murielle

Aha, Si. Eccolo, eccolo e arrivato.

I'll be honest with you. I fully expected to be dead by now. I remember a scant three Christmases ago making decisions about which Christmas specials to watch on my shitty 2 inch phone screen, since it was going to be my last Christmas. (For the record I decided on Scrooged, Bad Santa, It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th St). It's a good list if you're a peculiar son of a bitch and I certainly am.

My uncle decided to sell the house where I was living and I ran out of couches at one point ended up in a homeless man's rehab. All my worldly possessions stinking and reeking in a black hefty bag.

This place is called The Wheelhouse, and if you call asking for a bed, the answer is always no. What is required is that you go there with clothes and just pull up a spot on one of two vaguely comfortable couches and refuse to leave. Guys will read the AA big book to you and if you refuse them then you'll never get a bed. At 11:00 at night the residents there will make you a pallet on the floor. They will feed you three times a day, the food is donated and can tend toward the weird I remember,in specific, boudin kolaches donated by a local donut shop and one week where we were short on donations we ate turkey neck soup three times a day.

They don't take your cell phone until you're actually admitted into the facility which generally happens at a 7:00 p.m. AA meeting (one of 3 daily mandatory AA meetings)(You are usually admitted anywhere between 2 days and 2 weeks from when you plop down on the couch) But of course if you're spending a lot of time on your cell phone before admission you will never get a bed...see the pattern emerging. You are "chipped in" which is to say you receive an Alcoholics Anonymous newcomers chip. When you get the chip you also get a bed which means you immediately have approximately 70 roommates, many of whom are in various stages of withdrawals from various substances. My drug of choice was booze but if I'm to be honest with myself my real drug of choice was more... Anything that would change the way I feel, be it cocaine, gambling, women, whatever.

One of the more charming attributes of the Wheelhouse, is there are constantly more folks seeking beds than there are beds, so unless you're very strongly motivated to stay they will do their level best to move you along.

One of the techniques is called a "wood ride" where they will punish you as a group for some offense. Other punishments include taking away your toilet seats so you have to hover, because unlike the rest of the world where men are trained to put toilet seats down at the Wheelhouse toilet seats are supposed to be left in the up position. But the wood ride was probably my favorite punishment... You sit at a long table and read the AA Big Book at SCREAMING volume. You read every word as written usually for a couple pages and then it's the next man's turn. I learned early on, not to do anything that would single me out like saying Roman numeral 23 instead of X-X-Eye-Eye-Eye. A well-rounded liberal arts education is just going to mark you as someone who perhaps needs a beating. The idea of the wood ride is to make you so angry you voluntarily leave and give up your bed. The longest wood ride while I was there was 9 hours of reading and screaming.

Chores and reading the Big Book are the only way to spend your days, conversation is limited to the Big Book that first 30 days. I made 60 days sober inside, but they regulate your sleep and limit it fairly strictly and I had enough money to get a hotel room, funny how they'll deliver a bottle straight to a hotel room these days.

I tried to return to the Wheelhouse drunk apparently there was nudity involved I'm not sure I want to know the whole story.

After that I was a rehab hobo for a while including a place called the 24-hour Club which will let you stay for upwards of 10 days... Also you're forced to spend all day in the Big Book there as well.

I eventually found myself in a Christ-based sober living house. Where I paid a program fee of $575 a month. It was not technically rent because renters have rights and we had none. I had a 9:00 p.m. curfew there for over a year which was 2 hours earlier than my very strict mother had placed on me when I was 11.

I managed a year and 8 months sober before a recent relapse, but I am still here I have arrived at this place and this time, I'm not sure what the next step is for me I just know I don't want to face alcohol withdrawals and turkey neck soup on the same day again.

Maybe that's enough.