musing

I loosened my restrictions on drinking for a few days since I'm nearing the purported "end" anyway, but then decided that was a bad idea. Even hints of feeling like crap I'd rather do without, even approaching "the end" (of the money). By "loosening restrictions" that just meant allowing for bigger sips out of the shot glass, as much as half the shot at a time, but that did lead to filling the shot glass more often and slippage down the slippery slope. 

I remember when drinking alcohol was enjoyable. Beers with friends is a fond memory even if I don't have memories of any specific friends anymore. It just must have happened and the idea that it must have happened is a fond memory. The Beale St. NTN trivia crowd in San Francisco is the closest I get to remembering specific people. Friends invited you to come over and the standard operating procedure was for invitees to bring beer or wine of choice. Band rehearsals always enjoyably involved beer. Even alone beer was enjoyable, turning on music equipment with a Giants or A's game in the background on the TV. 

I don't remember exactly when drinking stopped being enjoyable. I wonder if there's any sort of consensus among heavy drinkers and alcoholics that drinking is no longer enjoyable. Are there drunks who still enjoy it? Probably. Happy drunks maybe. I can't say I enjoy it but I still do it, but not so much that it feels like crap. Once I start it's hard to stop, but it's important to know when to draw the line and hard stop. Ah, there's your mindfulness alcoholism. Or maybe it's the drinking knowing I'll have to stop that's unenjoyable. Going down the slippery slope is enjoyable, the consequences are not. I'm trying to figure out what my mind is doing with alcohol.

It kinda sucks being able to drink liquor like water. The uninitiated often have a visible, physical facial or bodily reaction to liquor – a good, healthy response to a toxin. When I took bigger sips of liquor it felt nice and easy and even downing the whole shot or even more from a glass would've been . . . I'm tempted to try it just to find the right word, but I won't. The feeling like crap thing, the havoc it wreaks on internal organs and functions. 

All through this blog I've gone back and forth whether I'm alcoholic or not. Actually it's more that I am but whenever I write about it I'm arguing that I'm not. I guess somewhat telling is that approaching "the end" it didn't occur to me to just try stopping. 

follow-ups

. . . I had braced myself for a long, cold, bitter winter with actually little evidence or suggestion by meteorologists to justify that expectation. I was just pessimistically bracing for the worst, hoping for better and fortunately after those two cold blasts early in January, at least one of which was Siberian, it hasn't been that bad, spasiba. Daytime highs, which are my standard gauge of the days in general, have been up and down but never as cold and with plenty on the mild side. I looked back at what I'd written about previous winters and this year is no where near as bad as Taipei could get. My nerves and psyche would be shredded catatonic if it was like one of those winters, especially with no hot water. 

. . . I've adapted alright to no hot water, helped by no sustained cold winter temperatures. It's still not pleasant and I still bifurcate my showers, even when I can't siphon hot water from my neighbor, to minimize being under cold water at any one time. When I do tap his hot water, I try minimizing any effect on his showers by waiting until I hear his water turn off. I can still get sufficient hot water for my needs for a short while afterwards. Hopefully there is zero effect on his showers and therefore no reason for him to do anything about it. Interdependence in action perhaps as I'm being considerate towards him but for selfish reasons.

. . . That fine line between "showing restraint" and resisting alcohol consumption became a slippery slope of itself towards resistance and I don't think I've gotten too nutty about it. It's no great achievement, just preferring to lean towards not drinking when it comes to mind. But I'm not that strict about resistance and alcohol levels in bottles still steadily decrease, just not as fast. Under my new regimen of "can I say no to this?" I'm drinking maybe half what I was. It's probably more complicated than that. The effect on my gut was incredibly quick, though, improvement within days and I don't think it just happened out of coincidence. This is attributable to the alcohol drop-off. Do I feel any different otherwise? Not really. Can I fall back into it? Easily, I'm not fooling myself about that. 

. . . I'm willing to backtrack a bit on my disparaging suggestion regarding the mental health industry and their inability to treat something like "chronic suicidal ideation". My inability to even imagine how they would go about treating it is probably more indicative of my lack of imagination (and professional education and training) than their ability to target strategies for treatment for whatever comes their way. 

. . . Still nary a thought of going to the bank. I don't know if I've gone past the point of no return, whereby if I went to the bank today funds would not come through before current remaining funds ran out. I don't care, I'm not thinking about it. I'm assuming I'm past the point. I've been bracing myself mentally and conditioning myself to conjure and maintain cognitive dissonance whenever I feel comfortable on the day-to-day conveyor belt of habit and routine: This is not going to last, everything must and will change. Many elements in my surrounding life have already shaken up senses of perpetual comfort, now it's just me that I have to work on and just keep myself off-balance instead of being complacent about anything. With the external world I keep adapting and coping with disturbances and changes, but internally I have to shake things up myself and there is no adapting or coping, just acceptance. 

I'm trying a new approach to alcohol. For the past three and a half years, I've drunk the same way every day in the name of "cutting back" at the time. I allowed for one-third of a bottle per day (measured out, basically a ration), two beers, and some dipping into reserve bottles after the third of a bottle was done.

The drinking schedule would begin around 10 or 11 at night enjoying a beer, followed by the third of a bottle of gin or vodka. I'd pour into a shot glass and sip it by halves or thirds. By 2 a.m. lights out, I like to have left at least a shot in the bottle for the next day and the satisfaction of showing restraint in not finishing off the ration. The next morning I could have a beer around 11 or noon and then finish the third of a bottle. After that I could dip into reserve bottles (scotch), which would be restricted by my leaving for the afternoon around 1:30 p.m. That would be maybe 2 or 3 shots at most. 

But something I noticed recently was that this strict rationing had also become a license, encouragement even, to drink. Sometimes I'd get to the times when I usually start drinking and I'd start drinking because it was time I could start drinking, not because I necessarily wanted or had the impulse to. And of course once started, it's down the slippery slope. You could sooner stop a fat German boy in lederhosen after shoving strudel in his face or Alice going down the rabbit hole after taking a tab of acid.

So the new approach is if I've been getting along just fine through my night or morning without even thinking about alcohol, don't start just because I can. If I'm fine without, just stay fine until it does beckon and I "really want it". I'm not sure what that means yet. I think if I notice I'm actively resisting, that means I really want it, and I can just go ahead. Resisting like that just creates a mental complex and who needs that? I don't need another thing to be nutty about. It's a fine line between resisting and "showing restraint". 

I wonder about my motivation for doing this and whether it has anything to do with my funds imminently running out, ostensibly ending my life as planned. I wouldn't put it past my thinly-veiled subconscious. Maybe the less I drink, the less I spend money thereby adding a few weeks? I dunno, it's possible but I hope it's not that crass or desperate. I hope I don't hang on spending every penny before I realize what I have to do in accordance with how I've set my life up. It may come down to that knowing me, but I hope not. There is an even worse scenario (accounted in a Buddhist fable) whereby I run out of money and still can't do it but that's another story, nevermind. 

Another possible subconscious motivation is accepting that alcohol has decidedly failed to kill me (unlike before where it failed to kill me but there's still hope!), so . . . may as well cut down even further? That sounds weaker than the money theory. If the drinking schedule isn't making me miserable and is manageable, why change it? Or maybe I'm testing mindfulness practice as a tool for tackling alcoholism? Sorry, "alcohol use disorder" I think they're calling it these days, good grief (*insert facepalm emoji*). I've always held the belief that I could stop drinking if I wanted to just through mindfulness practice. But no, if this were the case it wouldn't be a subconscious motivation but a conscious decision. 

Actually that "why change it?" question may be more onto something. And that's the wrong question, rather why not change it? If I'm really facing the end of my life with the end of finances within a few months, everything's changing! My conscious mind wants to maintain normality and keep the day-to-day conveyor belt going, but that's a reality that is untenable. My subconscious mind (i.e., the "universe") may be telling me to shake things up and get rid of ideas of normalcy and stability for my own good. That does make a lot more sense. It's not just alcohol, but other things in my habits and routine and even external life and health have been getting shook lately and it's always off-putting or annoying and requires adjustment. I don't like it, and that's the point. I don't like it when the conveyor belt gets disrupted, but that's where a wrench needs to be thrown.

mizerable daze

The weather oracle has already declared this to be a La Niña winter and the long-range forecast for Taiwan is that it will be mild until the end of the year, and then temperatures would plunge after New Year's followed by a long, cold, bitter winter (of course Taipei is subtropical, but that's how I read it). I remember cold, bitter winters over the past 10 years because I would bring cold weather stuffis back from New Jersey because of them. Below average winters aren't pleasant, but at least I should be sorta prepared for them.

And that "mild until the end of the year" is turning out to be no comfort as Taipei has just had two solid weeks of gloom and drear when it wasn't outright raining, which it has a lot, and at least another week and a half of the same according to the forecast. Weeks and weeks of this kind of weather is also in my experience here, notably my first two winters. It seems every kind of worst winter weather is being dished out all at once this season, perhaps the universe's answer for Taiwan avoiding the worst of the CCP pandemic and making sure 2020 sucked for everyone!

Adding to the personal suckage of 2020, one of the two major hypermarts near my place closed at the beginning of the year/pandemic. It was the closer of the two and was in walking distance for alcohol runs during extended rain periods. The remaining store isn't too much farther away in the opposite direction, but requires going by bike. The result is that whenever there's a lull in the rain, I do an alcohol run and accumulate a stock to last as far into the rainy period as possible in case it turns into constant rain. So far there have been enough lulls to consistently maintain over a week's worth of alcohol. 

Even more suckage is developing sciatica in my right leg. Somehow I immediately knew it was sciatica when the pain started (the word just came to me) and was able to confirm its likelihood with a web search that described it exactly. It was pain that was both dull and sharp and I couldn't pinpoint where on my leg it hurt, it was just the whole turkey leg. The description of a "radiating" pain rang true. And since it's a nerve issue, there's nothing that can be done about it but wait for it to go away (similar to the ridiculous issue I had with my cervix long ago).

I expect the pain to simply go away as that seems to be my karma (pattern/habit) my whole life. Same with the pain on my left knee that has developed in the past two days. That's too soon to worry about and I'll finish off the glucosamine I have left which usually takes care of knee pain. Only a little disturbing is that Advil seems to have no effect and it really fucking hurts (not quite as fast as "sciatica" came to mind, "gout" became a possibility). It's far worse than the usual glucosamine-cured knee aches and hampers mobility. Outwardly, sciatica only slows down my walking to thinly veil a limp. This knee pain has shown effects on walking, stairs and bike riding; makes me look crippled, even on bike. 

And then there are the cold showers as mercury continues to descend. Even no where near the depths of a forecast long, cold, bitter winter, cold showers aren't pleasant. I'm still mindfully gauging my emotions at the lack of hot water while in the shower. I scroll through my range of emotions, wondering what I'm feeling. I know what I'm thinking; I'm thinking at least I'm not in the Siege of St. Petersburg, at least I'm not Jewish in the Holocaust. I'm only at "abandon ye all hope of hot water", but how do I feel about that? OK, cold. I feel cold. That's not what I mean. Frustrated? Wronged? I don't deserve this? Injustice? Violated? Tempting, but no, none of those.  

How am I supposed to feel as I jump under the cold shower? This sucks!, yes but that's not a feeling, it's a fact (or an opinion depending upon who you ask, i.e., someone who isn't directly experiencing it). Holy shit! yes, but that's more an expression of a feeling. What is the emotion behind that expression?

What goes through my mind is "let go of ego, let go of attachment (to comforts), let go of the self (what suffers)". There's something practice-related going on. What comes up in my mind is certainly not the peaceful deities/lights (representing the ground of reality) in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, but rather the wrathful deities that appear after liberation through the peaceful deities is missed. 

Wrathful deities is more like it. Wrath; this is more akin to anger. Not anger at anything or anyone, just a violent and virulent dissonant energy. It helps me get through it. If I wasn't angry, maybe I'd be wimpy and whiny and complain about it in bouts of self-pity, but St. Anger says, "be damned, cold water, it is not you who will defeat me". All the while not knowing it just may (along with sciatica, seasonal affective disorder, gout, isolation and not being known, gastrointestinal issues, alcoholism, etc., etc.). 

Anger has helped me survive a lot along my way. Is that a good thing? It can't be, can it? Anger and negativity feed each other. But I'd posit negativity as a general or background state – that's not good, it just taints and sours everything. Anger, when controlled, can be a sword, a weapon, an adrenalin bomb, something you need when confronted. Actually, no, it's not a good thing. I'm probably just trying to justify the "way I am", but it has likely caused more grief than good for me.

WordsCharactersReading time

All I have to do is not go to the bank. It's that simple. I don't need to do something, I just need to not do something. I'm expert at not doing something. Don't transfer anymore money from the States and face the fact that all I have left is all there is. It's a little bit like John's WTF I've Got Cancer? blog when he decided to stop chemo. He had Stage IV terminal colon cancer so he accepted statistically that he was going to die. Chemo just gave him increments of extra time to live, but he was never willing to sacrifice quality of life (subjective and fluidly assessed) to live longer. And it was when he decided dealing with the U.S. health care-pharmaceutical juggernaut was too complicated, farcical and frustrating, and that the emotional, mental effect on his quality of life was intolerable, he said 'fuck it', no more chemo. Even when the drugs came through, he was resolved to not take them. Fuck it. He was done with all that.

I think I've reached that level of resignation where it is no longer worth it to keep trying to get injections into my bank account that allow me to live a little longer, just to maintain . . . *this* (you have to imagine me spreading my hands in sarcastic presentation of my studio apartment that represents all my shattered hopes and, um, dreams). Going to the bank and dealing with the joyless and permanently cranky workers in the foreign exchange was always unpleasant. I'm sure not a single one of them listens to show tunes. It was also personally humiliating since it's not my money, I'm just mooching, and I'm constantly bitching and moaning about my worthless life when suicide is my affirmative goal. Even I can't sympathize with myself!

I should now consider the current remaining reserve funds definitely finite. We have loomage. Mind you, I haven't crossed the point of know return yet, meaning if I went to the bank today I wouldn't run out of reserves before the expected 2-4 months for funds to go through. So I'm still just spouting theory. But the more I just don't do anything, it will become reality. All I have to do is not do anything. Don't even think, even though thinking about it does remind me of the miserable experience of going to the bank and how I'd rather not. 

And remember (me, myself) I don't even want to be here anymore, I don't like being me, and any moment I focus on during the day just reminds me how worthless and undesirable every bit of this is (in a non-negative, not-depressing paradigm, believe it or not). Really the only thing I'm attached to is the habit. The habit of being me, of existence. The habit of being attached, the habit that resets every day just to go around and do it again; every day's little annoyances of things not going quite how I want, fixing the bits that I can and bits where they turn out fine, then shower, wash the shot glass, brush-a da teeth, lights out and reset. It's great! Just not my aspiration.

Oh yeah, and the alcoholism. Nothing going right there anytime soon. Or ever at all. You know what? I'ma take issue with alcoholism. I look up alcoholism and read up on it and I really don't fall under the definition of alcoholic. I only accede to the label to avoid being accused of being in denial. But no one's accusing me of anything, no one's even here, so I opine for the record that I wasn't really alcoholic.

Heavy drinker? That's harder to dismiss. I ration a third of a bottle of liquor per day, plus limited dipping into reserve bottles which also happens every day after the third runs out, usually the next morning. I look at a third of a bottle and it just doesn't look like much. But then I asked someone if he thought it was a lot, and for him he said that was a LOT. Mind you, I don't know about now but he was a pothead when I knew him, as much as a Ph.D.-former-NASA-employee astrophysicist can be a pothead. He now sells kalimbas for a living and the Grateful Dead is his favorite band of all time as much as Genesis is mine (he only quit NASA because they shut down their Socorro, NM, field station and he didn't want to relocate to D.C. to stay with the agency). I don't think he was a drinker, but he wasn't substance-free.

I'll settle for heavy drinker. I drink to detriment in that I can't deny ill health effects of alcohol consumption. I'm pretty sure my engorged gut is alcohol-related ascites without going to doctor and facing a bevy of tests saying that's probably so. And I'll attribute my gastrointestinal issues to alcohol, too. Alcohol wreaks havoc on the liver and the liver provides bile to the intestines to help with digestion, so if my liver function is presumably being compromised, then it's not a stretch to think that the gastrointestinal issues are alcohol related, even without an examination and a bevy of tests to probably tell me the obvious. 

I was somewhat shocked when I saw the "L"-word in the headline of a local news story, some doctor calling for a total lockdown based on his assessment of how easily Taiwan's medical facilities could be overwhelmed if the CCP virus starts spreading here. My estimate is that's probably 75% irresponsible, alarmist bullshit and 25% legitimate warning for Taiwan to keep an eye on its resources and preparedness and beefing up our weaknesses. Actually, I think we're currently still in a comfortable enough position where I think we would be able to set up a task force just to do that as a smart thing to do (Come on, President Tsai, get with the program*) (edit: The government announced on April 7 that they were doing pretty much exactly this).

Calling for a lockdown is akin to calling for an economic shutdown, and looking at places where lockdowns have been warranted and implemented, their economies are being devastated. True, epidemics spread when people move, but when people stop moving, so does business. I haven't heard of any assessment of Taiwan's economic ability to handle an economic shutdown, but the prospects can't be good. Lockdowns are a last-ditch, desperate measure to fight a manifest threat. They shouldn't be used as a preventative measure when they aren't absolutely necessary. Bills need to be paid, money still needs to be moved, products still need to be consumed.

Currently, business is still going on in Taiwan, albeit not-quite-as-usual. People themselves seem to be refraining from "moving" if they don't need to and I've observed generally less people and traffic about. But people and cars are about and buses still running. Streets, parks and playgrounds aren't deserted. I still think about 60% of people wear masks out in public, and my personal opinion is that fewer actually need to, and "social distancing" isn't a mandate but only practiced when noticed and convenient. Higher mask-wearing percentages are observable on public transportation, work places and service businesses.

The mayors of Taipei and surrounding New Taipei City have both stated that lockdown procedures are coordinated and in place if ordered, although I imagine Taipei's mayor is getting excited in the groinal area at the thought of a lockdown as he's an authoritarian, control-freak moron. It would be the ultimate hard-wank for him to put Taipei on lockdown, but it's good, I suppose, that they have a plan. 

Me? I . . . actually don't know what a lockdown means or how I would be affected. I might be totally screwed. My main concerns are, of course, food and alcohol; being able to get out for food and alcohol and stores being open to get food and alcohol. Hopefully, it would be like the U.S. where essential businesses (including liquor stores!) would be allowed to stay open and I think convenient stores in Taiwan qualify. Hypermarts may qualify, which would be good. OR lockdown can mean more sitting meditation and less of this neurotic scanning the news for updates how things are going. Come to think of it, I should welcome an alcohol supply cutoff. 

* Just a joke. President Tsai's administration has been getting stunningly high approval ratings in regard to handling the CCP virus and mainland China. They didn't always get high ratings as it suffered some hiccups early on, most notably from a progressive, worker-friendly change to labor laws that didn't take into account the far-reaching effects that sent ripples of chaos and uncertainty down the supply chain. Some industries just don't work the way the law demanded, and many of the workers the law was supposed to protect were actually disadvantaged. There was a lot of backtracking (and face-palming) in the wake of that fiasco. 

My water went off yesterday afternoon. Annoying and anxiety-inducing; I don't know when it'll come back on. I don't know if the landlord gave warning and I didn't get it because I don't have a phone. The last time it happened about 5 years ago, he knocked on my door and gave me an estimate for the outage so I was able to fill the bathtub beforehand for my water needs. I don't know if he didn't knock on my door this time because my cousin managed at some point to suggest to him that I "didn't want to be bothered", which is totally untrue and would be rude, and I told her to communicate to him that was not the case, but I don't know if she did that. Lots gets lost in translation in this family – and not just in language. 

And somehow, without going into any TMI detail, my gut knew about it and the accompanying inability to flush the toilet more than once, and the chronic issues with my digestive system over the past few years disappeared for the time being. It's a minor miracle maybe. 

So far, it's fair to consider it a minor disturbance and I tried to maintain my evening routine Saturday, but I did opt to not drink until way late. Maybe I didn't want to be distracted from the distraction of not having running water (and perhaps avoiding the need to pee more often). Not washing hands or brushing teeth are something I just had to endure, but not being able to take a shower triggered the neurotic in me. I won't crawl under the covers to sleep if I haven't showered. It's just not comfortable and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, so I knew I was going to sleep on top of the covers (which is no big deal since that's how I nap) and in that case why bother changing clothes to sleep? No different from crashing at someone's place when I was younger.

I did have trouble sleeping, which I anticipated and didn't set the timer on my CD player, but did slip into sleep at some point and had a pretty disturbing and harrowing dream. I was kidnapped and stabbed twice in the process. This is likely a reflection of my true anxiety about having no water; uncertainty and a hunkering down mentality. The kidnap situation lasted the whole dream through a variety of sundry scenarios including a blood-sport, fight club-ish free-for-all amongst the kidnappees. I mostly laid low and hoped not to be targeted while not expecting to survive. Towards the end of the dream there was rumor that lawyers were being sent for to deal with the situation and I thought, "Lawyers? What good are lawyers? That's even dangerous". At some point I established we were in Thailand as I (irrationally) wondered why kidnappings always happen in Thailand. But the lawyer arrived from England and came up the stairs asking about the "Yank", as in Yankee, as in me, and he took one look at me and continued to ask for the Yank. As he assumed I wasn't the droid American he was looking for, I waited for a few beats to let him hang in ignorance before I voiced up. 

Twenty five years ago that would've been racist. Nowadays it would be called "racist" but would also be stupid to call racist. I'm not gonna get into it, but from what I've witnessed in the progressive political scene from afar, the political left has really dropped the ball and gotten stupid, overreacting to every little thing and just putting people on the defensive instead of trying to educate and promote sensitivity. My dream British lawyer would've been racist before because it was institutionalized with negative assumptions and real effects. Today, the British lawyer should be recognized as having come from a certain background with his own experience that informs his subjective view of the world, and he may make assumptions and even mistakes, such as "American" equals "white" or Asian-looking equals "not American", but that doesn't necessarily make him racist now. Plurality needs to acknowledge that. Constantly putting people on the defensive for infractions they didn't even know of eventually leads to a backlash and them going on the offensive and that's pretty much where we are now; a cycle of brazen stupidity is complete with the true racists coming out the woodwork and proud of it.

And, yes, the lawyer in the dream was white and male. Would anyone imagine otherwise when I said "British lawyer"? Actually my true dream British lawyer would've been South Asian and female, but that's a different kind of dream (mm, that accent). He also had long hair and a ponytail, kinda like that Virgin Branson guy. This is all immaterial, mind you, I didn't need to bring it up but it was in the dream that he assumed I wasn't American and I noticed it. 

What I'm actually seriously curious or concerned about is why mindfulness practice doesn't come up when I'm dreaming? I noticed that afterwards. Is my practice not deep enough to have reached my subconscious? Are my reactions in dreams a more accurate reflection of the success of my practice? I kinda think so, maybe. In a dream, if I'm reacting to the dream situation like it was real, then that may indicate that in physical life I'm reacting to situations too much like they're real. The actual reaction should be appropriate, but in extreme and harrowing situations, I think a conscious acknowledgement of mindfulness practice should be present maybe. 

All in all, my experience going to the doctor and with Taiwan's National Health Insurance was pretty harmless. Helpful even, in meaningful ways that my experience with the health care profession in the U.S., including family, never was. For starters, it was effective for what it did. My hearing's not perfect, but I think that's a matter of course; physicians aren't magicians.

Each of my two visits cost me NT$200 out of pocket. Six bucks U.S., including prescriptions. I don't know how different it is at larger hospitals or for serious conditions, but with neighborhood clinics, I just presented my national health card, they immediately asked for NT$200, they gave me a number, I waited, I saw the doctor, I picked up my prescription with no further cost. Nifty.

My first six dollar visit got me a diagnosis and ear drops for the impacted wax. The second six dollar visit three days later confirmed that my ear was clean, but since my hearing was still wonky I got a 3-day regimen of antibiotics for the infection. After three more days my hearing still wasn't perfect, but had improved enough for me to delay going for a third visit. I had impacted wax and an infection and they gave me treatment for those. They hinted that the next step would be giving me a referral to a hospital for more sophisticated hearing tests. They had done all they could. 

My general belief is that the human body, given time, will for most part heal itself from most non-life threatening maladies. So the doctors having treated my direct and identifiable symptoms to the best of their knowledge and abilities was the limit of what I was willing to pursue medically, and now is the time to give it time; to convalesce.

I figure the residual tinnitus I still have – a bearable, unobtrusive mid-range tone and occasional hearing drop-off – may be the result of deformities in my ear structure caused by swelling from the infection, and that's not anything a doctor can do anything about. I just need whatever ear parts to settle into where they belong to stop the ringing. I can physically manipulate my ear gently and carefully and get clarity in my hearing, and that's evidence that I'm not suffering from any major hearing loss requiring sophisticated hospital equipment to identify.

Not drinking for three days was easy and a bit interesting as I'd have quick pangs that I should be drinking by now, but then remember I'm not supposed to. I also didn't drink for 24 hours after the last course of antibiotics, so yay me. Also interesting was my body wasn't all that happy with the re-start of alcohol intake. But a fine alcoholic I'd be if I didn't drink, so my body just has to deal with not being happy. My brain and body don't have the best means or mode of communication.

I went to the doctor on Sunday and found I have impacted wax and an ear infection. He vacuumed out a big honkin' chunk o' wax the size of a grapefruit (just kidding, more like a desiccated pea) with a tiny bit of fungus growing on it (just a strand) and gave me a course of ear drops to take three times a day and to come back in three days. I went again today and it looks pretty well cleaned out, but since my hearing isn't back to normal he (actually a different doctor, who thought I was Korean so it took a while to break out his English) gave me antibiotics to work on the infection and to come back in three days. Don't drink alcohol or coffee, he says.

Coffee's no problem, I've descended into being satisfied with powdered Maxwell House coffee so that's easy to avoid. It's barely coffee. As for alcohol, I wasn't about to make any promises but then decided a web search was in order. In general, antibiotics and alcohol don't mix but I wanted to know what I was risking. I found a list of antibiotics that are particularly bad with alcohol and then checked if any of mine were on the list. The last tablet I checked includes two on the list and since the side-effects of mixing with alcohol are basically many of the gut problems I've had over the years and went away when I cut back on drinking, I decided to crawl on the wagon for a few days. I don't need to invite those symptoms back.

So now I get to test what I said about mindfulness practice and alcoholism. Great!🥴 Well, it's only three days, how hard can it be? If it's at all hard, I should consider myself full of crap in regard to that aspect of mindfulness practice. *sigh* I'm hungry. Hunger at this time usually goes away when I start drinking. And do I really drink that much? It doesn't feel like I do, but I guess that's what an alcoholic would say. Is a third of a bottle (and a beer appetizer) a lot? A little more than that is what I drink in a 24-hour period. Who am I talking to?

I'm in my third day of a non-digestion/intestinal-related dull ache in my abdomen. It's merely uncomfortable and I wouldn't even mention it if I hadn't recently written about having itchy palms and the surprising discovery that they may be symptomatic of liver problems. Like the itchy palms, I expect this ache to pass in short order, but I feel I should mark these things for posterity. In case anyone's interested in my posterior. 

And again, looking up what the ache might be a symptom of predictably led to liver problem sites, and the liver problem sites were inconclusive with some things that matched and others that didn't. The ache could get intense and occasionally becomes a backache, but that gets intermingled with cycling-related back pain which kept me off-bike for 2-3 days earlier this month. The pain didn't spread to my right shoulder. Other symptoms relate to appetite and inability to eat, but I had those symptoms years ago and nothing ever came out of it. I can now happily eat one meal a day with an optional but usually unnecessary snack from a convenient store. Zero weight loss, I'm sure. My diet and exercise don't explain my protruding stomach, which I described before as a paunch, but per the websites, yes this is more of a protrusion. It doesn't seem natural, like an alien is about to burst out of me. Or like I'm pregnant, which I suppose isn't so far different from an alien bursting out. On the other hand, my father also had a protruding stomach, so it could be genetic. On another hand (look ma, three hands!), he ate three meals a day and lived a sedentary lifestyle with minimal exercise that my mother forced upon him. He didn't drink, either.

Bottom line is that clinically I'd be considered a life-long heavy drinker I shouldn't wonder, if not an alcoholic, so at this point it's not a matter of if, but when. And now might as well be when, but even if now is when, I'm not going to get bent out of shape over it, seeing as I could've seen it coming from years ago, and whenever it does come, it could've come at any time during those however many years ago that I could have seen it coming. And if now isn't when and this ache disappears as I expect it will, well that's just the story of my life. Until it isn't.

I've been looking for that passage from one of my Theravadan Buddhist books I mentioned about alcoholism being about chasing a sensation. I found something close*, but it was about addiction and didn't use the word "chase", which was key to me. I'm starting to wonder if that actually might be the passage, and what I found so inspirational was how I formed it for myself in my mind. I'll keep looking, I don't think it was an inspired idea but a direct read.

That "chase" is important as a mental concept because it emphasizes the willful pursuit aspect of alcoholism. I know alcoholism is now considered an insidious and complex illness that requires treatment, but that's not my field and I don't know anything about it. From a mindfulness practice aspect for my purposes, it's filtering all that out and focusing on the chase, the willful pursuit in the moment.

I've been applying mindfulness practice to drinking to locate that sensation, that breaking point where the lure of another shot and another shot becomes irresistible. It isn't there at the first drink. It takes a few drinks for it to appear, and mind you I sip through shots; about four sips a shot. It's been years since I've shot my liquor, well-named I daresay, brutal and violent. Fuh yuh uh quick. Sipping shots is more demure and dâinty. That's me.🌷

That actually does help with the mindfulness because it spreads out or breaks the effect into increments, and the first indication that the chase sensation is kicking in is when the time interval between sips noticeably shortens. Resistance falters and that's when I mark the sensation and I know if I let go and cross the threshold I'll officially be chasing the sensation, sliding down the slippery slope. It manifests in manifold ways that I won't get into, but needless to say involves more alcohol intake/sensation chasing until I either brush my teeth and go to sleep or get out of my apartment for the day, both of which likely involve final "one for the road" drinks to satisfy the sensation, but is usually never a good thing. OR I mark the sensation and mindfully remind myself that to continue leads to "feeling bad", and if I heed that I can then stop. 

I'm also trying to force myself back onto the buying-a-bottle-every-three-days schedule, instead of every other day. I'm not trying to stop, I don't care about that. If I'm drinking enough to be considered alcoholic, yippy-da-doo-day. I'm just trying to manage a schedule to avoid feeling like crap, whatever that means. I know it when I feel it. So I've saved two empty bottles and when I buy a bottle, I dole the fifth into thirds and those are roughly the three days portions. Imagine my horror when I saw how little that is. I felt I could chug that and still see straight. But it's only a guideline serving restraint, a self-warning. Buying a bottle every three days never meant that's all I drank. That's why I have a tiered system of reserve bottles, because I always finished a bottle by or on the third day and dipped into the reserve bottle. It's anal, neurotic alcoholism.

* An addict takes a drug because he wishes to experience the pleasurable sensation that the drug produces in him, even though he knows that by taking the drug he reinforces his addiction. In the same way we are addicted to the condition of craving. As soon as one desire is satisfied, we generate another. The object is secondary; the fact is that we seek to maintain the state of craving continually, because this very craving produces in us a pleasurable sensation that we wish to prolong. Craving becomes a habit that we cannot break, an addiction. And just as an addict gradually develops tolerance towards his chosen drug and requires ever larger doses in order to achieve intoxication, our cravings steadily become stronger the more we seek to fulfill them. In this way we can never come to the end of craving. And so long as we crave, we can never be happy. - The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, William Hart, p. 46.

This passage is more about the dharma view of craving as an affliction, which applies just as much to shopping, rather than the affliction of sensations we chase, pleasurable or not, such as alcohol.

Mindfully paying attention to my drinking, I confirm it has ticked up. Not sure how I feel about it, I don't want to overreact. On one hand, it's bad. It does feel bad and I'm not sure I can do anything to reduce it; i.e., not sure I have the motivation to reduce it. On the other hand, that's just what my drinking does. It waxes and wanes. Sometimes I drink more, sometimes I drink less. I'm drinking more now, in time I'll drink less, attsamattafayou.

I do feel it. Mind gets taxed, bodily feel bad, wiped out after drying out. Where I'll draw the line is if intestinal problems return. That's weird. So that's where feeling bad bottoms out? I can accept all those "higher levels" of feeling bad? It's still feeling bad, but I can accept it? This conundrum may be an example of what some Buddhist teachers describe as the burning mental fires. The best said example is that when kids accidentally put their hand in a fire, they learn their lesson and never do it again. But as adults, we're constantly burning our minds doing painful and harmful things, but sometimes we never learn our lesson. So this is exactly an issue Buddhism deals with and somewhere I've missed a memo and need to focus on and figure out.

There's a passage in one of my Theravadan Buddhism books that I'm trying to look up about alcoholism being about chasing a sensation. Identifying and viewing the effects of alcohol as a sensation we're chasing resonated as something that could be helpful. It becomes fodder for analysis and mindfulness practice. What is the sensation? Why am I chasing it? Why is it so hard to resist one more drink, and then one more and then one more? I totally get that part about the sensation. There are times when I'm getting ready to go out and I worry that I don't have that sensation, that feeling that . . . it's not that I'm not drunk enough to go out, but I want to have drunk enough to have that sensation before going out.

Maybe I'm just splitting hairs and what I'm describing and analyzing is that I'm just like any other stumbling, slurring alcoholic. I can go on and on about this and in the end, someone will say 'get in line, yer just another drunk'. 

Oh, and I looked up what I mentioned about my skin itching and welting and it is a thing called dermatographia, skin writing. The article describes it exactly  down to not seeking medical attention because it doesn't seem too bad and goes away soon. The only thing it doesn't mention is cortizone cream as a topical treatment. The article mentions that it is triggered in some people by "infections, emotional upset or medications such as penicillin". I don't think I've had an infection in decades, nor medications. Emotional upset it is, lol! Bottom line, doctors don't know what it is. Story of my life.

I felt an itch on my left palm. An odd place for an itch, I thought. When I instinctively scratched it, it wasn't pleasant. It was a little pins-and-needles painful, and I immediately applied mindfulness practice to not scratch it. Scratching an itch is supposed to be pleasant. It's supposed to give relief to an irritation.

For as long as I can remember, I've always had skin particularly sensitive to scratching. Scratching caused my skin to welt, and there wasn't relief, just more itch to scratch. Before mindfulness practice, there were times I would mindlessly scratch until my entire back and arms would be red and welted. Horrific as it looked for anyone who saw it, I never considered it significant and never sought out what was going on medically. Applying mindfulness practice, I would concentrate on the sensation while completely resisting the urge to scratch and just focus on it until it went away. I'd gotten quite good at it. Whenever it reached a point that I knew it wasn't an itch that would get relief from scratching, I stopped and let it go away by itself. In the case I lost patience before it went away, I still have two tubes of Cortizone-10. I can't recall ever having an itch on my palms and can't imagine Cortizone-10 working on it. 

So it was a bit annoying when it started up on my right palm as well. There was redness along my palm lines, but it wasn't so bad that it prevented me from doing anything. I was able to plunk away at a bass for supposed "ear-training" practice just fine. It was enough for me to look it up online afterwards to see if it was a symptom of anything. What jumped out was that a burning sensation on palms was symptomatic of cirrhosis and of course my first thought was, "so this is how it ends". My liver's about to fail. But then I clicked on the link and of all the other symptoms of cirrhosis listed, none really rang a bell. At least none which I consider novel. Insomnia? Pfft, that's so last year. I've already used the joke that I'm of Asian descent, so no one would know if my skin was turning yellow. 

And since, the sensation has also occurred to the soles of my feet, the feet equivalent of the palms! Oooh! It's irritating. It's annoying. It persists. It comes and goes. If I stretch or scrunch my feet or hands, it's exacerbated and I feel it more intensely for a little while. My bathroom slippers are accupressure slippers and that also intensifies the sensation.

I roll my eyes at this. It's my full expectation that this is not a health scare of either cirrhosis or diabetes, another condition where palms may burn, and will disappear in a few days without fanfare. That's the pattern of everything before that seemed like a health scare. I know better now until it turns out to be something different, and I'll deal with that when it becomes something different.

As it is, I've been off bike for a couple weeks because the plum rains have arrived. This coming week appears like there might be ride opportunities with drier weather and only chance showers, so it'll be a day-to-day thing, but I have zero concern the burning on either my palms or soles will prevent. For the record and no one's interest but my own, only one weekday in May so far was dry and even sunny (I don't ride on weekends when there are too many people on the bikeways), but I knew from experience that it was too cool for the bikeways to have dried out, so I didn't ride, and that suited me fine since it was a mad windy day. Windy is unpleasant, but more of just an excuse to not ride. It's alright because it provides resistance training. Wind resistance slowing me down to 11-12 mph is still less than gravity resistance on hills where I go down to 8-10 mph. And going the opposite direction, the wind assist is great. I was once flying at a sustained 27 mph on a flat because of the wind at my back (translation: wheee!).

As for my liver, I feel like I've cut down on drinking, and since August 2017 I have. Back then I think I was buying six bottles a week. Only one day per week that I didn't. But I thought I had cut back to a schedule where I buy a bottle every three days. Maybe I was on that schedule since then, but recently I noticed that I'm back to buying a bottle every other day, with reserve bottles at home for when I run out. I always have two tiers of reserve (three actually, a desperation back line of mini-bottles!) to make sure there's never no alcohol in my apartment. Again, I'm talking liquor, not beer.

I don't feel like I've increased drinking, but that's what the schedule suggests. When I leave my apartment every day, that's a drying out period, as is sleep. But when I wake up or come home, there are hours before I allow myself to start. But somehow in the time that I allow it, it has increased. I don't feel it, but the schedule doesn't lie. But that's alcoholism. Or my brand of it. 

I caught a low grade cold on Saturday. Then it got cold, moist and gloomy outside for a few days and I used all that as an excuse to stay home for most part and feel sorry for myself (not really, I love staying home all day, the only problem is going out is my excuse to not drink through the afternoon and dry out, which I do like). The cold peaked Monday (the low grade one, not the weather) and today was recovery with a lingering cough, the kind that feels juicy and satisfying but is still a cough, and some wheezing and fatigue. Tomorrow and the rest of the week is supposed to be mid-60s and up and no rain. Sun, actually. I'm wondering if it's stupid to be planning on doing 20 miles tomorrow. Obviously I'll keep expectations low, I won't "time trial" it like I usually feel like I'm doing, and I'll abandon and come home the moment I feel I can't finish it. Thursday and Friday are definite ride days.

I wonder about how I caught the cold. Maybe I touched some surface with some germs on it and delivered them to a facial orifice? I went to a tonkatsu restaurant on Saturday with plenty of surface areas shared with other people. Leaving and entering my building I touch doors where germs can have been left by neighbors. Should I consider this to be my first social interaction of the year? 'Tis the season to carry a handkerchief to open doors.

<in the end>:
- Wisdom prevailed Wednesday and no ride. If I were still young and stupid, I may have pushed to go in a fit of braggadocio, as the pros call it, but I gauged my fitness and thought of consequences to my throat, to my lungs, to my metabolism and decided better not.
- I got out on my bike Thursday, but with the help of unprecedented construction completely blocking the bike path, forcing a 180 not even 2 miles out, I took that as a sign and abandoned. It would've been a disaster if I tried to do 20 miles. As soon as I started I was figuring out shorter routes using which bridges, 13 miles, 10 miles, 8 miles, . . . 3 miles! The construction said go home now, thou shall not pass! Seriously, when I first came to Taiwan, random construction was practically expected. In the past however many years, though, Taipei had advanced to the point that if there was construction blocking a bikeway, detours would be created or alternate routes posted.
- Friday I took the Thursday hint and I'm staying off bike until full recovery. See? We can still learn even at our ripe old age.

current status

Alcohol: I haven't quit completely since August last year when I had that great, wonderous, earth-shaking revelation for the umpteenth time that alcohol wasn't going to kill me and it therefore served no purpose. I was drinking almost a bottle of liquor a day with some beer in the mix because beer make happy. I cut down to a bottle every three days or less plus beer still in the mix because beer. The plan was to eventually totally get off the sauce, but that didn't happen because alcoholism.

That makes me question my mindfulness practice which believes quitting completely is not only possible, but even easy when mindfully applied. On the other hand, the reduced consumption (a schedule I've been on many times before in the name of cutting back) hasn't been making me feel like crap like the bottle a day did. There just hasn't been anything compelling to make me quit completely, but like my months at a monastery, now well over a decade ago, I theoretically could stop completely if I had to and not even think about it. Same as it ever was.

Sleep: Insomnia really went away with the reduced consumption of alcohol. Coincidence? The thing is that I've been on this reduced schedule of consumption before during years I've had insomnia, so they shouldn't be related. Psychological? I still always need music on to fall asleep with a timer set to shut off. Sleep is unsettled towards the end with multiple waking in the morning, but I turn on the music and reset the timer and that gets me back to sleep. If I don't turn on music, I don't fall asleep. Average 6 hours sleep with lights out between 1:30 and 2 a.m. and getting up in the 8 o'clock hour for morning sitting.

Exercise: It was full stop on even any thought of running and cycling since August last in the same realization as stopping drinking. Why am I doing this? So much effort and maintenance required, so much pain and risk of injury, so little satisfaction as performance declines. My bike is covered with dust and cobwebs, tyres flat. I don't even want to check how the last pair of running shoes I bought are doing.

Interesting how stopping exercise and stopping drinking are totally different things. Entropy working differently in either case. Or not. I'm kidding, entropy isn't at play at all (or is it?), but I'm realizing my jokes are too abstract, obtuse or just not funny. I realize now I should've been pointing out all along when I'm joking, which is even less funnier. Yes, that was a grammar joke. Yes, that was me pointing out that it was a grammar joke. Yes, it wasn't funny initially and even less funnier pointing it out. Oy vey.

Eating: Appetite has remained completely stable since August last. Faboo. Also alcohol related? Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe it was alcohol related at that time. Which still means it was. The Korean food obsession that started last November lasted until May or June when it relented. Literally Korean food almost every day. I still go for Korean when I think about it, but I no more have to think about where was the place I went least recently to decide where to go. Aigoo.

So what have I been doing? Reading and mindfulness practice has been the all-permeating focus. But mindfulness is more of a Zen thing and I've been playing and fiddling more with Vajrayana, so I should just say practice, mindfulness being a part of it. Pushing the teachings and my understanding the best I can without a guru. No great, mind-opening, satori-like breakthrough, but that's not a focus; not something I'm striving for. More slow immersion into my understanding with tangible, experiential moments of getting things. Applying whatever whenever, focusing on energies. Everything is energy. Energy equals emcee squared (on a total aside, to date there surprisingly has been no notable rock band that has named itself E=mc², but there was a white rapper who went under the name MC Squared).

K-pop girl group obsession and immersion has remained unabated. A lot of time spent watching YouTube videos. But with YouTube videos it's not just K-pop. I watch science lectures and documentaries. There's a "World Science Festival" channel where I watch videos on cosmology and astrophysics.

I watch a channel called "Asian Boss" which features vox pop videos in various Asian countries (at least once in the U.S.) asking people on the street about various topical topics. I think they edit videos for the most intelligent responses, which is refreshing and totally opposite of U.S. talk shows where they do the vox pop thing asking simple questions, but then air the most ridiculous, stupid-sounding people.

I also pay attention to a channel called "China Uncensored", which has sarcastic "news" videos about China-related topics, mostly pointing out China's hypocrisy and unfriendly or hostile relations with other countries. The sarcasm makes the outrage palatable. I like sarcasm, in case you haven't noticed. Wait! Was that sarcasm?! Was I being sarcastic talking about sarcasm?! Good grief. I'm having a crisis of (being) meta.

Back to the South Korea fetish, I follow a few South Korean YouTube vlogs. Apparently professional vloggers. They make money off of it. It's totally voyeuristic watching these people going through certain days they decide to video and narrate. I don't know how I feel about it. It's fascinating watching slices of these people's young women's lives, but it's not prurience. True, they are attractive but that's just the dressing, the bait, the aesthetic. It's the same with K-pop. I'm sure the boy groups are putting out just as good music as girl groups if it were just about the music, but for the pop genre, my aesthetic leans towards the girls. Same with golf, mind you. You couldn't pay me to watch men's golf, but I'll watch LPGA tournaments when sports channels choose to air them (NB: they won't if there's men's or motor sports or such boring bullshit to air).

It's the lives that interest me, the living life that they are doing which I'm not. The relating with other people, the moving through their cities/lives/world, neither of which I'm doing. They are reminders of what I'm not doing, what I may have used to have done when I was younger but don't even want anymore. And there is that tension between feeling I want to be a part of something and the reality that I totally don't.

Branching out of those videos, just recently I did a brief spate of watching videos of people showing their apartments in Seoul (still the Korean fetish). Again, it's just the look at and fascination of the lives going on. All those people doing something. Is there anyone doing the worthless nothingness I'm doing?

There's a class of apartments in Seoul that I don't think we have in Taiwan called goshiwon, which are tiny, basic apartments originally meant for students cramming for national exams. Mostly foreigners and students on a budget use them now, but they remind me of my ideal when I first moved to Taiwan. I wanted to live a simple hermit-like existence, and a goshiwon would've fit the ideal perfectly.

Now I look at my apartment and all the stuff I've accumulated and this is luxury compared to tiny goshiwons. This is my karma. I haven't torn myself and my ego down enough to deserve living in a goshiwon. I probably couldn't survive a goshiwon. I'd be like, "I gotta get out of this situation", and I could because I could afford it. I live in an apartment where I had the luxury of being an insomniac and baby it. Luxury of all my perceived problems without the added stresses of the perceived inconveniences of a goshiwon.

What made me think I could be a monk? I didn't deserve it. I haven't karmically earned it. My karma is still such "bad" enough that I tend towards comfort and luxury. In another life, I could easily become the hungry ghost my mother is in this life. That's the harsh possibility. Wow, that escalated quickly.

Last and least, since last December when cable TV went down for two months (I don't know if it's related; could be), I've been spending at least two hours a day with a bass in hand, plugged into my Korg PX5D and connected to iTunes and working on ear training along with K-pop songs. Why? I don't know. I'm not trying to do anything, it's not about making music or practicing bass or being a musician or anything. It may be closure to my discarded "musician" identity. I recognize now that I was never good enough to be a musician. I'm not talented, I never learned music nor got to know it, and I certainly never practiced near enough to be a musician. And if not any sort of "formal" musician, it behooves me to admit that despite my love of music and trying to make it, I was also not passionate enough to be any sort of musician.

Maybe it's an afterglow goodbye gesture towards musicianship. Ear training is one of those things I never got and never practiced as a skill. I'm just trying to see if I can improve my ear training, and that's it. It's not going to make me a musician, it's not going to make me know music. It's just training to listen to notes and develop a sense of what intervals sound like, where to go for the next note. I daresay it hasn't been a totally hopeless endeavor. It has been evidence that if I had started ear training early enough, in my teens, I could've been OK at it. I have good sessions where my fingers find the right notes without even thinking, and bad days where I feel hopelessly tone deaf and flounder about the fretboard hitting notes only after the second or third guess.

K-pop is particularly good for this because the songs are written by professional musicians applying theory, meaning there is a structure to the progressions, unlike rock which a lot is by feel and if theory is followed it's just happenstance. The theory-following structure makes a lot of K-pop predictable (they love their circle of fifths), which is good for ear training, but the writers are interesting enough to put in lots of twists and surprises to challenge ear training.

Ah, it all comes back to me. Another YouTube channel I pay attention to is ReacttotheK, a group of classical music students who react to K-pop. I generally avoid reaction videos as pointless and varying degrees of stupid, but it was interesting listening to people who know music, who pronounce "timbre" correctly, who know the difference between a piano, horns and an elbow, and had something intelligent to say about the songs.

Hearing them use music terms I recognize but have forgotten reminded me how lacking my music education has been, including ear training. That's what inspired me when cable TV went dark to at least try to do some ear training as a last gasp of musicianhood. I can grasp ear training, whereas I couldn't get music theory even if Kim Jong Un threatened to nuke Seoul unless I mastered music theory. I would pretend to try to do it and stall as long as I could to buy time for Seoul to be evacuated.

And bam, I found the gateway video that hooked me:

to be determined III

Just my imagination, running away with me.

I would have left music at home. For the past however many many years I rarely, if ever, wasn't listening to music when I went out. I only turned it off when people were taking my money (but giving me something I wanted in return). It was such that there were times I would turn off the music and be fascinated by what the ambient world sounded like. It became such that I designated certain conditions whereby I would turn off the music and experience the world as it sounded (sometimes becoming bored with it and turning the music back on). But no music this time; leaving behind the habit, not taking the emotions and attachment that music embodies.

I wouldn't have left alcohol at home, but I wouldn't have been drinking, either. I'd have a cute half bottle of Jack Daniels along with other things, but I'd be keeping clear to keep calm, peaceful, positive, tapping into happiness. The ha'fifth because it, or something like it, has always been there. Not even just in case, it's just always been there. I've read it isn't ideal to be disoriented by substances like painkillers or things that dull the senses, but I'm going to create a loophole for that. I will disable, hamper, stymie my consciousness, but realize only my physiology is affected. The substances will be more of a facilitating device.

In this regard, years of mindful alcoholism(!) may prove to have been helpful. Mindful alcoholism, wtf? I don't think I've ever used the term "mindful alcoholism" before; I don't think I've ever even thought of it. Using it now surprises me because it suggests how dangerous the practice I've developed is. Alcoholism is not a legitimate mindfulness practice. There are aspects of my practice that are even more risky, I shouldn't wonder, in possibly deluding myself thinking I'm doing a practice with one targeted aim, when I may be doing something entirely different and destructive in my mindstream and karma. I would never suggest to anyone to practice "mindful alcoholism". At least not as a starting point. If yer a drunk already, might as well give it a shot, so to speak.

But my loophole is being aware that whatever happens that doesn't rely on bodily structures will not be substantially affected by the effects of the substances. It may be detrimental to be pumped full of morphine or other drugs by some clinician who's just doing a job based on their own assessment of what's preferred treatment. Consciously using substances oneself for the purposes of dying and being aware of the need to keep mind and body separate, especially when mind and body separate, may prevent detriment caused by disorientation.

Despite near-death accounts suggesting it's not necessarily painful, I expect pain, at least discomfort and unpleasantness. Like a prostate exam. I don't know why, just to be on the safe side maybe. It seems logical, might as well expect and brace for it. It won't be for long, but it will be pretty intense. I won't like it, but I'm hoping mindfulness practice will keep me from panicking and help me keep calm in an experience that I visualize as difficult and intense as being exposed in the midst of a violent hurricane in the middle of the night.

And I do practice it as much as I can. Whenever I find myself challenged in uncomfortable situations, I imagine it as a bardo experience and react accordingly with equanimity and calm. Not that in my daily life do I find myself in terribly challenging, uncomfortable situations. Crowded rush hour MRT, sweaty and sticky in torrential rain, noisy children in the library. Maybe I should schedule a prostate exam. Even amusement park rides and extremes of physical challenges I would practice as bardo preparation. Not that I can even remember the last time I've been to an amusement park, but I see it on Korean TV. I imagine I wouldn't be much fun to be with at an amusement park. I'd be on rides calmly contemplating how interesting the experience is.

There will be a loss of consciousness. That's obvious. It's hard to die if you don't lose consciousness at some point. It's even described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead that after death there is no continuum of consciousness and whatever continues on is subject to "losing consciousness"; and logically the residual habit of past existence would include the experience of losing consciousness. Losing consciousness is no big deal, we do it at least once a day when we fall asleep. That may be to say that one of the most profound and frightening aspects of dying, going from awareness of being here to not being here, is something we regularly experience. The difference being the assumption of waking again when we sleep and the lack of said assumption when we die.

From asphyxiation to brief but intense pain to loss of consciousness, I expect death to occur fairly quickly. How quickly death occurs after loss of consciousness, I gather, depends on circumstances. Death can be immediate in cases of sudden or violent deaths, or it can be prolonged like my father who was kept alive by a machine, with zero prognosis of regaining consciousness, for a week. When the dissolutions occur, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is probably variable and individual. A straight-forward, starting point visualization of the dissolutions might have them occur sequentially after the loss of consciousness, but I have read other descriptions that describe the outer dissolutions as the dying process leading to the loss of consciousness, so occurring before death, rather than after. There's almost certainly not a uniform model of how or when they occur.

I take the descriptions of the dissolutions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's book as starting point templates, maybe ideal dying-at-home-surrounded-by-loved-ones-along-with-a-chanting-monk situation, and not literal nor universal. My impression of the descriptions of the dissolutions is that they are universally experienced in varying forms according to the individual and the circumstances, but that awareness of them differs between practitioners and non-practitioners, as well as degree or level of practice. Non-practitioners who haven't prepared experience them but in a more or less non-active manner, almost analogous to animal instinct, like a fish trapped in a net, with little to no understanding what's going on. If they were visible, they might look like me on an amusement park ride; something's happening, but no reaction.

If my mindfulness practice can kick in and weather the experience with some degree of awareness, I imagine the four outer dissolutions being very intense, almost as if they were happening all at once. Earth or ground (sensation of solidity) dissolution feeling like great crushing pressure all around, acutely felt at every point on the body where there is physical sense. Water (sensation of fluid elements) dissolution as feeling like being tossed uncontrollably around in a great torrent of my own bodily fluids, but not reacting in fear. The heat dissolution (remnant sensation of metabolism from being a living being) arising as a heat sensation while being tossed around by water, but then also dissipating. The wind/air dissolution is the end of breath and the movement of gas elements. The outer dissolutions signal the end of our subjective awareness of our physical existence of this life, separate from the continuation of the physical corpse left behind which will begin to decompose on a cellular level immediately.

Also the end of this exercise. The description of the dissolutions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead are found on pages 174-176 (chapter 8, sub-heading "Signs of Extremely Near Death") of the 2005 full translation (paperback), and pages 255-258 (chapter 15, sub-heading "The Outer Dissolution: The Senses and the Elements") in Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. They go into greater detail than I can imagine or understand, which is part of the purpose of this exercise. What am I getting out of their descriptions? If it's a personal experience, how do I personally envision it? It's no doubt inferior to the profundity of the actual experience, the nuances of which are suggested in the books, but it's worth it to try to be prepared. In any case, it's my death, not the bookses'.

"Yea, I'm alcoholic"
"Why do you drink so much?"
"Because . . . if I didn't, I wouldn't be alcoholic". Duh.

August-September-October-November, it's been three months since I cut back on drinking. It's no accomplishment. It doesn't feel like anything. And with the great revelation that a lot of the physical gripes I'd been griping about went away, there's a huge incentive to not go back to constant drinking.

It hasn't been hard. There have been the expected markers of alcoholism – pangs and temptation – but minimal restraint was necessary to get past those (restraint was necessary nonetheless). Also I haven't totally quit and I still probably drink enough to be considered alcoholic. Alcoholism, I shouldn't wonder, is not just the amount but the habit and regularity.

Ooh! That was quotable! Quote me, baby. Booyah.

Same as I mentioned before, I allow drinking before periods when I'm naturally not going to drink, i.e. before going to sleep and going out. But I also ration one beer outside of those times, meaning one in the morning and one in the evening is OK. I don't consider one beer a drink. It's a refreshing enjoyment, a quick buzz. More than one beer becomes drinking and I haven't done that at all.

To quantify, before I was drinking on average more than six bottles a week, but not quite a bottle a day. Now I go through a bottle about every three days; a schedule I've been on before.

Cutting back on drinking has also contributed to the cognitive dissonance since I'm clear and sober to contemplate the contradiction and futility of my continued existence. There are more spans going from moment to moment where I'm clear to question why I'm still here.

Cutting back on drinking has also put a full stop on insomnia, more or less. Same as I mentioned before, sleep isn't always perfect, but is OK and adequate. If I've been able to identify a bad night as insomnia these past three months, it's been a one-off.

Sleep, who can deny?, is a comfort. Waking rested after a good slumber is a feeling of all that's good about living and existing. For me it's cognitive dissonance. The feeling is quickly ambushed that it is temporary and I can't keep going on like this. The theoretical suicide is there first thing to contemplate during morning sitting.

There isn't anyone in my life, but if there were, this is where they start suggesting I go back to drinking constantly. Sorry, I'm done with feeling like shit all the time.

The most sobering part of sobriety may be the clarity. Well, after the not drinking all the time thing.

It's not that I wasn't clear-thinking-ish when constantly drinking. I felt I was thinking clearly, and if I wasn't I was at least subjectively thinking clearly enough. But certainly sense reality as a whole took on a muddled or muted feel, amenable to distraction.

Since cutting back on drinking, I've been trying to alter my daily existence to stop being a distraction-to-distraction conveyor belt from day to day. It's still a work in progress. Can't say a particularly successful one, though.

As a grandmaster of distraction, all I've done so far is switch out my old daily distractions with new ones. That's not a total fail, as I tell myself that at least I wasn't attached to those distractions as a way of being. Also, the changes may be seen as first steps to further changes. Like pulling myself out of quicksand.

Ultimately, I'm trying to get focused on the task at hand; what I want to do, what I keep saying is the purpose of my life and where I've led it. Cutting back on drinking, increased sobriety lead to focus on ending this life, this manifestation. Move on already.

There's a frustration that alcohol has been muting all these years. Drinking less allows me to be more acutely aware of it. So I decide to soberize because I realized drinking isn't going to kill me, and that leads to clarity about the frustration that I'm still alive and the need to focus on suicide as the goal. I can't figure out if that's ironic or logical.

The worst thing the distractions do is fool me into feeling like I'm doing something worthwhile or personally productive. That feeling, for most part, shuttles me from day to day. Laziness contributes, too. Too lazy to commit suicide. Never having encountered the external "unbearable" is also part of it. Nothing particularly or immediately compelling to commit suicide has led to complacency. Never been tested.

So why is it now, this time's newfound clarity that is suddenly compelling? I could rattle off a whole bunch of reasons, but they're the same reasons, I'm sure, that I've been citing for years, if not decades. Actually yes, decades.

I have no reason to believe that I won't be alive in six months' time back to drinking a bottle a day.

And that's the point where I shut up because it becomes a theoretical, abstract stream of thought. I really want to focus this time, I really want to do it, but I've said and done this over and over before. It's an incredibly consistent internal dialogue that has become like a recurring nightmare.

And I want to say something is different this time, but I've said that over and over, too. Something's gotta be different this time. I've probably said that before, too.

I decided to cut back drinking in dramatic fashion because of the realization that it's not going to kill me and therefore serves no purpose. So not constantly drinking, it's . . . sobering. Sobriety; interesting and strange with all its side-effects.

The constant drinking was making me feel like shit, and I think I can confirm that all, if not most, of my gripes and grievances regarding my gut and physical ailments were alcohol-related. Appetite is back and that's great. I don't struggle to eat and that's great. Eating more than once a day is, um, OK.

A bummer is that I get hungry now. Sometimes I find myself looking around my apartment at untimely moments to see if there are any morsels to munch on and glad for a pack of crackers.

A minor inconvenience is having to think of eating twice a day. I know, poor baby. But for years I've only had to think of it once and get it out of the way. Saved time and money, too. Well, time at least. I'm not doing the math, but I'm getting the sense that the amount I'm spending on more food is still offset by what I'm not spending on alcohol.

I've taken to looking for places to eat on Google maps. I wonder if anyone else does this. You can check out photos of eateries that are mapped out on Google maps and see what the place and the food look like and if it's appealing. Key for me is whether there is a readable photo of the menu if deciphering from Chinese is needed.

Sleep I mentioned has been "alright". It has continued to be alright, meaning no nights that I would call insomnia. The hours I've been sleeping aren't a lot, but it's never felt like insomnia, I haven't been struggling with it.

It's not insomnia where I can't sleep. It's just that I'm not sleeping a lot, but when I get up I'm satisfied with how much I slept. I may crash during the day or need a power nap, but it doesn't feel like I'm dealing with a problem.

Actually insomnia rarely led to crashes or power naps. Not getting enough sleep leads to a fatigue switch flipping and crashing, nodding off or power napping. With insomnia, there is no switch or it's a dead switch and nothing happens.

And this change occurs right after I cut back on drinking. The relationship between alcohol and sleep wouldn't surprise anyone, but with my type of insomnia, I would be surprised if it all hinged on alcohol.

I thought my insomnia was of a particular type that I was able to brush off cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most common treatment for insomnia. I thought there were deeper psychological issues involved or even a physiological basis that psychiatry isn't even looking for.

If it turns out it was all just because of alcohol, I'd be a little disappointed. Although I wonder how drinking less affects my other sleep-related quirks. For instance, I can't fall asleep unless there's music in the background. Every night, the last thing I do before turning off the light is play a CD with a 30 minute timer set. Eventually, I guess, I'll get around to test if this is still so.

Another one that is unlikely to be tested is that I can't fall asleep if there's someone else in the room. I have to be alone. That probably fits well if the other person isn't happy about music playing in the background.

You know, I keep starting these posts with something I want to say, but end up writing about all these other things. Distractions. That's what I continue to do, constantly distracting myself.

Things are going well after over a week of severely cutting back on drinking. It still stands, though, that anything I say about drinking should be taken with a grain of salt. I don't know how things will be a week from now or a month or six from now.

That's the insidious part of alcoholism, I suppose. I can't discount the possibility, I can't even eliminate from imagination that at some point I'll be back to drinking near a bottle a day.

So instead of drinking shot by shot through a bottle over the course of a day, now I sip through a single shot (4 sips per shot) right before doing something that forces me to stop, either going to sleep or going out. I drink the single shots telling myself I'm gradually decreasing intake, rather than going cold turkey which might create more tension over time.

I find that upon committing to cutting back, I mostly don't even want to drink. Without that commitment, it's the opposite; the simplest suggestion or thought has me reaching for a drink. Someone drinking on TV is an invitation to join in.

Really I don't like the way it makes me feel. That first sip, even a tiny one, is harsh to the system and raises my body temperature uncomfortably. It makes me wonder why I'm doing this. I liked the way I felt before I took the sip better.

However, one alcoholic trait that remains strong is that once I start, it's a slippery slope. That's why I try to only pour a shot right before I plan to do something that precludes further drinking.

If I start and stay home, I will have sipped through 3 or 4 shots without much thought. That's still less than I was drinking before, but by that time the amount is immaterial. I'm in the grip of habit.

Physically I started feeling better almost immediately. The stomach and intestinal issues disappeared within days and appetite has more or less returned. Is such a quick recovery suspicious? Maybe. Also maybe alcohol creates such stress on the gut that when it stops, the end of the distress comes quickly. How would I know? I ain't no doc.

Sleep has been alright, but not perfect. Perfect sleep? What the hell is that anyway? Certainly the decrease in alcohol must have some immediate effect on my sleeping patterns. Maybe 'alright' sleep is it.