Hard hitting, painful and full of hope. Sometimes tragic, sometimes funny – always honest and from the heart. Whether you drink or not, Dooshnik! has something for everyone. It is a story about hope. Dooshnik! runs the spectrum from misery, dysfunction and despair to hope, miracles and redemption.
With six siblings, he felt like an alien abandoned on an earthly doorstep. Quiet, shy and sensitive – He turned twelve in a psychiatric hospital. He had a bleeding ulcer at thirteen. Between first and twelfth grade he went to twenty-seven different schools. He started drinking when he left home and joined the Navy.
There were three rehab centers, nine months with the Salvation Army, half a dozen suicide attempts, two DUI's, homelessness – and countless arrests. He tried to get sober but inevitably found that drinking was the only solution he had for the misery and pain of life that, drunk or sober, was his daily existence.
After his last drunk, coming to alone in a one-room apartment, surviving an out of body near-death experience where “God hated me too much to let me die” – he only thought he had reached his bottom.
“Some may argue that this experience was a dream, or an hallucination.That’s their choice.I’m only saying what happened and what I know to be true.I know for a fact that I was out of my body because while I was I did not hurt.When I entered back into my body I hurt!I felt heavier and I felt pain.Physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain.Oh God I felt like hell.
I came into my body and I sat up.I had been lying on the floor and I had never been this drunk before, or felt this bad.The sleeping pills had put me into a fog and I could feel and smell the alcohol and I desperately wanted to be back where I didn’t feel any more pain.But even God didn’t seem to want me.God, I was in hell already.That’s when the hallucinations started.”
Excerpt
"People say you can’t get from where I was to where I am. You hear it all the time. And it’s true. It would take a miracle."
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Reviews for "Stanley Maynard Dooshnik, Jr. - With a name like that, you'd drink too!"
Mark Twain said, “if you see a turtle on a fence post you can just bet that he had help getting there.” This has been an incredible journey and I know it is only just beginning. You can’t get from where I was to where I am without help. This story is not so much about me as it is about mystery, magic and miracles. May you walk in Beauty—and I Love you all, Stan D
A passionate and poignant memoir written by a woman whose life has been guided by the words: "I am here to learn how to love well." The book is a deep examination of relationships, family, motivation, and honoring of the Self.
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