Praise for Still Standing
“Bucky Sinister is a desperately-needed tonic in this quasi-enlightened age. Sardonic, heartfelt and helpful, Bucky's writing is a lifeline for the non-spiritual.”
—Patton Oswalt, comedian and author of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland
“Bucky Sinister has done it again: a handbook for recovery without all the gobbledygook. A personal repair manual for your psychic glovebox.”
—Dana Gould, comedian
“An indispensable guide for sober misfits and those who love them. Like the best self-help authors, Bucky is insightful about everyday things we should know but don't. Probably because we were too drunk. Great stories about how to stay out of the gutter and feel okay about owning more than one towel.”
—Beth Lisick, author of Helping Me Help Myself
“Great insight into not simply getting clean and sober, but ‘living’ clean and sober. Well written, easy to read, gritty and brutally honest, Still Standing is the book to read for anyone who desires long term sobriety or those who care for someone in recovery. Bucky Sinister hit a homerun with this one.”
—Barb Rogers, author of If I Die Before I Wake: A Memoir of Drinking and Recovery and 12 Steps That Can Save Your Life: Real-Life Stories from People Who Are Walking the Walk
“[Bucky's]words on the sober game are some of the most honest, insightful and illuminating. If Soberland was a nation, Bucky's books would be in the bedside drawers in every motel in the country.”
—Alan Black, Scottish playwright and author of Kick the Balls: A Bruising Season in the Life of a Suburban Soccer Coach and co-author of The Glorious World Cup
Praise for Get Up: A 12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks & Weirdos
“[Sinister's] iconoclastic approach to addiction recovery will make a valuable addition to the growing works in this field. Highly recommended for university libraries supporting the helping professions and larger public libraries.”
—Library Journal Starred Review
“. . . a brilliant piece of literary performance with poetic and savagely funny insights. The book is a wild mixture of autobiography, philosophy, social criticism, pop culture and nuttiness: the consummate self-help book for those too cool for self-help books.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Our generation, Generation X, is a generation that doesn't like to be marketed to. We don't like to join groups and we're very suspicious of trends. In a lot of ways Get Up is a 12-step book for people that remember Kurt Cobain on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘Corporate Magazines Still Suck.’ People who think Dolittle is the best album ever made. . .The book's very funny.”
—Stephen Elliott, Huffington Post
“Every single person should own Bucky Sinister's 12 step book. Addict or not. It is an incredibly funny and interesting guide on how to successfully unpack one's mind when it's overpacked. Simply put, this book should replace every magazine in every plastic surgeon's office and every bible in every motel.”
—Amber Tamblyn, Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated actress and poet
First published in 2011 by Conari Press,
An imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
With offices at:
500 Third Street, Suite 230
San Francisco, CA 94107
Copyright © 2011 by Bucky Sinister
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
ISBN: 978-1-57324-476-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request
Cover design by Chuck Sperry
Text design by Jonathan Friedman
Typeset in Adobe using Bauhaus 93, Myriad Pro, Adobe Garamond Pro, and Kozuka Gothic H
Printed in the United States of America
TS
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
DEDICATION
People around town kept telling me Razor was looking for me, that he was out of San Quentin. That's not the sort of thing most people want to hear. Razor was a close friend though, a friend both in our poetry lives and our drug lives. We used to get high and the next thing you know, it was three days later. We had little drug adventures that I vaguely remembered in montage sequences. We were also comrades in this strange clique of poets that my life centered around.
We were the kind of poets who shot dope in the bathrooms before going onstage, the kind that smoked crack in the alley and lost our poems, the kind that didn't get drunk so much as stayed drunk. The academics hated us and no one else liked us. We went to poetry readings where there was heckling and fights, and brought the chaos with us to other readings.
Hearing about Razor made me nervous. There was no way I could hang out with him casually with the levels of drugs and alcohol he consumed. But finally, a mutual friend told me he was clean and sober and looking for meetings. We finally hooked up and went to a meeting together.
Since then, when we talk, it's usually about our ideas on addiction, recovery, and sobriety, how two idiots like us can manage to live like clean and sober people, when we have little to no practice. We used to spend hour after hour while high and drunk, telling stories and laughing. Now, we still spend hours yakking away, only we don't need the drugs or alcohol.
It turns out we were real friends all along. It wasn't the drugs or the scene, it was true friendship. I don't have many people from that earlier part of my life anymore. It's good to have someone to count on, a solid man who's always there when I need him.
Razor, you're my brother, I love you, I'm glad I got to keep you. This book's for you.
CONTENTS