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Introduction to my upcoming book Love Drunk

 

     I have always had a drinking problem. It started the very first time I got drunk, when I was ten, and became my dirty little secret for the next forty three years. I managed to hide it well most of the time but eventually it started affecting my work and my life began to fall apart. I didn't drink every day, at first, but by the time I was a teenager, I was getting drunk every weekend. By my early twenties I was binge drinking regularly with a few days off in between. Alcohol's victory over me was slow and insidious and slowly chipped away at any control I had over my own life until it literally ran the show. After twenty years of on and off binging I finally stopped cold turkey on Boxing day 1999. I stayed sober for over five years.

 

Eventually I convinced myself that I was no longer an alcoholic. That's the moment I started the slow slide back into chaos. There is no such thing as a former alcoholic.

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Never in my life was I ever told or shown just how horrible things could get if I abused alcohol, what it could do to my body and how it could destroy my life. There was nothing whatsoever taught in schools when I was a kid and the small town Canadian culture I was immersed in encouraged drinking, so I drank. Unluckily for me I was hard wired for alcoholism. To be honest, I don't think I would have listened to any advice back then, nor did I, as it came from many friends and family. I was arrogant and thought I would live forever no matter what I did to my body. Cirrhosis would show me otherwise.

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I have put down my story, as best I can remember it and it will be up to you, dear reader, to decide if my upbringing and subsequent life as an entertainer brought about my near death, or saved me from it -- or both! When you understand that alcoholism is a physiological disorder, then it seems likely that I would have been a drunk no matter what vocation I chose. Of course, the prevalence of alcohol and drugs in the entertainment industry does put the potential alcoholic at a serious disadvantage. This was my go-to rationalization for many years.

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This book is the remembering of a journey that has been far from ordinary. It's not a tale of  doom and gloom, but rather, it is the true story of a crazy, wonderful, terrible dream that I have had the privilege to have been given to experience. A life full of humour, imagination and music that nearly ended but for a miracle. It is the re-discovering of the magic that is all around us in this world and an account of a trial through fire that helped me to really see and appreciate the abundance in my life. I have been to the edge and looked into the pit of despair. The view was life-changing. The trick is to not fall in.

 

As long as I can remember I have expressed myself through stories and songs. This body of work is like a suitcase full of old home movies, marking moments in time for me. I have included many of these songs and poems throughout this book - signposts that follow my different states of mind across the years. Some of it is down right embarrassing for me to read, but I wanted to include the uncomfortable lyrics too, to give you a more rounded view of what I have written and experienced.

This book is about real events. Some of my memories are a little fuzzy and exact dates and timelines are often best guesses or approximations. I have added some artistic flourishes to make it more fun to read, but the core events are real and ACTUALLY HAPPENED! In some cases the characters are an amalgamation of several memories and don't necessarily accurately portray any specific individual. How's that for babble-speak?! No drummers were harmed in the making of this book.

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I decided not to use many peoples' real names in this story, mostly for my own protection, but also to respect people's privacy should they feel they have been portrayed inaccurately or slandered in any way. I apologize to anyone who recognizes themselves in this remembering and feels misrepresented, or was simply left out. I also apologize to the people whose real names I do use and trust they will be gentle in their critique of my caricatures. 

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One thing that you won't find in this book are details of my almost thirty years of marriage. We did kiss but I'm not telling. Suffice it to say I can see now what a lousy husband and partner I must have been. Living with a self-centered alcoholic extrovert with abandonment issues must have been hell for my dear ex-wife and for that I can only apologize. I take full responsibility for my actions and my experiences during married life and I carry a deep and cherished love for Joanne who did not deserve to be an alcoholic's wife for so many years. We have a beautiful daughter and our child was born, surrounded by the love of two people, created by that love. I do not regret one moment of our marriage (yeah, right!) and I have many happy, beautiful memories of our time together. As far as details, pick up a copy of Mommy Dearest if you need some family mud to wallow in. 

 

I have come through a trial of fire and fear and pain that stripped me of everything I had and everything I was. It was in the moment of complete collapse that something spoke directly to me and filled my heart with hope and love. I believe it was a power greater than myself, beyond my comprehension and, because it needs a name, I am calling it The Great Imagination. 

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I have noticed that whenever I mention my new-found connection and ongoing relationship with TGI, either I get a slightly patronizing look of sympathy, (presumably because they think I am delusional or high), or an affirmation from like-minded souls who have also had their hearts and minds open to the power of infinite possibilities through extraordinary experiences. 

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I had to be beaten down to the very brink of death before my ego would surrender and, when it finally did, in that moment, I was changed. I stood at the brink, and I knew in my heart that I was not alone. Since that day the miracles and synchronicity in my life has become so common and abundant I no longer believe in coincidences. I have somehow tapped into a subtle, loving, creative energy that has been guiding me through my life all along - I just didn't see it until now. 

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My personal beliefs are not tied to any religious dogma. The words I sometimes use to describe my spiritual experiences like, God and Angels and Heaven and Prayer, have decidedly Christian connotations but it is only language. My beliefs are born of direct personal experience and have nothing to do with the Bible or any other words written by men with an agenda. The voice of God does not come from the pens of men or the mouths of the pious. I believe it comes directly to each of us, if we listen. 

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So why not talk about it? I want to yell it from the rooftops and sing it in the streets and I couldn't care less if you don't like my new friends or my general dislike of religion. I do not need to convert anyone to anything. I simply wish to declare my gratitude to The Great Imagination for what I have been given, as I share my story.

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I now believe in the power of prayer as I have seen and felt it in my own life as of late. I am living in complete faith now. Not blind religious faith, but rather a total surrender to powerlessness, an admission that I am not really in control and the realization that I am loved and in good hands. I am not 'born again' in the traditional/fundamentalist sense. It's more like I have been 'reborn' into a new life, and a new perspective on my place in the universe. I have a deep sense that the hippies were right all along. Grace does exist in this world. 

 

    I have always had an extremely active imagination. As a very young child I was content to sit for hours building little villages with bridges and roadways under the big fir tree beside our house in Edmonton. It was the perfect little hideaway - my secret boy-cave, where everything was magical and anything was possible. My Mom tells me that as a baby I was just fine playing all by myself, daydreaming the days away. In grade one I remember being beside myself with excitement as I waited to get back to my 'secret' world after school. This would serve me well later in life when, as a guitarist, I would spend countless hours alone on the road practicing scales and writing songs. 

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Klondike Days in Edmonton was the most exciting thing that I could possibly imagine, even better than Christmas! As soon as the ads for the midway rides started running I was giddy with excitement! My absolute favorite was the Haunted House walk-through-thingy. All those little passage ways and corridors with walls that huffed and puffed and blew compressed air on your ankles amidst the screams and cackling. I would build my own haunted mazes out of couch cushions and sheets, crawling through my creations like a super spelunker, crouching for hours in those little alcoves, dreaming...always dreaming... 

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I have always had a strong 'dream memory' as well, remembering my dreams each morning more often than not. I had frequent recurring dreams as a child, especially dreams of flying. My most common dream went something like this: I am somewhere in my daily life, at school or at a mall or just walking down the street, when I suddenly realize that I am dreaming. I know who I am and where I am sleeping, but I also know that I am existing awake in a 'dream world' where ANYTHING is possible! Before puberty, my favorite thing to do in my dreams was break things and destroy property. I would find a baseball bat or a long sword and begin smashing and bashing and hacking apart grocery stores or department stores and very often random houses I would simply walk into and start destroying. 

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I remember the exhilaration and power I felt in those dreams. I was totally free and unstoppable. I don't remember hurting people in my earliest dream memories, just property. This was my subconscious mind trying to deal with the anger and sorrow I was feeling as I watched my parents break up amidst the chaos of the commune. 

 

As my sex drive came alive, my focus became having sex of any kind with as many 'dream women' as I possibly could before I woke up. In these early lucid sex dreams, it was always beautiful and erotic. The problem was, as soon as I realized that I was dreaming, I would begin to lose the dream and wake up. For a few seconds, I was consciously aware in BOTH WORLDS! I would try with all my will to stay asleep, to stay in the dream, but the more I focused on that, the more I woke up. It was soooo frustrating! Sometimes there would be laundry to do in the morning...

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I had frequent lucid dreams right up into my twenties, and then a strange and wonderful thing started happening; I began dreaming about places and people and situations that hadn't happened yet, but would 'happen' later in waking life exactly like I had dreamed. It was a clear recollection of the 'dream memory' while it was happening in real time, after I had had the dream! 

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This paradox of having visual images - manifested in my dreams - be replayed in waking life as the exact same images, is baffling to me. How could I 'store' a dream memory of something that had not happened yet? This conundrum got me interested in physics and the nature of time and matter and energy and infinite possibilities. I would need to be open minded in the future. 

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I now consider my dreams to be a kind of 'alternate reality', as real in every way to my subconscious mind as the 'reality' my conscious mind experiences. My dreams are free of physical limitations (unless created by my subconscious) and exist in a non-physical, non-linear, non-sensical place beyond what we call matter and space and time. I have come to learn it is sometimes called the Quantum Field; the realm of possibility. Access to this miracle world is one of the greatest gifts of my life. 

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I started remembering dreams less frequently as I 'grew up' and became more stressed with life and career. As the demons of alcohol and drugs began their hell-bent mission to destroy me, I remembered my dreams even less. After awhile the only dreams I remembered were nightmares. Horrible, terrifying nightmares of being chased by a ferocious beast and feeling trapped with nowhere to run. That beast would eventually catch me. Welcome to my rock and roll comedy dream.

 

 

 

 

 

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