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MY RECOVERY CONTINUED....
...... In 2003, I saw a psychiatrist for the first time, having acknowledged to myself before meeting with her that I might need to be open to a medicinal solution to my mental quandary. My depression symptoms had become more severe, and I felt as if I was floundering. She wanted to prescribe Lexapro, trazodone, and Wellbutrin, but as a  precondition she insisted that I cease drinking. For two weeks, I did just that. When I began to feel better, I continued taking the medication, and returned to drinking, assured in my notion that a lack of depression would enable me to drink in moderation. In no time at all, I was drinking to great excess again. Within months I stopped seeing the psychiatrist, and self-tapered off the medications.
......The two years that followed comprised a dismal series of failed companies, botched consulting assignments, intermittent unemployment, numerous geographic moves and personal economic disaster. It was during this period that I became an Every Single Day drinker permanently, beyond recall. Somehow I managed to land another executive position at yet another startup here in San Diego. As soon as my health insurance was established, I began seeing another psychiatrist, determined to have yet another go at returning stability and mental health to my life. That became perhaps the worst cocktail of all - multiple anti-depressants, tried in various combinations, trazodone abuse mixed with excessive daily alcohol consumption. I even tried acamprasote, which was supposed to help me crave less alcohol and taper down entirely. When that didn't work, I went all the way to disulfiram -Antabuse- in an attempt to shed the drinking habit I could not seem to let go of my own free will. After a week of cautious abstinence, I began tapering off the Antabuse in the hopes that I was “all-better” now. That wasn't really why. Really I just figured I wouldn't be able to have "just a couple drinks" while taking it. Two days later I had a few drinks. Some of the Antabuse remained in my system, and I experienced one of the most horrific 3-hour periods of my life. Some people vomit when they combine alcohol with Antabuse. I became flushed, hallucinatory and paranoid. I felt as if I might physically explode. I could sense each person that walked past gaping and leering into my turgid soul, passing terminal judgment upon me, plotting my demise. It was the last time I made that mistake - I was done with Antabuse, and done with my psychiatrist.
......Six months later, in the haze of a bender, in the midst of a thunderous downpour, I passed out face down in a deep mud puddle beneath a dumpster, a mere 20 feet shy of the front door to my apartment building. Fortunately, someone saw my plight and called an ambulance. I remember none of this. My first memory is being jolted awake in the ambulance, a shot of adrenaline, choking up dumpster runoff. They told me I hadn’t been breathing. When we reached the hospital, I snarled at the doctor, asked him if I was legally bound to remain in the hospital. He said I was not, so I stumbled out into the dark of night, with no idea where I was. Miraculously, I found my way home. The next day I awoke to searing pain and agitation; I began drinking anew.
.....A week later, sitting woozy on a curb, lights flashing in my face, I heard paramedic from the same ambulance say to me: “Wait a second . . . . . . didn’t I just see you last week?” But I lacked the emergency status for a second hospitalization. Instead, I was handcuffed and dropped at detox. The next day, I drank again.
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...MHSA PROP 63
....MY RECOVERY