(part 168) THE DAY AFTER.. THE NIGHT BEFORE...

When I came to, after passing out from exhaustion and drunkenness, the thoughts about what had happened, and the feelings of remorse slammed into me like a train wreck of regret.

I could not believe that what I'd done the night before was real, but it was. It was absolutely real, and sent cold chills through my body, as I looked down at the deep cut in my wrist, put there by the jagged glass from the jewelry store window.

I had a hangover that enveloped my entire being with a sense of fear and foreboding. I rushed frantically around the living room of Carol's house, desperately searching for a bottle to quell the screaming demons in my head.

Finding it, I began chugalugging straight scotch to ward off my growing sense of remorse. I gagged repeatedly, as the warm alcohol burned it's way into my empty stomach. I went back for more and more, until I felt the first wave of booze hitting my battered brain.

I fell back into the deep sofa where I had slept, and sat there like a zombie staring at the bottle in my hand. With each passing moment the alcohol did it's job of freeing me from the dark reality of my own actions from the night before.

I began reclaiming the lie that had caused me to violate my own moral code, and to reinforce my dread with false courage from the bottle. I looked around the living room, and watched the afternoon sunlight stream through the windows from the west.

The day was coming to an end as I was coming to. I had crossed a line by stealing the jewelry and knew it. I'd gone directly and irreversibly against myself the night before, and had forever lost something of real personal value in doing so.

Never again would I be the same. I would now know that I was one of those who had given away integrity, trading it for a few pieces of silver.

I took another drink from the bottle, and stared off into space, while filling my head with one lie after another in an attempt to exorcize my sense of guilt and disappointment. With each passing moment I rejected reason for another self-serving justification for what I'd done.

Over the next couple of hours I reconstructed a world of lies into a framework of self deceit, where I could be king of nothing and call it something. Somewhere deep inside me the light of who I was had been all but extinguished.

This may have been a first for me, but in no way would it be the last, in a succession of bewildering and criminal acts carried out by me in 1975. I unfortunately maintained this hard edged form of perversity all the way through that year and beyond.

It was as if I'd ceased being me altogether, and had taken on another person and inserted him into my body. I immersed myself into a world of criminal consciousness, and spent as much time as I could with those I'd met through DP.

What separated me from this particular group, and literally caused them to tolerate me and my insanity, was the simple fact that I could play music and write songs.

At times I'd sit in their homes and make up songs about them, some of whom were total strangers. I would sing the songs, and they would wonder and ask, how someone like me could come up with such personal things about people I just met, and have the songs be not only accurate, but something they liked hearing.

Because of this, and this alone, I was accepted into their midst as if I possessed some sort of magic, that in their opinion, validated me in a special way.

That faint, but ever present spark of who I was, never left, it had just faded from prominence and become more of a clever sideshow I used to ingratiate myself into this basically closed society of people.

Every one of them thought I was one of the craziest persons they'd ever met, but overlooked it because of their fascination with my ability to simply switch to this other personality and perform for them. They'd give me drugs and fix me a drink and say, "Go ahead and play Bobby, play for us."

* * *

Back in the 50's and the early 60's it had always been the music that allowed me to dream my way out of any circumstance I was faced with. It was the magical ability to see past where I was to where I wanted to go.

With a guitar, a pen, and a sheet of paper, I could literally lift myself out of one world and into another. This was the trick, one that I found that I could perform over and over.

My desire and need to write songs, play, and then record them, had given me a concrete path to walk, on my way to a new and different world than that of Tucson and Mesa, Arizona, and later from Glendale to Hollywood, California.

I would simply dream my dream into being, and place myself in exactly the world I had decided on.

* * *

But somewhere along the line something had changed. Now my ability with music had made me into a performing monkey in search for nothing more meaningful than a handful of peanuts from the occasional crowd who gathered on a street to nowhere.

(part 167) I NEEDED THE MONEY

I suppose that as I write this story, some may think I'm "stuck" in an ever repeating rewrite of that which has already been stated and reiterated to death.

This, in some sense is true, but necessary, in that the story itself cannot go where one wishes, but where the story actually goes. The tedious nature of alcoholism and drug addiction is that they are centered in repetition and habitual tendency.

The tragedy is, that alcoholics and addicts are alcoholics and/or addicts because they are caught in the cycle of repeating a failure, which at one point worked for them, but now does not.

It was 1975, and I stood on the sidewalk in front of a very expensive jewelry store on Rodeo Dr. in Beverly Hills. It was 2:00 in the morning, and I figured that the cops would be out looking for drunk drivers who were leaving the bars for the night.

As usual, I was broke, and was determined to do something about it. I stared at the jewelry still sitting in the sidewalk showcase windows.

I carefully read the little signs at the bottom of those windows, which said that the glass was shatterproof and/or unbreakable. "Yeah" I muttered, "I bet I can break it." I went to the car and retrieved a large golf club from the trunk, it was Carol's car.

I don't know why I picked the golf club over the tire jack, but that's what I grabbed. I stood in front of the window and took one last look around. Nothing! There was no one on the street and no traffic.

I lifted the golf club above my shoulder, and swung it like a baseball bat at the first small window. It hit with a thud and barely left a mark.

This incensed me, when I saw that it had done little or no damage to the window. I stood back and took another swing, repeating the action several times.

Over and over I wildly swung at the window like a man possessed. The repeated blows slowly began to break apart the glass, and finally I managed to beat a hole in it about the size of my fist.

I shoved my hand through the opening, and began pulling out the contents, mostly watches. During this process I caught my wrist on a jagged shard of glass, ripping it open covering the area in blood.

I yanked out my hand and looked around again. It was then that I caught sight of a video camera above the entrance to the store, and noticed it was pointed directly at me, and had a tiny red light that was illuminated.

"Shit!" I said, as I turned back toward the car. With the bloody jewelry in one hand, and the now completely bent golf club in the other, I threw everything on the front seat and slid in behind the steering wheel.

My heart was pounding in my chest, as I kept saying, "OK, Bobby, be cool, and don't freak out. Just drive away calmly as if nothing is wrong." I knew I'd set off a silent alarm when I'd hit the window, so I expected the police at any moment.

I could now hear the sound of sirens filling the air from Wilshire Blvd. to Sunset, as they raced toward where I'd just been. I drove off slowly and deliberately on a side street, as if I had all the right in the world to be there.

It was difficult not to over react and drive faster, but I managed to keep my wits and stay focused, at least on the outside. Inside I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.

I headed east towards Hollywood, and managed to miss the police by about twenty or thirty seconds, as I vanished into the darker side streets of a residential part of Beverly Hills.

I knew people who bought stolen jewelry, because of DP. He'd introduced me to them in the past, so I figured I had a way to get some money quick.

Early that morning, I went to one of their houses in the hills and rang the doorbell. When the women I was looking for finally opened the door she said, "What the hell are you doing here so early in the morning, Bobby?"

"I got some stuff to sell," I said. "What kind of stuff?" she asked, half asleep and bleary eyed. "Jewelry," I said, "stolen jewelry." "Oh shit," came the reply, "get in here before somebody hears you."

I went inside and the door closed behind me. "You're nuts, Jameson. You know that?" "Yeah, yeah I'm crazy," I said, "so what! How much can I get for this shit?"

I dropped the jewelry on a coffee table in front of her. "Where'd you get this from anyway?" she asked. I told her where it came from and how I got it. She stared at me like I was from another planet, and shook her head.

"God, Bobby, you really are crazy," she groaned. "How much can I get for it?" I asked. "I don't even want this crap, it's hot as hell," she said.

"Come on," I said, "give me something. I need the fucking money." She stared at me sensing I was not gonna leave without something.

"OK," she said, "I'll give you $250 for it but that's it." "OK," I said disappointed, "give me the Goddamn money, and then I'll leave."

(part 166) CHURCH OF SADNESS

click

In a 12 step program, the first 3 steps set up the basis for the next 9.

Step 1, Admit defeat, and to being powerless over the thing which is causing you trouble, such as alcohol and/or drugs. Further admit that the management of your life, while engaged in this troublesome behavior, is failing.

Step 2, Come to an understanding and belief that some power, spiritual in nature or not, can and will restore you to sanity regarding this behavior admitted to in the first step.

Step 3, Make a concrete and real life decision that you will relinquish yourself, both your will and your life, to this power described in step 2.

These three things were attempted by me initially, but became bastardized eventually by my unwillingness to accept defeat, believe in a power greater than my old self, and turn my will and my life over to the care of anything other than me, alcohol, and drugs.

My higher power was in fact drugs and booze. That was my main focus in life. I'd made getting loaded into my God, and was determined to maintain my right to glorify my chosen religion through the intake of substances.

I had always believed in God, and had always thought he cared about me, but some time during my previous eleven to twelve years, I'd come to believe that God had abandoned me, or possibly more precisely, I had abandoned God.

Prior to going to England in 1964 in an attempt to get away from Tony Alamo, I'd had a sense of deep spiritual connection to the Universe, but I altered my destiny by suddenly leaving America to engage with Andrew Oldham and Mick Jagger, and that sense of deep connection was changed.

The connection didn't vanish, it was just different. When I came back to America in 1965, I was not the same. I'd lost something I'd once possessed, and I tried desperately for the next ten years to reclaim it.

The use of LSD, and other substances, were no equal for what I'd felt naturally at 19 years old. But drugs and alcohol became for me, the new doorway to the unknown secrets I'd heard about and read about.

The simple and straight forward belief I'd had, was never recaptured or crystalized through the use of drugs, any drug.

Somewhere along the line, the use of those drugs had caused me to sink into darkness rather than rise into the light of clear thinking. Somehow, I had lost my way rather than found it.

So now here I was, lost and angry, and completely unwilling to embark wholeheartedly on a new way of life. Rather, I held to the past, and all that had failed me, in a stubborn fit of destructive and shortsighted behavior.

Gone was any sense of real purpose, other than to prove to the world that I could endure the endless pain and misery I seemed to create for myself through using.

Now I was more like a machine than a person, fueled by alcohol and drugs, and ever more determined to clash with everything and everyone I encountered.

Buried in the deep recesses of my memory was the big eyed boy who wanted only to sing songs and taste life to it's fullest. Buried too, was the true creative force I'd always relied on and used for inspiration and direction in deciding my next step in life.

This blank and dark room of no man's land became my domain, a place where tears were mistaken for laughter, and love traded for cruelty.

This was my altar, my church of sadness. A place of believing in nothing more than the ruthless selfishness of addiction, self-pity, and all that comes with it.

(part 165) COURT

I have no recollections of who I contacted, or where I stayed, when I got back to Nashville, but I do remember taking a 3 grain tuinal, a sleeping pill, before going to court.

This act of stupidity left me slurring my words and unsteady on my feet while trying to maintain my composure in the court room. I suppose I believed I might go to jail so I'd opted for being high if in fact that occurred.

As I stated in previous posts, many of the people I knew in Nashville had grown up together and gone to the same schools. It was a very small town in a lot of ways, and because of this, the lines between the non law abiding and law abiding were blurred.

For instance, DP had become a cocaine dealer, while close friends of his had ended up in politics and the government. One of these friends of his was the prosecuting attorney in the case against me, who I'd met during my previous time in Nashville.

The fact was, that I'd introduced this particular attorney to a flaming red haired nymphomaniac who he'd fallen in love with, and subsequently married. Who would have guessed?

Anyway, that was the case, and in this guy's mind I'd done him the biggest favor of his life, at least that's the way he saw it. Couple that with the fact that I knew where the cocaine I'd sold had originated from, DP, and the prosecutor was a friend of DP's, you had a mighty interesting and unusual set of facts.

While I sat in court, waiting for the proceedings against me to get underway, the prosecutor informed the judge that the state was not going to proceed with it's case against me for various reasons.

I sat there in shocked silence, and then was ordered to stand up while the judge launched into a long rambling dissertation about how the state of Tennessee was being drug traumatized, and was going into debt trying to deal with all the drug cases. He said the state was running out of jail and prison space because of it.

The long and the short of it was, that the judge said Tennessee had enough of it's own people to deal with, and that the state wasn't interested in further burdening it's dwindling resources to prosecute, convict, and then house idiots like me from California, who had come to Nashville and gotten in trouble.

He ordered me to leave the state forthwith, and not to come back for a very long time, if ever. I stood in the court room with my mouth hanging open, while it quickly dawned on me that I'd just been cut loose and was free to go.

One would think that I could have seen that I'd been miraculously spared prison, and that I'd sober up and go back to L.A. and rededicate myself to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, but this was not to be the case. In fact, I ended up at Friday's bar celebrating with DP and his crowd, and was told repeatedly that I'd beaten both the odds and the system.

During this celebration, the prosecutor, whose name was Tom M., and who'd dropped the case against me, walked up with his hand outstretched and a big smile on his face saying, "Stay out of trouble Bobby and good luck."

As I reached out to shake his hand he slipped a neatly folded hundred dollar bill into mine saying, "I owed you one partner, now we're even." I always assumed this was due to the fact that he'd married the red head I'd introduced him to.

Again, I have no recollection of leaving Nashville or getting back to L.A., but I assume I was stoned out of my mind, and stayed that way.

Something had occurred in my psyche, which caused me to reject AA altogether at that point, yet in thinking about it now I can only guess as to what that was.

Maybe it was just wanting to be loaded more than I wanted to face the world sober. Possibly it was as simple as I got clean in the first place because I was faced with prison time for committing a felony, and now I was over that hurdle.

I may have thought that appearing to straighten out my life by going to AA in the first place would help me with the problem in Nashville, but now that the problem was resolved I simply returned to what I wanted to do all along, which was to get loaded. It may all have been nothing more than a charade to cover my tracks.

I can think of many reasons, but may never really know the whole truth. The fact that I needed sobriety was self evident, but wanting sobriety was not.

There was no hunger for it the way I had thirsted after success and fame. There did not exist for me in those days a driving need to stay clean and sober.

What I do know for sure is that when I went back to drinking and using, I went back with a vengeance, the likes of which I'd never known. It was as if I was daring life to take me out of my misery, and my aim was to push it to the outer edge of all things reasonable.

My ticket back to hell was in reality, spending the next fourteen months of my life trying to drink myself to death, and vowing never to go back to AA. In fact, I did everything I could to make it a reality.

(part 164) TICKET BACK TO HELL

As you read what I am writing here, try and remember that these are my opinions only. They are recollections of experiences I had in AA thirty five years ago and in no way represent anyone other than me, and do not attempt to speak for anyone else's experience or opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous. My experience is mine alone, and my opinions are nothing more than my opinions.

As badly as I'd been beaten by alcohol and drugs, I still had not been beaten enough to formulate the necessary willingness to accept AA as a way of life. My stubborn ego was still too inflated to surrender to the simple reality that drugs and alcohol had beaten me into a bloody pulp.

I turned away from Alcoholics Anonymous, in an attempt to drink in a controlled manner, which was of course destined to take me even further into darkness and to a new bottom.

I'd fooled myself into believing that if I put my mind to it I could drink responsibly and control my own behavior. This brave and totally insane idea is a hallmark myth of alcoholic thinking, and has maimed and killed many.

After some months of deluding myself in this manner, I was back in AA again, admitting that I could not control my drinking and using, no matter how hard I tried.

The saying "One is too many and a thousand not enough" took on new meaning for me as I bitterly admitted to my own defeat. This, in fact, was a real breakthrough for me in my own false belief about self sufficiency and ego-driven logic.

Willingness to accept defeat, and admit I could not drink and use successfully, was slowly and painfully being taught to me in the harshest of ways. My obvious problems with AA were centered around key issues.

The 12 step program is laid out simply and directly in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. My problem was I had heard about the program via individual member's opinions, rather than getting to know about the program directly from the text of the book.

The nuts and bolts of Alcoholics Anonymous is the literal first hand experience of the original one hundred sober alcoholics. It worked then, and continues to work to this day.

Opinions about the program from individual members are just that, opinions, nothing more! Until I could get the program into my head, by way of the instructions in the book, I was like a boat in a storm crashing into various rocks in the ocean.

Of course at the time I did not know this, so I blindly careened off one opinion after another, regarding what I should do and how I was to do it.

I had heard about the steps, but knew little about them or how they applied to my life. I knew about the book, but had no understanding of what it said within it's pages.

In other words, I was getting, or not getting, the program from a second hand source. I was not taking responsibility for my own recovery and progress, which I'd unwittingly assigned, or given, to any other person available other than me. I could then blame someone else for my failures, which were ongoing.

During this second attempt at getting clean and sober, I was informed by Carol Paulus's cleaning lady that she had seen my picture on television on the program "Suspects Wanted."

This startling revelation threw me into a panic when I realized that the lawyer I'd given $300 to, for the purpose of handling my legal problems in Nashville, had done absolutely nothing about it.

I ended up on "Suspects Wanted" because it was assumed by the Nashville authorities that I was in flight to avoid prosecution of a felony, which was not the case.

Anything of a positive nature I'd come to believe about AA went out the window with this new problem, and I railed, "that if this was what I could expect from the trusted members of AA, than the hell with it."

In my mind this was the last straw. I could not believe that a staunch member of the program would take my money, and then fail completely to do what was necessary for his client, even if that client happened to be me.

I borrowed more money from another member of the program to buy an airplane ticket back to Nashville to turn myself in. I was sober, but completely unsure of what to expect, and feared that I would be sentenced from two to ten years in Tenn. State Prison for sales of narcotics.

As my benefactor reluctantly handed me the money to buy my plane ticket, he told me to stay sober and trust God, which I assured him I would, but on the plane I gave into my fear and trepidation and ordered a scotch, and then another, and another.

I had succumbed once more to the old friendship in a bottle to cope with what life seemed to endlessly hurl at me. I did not possess the necessary faith to believe that the current crisis could be worked out in my favor, and so I chose my old ways over anything new.

I stared out the window at the sky wondering if anything would ever go right in my life.

(part 163) TRYING TO STAY SOBER

In 1974 I was twenty nine years old, and surrounded, for the most part, by people much older than I, who said things like, "I spilled more booze than you drank," which was nonsense. This condescending attitude was rampant in AA in back then.

I felt at times as though some people were doing their best to get me to leave the program rather than stay, insinuating that I had not hit bottom, because I was too young, in their opinion.

The old school drunks were not about to throw open the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous to a whole new swarm of addict-alcoholics without a fight, regarding the multiple addictions of people like me.

They were purists! They did not want to hear about drugs, or the sexual problems of those who came out of the 60's, where sexual behavior had been forever changed on the social scale, by my generation.

In their minds they were drunks only, alcoholics in the purest sense of the word. If they had sex, they, in most cases, were married, or got married, as a direct result of such an act.

The 60's generation had not, and did not, follow that old-style set of rules, and had started to rattle the fundamental restrictions of sexual behavior as soon as they began to frequent the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Sooner or later AA would have to come to grips with this phenomenon, as well as other new facts, no matter how reluctant they were in doing so.

The sheer numbers of new and different kinds of members would see to that. As well, the new view of sexual behavior was going to force the old "Bleeding Deacons" to open the gates even wider to encompass the gay and lesbian movement.

It became apparent to me that the old timers didn't want to hear about drugs, because many of those drugs were being prescribed by doctors to older alcoholics for medical needs, such as trouble sleeping, over eating, and anxiety.

People taking these drugs prescribed by their doctors, were in no mood to be lectured by the likes of me, that these were the exact drugs I got high on.

Diet pills and valium, along with various sleeping remedies, were off limits conversationally, according to many old school members. These were things that were prescribed and used with their doctor's blessing to help with everyday problems of daily living, according to them.

Their pills were not seen as a violation of sobriety by those who had not had a drink in a number of years. Their drugs were not considered drugs. They were thought of, with the help of denial, as medicine.

It was the 60's generation that eventually busted this myth wide open. I knew, from personal experience, as did others, that doctors, in fact, were the worst dope pushers on earth, and that the best drugs of all had always been pharmaceutical, the things you got from the drugstore by way of a prescription.

Valium, for instance, was probably the most abused drug on the planet, but was considered at that time to be a harmless medication for tension.

This incredible fable, which still persists today, is exemplified by those who refuse to admit they have a problem with physician prescribed medications.

Many of those people have fallen victim to the insidiousness of long-term drug abuse, which was and is, systematically denied as a problem, simply because it is obtained from a doctor.

For what it's worth, I was clear as a bell on this topic, and knew quite well that I had a dual, or multiple, addiction problem. I was addicted to multiple substances, and prone to become addicted to anything that served my purpose, whether it was drinking, snorting, dropping, injected, or shoved up my ass. It was not in question; I was clear on this.

All in all, I found too many reasons not to stay with the program along the way, during my first initiation into this new world of recovery. As I said, I probably wanted to get the world off my back more than I wanted to get clean and sober and stay clean and sober.

I doggedly remained, and reluctantly participated as best I could at the time, but began wavering in my commitment to do so. Because I was completely new, and had no experience with the basic fundamentals of how the program worked, I accepted at face value much of what was told to me at the time, which proved to be a mistake.

The confusing part was that everybody I talked to had an opinion of what I should do, but most of those opinions were at odds with each other. I became lost in the confusion of not having a clear idea of how to apply the principles of the program into my own life on a daily basis.

I was afraid to voice any opinion of my own, and was continuously warned that getting angry would be lethal, and would end up getting me drunk if I should succumb to it.

I walked around in a straight jacket of sorts, trying to fathom how someone like me could fit into such an organized place of suppression and repression of volatile emotions, the likes of which I carried around by the ton inside my battered mind and body.

The clever slogans like "Let go and let God," although well meaning, could not forever keep the explosive nature of my personality at bay.

Sooner rather than later, the person known as Bobby Jameson, would come out of seclusion and assert himself once more in this new world of reality, and the old will to challenge that world would take over.