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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As of this week, I have a membership to a gym again. It has been nearly three years since I have allowed myself such an expense. My Higher Power has definitely made joining a gym possible for me financially, which is another big reason I had for staying away from gyms. The gym management put me on my boyfriend’s membership, so I am receiving a discount through him. I met with a trainer and negotiated a much smaller fee then what they originally wanted to charge me for a few sessions.

I am still not a fan of working out in…

Yesterday was my second anniversary of living a clean and sober existence! Two years ago yesterday, I woke up in a jail cell pretty unaware of what had happened after being arrested on a DUI. A steady bout of hard daily drinking that had been mostly secretive in nature mostly preceded the arrest. I was unemployed, depressed, and terrified.

I spent that morning seriously debating killing myself between bouts of throwing up everything I had been drinking. My day was topped off by over six hours in court and attending an AA meeting. I had been to AA meetings in the…

…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…

by Courtney H.

I never know what to say when the subject of drinking comes up. It is probably a pretty sure sign of my alcoholism that I have spent a fair amount of time considering this as some sort of quandary . When I am around someone who doesn’t know I am in the program and they want to know my favorite drink of the moment or when I am going to hit up happy hour with them, my immediate reaction is to clam up, red faced. Then I usually mutter, “I don’t drink,” and try escape the conversation quickly.…

by Courtney H.

When I was drinking, I made many grand plans for myself and the future. That is a mindset I have carried almost gleefully into sobriety. I couldn’t wait for that idealized time when all my plans would magically work out. Then, I would be happy. Usually that future, perfect and imagined place is so wonderful that my fantasies can practically make it sparkle with sheer fabulousness.

Guess what, life just doesn’t work that way.

It took me a while to get it, but lately circumstances have made it woefully clear that all my living in the future can be seriously…

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…

by Courtney H.

I often long for the ability to time travel. I want to change what happened last year or ten years ago. I like to fantasize about the wonderful or awful things that will happen two to twenty years from now.

When I drank, one of my favorite things to do was to get good and plastered while staring at the wall thinking about how I was going to show them! The jury is still out on who ‘them’ consisted of and what I was going to show. The only thing that mattered during those fantasies was that I didn’t…

by Greg W.

I sat down with a couple reporters from a local TV station the other day to give an interview on prescription drug abuse hoping this time might be different. As I started to tell my abbreviated story for the camera, the reporter quickly tried to push me past the disease concept where I was explaining how alcohol and drugs had a different effect on me when ingested, than others who were using at my age. He wanted drug names, and fear-instilling war stories so they could go back and cut out three sensational sound bites to package together in…

I am a “scooter boy.” It’s my aunt’s term; not mine. But, there it is. My primary mode of transportation is a 49cc Chinese wonder machine that gets 80mpg and hits it top speed of 38mph in 34 seconds. And I love it. I love pulling up next to an SUV when I get fuel. I love that I can buy $100 worth of groceries and carry them home on it and I love that I am no longer dependent on my feet, my bike, and the bus to get around.

But yesterday I was coming home from taking the very responsible, very…

by Jennifer Storm

Having an active addict in your life is probably one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences a person can have. The word powerless cannot even begin to capture the utter devastation, hopelessness and futility one can feel while being in the presence of an active addict. It is gut-wrenching and heart-breaking to watch someone you care about make all the wrong decisions.

Almost every time I travel and speak with my new book, Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America, inevitably the question comes up “How can I help an active addict?” I see the…

Jennifer Storm is the real-life voice of millions of girls and young women today who are growing up in a nightmarish vortex of addiction, abuse, despair, and spiraling self-destruction. Addicted to alcohol by age twelve, Storm now serves as Executive Director of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 2002 she was appointed commissioner to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Jennifer Storm has appeared extensively on national television and has been profiled in Rolling Stone, Time, Central Penn Business Journal, and many other national and local publications. She is the author of Blackout Girl: Growing Up and…

by Courtney H.

My alcoholism sure has a way of sneaking up on me. Whether in highly paranoid thinking, depressive mood swings, or a strange desire to self destruct the moment God does not give me what I want, the disease can place an extremely sobering block on my road to serenity. The first time I became acutely aware of how sneaky alcoholic thinking can become, even in sobriety, happened on a sunny morning last year.

I felt pretty wonderful as I walked down a Charlottesville street with six months of sobriety under my belt. When a row of bars formed in…

Courtney H. moved to Charlottesville, VA, two years ago from upstate New York in search of warmer weather. She also found a loving and welcoming community where she has learned the fine art of sober living. When she isn’t working, Courtney can be found writing, playing outside, or enjoying the benefits of a membership in a 12 step fellowship. Look for her weekly blog in our “Young and Sober” feature.

By Dave Breslin

Sitting in an open field,

nice weather, feeling content.

Not very much is bothering me now,

thoughts are fairly comfortable in my head.

Thinking back on what I’ve done,

seen, with whom and how.

I realize I might be forever scarred

or then again, blessed somehow.

Maybe this constant pondering mind

is insanity, maybe genius.

Each day’s the same in this life,

what’s left that I have seen in it?

I’ve been through terror, hell, sin and hate,

whichever you might call it.

I’ve felt pleasure, love and bliss

even though it’s rare that I recall it.

I’ve felt joy and lots of pain,

mentally, physically and self inflicted

but from each and every thing I’ve…

So, here we are. It’s a Sunday night and my kid and I are having dinner. I’m enjoying some microwavable yet organic chicken and cilantro sausage, a bowl of left over boiled potatoes and zucchini loaded with Jarlsburg cheese, while my offspring eats Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli right out of the can, while smoking a cigarette - kind of Currier and Ives, don’t you think? Anyway, we’re looking at Honda engines on his Mac, which is cause for great boredom for me, but great elation for him. And since I’m the mom, if my kid is happy then I’m happy.…

by Greg W.

I was driving into work today and listening to a guilty pleasure of mine Howard Stern. They had Jeff Conway on from Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and laughing about his detox experience from the show. They would play clips of his audio and how much pain he was in. Of course all the characters on the show were cracking up and laughing about how foolish he sounded, but all I could feel is sympathy for how sick he is and the realization that he is probably going to die from this disease. It upsets me that the…

Greg W. is twenty-four year-old in recovery from drugs and alcohol since July 15^th, 2001. In his six years of continuous sobriety he has become a public advocate for addiction recovery. With a degree in Media Production from Quinnipiac University he has combined his interests to create compelling video documentaries of other young people in recovery. His company, 4^th Dimension Productions, has goals to create powerful and inspiring resources for other young people. Through these videos and advocacy work with Connecticut Turning to Families, Greg believes that the current youth of Connecticut will soon begin to normalize sobriety at young ages, and have…

“Blackout Girl” by Jennifer Storm

Reviewed by Ginger B.

Jennifer Storm’s account of her dark and disturbing journey through her teens is a horrifying narrative of her tortured youth, and her pin-ball life choices which landed her in situations which were more than disturbing to me as the reader. On page 3, she describes her first rape at the age of 12, and the next three quarters of the book is a chronicle of her cataclysmic demise, almost to the point of annihilation. I have read my share of stories of addiction and Ms. Storm’s tale is among the most unnerving I…

THIS SOBER LIFE

by Dave Breslin

Reviewed by Ginger B.

I just finished reading a book of poetry called “This Sober Life.” The book was self-published in 2002 by Dave Breslin, who, at the time of publication, was about 2/1/2 years clean and sober. Breslin got sober at the age of 19 and writes that he wasn’t even aware that he could be suffering from alcoholism at such a young age. He thought he was just being “a normal teenage kid”, but the depression that ensued when he stopped drinking made him acutely aware that he was battling much more than the average…

It’s still too early to know yet what killed actor Heath Ledger.

But the typical media frenzy surrounding the sudden death of a young celebrity already suggests a drug overdose may be the cause.

No matter the final official determination, Ledger’s legacy now seems doomed to become part of the “Hall of Shame” that includes Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and so many other notable people who crash and burn, and then crash again for all of us to see.

I am still waiting for the tabloids to do a story about somebody other than Eric Clapton who hit bottom and then held on…