Illinois State Second Year, Second Arrest, Second Call to Dad...

After my first year at ISU, I was placed on academic probation and was risking expulsion. I was drinking everyday and smoking about 7 grams of pot alone a day. While my friends went to class and were preparing for their careers, I was doing the wake and bake and watching Bozo or the newly created MTV. I had a radio program on WZND, the ISU radio station. The show began with the Ramones jamming "Do you Remember Rock-n-Roll Radio?" Ironically the show was called the "Happy Hour Show" as I broadcasted from 4-7pm. I took requests and played the songs I liked and disregarded the requests for Culture Club and the Thompson Twins.

My sophomore year picked up right where my freshman one left off. I flunked 4 classes the first year and started year 2 on probation. To me, college was "Animal House" come to life. I was being treated for a spastic colon with medication. I now believe the condition was a symptom of my depression. As I got older the runs went away and the desire to run from everything took over. I remember very little of my academic career at ISU, but I can remember the parties and the drugs. By this point I was using drugs and alcohol day and night. Classes were recreational.

I would go home on weekends to see my girlfriend and hit my dad or grandma up for money. When I started my first year of college I had $5,000 dollars of spending money in an account for necessities. I went through the money in that first semester and was mooching my dad by the second. While I was home, I would lay a song and a dance on my dad and grandmother about my financial woes and could always weasel some cash out of them. Addicts know how to play each character specifically. We are chameleons. We can be smooth and gentlemanly, street wise and slick, loving and pathetic all to get the money we need to continue our run.

On one trip back to Bloomington from Mokena, I was drunk and high after a party earlier in the day. As I headed down I-55 in my '74 Buick Le Sabre, I was nodding off and clipped the bumper of a car in the lane next to me. I freaked. I hit the gas and the car chased me for about 25 miles before I finally pulled over. While they were moving in on me I knew they had my plate numbers and I was planning my scheme on how to get out of this latest pinch. I switched into an often used addicts' role. I acted like I was completely nuts!

I pleaded with the driver not to call the police. I gave them my insurance card and my father's phone number assuring them that the damages would be repaired. I cried or sobbed to gain their sympathy. I ranted and mumbled apologies, I paced and scared the driver enough for him to accept my proposal to keep the law out of it. Another scrape I escaped through the cunning tongue and acting of an alcoholic addict. These skills have been useful in my comedy and acting career. Now they're used for character identification and visualization, not for manipulation of family and friends.

I made it back to campus and called my father. He said he would take care of it after I balled like a baby. That always got him; to hear his grown son sob. I played him like a fiddle. When the call was ended, I wiped the crocodile tears from my eyes, had a beer and smoked some more hooch. I was completely immersed in chemicals now, including mushrooms and LSD. Like most users I did it to "expand my senses" and "write poetry." I knew the greats like Hemingway and Lennon were drunks and addicts and I thought my creative genius would be fueled from these "trips". The poetry was bad but the music was good. The toll the hallucinogens took on my body left me bed ridden for 2 or 3 days after use. I was the pariah of my Manchester Hall roommates. A joke, really. They talked to me but laughed behind my back at how truly pathetic I had become. I was the center of a joke that every one was in on, except me.

Early in the year campus officials were considering banning alcohol on campus and at parties. The students cried NO! I took part in an evening melee that even brought Oprah down to Normal, Illinois for a story on the pandemonium that ensued that night. When there was revolution or anarchy in the air, I took the lead and cheered my fellow hooligans on in their destruction. They knocked over garbage cans and when they began to break stuff my anarchist participation ended. I was in support of keeping the booze flowing but not at the expense of a campus window or innocent bystanders' property.

The police were making themselves more visible in the Cherry Street neighborhood and fraternity row. I was still bringing booze in from home and had connections for anything else I fancied right there on campus. On Halloween I was especially drunk and stoned. We were planning to go out to the costume parties. As a drunk I had to drink and use before we went out and drank and used in case they didn't drink and use at the same level as I did. You follow me? One of the greatest fears of an alcoholic addict is that they will arrive at a social function and find out there wasn't enough to reach the oblivion we so desperately seek. That made getting primed justifiable and necessary before heading out.

I had gone to the thrift store and bought a yellow rain coat, a fisherman's hat, and stopped at the Kroger for a box of fish sticks. I was going dressed as the Gordon Fisherman, that tiny guy in the corner of the box of fish sticks. I thought I was hilarious. Another commonly held notion of the active alcoholic is that we are an absolute riot when drunk. We don't realize that people are laughing more at us than with us. Me and a bunch of guys headed for the party. I smoked dope all the way and was blotto when we got there.

I poured a beer and snaked my way through the overcrowded house to get some fresh air. As I was stepping into the night air, a Bloomington police officer was stepping in. I tried to make my way around him but he shifted over to block my way. He asked if I was the one throwing the party. They were cracking down heavy after the campus and property damage, resulting from the earlier riots. I casually responded "no" and tried to move past him once more. He stepped in front of me with more resolve. His night stick was in hand, no doubt for protection, unsure of how the crowd would react at the announcement that the party was over.

He questioned me further, his night stick resting on my chest, and inquired if I knew whose party it was. The adrenalin and chemicals mixed with the interrogation began to anger me. My response of "no I don't" was more cocky and less respectful. His third question was accentuated with a poke to my chest with the night stick."How old are you?" My polluted mind and misdirected testosterone bubbled up until I spat out, "I'm 15!" He felt my sarcasm and knew I was older than stated. He asked for my student ID and asked me to wait in the front yard until his return.

In an alcoholic fog, the injustice of being singled out ate at me. The ache in my chest from the poking of his night stick made it more real and I was fuming. One of the crazy things alcohol and drugs creates in the user, beyond the removal of inhibition, is the dismissal of reality and the consequences our actions may hold. I shouted some expletives and left for another party, leaving my ID with the officer. I had directly disobeyed an officer.

I moved from party to party and was in complete blackout, an early sign of alcohol dependency. When I got rocked I blacked out nearly every time. I was an alcoholic and knew it at 18. It didn't bother me. There were plenty of boozers throwing them back around my family tree. Somehow I made it back to my dorm and convinced them to let me up to my room without my ID. The fact that I had thrown up down my shirt most likely contributed to their decision to allow me entry.

I passed out in my room and came to early the next morning, startled by the shaking of my arm from my roommate. I mumbled a greeting and asked what was up. He said,"What's up? You don't remember last night?" My response was clouded and honest when I said, "No I don't. I had a bit too much." He went on to explain that a police officer had called my dorm room late the night before and my roommate couldn't rouse me to take the call. In his efforts to revive me, and explain that the officer was on the phone and wanted to speak with me, I blathered a "Tell him to go screw himself!" loud enough that the officer heard my response. He instructed my roommate that I had better be at the police station early the next morning or a warrant would be issued for my arrest.

Nursing a hangover that would blind a rhino, I staggered to the police station still drunk from the night before. The officer greeted me and reviewed the nights events with me. He had returned the ID's to the party goers and left the party. I had fled and told him to screw himself. I was arrested for underage drinking and disobeying a police officer. It was my second arrest in a year. As I stood before the judge, the same one I had for my first arrest, he remembered me. He informed me that it was my second alcohol related arrest in a year. If I were to be arrested again at ISU or in Bloomington for any alcohol related offense he would recommend the maximum penalty that could include jail time.

I was scared and called my dad again. This time he was speechless but his silence stung worse than if he were screaming at me. I knew I had hurt him again. I hated hurting him but I seemed to do it over and over. It was a little over a month until the end of the semester. I was on academic probation and the law had it in for me. I did what any alcoholic would do in this case. I decided not to return to ISU and run as far from Bloomington as I could.

Alcoholism is like your shadow. Wherever you run to, it's there to help you unpack. The problems are inside you, not outside your door. I finished the semester and decided to transfer for "educational reasons". My alcoholism was happy to go to any school or any destination I chose. It wanted me dead but would settle for me drunk.