I just got back from a trip where I spent 4 days with some of the craziest people I have ever met.  They were hysterical, loud, outspoken, friendly, easy to get along with and had the combined energy of a major nuclear force.  They were also therapists, radio hosts, interviewers, marketing people, movers and shakers, business people and…..were all in recovery.  And we’re not talking 3 martini lunches here - we’re talkin’ crack heads, heroine addicts and any other illegal or illicit substance available.  All had been there, come through and were now paying it forward.

Each morning we spent working…

Here’s a great little clip by William White to get you thinking.  Watch it and let me know what you think.

Till Next Time -

You Humble Road Warrior

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and for the past 13 days I have been taking care of one of Melissa’s nieces while she has been attending to her dad’s illness and death.  It’s been a long time since I’ve lived with an ll year old and even then, it was a boy.  This girl is witty, gregarious, adorable,  in many ways much older than her biological age suggests, can be a pain in the butt and has been stuck to my side.  She’s been with me because she goes to a private school that got out on May 21 (sounds a…

Today, June 1, 2009 - The 30th anniversary of my little sister’s death.

May 30, 2009 - William Shore, father of Melissa, Laura and Jeff, died from cancer

May 28, 2009 - Bill W., our blogger, lost his granddaughter in an alcohol related accident.

May 21, 2009 - 21st anniversary of the death of my mother, Virginia, to cancer.

In the 10 days I have been faced with or reminded of death - it is inevitable, I know.  The day we are born, we begin to die - that’s just the way it is.  My sister was too young and yet, for her, I…

Last Saturday, May 30, 2009, Melissa Shore, our Executive Director, lost her father to cancer.  Please keep her and her family in your prayers.

Thanks,

Your Humble Road Warrior

by William C. Moyers

The insights in this week’s column are a gift to me from my children on my 50th birthday.

My daughter, Nancy, 12, got dressed, made her own breakfast and brushed her teeth and hair without being told.

Thomas, who turns 15 in a couple of weeks, enveloped me in a big bearhug, which required no supporting words.

And Henry, no longer an awkward teenager though he is not quite 17, grabbed the keys to my car and drove to school with his siblings in tow, leaving me with nothing to do this quiet morning except go for a long run…

I am sick and tired of everything and everyone in my life today (except, of course, my doggies).  I want to throw a tantrum, to break dishes, to spray paint a vulgarity on someone’s house.  I want to pinch a baby, to give a total stranger the finger as I drive by.  I want it to stop being dark and rainy.  I want to be a size 8 (I’ve never been a size 8, except for 3 weeks in 1984) and I want everyone in my life to feel what I feel like right at this moment.  I am sick…

Melissa and I had the honor to be interviewed on the webcast, The Afflicted and Affected, with host Chris Schroeder.  Not only can you see what we really look like, you can see how The Second Road got started, and what we’re up to now.

Till Next Time -

Your Humble Road Warrior

It’s almost 6:00 in the morning. I’m sitting on my back deck, coffee to my right, cigarettes to my left, laptop on my lap. One of my doggies is lying to my right, chewing on a rawhide bone and the neighborhood is taking on that beigy-gray color right before one sees the forehead of the son peek over the Eastern horizon. I’ve been up for an hour – ever since I heard the dogs bark, saw the car driving in a staccato semi-circle around my cul-de-sac and saw the man/boy get out of the car in front of my yard…

Be careful what you ask for - ever heard that?  Well, I’ve been very bold lately - asking my HP to “get on the ball” and get things moving in my life, and in my job.  I bluntly told her “Okay, I’ve waited long enough….been patient beyond the realms even Job could envision, and have held a (somewhat) steady course.  I WANT A SIGN AND I WANT IT NOW!”

Every since The Second Road launched 18 months ago, we have worked our collective  butts off to keep the site updated, new and fresh, well written; a place that is  a resource…

The Second Road is happy to introduce Richard Hartnett, the newest member to our blogging team.  We are excited to have Mr. Hartnett’s unique spiritual insight into recovery.  I am currently reading his newest book, “Sobriety and Inspiration” and will be reviewing it soon.

Welcome, Richard!!!!

Richard G. Hartnett, MA, MS, LCADC, the author of Sobriety and Inspiration: Entrusting Ourselves to the Source of Our Healing and Creativity, is a former Jesuit priest who now lives with his wife, Kathy, by a lake in northwestern New Jersey. He has served as the chaplain at Hazelden New York, pastoral counselor at the Chemical Dependency Department…

by William C. Moyers

I’m no Trekkie who revels in the fictional universe of “Star Trek” trivia or attends annual conventions of pointy-eared fans in tacky hotels or has an autographed photo of Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

And I rarely go to theaters to watch newly released movies anymore. So I don’t know how audiences react to what’s on the big screen.

Finally, I haven’t cried over a flick since the opening scenes of “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998. In fact, that just might have been the most recent movie I had seen in a theater. (And I…

Back to the hotel, he was drained which was a good thing, because the mattress was easily one of the ten worst he’d ever slept on, still there weren’t any creepy crawlies, which put it ahead if not by much of the other nine. As usual he had to navigate through the vagaries of Gazaian plumbing and wiring….nothing to it really if the outlet ground arched you moved the plug to one that didn’t…the toilet flushed and the hot water worked, even if it would probably poison if swallowed….what more could a man ask for. The dawg headed out for…

Just got back from one of my favorite meetings.  Whenever I am able to get to this meeting, I always leave with some juicy fruit of recovery that I can spiritually chew on for a good long time.

Today the topic was “perseverance” and many people had some really insightful perspectives to share.  As I sat and listened, I first thought about perseverance in the sense of “working my program” one day at a time, even when I didn’t want to.  Some days are easy, some are not, but as long as I keep doing what I know will work, there’s…

Back into the belching Yugo and they headed through town toward the sea….the downtown area had some sizeable high rises but it was just as dirty and litter strewn as the obviously poorer outskirts….mind you when you’d just had your asses bombed off with over 30,000 structures destroyed what’s a few piles of garbage here and there….the beaches were beautiful, if you could overlook the stench of the raw sewage flowing unchecked into the sea….it didn’t seem to bother the numerous parties of fisherman who were laboriously hauling in large sein nets….seafood was off the menu….he’d read that the sewage…

His first taste of what was to be Gaza was the border post, actually way to grandiose a term there was a rickety card table manned by a duly-bearded but genial Hamas member, “Welcome to Gaza”, he smiled, “Passports please.” They handed them over and he carefully wrote their numbers down with a pencil on a lined pad….the dawg noticed that there were only 5 names for the whole week…. Small wonder desolate didn’t begin to cover it….they were waved through toward a parking lot – a patch of dirt actually with 4 donkey carts and one taxi….please be ours…

“Dr. Lynn, Mr. Ohrstrom”, please follow me, the attractive one gave them a carefully neutral smile and gestured toward the terminal building….after they went in she told them to have a seat….the building was huge, there were 42 desks….Jesus he thought when had there ever been that kind of traffic…he glanced around at the cavernously empty hall, as far as he could see they were outnumbered 7 to1 by the cameras….at least it was air conditioned….clearly they weren’t lining up to visit Gaza, Qu’el surprise….”Just a few questions”, she was back.

The Dawg had to admit her manner was pleasant enough,…

by William C. Moyers

Out of options. When it happens to people ravaged by addiction, sometimes all I can offer them is my own encouragement. “It’s never too late,” I tell them. “Don’t let go of hope.”

I can’t help it. What else is there to say when a child or a spouse or a parent is drowning in alcohol or sinking into the mire of illegal drugs and there is nothing anyone can do? Hope is free, and I’ve got plenty of it, in part because of my own despair so many years ago, just before I finally got clean and…

Rick Ohrstrom, or “Bulldog” as he is otherwise known, is the CEO of C4Recovery Solutions, a website dedicated to improving the effectiveness of substance use disorder prevention and recovery services.  Right now he is in The Middle East, reaching out to those who would otherwise not hear this important message of recovery.  We at TSR just received this update on his adventures in Gaza.  For the next 5 days I will be posting it in parts.

Follow this amazing man’s journey as he tries to spread the word of recovery.  You can also find him at SoberBulldog.com

GAZA GAZETTE
At first glance the…

I started my journey along “the middle path” when I was in jail, doing time for the results of my addiction.   One day the book cart came by and I stuck my hand through the bars and grabbed a little white book, the binding of which was tattered and torn.  The title was “Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer” by Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk with the ability to blend the spiritualities of the East and West into a beautiful quilt of the practice of gratitude.  When I finished that book, my dear friend, Eleanor started to send me…

This article by Dr. Brigitte Lank is a bit long for a blog, but it gives a great amount of direct, usable information.

Your coworker reveals to you that he likes to hire call girls while at a Vegas trade show even though he’s been happily married for 30 years (remember, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas). Your wife’s brother is fired from his job for violating his company’s electronic usage policy by downloading porn on his office computer. Your email junk box is filled with solicitations and promises for everything from drugs that will guarantee genital enhancement to…

So, I get up this morning, it’s a new day and all is right with the world … I’ve got places to go, people to see and things to do.  I’m in a pretty good mood, considering I engulfed and entire Ben and Jerry’s “Chubby Hubby” at midnight last night.   But, ahhhh…..I can smell the coffee waiting downstairs for me.  I  have a religious ritual every night before I go to bed - the coffee has to be made, ready to turn on at 6:30 a.m. and be waiting for me, it’s loving handle placed at the perfect 45 degree…

In one of the Alanon pamphlets on detachment, there are a series of bullets representing the things we learn in Alanon.  Two of them are the following:

In Alanon We Learn:

Not to create a crisis, and

Not to prevent a crisis if it is in the natural course of events.

I am in a quandary right now.  How does one know if they are “creating a crisis” or allowing a crisis to occur “in the natural course of events?”  This has been gnawing at me for the last several days, since I have found myself in situations where I really don’t know if …

We are very happy to introduce Dr. Michael Stein, our newest blogger at TSR.  He is an Internal Medicine physician, who obviously has a gift for writing and a special interest in recovery.   We’re going to let him get started by writing from his heart and see how you, our TSR members, want to proceed.  Maybe he can write a “Question and Answer” column, or you can ask him to write on specific subjects - it’s your site, so let’s see what happens.  I just reviewed his latest book, “The Addict”,  - the story of a year in the life of…

by William C. Moyers

A new illicit drug grabs the headlines every couple of years.

In the 1980s, it was cocaine, and then, at the end of the decade, it was crack.

“Date-rape” drugs, such as GHB, got a lot of attention in the ’90s, and the media’s drugs of choice for most of this new millennium have been methamphetamines and Oxycontin.

But suddenly, an old drug is back in the news: marijuana. The Minnesota Legislature is debating medical marijuana. In Washington, D.C., advocates and opponents of legalization are parsing President Barack Obama’s utterances about the weed’s role in the war on drugs. Even…

I can remember when I would go to the Dentist just to try and get pain pills.  Now, if you have a mouth like mine, that’s a pretty easy task.  I have spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on my mouth during the course of my lifetime.  I was born with teeth that are prone to any and every kind of problem possible.  I can’t even remember the number of fillings I have AND the numbers of fillings I have had to have replaced. My mouth is so bad that I even had fillings in my baby teeth, for…

Dear  Friends,

Our Executive Director and founder of  The Second Road just received news last night that her father has metastatic cancer.  Melissa lost her sister last winter to breast cancer and, has since that time, legally adopted her sister’s 5 children, thereby making a major change in her life.

As I write this she is driving back home to be with her dad and her mom.

I ask special prayers, thoughts, and lots of light and serenity for Melissa as she faces yet another example of life on life’s terms.

Thank-you,

Till Next Time-

Your Humble Road Warrior

…

In my little corner of the world, this time of the year is called “The Dogwood” season.  We have thousands and thousands of pink, white, tangerine, rose, red, lavender, and every color in between of these voluptuous little trees adorning every available area of our city.  It is a glorious time and every year there is a Dogwood Festival honoring the blooming of said trees.  Thirty years ago a friend of mine started The Dogwood Chorus, a group of people who loved to sing and harmonize, and began a legacy that culminated last night in the 30th anniversary performance of…

by Michael Stein

I received an e-mail last week from Dr. Michael Stein, inquiring if I had read his book, “The Addict.”  I had not heard of it and he kindly sent me a copy.  I wasn’t sure what to expect - another drug-a-log,  a scientific analysis of addiction or a condescending monologue about addicts who just won’t follow doctor’s orders and refuse to do the hard work of staying clean.  What I found, instead, was a compassionate view of one man’s passion to try and  help his patients with the incurable disease of addiction.  Dr. Stein is an Internist and,…

Today is my mother’s birthday.  Were she alive, she would be in her 90’s.  She died almost 21 years ago, when I was in my 30’s and my son was but a baby.  I can still remember him playing on the gravestones as the family met and discreetly dug a hole to bury her ashes in the graves of her parents.  I kept on telling my son, Seamus, who was barely 16 months old at the time, to “be quiet” and “stay still”, but he was in his own world, trying to climb the various monuments that had been so…