by Mark Harris

Pearls of wisdom are generally acquired at the cost of great pain. It is often best to learn lessons the hard way, as many of us did, because you don’t forget them easily. When Isho warned against casting pearls before swine, he was saying in effect “If they can’t see your pain, they cannot understand your wisdom, and in their race to stuff themselves, they will tread your pearls into the mud, even if they are the keys out of their particular pig sty.
In my case one of my personal favorite pearls I accreted in the form of…

Here is an interesting video worth a watch, mind, there is some bold language…

This is a short to go along with song written by a group called “Beans on Toast”, as a recovering alcoholic an ex drug user myself, I made this short film to show the protagonist of this sound bite when he is sober, hopefully it might shock him into changing his ways, however, chance would be a fine thing…

A brave and honest YouTuber reminding us we are not alone…

Here is an excellent New Years entry by the captivating blogger, Shadow… a definite hit for 2008!

Monday December 31st 2007

my thoughts for 2008

2007 is drawing to a close
the future called 2008 lies just ahead.

plan for the future, yes,
but live each day as it deserves to be lived.
to it’s fullest, with gratitude that you can enjoy another day.
appreciate what you have every day.
appreciate who you get to spend your days with.
you may not like summer, but you have been granted another summer, to experience and capture memories, treasure that!
you may not like going to work, but you have been granted another…

Blogger Sobriety Girl has a creative way of keeping on top of her sober journey through life, read on…

Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A Gift.

In the midst of trying to trying to deal with the immense end of the year crunch at work, dealing with parties I keep lugging my diet soda to, painting pictures for friends & family and the general hoopla that surrounds the holiday season, I realized that I forgot to give one gift.
It’s not anything to wear or keep your head warm. It’s not candy or food or some fine tea that I have given. It’s not a gift…

There’s nothing like a little positive sober cheer for the New Year from An Irish friend of Bill…

Hey I ain’t Cliffy, but I WILL have been sober for 21 !! years on the trot (a day at a time) on 1st of Jan 2008. In case these details are of interest to you)
Cool huh! Thank christ for bottled water and gym. That’s all I can say!

But bless. I actually rather like Cliffy. He’s an OK guy in my books.
Well I’m rather glad to have been without a drink or any other mind bending drug (illicit or prescribed) for all that…

Sober Chick strikes again! Perfect for a quick pick me up…

Santa Boot Camp!
Friday, December 21 2007

Hola Family!

Sorry I have not been blogging. I am still trudging . . .

When I first got sober in 2005 I did very little to maintain my sobriety. It felt so good to be sober, and I was riding what they say in the fellowship “a pink cloud.” Bad things stopped happening to me as a result of not drinking. I grew comfortable; complacent. I would soon realize that my emotions had no memory of the pain and despair and complete state of hopelessness I experienced…

I’ve had one of the crappiest holidays in recent memory. People left and right of me were going “home” to visit families of origin that they would rather not see, others were in a buying frenzy, spending money they did not have, just because our culture tells us this is “what we’re supposed to do”, and three of our own team members are in the middle of dealing with immediate family members who all have terminal cancer. I, myself, had just received a call from my dear friend telling me that she was, once again, admitting herself into a treatment…

All the way from London, a Merry Bloody Christmas from Recovery Road….

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

This Christmas was my fourth successive sober festive season. It was fairly quite (although Long Joe livened things up), spent with family and that was all I wanted. I’m grateful I wasn’t drunk or drinking this year.

Three and a half months to go to my FOURTH AA birthday (I’m nearly four, the blog is three…**bangs head on desk**). I was talking to my sister about the past three and a half years and what the first three months of sobriety were like. **shudders**

Sober. Very grateful. Better eye…

Last Chance Texaco strikes again with an addictive entry…

Nostalgia
December 26, 2007

I had been talking to a friend Christmas morning about how “Christmas” had died with my grandmother. This was simply a statement of subjective truth; a topographical map of the geography of my heart. It was not a request for advice or a cry for sympathy, only an observation that all of the traditions that glued my relations into a perfect isosoles of nuclear and extended family niceness died with Goldie. At least it did for me. Revealing a secret sadness is often misinterperated as a plea for help from…

Here’s another great entry on Christmas cheer from Last Chance Texaco…

He’s making a list & checking it twice.
December 25, 2007

Now that I’m well on my way to resolving my part in the first harmed relationship on my 8th step list, it’s time to get busy finishing out the list. I know the book says that I already have already made the list when I took the 4th step, but there are people I have harmed against whom I have no resentment. Thought I’ve just begun to take a stab at the 8th step list I am meeting with my sponsor…

I just can’t get over what a great writer the Junkys Wife is!! If you have a moment, read this entry…

Tuesday, December 25, 2007
A Side Of Pain With That Pain Sandwich.
I just had the most amazing meltdown. It was worthy of my college years, those coked-out whoring years of drunken depressive madness. I haven’t thrown such a huge fit in a long, long time.

It’s just that it’s Christmas, and everyone is either dead or going to die. I am spending all my time working and hurting and being pissed off and having to force myself, to remind myself, to take…

Check out 12stepradio.com for recovery music 24/7.

A Brief History

Around February of 2004, before 12StepRadio ever existed, Bill Z. and Gracie H. were talking on the phone (he’s in California and she’s in Tennessee) about Bill’s vision of one day being able to walk into a music store and having an entire section dedicated to recovery music. (Gracie reminded him that it wasn’t all that long ago when bookstores didn’t have “recovery” sections.) A few days later, Gracie fired off an E-mail to Bill. It went something like this,
“Why don’t you start an Internet radio station that plays recovery music?” Bill went online…

Another great entry from blogger, In Repair…

Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Withdrawal Method
I am noticing a withdrawing of friends. I have friends I have met online and haven’t heard from them nearly as regularly as I did when I was *party girl*. Hmm. Interesting stuff, that. I have a friend who is a sommelier at a schmancy restaurant who I met at the liquor store and we became friends thereafter, but am wondering how long this relationship will really last as we no longer have the *big common thread* that wove through each of our tapestries at one time. Have only the…

This is an entry from blogger, Sober Blog, who has been sober for 40 years…

December 18th, 2007

TO ALL MEMBERS
Greetings On Our 10th Christmas 1944

Yes, it’s in the air! The spirit of Christmas once more warms this poor distraught world. Over the whole globe millions are looking forward to that one day when strife can be forgotten, when it will be remembered that all human beings, even the least are loved by God, when men will hope for the coming of the Prince of Peace as they never hoped before.

But there is another world which is not poor. Neither is it…

A guide to sobriety for the holiday season, by blogger, Sober Blog…

December 16th, 2007

Plan your sobriety this holiday season!…the enemy never sleeps and never takes any time off!
Tips:
Work with a newcomer.
H.A.L.T. Don’t get hungry, angry, lonely or tired, especially while gift shopping.
Visit your local Alkathons.
Parties: Arrive late with a full stomach, leave early, and if possible, take a friend in the program with you.
Whenever you put your drink down, never pick it up again and always get a fresh one.
Keep sweets close at hand.
Make a daily Gratitude List.
And don’t forget, God will meet you anywhere!

…

Fellow blogger on Second Surrender had not written anything for two months but she is back on track, check out her most recent entry…

Sunday, December 16, 2007
Warring factions
I haven’t posted in a long while I know. I am not sure why. Maybe there is a wish to be positive in this blog, and post when I reach certain realizations or milestones. Maybe I am just so busy usually. Maybe I don’t want to bore anyone with certain struggles that never seem to go away.

Warring factions refers to that. I have the same problem I had last year at this time (in…

This might be old news, but Kenneally’s work is timeless and really hits home….

By Donald R. Winslow
News Photographer magazine

(February 14, 2005) – Brenda Ann Kenneally, a freelance photojournalist from Brooklyn, NY, is the winner of the 2005 NPPA-Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant, committee chairman Bill Luster announced today. Kenneally’s ongoing essay, “Legal Guardian: The Long Arm of the Law Reaches Inside America’s Most Vulnerable Families,” won over 36 other entries. Matt Black, a freelance photojournalist from Lemoncove, CA, was the runner-up.

Kenneally is the first two-time winner of the honor. She also won in 2000 for “Money, Power, Respect: Real Life Stories…

Here is an article excerpt from Join Together, a program of the Boston University School of Public Health. Since 1991 it has been “a leading provider of information, strategic planning assistance, and leadership development for community-based efforts to advance effective alcohol and drug policy, prevention, and treatment. We believe problems associated with alcohol and drugs can be best addressed at the community level.”

Prometa Founder’s Spotty Background Explored

November 3, 2006

Some observers say they see a familiar pattern in the aggressive marketing of an unproved addiction treatment regimen called Prometa: founder Terren Peizer similarly hyped an anti-AIDS drug, Immunitin, in the 1990s,…

Scott W blogs on Attitude of Gratitude, here is an entry of gratitude…

Thursday, December 20, 2007
12.20.07
Our faith should control the whole of our life. We alcoholics were living a divided life. We had to find a way to make it whole. ~Twenty-Four Hours a Day.
Today I am grateful…

that I heard something mechanical whilst in the bathroom this morning. I knew the air conditioner wasn’t on, although it is warm enough for it to be. Then afterwards I figured out it was the clothes dryer. I have never been able to hear the dryer from inside the bathroom–my hearing is changing!

for…

The News Tribune Tacoma, WA
M. Alexander Otto
November 2nd, 2007
The first study comparing a new addiction treatment, Prometa, to a placebo was released Thursday by Hythiam, the Santa Monica, Calif., company that owns the rights to Prometa. In the 30-day study, 67 meth-addicted subjects got Prometa, and 67 got a placebo. Meth cravings dropped in both groups, but dropped more in the Prometa group. A combined-craving score dropped 31.1 points in the group that got Prometa, and 20.9 points in the placebo group, a statistically significant difference, according to a Hythiam press release.
However, the difference in the two group’s self-reported meth use…

This is just too good!!!

Wow. These old educational movies are so weird!?!

Singer Kelly Clarkson sings her new single, “Sober” live on ABC…

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, (founding members of Blind Faith) play “Can’t Find My Way Home” (release 1969) at the Highclere Castle, in Hampshire, UK (May 2007).

Lyrics, for those who would like to know!

Come down off your throne
And leave your body alone
Somebody must change
You are the reason
I’ve been waiting so long
Somebody holds the key
Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
Well, I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home

Come down on your own
And leave your money at home
Somebody must change
You are the reason
I’ve been waiting all these years
Somebody holds the key
I’m near the end, and…

Blogger, In Repair, describes her experience on the road to recovery…
“…Stumbling after Christ and “in repair” — i’m not together, but i’m getting there…
Nothing is worth more than this day — Goethe”

Thursday, December 20, 2007
Fence Sitting

During the meetings, I have heard on more than one occasion you are to take what you want and leave the rest.
The meeting on Tuesday night was rough because not only am in recovery for my alcohol dependency, I still have a difficult time with the “it is a sickness” part and I am trying to reconcile that within myself. I had a shitful childhood…

Take a look at this site, Right Turn, dedicated to sobriety through music, musicians and safe and sober live performances…

Treatment for Creative People on the Road to Recovery

Right Turn is a non-profit organization founded in March of 2003 by Addictions Specialist Woody Giessmann with a vision of providing innovative programming, individual support, rehabilitation services and ongoing encouragement to New England artists and entertainers (and their families) who’ve been affected by alcoholism, addiction, and psychiatric issues.
…we understand that artists and entertainers are a population that is typically isolated and unlikely to enter into traditional treatment facilities, we have developed a unique…

Thursday, October 4, 2007
You’d think by now that everyone knew. Yet I was active in A.A. and its meetings for two or three years before I ever heard mention of the founding. Finally, I learned that the date was June 10, 1935 - the date that Dr. Bob had his last drink. But that didn’t satisfy today’s historians. They tinkered with dates and concluded that Dr. Bob didn’t have his last drink on June 10th, that the medical convention to which he went in Atlantic City never occurred when AAs said it did, and that A.A. was founded on some…

Since 1996, photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally has documented the families in her Brooklyn neighborhood, quietly witnessing their struggle with poverty, social institutions, and the illicit drug trade. Having inspired the likes of Eugene Richards and Thomas Roma, Brooklyn provides an inexhaustible muse, and Kenneally comes to the familiar ground with a fresh perspective. Her poignant, psychological photographs span generations, tracing the same people she sees everyday on her street. With her camera, Kenneally narrates their tale of both hope and despair as she explores how her subjects empower themselves in a lost culture of drugs and prison. Money, Power, Respect:…

Check out more of The Raw File’s Brenda Ann Kenneally at her website. There are some slideshows and commentaries that are just amazing!

Brenda Ann Kenneally: Biography

Money, Power, Respect: Real Life Stories from the Hip-Hop Generation
Soros Criminal Justice Media Fellow Brenda Ann Kenneally attended the University of Miami, where she earned a B.S. in sociology and photojournalism, and New York University, where she received an M.A. in studio art.

Kenneally has been documenting the causes, effects, and economy of the use and sale of illegal drugs in her Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. The mother of an eight-year-old, Kenneally has focused on how…