I Didn’t Quit Drinking to Get High On Hope and Change

With the holidays fast approaching, I thought it might be a good time to jot down some thoughts on drinking.  Or, more specifically, not drinking – booze or Kool Aid.

Recently, I celebrated my eighth year of sobriety.  I have 9/11 to thank for that; it was shortly after the attacks that I began attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous with regularity.  I’d been to AA once before, at 25, when a DUI arrest landed me in “the rooms.”  But at the time, I still had 15+ years of drinking to get out of my system, plus a mid-life crisis to go through that sent me flying out to La-La Land (which is where I was when the towers fell back in my home town).

I’m proud I haven’t had a drink since 2001.  After spending decades trying to flee my “issues” like an adolescent hamster on an existential wheel, the fog gradually lifted from my brain and I stopped running.

They say when you drink, you stop growing emotionally, that you’re almost in a state of suspended animation – normal on the outside, stunted on the inside.  Sobriety gets the spiritual gears moving again.  Suddenly, years of pent-up, delayed maturation caught up with me – real fast. (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, Alcoholics Anonymous, BDS, Big Book, Bill Wilson
Posted Nov 23rd 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 21587877 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/11/23/i-didnt-quit-drinking-to-get-high-on-hope-and-change/I+Didn%27t+Quit+Drinking+to+Get+High+On+Hope+and+Change2009-11-23+13%3A03%3A43Charles+Winecoff

In Defense of Obama’s Safe School Czar (Sort Of) – or I Was A Teenage ‘Lolito’

When I was 17 and desperate to get out of the house (and away from my parents), I wrote a crafty, fawning letter to a teacher whom I had admired from afar (a gay man 20 years my senior, who looked like a teddy bear), then sat back and waited.  It didn’t take long to get a response, a phone number, and then a meeting that I managed to turn into a date.  He thought I was very “mature” for my age.  I thought so too. 

As soon as I turned 18, I moved in with him.  (Note: he was not my first target; I had a terrible crush on my American History teacher in high school – another gay man – but he was partnered and I scared him off.)  Needless to say, we did not live happily ever after.

Married life brought out my true immaturity.  He was set in his ways, I had no discipline.  He liked dinner parties and lectures, I liked wearing silver lame’ pants to discos.  He had plenty of friends, gay and straight, some of whom he’d known since I was an infant.  They were very nice to me – but I was jealous of them all.  I threw tantrums.  “You love them more than you love me!”  (more…)

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Tags: Christianophobia, Christopher Isherwood, Cruising, Desperate Houswives, Dick Cheney
Posted Oct 9th 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 239946205 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/10/09/in-defense-of-obamas-safe-school-czar-sort-of-or-i-was-a-teenage-lolito/In+Defense+of+Obama%27s+Safe+School+Czar+%28Sort+Of%29+-+or+I+Was+A+Teenage+%27Lolito%272009-10-09+12%3A03%3A06Charles+Winecoff