Obsessed Drunk

I drank today…..

I became obsessed, I became jealous and I became someone I do not like, but that was long ago. To change that I had to stop drinking. And I did. But I stayed some of those things in some way, and in a lot of ways with a lot of help. I know now, that trust is something earned and not given, and when shocked and not earned back. Chances are that those whose trust has been shocked will become obsessed and jealous.

So I am obsessed and jealous, sober obsessed and jealous.

I decided that to change that; I will have to live the fantasy of life, I will have to do some “addiction” replacement.

Living the fantasy meant that I had to take that first drink. That I had to step over that first line. Knowing that it takes only one drink for a person like me to fall back into the way his life was before. Knowing that because of one drink I will stand a very real chance of losing it all. A real chance of not having what I have now.

I decided that the obsession and the jealousy and the shocked trust had to be replaced, and to do that I had to take the first drink of a life that I could have had. A life that lay open wide and to be explored. Until I saw your green eyes and your beautiful smile. And became addicted to a person that I would drink from every day and every night, sharing the glass of a life together.

But we let that glass slip, it fell, it shattered into a million little pieces, and I had to walk through the shards to find the broom and sweep our spilled water away.

So I took my first drink slowly and precariously while giving you space and time. I loved the sweetness that life offered. I became addicted like my sickness and personality dictates. And I became sad that I will not share this with you.

I am sad, drunk, obsessed and jealous of life, as I need to live the fantasy of my life. Everyday. And for some people fantasy is something used to hurt those that love them the most. A private affair not to be shared.

THE END

Alcoholism and atheism: Christo Hoffmann, The Godless Alcoholic.: Coming Home.

Alcoholism and atheism: Christo Hoffmann, The Godless Alcoholic.: Coming Home.: So I went there, dressed in my normal every day clothes. No leather pants, no soft shirt that shows the tattoo. Just normal. My third time ...

Coming Home.

So I went there, dressed in my normal every day clothes. No leather pants, no soft shirt that shows the tattoo. Just normal. My third time going to a pub as a sober alcoholic in two years and ten months. And the second time at a pub in the last week. The first time I took photographs of the band. An amazing experience going out. The photographs was not the idea, but was a good thing. It made me feel less out of place with my cold drink in my hand.

But this is different. It’s a kink event, a social. A regular meeting that happens socially in a pub on a monthly basis. And just because I have a sickness that makes me different from most in just another different way should after all not influence where I should be able to socialize or not.

A week before I was sitting in a different place. Where everyday Vanilla life was happening around me. Normal people dressed normal, as now. Walking past, going about their lives. And I was talking to someone, and the person was departing her Vanilla life’s philosophy to me.

And the thought in my head, in the crowd was:

“You are so fucking normal. You have no idea how different I am from you. You presume to know me and know what and who I am. But the truth is that if you knew. I would scare you. I would make you afraid of me, and what I stand for. Not because what I am is scary, or who I am is scary. But because it falls outside your frame of reference.

You don’t know anything about what my life, my lifestyle, my beliefs and non beliefs are about. But I know that if I told you. You would judge me. You would take the tiny bits of information that got stuck somewhere in your brain and carry that to the world.

Talking about how I believe things to be different, idealistic perhaps, innocent perhaps… No, those are not the things you will remember. You will not hear that I have more love to give than most. You will hear that I want to receive more than most, and your reference will not be that I want to just love. Your interpretation will defile the word. It will take away from it everything that Love stands for. As you will not be able to fathom that I have moral values, that I have a sense of right or wrong. You will take the bits of what stems from true love, submission, dominance, equality, passion, raw desire and a willingness and a need to please, not only sexually, and you will defile that with your judgment of me. Because you don’t know. Because you have never and will never know all of what it is that you grew up being taught to fear and judge. It comes naturally to you because you don’t know better.”

However now I am sitting behind a guy that wears a big black ear ring, tattoos on his calves and other places, his fiancée a petit beautiful woman. With hair colored like the pelt of a leopard. With a tattoo of a cupcake on her wrist to remind her of her daughter on a daily basis. Beautiful people, people that’s able to love on every level that the word can describe, Love in punishment, love in tenderness, love in dominance and submission.

Next to them sits a Man. Big strong, muscular, no fat. Dressed in sexy female clothes. With knee high boots, and an amazing person to talk to and listen to. Someone that will be judged like me. We sit there and I see the girl that has just told me that her backside is sore from her first flogging she got a few days ago, and I look around this room of people all listening to a very “normal” guy standing in front of us talking about his fetish, what he finds interesting about it. Why it turns him on, why he pursues his fetish. Foot fetish.

I look around at these people; I see them, but strangely. I don’t see how they are different. I see how each of them represents me in some way. I see how they are true to themselves. How being honest about what and who they are will get them judgment, rejection, heartache, tears and sadness. But I see that they know, if they are not honest, and open where it is safe. Then they will be unfulfilled. Their lives will lose tiny bits of who they are as time passes, their pent up energy will accumulate and break one day, or they will start screaming and kicking to get out. But survive they will, probably not if they don’t find places and people like this. People like me. Because as I don’t judge them for political, religious or sexual or relationship preference. In the same way they don’t judge me.

And I realize that right now, at this moment, sitting here behind a beautiful muscular transvestite listening to someone talking about sucking toes, and licking feet and how sexy a low bridge on a woman’s size four foot is. In the basement of a bar. I know, that I have never felt more safe, never felt no judgment and stood no chance of being forced out of any cupboard that my life’s preferences and needs and desires has given me. Than I do now. Because someone else had to be true to them self and force me into the open.

And I know. I am home amongst the freaks, the degenerates and the people that you will judge without blinking an eye. Because you don’t know them, or perhaps you do and aren’t even aware.

I am home.

The Core of Amends

MY CORE

I drank, from my first drink at age ten I could not stop myself from wanting more. I got drunk that night and off and on over the years as teen ager every now and again when the drink was available it would happen.

So the fact that I was alcoholic was established pretty much early on. As much as I was not a regular drinker until age 19 the alcoholism was pretty much cast in stone.

When I did become a regular drinker, it was with a vengeance. Days in the Military as a young officer in an era where the armed forces was pampered in a country where the young men became part of a military fighting culture at young ages. This made for an organisation where a can of Beer was cheaper than a can of Coca-Cola.

Couple this with a very conservative Dutch Reformed Christian upbringing where even watching movies with an age restriction of 2-10 years old I was unthinkable. Keep in mind that these age restrictions was placed on everything that the Nationalist party of the time did not ban outright. And the chances that any child of the era could grow up freeing their minds to alternative thought processes was basically impossible.

It certainly was the case with me. I ended up being a Sunday school teacher and firmly believing masturbating is wrong and profusely prayed for forgiveness every time this happened.

I think what I basically want to say is that I became alcoholic even before I ever had the chance to define myself as a human being. I never figured out for myself exactly what I was and how I regarded life and the act of living it. I drank, and during these drinking years never grew up. As we alcoholics stop growing emotionally when we drink and there is basically no time or effort to want to discover yourself, we just keep on existing.

This was most certainly the case with me, and I most certainly had a basic idea what it was that I liked and what excited me and what drove me as a human being and much later on at the age of around 35 only started forming my own opinions around religion, however I never ventured into the arena of discovering any of these things as the alcohol just made sure that I kept hiding myself, the core me from the world.

The fact was that I knew on some level that I was a polyamorous, kinky atheist, I just had not added the label of alcoholic officially as well.

Through these years I found a degree of happiness and fell in love with a woman that became the centre of my crappy universe. I formed my life around her, and at times showed her bits of the thing I thought I might be but never all of it as the alcohol stopped me from finding this person in myself.

So the day came when my long standing secondary relationship with alcohol came to an end. That was the 10^th of November 2008.

That was the day I started discovering myself, that was the day I had to start facing the core of what defines me as a human being and what made me want to survive and live.

Over the next two years I plunged myself into subjects that I knew were things that I could not, or wanted to identify with. For a few months I plunged myself into finding out everything about alternative medicine for the reason that my wife had had an affair with a Homeopath. A long standing one which in a way saved my life. It still made me research everything surrounding the subject where I became a kind of lay expert in refuting the efficacy of any alternative medicine.

I followed this up with religion and specifically the one that I grew up in and soon came to realize that I was atheist, that I could not identify as a Christian and that I did not believe in what the religion stood for.

I then found a sub culture of kink and BDSM, which in itself was a journey that opened my mind to people in this world more than I think anything else ever would or could. In short I figure out I was kinky, and pretty much that this made me tick sexually.

Through this I found out about polyamory. It started out as a process where I justified my wife's un faithfulness, and I still believe that I am wrong in this. As she maintained throughout that she never stopped loving me. That she even loved two men at the same time. However that may be, I figured I was like that too, that I could love more than one person at the same time. A committed love and a love that would not judge.

However it became clear soon, that as they sometimes say, love is not enough. Because through this all I changed, the person emerging from eighteen years of drunken life. Was not the person that went into it, or even resembled the person that I had been before.

My wife was married to a different person totally. She still loved this person, but did not know him. She understood the things he did but could not agree with the things he did or identify with them. She stayed and shared a life and even understood him as she watched and supported and cried with me every step of the way through the fight of staying sober. My sobriety became our sobriety. My life however and what I became was not us anymore.

She knew me, as she supported me in ways that most men can only dream to get from their wives, she made sacrifices and changed her life for me. But through all of it I emerged for the first time as the core person that was even hidden throughout childhood, through a whole life until the age of 37.

She moved out a few weeks ago, I believe that she deserves her time for herself. I believe that she deserves happiness. I believe that she deserves a life.

My sweetheart, I have changed. What I represent in this world has changed. But through 11 years with you at my side my love has not changed. We can find what works for us.

I have done things to you when I was drinking and I have done things when I have been sober. I can not change the past as much as I wish I could. But I can say that I want to make amends. For the drinking and the sober years. And all I need is to know how I can make it better as you are the one person in this world that has suffered the most at my hands. And the person that deserves my amends the most.

For that I will always have regret and resentment towards myself. And can only hope that I will be given the opportunity to make it better.

I love you, as much as I love my sober life and our son.

The Godless, Kinky, atheist Alcoholic.

Alcoholism and atheism: Christo Hoffmann, The Godless Alcoholic.: Spiritual Awakening.

Alcoholism and atheism: Christo Hoffmann, The Godless Alcoholic.: Spiritual Awakening.: "I drove today. There was nothing different from usual. There was nothing strange, weird or wonderful. Actually to the contrary. It was a col..."

Spiritual Awakening.

I drove today. There was nothing different from usual. There was nothing strange, weird or wonderful. Actually to the contrary. It was a cold winter’s morning. It was really cold… Also the trees had no leaves. The sky seemed paler than usual, the grass next to the road seemed dried out more than it should be for the time of year. There was a dusty feeling from dry wind and cold and dreary winter as you can only feel at the tip of Africa.

In actual fact, what I saw this morning was no different from what I truly hate about winter. As an African, born and bred, raised and part of this continent in the deepest sense. The dust of the earth has formed part of my DNA through generations I am sure. The cold from the few months of winter is something that almost feels like it goes against the very nature of the dark hot sweaty continent.

But today I drove in silence, a diesel motor accompanying the hum of rubber on tar. Window open and the drive silence that can sometimes be so calming suddenly just swept over me. I realized that for close on two and a half years I have been sober. I realized that for two and a half years I have not had a drink or a hang over or that indescribable sense of loss, regret, self pity, pity for those who have to deal with me, insecurity, self loathing and most of all that sense of something lost that you can not put a name to until you have lived life. After a night of drinking.

I realized in that instant how beautiful this winters day was. I realized in that moment how some must feel when they have a spiritual awakening. I would love to have given it the same name. But I decide to not do that. Every day of my life, it is part of my sobriety and sanity. It is what works for me. And I have decided to leave the rest.

I realized this morning, how beautiful the earth we inhabit is. I stood in awe of the wonderful things that surround me everyday, the mere wonder at how far the human species must have come through millions of years of evolution. The grand scale of everything surrounding me made me realize how grand sobriety was. How it seemed like a massive accomplishment now looking back at time and then realizing that it was no gift… that it was not something achieved from allowing anyone to take my worries away, but that it seemed this beautiful on this ugly day because life and what surrounds us is beautiful. If we only open our eyes and look, look at nature’s accomplishments.

When we look at another living creature and that realization kicks in that through millions of years of evolution the magnificence of each of that animals forefathers’ fight for survival has culminated in what you look at. That is no small feat. That is no small thing. That is something some would like to attribute to a higher power. That is something some would like to believe was created. I believe that those who can not open their minds and see what has evolved around them can not evolve in themselves.

My evolution from drunken Christian to sober atheist has been nothing less than miraculous. It has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride and it has been no small feat. But in the grander scheme of things, hopefully my evolution will result in those after me having less to evolve from than I did.

It is a beautiful morning in Africa, and it feels like I am home.

Rock Bottom

Sometimes when we love, we love with everything we have; the person we place our trust in is the centre of our existence. That person becomes the reason for everything. You work, because you want to give them the absolute best you can.

You arrange your life for their convenience, you do things to try and win their love, their approval. I know this sounds unhealthy, and thinking that will not be wrong. It is. However when you are living it, it feels right.

The day I met my wife, she became my reason to live. I know now that in my alcoholic mind I did everything I could to win her approval. However we alcoholics do not do things like other “normal” people when we drink. In my case this meant that I tried to do everything I could in support. I made sure there were cooked meals for her. I made sure the house cleaning did not have to be done by her. I made sure washing was taken care of.

But what I failed to realize was that as long as I was drinking, it did not matter how much of myself I gave to her in other ways, because I was not truly giving all of myself it everything else could and would never be enough. I was not giving myself, not in the true sense of the word. Instead I gave her heartache and sorrow of a kind that would make her see the person that she fell in love with become a degenerate. And then the inevitable happened. She pushed me away. And in that I experienced rejection. Rejection that was evident in the way she talked to me and the way she made love.

Unfortunately I was not the one she was making love with. She had found another man that could give her what she truly needed. A man that could offer her a strong shoulder.

A man that could listen. A man that could give her advice. A man that would not necessarily always give her advice but also sometimes just listen. Where she could get rid of emotional baggage, where she found safety and understanding. Where she found sobriety in another human being away from the crazy world that I had led her into.

She had an affair, an affair of the worst kind. An affair where she found love.

No amount of love that I could offer in that time could have ever compared to the love that she must still have had for me, I was a weak and egocentric alcoholic. Yet she stayed. In some way I should be thankful that she found someone else to give her sober orgasms. Because that quite possibly saved my live.

When I found out about her affair. I had reached a rock bottom where my life did not just smash to pieces in seconds. I had reached a rock bottom where the one person that I had placed on a pedestal and whom in my eyes was above all suspicion in the world. In a few long soul wrecking days she became a slut to me, became human. This opened my eyes to see her human needs. This woke me out of a drunken stupor for long enough to realize that I needed help to end the insanity and self centered egotistical life I had been leading. I was confronted not only with her humanity and flaws, but also with her need for a sober man. A man that could be a man and not a bag of wind.

Thus when I sobered up I went to a place where I could find crazy people like me. People who would understand the emotional sewerage that my life had become. People who would see themselves in me.

That day my life began. That day I realized how much I did love my wife. That day that I thought everything I knew was gone.

I only now realize that I stood at the first day of the rest of my life then. The things that came after this has been utterly amazing and thrilling and life changing.

That is where my rock bottom was, where I began to become human again. The day she found honesty, was the day I found the small road to sobriety. And what a road its been.