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back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 2:08 pm
by wheezy e
great series of 60's garage comps, but that ain't what this is about.

First things first: I've missed you all quite a damn bit for quite a while. Little bit of mushy stuff toward the bottom here:
http://www.utmc-forum.org/pub/viewtopic ... 9&start=30
I didn't actually get any letter, I was just thinking about this place a buch lately, decided to drop by & that's the first thread I saw. Go figure. Since the members thingy is busted the second place I went trying to find out when & what my last posts might have been was just to put "wheezy" in the search term. there was a whole bunch of post from a bunch of different folks wondering where I went & what not. That sure does makes a fella feel nice. Not unlike me to drop off the earth with no notice, even with people who were actively a part of my life in the real world too. that's not very nice of course.

then I tried to post via my phone & f'ed things up a couple times & decided to wait till I could get to a computer.

so here we are. did I mention I missed you? wanna hear a story? too bad, here it goes:
Spoiler
Show
Once upon a time there was a boy who liked motorcycles. He found this out when his father would put him between himself and the tank on his Honda. Many of his fathers friends also rode motorcycles. The boy decided they were all very, very cool. Maybe they did some other things that the boy decided were probably cool also, but mostly motorcycles were the main thing. The boy decided that he wanted to always share his life with motorcycles. As he grew up motorcycles seemed also to like the boy and some decided to share parts of their lives with him too. Sometimes the boy would enjoy the friendship of a girl and on cold days they'd (she'd) be more comfortable in an automobile and this was ok. The motorcycles always understood and were never jealous. Probably they knew he'd always come back, Maybe they were just glad when the boy came around again and would forget how long it had been, kinda like dogs.
Things mostly were good, life is life and the boy made some good decisions and some bad ones. Turns out some things that seem cool and fun aren't necessarily so. It's tricky, the human brain is a complicated piece of equipment & each one is a unique design. Some things that are quite lovely, fun, and innocent for most people just aren't really the right thing for another. He understood this in principle. He'd met people who really should have picked a hobby other than motorcycles. Usually they liked motorcycles, maybe even more than him but in a weird way, they couldn't make rational choices. They ignore dangers that most motorcyclists respect, they thought they could ride as fast and recklessly as they want. In fact it seemed to the boy that these people believed that fast and reckless was the whole point of motorcycles, like that's what makes them fun. It's like they don't or can't think properly but only with motorcycles. It's hard to describe, you know it when you see it, but they never can. He would usually try to talk to these people because he didn't want them to get hurt. On the odd occasion they did change at all it was mostly temporary and they ended up getting hurt very badly later.

Basically I traded life for heroin. Can't say it was unknowingly or it snuck up on me or anything really, I know better. Went through the same thing in the 90's, just got off the bus a few stops earlier & abstained from all intoxicants till the winter of 07-08. A lot of crap happened that I was taking too seriously, stopped doing a bunch of things that help me navigate around depression. (Doctors think me some sort of "bi" polar bear nonsense. Far as I can tell I only like girl humans, but I do what they say & I'm happier in general.) Took a spill on a dirt bike & busted a collar bone. No biggie, pretty minor injury. Still need to take care of work so just in case I'll go ahead & fill the pain script. With what I did to my opiate receptors 10 years ago I'm sure I could take the damn bottle & not feel the slightest rise. Took 'em as prescribed, less often if anything. Nothing hit the fan, life was just life. Except... it looked a little better. I was doing way more with a broken arm and a smile than I had been prior. Started thinking long & hard about this which is the LAST thing I should have done since, like people who ride motorcycles in flip flops, I obviously do not think properly about these things. Normal person probably would have gone back to the psych or whatever. I just figured heroin was the thing to do. Not quite that simple, but that's what it amounted to. from then on there's not much more to say till 7 months ago. Highlights include urban camping, causing lots of pain to people I like, achieving self disgust, seeing dead people & waking up via narcan shots. between all that and perpetual kicking/relapsing I tried the methadone & suboxone routes. I just turned them into ways to not get sick and do heroin whenever possible.
Enough about that. At the end of may last year I got into a place north of Fort Collins (CO) that I can stay at for at least a year & figure out what I need to do to. It's a working farm, I do lots of different stuff. Coolest bit is learning to drive oxen, like pull implements and shit. Most guys here came from worse or at least longer situations, like years and years homeless, long prison terms, stuff like that along with whatever drug problems. There's a lot of things that need considering and doing to figure out why I made a bunch of progressively worse choices & prevent the same from happening again. I don't have any more time for typing right now, but as bad as that all sounds, the future sounds way better to me right now than it ever has before. I'm seriously excited about life, I've got big ideas & not what one might expect. I'll fill you in on that next installment.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 2:21 pm
by Sisyphus
Wow. I hope things work out for you in a positive manner. Be the change.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 3:30 pm
by DerGolgo
Strewth. That's sounds ... wow.

You're gonna get it together. That's what's going to happen.
I wish you the best that you manage to get it done with the minimum of pain.
But, considering the experience you describe, and that you're still around, I have no doubt you're going to be fine.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 4:16 pm
by guitargeek
I got something in my eye.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 6:54 pm
by motorpsycho67
I've lost some very good people to the H. Glad you made it through...

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 7:48 pm
by Jaeger
Farms are good, just stay away from the Horse(s). :mrgreen:

(Seriously, tho, glad to hear your dance with the devil didn't end with a dirt nap or long-term incarceration, and glad you decided to come back. You're still here, and so are we. Yay.)

--Jaeger

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 8:23 pm
by stiles
Glad you're back.

That is some nasty shit, some of my friends danced with that devil and are lost, some still struggle with it and I hope they beat it and don't die.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 8:36 pm
by Rench
Glad you're back on this side wheezy. I know you and I weren't too close, but I gotta say, talk to people. Out loud. Or even here with a thin veil of anonymity. I vent personal shit all the time here. Nokne complains. Too much. :mrgreen: But at least for me, its out, so its not feeding the bad decision driver we all have to some degree.

But anyway, good to see you here man.

-Rench

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 8:55 pm
by Rabbit_Fighter
I don't spend much time on the board lately, but have thought about you on the occasions I do. I'm kind of at a loss for words, but really wish you the best and am very glad to hear you are back in the daylight again.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 11:37 pm
by xtian
Thanks for sharing. My experience cannot compare, but I recently began to think that most of the bad self destructive decisions I could make in the past, I made because I needed to feel busy and excited. So I hope you'll stay busy and excited and reunite with motorcycles.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 11:45 am
by goose
Glad to see you back. Job #1, take care of yourself.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 11:53 am
by calamari kid
Keep fighting the good fight. Happy to see ya back around.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 8:24 am
by eddyline
Wow. What a tale. You're a better man than me, Gunga Din.
Good that you're fighting to stay sober. What everyone else said: if it's possible for you, keep in touch with everyone you can. People are good, mostly, and can help keep you fighting when you don't feel like it.

Glad to see you back.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2014 11:04 am
by Zer0
This is good. This whole thing is just so fucking good.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:12 pm
by wheezy e
Thanks everybody. :) I do need to lean on others a lot more & I'm building a network of good people who are into doing good stuff. I don't plan on leaving myself a lot of free time & I do plan on doing things that I think matter more than pushing the feel good button. Lots of different stuff factored into me deciding to hop back on the train but one thing that sticks out pretty vividly is lying in bed thinking "well shit, does anything I'm doing right now REALLY matter?.. Why not then..." - I've been there a lot, clean & otherwise. Partially it's one of my personality / disposition quirks, add a bunch of philosophy classes to it & you can start to get problems where there really aren't problems... But I've also been right where I am today more than once, with a clean slate, no real obligations other than some debt that's fixable and that little voice in the back of my head saying "why don't you do something totally different?" "what do you think would make you feel the best about yourself & life in general? What do you think you're supposed to do?" More or less I've never really done anything with that. For most of my life I thought the biggest thing that separates us from other critters was our ability to reason, to figure stuff out, mysteries of the universe type stuff, but also just little things in life. Better ways of doing things, learning as much as possible. Cats have claws, birds have wings, we have brains, right? Nothing wrong with that at all, but I think I've changed my mind a bit, or at least added to it. Something else that we can do better than other critters is to have empathy, care for each other. I don't have the slightest idea what I'm actually going to do with that, but I know what sort of things I'm good at & enjoy, so mostly just finding out where there's a need & if I'd fit well is the next thing. If nothing else & I end up with a good job & a place to work on stuff I could fix things for people who can't afford to take their vehicle to a shop, maybe work on one cool project at a time, sell it & give the $ to a charity or two. What I'm presently thinking I'd dig most would be to do stainless welding for hospitals & kitchens in places that can't afford to pay for hospitals & kitchens. Who knows, I've got time to figure stuff out. I just met a fella that came back from a 2 year stint in the congo, he's gonna help me brainstorm a bit & hopefully find some resources to point me in the direction I'm thinking of. Shit, I might even change my post signature, who knows?

To anyone who joined in the last 5 years or otherwise doesn't know me, my name's erik & I like motorcycles & other things you can pour flammable liquids into. I'm very happy to live in Colorado instead of Las Vegas (condolences to AZrider if he's still residing there) - Oh quick story about that. A few months ago I'm taking a long bicycle ride on the dirt farm roads around here & I see this guy on the porch of a place I've noticed before. The place has a bunch of junk vehicles & appliances strewn about, usually several choppers & rusty pickups parked in the yard, it just gives off a certain vibe that says "you either belong here or you stay the fuck out" sorta thing. So the guy sitting on the porch has a loooong beard & hair, covered in old tattoos, perfect stereotype of that sort of "motorcycle enthusiast" Except I see that what he's doing on his porch is reading a book, and that the book is Walt Whitman (ok I added that part, but he was reading a book and it probably was poetry, I just can't say for sure it was Walt). I waved to him & he smiled & waved back. That was the first time since I left Vegas that I knew for sure Colorado is where I'm supposed to be.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:55 pm
by MATPOC
Hey, you still remember the Russian? You picked me up at the airport in your 'stang.

Out last conversation on the phone went something like:
-Hey, this is the Russian!
-WTF, who da fuck are you?

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 11:57 am
by wheezy e
MATPOC wrote:Hey, you still remember the Russian? You picked me up at the airport in your 'stang.

Out last conversation on the phone went something like:
-Hey, this is the Russian!
-WTF, who da fuck are you?
You bet, I remember that conversation also. I was all... "The Russian?" "Am I about to get myself involved in some international espionage?" "Did I mail-order a bride again?" ?????


Important detail: I do still have the trusty ZRX :mrgreen:

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:14 pm
by motorpsycho67
Wheezy, you don't just belong in Colorado..... you belong here.

Try as you might, you ain't gettin rid of us that easy.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 1:34 pm
by wheezy e
I landed an awesome job, start Monday. The semester's over, I've got a 4.0 gpa going & am about 20 credits or so from an associates in welding if everything I need to transfer goes through, but I'm really itching to get to work & get some semblance of a normal life going. I'd been hitting the job search pretty hard over the last 4 months or so and getting nowhere had more or less resigned myself to 12 more credits this summer and my 20 hours a week of $8/hr work study, probably the same in the fall. A couple weeks back I took a weld test at a place about 30 miles south. Did o.k., but just o.k. really. They do mostly military contract work, about 90% aluminum with a little steel & stainless from time to time. I'm nowhere near as proficient as the welders there - the stuff they do is seriously off the hook. They're gonna let me work in assembly & help out where needed while I work on my welding skills. There's a full time welding engineer who's job is to train welders. Basically I pay some dues & get a way better education while getting paid for it. (i'm still going to finish the welding degree of course, just at night & it'll take a while longer.) The director of the welding program I'm in used to work at this place & he said basically that - I'll learn way more there, especially being that I want to concentrate on cutting edge technology & exotic metals stuff. Four 10 hour days, overtime on Friday when needed in a clean, reasonably quiet, heated shop... FUCKING STOKED. I'm staying at the farm for a couple more months at the very least, I'm in no rush & the longer I hang out here the more I'll have saved. I REALLY want a place with a garage so I can get the projects I still have out here... It's killing me not working on fun stuff.

Other than that things are falling into place pretty well. I've got a solid support network, I'm doing something most every night of the week - aa, church stuff, a couple volunteer gigs. I went up to South Dakota for a week to do some volunteer work at a reservation, I'm planning on making that a yearly thing at the least. That sort of stuff is probably the best thing I can do for myself, imho. My head still goes off in bad directions pretty regularly but I've got ways to deal with it, usually. Laying in bed unable to sleep seems to be when I have the most difficulty turning using thoughts off, maybe cause there's no immediate danger of me taking any action on it. Luckily I always wake up going "wtf was I entertaining those thoughts for? There's nothing even remotely appealing about it anymore. In fact, trying to think about it at all right now totally disgusts me." And it won't pop into my head for weeks. Then - boing! - there it is again, like a switch flipped in my head & it's the only thing I can think about again. Thank God it's motorcycle season already... When I was young and poor with only a motorcycle I used to say that being without a car is only a physical inconvenience. I can get where I need to go with a bicycle or my feet if need be. Being without a motorcycle however is a meta-physical problem. It's much harder to "get where I need to go" so to speak.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 11:50 pm
by guitargeek
I'm so proud of you, man...

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri May 16, 2014 12:02 am
by motorpsycho67
Thanks for putting a big cheesy grin on my face Wheez...

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri May 16, 2014 7:55 am
by Jaeger
Hot damn! Well done! :)

--Jaeger

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri May 16, 2014 8:57 am
by calamari kid
Huzzah!! Way to go!

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 7:14 am
by wheezy e
I'm gonna be busy the next 2 months. Taking 12 credits this summer & work says expect overtime. Im doing the classes via independant study so i can go in any day (sunday included) till at least 9 pm and use whatever machines aren't being used by classes. I did get a laptop though so once this couple months is over I'll be around more. :)

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 10:09 am
by wheezy e
Things are f'ing great still. Pulled off the summer semester fine. Yesterday I finished the last 4 (of 13 total) welding tests required to weld on the current contracts at work, i start my new position monday.

I completed my stay at the farm & am living in a cheap house with 4 other guys for a while. It works fine for now but the garage isn't usable - landlord has it packed with junk. I'm rarely here anyhow because there's a girl. It's been 10 years at least since I had a date, almost 20 since there was anyone serious hanging around. So that's wierd but nice. I got myself a good acoustic bike & have been riding the shit out of it. Nothing bad going on that I can see anywhere... :)

Im still not gonna pay for internet for a while so my phone limits me a bit. I need to find a better image hosting service, photobucket, imageshack & one other i cant recall seriously suck ass on an android. any suggestions?

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 12:23 pm
by SomeMook
Glad to hear things are going well! You've faced many more demons than most do in a lifetime, and you are still here. Huzzah!

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 4:54 am
by wheezy e
I guess this would be the place to update although I'd prefer not to bump all my previous drama. I haven't re-read any of it, too self conscious. Doesn't really matter cause I'm just gonna lay more drama on ya anyhow.

There's always an over-abundance of it with me... For instanse (phone has no spell check & parts of my brain are legitimately shot to shit, so deal) yesterday when GG texted me I'd just heard that my ongoing overtime friday(s) was called off for the first time in 2 months. Wanna know what was going on in my head? "I actually have spending money from all this over-time & three whole days to recover from a night of speedballs." Maybe not the closest I've come in 3 + years now but it was calling to me again & it might have been your text that snapped me out of it so thanks Justin.

If that ain't enough drama for you about 4 months ago I told my psych that I hear voices & have since I was 14. Never told another living soul in the 32 years since it started.

I'm up at 4am because my alarm went off as usual. I got up, made coffee, showered & did everything but start the truck all the while thinking "shit, I'm actually going to work with a legitimate hangover for once, what the fuck time did I go to bed?" Before remembering that i got wicked drunk because I'm off today.

Not only no heroin, nothing (rex/speed limit excluded) Colorado-illegal since I was here but I am in a pretty size-able rut & really dreading winter.

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 6:03 am
by Jaeger
wheezy e wrote:...Maybe not the closest I've come in 3 + years now but it was calling to me again & it might have been your text that snapped me out of it so thanks Justin....
Timing is everything. :D

Hang in there, man. I know everybody on here is rootin' for ya. You're in CO! Go find some of that magic green stuff y'all got there and test the theory about "impossible to administer a lethal dose." :mrgreen:

--Jaeger

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 6:23 am
by Rench
As the man said, "this too shall pass." Hang in there wheezy. You've got a lot of folks in your corner when you need us.

-Rench

Re: back from the grave

Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 1:24 pm
by guitargeek
I recommend that you get to Streets of London on Tuesday evening...