We have another great chat session planned this Sunday, at 8pm EST.
Our hostess will be Betty, the hen behind the blog, Frugal Hen without a Rooster.
Her blog profile describes herself as;

Stream of Unconsciousness/Honest Ramblings of a single woman living frugally in a Big City……………………’Striving to NOT Just Survive but to Thrive’ Emotionally * Physically * Intelligently * Financially…….and Recovering from Growing up in an alcoholic home. (thanks Al-Anon)

Betty says,

“Learning to be Frugal means to stretch a dollar creatively and never with a sense of Deprivation.

Frugality does not mean being CHEAP. It means getting more for your Dollar.
It means knowing when…

Your calls today can expand opportunities for people to get the help that they need to recover from addiction to alcohol and other drugs!

From Join Together:

Today, June 17, is National Call Day — an effort to ensure that substance use/abuse and mental illness prevention, treatment and recovery are included in healthcare reform legislation. If you have an opinion on this issue, you may want to call your members of Congress today. To find the contact information for your members of congress, go online (click) and insert your zip code, or call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

…

A weekly roundup of hat tips, news, discoveries and positive messages.

Today is Bike to Work Day and Natn’l Bike Month!

The 12 steps explored in a Buddhist context.

Blogger Heroinhead responds to Lou’s inquiry: “Heroin Addicts vs. Junkies”

The Things We Carried. How something that feels so good can be so wrong.

Dad’s and Daughters with Eating Disorders.

Meatless in May. Learn more. Take the pledge!

“The Voice that Sways the Land.” Oprah apologizes to James Frey.

12 steps to finding a date. Online dating service for sober singles.

Montyman’s Take12 radio. Recovery talk and positive music.

New White House Drug Czar pledges to end “War…

Well, here we are - the last day of Alcohol Awareness Month - and I must first express my gratitude to Alix M. who has diligently (and I mean work your butt off diligent) contacted writers and made sure that every single day during this very important month, a new story was posted about someone’s journey on the ferris wheel  of addiction and recovery.

I have been honored to write the last entry:

What Recovery Means To Me:

Being able to look people in the eye

Knowing that I can be trusted driving other peoples’ children in my car

Asking for help when I need…

Sarah Allen Benton
therapist, author, speaker

I feel as though I have lived two lives—a drinking life and a life in recovery.  I began drinking at the age of 14 and recall that right from the beginning I was blacking out, vomiting, and unable to recognize the danger I was in. These events felt ordinary to me, and I quickly began to live for them.  I was truly infatuated with alcohol from my first experiences. It just felt right—even when it made me sick. My love-hate relationship with alcohol had just begun.

I thrived on the social aspect of college and found that…

A Mother’s Desperation
The story of one mother’s attempt to rescue her daughter from her heroin addiction -a more complete telling of the story introduced in the centerpiece show, Addiction, from the HBO Series.

Our prayers are with this family, and all the others going through similar circumstances.

Chad shares with us how he found God in living, after coming so close to loosing everything. Thank you for submitting your story Chad. We celebrate your 17 years and wish you many, many more–one day at a time.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

17 X 365 = 6,205

Today I’ve reached the seventeen year mark in my sobriety.

On the first day I was sober, if you would have told me I would still be sober seventeen years from now, I would have laughed at you. On the twenty ninth day of my sobriety, if you would have told me I would still…

Today’s guest post is from blogger Mary Christine, who has been sober since July 24, 1984.  I was 10 years old in ‘84, and I just bring that up because at 10, I was a big geek. I would have laughed if you told me I would wind up as a meth head at 25. It’s always easier to loose sight of your goals than it is to get back on track. Stories like Mary Christine’s are inspiring and remind me how deep my appreciation for life runs now that I came close to loosing it all! Thanks Mary!

I was…

Today’s guest post for Alcohol Awareness Month comes from a man, maybe a superhero, whose stories and reflections will put a grin on your face,  a thought or two in your brain, and love in your heart. He shares his stories on his blog and is deeply committed to working a 12 step program.

DEAR READER

Whenever I have the opportunity to tell my story, so that another might identify–and thereby receive help, I begin with this excerpt from page 202 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, in the chapter “Women Suffer Too”. This tells me–and maybe you–exactly the place from where I…

Part 10 ~ The Conclusion…And The Beginning.

October 1, 2000. I pressed send and then left the house. I hadn’t a clue as to where I was going. I know I went shopping. Probably to a bookstore but I don’t remember. What I do remember is pulling in to the back alley behind our house and seeing my boyfriend’s truck. He was home. He was home and I was about to find out if our relationship was over. A side note about the boyfriend: early on in our relationship, when we were doing some pretty late nights and quite a bit…

Hey y’all and a BIG welcome to our new members! Monty’man just joined the Second Road family and wrote such a wonderful introduction post on his member page that we thought we would share it for AA Month!

My name is Monty, Recovered Alcoholic and Addict. Also ExecutiveProducer of Take12 Recovery Radio and KHLT Recovery Broadcasting. I was born in Greenville California in 1955 and adopted by Robert and Marylyn Meyer at the age of 2. Dad was the City Manager of Petaluma Calif and Mom was a housewife and wonderful Mother. I grew up in Petaluma and learned how to…

Researchers recently presented reports that suggest online drug-treatment programs are an effective form of rehabilitation, at least in the short term.  Former U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey approves of the concept and recognizes its economic value, saying, “This Internet delivery behind health care is going to be a big thing for us in the coming years.”

The Second Road from start envisioned an online community that would not only augment one’s chosen program, but also reach people who, for numerous reasons, do not attend meetings. There are high numbers of people who want help, but who often have a stigma of…

Part Nine~The Hideous Four Horsemen

FOR MOST normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more…

Part Eight (aka The Promises)
I had been drinking and drugging since 10:00 AM. The day was a complete fog and yet in my mind I wasn’t even done using. I was heading back from a downtown bar when I was pulled over. Heading back “where” I don’t remember. Back home? To another bar? A friend’s house? I don’t remember. All I remember were the sirens. That telltale blue and red and white that I had been looking for over my shoulder for almost a decade. When you drank as much as I did, you’re always waiting for the other shoe…

I was born to a woman who did not want me. I was the first girl child, born to a woman who was sexually abused in her own childhood. My father did not know it at the time, but he was a homosexual, closeted in the sixties. His need to procreate and do the ‘right thing’ outweighed his need to find out about himself. My mother rejected me, abandoned me while still living under the same roof as me. My little sister was born six years after I was and I was told on more than one occasion that she…

Stay sober with us today!

We’re so happy you are here with us and working on your dreams. We believe in them! To show our appreciation for our members, and in recognition of AA Month, we have hidden this medallion somewhere on the website. Be the first to find it and send an email to our member A.Miles, with the link to the medallion included. This means, yes, you must have an account. But why don’t you already have one?

We’ll send you a TSR tshirt if you are the first to find the medallion.

It’s not too late to submit YOUR story for…

By the time I finally began (at age 49) my own road to understanding what had happened in my life as the result of decades loving/living with various loved ones who abused or were addicted to alcohol, I was one angry, frustrated, fit-to-be-tied person filled with resentments and consumed with “righteous” indignation. My loved ones’ [whom I collectively refer to as “Alex” or “he” in my work] combined drinking behaviors included countless broken promises to stop or cut down, DUIs, arrests, periods of no alcohol (“See, I can control my drinking.”), disappearing acts, foreclosure, lost friendships, bankruptcy, insane circular arguments…

Part Seven ~ California State Highway Intervention

The rules by which one governs their life begin to change when they are severely alcohol and drug addicted. When you can’t go more than 24 hours without a drink, the world as you know it becomes very narrow. As a sober person, I now recognize this restriction as a prison; my own private hell that kept me bound at all times with no hope for respite.

My parents lived two hours away from me on the Central Coast of California. They weren’t on my doorstep, but I was still obligated to visit occasionally and…

Part Six ~ Nine Months

Nine months. That is all I lasted. Nine months of sobriety and I went back out on a twelve pack of Zima. I freaking suck. I’m sick and I know it. I’m sick and everyone else knows it. There is no hiding who I really am. I can’t stay sober. And why should I? If any “normal” person knew what it felt like to not drink or use then they wouldn’t think of asking me to stay clean.

I didn’t stand a chance in recovery. I didn’t ingest intoxicants for almost nine months, but I used the…

Part Five ~ Connect the Dots

Part five in a series of posts chronicling my history of alcoholism and recovery.

As a female alcoholic, it is difficult to determine what is an acceptable disclosure point. Do I post everything in its entirety? The entire lengths that we go to in order to feed our addictions? The lying, the stealing, the men, the strange beds in strange cities? At what point is enough, enough? At what point can I assume that the reader gets the picture? That they are intelligent enough to connect the dots. There were a lot of dots in my…

Part Four ~ That Girl

Part four in a series of posts chronicling my history of alcoholism and recovery.

I graduated from high school in 1988. I don’t have a strong recollection of this period of my life. And this will continue to be the case for the next 10 years. I was a study in contradictions. Outward appearance: girl going through the motions of daily living. Inward reality: obsessive hell surrounding issues of food and drink.

The next ten years were a fast downward spiral. I don’t know if I have it in me to detail the lengths that one goes to…

We’re so thankful that Kristin H. took the time to write out her story and is sharing it with us. Here at part three of her bio, Kristin is only 17. That’s powerful. The main focus of Alcohol Awareness Month is underage drinking. The stats show that if  WE can find away to prevent/educate/deter teens from drinking, they are more likely to escape alcoholism/drug addiction when they are older. And now for the feature presentation…..

Part Three ~ Drunken Girlhood

For me, there have been few individuals that have captured the horror of drunkenness like this girl. An excellent choice of reading…

Part Two ~ Pandora’s Box

I got drunk for the first time shortly after I turned 16. I remember the night as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. Not bad for a black out drinker. It was a high school party at kid’s house whom I really didn’t know. I was picked up by one of my fellow cheerleader friends. It was the first time I had ever been to a high school party and I was stoked. I spent the evening downing cheap wine coolers and trying like hell to look cool.

It was to be a night of “firsts”…

We are grateful for blogger Kristin H. who contributes posts here at TSR.  Over on her site, she laboriously recorded her recovery story. This is part one in a series of ten posts chronicling her history with alcoholism and recovery–in recognition of Alcohol Awareness Month we are linking to them. It’s a wonderful written story and we hope you take the time to thank her for writing it!

Part One ~ In the beginning…

People who begin drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who wait until age 21. Each additional year of delayed…

Last week I had the pleasure of attending my six-year-old’s dance recital. Sitting in a room full of other eager parents, I couldn’t help noticing how typical I appeared. By most accounts, I’m your average suburban mom, if there is such a thing. I’m 32, happily married and have three children. I drive a minivan (gah!), own a home and unfortunately pay taxes. I spend my days running after a toddler and ushering his older brothers off to school in the morning.

Life looks fairly normal from the outside. Until you dig a little deeper, that is.

Peel back a few layers…

Happy Holidays to those celebrating today. This really short video inspired me today; after a sober, clear headed, fun weekend with the family. Those moments seemed out of the realm of possibility just five years ago, so there is a lot to be thankful for today. William Moyers is a contributing writer here at TSR and this video starts with him saying, “It’s easy to quit drinking, I did that 1,000 times.” Maintaining sobriety and transforming as a person is the hard part; it requires deliberation and determination. Thanks for being here with us and we hope this little video…

My first sip of alcohol was Budweiser, one can that turned into a few, which proceeded the room turning into a whirling, dizzy vortex. I was 13 and visiting my father, the alcoholic, for the summer. You know, the guy who should be able to tell I was wasted even though I somehow defied gravity and walked nonchalantly into the house. His second wife was pretty comfortable in her role enabling, and one night she lent me the car keys to go pick up some alcohol.

Which we were able to buy. Let’s go over this again. By age 13, not…

The final chapter in Tom’s story of addiction. He talks about his program, working it daily and his bottom line–no drinking. Hear how he has turned his life around through full recovery and now enjoys living! You can take control and free yourself from addiction!

In part three of this four part series, Tom becomes spiritually and emotionally bankrupt. After living at the bottom, he has finally had enough. He gives recovery a second chance and finally…he listens. Follow through the break for the video.

April is Alcohol Awareness Month and TSR has been contributing by sharing daily stories, submitted by a range of people, all struggling with alcohol, some in their first two weeks of sobriety, some in their 8th year.

April 9th (tomorrow) is National Alcohol Screening Day. Organizations and colleges across the nation will participate; making the screening available and providing information.

To locate a nearby NASD site, telephone 1-800-405-9200 or visit NationalAlcoholScreeningDay.org. There is also an online test, always available, at http://www.alcoholscreening.org/ This test was developed by Join Together, and just yesterday a milestone was reached, one million people have now taken that test!…