A friend asks if it is OK to be angry about a relative having “chosen” behavior that has led to his imminent death and a lot of grief for those around him.

You have an absolute right to feel angry; in fact, you don’t have a choice. Anger is an emotion, and it will happen whether we agree or not. If we try to suppress emotions completely, they always come out in other ways eventually. We can moderate them when we need to for social reasons, but we have to allow ourselves to feel and walk beyond them.

Once your anger has…

The Shrink has been out for several hours today in the rain, canvassing the poorer neighborhoods and getting people to register, reminding them to vote, getting address changes made, and generally making a pest of herself.

We’ve found that I don’t do too well in those sorts of situations, and we think it’s because I simply look too intimidating.  Poor folks look at me, and even though it’s been 18 years and I’m in my 60’s now, they still see a cop.  Not much I can do about it.  I looked like one even before I was one.  When I walk up…

From the AA Grapevine Digital Archive:

ONE THURSDAY evening, April 2, 1840, nearly 100 years before the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous, six good drinking buddies were gathered at Chase’s Tavern on Liberty Street in Baltimore, Md.

The more they drank, the more their discussion centered on temperance, which was one of the most popular topics of the day. This meeting and subsequent discussions led to the formation and brief, spectacular life of the Washingtonian movement, which grew in membership to over 400,000 “reformed drunkards” and then destroyed itself overnight and dropped out of sight.

The story of the Washingtonian movement brings sharply into…

My friend Jere is dying. He may even be dead by now. We just heard about the cancer a couple of days ago. Someone told Michele at a meeting. And now he’s probably gone.

Jere’s no kid. I’d guess him to be closer to 80 than 70. You know how it is with people you’ve known, seemingly, forever. They age, but you don’t notice until one day you look and realize that you’ve both suddenly grown a lot older. It was that way with Jere. He was the soul of vitality, one of those people who radiated energy even when standing…

Spirituality is a difficult subject for many people in early recovery. There are a variety of reasons, but what they usually boil down to is a bad experience with religion.

Forgetting, for the moment, that religion and spirituality are not the same thing, we need to help newcomers reach some sort of accommodation with their possible misgivings about all the discussions of higher powers, God as we understood him, spiritual awakenings and all the other recovery jargon that flies around the rooms.

This is sometimes an awkward situation, and one that needs to be dealt with gently — perhaps passed over altogether…

Tobacco products are the only products legally sold in the United States that are known to be deadly when used as directed .

That being the case, how can anyone who is still using them claim to be in recovery from addiction? Who but an active addict would do that?

Addiction is addiction, and denial is denial. Get over it. I’m not saying we have to quit everything all at once, but if we’ve been off the sauce or drugs for more than a couple of years and are still smoking, we needn’t be bragging about how we’re recovered” addicts. We ain’t there…

Nineteen years ago today, at a few minutes after 4:00 PM, I washed my last Valium® down with my last beer. Shortly thereafter, I walked through the doors of a drug and alcohol treatment center to begin the rest of my life. A couple of days later I had the moment of clarity that was truly the beginning of my recovery.

I could write a book (and may someday do so) about the next six weeks of confusion, illumination, and being dragged kicking and screaming into a thriving community of recovering addicts. Over the past few days I’ve found myself remembering…

It’s sort of hard being an agnostic in the 12-step rooms.  Mostly my problem is my intolerance.  It’s not so much that folks believe in something that I do not.  I’m a Democrat, and there are a lot of Republicans; a recovering addict, and there are a lot of Earth People who don’t understand us, or want to.  I’m used to differing opinions, and if I find them objectionable it’s generally easy enough to avoid those people (except for family).  My problem is that I have very little tolerance for people who judge others, especially in the rooms, and when they…

My home group has a tradition, when celebrating 12-step birthdays, of asking celebrants to speak, not in generalities, but about one specific thing that they have found important in their own recovery. It’s an old-timer’s group, and you know how they like to go on and on. We’ve found that doing it that way is helpful for newcomers and keeps things from getting too preachy (and long). SO I thought, in honor of my anniversary this month, that I’d extend that tradition a bit along the Second Road.

Every so often around the 12-step rooms you’ll hear someone say, “My name’s…

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
~ Herbert Spencer

Frankly, I have no idea who he was. I stole that quote from page 570 of Alcoholics Anonymous (3rd edition,) known to drunks worldwide as “The Big Book.” Whoever or whatever ol’ Herb was, he was also a wise man.

I mostly ignored similar concepts for most of my life. I would have told you that I was a liberal, well-educated, philosophically-inclined, hyper-intelligent and…

For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. Because this is the time of the year when I make a point of looking back at how things were, I offer the following story.

Twenty-odd years ago, when my life was remarkably different from the way it is today, I was handed an assignment by my boss, the Chief of Police. The job was to wade through a bunch of sworn affidavits that had been provided by the local hospital as fruits of a civil case, interview some folks, and find out if there…

Sittin’ here watchin’ th’ rain. And th’ wind. And th’ radar — and thinking about how lucky I am to be sober, and able to avoid the drama and bullshit with which I would have surrounded an occasion like Tropical Storm Fay, back in the day.

Of course, it would have been a perfect opportunity to drink. Even in my cop days, when I at least managed not to drink on the job (I had other things to tide me over), I would have complained about having to be there (Hey, I’m a f****g executive!), and as soon as I finally…

This issue is especially important to people in recovery. Many doctors make it clear by their statements and attitudes that they know little or nothing about addiction.

I was once sent by my dentist (25 years sober) to an oral surgeon for some tricky extractions. The DMD and I had a long conversation about my recovery, addiction, and the fact that I was unwilling to take mood-altering medications. He agreed that was a good idea, and assured me that he was up on such things. He then went on into my treatment planning, and his first two ideas were Valium to…

…we got all night

to set the world right…
…find us a dream that don’t ask no…

I was at a particularly “bloody” meeting yesterday, one of those where everyone who shared had some semi-horror story to discuss about their recovery. I go to a lot of meetings attended by folks from the many treatment facilities hereabouts, so that sort of thing is hardly a surprise. This one, however, was especially notable — lots of unhappy folks having their problems walking the path, just like I did in the early days.

I went straight from there to a weekend retreat that was mostly meditation, and found myself considering the question of just what constitutes an “old-timer”. It’s not…

I’m an alcoholic, drug addict and codependent.  My name is Bill.

I had my 45th birthday in a treatment center. I was employed in a good job, making a good salary, working for a man I liked and respected, and doing a job I didn’t especially like, but at which I excelled. Nevertheless, not two weeks before my birthday I’d been sitting on one of the twin beds in a motel room, my home having been foreclosed on. Food was hot dogs from the convenience store across the street. Salvation, such as it was, was beer from the same source. The…

Sometimes we bloggers find that our text doesn’t play nice with the blogging system we use.  Copying and pasting from our editors into the blog pages can result in some unfortunate conflicts, format-wise.  I’ve noticed the problem here at 2ndRd as well as other sites on the Net, so I thought I’d offer this.  It might not seem exactly related to recovery, but if you’re writing about recovery much, it could help avoid resentments.

There are a couple of simple ways around this formatting problem.  The most obvious is to use the Rich Text editors on the blog page or on…

About 18 or so years ago, the author Lawrence Block wrote a novel called Random Walk, about a young man who begins a journey eastward from Oregon on foot, on what he imagines is a whim.  Along the way he picks up followers, including a murderous character whose coming to terms with his past makes up a powerful subplot.

The book is clearly a parable for the recovery process, as well as a New Age venture into mysticism.  Like all Block’s novels, it is tight and well-crafted.  Unfortunately it fell flat on its face and is now out of print.  Nonetheless,…

I just learned of a resentment toward me being held by a close family member. Since we won’t be able to discuss it face to face for a few weeks, neither of us wanted to get into it at all right now. Such things are ill-resolved by email. They require the nuances of tone of voice and the visual cues that make up 80% of human interaction. We will discuss it.

It’s interesting, however, that now I’m aware of it I feel as though there’s some sort of sword hanging over my head. Change is afoot, and I may have to do…