I Forgive You and...Me. Entry #20

On December 10th 2012, I spoke at the F-You (Forgiveness Project) founded and organized by my good friend Tara Muldoon. I’ve spoken at a couple of them before touching on topics from my past alcoholism and Pro-Criminal lifestyle along with sex education through stories of my past selfishness and womanizing. Naturally, it was an honor to be a featured speaker at the two year anniversary. The event made me go into deeper reflection now in hinds sight, have I really forgiven all of the people whom I felt wronged me? Have I asked for forgiveness from all the people I’ve done wrong? Sometimes I feel like it’s easier to get in front of an audience of people and tell my story than it is to look in the mirror and face myself or even talk to god and ask for forgiveness. Let me explain, in past blog entries I’ve spoken about my grown connection with God while being incarcerated. The belief never goes away but the connection weakens when we as Ex-Con’s are all caught up with our lives on the outside with all the temptations and life’s whirlwinds that we live in. I apologized to my Mom, Fiancé, friends, and family members for the stress I put them through. I repented to God for my sins hoping that in exchange He would grant me earlier freedom. But its one thing to ask for forgiveness, saying the words sorry or I apologize but it’s a whole different thing when you live like a forgiven or a forgiving person. I’ve done a lot of wrong things in my past; I’ve cheated on numerous girlfriends due to drunken looseness, I’ve lied many times to spend more time with my old friend the bottle, I’ve sold drugs to customers that other dealers would turn down, I betrayed friends and been betrayed by so-called friends. The list goes on and on but I’ve learned one thing, I can’t keep it all trapped in my chest. I’ve asked for a lot of forgiveness from different people but it’s truly impossible to get to everyone therefore I have to start with myself. I cannot beat myself up for my past because I know I’m not perfect, only God is perfect. But we need to understand that we are all works in progress and no matter what, we can’t start asking for forgiveness and giving forgiveness without forgiving ourselves first.

Liqour and Triggers Entry #19

So another Caribanna has passed us again and this year it was a peaceful one, for once. There have been a lot of extremely violent incidents lately and it has a lot of Torontonians on edge living in fear. I spoke to numerous people that said that they would not be attending the parade this year. Frankly I think that it’s unfortunate that when an event comes that everyone usually consumes a lot of alcohol that there are the additional chances of violence. Just think about it; young thug with a gun and something to prove; now add alcohol to someone with an already jaded judgment and BANG party’s over and a lot of times innocent bystanders pay the price. Many times I’ve seen people get into fights outside of bars because they have their beer muscles pumped but things can get ten times worst when weapons are involved. The root of the problem is the weapon itself then the bad judgment that is influenced by that bottle of Ciroc or Patron. It’s like the Wild West and all these kids have turned into drunken cowboys. On a personal note I’m just glad that I was able to stay sober and alert this year and still have a good time. I remember one year on Yonge Street the Friday night before the parade, I was mediating a big freestyle battle with one of my former artist on the corner of Yonge and Gerrard. We were so drunk and loud that we didn’t even hear the shots go off a few blocks down at Yonge and Dundas. Someone shot someone else right at Dundas Square in front of dozens of cops, sounds like a drunken decision to me. Fortunately my decisions are all now sober ones that lessen my chances of becoming a statistic. Like a lot of the crazy thugs these days I once carried guns and I made a lot bad decisions while drunk, so it’s a blessing for me that the triggers and the alcohol never mixed, because that is truly a lethal cocktail. Bless

The Sober Emcee entry 18: Swag

Does an Alcoholic loose swag when the alcohol is out of the equation? Let’s examine, when inebriated we tend to think that we have more game and we (at least me personally) care less about the outcome of our advancements. It’s like if I strike out, who cares I’m still the shit! That’s the mentality that most of us have when we’re drunk. Alcohol takes away the shyness that a lot of us experience making it easier to talk to the opposite sex in social and private situations. And at the end of the day everyone looks better once the liquor starts guiding our vision. I’ve had many of nights in the past when I thought some girl looked like Kim Kardashian the night before but in the morning she looked like Rosie O’Donnell. When I was in my drinking days I thought myself to be quite the ladies man, sort of like the black Hank Moody and after a lot of vodka I thought my swag was at a million. Now that I’m sober, does that change??? I look better and feel better than I’ve ever felt, but I must admit that the shyness I felt when I was a teenager has made an unwanted return. It interferes with me on many levels in my home life and if I was single I probably wouldn’t be the mack that I thought I once was. What’s the solution? Many of us alcoholics ponder the answer and this is proven by many people’s stories shared at the 12 step meetings that I attend. I’ve heard many stories of how that now in sobriety that we feel more apprehensive and the result is a lot of social and sexual frustration. A lot of times unfortunately this drives a lot of us back to bottle, me personally I plan to stay strong at all cost. Nobody likes the drunk 40 year old guy at the club trying to pick up young party girls and I’m happy with what I got at home, even if things aren’t always sunshine. What we need to do as recovering alcoholics is re gain our confidence and remember that we are better than the way we used to be. Even though it’s easier said than done, it still can be done. All my single recoveries can still meet someone and go out for a drink with someone even if we don’t drink anymore; soda doesn’t make you a nerd. Also, if a one night stand happens you can make better choices and remember what happened the night before. For us in relationships we need to get back to that state of mind and romanticism that we had when we first met our spouses and remember that they had to endure the monstrous version of the old drunk us to get to the way we are now, so we owe it to them to try to keep that spark alive without the influence of the liquor. So in conclusion...liquor doesn’t really give us more swag, that's suppose to come from the inside! It’s up to us to bring it back out. So continue to pop your collars all my recoveries! Bless

The Sober Emcee Entry 17 "The Blackouts pt 1"

The first blackout that I can remember was back in the mid 90’s. I was on my way to a house party with a few friends and we did a lot of pre drinking before we left. When we finally got to the house I was extremely drunk and wasn’t able to get out of the car. I told my friends to go ahead and that I would meet them inside. As they partied I was in a war with my stomach and spinning head in the back seat of the car. That went on for an hour until my stomach finally gave up and I threw up for what seemed like 15 minutes. After my stomach was emptied I blacked out for about 2 hours, when I woke up my friends were on their way back to car ready to leave after enjoying a great party.
The second blackout that I can remember was on a New Years Eve in the mid 90’s. My friends and I were at a hotel party dressed to kill. We were all enjoying ourselves and everything was going fine until midnight hit. We all rang in the New Year and right after midnight I had to hit the washroom. When I got in there my head was spinning I sat down on the toilet because I felt faint. When I tried to get up I fell back on the seat feeling woozy. I spun around and started throwing up violently. After my stomach was purged I sat back down on the toilet seat and my brain lights went out. When I woke up it was past 3am and the party was over. I missed the whole night and that how I started that New Years which was evidence of how I was going to spend years to come.
My third but far from final blackout came in 1996 at the Toronto Caribanna. This was before I actually lived in Toronto, so every time I came out here it was party time. My friends and I had all bought Mickey sized bottles of Tangeray mixing it with orange juice. We walked down the Lakeshore and were having a great time for hours. At the end of the track we all sat down to rest our feet. We were all pretty drunk from finishing our bottles of gin and we sat and smoked a huge blunt. Everyone was in good spirits especially me. I had about $200 extra in my pocket from selling weed while we were walking, so in the celebration mood I decided to push my drunkenness a little bit further. I had a 40oz bottle of malt liquor in my back pack. I pulled it out and drank it down in about 10 minutes. We decided to start making our way back, it was around 5pm. As we walked I started seeing my friends getting further and further ahead of me. I called out to them to slow down but for some reason I couldn’t project my voice. They were getting too far and my legs felt like they were made out of jelly. Finally I sat on a bench to recuperate. I was sweating like crazy and I can feel all the hot liquid creeping back up through my body. I leaned over the bench and started throwing up then everything went black. When I open my eyes again 2 hours had passed, I was very disoriented at first. I checked my pockets for all the money I made earlier, luckily I had every cent but my friends were nowhere to be found. I got up off the bench and started a slow jog back to the Lakeshore Caribanna entrance and then back to the hotel in a daze.
That was 3 of the 1st blackouts that I can remember, unfortunately there were more to come, stay tuned for Blackouts part 2.

Giving Back Entry #16

It’s been a long road to get to where I am now. I’ve been through a lot of crazy episodes and survived to tell the story. I’ve been robbed at gun point, shot at, stabbed, incarcerated and survived alcoholism with 2 years of sobriety under my belt now. At this point of my life I feel it’s my responsibility to give back because I spent most of my life being a selfish person taking and taking. I started selling drugs at 17 years old and sold drugs for 17 years after that, so that’s a lot of taking. Over the years of my criminal career I’ve lost over 7 people to murders in this crazy game and one thing that I have learned is that life is short. Every time another layer of sorrow was added to my life I tried to drown the pain with alcohol and now that I’m sober I realized that it only made things worst and my problems still remained prevalent. I feel blessed to be a survivor because so many of us don’t make it to the other side to tell about their experiences. My point is that I need to give back and try to encourage all the people still caught up (especially the younger cats) to know that we all have choices. It doesn’t take a genius to sell drugs it’s just some simple math mixed with charisma and the respect gained from that is mostly fake love, fair weather friends and in a lot case just temporary fear. But it’s the dealers that have the true fear, the fear of challenging the mind and the fear of failure. So the so-called easy route is readily taken and with jail and death waiting at every corner how easy of a route is it really? Besides we’re loosing way too many of you these days at a young age, we need ya’ll to be a future leaders to carry the world into the future, instead of carrying your caskets now in the present day.
The reason I call my blog the Sober Emcee is because I know that the term is oxymoronic like jumbo shrimp it’s like going to the pet store trying to find a unicorn. Sober emcees are hard to come by and most of the sober rappers I ever heard of do that Kirk Franklyn gospel rap. I ain’t dissin’ that type of rap but it’s not teaching the average street kid about changes because 99% of the time they aren’t trying to listen to that stuff. So as a guy who has been there and done that I feel it’s my duty now to tell my story and hopefully change some lives for the better.
I’ve been trying lately to speak at different venues, telling my story as a way of giving back and I realized something. From going around sharing my story and hopefully helping other people I’m helping myself stay sober also. I can’ go around telling people how much I’m sober and what I’ve accomplished if I’m going to turn around and pick up a bottle of vodka later, that would make me a hypocrite. So essentially I have to thank all the readers of this blog and the people that come out and hear me speak because you’re all helping me to stay sober through your reading eyes and listening ears. So I’m going to continue to write this blog and speak at as many places as I can because if I’m helping any of you in any way, just recognize that you’re helping me too. So thank you.
Bless

Entry #15 Let's Talk About Sex

I’m coming up on my second year of sobriety in a few days and I feel good. There have been a lot of trials that I have gone through since February 17 of 2010 but still I’ve been able to maintain a clear and sober mind. One of the saying that I always hear in my AA meetings is “Remember When” that’s when we think back on the insanities that we brought to the world in our drunken state and feel happy for the moments now because those times are over. One of my remember when moments that remain prevalent in my mind was the way that I was when it came to women and sex. We all know that when we have the right amount of alcohol in us that all our inhibitions can fly away quickly. I used to drink a mickey of vodka before I went to the club so I would already be in Mac mode before even hitting the bar, plus (I thought) it made it cheaper for the night of buying expensive drinks. Truth was because I was so drunk already I had less discretion on my pockets and the money flew at the bar and ever friend, chick and even non-close associates got a drink from me. I had many of drunk sloppy sex nights after the bar or afterhours that I woke up with regrets. I would wake up in some of the strangest parts of town dreading the trip home I had ahead of me. The night before travelling all the way to another side of the city always seemed like such a great idea while I had the vodka and Hennessey making my decisions for me. But in the morning no one likes to do the walk of shame, or getting home groggy and hung over just so I can get some proper sleep in my own bed. I laugh and cringe at the same time when I think about some of the monsters I woke up next to also, the night before she looked like Megan Fox with the Henney guiding my vision but in the morning she’d look like Rosie O’ Donald. I’d like to apologize to my current fiancé and past serious relationships that I had dealing with a drunken womanizer like I was back then. It’s always so easy to blame promiscuity on alcohol when I slipped, both men and women can relate to that.
When I was younger I used alcohol to loosen up to be able to talk to women because I was shy and self conscious about the weight I had back then, but as I got older alcohol went from loosening me up to just make me loose. So in closing I thank God that I’m in a relationship with a good women and that my Johnson never fell off or got chopped off from all my crazy adventures. And as I always say go out there and have some drinks and have fun just be responsible or you too can wake up in a strange place with a stranger in a bed full of regrets.
Bless