We often speak about the phenomenan of craving. It is not something that I consider very often. Physical craving goes away after only a short time of abstainence. The deeper work of recovery is in addressing the mental obsession, which is often and incorrectly described as craving, and the underlying causes and conditions which set the obsession into motion, what we 12 steppers call the spiritual malady.

I don’t think about the physical compulsion, the craviing, much because my craving for methamphetamin left me long, long ago. I rarely experience the mental obsession anymore, either. I do have the occasional though…

Been cleaning all day today, and yesterday. Well, maybe not all day, there was some toenail painting and shopping in there as well, but I’m exhausted still.

Bagged up so. much. crap. today and took it to be donated. Oh, that felt so good. I had this huge pile of “stuff to be donated” gathering in the corner of my bedroom for like a year, and now it’s gone. And, I scored a pair of in-line skates for $7, thanks to J’s eagle eye. Turns out they retail for 180 beans and they’re barely even used. I love getting rid of all…

I was on the phone with a friend one day and she commented on the fact that I was obviously not present in the call. First of all I had no idea what kind of language is “present in the call.” Second, if you were trying to figure out what you could smoke without out harming your unborn child (and I’m not talking Pall Malls) or whether you should deal with that strange wailing coming from your basement you wouldn’t be present either. Third, shut up. She told me she would be right over. Gross.
pllleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaase go away!

I would so much…

by William C. Moyers

In the past few months, I’ve had an opportunity to speak to students at a high school for adults in Minnesota and criminal defendants in the judicial system in Texas. The students know almost nothing about addiction. The felons know everything. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum that separates fiction from fact. And both are crucial to changing the debate about alcoholism and drug addiction in America.

At the Lehmann Center School, in a gritty Minneapolis neighborhood of emigrants from all over the world, older students striving to get their high-school diplomas never had heard about alcoholism…

God and I can only partner in any useful way in the real world, and the reality is that the real world often makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve certainly done my share of damage by shying away from my own discomfort. Back in the early nineties when I was first climbing out of addiction, I ran a railroad crew hotel for about a year. It was the last remaining business in a once-thriving town. At the time, I was filled with the desire to save people as I, myself, had been saved—filled with it to the point of omnipotence. I was certain…

I’ve read that it’s possible to have unconditional love of self in which you love yourself regardless of external conditions. This means being true to your feelings regardless of those around you. Based on what I know from Al-Anon, the HP loves each of us unconditionally. And if I look outside myself for love, I will not find unconditional love from another human. This has been a tough one to understand in my past but now I know that my demands for love often far exceed what the other person can give. And then my expectations of the other become…

I hate coming home. I hate the slow, slow dread that creeps up on me when I’m traveling. It was a four hour ride in the car, and I loved every minute of it. I loved having time alone, time away…and now I’m back.

It’s not even so bad here. He was glad to see me. The dog was excited. I just hate coming back to my life. I’m trying not to…but it’s there, coiled up inside of me…a profound hatred for everything in my house.

I spoke with a friend today who broke up with a boyfriend recently, and he’s moved…

I’ve had better week-ends.

Yesterday was what I can only describe as a “dull” kind of day. Not dull in the sense that it was boring, but dull in the sense that my emotions were brought to a place that I can only describe as flat, lackluster, colorless, listless…I could go on, but you get the picture. I was in bed, reading, not wanting to do anything remotely physical. I fell asleep and had a horrible dream where I was standing beside my car and, all of a sudden, a SWAT team descended upon it, ripping it to shreds, looking for…

“Caliente!”

Absolutely an understatement I thought as I nodded my head in the direction of my latin co-worker. Even hotter for me, four days out of the crack pipe. The hard work feels good, gives purpose to my day and helps me live in the moment. Trying not to fall off the scaffold, read a measurement accurately, cut, drill, etc., at an acceptable rate and quality of work keeps my head out of my empty pocket.

The structure. The relationships. The patterns. The accountability. All these elements coagulate somehow at long last to grant me opportunity to get clean and, most importantly,…

I guess personal relationships just come more easily for some people. At least that’s what it looks like. I’d see them in school. They had straighter, whiter teeth, and shiny hair that lay where it was supposed to. They were good at sports. They knew who to talk to and what to say. They liked the right music and wore the right clothes. They looked comfortable inside their own bodies, I desperately wanted to be one of them, to be granted access to the popular kids table at the cafeteria and all that it symbolized, but I could never seem…

ME (confused): So despite the house overwhelmingly approving this medicare reform bill…bipartisan, too…what was the vote, something like 355-59?

SENATOR (dismissively aloof): Something like that…

ME: (questioning, confused): Geeez…when does that ever happen? 355-59? Phew! Yet, despite their strong, bipartisan support, you guys couldn’t even gain enough votes to stop debating? Is that right? You needed two more votes just to actually VOTE? On the bill?

SENATOR (wavering): Yes, that sounds about right, I guess.

ME (a bit incredulous): Forgive me for beating a dead horse here, but let’s go through this once more just so I’m clear. You guys didn’t vote “yes” or…

So I found this place - this place called recovery. It sucked. And it saved. The meetings, the coffee, the cookies, that smell of church basements that forced me to remember my Catholic up bringing, any form of sugar I could consume, the ego trips, the eye rolling, the clock watching,  the endless stories - it all somehow made me feel that maybe I could make it.

Maybe I was crazy but so what? I mean if this chick next to me who lost the ability to
add, subtract, and speak because of a binge could show up tonight then I better…

I started working with a new spnsor recently. I started taking the steps again, from the beginning. It is the best thing I could have done for my recovery. I’m not only excited about the program again, particularly about the way of studying the material that I’m learning and the opprtunity to pass this experience along. I had run out of specific instructions to pass along to the men I work with long before I began to become bored with it myself.

I never really lost my passion for recovery, something I see happening to lots of people. I’m grateful for…

Grief is often overlooked in addiction treatment, and almost universally so by the 12-step programs. It isn’t necessary that this should be the case, since the 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th steps are capable of dealing with it, when used skillfully by a good sponsor and a willing sponsee, and any reasonably competent therapist who is willing to do the research and attend a few seminars can deal with it in group.

I think the reasons are more basic than that: some of the same reasons that gave us an excuse for our abuse of chemicals. Quite simply, human beings instinctively…

One of the things that I’ve learned in Al-Anon is that I’m not responsible for someone else’s drinking. The slogan that captures this is “I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it”. A lot of people come into the program trying to find a way to stop their alcoholic from drinking. Look at the writings of Lois Wilson and all that she tried to do for Bill W. She tried everything including getting drunk herself to show him what the terrible effects of alcohol were. There are a lot of people who come to Al-Anon…

Little C left on Sunday for Alaska, and contrary to my grand plans for my time during her absence, I’ve accomplished basically nothing.

Sure, I’ve been looking forward to cleaning out the closets, scrubbing the bathroom floor, decluttering the house and having a yard sale ever since her grandma planned this trip. They’re gone for a week - what a perfect opportunity to do all the stuff I never do because I have a 5-year-old under foot. And I’d even have time to hit the gym, go for walks, cook some delicious food, and plant some flowers. Well, they left on…

It was an off-hand comment because he thought I knew. Liver cancer. It’s inoperable. I didn’t know. At the meeting last night another friend said she was in the hospital because of pain–”probably gall stones.” Tonight it’s a death sentence. Chemo. That’s all they can offer at this point in time. WHAT??? “I’m sorry. I thought you knew,” he said. I didn’t know.

Now I know more than I want to believe. My friend has a terminal illness. My bubbly, happy, laughing, sarcastic, always-lively, middle-aged, sober friend has cancer–inoperable cancer. It could be a made for tv movie, the characters are…

I’m taking one. It will be a little one, but it will be mine. I’ll get some sleep, and I’ll see some friends, and I’ll be near water. My husband can stomp around and yell at the air if he needs to stomp around and yell at something, someone, somewhere. I need a break from being the obstacle for his anger’s battering ram.

I wish I had it in me to tell him that I need a break. I wish I could believe that there’s a break that’s possible in marriage…a break that isn’t permanent. I won’t risk asking him to…

Boundaries are one of those subjects that come up a lot in Al-Anon meetings. I never understood the term before and what it meant in a relationship until coming to meetings.

I’ve had to learn hard lessons with keeping boundaries because I’ve been a boundary breaker. I’ve been involved in a marriage in which I’ve had to gradually learn to establish boundaries.

In the beginning, I put a lot of time and emotional energy into the relationship. I was willing to sacrifice a lot and give much more than I got. That’s definitely not a good thing and indicates my lack of…

I’ve been going to Al-Anon for a couple of years. It has helped me to understand the disease of alcoholism that the Big Book of AA describes as “cunning, baffling, and powerful”. Before Al-Anon, I didn’t have any understanding but I had a lot of pain.

I’ve felt a lot of pain over the years that I’ve lived around alcoholics. I understand what emotional bottoms are. I’ve been there and have been told over the years by my alcoholic that I was a lot of things, most of them not any good. It’s fairly standard alcoholic rhetoric. What I’ve come to…

…and stick it in your mouth. I remember hearing this old timers slogan often when I first came into the rooms of recovery over 10 years ago. I have to admit I found it quite offensive at the time but that was of course because I thought I knew everything. I would share incessantly at meetings about everything in my life whether it pertained to recovery or not, sometimes taking up 10 or more minutes of a 60 minute meeting. Talk about self-serving. But I was green and didn’t know the ropes until an old timer approached me after a…

I am the oldest of 4 children. My sisters are 2 years and 6 years younger than me. My brother is 13 years younger. Until the day my parents divorced we were raised in a home free of alcohol. Then everything changed.

For reasons of her own, the older of my two sisters, Stephanie, has not spoken to our mother in five years. For similar reasons, even though we live in the same city, I haven’t spoken to our mother in 18 months. Stephanie and I have a lot of stuff to talk about.

We rarely have the opportunity to talk, though.…

It’s up and down, up and down at my house. I am observing things working in a real predictable cycle, which seems new.

Over the weekends, my husband overcomes my wariness by being the love of my life…exuberant, charming, engaging, funny, affectionate…

By Monday, he’s a little grumpy, but still an engaged partner. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, however, he’s awful. Everything is wrong. Everyone is out to get him. Everybody is unfair. All he wants to do is lie on the couch, sleep. Get up, go to bed, sleep. When he’s awake, he’s yelling or scowling. On Friday, he starts to become…

If overwhelmed were a tool, I would be an expert with it. Whatever the overwhelmed tool did, I would do it best! I’m sure of it! If overwhelmed were taught in the Big Book, I’d be the featured speaker at every meeting. Nobody can do overwhelmed like I can! If overwhelmed were an Olympic event, I’d certainly have multiple golds…AND I’d still be f—ing miserable!!

I am so tired of feeling overwhelmed! It’s a giant snowball of a feeling, and it’s rolling downhill with ever increasing speed. From my wet basement to Puck’s ACL to my ailing hip to the race…

I was engaged in a dialog over on Dean’s World about the disease concept of alcoholism and the need/not need for absolute abstinence among recovering people. Without opening that can of worms for the moment, in the process we began discussing the idea of “outside help” in the 12-step programs.

Most of us who have been around the rooms for very long have heard some old mustache pete pipe up and say that he (sometimes she) got sober in the rooms of AA (this seems to be more common at AA meetings) and the Program Of Recovery As Laid Out In The…

Since I have presumed to write about Mind, Body and Spirit for The Second Road, you deserve to know my own positions on related issues.  This is my take on living in general.  You need not feel obliged to agree with any of it, but I hope it makes sense and does not seem too stodgy — a vice of which I have been accused from time to time.

I am currently having an e-mail exchange with a lady I knew at school. She is now a minister, and I think what we are doing in our correspondence is feeling each…

When I tried getting clean and sober, I knew I had to give up the friends that I partied with for years. That didn’t sound so easy. I knew what my friends would say. Some of their comments would be, “You can just have a couple, you don’t have to get drunk” or “you can still hang out with us and you don’t have to drink alcohol, you can drink pop or coffee and you can be our designated driver.” Their ideas aren’t going to work for me and a lot of other alcoholics.

I’m afraid you’re going to have to…

It’s no big secret that I practice 12 step recovery. Though I take the program very seriously, I am by no definition a “Big Book Thumper” or a “Boomer” as the strange personality cult in my area are called in honor of their sponsor, but I digress. I take the program seriously. It got me “sober”, but much of my recovery falls under the heading of “God will constantly disclose more to you and to us”.

Having said that, I have a confession. Sometimes meetings drive me insane. Some meetings more than others. Some people in the program drive me insane,…

It’s been almost thirty-one years, since my brother, Donald, put his revolver in his mouth and blew himself away. I remember August 3^rd, 1975–like it was almost yesterday.

I was on a first date with a very young woman, named Belinda. She was very attractive–curves and all. She lived with her mother only two doors down from my apartment. I wanted to show her off to my brother. I was twenty-two and Belinda was eighteen.

I was pretty close to Donald–especially the last couple years of his life. He was my oldest brother. There was almost fourteen years difference between us.…

I love this beautiful city that I’ve adopted as my home. Sure, it rains or is cloudy eight or nine months of the year, but when summer comes to town ~ the whole city celebrates.

Today, J and I took our 5-year-old daughter, Little C, to the Solstice Parade and Festival at one of the coolest parks in Seattle. The park itself is a reclaimed oil refinery that sits on the lake shore, and the parade is a spectacle of beautiful hippie-pagan-freakshow rejoicing that is truly fit to celebrate the sun’s birthday.

Little C was dressed up like a fairie, and she…