Tag: blackouts

My 38th Street Bridge Blackout

My friend Michael suggested that I write about a couple of my blackouts. He thought it would be helpful for some of the newcomers visiting this site. Here is one of them.

So let me set the scene…..it was 1979, I was going to school in West Philadelphia. I was 17 years old, and I was working in a bar call Doc Watson’s. (Go back and read that again-I was 17, and working in a bar).

Doc Watson’s was a dive bar. College students could get a cheap pitcher of beer and a pizza for about $5. From Thursday night through Sunday night, the place was always packed. I waited tables, delivered pizza and beer to my classmates, and made at least $100 in tips every night. One hundred dollars a night was a lot of money forty years ago.

My shift was from 4pm until 2 am, two to three nights a week. The hours from 4pm until 9pm were kind quiet, with the pizza-eaters. At about 9pm, the beer drinkers came in, and the bartenders filled pitchers of beer as fast as they could.

Doc Watsons was where I learned to drink hard. Up until then, I had a casual approach to my drinking. But at this bar, we had 15 minutes (from 2 am until 2:15 am) to clean up, and drink as much as we wanted for free. Since there was only 15 minutes between 2 am and 2:15, I spent less time on “cleaning up”, and more time on “drinking as much as I wanted for free”.

Over the course of several weeks, I learned how to drink at least a pitcher of beer in that 15 minute period. I learned to drink fast. That didn’t seem to be a problem for me. I lived about 4 blocks from the bar. I would get drunk, and glide back to my dormitory with a buzz and a hundred dollars in my pocket.

One night I lost track of how much I had to drink. (Everything I am about to share with you has been told to me by other people). I probably had at least 1 1/2 pitchers of beer in 15 minutes. I walked out of the bar, and headed for the 38th Street Bridge, which was a pedestrian bridge along my route back to my dormitory.

The route that I was SUPPOSED to take was:

1) leave the bar, walk one block

2) turn left, cross the bridge, walk two blocks

3) turn right, go one block to my dorm

Two turns, four blocks. I had done this walk a hundred times. I still have the map imprinted in my brain.

But on this night in 1979, I made it to the bridge, and I got lost. I crossed over the bridge three or four times. A campus police officer approached me, and asked me if I was lost. I don’t know what I said to the police officer, but if I had been honest, I would have sung from Blind Faith’s song and sung “I am wasted, and I can’t find my way home”.

Looking back at that evening, there are several things that seem remarkable to me now:

I was four blocks from my dorm, I had walked that route a hundred times, and I was so blindly drunk that I got lost.

A police officer escorted me back to my dorm, and delivered me to my roommate.

I did not freeze to death. I did not fall off the bridge and die. I did not get arrested.

I saw nothing wrong with what had happened. Neither did anyone else. Not my school, not my roommate, not my co-workers. But especially not me.

I repeated most of that evening many more times while I worked at that bar.

Why do I write this for you?

If you are a newcomer, you should know that blackouts happen to alcoholics. Blackouts are memory losses that happen when we have way too much to drink. Normal drinkers don’t have blackouts, because normal drinkers don’t drink that much.

I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize that I had blackouts until I went to rehab and someone explained to me what was happening.

I haven’t had a blackout like that since I got sober.

If you get sober, you won’t have any more blackouts either.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

Guest post: Zen Spot #36 — Mindfulness, meditation, autopilot and the internal gyroscope

Auto-pilot and gyroscopes

It happens, from time to time, that a memory returns from an alcohol-fueled blackout. There’s no telling what will jar the memory loose. Sometimes, it’s like walking into a wall. At other times, the memory fades in slowly, over the course of a minute. Even after fifteen years of sobriety, it still happens once in a while.

At its worst, while still drinking, I would end up passed-out on a park bench, in a nice business suit. It happened in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Miami, Washington D.C and other cities. Perhaps my physical size was the only thing that kept me safe. Predators must have moved on to easier targets. The police ignored me as well.

It is a time I never want to revisit.

Washington Square, PHL

Walking from corner to corner, at about 9 pm on a recent Friday night, on my way to an art gallery, my memory opened up. This rarely happens in Philadelphia. My auto-pilot and internal gyroscope could always help me find my way through my hometown without having to sleep on a bench.

This time was different.

Slow

I don’t shuffle, but my foot speed is noticeably slower than in the life I have since forgotten. That night, I was taking my time, too. It was a beautiful evening. As I passed a particular park bench, my memory faded into a time having crawled across the sidewalk of rectangular flagstone, until I could pull myself onto the bench. To the best of my estimation, the year was 1998. I had probably been at Dirty Franks, a bar about twelve blocks away, which falls in line with my modus operandi of walkabouts while living in oblivion. No recollection of the stroll has returned.

The bench

As the flashback fully returned, I stood looking down at the bench for a full minute. Shaking my head, I closed my eyes and swayed back and forth on unsteady feet. Shame accompanies these experiences no matter how much time has passed.

I chose to sit. Sobriety, and clarity, provided the option to choose. I further chose to take a breath, with my hands on my knees, in the dark, and make peace with the memory. The quiet was full of distant sirens, plates being cleared by waiters in a nearby restaurant and the sound of rubber tires turning on asphalt.

I imagined a space ship having departed some 5000 days before, disappearing into the blackness, only to return, unannounced, just minutes before. A guy about my size got out, sat down next to me and disappeared into nothingness.

This has been a guest post by DharmaMechanic.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin