Sideeffect2, I've been riding since I was 16, so I have decades of use of fairly high-powered rr machines (mostly 1000+ Guzzi's). Didn't matter. One mechanical anamoly at 30 mph, then I high-sided the thing: it resembles if anything a deus ex machina event. I have concluded my riding life.

Barry, yes, flailing chest is a unique sensation, and it hurts a lot more than being shot or knifed, each of which I also experienced once. I am walking around but it's not like I have a plan. When they cut me and strapped some titanium to the clavicle I broke and displaced, in an operation Wednesday, I was sent back to my room with nothing more than a sling and my IVs -- but it felt much better than it did for the week prior when I was just lying in the hospital bed mainlining morphine. My plan is only to never feel like this again. I wish to achieve a state of personal sovereignty, and maximize the richness of the remaining 30 years of life I have budgeted for myself.

I have zero present interest in alcohol, fortunately, just as I have zero interest in eating. I do credit some of this to naltrexone, which demonstrated to me that (through my drinking actions) I have previously modified/damaged my brain. I don't think at all about booze unless I'm reflecting here or wondering if I should I'm taking this episode as something more than a coincidence or bit of bad luck. Instead I am taking it as the last life lesson I should expect, in regard to self-conquest or self-healing.

Had I been drinking beer or wine all night, as I used to do when working in my shop or hangar, I doubt I would have made it. I probably would have lay down in the grass at the end of the runway and gone to sleep for good.

As it happens, I had to walk almost a mile from the end of the runway (where I flipped the bike, or my bike's dirty hydraulics flipped me) back to my hangar and then drive myself five miles to the town emergency room. I have no idea how I managed to do that, either. My jeans and the cab of my pickup are soaked with blood. They simply cut off and discarded everything I was wearing above the waist. I suppose I truly wish to live a few years yet.

I'm very grateful I didn't check out with a BAC level that would have embarrassed everyone I know, and stained my childrens' opinion of me the balance of their lives. I'm also very grateful that I still have friends I can call upon today, being in need as I am. I threw away a lot of years seeking alcohol-induced numbness, so I'm hardly angry about my circumstances now, which occurred while sober. I put myself on that bike at 11 p.m. and I put myself in the situation where I need activity and thought to fill the evening hours now that I have broken up with booze.

While I don't believe in the old AA saw about "finally reaching bottom" I certainly now believe that there is such a thing as a point of no return. I've been given the privilege -- be it a secular accident or something more fraught -- to live yet again. I hope I retain the honesty to remember this two weeks of hell, and continue to act with greater respect toward the downside effects that none of us can escape forever. Much as the booze lies to us and tells us that the alcohol sympathy tonight is worth far more than the morning reckoning when we realize that nothing, whatsoever, was improved the night before through the alcohol-induced warm fuzzies, I need now to see my many lies for what they are. This will either be the most important thing to happen to me since my children were born, or I will have to abandon all hope and calmly await my own condemnation.

This will either be the most important thing to happen to me since my children were born, or I will have to abandon all hope and calmly await my own condemnation., or something else might happen.

Still, life has a way of making tough choices for us.

Barry, thanks for another provocative observation.

Choice -- its presence or absence in our thinking -- seems to me to be the key. Once we abandon our capacity to choose, we abandon any claim on an agentic life. However, in a therapeutic culture, we are trained to deemphasize our obligation to choose our behaviors. I find freedom in renewing my commitment to a life of chosen behaviors. I find jail in externalizing my (chosen) circumstances, blaming others, my genetic code, a society that often makes no sense to me.

To your point, I might rephrase your comment "life has a way of making tough choices for us" more strongly. I might say, "Life *is*, at bottom, tough choices." At least if we view life as something more than a biological wheezing, leading us in the direction of the inevitable extinction. If we are mere biological wheezers, then Leaving Las Vegas is absolutely a rational path to take.

Once we're damaged, and we are all damaged (through our choices, through those of others that affect us), everything becomes a matter of choice. Some of us are first broken by life's choices when very young, others (more fortunate) have the opportunity to build a healthier self before being clobbered.

Most of us hold dear an abstraction of ourselves, which is to say, we prize the abstraction that is our lives. But most of us also surrender contextual choice-making for momentary pleasures and diversions. I struggle to respect my own life abstraction, and I allowed alcohol to flow into my life and quietly disable my higher purposes. So while life becomes a march through a dark tunnel, with brief moments of enlightened insight, there's no question that alcohol helps us befriend the darkness. But eventually, for everyone, the onrushing train does appear.

I am 13 days AF (and naltexone-free) now. Many, many big issues to sort out, and I rue the loss of the evening companionship of friends and drink. Still, no cravings and few thoughts directing me back to the convenience store for a pint of bourbon or bottle of wine. I've lost 10 lbs in these two weeks and 20 lbs since I first touched the nal last summer. It will be a challenge to re-integrate this version of me (the version that doesn't avoid evening phone calls, so I am not discovered; the version that needs a cane to walk to the corner; the version that experiences vertigo and the spins if he so much as coughs or has the hiccups; the version who sacrificed some of his utility through decades of selfish self-medicating) with any social reality. But the fact is that if I choose appropriately -- choose appropriate behavior, work, and companions -- I have a shot. I know that if I abandon the responsibility to choose, every minute of every day, my life is what it was and no more: I know my life is over.

This latter is the conclusion of Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) in the Deadwood drama: in the end he says, "I am tired of pretending to be a better man than I am, and please let me embrace my hell and march toward my hell, in the manner that I find most agreeable." He then dresses elaborately before his morning whiskey and cards, as though he knew, absolutely knew, that shortly he would be shot in the back. While the story describes his assassination as a criminal act, generating sympathy, the underlying note is that he chose to go down, and simply wished to be dressed appropriately for his very certain end. So we are obligated to choose, if we are in this community of abusers, between going down with maximal style, or confronting our self-delivered lapses in potential.

It's important, to me, to remember always that the nal does not make choices for me. I cannot unload my agentic responsibilities to a pill, to a healing professional, or even to a sympathetic lover.

Hi Buena Vista. I started Naltrexone when you did, it helped then my drinking crept back up. I've worked recently on fixing the underlying issues and am now less than 20 drinks/month consistently. What you say makes good sense, but I was starting to feel a bit like Nicholas Cage, and now I just feel pretty damn good.

I didn't really believe this problem was controllable, but now I know it is.

So there

The words in bold may be significant.

The important thing is if Naltrexone isn't working for you then you need to try another method.

If you want to stick with Nal I would advise getting yourself into a place where you really want to stop. You need to be able to recognise and respond to Nal working it's magic, because if you are simply carrying on drinking because you 'want' to then nal won't take the drink from your hand.

If however it's plain not working, then get onto something else.

Wow, BV. I'm really sorry to hear that. What a kick in the nuts.

Yes, please start a progress thread for that and let us go through it with you. You'll need somebody.