to the fraternity house (2.5 hours each way), just to score a bag.

Towards the end of my time in Syracuse I added another drug to my repertoir. I had heard of "whippets," which was inhaling nitrous oxide from whipped cream containers. I had tried it once, years before. One Summer I was working as a bus boy at a fancy restaurant. One day, on break, I saw an empty whipped cream can sitting in the trash. Curious, I grabbed it and walked way to the back-most part of the back of the kitchen. I stuck it in my mouth and gave it a huff. Of course at that very moment the bar manager walked in on me and caught me red-handed. But he just laughed his ass off and told me not to do that kind of thing at work. I didn't get even a mild buzz out of it anyway.

But back in Syracuse, an older fraternity alumnus who also lived in town turnd my housemates and me on to the real way to do whippets. He had a commercial whipped cream bottle. It was refillable, both with respect to the whipping cream and the nitrous oxide chargers. By omitting the cream and just inhaling the gas, it was possible to get a noticeable nitrous high. It caught on with us, at least at the time being as a novelty. But I seemed to take to it more than my housemates did.

A year later I left Syracuase and moved to Ithaca. I moved in with yet another fraternity brother, but he wasn't as much of a boozer as my other brothers had been. And I dind't interact with him socially all that much. But I made some new friends at work who enjoyed a good TGIF experience. There was a brew pub in town that became my second home. I would often go there right after work on Fridays and stay until it closed. That was becoming more of a pattern. I would tie one on Friday night and pretty much spend the rest of the weekend recovering. I rarely drank during the week, and generally not to excess.

I would still occasionally make trips up to the fraternity house. I didn't go quite as often as I used to, but it was still a regular event. I had picked up an old VW van I could sleep in, so the process was becoming a bit more institutionalized.

When Memorial Day rolled around I decided to head up for the long weekend. One of the recent graduates, Richie, was in Syracuse. I swung by and picked up him and his girlfriend in my VW van and we went up together.

Friday night I skipped dinner and got really drunk. I had a tendency to skip meals when I was drinking heavily. Saturday I drank all day. I ate little or no solid food that whole day. Then Sunday I was at it again. I drank all day, and ate little or no food. Monday morning I woke up in my van. Richie came in and promptly stuck a bong in my face. I took a hit, pretty much to get rid of him. The buzz hit me really hard. I was fucked up. Way more fucked up than I should have been after one bong hit, even in a wake-and-bake situation. It was like I'd blown out some circuitry or something. And what was worse, my heart started acting funny.

For a long time, my heart would occasionally do this thing. It felt like someone took the dull edge of a butter knife and pressed it against the cardiac muscle just for a second. It only happened like once every six months, so I never really thought about it. But on this morning it started doing it every few minutes. And it felt a little different. It no longer felt like the cull edge of the knife. It felt like someone was pressing the whole side of it against my heart.

At the moment, disturbing as this was, it was not my biggest worry. I was so fucked up from that one bong hit that I was in no condition to drive home. I actually felt like I was having an LSD flashback or something. Fortunately I had Richie with me. He drove us back as far as Syracuse, but by then it was late afternoon, and I felt just as fucked up as I had first thing in the morning. I got behind the wheel. I managed to get myself to the Ithaca exit off Interstate 81, but I just couldn't go any further. I pulled into a gas station parking lot and took a nap. When I woke up I felt a little better. I could at least get myself the rest of the way home.

After that day I decided to give alcohol a rest. I stopped drinking that day. My heart seemed to settle back down again and I felt better overall. But my older brother got married around the 4th of July. I decided to relax my non-drinking policy, and I got pretty drunk at his reception. The next day when I was hung over my heart started doing that thing again. It was like my cardiac rhythm would go, "baDump baDump baDump baaaaaaaaaaaaaDUMP        baaaDUMP baaaDump baDump baDump." It felt like my heart actually stopped beating for a second, and followed up with a big, hard beat. That big beat was what had felt like a butter knife years before.

This had me pretty scared, but not scared enough to stop drinking. I'd go out on a Friday night, get all liquored up, and then Saturday lie in bed and fret over what was going on in my chest. Sometimes it would start doing it at any time, for no reason, like when I was at work or something. And still I didn't stop drinking. At one point I decided that I'd at least try to cut down. I would go out and set a limit for myself. The problem was that I could not hold myself to that limit. I tried a couple times, and it was of no use. I'd blow past the limit, apparently unable to control my drinking at all. It was when I came to this realization that I realized I had a problem, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before I'd have to stop altogether. I could tell I was in a bad place. My hangovers were getting worse and worse. Every Friday night I'd get trashed, and every Saturday was pretty much a waste as I lay on the couch watching TV, waiting until my body recovered.

I didn't stop drinking right away, though. I knew this was going to be a monumental effort. In order to help it succeed, I actually fostered the anxiety that my heart condition was causing in me. The plan was basically to scare myself straight. In all I let it go on for a year and a half. My drinking, my heart, and my mental health got worse and worse. I mean, this whole heart thing was really, really scary. I'd be lying in bed, hung over, feeling like shit to begin with, and then having my heart threaten to stop beating. Every time it did it I never knew if it might not fail to start beating again. It literally put the fear of death in me. I had thoughts of possibly needing open heart surgery at the tender young age of 29 years old. Add to this the self-esteem issues associated with my inability to stop drinking even in the face of this grave health condition. It made me a real mess.

Finally I dragged myself into a doctor's office. I didn't even have a regular doctor. I hadn't had one since I'd moved away from home. So I just looked up cardiologists in the yellow pages and made an appointment. I went in to see the guy and explained what was going on. I tried to explain the sensation when my heart did this thing, and confessed that it was exacerbated by, if not caused by my heavy drinking. Before he even examined me, he said, "The best advice I could give you is to stop drinking."

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," I said.

He hooked me up to all the EKG wires and had me run on a treadmill as he watched the monitors. Of course my heart wasn't doing the thing just then. "It looks good," the doctor said. "Actually it looks very good." When I couldn't run any more he had me get off the treadmill, but he kept me hooked up to the machine.

As we were talking and I was catching my breath, I felt my heart do the thing. "There!" I shouted as I pointed to the monitor. "Right there!"

The doctor looked at the monitor. "Oh," he said casually. "That's just an extra heart beat."

"What?!?!?" I asked. "JUST an extra heart beat?" This had been inspiring mortal fear in me for a year and a half, but the doctor said it was nothing.

The "thing" was technically called a premature ventricle contraction, or PVC. I forget the actual explanation of what was happening. It had to do with electrical impulses getting confused, which made some nerves fire prematurely, which caused one chamber of my heart to beat out of sync with the rest, which caused another chamber to fill with blood before it finally expelled it in that one, big beat. He said it was to the heart muscle what a hiccup is to the diaphram muscle, and no more threatening to the cardiac rhythm than a hiccup is to the respiratory rhythm. He said I could just forget about it.

He still told me, though, that it would be a good idea for me to give up drinking. I told him that I planned to. And to my credit, I did. It wasn't easy at first, but I motivated myself through all the anxiety that had been building up that year and a half. My plan had essentially worked. I was also motivated by the lack of hangovers. My hangovers had become very painful, unpleasant, miserable occasions. On those early Friday nights when I felt like getting drunk, I'd just remind myself that if I didn't drink then I wouldn't have a hangover. It seemed to work.

What also worked was the fact that I was keeping myself 100% alcohol-free. No cheating. No slip-ups. No nothing. I knew that if I had even one little sip, that the streak would be broken, and that the magic would be gone. I knew I would say to myself, "Well since the perfect streak is broken, I might as well havea a little slip whenever I feel like it," and it would only be a matter of time until I was back into the unhealthy drinking patterns. Keeping the unbroken streak going was what gave me strength.

I went to see an addiction counsellor. We had a couple good sessions, but he quickly said that I wasn't in need of counselling. I was highly motivated, I had a sound strategy (keeping the streak going), and I had basically gotten over the hump.

I was still smoking and getting high, though. But it was more that I was simply sustaining those other addictions than substituting them for alcohol. I quickly realized that pot was not a substitute for alcohol, anyway. They were two completely different drugs with completely different effects. But it gave me something to do. It was easier to give up one addiction when I had another to satiate my addictive personality, even if it could never play the same role as the substance from which I was abstaining. I did have plans to eventually become completely sober, but for now I decided to tackle one thing at a time.

The interesting thing was that I continued going to the fraternity house all the time. It was a very important part of my life, and I wasn't ready to let go. It was basically like vacationing in the lions' den during the most vulnerable time of my recovery, but I pulled it off. My brothers didn't really understand why I wasn't drinking, but they were supportive. They certainly didn't give me any peer pressure.

Only 100 days into my effort, there was an incident. I was attending a family wedding. For dessert after the rehearsal dinner they brought out little dishes of vanilla ice cream with green sauce on it. It looked suspect to me, but I saw them serving it to little kids. I dug in and ate the dessert. When the ice cream was gone I used my spoon to slurp up the last of the mint sauce. When I swallowed it I knew I'd just done a shot. I grabbed a waiter.

"What's this green sauce?" I asked.

"That's cream d'minth," he said.

"You mean there's alcohol in it," I asked.

"Mmm hmm," he said casually, as if I was an idiot for asking.

I was furious. I was absolutely furious. My perfect streak had been broken, and it hadn't been from my own weakness. This God damned restaurant had ruined it for me without my knowledge or consent. If they wanted to serve this dessert then that was fine, but I felt that they had an obligation to notify people that it contained alcohol. I felt as violated as if someone had intentionally slipped me a drug without telling me. If I hadn't been around my polite, well-mannered WASP family, I would have stormed into the manager's office and torn him a new asshole. But I didn't. I just sucked it up and dealt.

The worst part was that this HAD broken my streak. That allowed the magic to escape. I immediately started having the thoughts I knew I would have. "Well," I said to myself, "the streak has been broken. The purity is gone. The power has been lost. You might just as well give up your efforts and slide back into the heavy drinking that you know is your destiny." I damn near gave in. I almost got drunk that very night. Fortunately I was able to keep this train of thought under control. I knew it was silly. Since it had not been my own weakness, since it was through the bad judgement of the restaurant itself, I told myself that the streak hadn't really ended. Yes, some C₂H₅OH had passed my lips, but I hadn't "taken a drink." And ultimately it was my sense of spite towards the restaurant that inspired me to keep the faith. I was good and goddammed if I was going to let their stupid oversight cost me all the hard work and diligence I'd built up over this time, not to mention my health, my happiness, and my very future. I made it through the wedding and the reception without relapsing. The thought did keep nagging me for a couple weeks, but the magic was still strong and I was able to stay on track.

I survived that close call, but there were other things afoot. It appeared that an unintended side effect of all the anxiety that I had put myself through was a mild bout with Panic/Stress Disorder. It all started one day when I was giving blood. For the first time since I had started donating, after having made a great many donations, I got a little light-headed while I was on the table. After they pulled the needle out and made the obligatory inquiry as to how I felt, I did mention that I got a little light headed. I really felt fine, but all the nurses over-reacted like I was at death's door or something. When I went back several weeks later to make my next donation, the previous situation was still on my mind. I was worrying about it. I'd never worried about donating blood ever before in my life. But this time was different. Sure enough, the very second they stuck that needle in my arm I got light-headed again. I tried to lie there and deal with it, but I started feeling worse and worse. I finally had them yank the needle back out. I decided not to donate any more, based on that experience, and the fact that I had recently become muchmore sexually active and felt a moral obligation to start honoring the Red Cross's eligibility requirements, which precluded sexually active gay men.

I didn't think much of the whole situation. But when I was at the aforementioned family wedding, standing at the front of the church with the other ushers, I got that same light-headed feeling again. This time there was no needle stuck in my arm. There was no explanation beyond my own anxiety. I felt faint, like I could lose consciousness at any moment. I didn't know it at the time, but I was essentially experiencing an anxiety attack. And with the whole congretation watching, there wasn't much I could do about it but cope. I held my ground and kept it together, but it was rough going. As soon as the ceremony was over and the pressure was off, I felt fine.

A couple months later I had yet another family wedding, and I was an usher again. I experienced a lot of anxiety leading up to the day, fearing that I would have another spell. The only specific fear I had, really, was that I might faint in front of the whole wedding party and congretation. Not that this was the worst fate that could possibly befall me, but I felt there was a lot at stake. I'd never fainted before in my life. Not once. I felt that if I ever did faint for the first time, then it could happen again. And again. I was concerned that this would open up a whole Pandora's Box, and make my anxiety situation even worse.

In that particular situation what I did was warn the groom that I wasn't feeling well, and if I made a dive for the nearest pew to just go right on with the ceremony. I'm sure that didn't help his anxiety levels at all, but it did wonders for mine. It took half the pressure off right there. I did feel light-headed once I had to stand up in front of all those people, but not as panicky as I expected, due mostly to the fact that I felt I had an exit strategy if I needed one. That alone took most of the anxiety away. I was able to deal pretty well during the ceremony, and as soon as it was over I felt fine.

As time went on I began to understand a little more what I was going through. In everyday life I was just fine. I learned that what would set off my anxiety was to be in a situation where escape was difficult, such as standing at the front of a church with a hundred people watching me. It wasn't the people that bothered me. It was that I couldn't just excuse myself at my own will. I was trapped up there until the ceremony was over. There was no escape.

Another situation that bothered me was public speaking. That's stressful for anyone, but I'd always enjoyed pushing myself to do it. But this new wrinkle, knowing I was trapped and couldn't escape, added a whole new echelon of anxiety to the equation. One day I had to give a little presentation to my department. That was hardly a high-stakes endeavor. But in the hours, minutes, and seconds leading up to my actually walking to the lecturn were nightmarish. My heart was pounding, I was light-headed, and I felt faint. The moment I finally arrived at the microphone I practically did pass out. But as soon as I started speaking I chilled out considerably and wound up being fine.

Another problem I had was being in crowded arenas. I had no real fear of that situation, beyond the fact that I just didn't like crowds all that much, but I knew I would not be able to leave at will. I mean, I could walk out whenever I wanted, but I would have to fight the crowds and filter through limited access exits. It made me nervy, and it led to my first experience with "avoidance behavior." I found it easier to just avoid those situations altogether. On one occasion all my buddies were going to a Grateful Dead concert. I intended to go with them, but when the event approached and I thought about all the hassles associated with getting into and out of the huge football areana where it was taking place, I wound up giving my ticket to a buddy who didn't have one, and I just went home when they all went off to the concert. I missed out on a really good time, pretty much for no good reason.

This was an unfortunate and rather difficult time in my life. There were times when I really wished I could down a couple drinks to chill myself out, but that was never an option. After a while I realized that there really wasn't anything wrong with me. Anxiety isn't a life-threatening situation. It just really sucks for the person experiencing it. After this the condition just sort of faded bit by bit until I wasn't really bothered by anxiety at all.

Speaking of which, I knew that abstaining from alcohol did not constitute "sobriety." The next substance slated for abatement was tobacco. All along I planned to just go ahead and smoke for now, but on the 1st anniversary of the day I quit alcohol, I'd quit smoking as well. Eventually the time drew near. I had been preparing for it for the entire year. In the weeks leading up to it, I went and smoked some brands I'd smoked in the past. It was like a trip down memory lane. I knew that this was going to soon come to an end, so I got my final enjoyment out of it while I could.

When the day approached I invited some key friends over for a little ceremony. My time with the fraternity had taught me the value of ceremony. One thing was that it made a big deal out of an event. But also, in this case, it would introduce the embarrassment factor. After bringing my closest friends over for this stupid cremony, I'd be too embarrassed to relapse.

Finally the day came. My friends came over and I did the dumb little ceremony, which included smoking my very last cigarette. It actually worked like a charm. In the days and weeks following that day, whenever I was tempted to have a smoke, I would just think about having to face up to these people, and I'd get over the craving. I also used the 100% factor. The fact that I never cheated, even once, was what kept me from cheating that first time. After a week or two I pretty much had it out of my system.

So there I was. Two of my demons were slain.

This had me in a fairly interesting situation. I had sworn off legal drugs, but was still using illegal drugs. One illegal drug, anyway. I was pretty much over the alcohol thing. I would occasionally get cravings, usually for a hearty ale, or maybe a nice glass of wine with a fancy dinner.

But there was an unintended side effect of all the anxiety that I put myself through in the 18 months leading up to my quit date. I seemed to have acquired a mild case of Panic/Stress Disorder. But I was never really tempted. I'd been through too much The plan was on my 2nd anniversary, I'd quit smoking pot too. Well the anniversary came around, and I decided that I wasn't ready yet. So I let the calendar go around once more, and planned to quit on my 3rd anniversary. When that day came I reluctantly set the weed aside. But things didn't go well. I was pretty miserable. I lasted about two weeks, when that episode of Rosanne came on where they found a bag of weed in the basement and all the adults got stoned. It was more than I could take. It as like a sign. I had some resin sitting around somewhere. I dug it out and got high. It felt so good.