I cannot help but find myself at such a loss after hearing of the death of one of our own.  DJ AM aka Adam Goldstein, was found dead in his NYC apartment.  Allegedly, there were prescription drugs and a crack pipe found in his possession. Adam had been admittedly clean and sober since 1997 after a suicide attempt. He had 11 ½ years of recovery and was working on a show with MTV helping other addicts find recovery. 

Wikipedia defines duct tape as a strong,  multi-purpose pressure-sensitive adhesive tape. In America, we define duct tape as the multi-purpose, quick fix-it for all circumstances that need an immediate, temporary fix. This can range from taping the spine of a book together or holding a headlight in place until a repair can be done. Duct tape is the all-American fixer-upper.

My father used duct tape in an attempt to fix me. When I used to drink and black out—which was more often than I care to recall—I wasn’t always the best driver. I drank, and I drove, and I bounced off things…

I have been struggling for a while in my personal relationship. This appears to be an area in my life and my recovery where I still have such challenges. I guess we can’t all be good at everything, right? I’m good at work, I am a trusted friend, good at recovery, I am a loving and caring daughter—but I somehow still make a lousy partner. Or is it more that I am still choosing the wrong partner?  Not that I am some innocent angel in relationships, but I have done my share of therapy and work in this area. My…

Sorry I have been gone from the blog scene for a while.  I am deep in the process of getting my second memoir, Leave the Light on: A Memoir of Recovery and Self-Discovery ready.  It will be released by Central Recovery Press in April.  Check out CRP, they are an amazing new publishing company out of Las Vegas, they also happen to have several great rehabilitation facilities in the country.  www.centralrecovery.com  I tend to get exhausted in the writing process and when I go to blog it’s like the pen’s run dry.  But I think my pen is now running over…

I got clean and sober at Penn State.  I went to college there in early recovery and stayed clean and sober for my entire four year stay there. Sure there were times when it was hard, but my recovery was what enabled me to go there in the first place and become the first person in my family ever to graduate from college.

 I didn’t have a boring experience, in fact, I had a blast at Penn State and I never picked up a drink or drug.

 It is possible to attend a university with a party reputation and stay clean and…

Traditionally my birthday and mother’s day have always fallen on the same weekend or at the least one weekend apart. When I was little some of my sweetest mother/daughter moments were of these times. My only truly fond memories of my mom and I are when I was very young, around age 5 or 6 when we would get all dressed up and go to this mother/daughter dinner thing with our church. I would drink Shirley Temple’s and in those moments felt connected to my mother. But the feeling didn’t last and our attendance at the dinner’s ended.

…

Today I said goodbye to a friend. Today I stood up for myself in the face of my co-dependency. Today I choose to say no. Today I put myself and my needs first. Today I fully understand the beauty of recovery.

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I am gearing up to do a radio show as part of my continued book promotion for Blackout Girl. I love radio because you do it from the comfort of your home and there is none of the issues that come with going live on television. However, this particular show it from 9:00PM – 11:00PM which poses other issues for me. It’s way past my bedtime. In recovery I must say I have become such a morning person which is the total opposite of who I use to be. Back in my using days I was a total night owl.…

This morning I read a passage in my daily reflection that spoke of the various masks we wear in our lives. In my addiction, I was an ever changing person always accommodating the outside world and never truly revealing who I was inside. I would dress up and paint on whatever face I thought was expected of me on any given day. I would hide under layers of make-up and pretend to be different people, all the while never truly knowing myself at all. I never took the time to get to know the girl under the façade. Instead, I…

The third step of Alcoholics Anonymous is as follows: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. This can be a really tricky one for many new comers into the program of recovery as it requires us to do two things that are very difficult. Give up control over our lives and hand our will over and to believe in this whole God thing enough to trust this new found higher power with our will. I have a tendency to hang onto things like playful puppy would a…

My sponsor and I met for a coffee before heading to a meeting one Saturday afternoon a couple weeks back. We were talking about the fact that both of us had really been missing meetings lately.  Life, as it so often does once the promises of recovery begin to come true, was getting rather full and time seemed to not stretch enough to compensate for our growing lives. I believe very much in the basics of the program of recovery, have a sponsor, go to meetings, read literature, pray or meditate etc.  My sponsor and I talk every morning at…

I recently watched the pilot episode of United States of Tara a new Showtime Original by Diablo Cody. It is about a housewife with multiple personality disorder and in true Cody style is written to perfection. Cody just has a way of taking dialogue to a level that is beyond my wildest expectations. I really think she is one of the best writers of our time. I love everything that comes out of her brilliantly defiant mind. Check the show out you will not be sorry.

Watching the show reminded me of a sponsee I once had who had multiple personality…

I have been hitting the gym in hopes that running and working out will help bring some balance into my world.  Today after running on the treadmill, I noticed a Yogalates class filing into the mind, body, spirit…

Love Junkie

By Rachel Resnick

This brutally honest account of Resnick’s personal compulsion toward sex to fill the void of her horrific childhood is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand love and sex obsession. Resnick details is vivid prose her dysfunctional childhood wrought with abandonment, sexual confusion, her mothers alcoholism and neglect. It is a miracle she made it without turning to alcoholism herself. Her escape of choice was men and loveless abusive relationships instead. She confused sex with love and love with attention. She spent the majority of her adult life looking for love in every sexual encounter…

I recently returned from a week long trip to Las Vegas.  Let me first state that in my humble opinion, a week is about four-five days too long to spend in Las Vegas for me.  Don’t get me wrong there is much to love about Vegas, the lights, the shopping, the energy etc.  However, after about the third day the lights became blinding, my wallet emptied and my energy was very low. I was there for a training and book signing; both which were amazing and totally worth the trip.  Being from the east coast, it took me a couple…

One of the fundamental tools I learned early on in recovery was HONESTY. It is key to any healing, growth and recovery. As an active addict—I lied. I told white lies that I thought were harmless and I told major lies that I knew were destructive. I lied about little things and I lied about big things. I strung together a laundry line of lies that got so tangled by the end of it that I couldn’t tell fact from my created fiction. The lies were a part of keeping my addiction alive and kicking. The lies were built from…

I apologize for being out of the loop lately. I recently had surgery and have been down for a while. This brings me to my recent blog about medication in recovery. Such a fun and always heated topic in meetings. I recently went to my first meeting yesterday after being laid up for a while with my surgery. I brought up the topic and sure enough sparks flew! There is such an interesting and overwhelmingly diverse opinion in recovery about this topic. It is one of the reasons I love recovery—it is one of the places where vast opinions can…

I was on the treadmill this morning running my morning mile when my parents woke up and came downstairs to join me. I felt good, having run a good mile in a decent time and decided to join them outside. They were in town for a night on their way home from Baltimore. I was doing my little dumbbell routine that I do every morning on the deck while they were sitting and pulling on their morning cigarette.

My father looks at me and said, “Ya know Jennifer, I don’t understand, you work out everyday and you don’t eat a…

I have been sober now for over ten years and my life is a wonderful gift that I cherish dearly. I am still in so many ways, new to this world—this sober world that is. Intimate relationships are the one area where I am still on an extreme learning curve. No matter how much therapy I’ve done, how much I mediate, how many self-help books I read etc. I can’t seem to get this whole relationship thing down. I know in recovery we strive for spiritual progress not spiritual perfection. I do feel as though I have made significant strides…

I have to admit that I typically will defend the inappropriate, senseless, hurtful and sometimes illegal actions of an active addict or alcoholic as being a part of their disease almost 99.9% of the time.  What I mean by this is that, being an addict myself, I know the depths I went to achieve my next high, sometimes I hurt people emotionally, broke laws, stole from people, cheated, lied etc.  I did all these things because the driving force was my addiction and I didn’t care of anything but that.

As of late my life is a stream of flowing change…ever moving and always shifting. The plan I had—ha—just saying that is funny, isn’t it. But, anyway, the plan I had of course isn’t unfolding in my life. In the rooms there is a saying—if you want to hear your higher power laugh—tell your plan for your life. It is so true. I still don’t know what is best for me all the time and just when I think I have it all figured out…WHAM! It all changes.

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…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…

There is a great tool in the program of recovery that I often use to help me determine if I am in balance or way off. It is HALT. I am sure you may have heard of it but if not it stands for:

Hungry

Angry

Lonely

Tired

It is a little acronym to use whenever you are feely funky or just simply off base. This little acronym holds so many answers to the why’s of moods our addiction can play out in negative ways in our lives. I was always told early on in recovery if I was feeling squirrelly to HALT…