Tonight, after a group of my friends and I were dropped off by our designated driver, he was pulled over for no apparent reason. He wasn’t speeding, used his turn signals, came to complete stops and drove as well as any sober person on the road is expected to.

Once pulled over, he did not smell of intoxicants, didn’t slur his words, provided the officer with proper ID, registration and proof of insurance. He was polite to the officer and did everything by the book. Even after all of this, he was still asked out of his car to do a series of sobriety tests, which he passed with flying colors, and then asked to take a Breathalyzer (Breath Alcohol Test) which showed a negligible .003 (a .080 is the legal limit in Michigan, and a .003 is equal to a glass of grape juice being consumed).

Even after jumping through all the hoops, he was still detained for over 20 minutes while the police did god-knows-what in their car.

So, is this police doing their job or is it misconduct?

What makes it worse is that Saturday night, another friend of mine suffered through a very similar situation. He did manage to get the cops to give him a reason for being pulled over — which was, get this, because he used his brights and didn’t turn them off fast enough when another car was coming from the opposite direction. In other words, they saw him leaving a bar and decided to use whatever excuse they could to pull him over.

I just don’t get it — I love the police for protecting the public from drunk drivers, but how far is too far? Where is the line between duty and our rights to move about freely without being harassed? Do we turn a blind eye because they’re just trying to keep us safe? Should the police be accountable for haphazardly pulling people over and subjecting them to sobriety tests without any probable cause?

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I’m not a one-night-stand kinda guy, in general… It’s just not the way I like to work things. The opportunities are generally there, but I’m typically lookin for love rather than a one-night-stand… I am not, however, immune to lure of a lovely woman — particularly when she’s as smart and easy going as she is gorgeous.

The story:

Last weekend, a friend — someone I’ve gotten to know over the past couple of months — joined a group of us to go spread the word about the bar, something that’s become a regular part of our promoting routine. She and I teamed up for a while, socializing with friends, acquaintances and many random strangers, evangelizing the gospel of the Sweet Cherry and just having a good time.

A little background: The bar is located in pretty small town area … The type of place where everyone knows everyone and there really isn’t more than 2 or 3 degrees of separation between anyone. Even the random strangers knew us, or of us through a friend or a cousin or whatever.

Now, anyone that knows me, for more than a day or so, will tell you that I’m a pretty social guy — People often describe me as tough and abrasive, sometimes intimidating, on the outside, but a fun-loving asshole once you get to know me… If you’re my friend, and you’re female, you’ll quickly understand that I’m gonna flirt with you one minute, treat you like my little sister the next and there’s no doubt that I’ll eventually say something to absolutely shock the shit outta you. I don’t know why I do it, but I do and it works for me. I guess when you go way over the top, it opens the door for the people around you to let loose and relax any social inhibitions they might have.

Sometimes, if you’re on the outside looking in, you might mistake my social ways as ‘game’ or ‘moves’ — so it didn’t surprise me when a few people asked me and my lovely, bar-promoting, partner if we were ‘together‘… It actually happened more than a couple times — I guess small town people tend to be a bit more small minded. They’re not used to us city-folk, er, something.

Anyway — she and I found it to be pretty funny. A couple times we played along for a minute before telling them and once toward the end of the night we just went so over the top with sarcasm and fake-love that the group just got the idea.

The night came to a close with us meeting back up with most of the rest of our promo group and going our separate ways. She’d run into a guy she was “into” and I had plans to meet some more people and continue enjoying my evening. The night ended exactly the way it was supposed to.

Fast-forward to the next Friday.

My lovely promotions assistant is covering the Friday night shift at the bar and a good group of people, mostly friends of the bar, show up to party the night away. We’re doin’ what we do — I’m socializing and shooting pool, making my occasional appearance behind the bar to pour a few and chat it up with someone. She’s pouring drinks and being likable — making most of the guys in bar drool the way a good bartender should.

In walks her “new man” — though she protests a bit when her sister announces it … He walks up to me to say hey, we chat for a while and the night proceeds nicely. Kinda.

Seems her “man” e. is a bit annoying. He spends the evening throwing down drinks and the seams of his sewn on personality start to show. To be totally honest, I didn’t notice how much of a schmuck the guy was at first, and I attributed the general disdain most of the guys had toward him to the fact that they were jealous… It wasn’t until the 4th or 5th time he tried to get me to go out to his truck to check out his $6000 stereo system that I decided he was a putz.

No problem though. Whats a bar without at least one annoying idiot to give everyone something to giggle about. Hell, once in a while, I play the part of that idiot. All in a nights work in the bar business.

At some point during the night, my bartender asks if we had an open room at the resort so she wouldn’t have to drive. She’d had a few and wanted to let loose a bit without the worries of the good old state police pullin’ her over at 3am.

Well, as it happens, we have a staff house on the property — nothing special, just some low-end rooms with clean sheets. It does come with a couple of rules — you can’t get outta control and wake any of the live-in staff up, and you have to stay alone. It’s not a flop-house for fucks sake. I explain that and she’s cool with it. Not sure if she’s as annoyed with e. as the rest of us are, or what…

We party on and a few of e.’s friends show up — really good people. They tell me they’ve not really seen him get as drunk as he is too often and that they’ll make sure he gets home ok. His annoying behavior gets easier to ignore now that he’s got some friends to keep him occupied — but he still manages to drag me out to his truck to show off his “awesome” system — doesn’t quite understand why I’m upset when he cranks it to 11; probably waking up the neighbors a half mile up the road. Then he can’t figure out how to turn it off. Fuckin’ pathetic.

I head back in the bar and it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not a happy camper. I’m waiting for the cops to roll in to show their appreciation for e. breaking the local noise ordinance. Thank god that doesn’t happen.

Jump to closing time…

Last call goes down like it always does — tabs get paid and people get on to wherever they’re gettin’ on to… I walk the last few out, including e. and his friends, and we’re all sayin’ our goodbyes when it starts to become obvious that e. has decided he’s not going anywhere. First he says he’s waiting for his girl … after he’s informed that he need not do that, he decides he can’t leave his truck in our lot.

Crap goes as crap goes and his friends have no luck getting his ass into their car. He’s shown his hand and it’s got nothing but jealous written all over it. He’s marked his property and now he’s drunk and afraid that he’s gonna loose it to someone else unless it comes with him.

She sees this and decides she’s not havin’ it. She heads back into the bar to do her closing and clean up work and leaves me and his buddies to deal with him. We never manage to get him into their car, instead he wanders off down the road. Whatever — he’s gone, and I’m more than happy to go finish closing the bar and get a well deserved nights sleep.

Back inside, I decide that I deserve a few minutes to throw back a beer and relax. My bartender agrees — she needs to vent and I let her. Her venting turns into some interesting conversation and the development of our new house shot (to be unveiled on the 25th).

It’s hard work developing a house shot. We decide that our new house shot needs to be Jager-Bomb based with a cherry theme and proceed to do some hands on R&D. 3 or 4 design samples later, we’re pretty relaxed and the walls have been torn down. e. is a no longer the topic of conversation, but relationships are still up for discussion.

Thats when she just about blows me off my barstool … Asks me why I never really hit on her. Our conversation has taken on a whole new dimension — we’re now in the drunk and I’m gonna tell you something I’d only say after too many shots dimension.

I gotta say, I didn’t exactly know how to respond to what she was telling me. Yes, thats right, me – speechless. I mean, sure, she’s hot — fuckin’ hot — but I seriously just filed her into my just friends file and you don’t ever really hit on someone thats in that category. Some of the things that came out of her mouth left me feeling more flattered than I’ve ever felt before. The ultimate ego boost.

Thats when it happened — I’m thinkin’ I made the biggest mistake I’ve made in a while. I pulled her record out of the just friends file and put it through the shredder.

I opened up and explained why I never thought about hookin’ up with her… I guess sometimes honesty is better game than anything the worlds best playaa can come up with — this woman was not used to someone being as blunt as I was, cause the tables were suddenly turned and she acted as if I’d just told her something nobody had ever told her before. I don’t think I really told her anything all that special … Just explained to her that she was a really cool girl and I didn’t think trying to get in her jeans was the way to show her respect.

A kiss led to another and we ended up where things like this tend to end up. I don’t think I need to go into detail…

So, why was this a mistake? Well … Maybe it wasn’t a mistake. But it was a really unexpected hookup and a drunk hookup. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean when they’ve had a few too many — but usually they mean exactly what they’re sayin.

There are so many unknowns when you wake up … It’s one thing when you hookup with someone random, but when it’s someone you’ve had in your just friends file and you’ve been all good with it, it really complicates things. On the one hand you wanna play it off like it’s not a big deal — but if you do that you risk making them feel cheap and used. On the other hand you can’t really make it a big deal ’cause once you cross that line it’s hard to recover if they think it’s not a big deal. Not to mention the fact that e. had just been blown off a few hours earlier.

Ah, well — I guess I’ll have to play this one by ear. I regret letting it get to where it got, but since I can’t un-ring that bell I’ll deal with the complications and try not to let anyone get busted up too bad.

Lessons learned:

A) Don’t be that jealous guy — being that guy will make your fears a reality.
B) Don’t hook up with a friend after you’ve been drinking. It really complicates life.

Knowing it would be a slow night tonight, Venetian Festival taking most of the normal local business, I didn’t really prepare for much. I gave “R.” the night off, I didn’t cut fruit, I didn’t even load up the ice bins.

Thats when it happened. The typically absent Polish resorters abandoned their bonfires and descended on the bar.

Thankfully, most Pols are easy to deal with … they want their Vodka Cran, their Johnny Walker Black and, of course, they want their shots with a 7-up back. No fruit for these guys and gals.

I’m helpin the folks out — bartending at the resort.  We’re having a “reunion show” for a band that used to play here back when I was 15 years old…

Little did I know that 350 people would show up…

The first 3 hours … Well, I couldn’t tell ya much about them.  I was too busy filling 15-drink orders from 3 girls while I was trying to pay attention to the 20-30 people ordering drinks at the bar.  Fuckin’ bedlam — I seriously didn’t even realize the band was playing ’til they were half way through their second set.

Once I got into the rythm of things, I realized there was an insane world of activity going on around me … Even managed to jump over the bar and get between a couple of guys gettin’ ready to throw down, before it actually happened… But there really was a solid couple of hours where I became a drink making machine — Nothing but pour, pour, pour …

8 hours and, nearly $4000 in drink sales later, I’m sittin’ here chatting with Capital “R” trying to get a grasp on what had just happened…  By my figures, I opened over 500 beers and mixed just as many drinks …  All the while, not drinking a single ounce of alcohol … Well, ’til It was 30 minutes to closing.  Then I finally let myself crack open my first beer — for me.

Ah, fuckit — so much more to talk about right not… but the dogs are barkin’ … it’s 3 hours past closing time and I am SPENT!  Maybe I’ll post a more accurate rundown in the morning (afternoon) …

G’Night all!

P.S. — If you ain’t the staff and if you ain’t fuckin’ the staff — go the fuck home.

The ‘N’ Key on this POS laptop fell off a few days back … So, dear letter ‘N’ … Fuck you for falling off.  Fuck you for making it so hard to do simple things … Like type any word with an ‘N’ in it.

I never noticed how many words use the ‘N’ until it fell off … There really are many of them.

You may wonder why I’m going on about the letter ‘N’ — it’s quite simple really … The only other thing I feel like writing about would require that I empty an amazing amount of hate that I’m holding close to my heart right now.  I’m gonna hold on to that hate as a reminder of the pain that caused it.

Once upon a time, when things were real shitty and I was feelin’ down, I’d hop in the Talon, roll down all the windows, open up the sunroof and drive…  I’d drive for hours, getting lost, not caring …

Now the Talon has been replaced by a friends Shadow 1100 — no need to roll down the windows; there are none.  Nothing but the sound of the wind and the adrenaline rush …

Things have gone all upside down and backwards over the past couple weeks.  I haven’t posted much because of it.  Seems that all things bad have a theme this time:  Alcohol.

Frankly, I’m ashamed to admit that my family is in the booze peddling business…  I guess in theory I don’t have anything against alcohol.  It’s the alcohol abuse I’ve got a problem with.  I’m sick of watching people fuck up their lives … It’s sad.

On a good note — I just had the worlds best Singapore Noodles.  Singapore Noodles make me smile.

• Don’t tell me not to light my own cigarettes. I’ve been smoking longer than I’ve been driving — the process is second nature and I’m quite good at it. Besides that, trying to get at the lit cigarette you’re dangling in front of my face is really quit difficult and much more distracting than lighting my own.
• Please don’t try to take things out of my hands. Especially lit cigarettes. Especially after spending the past 10 minutes explaining why I should be concentrating on the road rather than lighting my own smokes. That red hot ember burning a hole through a few layers of skin is a touch distracting and I believe we’re trying to avoid that.
• Don’t tell me, over and over and over and over, why I should be using the cruise-control. I’m not nearly as drunk as you are and I’m quite happy with the way the pedals work. I feel much more in control — and it keeps my right foot from getting bored.
• Don’t get mad when I ask you to stop yelling at me. A few seconds ago you’re primary goal was to keep me from being distracted; the yelling is a bit of a contradiction.  It’s frustrating and will eventually end with me telling you to shut the fuck up at the top of my voice which will in turn make you sad and angry.  Lets avoid that.
• Don’t give me directions unless I ask for them. I know where I’m going. I just drove there, the 1 shot and 4 beers I’ve had over the past 4 hours have not erased my memory.
• When you insist on giving me directions, please consider that you’re wrong and if I take the path you’ve chosen, we’ll likely end up in Joliet rather than your house. Don’t get pissy when I tell you your wrong and PLEASE don’t get even pissier when you realize that I’m right. Again, not conducive to my concentrating.
• When the radio starts playing that song I like and I try to turn it up, don’t grab my hand, turn the radio off and explain to me why I shouldn’t be adjusting the radio. A) It’s really frustrating — I just wanna listen to my song. B) Jerking my hand causes a chain reaction. It is attached to the rest of my body. My body is currently working a couple of pedals and a steering wheel. You see what I’m getting at with this one?
• The drive home is not a great time for you to explain to me why you think I’m as drunk as you are. Here’s how this works. A) You weight 105lbs and I weight over twice that. B) I’ve consumed less. C) You have refused to eat a damn thing, so you’re tiny little ass currently being fueled by nothing but Miller light and Jagermeister. I don’t care how you do the math, I’m still sober when your blood alcohol level is well over .08 — Sorry if this seems unfair, but it’s just the way it works.

Thats all — Just follow those simple rules and we’re golden.

* Note to the general public: I do not in any way advise you drive drunk. Even if you’re not drunk, take a cab. Drinking and driving can land you in a stinky jail cell with really rude cops and people that would otherwise be homeless. Also, you could kill someone — and that entails crying, a dead person, lots more jail time, probably some guilt and lots of other undesirable things.

A little note:

I won’t mention her name or even an initial. Although I do keep this journal a pretty good secret from most people, I’d hate for someone who knows the two of us to eventually put 2 and 2 together. Not that talking about this sort of thing is bad, but so many people are quick to judge and label this type of thing … I’m just going to keep it as anonymous as possible.

I’m going to describe her from my point of view and share a few insights that she’s given me. I’m going to try and do this in a way that’s very neutral — Not holding back, but not judging her behavior either. It’s going to be a bit difficult as, I’ll admit, I’m very biased.

Since I don’t outline anything I write, and I try not to revise too much, this may come out as a bunch of randomness or a cohesive group of statements. Neither you or I will know ’til I’m done writing it and you’re done reading.

Ok, so I think the Dx is wrong. Since the Dx is wrong, the Rx is (probably) wrong. In the end a bad Dx + a bad Rx probably = a pointless spinning of wheels and a liver thats getting pounded for no reason.

Sometimes she really does fit the Dx of someone that’s severely and chronically depressed. Lets run down her behavior and make sure we agree. She:

• Feels helpless and empty.
• Hypersomnia (Sleeps forever sometimes, Insomnia others).
• Endless self-loathing.
• Unable to feel pleasure — of any kind.
• No energy.
• Suicidal thoughts … and unfortunately intentions.

All those typical indicators … All the obvious things you’d tell your PDoc about, right. Now here’s where the problem starts… Despite having all those indicators she also:

• Becomes extremely irritable.
• Talks on ten levels of tangents.
• Makes lists and gets ultra organized (We’re not talkin’ about your average make a shopping list behavior).
• Doesn’t “Give a shit” — not in the depressed, just don’t care way, but in the aggressive intentional distancing way.
• Things are very black and white — there is no gray area.

While I can see these things as indicators of a manic state, from our conversations I don’t think she’s aware of these things a lot of the time. In not being aware of them (to the extent that a 3rd party like myself or others around her are) I don’t know that she expresses them to her PDoc — which I think may be a common reason for mis-diagnosis of a bipolar patient.

Now, lets add some alcohol. Yeah, she likes to party a bit — as do I. So when we add a few drinks we get all the above behavior — both the depressive and the manic. Usually the cycle goes from a daily/weekly rotation to a washer on the spin cycle. Sometimes she’ll go the whole night in a good place, sometimes it’ll be a bad place — but both sides are elevated 100%.

To make things worse — she gets pretty neurotic … Now, most of us are neurotic to some extent, and for many of us this behavior is magnified when we’re intoxicated so maybe this isn’t an indicator of anything at all, but sometimes I wonder.

“He is incapable of holding an external dialog. Even when he seems to be interacting with someone else – the narcissist is actually engaged in a self-referential discourse. To the narcissist, all other people are cardboard cut-outs, two dimensional animated cartoon characters, or symbols. They exist only in his mind. He is startled when they deviate from the script and prove to be complex and autonomous.”
– Sam Vaknin

Although that quote only describes her when she’s really has too much, it does (from an outside and much more sober point of view) seem like the places she’s coming from. In her defense, I have seen the world from that place once or twice (or 10 times) after having a few too many as well, so again — maybe nothing.

Ok, so … Thats where I’m gonna stop. I’m distracted and having a real hard time writing much more about it — I’m even pondering deleting the last few paragraphs, but since I don’t really want to censor myself I guess it’s gotta stay.

What it all boils down to is that I’m worried about her.

Her current Rx (Effexor, Lamictal and one other med I can’t remember) isn’t working so she’s weening off the Effexor and on to Cymbalta (Quickly moving up to 30mg BID instead of trying 20mg BID to start).

Her suicidal confessions to me the other night.

I just can stand to see my best friend in this state. And I surely can’t stand by just watching and waiting if I think she’s been mis-diagnosed.

I’m guessing if anyone reads this they’ll have an opinion one way or the other — Tell me what you think.

Don’t try and make light of it please — Feel free to be negative about any other post on the site, but not here. If you can’t be constructive, I’ll kindly ask you to shut the fuck up.