Joshua Lyon, author of Pill Head, has penned a book that could not be more timely. Pill Head, which hits the stores on 7/7, is part drug addled memoir and part thoughtful, investigative journalism; it is the story of a pill addict told with unflinching honesty, from first pill to detox. The book weaves together the stories of addicts, doctors, and governmental agents–effectively demonstrating how the lives and decisions of each are intertwined in America’s new drug epidemic–prescription pills.

Lyon admits that prior to his Vicodin use, he had sampled plenty of goodies from the recreational drug grab bag; ecstasy, coke, mushrooms,…

Maybe I’ll be stating the obvious, but those of us in the mental health biz talk a lot about enabling, and the rule, of course is, DON’T.

Don’t make it easy for someone to stay addicted. Don’t bring him a beer, even if he’s your father and that’s what you’ve always done. If your mother’s half in the bag at your graduation, get really mad at her. Create such a fuss that she thinks, Good golly. I have a problem. I messed up. I better change.

If (s)he is your partner, you don’t go with him to the bar. And if (s)he comes…

i watch the dawn

spreading a hint

of light over far eastern skies

melting away

deep shadows dark

drying up tears in my eyes

light that shrinks shadows

changing the forms

that haunt into those of ease

displacing the dark

with rays of hope

i gratefully soak in some peace

another day

is granted to me

to live a life worth living

to do what’s right

to make amends

give back what to me’s been given

picture: http://onixa.deviantart.com/art/Let-it-fly-127498417

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the touch of a father spreads further than

the moments you spend in time

the touch of a father forms your vision

of how through life to climb

my father, the one, with a laugh and a smile

from times i don’t recall

a man that valued the playfulness

who loved my artless scrawl

a dreamer with many a story to tell

who taught me that make-believe

is real if you want it badly enough

and allowed it through you to weave

yet over time his smile become scarce

the jokes and the stories turned dark

i felt a burden on his shoulder

it left on us a mark

his heart become haunted, it touched all of…

You know I work with a lot of program people, meaning I hear many stories from people who are working 12-Step programs. And sometimes themes emerge.

Being a therapist with a research background, you look at things differently. You see your work as a series of qualitative interviews and you look for themes that cross lines.

Here’s one I find interesting. I’m sure you’re familiar with it. It’s about the idea that a person in recovery from an addiction is beginning life where life sober left off.

I find this a very sad and difficult concept to have to lay on people,…

This Sunday Dr. Michael Stein, author of The Addict, will host a one hour chat. The Addict chronicles both the physical and psychological pain of Stein’s patient, Lucy, a 29 year old Vicodin addict, as she seeks to overcome her addiction. Dr. Stein will be blogging at TSR on occasion; his introductory post is here; feel free to leave your questions for the Doctor. His book has been reviewed by Ginger and can be found here.

The Sunday chats have been hosted by a number of bloggers, authors, and recovering addicts. Our conversations are always interesting and the hour is always up…

on this day you’ll see me walk

through each minute of o’clock

there is birdsong in my ears

i see visions that bring cheers

and the world is full of smiles

even through some dreary isles

and each steps a happy whirl

‘cause for sure i own the world

days like these bring me great patience

i can feel a higher presence

i will bring a smile to you

and to you, and you, and you

i can tolerate indifference

i find balance in the silence

and temptation doesn’t trouble

feel quite able in a muddle

and the past is but a tool

as i page through ancient spool

and one day i’ll wake to sunshine

that brings chills…

Cat writes about recovery and changing sponsors, and it brought up all the issues I have, mainly my own insecurities about telling someone to get another therapist, get another opinion. I’m not the only doc in the sea, and am not for everyone.

It’s so ironic, you know, because the patient (or in AA parl, the sponsee) is afraid of hurting the therapist’s feelings (sometimes), and yet the therapist doesn’t want to add to the patient’s abandonment anxiety, ever.

We don’t want to add to the issue when the issue isn’t resolved.

So for me, it’s all about trying to resolve…

I’m in the car with FD. He’s driving south on 1, we’re heading for the tide pools, and two of our grandsons are kicking at the front seat.

I get a call from one of my sons, a married son with children who lives on the opposite coast. Basically, if I want to see my grandchildren, I get to get on an airplane and fly an hour or four. I’m still working it out three days later. My back is, that is.

Oh, let’s segue. I’m not complaining, although I do look silly in the galley on the plane, doing the physical…

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…

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…

Hi all,

Thanks for having me on the site. I’m just back from the American Society of Addiction Medicine annual meeting where I attended some scientific sessions and was asked to give a reading from my new book THE ADDICT: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year, to a large group of addiction and pain specialists, as well as psychiatrists, nurses, and counselors. Of great interest to me was the growing number of reports I heard of doctors, or doctor groups, refusing to write prescriptions for narcotics to anyone in their practices. Simply declaring this as a policy. It seems that many…

Mother’s Day when someone in the family is addicted.  Mother’s Day when your mother is addicted.  Mother’s Day when your father is addicted.  Mother’s Day when one of the kids is addicted.

The fun never stops.

I’m sorry.  That wasn’t nice.

But people give me those looks when I say, “Well, surely nobody’s going to get wasted on Mother’s Day.”  There’s a Jewish expression, kal v’chomer (rhymes with doll-v’-roh-mare) that can mean, among other things, all the more so.

Looking at the problem with a cognitive approach (drinking/using is behavioral, not in your head), people actually think about the meaning of a person’s drinking on…

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.

…

I’m so glad you guys found me, you Second Road people.

Because you know I love to talk, but am basically too shy to do that, just talk to people.  So instead I listen for a living, and occasionally, when I have something worth saying, let it roll, the mini-psychoeducational lecture, or the observation about how a person is operating, and maybe suggest, hypnotically of course, a better way.

But blogging, as you who are here well know, allows all of us to talk ad nauseum, and no one is interrupting, and no one necessarily even knows who we are, so we can…

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…

I think that there is a stereotype about this type of family, the alcoholic family, one that is unfortunately well-deserved, if misinformed.   It is by definition a stereotype, a generalization, that alcoholic families tend to be violent.  Just as any generalization about any type of family has to be wrong, this one is too.

Each family is unique, crazy in its own way.

And yet, someone like me sees some people for about seventy seconds before thinking, alcoholic family. Maybe you do this, too.

People in 12-Step programs aptly use words like rage-aholic to describe a population of people who don’t drink,…

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…

…and sometimes i set out to do what i do

planned as part of the day

when suddenly and without warning

everything’s wrong in my way

i don’t want to play, i don’t want to make

i don’t want to talk, why does everyone just take???

i feel the anger swelling up inside

there’s no way of stopping, of stopping this tide

inexplicable anger and dissatisfaction

yet i know that it’s just an age-old reaction

so i stop what i’m doing, take a breather

do something completely random

and when i’ve untangled that crazy web

then my feelings i’m able to fathom

…

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…

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!…

Benoit Denizet-Lewis will join the TSR community, this Sunday night, April 5th, at 8pm EST. Benoit is the author of America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life. TSR recently posted a book review about America Anonymous, the recovery book gathering so much widespread critical acclaim.

We are happy to present this wonderful opportunity to chat with an author so earnestly bringing awareness to addiction and proposing such pertinent health questions to both the recovery community and society at large.

America Anonymous is the story of eight men and women from around the country—including a grandmother, a college student, a bodybuilder, a housewife,…

Dear Fellow Travelers on the Curvy Road to Destiny

My name is Sandi Bachom and my last drink was March 27, 1987. I am a Hazelden author and have written three books, “Denial Is Not A River In Egypt”, “The Wrath of Grapes” and “Hell in the Hallway, my 4th book, is not a book at all, it’s a social network, laughinginhell.com.

I have been meaning to blog for so long but lucky for me, someone asked if they could tape my talk at the Promises meeting, my home group in New York City on Friday…..so here you go…
Promises: Friday April 3

“We…

I did an open talk recently where I was asked to share what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.  Thanks to Second Road, I have another opportunity to do just that.
I guess I should start with an introduction.  My name is Jessie, I’m an alcoholic, grateful to God and the Recovery fellowship for the opportunity to live and be here telling my story today.  Because of the healing and fellowship I have found through this program I haven’t needed to drink or take any chemical enhancement prescription or illegal since February 12, 2008.  And I wake…

this post is inspired by steveroni and his post on friday, which you can read here http://steveroni.blogspot.com/2009/03/fridayride-bus.html. here’s my take…

who am i

were it not for my past

this certainly wouldn’t be me

i’d be a person

with different ideas

of encounters that i didn’t see

by nature i’m

quite inquisitive

i was bound to bump my head

but isn’t part

of learning

rebounding in your step

now i acknowledge

my darker side

the messes i had made

i found my way

through rules unclear

by headstrong illusions betrayed

and on this road

i fought the fight

my very own personal war

eventually listened

accepted direction

in delusions i’m stuck no more

as day follows night

so good follows bad

for everything leads somewhere

building your strengths

your…

Those of you who read me regularly know that I’m from an observant Jewish background, which means that I follow plenty of rules. And I scoff plenty of rules. I’m as good a hypocrite as anyone else, as are all my friends and most people who breathe.

But we try to be better.

And probably like most religions that have teeth to them, there’s plenty of spirituality to back up mine, to make the rigor make sense.

Because a Jew’s life is one for the books, meaning theoretically, ideally, every movement could be a page from a Jewish law book, should be a…

don’t feel. don’t speak. don’t trust.

my mantra as a child

what would happen if i did

would it leave me alone and exiled?

now i think not, it’s taken some time

but it’s still not easy to practice

so many years of building the walls

to be broken down, my childhood fortress

brick by brick the walls came down

as feelings found their wings

causing pain from unearthed boxes

but they came with golden linings

words were next to escape the fort

as my feelings became more coherent

unpleasantness fading with every time

it didn’t end in judgment

and trust? well, trust, that monstrous hurdle

that still has its claws in me

refuses to let me hand…

April is Alcohol Awareness month. The Second Road will showcase a recovery story everyday during the month of April. They want to applaud those living in recovery while helping to bring awareness to addiction and to also make people aware of the strong community of support that exists.

TSR wants to salute the people who are battling alcoholism; as a child, a parent, a spouse, sibling, or as an addict. Be it 22 years or 2 days, they want to hear from the people making the decision to start a new path—to take the second road. TSR hopes this showcase will…

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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