ATPF - Part 2

I filled out forms online and the psychologist reviewed them. Of particular note to them was my 29 years in Alcoholics Anonymous.  They had previously attended Al Anon due to an alcoholic ex-spouse and drug abusing child so that was an initial connecting point.   

If a psychologist is aware that you've been in AA for almost 30 years and have "sponsored people" they will read through your file and then confirm with a few questions that what you present is valid.   If your answers hold to what's in your file, you move up the ladder from the typical, co-dependent, whining bull-shitters coming through their door on a daily basis and they can get right to the point.  "What are the issues you are dealing with, why are we talking."

"Well, the last day of November I was on business in Miami, met someone, returned after meeting them and told the mother of my children, with whom I'd been for 25 years, that I was going back to Miami to help this person as they were in some serious trouble in life and that there was the possibility of a relationship with this person in Miami."

"How'd she take it?"

"Devastated.  But it's like the night before I meet this person I called my wife from the hotel at 10:00 pm, begging for a conversation.  Just talk to me.  And nothing.  And it's been that way......it's always been that way on the phone.   It's better in person, but for 25 years life has revolved around her professional ballet career, church and family.  She's a perfectly smart person.  Actually she is a brilliant dancer and instructor, has a photographic memory for music, dance and the Bible.  But she's just not that, and really has never been that, into me."   

"But you met someone.  What were they like?"

"Well, that's where things get strange."

"Oh ?"

"COVID hit in March, Michigan shut down.  Church several times a week gone.  AA meetings.  Friends pub to meet air and ocean cargo reps. Coffee shops where I'd hang with owner or other regulars while working remotely.  Sports.  Ballet.  Boyscouts.  Soccer.  Gone. Gone. Gone..  Business crashed for a couple months, but I was able to keep the three people that work for me in our overseas offices and then business came back about May and is now up over last year. But..."

"But ?"

"But in May, a good friend died.  My dad is a mess, so this friend was like a father for the last decade.  Bam - he drops of heart attack and no funeral.  Also in May, after the 4th time my 17 year old checks himself into the ER for COVID, I had to take an awful walk with him, down that long atrium at U of M Hospital from the pediatric ER to and check him into the Psychiatric ER."

"What ?"

"Every time he'd see one of those fucking sermons, zoomed in from the closed churches,  COVID porn interview - prays for one of the church members who had experienced COVID, 48 hours later the kid would be claiming the same symptoms and be asking to go to the ER.  Last time he just walked himself 6 miles at 1:00 am and I got the call at 3:00 am that he was there.   That was it.  We could not get any Psychologist to talk to him as he was not considered 'an emergency'  and the asshole pastors whimpering about COVID and closing their churches per CDC guidelines so that they could be sure and collect their Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding from the Federal Government were the biggest pile of worthless pukes.   I never imagined - the fucking pastors, telling their parishioners to Don the Full Mask of the Beast and worship at the altar of the CDC in Atlanta and it's High Priest Dr. Faucci.   So my 17 year old autistic kid had all of his social support disappear, thinks maybe that what's going on in the world ties into the Book of Revelations and that the world is coming to an end and thinks he has COVID and the pastors won't say any different like they actually hope the world is coming to an end so they don't have to die, but can just be raptured up to Jesus."

"Are you in a cult?"

"No.  Mainstream Baptists, non-denominational."

"So what happened to your kid?"

"I thought he was actually doing a lot of acting.  The prophesying.  Speaking in tongues.  Casting out demons.  All gibberish.  And since I was laughing at the shit he tried to cast a demon out of me."

"What?!"

"Yeah.  I told him to show me in his Bible a son casting a demon out of his father.  I know the Bible too and it's an easy search as there were no demons cast out of anything in the Old Testament but for Lucifer being cast out of heaven with a 3rd of the angels - the ones that sided with him.  Then in the New Testament, the demons were cast out when they were causing physical or mental illness.  At first it was sort of funny - the kid singing hymns in a weird sort of Chinese voice, but it grew tiresome, and then grabbed me to try and cast out the demon.  I think he did it because I told him to cut the crap and grow up." 

"So what about mom?"

"Mom?   Kid needed to man up and sit in a padded cell until he was motivated to cut the crap and quit playing with people.  Sure he was anxious.  Who wasn't?  Sure he was bored.  Who wasn't?  But fuck!  What a fucking stupid way to mess with people and if you are going to keep up the game, the Psychiatrists are going to give you a label and convince your mom that you need to be on meds."

"So what did they put him on? "

"Respiradol.   I didn't object to some lithium just to bring down the anxiety level, but the other crap - I've seen people on the SRI's, like his uncle with the Aspergers diagnosis and they are just slobbering, shit faces. Better to take someone out and get them drunk or smoke week or coke for that matter than the crap that a pharma rep dishes out - and I get this from my friends who sold pharma."

"OMG"

"Yeah, when I -cq                67IU890O[P