Blind.

I don't even know how to start this, but I guess I just did.

How could a loved one taking their own life get any worse? Having a bad friend at a time when you're at your weakest, emotionally.

I recently (seconds ago) had a revelation that almost everything bad that has happened to me or around me over the past 7 or so years has been directly related to my problems with alcohol.

I spent last night grieving the loss of a good man, a great friend and someone that I've spent several hours talking with about deep stuff. Stuff that people don't generally want to talk about with someone that they really don't know very well, but that's how we got to know each other, I suppose. I looked up to him in several different ways. This person waited with me at a rehab clinic as I paced around for about two hours trying to drunkenly decide if I was going to sign the admission papers or not. My panic took over, and I did not. Being an alcoholic is no fun, really. After the drive back to my car, he was very gentle in the way that he dealt with me. There was no guilt, no arrogance of his own sobriety. He was just a friend. He was there if you needed him. I wish I had been that kind of friend last night.

As much as I cared for this person, I have a friend that was much closer to him and knew him much longer. As I type this I'm fighting off tears.

Here's what I know about myself: I am an alcoholic. When I drink, I can get to the point of blacking out (this is much harder to do now than it used to be, but happens more frequently) and pulling the hair trigger on my rage. I have been so worried about my friend. I just wanted to be there for him and try and get through all of this together. Instead of doing that, I drank myself into a blind rage. I just now was told what I had done. All I remembered was being charged at and knocked over by my friend and taking a cab home. I woke up this morning with no recollection of the things that I had said or done. After another friend of mine called me and reluctantly told me what I had done and I reluctantly listened to him describe my arrogant, shameful, despicable behavior, I can't even begin to describe how I feel. It feels like someone you love has died and someone else you love wants you dead. He would be justified in feeling that way.

My nature is to care, bring peace, nurture and love. When I drink, I am what alcohol wants me to be- a vessel for destruction and hate. This is not uncommon among alcoholics. Go to an AA meeting and you'll hear and know. I am very self-conscious, I assume everyone is always laughing at me and that the world is in on some joke about me that I don't know about. From what I know about myself and what I've been able to piece together, I assume I felt mocked, for no reason a sober person would think. So, I lashed out. I lashed out on my friends, and tried to fight them. I hate violence with a passion. I wish no one would ever want to hurt anyone or themselves. I hate confrontation (Ironic statement from someone who a lot of people would consider confrontational). I hate being a bad friend. Which I am.

This is nothing new for me. Alcohol has always made the little demons inside me rise up to the surface. I have lashed out at family, friends, girlfriends, strangers.

Over the past few months there have been massive revelations for me. One was that I have come dangerously close to killing myself or others when I've driven drunk. As the result of running my car into a wall and totaling it, and the damage done to my body, I will never drive drunk again. I have come dangerously close to committing suicide, and if it hadn't been for some strange happenings with my family after I took a bunch of pills and drank enough booze to sink a ship, I don't think the paramedics would have gotten there in time.

I have spent some time in AA. in and out. Convincing myself that I'm not an alcoholic and I can control it. After all, over the past month or so I've been quite satisfied with the .99 cent 32oz High Lifes from the local gas station and going home and drinking 3 to 5 of them a night...But the one time I go out. The one time I needed to be a good friend...I was not.

Some people could tell you that I fold under pressure. That you can't count on me when it counts the most. This is true. This is the antipode of what my deceased friend was. If he wasn't genuinely caring towards others, he was fucking great at faking it. But he wasn't faking. He was a good friend, a good father, with his own demons.

I'm starting to believe that people who take their life when they're drunk aren't committing suicide, but just succumbing to the violent nature of alcohol.

Alcohol is not a drug. It is a murderer. It's like the God/Devil thing; The devil doesn't care if you believe in him, he just doesn't want you to believe in God. Alcohol doesn't care if you're dead, it just doesn't want you alive. It is a poison to the brain and the body. It is glorified to the masses as a relaxer, deserved after a long day. What men do. Moderation? How many people do you know that drink in moderation? I think being an alcoholic is more common than not being an alcoholic. It's a tricky little fucker. At first it makes you happy to drink, but after long enough and hard enough, you realize that nothing feels good when you're drinking. It's like asking a smoker why they smoke, they really can't tell you, but they're body could.

Alcohol can take a life, break relationships, ruin your body and leave you broke. While I don't know all the details of my friends death, I can't help but assume alcohol helped pull the trigger, or pulled the trigger all by itself. See, when I tried to kill myself I had had a great day. I was telling everyone what a great day it was, but by then end of the night, I was depressed and ready to die. I had drank so very much alcohol that I wasn't myself. By the time the paramedics had gotten through my front door, I was unconscious and they thought I was dead. They made my Mother and her Husband sit on the couch while they found out. This makes me sick to my stomach to think about. Especially after getting the news about my friend and thinking that I could have doled out that same emotion if my suicide attempt had been successful, and how I never want anyone to feel like that. But alcohol does want me to kill myself. Alcohol wants nothing more than for me to be a failure at everything I set out to do.

Like last night, I drank so much alcohol that I wasn't myself. I turned from a caring, compassionate, sympathetic, sad friend into a school yard bully, apparently in seconds. What the saddest part about this? I may have lost two friends this week. One from the mother fucker that is alcohol, and the other from the mother fucker that is alcohol. All of it was preventable. Definitely not inevitable.

If I could stop crying I wouldn't. I'm ashamed and scared.

I am going back to AA and getting the help that I need. I'm not leaving without a sponsor and hopefully, this will be my last hangover. I think this is the best way I can honor the life of my friend; trying as hard as I can to be successful in sobriety instead of trying to honor his memory with booze and destroying friendships. That is not at all what he would've wanted or done had it been me that died.

This is me. I really don't know what any of this might mean to you. But posting it is my personal punishment for my behavior, a half-assed apology and my tribute to a friend/victim.