Grand Canyon Prison Blues

In the late fall of the year 2000, while Autumn leaves were falling, I was separated from my wife.

Also, I was constantly drunk, popping Hillbilly Heroin or (Oxycodone) and hanging-out in the filthiest places, namely, Country Music Bars called "Whisky's" and " Little Nashville."

Late one chilly-night, drunk out of my skull, I got picked up staggering along in the middle of a street called Wyse Road in Dartmouth. Locked away for being intoxicated in a public place.

I guess I put up quite a fight before being battered and beaten by the city cops and thrown in the Drunk Tank. 

The next morning I woke up in a freezing-cold Halifax Jail cell and was told that I was not going anywhere except to the local court house.

I was charged with assaulting two police officers, and resisting arrest to which I pleaded guilty and was subsequently sentenced to one year at the old (torn down now) Sackville Correctional Center, located, or "tucked away" I should say, behind a forested area in the suburbs called Cobequid Road. 

I was friends with a beautiful young lady at the time, and when I called her from the Jail to tell her what had happened, and to ask if she would be there for me when I got out, she started singing a song that I'd never heard before, called "There is no Arizona."

And then she Laughs hysterically, and informs me to turn on the country music station, listen to the words of the song and I would have the answer to all my questions. 

Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, my beautiful mystery lady wouldn't accept anymore phone calls from me while I was locked-up.

And when I was released, she had moved. 

I haven't seen her since. 

Maybe she lives in Arizona. However, that place does not exist for me. I will never go there. 

No Painted Desert, no Sedona, no Grand Canyon, and certainly no Arizona.

Thanks for reading.

~ Outlaw Mann

Jamie O'neal- There is no Arizona. This song is for you know who you ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_vJcr3al48

The Freedom of Kanye

The term "Free Thinking" has been in the news of late.

My Personal Philosophy is that "Free Thought" is the ability to not play "follow the leader" for adults. Not being led around by the nose by a group of so-called Peers.

Free thinking is just that. It is mine and mine alone. Free of any and all outside influences; such as religious conditioning, or 12 step programming.

If I am following your lead, then it suggests to me that my way of thinking is somehow severely flawed. Or else why would I need to follow your way of thinking? I was born with my own brain, I have no real use or application with someone else's.

To tell you about the Author here, I am a recovering alcoholic. One who attended, with very little success, for the past 25 years, the program of AA. As a result, I saw and I learned many opposing views from most of the other members I came into contact with.

I was eventually ostracized. And, because I questioned their Big Book, I was told I was "mentally incapable of grasping the Program of AA."  A slogan, which, by the way, is the exact wording in their AA Big Book.

It is now my opinion, that these People who have been conditioned and "programmed" by AA, may in fact be sober and happy, but they are in no way mentally free. They remain locked up inside their individual Mental Prisons.

Least of all are they free thinkers who are practicing their own free thought. Instead, they peruse and skim over the Big Book, adding their own interpretations where needed. Mostly to fit their Guru agenda. Next, they get programmed; and in the 12th and final step, they are told to go on a mission or missionary quest to bring other drunks and addicts into the fold. 

Day after boring Day they manage to stay sober while they memorize the ancient 1939 text and repeat after Bill Wilson; rinse and repeat. In my opinion, certain members are merely practicing a Christian religion of sorts. Or else repeating a mantra and thus programming themselves to think like Christians.

For example: They demand in a not-so-subtle way, that one should eventually acquire a belief in something outside of their own flawed selves.."a higher power." This will, I am told, save me from going to jail again. 

It might also, if I happen to be a Mother, help me get my kids back and maybe just maybe keep me from getting high or drunk again. A higher power, or a belief in a higher power, they tell me, can do all that and more. Ah, but here's the catch. I need to follow someone first, a "Sponsor."

I also need to constantly go to meetings and hear the same nonsense repeated day after day...and I dare not complain either, or I am told I am without Gratitude. A Sin, in their eyes.

If I do all that, well it's then, and only then, that I "GET" the program; or something.

Who knows? Just like the Christian concept of a reward in Heaven opposed to the Hell of getting Drunk, AA has a list of 12 promises—which is also found in the Big Book.

As for their humble opinion of me?


Well, "Garth doesn't get the program."


Q: How often did I hear that?


A: Too damned many times to count.


Well you're damn right I don't get whatever it is I'm supposed to get. Or maybe I do get it. And I am appalled and repelled by the lack of inner strength that some (not all) of these mental weaklings seem to have.

I feel I can judge them now, because I was one of those Mental Weaklings.

What's absent there, in AA, is a Nietzschean philosophy; one that's pretty obvious to me. The "Will to Power." Or having one's own mind and having the power to free your mind from the societal conditioning that it has been trapped in since birth and early youth.

My thinking was once so corrupted that I was told that I needed other AA members to do my thinking for me.

That may have been true at first..but some of us do get physically and mentally better. And when I got well, I took a look around and saw others stuck in the victim mode.

Following the guru's latest suggestions, no matter how asinine and ludicrous, seemed like an avenue toward another disastrous relapse for me..and it was. And I did, time after time.

So, I thought that one thing is for sure here; If I don't want to get a watered down form of Christianity programmed into my brain, I had better start questioning this new environment.

Thanks to a few AA members, who were on the same page as me in life, I opened my eyes, or should I say, they helped me open my own eyes. And you might already know what I am about to say.

Yes, I'm on the same page as the great Kanye West. And if he is saying what I think he's saying, then he's right. It isn't a racial thing. It has no color. It isn't white or black slavery. It's a "Mental" form of slavery, and the truth is that it is only acceptable when one is asleep.

Kanye talked about the little girl who was having loads of fun jumping and playing on the coffee table until her Auntie, who she didn't like, came and yelled at her to stop and pointed out that it was a table she was jumping on.

The childhood undeveloped brain will interpret this episode later in life as: " I am bad and I should not be having fun." The conditioning and programming for this little girl may have started right then and there.

I can guarantee you she will remember the episode until death..especially any time she is carefree. The memory will come back and hit her like a brick. Adult humans are the only animals who form loving relationships and physical attachments to material things. Kids just have fun.

Also, this thing where we always want the greener grass in the neighbor's yard instead of our own well trimmed lawn, which is exactly the same color. After we become awakened, we see how crazy our thinking is. And we change it. Now it's no longer acceptable to try and be clones of someone else. Or to continue to play, "I hate me, so now I wanna be you."

We all have our own persona; it's the one we were programmed into when we were toddlers. And most times it is not our own. It is the hand me down mental programming from generations long gone.

The conditioning and programming of our youth is best administered into us when we are too young to know better. It can be called childhood mental slavery. And some children get programmed more than others.

These unfortunate children get broken mentally beyond repair. They grow up and learn to hate any type of authority. School becomes a trigger for their pain. And, if they choose to pull that trigger, as a result, some become mass murderers.

If then, we choose to stay in that mental state, it is, as Mr. West so eloquently said, very much a "choice."

My buddy, Mister D, once said it best, " We either Stay asleep, or wake the f**k up. But we can't do both."

So I choose to "Stay Woke."

Thank you for reading this.

GWM

My Opioid Overdose Diary

"He who is not busy being born is busy Dying" ~ Bob Dylan.



Last June, nearly a year ago, at age 55, I was given up for dead.

I  was at the Dartmouth General—tubes down my throat, intravenous, interstitial, etc. etc...my heart had stopped and subsequently had been jump-started again by the staff physicians.  My family were called.

And now, 11 months later, I feel reborn, clean and sober and willing to tell everyone who will listen, what works and what doesn't work.

The heart beat that nearly stopped for ever, goes on and on once more. I have also once again found my voice.

You see, it seems I had once again purposely overdosed by swallowing a handful of Opioids. The brand name doesn't matter, the content is all the same. Pain Killers, the illegal kind, in pill form. If that wasn't enough, I had quickly washed them down with 2 large bottles of Listerine Gold.

I then proceeded to calmly walk out of my apartment at 203, 3, Farthington Place.

I remember taking a long cool breath of crisp Dartmouth air before turning left onto Brule Street, and suddenly everything went Dark. Someone from a nearby Transition House saw me collapse and quickly called the Ambulance who were followed by Police.

I woke up in the most uncomfortable position, flat on my back, strapped to a rock-hard hospital bed. My father, Charles Sr., was sitting in a chair to my left. The 78 year old guy told me there and then that I was finished and he was finished. The bell had sounded. The 12th round was over and the self-hatred fight within me was now over for good. He politely said that 27 years of beating myself to a pulp in the twin Cities of Halifax and Dartmouth was long enough. I was going back to the place of my birth, located on the southern tip of the province of Nova Scotia,Canada.

This old man, my father, who had once contributed to some of my long ago pain, was now my savior. He gathered up what was left of me, placed me in the passenger seat of his Dodge Pick-up, and brought me back here—back to the tiny fishing Village of Lockeport.

I was busy dying back then, now I'm busy Living. It's early in my awakening—that I do realize. But my eyes are fully open. And even though I am not in that moment, there doesn't seem to be any mountains to climb in this one. So I will stay in this rather than that. I hope you understand my meaning here. It's important not to allow my thoughts to roam into a future that hasn't yet arrived.

I'm Grateful for what I've learned from the 27 years of creating my own private "Heaven and Hell." One which included Jails, Institutions, and AA meetings. Yet, I no longer want any part of that life..because even the life of being an AA member has its drawbacks, if one allows it.

For example, Love and Tolerance, although it is always preached in the rooms of AA, is seldom practiced. They also preached, but seldom practiced, that if one should trudge along on some invisible but omnipotent and powerful path, and listen closely to the token "Guru of the Month" who just happens to have years of questionable sobriety, and even more questionable credibility, you may, just may, stay sober.

In my case, I was too old and too tired and damaged to listen to anyone. Especially a load of Bill Wilson disciples (although they won't admit that) whose literature hadn't been updated in 80 years.

I knew that I somehow had to find "Me"..and then, and only then, I would find the illusive so-called "god of my understanding." I found out later, that the search was from the inside outward, not the other way around, as they had tried but failed to instill in me.

I already had all the built in tools for finding out who I was and what made me tick, I didn't need their 12 step programming. I had been programmed my entire life. I needed to be deprogrammed.

All I needed was 12 months of fresh air and meditation..soul searching in the solitude of nature.

I went walking along the local beach—strolling along on the smooth white sand—while the roar of the rugged North Atlantic played a natural symphony for me and my shaky footsteps in the background.

Then, in late Autumn, I went Deer hunting with bow and arrow. With no plans to hunt, only to find a quiet place to sit and reflect on the how and why of it all. To make a new friend to this so called "Self." This material body and psychological mind.

I meditated inwardly about the totality of brain and brawn. The Alcohol and foreign chemicals that I had poisoned myself with for years, were suddenly were no match my new and healthy thoughts and freshly oxygenated brain. And the human philosophy that makes us want to name-tag everything disappeared. Nothing had a man-given or god given name-tag. It simply"Was." And I was part of it. A being not a doing.

The name given to me by my mother at birth no longer held any significance. 

The Ego that was continuously whispering for me to get drunk or high was no-longer there. 

Garth and MacIntosh were just two words assigned to me without my choosing. 

In hindsight I could have been called "Outlaw" and it would have been much more fitting.

I'm suppose to refer to myself as an alcoholic and an addict. But is that who or what I really am? 

Does that truly define me?  We are those humans who hated ourselves at one time, and had no voice, and no one who would truly listen without prejudice. We are now ready to shout to the rafters about the importance of staying chemical free. Of free thinking, and freedom of thought, which, in my opinion, is true freedom.

" I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect." - Jimmu Krishnamurti