Evan Version 2.0

I wanted to talk a little to everyone about my experience in rehab since i'm leaving very soon. First I'd just like to say that I feel friggin amazing. Like a huge fog has been lifted. I feel healthy, i've been exercising daily and eating well. I feel like I can focus and take on the world again. I have a much different outlook on everything and I am so ready to get back to work and back to my passions which is now one of my main priorities.
There are a lot of people I need to acknowledge that have helped me out and given tons of support these past few months. So in no particular order, thanks to:
My dad, Dino Velvet, Greg Yuen, Baljeet Hayer, Anne Baker, Ilona, my sisters Carrie and Kylie, my aunts Maria, Roe, Josie and Shar, my cousins Anne, Nina, Lori, Lana and Lisa, Magan Rivas, my therapist Susan, my roomie Rick, Katie from LA, Stephen Bitner, Marcela Fabbri, Angela Wray and anyone who shot me a phone call or sent encouraging words on facebook. You all have been great and if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have ever gotten to rehab in the first place. The hardest part of admitting you have a problem and need help is not knowing what people's reactions will be and you have this overwhelming feeling of shame...but you guys showed unconditional love and friendship and in my opinion...you're the best! There is such a stigma and taboo about drug addiction and I wish more people talked about it openly and understood that it IS a disease and needs to be treated like one.
I've learned a lot about myself and addiction since I've been out here in Palm Springs. Before I came here my attitude was "why doesn't anything ever work out for me....why can't I have a good healthy relationship....I could care less about myself or you for that matter." I was in self destruct mode and totally blamed it on any person, place or thing besides myself. I can honestly say one of the most difficult things a person can do is take a good, hard and honest look at themselves. It's not fun. But now I realize it's all me. I did this to myself and no one is responsible for making me feel the way I do. If you're thinking..."if I only could get this job I'll be happy...or If I could only fall in love I'll be happy...etc," then you will be searching for happiness your whole life. Bottom Line. Life is gonna throw at you whatever it wants and if you don't grow from that, it will eat you alive. So I guess that's where I'm at. I'm learning from that dark place I was in and using it to motivate me to be a better person.
Another thing that I think a lot of people don't realize or want to realize is the effect drugs has on your brain. Every time you use, the false excitement you get is destroying your brains ability to produce dopamine, which is where your feeling of pleasure comes from. After a while your brain cannot produce dopamine unless drugs are involved. So if you're constantly getting high and wondering why you're miserable and depressed...well....duh....no dopamine. The good news is that your brain has a remarkable capacity to heal over time. Just in a couple of months I've noticed this but it can take years to fully heal. This also means that even months after someone stops using, you might not notice a huge change in their behavior. This is a LONG healing process and I can't expect over 10 years of serious abuse to heal in just 2 months...but I'm looking forward to getting my dopamine back.
But enough about that. I've had tons of time to think about what's really important to me. I'm about to receive some long-overdue and much deserved money which I'm going to invest in my studio and get back to finishing the album I started in Nicaragua. I'm also hoping to possibly open my own recording studio where I can continue to help produce emerging artists and spread some more knowledge to youngsters. I'm going to completely immerse myself in music and art...the place that puts a TRUE smile on my face. I know that as long as I'm doing good...good things will happen. The past is behind me and will stay there...I'm living in the present.
I'd like to ask my friends to help me out and respect me by not using drugs around me. In fact, it would be better if you didn't even talk about it for awhile. Even just saying the word still hits a trigger in the back of my mind so just do me a favor and respect the fact that I can't have that around me right now. Chances are that if we used to do drugs together you're not going to see me around as much anyway. Nothing personal...you're still my homies...that's just not my life anymore.
I'd also like to apologize again to my family, friends and ex-girlfriends for acting like a complete dumb ass for so many years. I hope u find it in your hearts to forgive me and I hope you find comfort in knowing that I'm doing everything I can to not be that selfish person anymore. After all, life is too short to hold grudges.
I hope I didn't come off sounding too preachy. I'm only writing this because it helps me tremendously to do so, and I hope that maybe it inspires some people to at least cut back on the drugs and alcohol for a bit. The worst thing that could happen is you feel better...
Love Ya'll
Peace
evan

The trip from Managua to Bluefields and why my life is like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm sometimes

Let me just start out by saying that I've make this trip over a dozen times, and at no point has it ever been an easy or comfortable trip. But never has it ever been as bad as this time.

The bus from managua leaves for Rama, a small city in eastern Nicaragua, at 9pm. It's always a good idea to get there a couple hours before to ensure you have a ticket. Due to a situation with my taxi dude, I didn't get there until 8:55. I was certain I wasn't going to get a seat on the bus, but it turns out there was one seat left. Phew!

There are 2 buses that were leaving that day. One was school bus style, the other was more like a tour bus. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I would be on the tour bus, because I remembered that the seats were a bit more comfortable. It is a 6 hour bus ride after all.

Upon entering a bus or a plane and looking for my seat, I'm always filled with a great deal of fear. It seems that I've never really had good luck in that department. It's never like in the movies where you get to sit next to the beautiful girl, or someone who is super interesting to talk to. In my case, I'm always next to someone who is either overweight or has children. In this case it was both. I'm beginning to think that there is a conspiracy against skinny white dudes. I'm thinking that when an overweight person gets a seat on the bus, the ticket woman leaves that seat open next to them, and waits for the skinny gringo to show up to fill that tiny half of a seat that's left after spillover. I think you know what I mean by spillover.

Well this time my seat was especially amazing because the overweight woman next to me not only had a baby in her arms, but also a 4 or 5 year old daughter sharing her seat with her. Keep in mind there are only 2 seats per row. So how did she plan on pulling it off? 3 people in one seat? and poor me next to them? Is that fair to the person sitting next to you? Buy 2 seats! Be serious!!!! Of course at this point I'm thinking, had she bought 2 seats like anyone in their right mind would do, I wouldn't have a seat at all. So ok...let's do this. It won't be so bad right?

At first it really isn't that bad. I can tell she's making an attempt to give me as much room as possible, even though there's a lot of contact going on and I basically have one cheek half off the seat. After about an hour it gets really uncomfortable. Bus seats are contoured to fit snug to your body. If you're not directly in the center of the seat it can be painful. Right around this time, she falls asleep. Oh god. Instead of leaning towards the window, she leans towards me. Now I'm a pillow for this mammoth woman. To make matters worse, it's very windy on the bus and her hair is whipping me in the face and neck. She doesn't have soft silky hair. Her hair was like sandpaper and itched like crazy. Tie that shit back lady! At one point I think I took a little in the mouth.

So what do you do in this situation? Do I wake her up and tell her to give me some space? She's got an infant in her lap. That would be really rude of me. So I suck it up. And put myself in a happy place. I'm thinking about a certain girl, and sitting in a hammock on the beach full of dancing midgets. Things like that. Those thoughts got me through my trip.

3 hours pass and I'm in excruciating pain from one-cheecking it the whole trip so far, when we stop for a 10 minute break. Thank god! Even better I notice a seat opens up because one of the passengers had gotten off. I'm getting that seat! I politely ask the Nelly looking guy with the fake diamond earings if I can sit with him. I explain the situation and I think my exact words were "she's all over me dude. I'm going crazy." He politely says no problem. So the second half of the trip was easy. All I could think about was how amazing it felt to have a whole seat all to myself! yeeeeeee!

At about 3am we arrive in Rama. After you get off the bus it's a race to another line where you are assigned which boat you'll take to bluefields. I'm like 3rd in line. Bad ass! i'll get boat number 1 and be the first to get the eff outta here. Unfortunately the ticket booth opens at 4 am and the boats leave around 6am.

After an hour of standing in line I'm finally assigned boat number 2. Number 2? Did I miss something here? I'm 3rd in line! Anyway whatever. I grab my ticket and head over towards the boat docks to wait. For 2 hours. Yay! Good thing I had family guy episodes on my ipod to watch. So I fire up an episode and sit on the concrete steps and wait. All of a sudden I hear footsteps behind me. A lot of footsteps. It sounds like horses. I turn around to find I'm completely surrounded by 7 sandinista militants with automatic weapons. WTF? My heart sinks. This could be a potentially serious situation. These guys do not fuck around, and if you've ever been surrounded by guys in army fatigues with AK-47's you'll know, it's not a good feeling. I have my headphones on, and my plan is to not say a word and be perfectly still and just watch my family guy. After a couple minutes or so, I realize, they really were just checking out my Ipod and then they took off. That was a close one.

A short while later after coming out of the bathroom I was confronted by an angry street dog. When he barked at me, it scared the shit outta me and I jumped backwards and slammed my elbow into a concrete wall. What was his problem? Did I take to long in the bathroom? Did he want me to wash my hands? So now we're at a mexican stand off and in this situation, I decided to play it like I did with the Sandinista Militants. Stay perfectly still and hope that he goes away. He does.

5:30am rolls around and they're starting to load up the panga boats. They're small speed boats with wooden benches for seats. I sit down on the side of the boat so I only have to worry about someone sitting on one side of me. To my non-surprise....an overweight woman with an infant takes the seat next to me. At this point all I can do is laugh. Thank god it was never really an issue. She was cool, and the baby was cool but there was this older nicaraguan lady across from me that was making me pretty uncomfortable. She wouldn't stop staring at me. I would look the other way, but you know you can just feel someone looking at you. And when I would catch her she would look the other way really quickly. It became sort of a game for me. I'd whip my head around to see her looking at me like I was the first white guy she had ever seen in her long life.

The boat ride is my least favorite part of this trip. The bench is hard and the boat bounces a lot. It's extremely hard on the ass. Especially one as boney as mine. I found myself "chifting" about every 2 minutes. Chifting is a word I made up on this trip where you shift your body wait from one cheek to the other cheek. The skinnier you are, the more you chift. Overweight people are lucky in this regard. Minimal chifting is required. Although the woman on the bus I think was chifting on my thigh at one point.

Almost 2 hours later of excruciating ass pain through the jungles of nicaruagua and I see bluefields in the horizon. There is nothing like the feeling of relief you get when you see the the small port city. It's 8am and I haven't slept yet, but it's over!!!

And as horrible as the trip was, I've actually had worse. There was the time when I was hung-over flying from Detroit to San Francisco and I was sandwiched in the middle seat between two 350lb guys and ended up throwing up in the barf bag. But hey, that's a different story all together.

If you've actually made it this far, thanks for reading. I'm in no way a writer, but I feel like I should just start documenting some of these stories in my life just in case anyone wants to make a sitcom about me.