Ball and Chain

Written in 1987 and released in 1990, the song Ball and Chain is found on Social Distortion's self-titled album. Some of the timeless themes this song deals with are addiction, hopelessness, heartbreak, poverty, failure, and suicide — all themes I am intimately familiar with — and all made life feel like a ball and chain and not worth living. I know what it's like to think, "I can't take any more pain."

This is a song I know by heart but heard yesterday on the radio, which isn't entirely strange, except I'm not sure how many people are familiar with Social Distortion in South Dakota or how many of them are listening to the radio on a Sunday afternoon. That's okay; we don't have to know what we're listening to in order to enjoy it, right? Well, except Social Distortion sings a lot of "hard luck" songs, which are an acquired taste. As Social Distortion's singer, Mike Ness, has been known to say, "We don't sing no happy songs." But, just like the blues, sad songs can have a cathartic effect, lessening a listener's pain. 

Listening to this song driving back to town on Sunday afternoon after enjoying some time at a hidden gem in the Black Hills with my son, a lot of thoughts flooded my mind because, well, I lived a lot of this song.

Some background information on Mike Ness is necessary. Mike Ness was a junkie (heroin), an alcoholic, routinely got into fistfights, was in detox and prison, and was (and perhaps still is) a boxer. A lot of his songs are about his addictions, and with a career that has spanned more than 40 years, it's safe to say he's a survivor of those addictions. Ness, in an interview here, credits his "painful childhood" for his hitting rock bottom early in his 20s. He said, after going through a painful childhood, he didn't want to live a painful adult life, as he had already dealt with so much in childhood. As he says in the above-mentioned interview, "I had already been through alcoholism and divorce and foster homes and welfare workers, and all of that as a kid. I didn't want to go through all of that as an adult." For me, my painful childhood was a fact I tried to deny. I didn't have to deal with all of the things Ness did, but it's safe to say it was debilitating just the same. It would take me years to figure out how to deal with those painful facts. 

What Ness figured out early was that progress dealing with trauma is impeded by addictive substances like drugs and alcohol. I only started making progress with my mental health when I stopped drinking alcohol in April of 2014. It's been five years, and I feel great. But my life started to unravel after I quit drinking. It was necessary, of course, and because I had put off dealing with so many traumas for so many years, it was almost overwhelming. No, it was overwhelming. I firmly believe sobriety was the catalyst to quitting my marriage. A lot of people surely wondered, why now? When you get sober, you're forced to deal with everything. I clearly could not deal with my ex-wife's behavior any longer. There was no place where I could retreat, no endless rows of bottles to console myself with, no great salve for my wounded soul. 

Alcohol was just another abusive relationship I found myself in. It was like my relationships with family members, my job, my wife, etc. It was all really the same thing. All of these things took more than they gave, wasting me in the process. It's amazing how few good people and things I had in my life. How did I go on like that for so many years? Why did I have so many destructive, traumatizing relationships? Clearly, that was a choice I made. But why? We accept the love we think we deserve? 

What the song shows us is the end result of those numerous destructive relationships. Here he is, alone and suicidal. This is the path of sin and excess. I was reading to my son in his Bible stories book recently and came upon the story of the 10 lepers Jesus healed. The story made a mistake because it said leprosy is an extremely painful disease. It is not, however, painful. The disease kills the nerves ahead of itself, numbing the poor victim to its destructive power and the actual rotting away of their flesh. There are stories of lepers in recent times who would, say, smoke a cigarette, get distracted, and realize later the cigarette kept burning right into their flesh. They felt nothing. So, in that way, it is a good picture of sin. Sinful acts numb us to their destructive power, as well. They feel good in the moment, but the end result is death. The soul that sins, it will die, says the Bible. But we don't always know our soul is dying because we're having a good old time until, like Mike Ness, we are sitting in our "broken down Chevrolet," thinking "there's got to be another way." 

What I've learned is there is no substitute for love, for good people, for God in our lives. There is no substance on this planet that can replace any of those things. The more I drank, the emptier I felt. The emptier I felt, the more I had to drink, to copulate, to turn up the volume on my life, just to numb the sense that something was very wrong. The story of the 10 lepers was sad, of course, because only one of those men who were healed returned to thank Jesus. I don't want to be like that. I want to thank Jesus right here and now for taking away the awful scourge of alcoholism from my life, for healing me during the five years that have passed since I last drank. It has been a very hard road but worth every mile. 

My primary destructive relationship is with myself. Like Mike Ness, I had searched and searched "to find the perfect life." But perfection is a concept that exists apart from reality. There is nothing perfect in this world and no one is perfect. We use that term flippantly. But when a perfectionist meets with failure (as I was and as I did), sometimes the reaction is to throw in the towel. To my credit, I tried to make something work far longer than I should have. I did not throw in the towel. I was a trooper. But that tendency to quit when things are imperfect is something I watch closely for in myself because I have seen it ruin many good opportunities for growth. Sometimes it's easier to console oneself with a substance than to fight through a problem and achieve a workable solution. That isn't an option for me anymore, so thank God for that!

The end of the road for so many sad people is suicide. And that's where this song ends, as well, with Ness singing to "take away this ball and chain," meaning, take away this prison of a life. It's fortunate he got healthy and put his energy into his passions because he has been a productive member of society, entertaining untold numbers of fans for many years. While I don't have those sorts of outlets in my life, I can certainly make good and do something similar. 

Many times since my divorce I have felt the urge to push everyone away. And many times I have succumbed to this urge. But what I really need is to reach out to people who are good for me. And good to me. I need to build roads out of this mess, which will take time and energy. But no one ever said rebuilding one's life is easy. I am way behind so many people. I am middle-aged and so messed up, it isn't even funny. Will I ever get to where I need to be? God has shown me my race is not everyone else's race. It's me and Him and that's all that matters. Comparing my life to everyone else's is a recipe for unhappiness. 

Right now, I'm just thankful I'm not in my broken down car, wishing my life away. I'm thankful I don't need a drink when I get home from work. I'm thankful I don't have to watch the clock on my days off so I don't break into the beer before noon. I'm thankful I don't schedule things around my drinking, that I don't wake up with my heart buzzing away and my mouth parched and my head shaved (and, what the hell? whose bike did I steal?) because I did it again, I drank too much. There is no more shame or humiliation. There is only freedom and a sense of gratitude. And that is a foundation to build on.