DIY or DOA

To write a story about the creation of happiness, you have to start out with the absence of it. To appreciate the light, you have to begin without it. My story begins in the dark.

It was 3am and as cold as disillusionment. I woke shivering, my jaw clenched and sore, biting back the chattering of my teeth. I had on every stitch of clothing I owned and was curled into a ball in my sleeping bag, but the ground still sucked the heat out of me like it would suck the marrow from my bones.

Everything ached, and I prayed, begged, for sleep to return. I pleaded with life to return me to oblivion for just a little while longer, knowing it would still be a few hours before it got any warmer, a few hours before anything but casinos and mini marts were open.

One sheep. Two sheep. 84 million sheep. No dice.

I sat up and reluctantly pealed an arm out of the sleeping bag. The clear plastic vodka bottle was never too far out of reach. I screwed off the little red cap, the same kind you see on the streets all over town, and made a sarcastic toast. "God bless Reno."

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People end up on the street for a lot of reasons, and they stay on the street for a lot of them too. It's different for everybody. Not everyone's an addict. Not everyone has mental health problems, or legal problems. Nobody's lazy, ‘cuz you don't have anywhere to be lazy in. Look at how torn up a homeless person's feet are, and you can see that.

I ended up on the street because of financial ruin at the end of my marriage, and my budding alcoholism burst into full bloom in my attempt to cope with my misery. But no matter what you do, you can't get away from the ground, and that ground gets cold. But we'll come back to that.

Nobody gets off the street without help. Without so much as a food box, or a ride somewhere. The human is a social animal, and our best achievements we achieve together. There's no shame in banding together. There's no shame in asking for help.

Alcohol withdrawals seriously can kill you. They are so severe that the cops are required by law to medicate you in jail if you come in alcohol dependent. It is literally more dangerous than coming off heroin, so if you are planning to quit, or find yourself in a situation where you are forced to go without, please get medical attention.

That being said, I had gone into the hospital a few times to detox, but it wasn't enough. I kept going right back to drinking when I got out. Something had to change.

I am what they call dual diagnosis. That means I suffer from both addiction and mental illnesses. I don’t choose to go into detail about my darkest experiences here. Suffice it to say that the last time I had given in to that darkness, I wound up on a ventilator.

I was lucky to walk out of the hospital that time. I’d already been to jails & institutions; and death loomed very real on the horizon if I didn’t change my path.

So, the final time that I went in to detox, I told everyone that would listen the following joke:

"You're on a horse. There's a zebra next to you and a lion behind you. What do you do?

You get your drunk a** off the carousel!

I want to get off this carousel. I'm tired of going around and around. I need help. I need to go to rehab."

I got lucky. I got help. A social worker got me into an inpatient treatment facility. This place was strict! No drugs, no alcohol, no controlled meds, no smoking, no nicotine patches or gum, no caffeine, no sugar, no chocolate, and no swearing!

Believe me, it was hard to stay. I wanted to leave so many times, but I told myself just to make it to the end of the day, ‘cuz I could always run away tomorrow. Like a certain group of folx say, 'one day at a time'.

Then something magical happened, that changed my life forever!

I got a care package from my mom, and in it were a pair of FISKARS scissors! They were beautiful, and brand new in the package, and all mine. They had sparkly blue handles, that glittered like metallic paint on a hot rod in one of the car shows my dad took me too as a kid. They were like Dorothy's slippers in blue, and there was no place like the creative spirit!

One of the most depressing things about being deep in addiction is that you lose your ability to enjoy anything else. You kind of die inside, and the world goes grey as you shamble through it like a zombie, moaning whatever your drug of choice is instead of "Braaaains!"

Opening that plastic bag full of art supplies gently awakened that tiny, smoldering ember of creativity inside me, and the world exploded back into vivid color for me! I had been sober for almost a month at this point, but now I was alive!

I made paper beads from strips I cut out of magazines, and made a necklace for a friend. I crocheted a black and white houndstooth handbag for another friend. But the most important thing I ever did with those FISKARS was cut plastic shopping bags into strips.

Have you ever heard of plarn? I hadn't. For those of you like me, here's what it is. You take disposable plastic shopping bags -- the same kind I had seen flying around Reno so often that I used to joke they were the city bird -- and straighten them out so that they lay completely flat. Then you cut across them from side to side, making strips about 2 fingers wide. Toss out the bottom and handles, and you should be left with a few continuous circular loops of plastic bag.

You pass one end of a loop through another loop, and then back through itself, and pull tight, making a knot between them. Keep adding another loop to the end of the chain, until you have a rolled up ball of it, at least as big as a grapefruit. Now you have a plarn ball. Plastic yarn. Plarn. Get it?

Okay, that's great and all, I hear you say, but what the heck do you do with it? Well, if you have a size Q crochet hook, which is about as big around as a broom handle, you can crochet with it! It also became my favorite pseudo-swear. Oh, plarn balls!

And now we come back to that cold, cold ground. Do you know what they taught us to make in rehab? Crocheted plarn mats for homeless people to sleep on. I just about cried.

It's a little tricky working with the plarn at first, ‘cuz you have to realize that it's basically double stranded between the knots. Once you get the hang of it though, it's pretty simple to make a mat. It's just 45 foundation single crochet to start, ch1, turn, and 45sc across, back and forth until the mat is 6-7 feet long.

Those mats are amazing. They're water resistant, easy to clean, durable, lightweight, easy to carry, and they give you that little bit of insulation you need to finally, finally, stop the ground from soaking up all your warmth.

They do take a while to make. It takes about 700 bags to make one mat. But that is 700 bags that aren't flying around, or stuck in trees, or floating down a river, or sitting in a landfill.

I'd like to build a wooden loom, and experiment with a woven technique I saw in Colorado. You can insulate the inside of your tent with those. I'd also like to try planning out patterns with the different bag colors.

Recently, I've moved back to my hometown of Portland, Oregon. The bags are less plentiful here, as they are banned in Multnomah county, but there are people online who collect them and sell them, and the homeless population here has exploded. There are tents along the highways and every major street in town.

I've got my work cut out for me, but I've got my FISKARS scissors to cut it down to size! Oh yeah, and I've also got 2 years sober.

If you want to create happiness, alleviate someone's suffering.