It was an incredible day today in one of my favorite places on earth. Made it a bit easier to awaken at 4:25 AM to catch the bus to the start of my favorite half marathon–The Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon (run in conjunction with Grandma’s Marathon today). Fifteen weeks of training culminated in one extended moment–this goal race. Like I said, it was an incredible day.

I had a goal today. I had a time I wanted to meet–a time that would assure a better starting position in the BIG goal race–The Twin Cities Marathon, October 5, 2008. That’s important to…

I will be celebrating my fifth anniversary of sobriety on the Fourth of July, 2008. Independence Day has a new (second) meaning to me now–my independence from alcohol. This is my other birthday. This is the new and improved Earl.

My recovery is all about truth. And to be truthful, I am writing a book about my infamous character from birth to present. Also, I hope my readers can appreciate and realize how important the truth is in their recovery.

I have had eleven DUI arrests from 1972 to 2003. Nine of those were convictions. Two of them I was a no-show…

Did you ever have a day when everything seemed to go wrong? Or a week?

I thought so.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you can’t seem to figure out if you’re supposed to be practicing the principle of perseverance or of acceptance? Or have you ever tried to do something that you know you have to do, with fewer resources than you’d like to have to do it and become so frustrated along the way that it takes everything in your power to not give up?

I thought so. Life is like that, isn’t it?

About a week ago I…

I was out of town yesterday recording a series of panel discussions with “professionals” in the addiction/recovery field for a series of videos that will appear on a national recovery website later on this summer. There I was, surrounded by Ph.D.’s, experts on addiction prevention, treatment, and long-term care and I was the only person in recovery in the group. I was told that for each of these panels, there had to be one person in recovery at the table. On this particular occasion that was me.

We taped four discussions, all revolving around prevention and treatment for addiction in the…

Just today I truly understood that I have will power again. Maybe now more than ever because I learned a respect for life when I kicked my addiction.

It happened today, with logging trucks barreling down on me and raging maniacs flicking me off while my scooter plugged along spilling oil on the back tire.

I have forgiven myself for having no willpower while in the height of my decadent addiction and depths of dependency. Most addicts in the 12 step process embrace the mantra, “we admitted we were powerless…”

Well, this girl’s recovery has been done alone, by utilizing meditation, yoga, and…

I have recently been involved in a dialogue with some Evangelical Christian folk.  The results have been interesting.

As is often the case, the encounters began with an approach in an attempt to “save” me.  This sort of thing used to really bother me.  Eventually I came to realize that, unlike some lesser species, such as TV evangelists, most Evangelicals are simply trying to do me a favor.  They believe in their hearts that my soul is doomed, and they want to help.  Viewed that way, it is hard to remain insulted or angry.  Annoyed is a different matter.

Buddhists do not…

I’ve had an interesting life experience over the past few years that I’d like to share with you.

Back in 2001, my wife and I helped start a drug and alcohol treatment center — and that was, indeed, a spacey odyssey. (I’m sorry, that just forced its way out.)

For the first few months it was Michele, me, two other therapists, an office manager and about ten clients. Over the next couple of years, it evolved into a much larger and quite successful operation. During my time there I was a residential manager/gofer, office manager, part time manager of the women’s residence,…

July 4th, 2008, marks my fifth year of sobriety. Coincidentally by accident, the day I sobered up was Independence Day. It was to be my new birthday. My independence from alcohol. I didn’t plan it that way. Oddly enough, I planned on getting drunk during the Fourth of July (2003) on a solo RV camp out. Things were bothering me that day. But sobering up was far from my mind.

I had one beer that day. The tavern was dead. As a matter of fact, I was the only customer. I got bored, so I left. I planned on coming back later.…

Hi there, friends and fellow travellers on the gypsy road.  The staff have asked me to write occasionally about mind, body and spirit stuff.  I suppose spirit stuff would be ectoplasm, if you are into that sort of thing.  I hasten to say that I know nothing at all about it.

A few words about meself are in order, I suppose.  I read anthropology and comparative religion at university.  This proves only that I have been interested in mind, body and spirit for a long time.  The fact is, I know no more about it than anyone else, I simply have more…

But I deserve it! Self-pity, that is. I am in it up to my eyeballs, and the muck is rising fast. Soon I will be totally blinded by it! I am sad, irritable, and forlorn! I am terrified. I am catastrophizing to a degree rarely witnessed before–thank God! I am repetitively asking, “Why me? Why now? How come?” And for good measure, I am also praying, “Please, not now. No more. Make it go away. I can’t handle this. Please heal me now.” Pitiful really. Really pitiful.
What’s landed me in such a state? Well, if you want the full catastrophe version,…

and decided that I sound just too-too spiritual and perfect sounding. In fact, I thought I sounded like the kind of person I wouldn’t enjoy lunching with at all.

So I feel a burning desire to make one thing clear about my personal code of conduct (that’s the title of my last post). It’s very much about the way I act, not about the way I necessarily feel.

In other words, sobriety hasn’t turned me into a saint who always feels kindly toward everyone else on the planet. I’m still annoyed with people about 50 percent of the time. What sobriety has…

I always meant to be a morning person, but never quite could get it together. When I was younger, I was too hungover or strung out to get up early, or to get up ever unless I had to. As I got older, I was generally too exhausted by fretting about the person I’d married being too hungover or strung out to get up early, or ever…but something about the last year has gotten me up and out of bed.

I love the mornings. I love the soft light, and the way it smells, and the feeling in the day before…

by Mariclaire

You know I came into this world hesitantly. As an infant I was ill and died three times.
I wasn’t sure about this ride this time. I just wasn’t sure. I remember when I decided to stay.

I had just come home from the hospital after three months of mystery illnesses and was laying on the sofa in our living room. To my left were two windows and on the other side
were my two older sisters and my mom’s mom waving and smiling. To my right, in the room, was my mom. I could feel a prickly heat on my arm.…

Effort/Results

Cause/Effect

Action/Consequence

Seed/Harvest

Persevere in the process

Waiting is an action.

When you don’t know what to do… be still

Time-Takes-Takes-Takes-Takes

In the street I could “bust-a-move.” In the street I could “make” something happen to get what I wanted. Though often active addiction became a waiting game, you usually knew what or who or why you waited. You might be waiting on the man. You might be waiting on your dealer to re-up.

You might be waiting on the right person to hustle, like a lion in the grass, waiting on that lame antelope to come to the watering hole. Always, when you waited, you got the…

I took a 12 step meeting to the psych ward the other night. I’ve done this regularly in the past year or so and I’ve never come away from that experience without thanking God that I am where I am, even if it’s a really crappy place. This night was no different. There are always two of us that bring the meeting, but no more than two, since often there are only one or two patients that come, and we are conscious of not outnumbering the patients. This time we were both females, and three patients showed up for the…

by William C. Moyers

What is success?

And at what price?

Finding answers to these questions is a challenge for people trying to decide where to seek treatment for addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Complicating the effort is the emotion of the crisis that usually precedes a decision. And misperceptions and expectations about treatment often exacerbate the process.

“We are such a ‘fix’ and ‘cure’ culture that we often get confused about the goal of addiction treatment,” said Ron Hunsicker, the president and CEO of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers. “It is important to remember that addiction is a chronic disease…

A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post referencing my tendency to write yoga-gasms on my blog, and I thought it was a hilarious expression…and then I thought it was more hilarious to shorten it again to yogasm. I do yogasm, a lot…yoga changed my life. It’s a part of the trinity of my recovery…Nar-Anon, yoga, and writing have helped me live through the hardest time I’ve ever had. I’ve got all these tools now, this rich mixed bag…and my stomach looks great, too!

I lured another Nar-Anon friend into the yoga class today, and I’m afraid she’ll never speak to…

the urge to drink took me by surprise last night. i don’t know if it was before or after the tears. doesn’t matter. it was there. an old, familiar voice in my head…not yelling, teasing or screaming, but calm and subtle it was. a quiet attack. sneaky. “fuck it,” it said. “fuck it. who cares,” it followed. “who cares.” and for a moment i believed. i entertained the notion. throw all the work away. i was hurt. i was sad. and i did not want to feel hurt or sad. i did not want to feel at all.

etta

…

I saw my husband’s sister yesterday, and she asked me how things were going at our house. I told her that I’m working a lot, so I’m not home much; however, when I am home, I feel my husband’s resentment of me in the air as thick as if it were smoke. She said she’d spoken with him recently, and he’d said that he thinks I ought to let bygones be bygones…that he’s doing the best he can, and that I should let go of my own resentment and go back to “the way things were.”

I don’t think things will…

After reading the three-part story Chris related about his journey to recovery, I am left in a weird, I-hate-to-admit-it, conflicted state. Only an alcoholic could read such a story and feel both relief and…and…and…oh, okay, envy. How screwed up is that? If you’ve not disgustingly clicked over to another blog by now, please let me try to explain.

Here’s the thing. My story is boring. Boring in comparison to every single story I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of them. Thankfully, I’ve only been asked to speak about my recovery once. Unfortunately, it was in a women’s halfway house…

by Courtney H.

I never know what to say when the subject of drinking comes up. It is probably a pretty sure sign of my alcoholism that I have spent a fair amount of time considering this as some sort of quandary . When I am around someone who doesn’t know I am in the program and they want to know my favorite drink of the moment or when I am going to hit up happy hour with them, my immediate reaction is to clam up, red faced. Then I usually mutter, “I don’t drink,” and try escape the conversation quickly.…

Fear. Fear. Fear. “A thousand forms of fear.” “Fear of impending doom.”

Fear breathes. Fear walks. Fear stands outside my window with its nasty nose pressed to the glass, vapor fogging the pane, obscuring my view. Sometimes I can’t hear for the whisper…the voice…the yelling…the screaming…the brass chaotic band that drowns my stillness and tidal waves my peace, my perceptions, my plans.

Fear is real. Fear is imagined. Fear, so much my constant companion…so long my constant companion that in those eye-of-the-hurricane moments, or respite, like the naked, wet survivor of the ship wreck washed upon the shore, spent empty, shocked and…

I have a code of conduct, but it’s far less specific than it used to be back in the days when I used such a code mainly as a Richter scale for measuring the strength my current rebellion.

These days I try to be kind, thoughtful, completely honest with myself (an ever-evolving process) and as honest with others as kindness allows.

I try to approach people who are different than I, or who don’t seem to be behaving as I think they should, with curiosity and compassion, and without judgment — which is still a huge struggle for me, particularly…

After tonight’s meeting, which I attended solo because right now, my husband isn’t like “those people,” I went out with a friend from my program and her spouse, who is among “those people” in the rooms across the hall. It is so wonderful and exhausting to be among people in recovery. I always love these folks…people who are acutely aware of themselves, their issues, their ups and downs…and I remember it most when I’m in meetings. It’s nice, though, to get away from the meeting setting sometimes, and to get a break from all the meeting rules. It’s nice just…

I had a meltdown in the parking lot of a grocery store the other day and ended up sobbing into my steering wheel. I rarely cry anymore. I have sometimes laid in my bed and tried to force myself to cry, but my tear ducts are like 19th century oil wells that have been sucked dry. I cried a couple of weeks ago at the funeral of a friend of mine who died too young. His son read a poem that I had sung years before when I was the music director at that church. The eventual loss of that…

Methamphetamine quickly assumed a great role in C’s and my lives. He became a slut. I became resentful. It ended badly and violently.

I was unable to stop using and I continued like that for a year, frequently exchanging sex and drugs for the sound of a heart beating next to me to help kill the pain. It didn’t work, of course. I just continued getting crazier. Somewhere in there I landed in a psych ward again. This time I was taken there by the police. In the end I decided that I couldn’t get sober on my own. I needed…

Anonymity has become a big issue lately. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, in some respects, it is no longer an issue at all. There was a time when the admonition to preserve anonymity at the level of press, radio and film was pretty-much sacrosanct. Absolutely no reputable journalist or medium would have dreamed of breaking anyone’s anonymity. Movie stars, sports figures, politicians, judges — all could attend treatment or meetings without fear of the media blowing their cover. Even if someone had recognized them, the damage would have been minimal because there would have been…

I was sitting in a meeting today, and a person who has been trying to stay sober for quite a few years was speaking about relapse. Actually, she was speaking about something totally different, but the relapse comment caught my attention. It’s a comment I’ve heard before–spoken as fact, and a comment I’ve heard disputed with equal vigor. The comment is usually some variation of the following: Relapse is a required or necessary part of recovery. Or, so-and-so had to relapse in order to recover. Or, relapse is normal in recovery.

I don’t know. Is it?
Is relapse necessary or normal? Should we…

I’ve been trying to think of the polite way to describe the next part of my story, the PG version, and I can’t seem to do it, so I won’t go into any detail except to say that I had broken up with a boyfriend whom I had loved very much. That whole relationship had been prior to my methamphetamine use. I “sought out sordid places” to ease the pain of the breakup and it was there that I was introduced to meth.

All the feelings of sorrow over the lost relationship vanished. All my shame over being gay vanished. My…