Hey guys is Erik Johnson today we’re going to review Saturday Night Wrist by Deftones, their fifth album that was published, 2006, and we’re going to also talk about my last two years of drinking which run parallel with this album and how everything was just bitter sweet. Here’s ex-alcoholic’s Thoughts on Deftones Saturday Night Wrist.
Thoughts on Deftones Saturday Night Wrist
Chino the singer of Deftones was going through a breakup with Celeste, and he was also battling meth addiction. So, the whole album is kind of dark, but one of the best albums I’ve ever heard.
And it just signified a time in my life, between the ages of 34 to 36 when I was dying from alcohol, and I was in a very abusive relationship with a girl, so it just has a lot of semblances with this album.
The blog heavyblogisheavy says about Saturday Night Wrist: “bleakness is the main feeling that comes off. If you listen to Saturday night risk, there’s a constant lyrical reference to the earth, destruction, as in the song hole in the earth, Kim Dracula and relationships crumbling verses and beware, on a musical level many songs are nothing short of sad.”
So I felt that as well when I was listening to this album. I was dying from alcoholism, I wasn’t eating food anymore, but there’s more symbolism to this album that I would like to touch on based on a couple girlfriends that I dated many years before Saturday night wrist actually came on the scene.
My first girlfriend is 20 years older than me. We were having a little fight and I wanted to go out and drink and she wanted to hang out for the night.
I went out anyways because I was young and wild, and when I came back home she was sitting at the counter at the kitchen, and I wanted to make amends, so I came up and I was like comforting her and soothing her and I was rubbing her arm and I noticed that her flannel nightgown was wet.
When I peeled back her nightgown, I noticed that she had cut her wrist and there was blood everywhere, and I tried calling 911 frantically but she pulled the cord out of the wall, but the ambulance came anyway. The call went through and her life was saved and she got lots of stitches.
Another girl that I dated, was bipolar and schizophrenic and she had scars all over her wrist because she was fighting with a boyfriend and he had left her behind in her apartment and she smashed the windows with the palms of her hands, and got these deep scars.
So, demon alcohol is pretty much the theme here and how I interpret Saturday night wrist. And I’ll tell you the real meaning of Saturday Night risk but my interpretation of Saturday Night Wrist is that a lot of hell goes down Saturday night all across America and the world because that’s pretty much the biggest night to drink.
So when I heard the album name Saturday night wrist I associated it with people actually committing suicide saturday night. I published a poetry book, and it was called early morning knife wounds, and it kind of relates to that Saturday night wrist theme that in the morning you discover knife wounds on your body and you don’t remember what happened because Saturday night is crazy.
I also cut my knee one time Saturday night, and I don’t remember cutting my knee on the steps of my house, and in the morning, I had an open wound that was about half an inch open, and I could see the cartilage in the bone in my knee and I don’t even remember doing it.
So I want to talk really fast about , first of all, I want to summarize my life during Saturday night wrist. I wrote a little poem here. So this is between the ages of 34 and 36 I got sober when I was 36 So two years after Saturday night wrist:
“The honeymoon is over, more fights – some public, some vicious and involve the police. So at this time the honeymoons over I’m drinking every single day. I’m getting drunk twice a day now. And this girl that I’m with is violent – we’re both violent together. It’s like fireworks, but they’re the wrong kind of fireworks the honeymoons over. “
We’re getting in fights in public restaurants, the cops are being called on us, and it’s kind of like the movie Sid and Nancy, you know, just craziness, and it’s not getting any better – all to the backdrop of hole in the earth.
So, the song hole in the earth is bittersweet – and I’m dying from alcohol while listening to hole in the earth, and I have Asperger’s, and I have an obsession with music. I live by music, and so I can remember these memories clearly when I listen to all the songs “hole in the earth”, and other songs from this album.
So here’s the last passage: “I’m not eating any more. I’m starving to death but my beer belly is getting bigger. Last friend says, ‘I’ll be dead in a year.’ My bed doesn’t have bedsheets anymore because I pissed the bed every night in a drunken blackout.”
So I’m literally, my life is almost over. So at the very end of this, I finally decided that my life was worth living, and I cut out the alcoholic cold turkey.
I left that girl behind and walked back home to my own place where I had lived in a converted school bus. I nursed the last two beers, which probably saved my life because you can die from alcohol withdrawals if you cut suddenly and I nursed on those two last Tallboys of malt liquor.
My last days of drinking I couldn’t even eat food. So I slowly nursed back, I couldn’t even hold down yogurt, so eating again was very hard.
I got two jobs when I got enough strength, and I just ignored all of the old drinking friends. I ignored all the places where I drank because here’s the thing guys, alcohol is progressive. It gets worse and worse even if you have bouts of sobriety, you go back, you’ll probably be where you left off within a matter of weeks. I know because I’ve had hundreds of relapses.
So last thing: Chino (singer from Deftones) said the album was very hard to make, and the band almost broke up, and they had to take time off from the album. It was just a very hard time for the whole band in general. And, what happened was it created a very beautiful bittersweet album with many different intertwining layers of beautiful melodic guitars with their signature sound of crunchiness and it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard.
But it’s hard for me to listen to it today because it reminds me of that time when I almost died and my girlfriend’s beating me up. She went to jail after beating me up – and there’s been many times that I’ve gone to jail by not hurting her but getting close to hurting other people.
So Saturday night wrist is just a reminder of how bad it is with alcohol. I call it demon alcohol for a reason because there are literally demons hovering over us waiting to get into our body if they can and influence our decisions.
I almost killed a girl while I blacked out – that first girlfriend I was talking about who slit her wrist. I barely remember it but it was like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde type scenario where I was laughing and then crying and then laughing and then crying.
I remember the thought of wanting to kill her and getting this bizarre sense of excitement from thinking that way that I could just take this mere mortal’s life.
And that was not my thinking. I was in a blackout drunk but I remember the excitement of knowing I could take her life and it wasn’t me, it was a demon. So there are demons.
I want to talk about how to get sober. I’ve been sober for over 13 years now and I just want to go over these three steps with you. They’re from the 12 steps. The first step is to admit that you’re powerless over the alcohol, and for me it was very easy to look around and realize that I was powerless over it.
I couldn’t stay sober, I tried hundreds of times. Everything around me was destroyed, beer cans all over the place, pissing the bed every night, not eating food anymore, getting drunk twice a day, and only holding a job two days a week. I could literally drink at work so it didn’t even matter about that job.
So you have to admit you’re powerless. The second step is to believe there’s a higher power, and the third step you have to turn your will and your life over to the care of God or higher power, because we can’t do it on our own. We’ve tried many many times to do it on our own. Our will just keeps getting us in trouble, and it doesn’t get better, and we can’t get our way through this. We need the help of a higher power.
These steps can be very transformative. You can do them on your own if you want to learn all of the steps, just look up the 12 steps of AA, But that is my review of Saturday Night wrist. And like I said, drinking is life or death, especially if you’re addicted to it, if you’re an alcoholic, like I was, and you can’t just do it on your own.
You can’t just white knuckle it and avoid people. You have to go through the steps – you have to get help, and I’m here for you, leave a comment if you are struggling with drinking if your life is out of control I was there, and like I said Saturday night wrist was the theme of my life, the last two years of drinking from 2006 to 2008.
I was nearly dying. This girl is just crazy we’re crazy together. It’s not fun anymore. And that’s how a lot of my relationships ended with alcohol was they weren’t good, they weren’t good at all, so hit that subscribe button if you’re new here. Thanks for watching/reading, and we’ll talk to you soon.
