THE WALLET......

i had a mild panic attack the other day when i realized i have absolutely no reason to carry a wallet....when i got sober in 1997 it took me about a year to get my shit together. in that year my mother had gone completely out of her way to help me get my license back, while i got rides to meetings from people i didnt really know, sitting in cars with weird old men telling me stories that i think were supposed to "scare me straight", but really all they did was just make me pound my head against the passenger window...i had a friend who worked at an auto body shop and gave me a little jobby job basically making coffee and hosing down the parking lot for 7 bucks an hour. i moved into a house full of sober dudes closer into the city of nyack ny in a room about as big as my girlfriends closet and paid $350 a month rent......my moms boyfriend at the time was an auto mechanic and got me a little light blue festiva to tool around in. after years of being a couch tour junky i had finally had a little self worth and it felt really good. i eventually moved into the city where i became a production assistant on feature films making $90 a day working 18 hours....me and my friend austin got an apartment right next to the george washington bridge in washington heights and things were cruising right along....trust me...a point is being made here....

so long story short i ended up coming back to california working on a movie and ended up staying here. i slept on a friends couch until i got enough cash together to get a little hole in the wall on franklin and highland and my life back in los angeles began once again almost ten years after i moved back home....at about 3 1/2 years sober i decided to take a bonghit, which immediately led to a beer, a line of coke, and a pill......the next 8 years would be a story of me in and out of alcoholics anonymous, putting a little time together and relapsing, but never really losing it all....then a few years back i thought i had finally pulled it all together. i had a great band, 2 good jobs, a nice car, a fucking rad bachelor pad right in the center of hollywood with a parking spot, friends that actually gave a fuck, and more girls than a motley crue parking lot......i was driving for the biggest porn agency in the world pretty much, and doing the door at one of the craziest nights in hollywood....i had forgotten how bad it was and decided one night that i was going to get fucked up. a dry drunk with a pocket full of money never amounts to anything spiritual....
so i drank, before i drank i had found out that many of my friends in the program with many years sober had started drinking all at the same time a few days prior to me making the decision to once again ruin my life.....for about 6 months it was fun, i was somewhat controlling myself to just booze and coke. after parties at my house were fun and insane, i met a girl and fell in love in a blackout...then a neighbor came by with a syringe, and after about 30 seconds of telling him "no way" i was in my bathroom with a spoonfull of shitty cocaine....in that year i had become a flaming speedball addict, selling everything i had accumulated over the year and a half i was sober. my car was repossessed, my dick stopped getting hard, the girl was only coming by to see if i was still alive, i got fired from the porn agency, and i just stopped showing up to my one door gig a week that made me over $500 in a 4 hour period...and if i did show up i was just shooting coke in the bathroom the whole time (sorry anthony)......
i was eventually in my house alone borrowing money from distant relatives and old friends that didnt know my situation i couldnt pay back, 4 months behind in rent, no phone, no computer, no hot water, and they were about to shut the lights off....nobody from AA was checking on me anymore and everyone including myself was just waiting for me to die. i had injected so much poison into my arms and legs that eventually there were no more viens to be found...i had a bunch of speeding and parking tickets that i let go into collections so my license was once again..gone....
i would shoot up in hopes of just not waking up so i didnt have to look at myself anymore. i was 118 pounds and my eyes were black.....i would wake up in emergency rooms and psych wards on suicide watch, and completely lost all motor skills....i eventually had my mom fly me home and after 8 weeks finally kicked and got sober on her birthday...and with the help of good friends and the most amazing woman i have ever met in my life it has been almost 2 years. i am not as frazzled as i was, but i still drop things constantly and forget things hourly...i walked into a closed glass door the other day for christ sake...i wiped out on stage in front of like 10,000 people cuz i lost my balance...and my hustle for work is completely non existant....so with a suspended license sitting in an empty wallet with a debit card for a cancelled bank account ......i have absolutely no use for my wallet at this time in my life. except to take my valid california i.d. to the airport tomorrow so i can show my mom im still sober....everything else will come in time....but the fact that i can go to my mothers and not have her cry or hide her purse makes everything that sucks right now not suck so bad after all......