MORE ABOUT HOLDING/PUT YOUR HIPS INTO IT/THANKS, PSYCHO

When we weren't being given meds or at an AA meeting we played a card game called Space which was fucking awesome. It's basically Hearts but with spades instead of hearts. The other thing is that one time some dudes came on a Friday night and had an NA meeting. It was considered way cooler than AA. These guys did the whole meeting as a call and response musical type of thing, it was fucking cool. It was like 'The Stepshow" in School Daze. I literally bought an NA book from these guys and from then on described myself as an "Addict and Alcoholic."

When I was there my glasses fell off and smashed on the concrete floor. So I had a broken lens, long hair, and fucking a couple black teeth in front. Everyone there started calling me 'Hanson'. https://youtu.be/LdhEXTQUkDY 

When we went not in AA Meetings or "sharing" we would have like 15 minutes of free time. One time I went to up to my bed to get something, there was a kid in his bed cranking Nirvana. He was playing the song "Beat Me Outta Me" over and over. I had never heard the line which is fucking kinda major for a kid to be cranking. You know he was a junkie or something. One of the other few young people there was someone I recognized who had been a regular at the donut shop I had worked at. Steve Mason had been 10 years old and he would order a dozen assorted donuts. This meant I would have my back turned. While I put the dozen together he would loosen the tops of all the sugars. I figured that out after he did it once. When I ran into him in Holding he had a fucking tear drop tattoo on his eye. You know what that means? He was a little blonde kid but you know he was definitely a murderer as an adult. 

Me and my girlfriend were at a wedding in New Mexico. I remember the place was fucking remote. It was on a Native American Reservation and the hotel didn't have hot water. We were at the reception, they were playing music, my girlfriend Lila said, "Come on let's dance," I was like, "No Way", she says "Come on it doesn't matter what you do, I just wanna dance." I'm like, "Hell No." After a few more of these I finally agreed to dance, it was fucking Afro Cuban Salsa music. This shit is polyrythmic. When were were dancing for like one second Lila said to me, "Why are you marching?" 

Back when Uber just started we got a driver. The driver talked the whole time. He was clearly lonely as hell. He took the fucking longest way home. At one point he said, "I have a book back there, you can draw anything you want in it." We looked through the book and somebody had drawn a clown had written "Thanks, Psycho." 

DETOX

You should never start out a story like this. The first time I was in detox I went to secure myself housing. The idea was to live in a half way house. I realized you don't end up in detox for no reason so I realized I needed to get sober. I wrote about this experience a thousand years ago when it happened.

 I remember you sat around all day eating cinnamon toast, drinking AA coffee and smoking between AA meetings. I remember there was a guy who couldn't really talk. All he could say was, he'd mumble "I was taking 90 Xanax a day." There was another guy who had been drinking fucking gasoline. He had lost the ability to communicate. I remember during dinner one night he, without warning, totally flipped the table while yelling. Because I had to wait til there was a bed in the halfway house I was sent to "holding." 

This is where they put people just out of prison waiting for sober living. Because our country is insane everyone, well just about everyone was African American. I was told I'd be there 5 weeks waiting. Over the loud speaker every day a guy would say, "All the inmates please line up in the front for a meal." Eventually someone complained about him using the word "inmate" and they changed it to "clients". I don't know what meds I was on, but there were plenty of people on Methadone. Every day we'd all line up and they'd give us our meds. One day I was in line, the guy in front of me was there for Methadone and he said "Maybe this time I'll just smoke crack." That was his plan. So you get the idea, these people were fucked. At one point during a class the fucking FBI bust into the room and pulled one of the dudes out. I later learned he had murdered two people in Worceter.

At one point I ran out of cigarettes and no one was coming for a week to bring me more. After 2 days I finally got the courage up and asked one of the men for a cigarette. All the "clients" only had Newports. I had never had a Newport. I finally asked this guy for one and he gave it to me and said, "Son, this is the Cadillac of cigarettes." It tasted fucking awesome. From that moment on I loved Newport/menthol of any kind. Me and my brother call them Nature's Toothbrush and I used to only buy them when I had extra money. I can't really smoke a whole pack so I'd get them when I was particularly flush. I used to say "They call me 2 pack". 

IN WHICH DEE DEE GETS MARRIED AND I GET DRUNK

In 1988 I was 18. We went to Ireland for Dee Dee's wedding. This is funny I have to tell it. My father showed up a week later. Me and my brother went to meet him at the airport. As soon as he got off the plane he barely looked at us and was clearly nervous and said, "We have to get the fuck out of here right now." When we got in the car, he had a CVS bag with $10,000 in cash in it because he didn't believe in checks and he literally had all that cash in a plastic bag the whole flight.

 Dee Dee's wedding had a full fucking Mass in it with Communion and a sermon and everything. It was brutal. I'm not kidding fucking 2 hours. Then they left in a white Rolls Royce, it was on the fucking news because we were in Cork, Ireland. While I was there I bought my friend Rick a bottle of Paddy's Irish Whiskey and I never gave it to him. A year later it was still sitting on my bookshelf. One day I decided to drink it, it was like 4pm and I was staunchly anti-alcohol. I remember how it felt going down my throat. That shit was hot. Next thing I remember I was cranking "Sister Ray" by The Velvet Underground. This song is 18 minutes long and they are attempting to change the weather with the music. At one point my father comes bursting into the room and yells, "I could hear that music driving up, I could hear it fucking down the street." Then he saw that I was wicked drunk and said, "At least you're normal" and then I guess I passed out. 

WTF

 Me and my father were in the ICU unit. We were there because my sister Dee Dee was dying. This is fucking heavy but also funny as hell. Basically Dee Dee choked on her dinner and the EMT's crushed her windpipe trying to help her and because her DNR said, 'no extraordinary measures' we had to let her go. This sucked, but it's not like her life was going to get better. Anyway, we're in the ICU for a couple hours at least. It was silent except for the pace maker beeping. A cart on wheels is pushed into the room. There's a dog in the top of the cart. There's a sign on the front of the cart that says, 'Therapy Dog'. My father looks at it and says to me, "What the fuck is that?" 

In 1998 or 9 Motley Crue put out an alcoholic beverage called "Motley Brew," It was blue and kinda looked like Zima. I remember trying it and it fucking turned my teeth blue. I am still not sure if they did it on purpose. I hope they did. 

When I was in Thailand I was in a bar that had a band. They were setting up and getting ready. The guitar player had crazily long hair. I'm not kidding, he really looked like early Larry David. Anyway, that guy and the drummer were tuning up and kind of playing, there was a keyboard playing here and there also. They were all absent-mindedly jamming. The guitar player with the crazy hair suddenly blew a whistle. They all stopped and broke into 'Another Brick in the Wall' by Pink Floyd. With them doing the vocals and everything, it was fucking perfect. Talk about a cool way to start a show. 

Nerf this