3 1/2 years sober.
The relationship I have with booze is wildly complicated.

As an aspiring musician, I’m forced into the cult of alcohol. The venues I’m reaching out to are primarily houses for drinking. There’s food and entertainment, but the biggest profit from any evening establishment is always alcohol sales. James McMurtry says on a live album, “Here I thought I was a musician, but turns out I’m really just a beer salesman”.

That’s just the way it is. We can have issues with the system and society, but as long as alcohol is promoted and encouraged for profit, ain’t a thing anyone can do about it.

I’m aware that my discussion is possibly self sabotaging.

As a musician that very much needs to pander to these performance venues, I am biting the hand that I hope will feed me. But there are plenty of bar owners that fully understand alcoholism, the only way they can, by being an alcoholic themselves, reformed or not. I know they won’t be offended.

It’s not entirely their fault. Selling alcohol is their business, although their true intentions are providing a service, a good time and a way to unwind. It’s considered therapy and socializing and Humans desperately need that.

It’s also not any individuals fault.

I don’t want to shame anyone for letting loose. This is where it gets complicated. I fear I come across as preachy at times, and have straight up been accused of acting like a born again religious fanatic. A reformed alcoholic spewing blame and guilting people for enjoying themselves. I apologize if that’s the interpretation, but also, if that’s how you hear it, check yourself, alcoholism is sneaky.

In absolute honesty, it’s just all about me. My own study of myself. It has become an interesting experiment. My beginnings of alcoholism as an eight year old drinking Tequila, whiskey, and beer well into my teenage years of binge drinking, and continuing the party way after the party was over. To the brutal alcoholic deaths of my father, friends, and acquaintances to somehow wind up here on the other side, miraculously still alive. In hindsight, it seems quite predictable that I was destined to wind up with a drinking problem.

Most everyone is aware of the potential to become an alcoholic. Functional or dysfunctional. There are even laws in place to make us keenly aware of the danger. The real problem is how we embrace alcohol as a society. Ignoring the dangers or worse, glorifying them. Turning to drinking when there’s a problem. Turning to drinking to have a good time. It sounds insane if you think about it.

I think everyone has a slightly different relationship with alcohol. It’s something we all have to figure out. Our tolerance, our ability to reason, and our physical limitations. And there’s only one way to study. Get trashed a few times and see how it pans out.

My sobriety has gone through stages. My first attempt lasted about a year. The initial withdrawal was very intense. I couldn’t sleep for months. My brain was rebooting and every thought seemed broken. I eventually started thinking and feeling again and it was weird. It was mostly indescribable but I felt like thousands of small computers coming on line, one by one. It’s still happening today, but not as intense.

The internal rage, bitterness, self loathing, and cloudiness my disease had been cultivating was slowly breaking apart and I could feel it. There was a raging storm inside my entire being.

I still had a desire to drink. Especially since my wife continued to enjoy her wine. It was extremely hard to suddenly remove my entire lifestyle, drinking more than a few beers to relax. Especially grilling and working in the music studio.

I made a deal with myself. I’d only drink during these times and I’d limit myself to three beers. And I would only drink high quality, delicious Mexican beer with salt and lime on ice. It worked for about three months, then three beers turned into eight. But that’s where I stopped. Eight was my magic number. I continued for another year.

I saw a doctor and told him my biggest motivation to stop drinking was the death of my friend, but I had started again. He said, “How many friends have to die?” Then apologized for being so harsh. I thought it was kinda funny. We all need a harsh truth sometimes.

Eight beers was about half of what I was drinking nightly the years before. I actually felt more healthy. I was drinking twelve to twenty-six beers every night for over ten years. I don’t know how I sustained.

I realized that I wasn’t healthy and I was lying to myself. I had pain in my gut again and was incredibly weak. I realized that I was going to have to quit for good, or die. The alcohol revealed itself as a disease that I could not wager. A demon monster that controlled my thoughts and led me to believe lies. The disease made me betray myself. I now understood just how my father died. I understand how my friend died. The disease uses all of your existing sadness, discomfort, shame, and self doubt and coddles you with the intent to kill you. Like an invasive weed that eventually chokes itself out.

The second time I quit was amazingly different from the first. I still had insomnia but there were new things. It felt different. I developed a sweet tooth. My memories came back in true color. My reasoning sharpened and my desire to live returned.

I also know, from experience, that if I drink at all again, I might not survive. I have to leave it forever and that’s a scary thing. Not because I have a desire, that’s actually gone, but because of the stories we hear about relapse twenty years later. It always ends bad. I have to always remember that the monster is waiting. I didn’t kill it. It’s still there. It lies in dormancy and will always be there.

Three and a half years later, I still feel my brain growing. I’m alive again. I feel my hard age, but I’m not consumed with sadness. I believe I have some undiagnosed clinical depression, but going through my dark spells now is more rare and less painful without alcohol. I am aware that my brief suicidal thoughts and sadness are just another monster. That monster used to have a very powerful friend and together, they wanted me dead. They almost succeeded.

So now when a concerned friend asks me if I’m okay with their drinking, I have to respond with a quick answer. “Yeah, fine”. Explaining it takes to long and they are trying to party, but eventually, they’re loose and have lost their inhibition and they ask again. So I tell them about some of this.

I’m not concerned with you. I’m just remembering and imagining myself and how I once was. I’m not judging anyone although I strikingly recognize the symptoms of potential problems for you. But I understand, you’re just trying to have fun. You’re already aware that you’re dancing with a devil, or you wouldn’t be concerned. So was I, until it got out of control. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Don’t worry about it now anyway. I’m sorry I make you feel awkward. Go ahead and have a good time. Let’s see if you can let me have one too.

It was fifty years ago. Something happened in the universe. Jupiter got stupider or Saturn got smart, or Mars collided with some other stars, but whatever it was, it created a Cosmic Cowboy. A different kind of traveler. A storyteller that didn’t adhere to any established rules. An outcast, a societal misfit that just happened to gather with others cut from the same cloth. Drawn by cosmic energy focused on a specific spot on the globe. Like ants to a grain of sugar. Like bugs to a light bulb. Like cotton candy around the lips of the gods.

I don’t know all the facts and I refuse to be bound by the strict rules of journalistic integrity. I deal in rumor and folklore. Tales of the unknown and low class mystery. I’ll tell what I think I know, embellish for creative flair and glorify that which I know little about.

Because I wasn’t there, but I felt the energy as an infant. It affects me to this day. My mind was corrupted by the same big bang and has led me throughout my awkward life of waywardness. Searching for the collective of like minds in this vast world of round holes and square pegs.

I yearn for the type of comradery and shared intellectual being as they once had. A pack of wild wolves strangely drawn to the same pond. To drink from the same creative waters that would forge a new art form. Temporarily sustainable, legendary, and the power to shape a nation. Creating the seeds of sound and style that generations would feel forever in their souls. Souls that are sometimes completely unaware of its existence.

The Cowboys are still around, well, most of them anyway. They’ve agreed to get old and survive the chemicals and ignorance of their youth. Some used the popular drugs of their generation to experience expanded thought and consciousness while others kept their minds pure and un-enhanced, or unaltered. It was that social division that ultimately corrupted their world, causing the downfall of their temporary culture. The room was divided by users and non users, two different attitudes that didn’t mix. Unable to effectively communicate.

Like any spark of life, the creation must evolve by duplication and the original copy will eventually deteriorate, doomed to fade into cultural obscurity. It’s now only legend, with a few occasional elderly reunions in dimly lit rooms along the paths of its original trek. Giving new life to memories and memories giving new life.

The unofficial club of Cosmic Cowboys. There was never a membership jacket or dues to be paid. Membership only required some scribbles on random sheets and mindful floating ideas that became the anthems of a generation.

It was an original flame of creation that lasted as long as anything else of purity in a corrupt society. Giving birth to evolutionary marketing and fueling years of unchecked capitalism and greed. Branding a new, less friendly, but purely American ideal of badassery to blanket the nation with self indulgent worship for generations to follow. Even the icons were uncomfortable with the idea. It was a false identity. A farce. A delusion. It became the Outlaw era. And it’s influence is still corrupting our society and making tons of money.

But it’s important to note, the Outlaw craze was always just a marketing stunt that appealed to those who needed a self gratifying identity larger than their own life. To those that can grab on to a culture that makes them feel powerful. Like a pistol in hand or having a warning sticker on the back of a vehicle that seems to suggest their own vigilante justice is above the law. Proudly proclaimed that the vehicle is protected by Smith and Wesson. It isn’t true, but it’s empowering to pretend. A fantasy can create the same feeling of confidence as a flamboyant red sports jacket and a little hair gel.

Meanwhile the less aggressive original mantra of simply following your own path was mostly forgotten. It was less appealing for a mass frenzy. There were no poster boys. No gods of coolness to worship. They were just people. People that were a little odd. People whose intentions were never based on greed or wealth, but art. Simply art, in the form of music and words and a good time to be had.

I’m a straggler Cosmic Cowboy, lost in time. I’m not the only one. I can’t be.

I don’t have the resources to create a new generation of Cosmic Cowboys, and yes, it was financed. Someone had the space to create the universe. The dollars and clout to book the venue for experimental research. Motivated by just having a party and to see where it lead. To create a gathering of songwriter dorks and goofy artsy fartsies and push the record button to capture the moment in unlost time. It was a collaboration, unorganized and whimsical. Motivated by boredom and the desire to simply entertain themselves. I can only assume that some attempts were total flops, but surely led to successes. Eventually, the pot was stirred long enough and magic happened. The sugar caramelized. The dough rose.

I can only imagine what it was like to be there. To live in the moment of future nostalgia. I’ve had some relatable moments, but nothing that lasted. And nothing that was shared on such a massive scale. I assume they all were aware of what was happening when it was happening. I’m sure they knew they would be legends and revered as musical heroes. No, no they didn’t know.

The buildings that once provided the stages have all been torn down and replaced with corporate money generators. The music has been added to the vast ocean of noise on the internet, only to be discovered by a few curious cultural small town mindset historians. The lyrics have been integrated with our societal phrasing, the origin and actual meaning lost in the fuzziness of trend and now seems utterly meaningless. Cowboys, Hippies, Redneck Mothers?

But that creative spark still exists. There are places and gatherings that can be conducive to creating another wave of Cosmic Cowboys. The universe just has to align and focus on a specific spot on the globe. Again.

And I hope I’m there this time.

In a snow covered parking lot on the edge of Chicago, two giant Kenworth semi trucks sat idling in the darkness, side by side with no trailers attached. Like a couple of old buddies, the drivers were sitting inside one of the cabs talking. They were drinking out of chilled aluminum cans from a smuggled case of LeBatts beer that was half buried in the snow, keeping it cold, just outside the rumbling truck’s passenger side door.

They’d actually just met a few hours before in a tiny bar a few blocks away from the railyards, taking advantage of a rare moment of being locked down by winter weather, when they could get good and drunk and sleep it off before the freezing snow melted enough for the shipping business to reset.

There was no concern if it was legal, or against company policy. As long as they were cool and quiet, no one would ever know. It was, for a moment, very illegal when the bar closed at three a.m. and the scrappy female bartender informed the intoxicated commercial drivers they would have to move the bobtail trucks to a nearby parking lot for the night. It was ignored that it would involve actual operation of a giant motor vehicle and be considered a DWI. But it was Chicago at three in the morning, after all, and sometimes the rules just don’t apply.

I guess the frizzy haired bartender didn’t tell us earlier so we wouldn’t leave and quit buying drinks. I remember being so incredibly pleased that I was going to stumble out of the door of a bar and have a nice, warm bed waiting for me just a few feet away. That’s when the bartender, who resembled a coyote wearing mascara, told us, “Uh yeah you guys gotta move them trucks so’s they don’t get towed with you in em’. Take a yoo-ee and don’t go cross them tracks, that’s a bad part a town down there. That’s a big empty parkin’ lot cross the street. You’d be good in there for a night. Lotsa drivers do it”.

For me, and my inebriated thinking skills, I chose in that moment while crossing the street, to lock the differential into eight wheel drive, dump the clutches into seventh gear, and see how high in the air the giant truck tires could throw snow. I reverted to my High School mentality with my logic being, when would I ever again have a chance to do donuts and rooster tails in an eighteen wheeler? Never. I surely would have been fired, locked up, and had my expensive commercial drivers license revoked if I’d been caught. But just like in High School, I was smart enough to hide it and not brag about it later. I’m betting the statute of limitations has run out by now.

I can’t speak for how intoxicated my temporary friend was. I knew he could handle his alcohol as well as me, since we’d been drinking all evening and continued to drink well into the early morning hours.

I didn’t make a large habit out of drinking on the road in those days. Maybe four or five times in a year. Hangovers while driving big rigs were dangerous and miserable. Dealing with dispatchers, deciphering their bad grammar and incomplete sentences on the satellite messaging system, mapping out an itinerary, fueling up in the freezing cold, eating unhealthy and poorly prepared food, getting directions on a stinky, germ infested pay phone and writing them down in a miniature spiral notebook, using my own hieroglyphic shorthand language, and using disgusting smelling restrooms was hard enough with a clear head. Who knew truck driving would be so glamorous? It wasn’t anything like my career inspiration, the movie, Smokey and the Bandit.

A week before, I had gone to Canada to deliver the biggest avocados from Mexico I’d ever seen. Once the trailer doors were opened, I wondered why I’d never seen them in the United States. They were as big as Nerf footballs. As I wandered through the world market in Toronto, I wondered why I had never seen most of that amazing food in the United States. I still don’t know, but we sure are unhealthy and fat.

I did have a delicious glass of beer at my next Canadian working tourist destination. I stopped at a local shopping center, had an afternoon meal and an authentic brew, then saw a movie called Fried Green Tomatoes in a mostly empty theater. After the show, a random, polite, young man told me, “Good movie, eh!” I’d only heard that phrase from my Bob and Doug McKenzie, Great White North album before and wasn’t sure people really said that until then. My only response was to nod upward, like a Chicano in a passing low rider. He’d probably only seen that in a Cheech n’ Chong movie. He probably didn’t know people really did that.

When I left Canada, I bought three cases of the delicious LeBatts beer. Since it was Federally illegal in the USA to have alcohol in a commercial vehicle, I decided I would hide it until I got back home. More High School logic. Be cool and keep your mouth shut.

It is very against the law to transport alcohol into Canada, but I was leaving, so it didn’t matter. There wasn’t a checkpoint entering the U.S. for some reason. I guess we trusted them more than they trusted us.

I was absolutely terrified when my next load from New York sent me right back into Canada, but I wasn’t about to ditch my brewskis. How bad could a Canadian prison be?

And of course, as luck would have it, I was randomly pulled aside at the border and inspected. I watched in horror as she had me open my side box door on the sleeper, exposing my three cases of contraband. She looked at me, closed the door, and let me go. I guess I was damn lucky it was Canadian beer.

I remember, in truck driving school, they told us not to say “Texas” when we were asked about our nationality. We would be instantly detained and inspected for guns. I guess that happened a lot to people from the Nation of Texas.

I’d bought one case for my brother and two for me. I had no intention of drinking it before I got it back home to Texas, until that night in Chicago.

At first, the only thing my new friend and I had in common was the logo on our company trucks, but we talked for hours about life and women, and growing up and doing dumb things. That’s all most drunks ever talk about. He was never going to get married, and he was serious. I told him about a girl that loved me, but I didn’t know if I loved her. Love was confusing. I said she was just my friend. He just smirked and said, with a combination of confidence and disappointment, “You’re gonna marry her,” as if he’d seen the future already, 

Many years later, our circumstances led to a real choice and guess what? I did marry her.

I had to look deep inside myself. I had to learn that, for whatever buried psychological trauma, I was probably not a person who was even capable of real love. But I could respect it. I could recognize it and I did believe in it. Kind of like how a sociopath knows about empathy and what’s right and wrong.

And maybe I couldn’t actually, completely, fully fall in love with her, but I really liked her. I respected her, and I believed in her. I knew that I would never find anyone that loved me more than she loved me, and maybe that was enough.

And maybe, that’s what love is for everybody.

Love enough.

That drunken trucker had seen the future. His confidence was just one of the voices in my head, pointing me to my destination. He was the unknown, unnamed ambassador to my destiny. In retrospect and memory, that strange moonless night was out of place. It was out of time itself. It was my future visiting me, guiding me. There were no other people around. The bar was foggy and empty, except for the scrappy bartender who I could barely see through my booze riddled glassy eyes. I was visited by the Ghost of Christmas LeBatts.

I delivered a case to my brother in time for Christmas and the other back home to share with my future wife.

This is our twentieth year of being married and I’m still overthinking and just as confused as I ever was. Luckily, in my marriage I’ve learned that it probably doesn’t matter what I think anyway.

There’s love, and that’s love enough.

It was the size of, and almost as round, as a baseball bouncing through the cars. I watched without a thought as it plummeted, leapt, and spun, bouncing from the summer sun heated pavement up and over the hood of a black Lexus sedan, gliding and trickling across the shiny fender, dipping adieu only to pop off the blacktop, elevating itself to the perfect height to gently scale the side of a speeding monster truck and tap dance across the flat bed cover of the Super Duty Ford.

As it traveled away, almost matching the speed of the wayward traffic, I lost sight of the whimsical roadway meteor, leaving me in a state of awe like I’d just experienced the last note of a symphony concert.

The scene slowly replayed in my mind from the beginning of the sonata. I remember seeing the work truck trailer pass by, peripherally, seconds after the rock star took it’s leave, falling gracefully off the back of it’s construction trailer stage for it’s solo performance. Saying farewell to it’s stone comrades forever as it followed its own, very different destiny. It would not be one to wind up forever buried again, after a million years, only after it’s tiny contribution, with its team of thousands, as a temporary driveway. To block the force of water from eroding the path to someone’s future home or office. To be a small part of a foundation to support the giant rolling rubber tires of Goliath sized tractors and trucks.

I realized in that moment, that it had bailed off the back of the trailer just a few feet ahead of where I was parked in the turn lane and it’s trajectory was completely left to fate.

I imagined a different dance, a fate-plotted assassins target. It could have been any one of us. I contrived a different moment, where my last vision was of a rock blasting through my windshield into a spider web ball shape and my last word-formed thought was, “What’s tha…….”.

I would have no knowledge, I hope, that my brains were instantly smashed and my spark of life was suddenly extinguished, leaving my corpse forever waiting for the left turn light as my turn signal slowly clicked its last audible click.

The gravity fed, fueled spinning boulderite could easily have taken the life of an unsuspecting motorist if it was just destined to do it, but it wasn’t. Somehow, it seemed to float through the air and rocketing, rambling vehicles, each driver and passenger uniquely unaware of their own immediate dance with fate.