In the meeting last night, we talked about the meaning of this reading:

Just for today
I will try to live through this day only,
and not tackle all my problems at once.
I can do something for twelve hours that would
appall me if I felt I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

I have learned to live in this day and not get stuck in what happened in the past. I also don’t dream about the future but do the best that I can to focus on what is happening today. I don’t think too much about how permanent situations are but…

The New York Times paints a dim view of addiction treatment and foreshadows a financial black hole once parity takes effect. The word recovery does not appear once, no mention of findings regarding the positive outcomes and  cost-effectiveness of treatment, no mention of twelve step facilitation as an evidence based practice, no mention of duration of treatment as an important factor in outcomes, and, as Bill White has said, these arguments about MET vs. TSF vs. MET are all arguments within the acute care paradigm. Systems change needs to focus on long term recovery management strategies for chronic addicts.

[hat tip: Matt]

…

I understand this is a difficult time of year for most people, and for many of us economic pressures are adding to the holiday burden.

For me, the winter of my discontent begins on the 13th of December, my birthday, the day I was arrested the last time, the day I was sentenced to prison, the day I became homeless.  The day I had the meltdown that got me sober.

Then comes Christmas with all it’s demands for happiness for joy and peace and cards and gifts and wrapping paper.  Every wrapped gift I see, every house with electronically choreographed lights and…

Ahh, family - you sweet bitch.

It is happening, Christmas is stirring up a handful of things that I manage to avoid through out the year, such as… dinner with my sister. ‘Bite the bullet’ is a phrase that comes to mind when I think of a warm family dinner. It is the shrill sound of my sister’s victim stance that sends shivers down my spine, like a fork screeching across the dinner plate - such is the voice of my dearest older sister. She is a dry drunk, a wet drunk, a binge drug addict, and an all over toxic…

This morning, I was in the car with my husband, and for some reason, I thought of my ex-husband and another of my exes. There have been three men in my life with whom I’ve had serious relationships, and it had never occurred to me before that all three of them parents who encouraged them in their substance abuse.

When my ex-husband and I were first dating, we were quite young. I went with him to meet his father, who lived in another state, and I was surprised to learn that his father let him drink. It seemed really neat at…

I’ve been feeling pretty dang good this holiday season, but pretty dang good doesn’t mean perfect or resentment free. I’m finding that my resentments this year really focus on retail workers, which is probably only fair, since I imagine a lot of their resentments center on me or millions of other shoppers like me.

I think it’s a volume thing. I’ve worked in retail and customer service before and eventually it wasn’t the troublesome customers who irked me as much as the 50th person in a day to ask the exact same question. “No, we still don’t have any of those,” I’d…

It’s time for me to make amends to a friend with whom I’ve basically not been around much over the past year. We used to be close and do quite a few things together but since I told him about my wife being an alcoholic and our marital difficulties, he’s distanced himself quite a bit.

My recovery hcas been about learning how to take care of myself as much as it has been about staying away from drugs. Over this past year, I’ve rediscovered the value of going to bed early, cooking and eating healthy meals, taking walks, practicing yoga, dancing, meditating, spending time with family and friends, writing, doing therapy…all of the things that make my life whole and keep me sane.

By doing these things, I’ve been able to cultivate some balance in my life. I’ve repaired a lot of damage, done some healing and even begun moving forward toward life goals that I had…

And no, it’s not recovery-related. I never promised nuthin’.

Humans have been around for quite a while. Even if you accept Bishop Usher’s figure of 6011 years ago (as of October 22nd) for the date of Creation, there have been 300 generations of us. If you prefer evolution, the figure expands to at least 7,500 generations in the case of Homo sapiens, and much longer if you include our cousins who preceded us.

The main thing distinguishing us from the other members of the hominid family is our big brain. Not only has it permitted us to develop intellectually, it has…

My husband has found the coolest meeting, ever, and I think he wants to make it his home group. While he’s been doing his 90 meetings in 90 days, I’ve attended several meetings with him. I’m his ride, and I’m finding that I get a lot out of what they have to say in those rooms. The steps are the steps, so a meeting on the third step is going to inform my own understanding of turning my will and my life over to my Higher Power. I also have had my own issues with drugs and alcohol, so it is…

I went to an AA/Al-Anon party last night that was nice. There was plenty of food and the speakers were good. Although I thought about skipping the whole thing because I was tired after the work week,  I realized (thankfully) that the time to go to something like an AA/Al-Anon Christmas party is when you don’t feel much like being at a party. I’m glad that I went.

Here is something that I heard and thought that I’d share. It helped put things in proper perspective for me.

I asked God to take away my habit.
God said, No.
It is not for me…

I’ve been feeling really calm, serene, balanced and happy lately. And I’m back to eating healthy meals. Weird. Because a little while back I was feeling pretty darn frustrated and stressed out. I was scheming about how I might control my world to make myself comfortable and I was (sugar being my drug of choice) drinking Coke for breakfast (no, I really do) and eating M&M’s by the handful.

So, did the world suddenly conform to the beautiful pattern I’d set for it? Hm, no. My son is sick. The one present my daughter really wanted for Christmas (ordered several weeks…

I enjoyed the meeting last night. I didn’t exactly get the nap that I’d planned but opted to get a little Christmas shopping done. Then it was off to the meeting. The topic was gratitude.

The person who brought the topic talked about being grateful that his son who is an addict and an alcoholic showed up for the Holidays. The son is in the process of wandering around the country by hopping freight trains. He showed up with a couple of friends who were described as “having enough metal pierced in their faces to look like a Cadillac grille”. The…

Being asked to write here at the Second Road was an honor and a…

Sometimes I think it’s cheap that I use television shows as teaching examples.  But The Office is never cheap television.  It is an exemplary show that mocks our work culture, the one particular to the office, a place where people have the opportunity to get to know each other very, very well. 

There’s potential for intimacy at the office, too much, sometimes, one of the reasons we why we find it so hilarious.

I liked last week’s show, Moroccan Christmas, for one line, really, the one at the end that illustrates so well how systems operate.  

In the show, Michael (Steve Carell) stages an intervention.   You may…

Yesterday was the last day of class until January 5th and I am so releived.  I hadn’t underestimated the difficulty of being a fulltime employee and a fulltime student, but, like the book says, "we alcoholics are undiciplined."  And I am an extreme example of that.

This was a particularly hard section to stay focused through because I was stuck having to learn stuff I will never use again and it made staying focused almost impossible.  I did get all of my assignments in last night with an hour to spare so that’s good, but I am grateful that I’m done…

I feel like I am walking into an empty room full of strangers. Hello…? You’ll all come in on your own time and see me standing here, introducing myself.

Hi, I’m Mantra of Mantramine- The Art of Being. I was so very pleased to be invited here to share my experience, past and present, in my spiritual recovery. I am many things: a writer, an artist, a mother, a woman, a cussy mouthed Canadian, and a the wife of a heroin addict who has found recovery on the methadone maintenance program.

I have been heard to declare that I AM NOT A CODEPENDENT!…

©2008 Allen Berger, Ph.D.

For those of us trudging the road of recovery the holiday season can be quite difficult and a challenge to both our serenity and abstinence. For me holiday celebrations were synonymous with drinking and partying. But it’s not only the ubiquity of “relapse triggers” that make this time of year so difficult, it is also the expectations associated with the holidays.

We are told that it, “Tis the season to be jolly.” We are expected to be filled with love and joy. Yet for many of us family celebrations bring to the foreground unfinished business, disappointments, grief…

• Special Treatment: The rise of luxury rehab
• Something In the Air: When a Smoker Gets Lung Cancer, Sympathy Is Stained With Blame
• Law gives strength in fight against heroin
• College Students Say ADHD Drugs Help Them Study

The New York Time yesterday published an opinion piece entitled “Drunkenfreude ” by Susan Cheever, the author of “My Name is Bill” and “Note found in a Bottle,” where she recounts some of the details of the last time she saw anyone obviously drunk at a party in New York City.

The New York apartments and lofts which were once the scenes of old-fashioned drunken carnage — slurred speech, broken crockery, broken legs and arms, broken marriages and broken dreams — are now the scene of parties where both friendships and glassware survive intact. Everyone comes on time, behaves well, drinks a…

I often hear newcomers, people who haven’t yet completed a 4th or 5th Step, talking about how they made amends for this and that in their lives. While I certainly admire anyone who is trying to clear up some of the wreckage of the past, I sometimes wonder about their concept of amends. Since the holidays are coming up and conversations with family members and old friends may be imminent, I thought I might make a few comments about amends and the 9th Step.

First of all, let me say that I’m old-school when it comes to the Steps. I believe…

Odd that there’s growing cultural pressure toward greater criminalization of tobacco and decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs.

I always thought it was such a stupid question; is the glass half empty or half full.  “Obviously,” I’d think to myself, “it is half empty AND half full.”  Being too literal is a defect of my character.  Literally.

Then one day I heard my sister’s answer.  “Half empty.  Half full.  It doesn’t really matter because either way it’s going to spill, and that is why we have sippy cups.”

Yesterday I heard another brilliant answer in the form of a question.  “We have glasses?”

I guess it’s on my mind because it was my birthday yesterday and I’ve been feeling a little…

I realized last night, as we were preparing to go to a Christmas party at this meditation room where my husband likes to attend AA meetings, that it has been a long, long time since I’ve done something for fun. Even the things that I do for fun, like yoga and meditation, are still awfully serious.

I’m proud of myself for my dedication to my recovery and personal growth, but really, humans sometimes need a break from thinking. I’m becoming awfully serious in my recovery, and I’m going to make a commitment tonight to myself to do something just for fun…

I went to one of the local dives the other night to listen to some blues music. I really like good blues and went with a friend of mine. As the night wore on, it became hard not to notice all the cross eyed people staggering around the floor. If I had been there with my SO, I would have been so anxious. As it was, I was just glad that I neither have had the urge to get drunk or really have deep anxiety about what the others were doing or why.

Probably my urge not to get drunk stems…

Most of the time, I find a lot of comfort in the idea that I have a God who is watching out for me, taking care of me, and creating a more fit container for the God within me through the dificulties I face in my life. I appreciate the freedom from worry that I feel when I realize that I am not in charge and that no matter what kinds of foolish decisions I make along the way, I will always be able to re-center and find myself again if I’m receptive to my Higher Power’s will.

There are times,…

My husband and I left the kids with a babysitter and went out on a date last night. Mark had a work crisis he wanted to deal with before leaving the office, so to save time, I decided to meet him there. When I do have to meet Mark at work, I tend to make sure it is after hours, when his coworkers are unlikely to be in the office. Visiting him at work always provokes anxiety in me, because he has a history of acting out in his sex addiction with coworkers, most recently by taking a female coworker…

Michigan’s Department of Community Health has fleshed out the medical marijuana program. It will be interesting to see how the role of caretaker takes shape.

This writer suggests that smoking warnings actually trigger cravings.

There’s something a little too neat and a little too certain about his op-ed, particularly from a study of 32 subjects.

It’s easy to imagine how a warning that contains the words cigarettes, tobacco or smoking might trigger craving. It’s a little more difficult to understand how an image of a tumorous lung would provoke craving, unless subjects have been desensitized to the image and have developed an association between the image and a cigarette. The op-ed suggests that all warnings are useless, but only explicitly addresses subject response to the text warnings.

I…

A troubling trend continues:

15.4 percent of 12th-grade students reported nonmedical use of legal prescription or over-the-counter medications

This is particularly troubling for 2 reasons. First, as JAMA recently pointed out, overdose deaths associated with prescription drugs are skyrocketing in some areas. Second, people who develop problems with prescription opiates often end up switching to heroin because it’s cheaper. They often start out by snorting heroin and end up switching to injecting.