True: True Stories From a Small Town #3: Life in A Minor

In AA they say that addictions will take you to hospitals, Mental Institutions and Prisons. It's true. They will. I have been in all of those places because of my addictions. But addictions are not responsible for the life I lead entirely, and certainly not responsible for the things I did. I may have used because I believe it solved problems, or to cover pain, but the decisions I made, I made because I wanted to make them. Because I chose to make them.

This is about the life that I lead that took me down the path of addiction that ruled almost all of my life. Although my addictions were not responsible for my actions, lifestyles and decisions, when I was still in those addictions I believed they did. I believed that addiction took me where it wanted to take me, instead of me using addiction to cover the pain and anger that made up the greater part of me.

There are depictions, explicit depictions, of drug use, street life, sexual situations, alcoholism, prison life and more. I want you to understand that I wrote these situations as they were then. I do not believe now that drugs, prostitution, alcohol, promiscuity or anything else actually does anything for the pain that is buried inside many of us. It certainly doesn't solve it. This was a different time too. This was a time, some of it early on, when a man could beat his wife and children and it was considered his business. If the cops were called in situations like that is was because of too much noise, not because they intended to do anything to the man. So when I write it, I am writing it from that perspective alone. I am not in any way endorsing or romanticizing it.