…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…

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,…