Sometimes blogging is such a challenge to me. Robin and Linnie tagged me–which just makes me glow, for I love feeling part of bloggersphere.  The problem is, I’m not quite sure what this means. Since sobriety means honesty, I thought the best thing to do would be to admit my ignorance and say (loudly and clearly): HELP!

Happy Monday, everyone.

I was driving back from going out on a story, tired of listening to my book on tape, in the mood for a little vintage rock and roll, punching the radio dials–and, suddenly, there were the Animals singing “We Gotta Get Out of this Place.”

I was right back in 1965, dancing my toes off a huge college parties, arms waving over my head, singing along. Beside me is Tom Spear–a friend of my eventual first husband’s–tall, dark, handsome, drunk out of his mind, singing “we gotta get out of this place” with the fervor of a true believer.

Tom was the…

You know, it struck me while e-mailing a friend that once I stop talking about whatever’s going on in my professional life, I have very little new to report. I could get by with cutting and pasting a pre-written paragraph that goes something like “Charlie and I are both fine, our Head Cat (who has feline HIV and so is in precarious health) is taking a nap in the sun, our other cat is causing trouble, the gardens are doing well, and I plan to eat three square meals, work out, and, if I’m lucky, take a nap.” And how…

It’s a little after 8 in the morning, and I’ve just put the final tweaks on an NPR story. It’s a wonderful feeling to work and work, push and push, and then–poof!–the story’s done and there it is. I like working in intense bursts that actually end with a real sense of completion.

At home my desk sits directly in front of a window that looks out to mountains over our back gardens. The early daffodils in those gardens are just beginning to pop open, the day lilies have begun to peak out of the ground, the lawn is greening, there’s…

“Blackout Girl” by Jennifer Storm

Reviewed by Ginger B.

Jennifer Storm’s account of her dark and disturbing journey through her teens is a horrifying narrative of her tortured youth, and her pin-ball life choices which landed her in situations which were more than disturbing to me as the reader. On page 3, she describes her first rape at the age of 12, and the next three quarters of the book is a chronicle of her cataclysmic demise, almost to the point of annihilation. I have read my share of stories of addiction and Ms. Storm’s tale is among the most unnerving I…

By William C. Moyers

Two events occurred recently that remind me of the stakes in getting the public to accept addiction as a disease that affects the entire family — but one that is treatable with benefits for everyone.

On March 5, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to expand private insurance coverage for people seeking treatment for drug dependence or alcoholism. It’s the first time the House has ever voted to require insurance companies to treat addiction like other chronic illnesses. It follows by a few months similar action in the Senate.

“We’ve waited 12 long years for this historic day,”…

An original trailer edit to the documentary about drug addiction aired on HBO, definitely worth a look…

This is an astonishing article I found on CNN.com on how America’s drinking water holds many different types of pharmaceuticals…

(AP) — A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Officials in Philadelphia say testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But…

Charlie, my husband and most tremendous pal, says there is no such thing as an inanimate object–that every blasted one of the “machines” in this sweet old world are periodically out to get us!

No, he’s not paranoid, just experienced. And this weekend, when my computer failed to save a whole afternoon’s worth of sound editing and script writing, I was ready to agree with him.

This is what happened. I’m on deadline on a national story, so I make myself keep slogging Friday afternoon when I am dog-tired. I save the files, slap them on my zip-drive, take them home to…

I think I may be having one of “those days” - you know, the kind that you just hope you can get through without putting your fist (figuratively or literally) through the wall. The kind where you don’t find anything particularly wonderful to be grateful for, let alone celebrate. The kind where you’re glad it’s cloudy and rainy, so you can wallow just a little bit deeper in your quagmire of self pity. And the kind where, underneath your blouse or sweater, you are wearing your “VICTIM” t-shirt. Yeah, I’m definitely having one of those days.

If I were a flower,…

Here is a clip from YouTube of a former drug addict who has overcome his addiction through determination, hard work and hard running…

Okay, I got really steamed at work a couple of days ago. It was a bad day in the office all around for all of us–which I should add is highly unusual.

So, in time-honored sober-person fashion, I took myself to a meeting right after work.  What was unusual for me–in fact I can’t remember ever doing (unless called upon to do it) in 17 years of sobriety–was that I brought up a topic. I sat there and splatted out a bunch of words about how frustrated I was with my colleagues and how awful and un-sober that frustration made me feel.…

By William C. Moyers

I spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the other night. It was a remarkable moment for me. There I was, in a national monument of spirituality — “America’s house of prayer for all people” — telling my story of addiction, redemption and recovery. From the floor of a crack house in Atlanta in 1994 to the sanctuary of the cathedral 14 years later … go figure.

Of the several hundred people in the audience were a group of women from N Street Village. It’s an organization dedicated to preventing and eliminating homeless, and it starts by…