The Big Book tells us that the way to tell our recovery stories is to describe what we were like, what happened, and what we’re like now. I thought it would be a great assignment for my students…

In Dave B’s story of “Gratitude in Action,” he explains:

I believe it would do me good to tell the story of my life. Doing so will give me the opportunity to remember that I must be grateful to God and to those members of ALcoholics Anonymous who knew AA  before me. Telling my story reminds me that I could go back to where I was if I forget the wonderful things that have been given to me or forget that God is the guide who keeps me on this path.

It’s always been one of my favorite things about speaker meetings…watching the ways that people realize the significance of their own stories. Their lives become meaningful as the speakers relay the sequence of events, which are frequently disastrous and shameful and embarassing and full of weakness, that brought them so low that they had no choice but to recovery. For me, it’s a powerful testament to the elegance of the steps and the life lived along spiritual lines, but it’s also a testament to the power of stories.

And man, have recovering people got stories! I thought my own must have been completely crazy and original, but when I started writing about this stuff and attending meetings, I realized that my story was so common. It is unique in the way the various characteristics of the addiction dance come together at my house, but it is far from original. It’s a story that is as old as marriage, in many ways…and it doesn’t stop fascinating me.

I hope that my students will find the experience to be as potent as I’ve found it…

Lyon admits that prior to his Vicodin use, he had sampled plenty of goodies from the recreational drug grab bag; ecstasy, coke, mushrooms, marijuana and LSD.   While he might have been a self professed “expert at escapism,” he wasn’t an addict. He was a young, experimental, gay man with social anxiety; living and working in New York City as an editor of the popular magazine Jane.  He, not unlike thousands of people, partied just hard enough one night a week to be left incapacitated the rest of the weekend. But when he first got a hold of Vicodin, as research for a magazine assignment in 2003, all prior dabbling paled in sensation to this new wonder drug. That pivotal night, instead of flushing the pills as instructed by his editor, Lyon found himself defiantly taking three Vicodin and later professing out loud, “This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life.”

Lyon escorts us into the lives of other pill heads who were also entranced by that feeling, even as addiction led them into emotional, spiritual, physical and financial despair. We meet addicts like Jared, whose introduction to pills came from a high school inside connection at the local pharmacy and later escalated into a $45,000 habit; Caleb, whose first big OxyContin supply came from a stolen tractor trailer shipment; Heather, who doctor shopped and eventually stole prescription pads;  and James Dean, charged with manslaughter because his own son overdosed from the very pills they sold together. Through Lyon’s own exploits and those of others, we discover the secret trades sustaining this rampant market,

Also interspersed throughout the book are interviews with experts, like Carol Boyd, a research scientist for the Substance Abuse Research Center.  who explains several factors that account for our current national level of painkiller abuse. There are currently 7 million who abuse them, which surpasses use of cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy, and inhalants combined. 33 million Americans admitted that they have non-medically used prescription painkillers. After all, this is a nation of pill poppers–one for every ailment–no wonder the rates of prescription pill abuse have skyrocketed.

DEA agent Mark Caverly acknowledges that the increase in painkiller abuse is related to “societal influences,” and that “we turn to pharmaceuticals for everything.” Lyon points out that with Generation RX, parents need to lock up their medicine cabinets, not their liquor cabinets. Not only are prescription pills popular among youth because they are easy to get but they also represent a more socially acceptable way of getting high than taking street drugs. It isn’t as taboo to pop a pill, that someone “pharmed” from their mother’s medicine cabinet, as it is to buy street heroin. However less taboo, it is just as deadly and the pills sometimes stronger than street drugs. Ironically,  as Lyon’s points out in a recent Huffington Post op-ed, there is surge in heroin use as pill heads now desperately resort to the once taboo street deals as a result of the DEA crackdown on pharmaceuticals.

Because our country has such an outdated way of understanding addiction, and drug control gets confused with pain control, there is what Lyon refers to as, “the witch hunt going on in the United States for doctors prescribing pain medication.”  Pill Head deftly tackles this discussion, introducing us to physicians like Dr. Hurwitz, whose lives have been ruined now that the DEA struggles to suppress the burgeoning pill epidemic. This is a current hot topic, as the DEA proceeds to take the authority to determine the legitimacy and appropriateness of a doctor’s practice and doses prescribed, often at the costs of patient needs. While addicts and thieves flood the market by looting trucks full of pills, the DEA chooses to focus on diversion of pills from doctor to patient.

Lyon is not just an addict, or a journalist, but an empathetic writer sharing his story in hopes of raising public awareness. He is adept at orchestrating the many voices and layers involved in such a broad endeavor like Pill Head. The honest, raw chronicle of Lyon’s own pill abuse unfolds and it becomes clear that the initial appeal of Vicodin, like “no apparent side effects” or feeling “fantastic, even when the high was over,” was just a seductive illusion that slowly took over Lyon’s life.

A sudden illness brought Lyon to the road of recovery, eventually landing him in detox. His ability to divulge the most intimate details grips the reader. It isn’t always pretty, and the content might be intense for readers, especially recovering addicts, but the book offers us a necessary, compelling look at pill abuse; an addiciton affecting every demographic in the nation. Readers will find themselves in detox with him at the book’s conclusion, anxiously hopeful and heartfelt that Lyon’s illusion will finally shatter and he will take back his life. Pill Head is written with intensity, wit and is a message of hope. We welcome Joshua to The Second Road and encourage you to buy this book, tell others about it and stop by Joshua’s blog to show your support!

Home at that time was in another part of the country entirely: an apartment I was sharing with my then-boyfriend. That relationship fell apart slowly, over a number of years, and it was passing through its own calm twilight just then. He was horrified that I’d brought home a potentially disease ridden little creature to our “no pets allowed” apartment, and I was horrified that he’d rather leave it to the neighborhood cats than take it in for a night.

In those pre-Internet days, I spent all the next morning on the phone looking both for instructions on how to care for the bird as well as searching for anyone who might take it; I called the Humane Society who put me in touch with the Audubon Society who put me in touch with a bird sanctuary who put in me in touch with a man who took in and rehabilitated local wildlife. Then (since this was also before I owned a car) the bird took a bus ride in a cardboard box to meet the man. He identified it as a songbird common to that area, nothing special, but promised nonetheless to do his best to save it, because he was the kind of person who did such things, just like I was the kind of person who went to great lengths to make sure my little charge made it to him so that he could.

In the years since, veterinarians and the Humane Society have been recipients of my frequent phone calls, as I’ve learned how to play foster mama to everything from injured birds to baby squirrels to feral kittens. Anything small, abandoned and in need of protection that shows up in my path (or attic or yard or general vicinity) gets appropriate interim food and lodging, followed by expert care and medical treatment. My husband, like my boyfriend before, if left to his own devices, would let survival of the fittest play out, but (having heard the little bird story before we started dating) did at least know what he was getting into marrying me.

Still, the contrast between my method and that of those closest to me made me wonder for years (in that self-doubting way of mine) “Who’s right?” Each time I would throw myself wholeheartedly into saving some little animal that would hardly be missed (really is anyone of the opinion that we need more pigeons?), I would wonder if my time and money and energy shouldn’t be directed elsewhere. (With so many problems in the world, I’m choosing to go at fixing them by staying up late at night swaddling a squirrel?) Then when I began working my recovery, I uneasily wondered if my desire to take in strays, to heal and fix them, was just more codependent caretaking. Would it be healthier for me and better for the natural order of things to leave stray dogs where they lie?

I’ve spent a good portion of my time today providing and procuring care for the latest in the series of helpless creatures to cross my path. And these questions popped up again, but rather than trying to think my way out of them and find some rational way to measure the worth of a songbird, I checked in with my Higher Power. And I found that regardless of whether or not I can see the importance in what I’m doing, it feels right. It feels right even when the universe doesn’t bend to my will and little animals die (as they sometimes do) in spite of my efforts. It feels right even if they live in a world already seemingly overpopulated by their kind. It feels right whether I’m praised for my kindness or maligned for my concern with things that appear so inconsequential. And even though some of my character defects do come up around it (as around nearly everything) it doesn’t feel like an act of codependency, but an act of love and kindness.

And I realized today that I’ve been holding a resentment against my ex-boyfriend, from the days before the Internet all the way down to a time when I can blog about it. I’ve seen him as a cold, cruel person who didn’t want to help a little bird, all while fearing that (without the validation of his actions) that there was something not quite right with the path I’d chosen. Today, as my husband was displaying his usual loving tolerance of antics he clearly didn’t quite understand, I saw clearly that some people, people I love, would see a baby songbird on the sidewalk and let the crows and cats have at it. And that’s the right thing for them to do; after all, the crows need to eat too, and the universe needs people who will let them. But that doesn’t change the fact that I do believe it’s also the right thing to wrap the bird in one’s shirt and stay up hand feeding it, because the world also seems to need people who are willing to do that for no reason other than that they feel moved to.

I’ve learned quite well to protect myself from my husband by throwing up great, big, frozen, insurmountable walls. I hunker down behind them. There have been good reasons for me to feel the need to be safe, and I’ve learned out of a strong sense of survival. It works well in the short term, and it keeps me from following my husband off a cliff, which is my immediate, instinctual response.

It doesn’t, though, truly work. As long as I can construct a big enough wall to keep me far away from his pain, I am able to stay frozen in a relationship that is destructive for both of us.

My new homework, then, is to take the walls down. It is my job, if I’m in this marriage until death, to love truly unconditionally. It is my job to be in my husband’s corner, no matter what, believing in him and cheering him on.

The idea scares the hell out of me, but I recognize that what I’ve been doing has not been working. I also recognize that in trying to put up walls to keep myself safe, I’ve not been trusting God to take care of me. I’ve not trusted that there is a God out there who is the true protector of my heart.

I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Technorati Tags: tobacco, outpatient, treatment, policy, buprenorphine, methadone

I say “drug of choice” because journaling has become an ingrained habit with me, if not actually an addiction. (Writing, on the other hand, qualifies fully, including withdrawal symptoms.) I’ve lost most of the journals I kept in my youth and through the years of my addiction; a shame, really, since if I had those I could really write a book, although I can’t help thinking that the embarrassment factor might be seriously off-putting. Anyway, that doesn’t matter.

I do have my jottings for virtually all of the years I’ve been in recovery, and it has been highly instructive to go back and check out the cringe factor in those. When I read something now and find it makes me squirm, I become aware of one more way that I’ve changed — or not changed — and it shows me a lot about my successes and also the areas where I need more work.

I consider my journals an integral and essential part of my recovery. For about a year I tried keyboarding, and it just wasn’t the same. I have to put pen to paper and actually write things down. My-wife-the-shrink informs me that physically writing things engages different parts of the brain, and the inability to make changes easily causes us to think more deeply and carefully about what we’re recording. I agree with that. I find that my handwritten musings have far more gut-level effect when I re-read them, so I have to assume that I’m digging deeper to begin with.

I require those I sponsor to journal, as well — those who know how to read and write. (The others go to literacy classes.) I give them each a notebook, so they’ll have no excuse for procrastinating. I don’t demand to read them, but when we meet I expect them to show me that they have been writing. Those who have remained sober and in contact often mention that they have continued to do so, and remark how much they get out of looking back at who they were early on.  Some have remarked how much it helped them when they got serious about a 4th Step.

Try it. You may not like it, but you’ll benefit. The rules are simple: use the same book, use ink (no erasing), and write something every day — even if it’s just the date. No one but you will be reading it, so you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

at one major university, student visits to the emergency room for alcohol-related treatment have increased by 84 percent in the past three years. Between 1993 and 2001, 18-to-20-year-olds showed a 56 percent jump in the rate of heavy-drinking episodes. Underage drinkers now consume more than 90 percent of their alcohol during binges. These alarming rates have life-threatening consequences: each year, underage drinking kills some 5,000 young people and contributes to roughly 600,000 injuries and 100,000 cases of sexual assault among college students.

These increases occurred during a period with no changes in the legality of drinking for people under 21. Seems strange to blame the drinking age in that context, no? Particularly when countries with lower drinking ages are experiencing similar trends. One might argue that lowering the drinking age has little or no effect but, again, it seems inconsistent to blame it. Shouldn’t be more interested/curious/concerned about the causes of this?

Interestingly, a study suggests that the 21 drinking age reduces binge drinking except in college students.

New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found substantial reductions in binge drinking since the national drinking age was set at 21 two decades ago, with one exception — college students. The rates of binge drinking in male collegians remains unchanged, but the rates in female collegians has increased dramatically. The report was published in the July issue of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Core message: The drinking age is having a beneficial impact; reducing it would be a mistake.

Again, begging the question, “What’s going on with college students to explain this ‘dramatic increase’ in recent years?”

Technorati Tags: alcohol, binge drinking, policy, underage drinking, amythest

That’s right, Jack told everyone on the island where they could stick the Hippocratic Oath, because apparently, when we’re talking about Ben, “do no harm” means the greater harm would actually be letting him live. What’s more, Jack held firm in the face of several different people begging and bullying him to change. My husband and I speculated that Jack must have attended some of those fast acting TV 12 Step meetings around the time he shaved off the alcoholic-Jack beard and went back to clean shaven control-freak-Jack. Yeah, TV isn’t always so realistic. But what was realistic was the way other people reacted to his sudden ability to say no (and mean it): they were pissed. And they pushed back.

“For crying out loud, Kate,” I mock-yelled at the TV, “It’s hard to say no! Respect Jack’s boundaries!” Because that part is still the part that trips me up. I’m getting better at the saying no part, at the “this is as far as I’m willing to go and as much as I’m willing to do” part. I’m just not so good at holding to that path as others get angrier and push harder and harder for me to change, to go back to the old me, the one with the friendly and free flowing boundaries. So I was inwardly gleeful that this character on TV (having gone to the imaginary 12 Step meetings my husband and I invented for him) held his ground in the face of angry attempts to get him to change. And I loved what happened after he did. People took care of themselves and figured out other solutions without him. What a beautiful thing!

But not long after I started hatching my new recovery plan, I had this realization: What is codependency if not a disease by proxy? When I got honest, I had to admit that, though I’m not a sex addict, the majority of my issues are on the flip side of the same coin as sex addiction. And these issues have been with me my whole life—they didn’t just materialize once I met my husband.

Right now, I suppose I’m looking for some balance that may be impossible to achieve. I want to focus on myself, but focusing on myself means I have to focus on the fact that I focus on other people, namely sex addicts.

Sometimes this codependency business makes my head spin.  Though I doubt it would be any less challenging if I had an addiction to call my very own.

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 home too late, you lock the bedroom door. If this person becomes violent you leave him. If he neglects you, you leave him. At least that’s what people tell you to do, and they’re right. You don’t deserve it.

But most people can’t just do what other people tell them to do, even if it is the rational thing to do. We’re an emotional lot, we humans, and we form emotional attachments, not rational attachments, and we can’t just break them because we know they aren’t good for us.

And a lot of people are hoping that an addicted partner will change, eventually. How long could a person stand to be addicted, after all?

It’s got to wear a body down.

Anyway, I’ve watched these relationships progress, what are called co-dependent relationships, and if the healthier partner (let’s just say, the one who isn’t addicted) works at self-growth and fulfillment, vocation, avocation, education, or community service, then after awhile, the partner, the one who is dependent upon a substance, begins to look really lame.

Improve yourself enough and you lose the love, so to speak, the emotional spark, the gooey, inexplicably needy, lovin’ feeling. It goes away with something I like to think is self-esteem.

Not always possible, sure, but always worth the trip, self-esteem. Sometimes worth it to work on it in therapy, is the truth.

I’ll tell you one thing. If you’re doing that, working on yourself, maybe finding new hobbies, getting more education, socializing and helping others, getting outside the relationship and flourishing, then you really will look at your dependent and think, What IS taking him/her so long?

And you look around and other people don’t seem to be waiting this interminable wait, this stay of execution for the dependent, and you think, I could be like them, free to date someone, free to drink socially if I want, without the fear that I’m giving permission to my partner to get hammered; free of a lot of things, sloppy drunkenness, poverty, a partner with failing health, all kinds of wretched corollaries of addiction.

And the world looks like a much better, happier place.

therapydoc

It’s sucky. It’s hard. Apparently, I’m really angry with my parents.

Today, we talked about a peripheral story to the sexual abuse. A friend of the main perpetrator in my life would sometimes touch me inappropriately. Between the ages of 10 and 16, this guy would push himself up against me, shut himself in rooms with me, and generally show up in places where a grown man shouldn’t be lurking around a little girl.

I’d not thought much about this stuff until today.

When I was in the 9th and 10th grades, I’d started using drugs pretty heavily. I spent much of my time being squirrelly in my bedroom, and I’d come out to have angsty interactions with my family. This creepy man was visiting our home one night, and he opened the door to my bedroom, came in, and closed it behind him. I’d been in my bed, reading. He’d started touching my feet underneath the blanket I’d wrapped my legs in. He kept tickling them and touching them. I told him to stop. He left the room.

It happened again and again…my parents sat in the living room, and this man wandered around our house, coming into my room and touching me. I expressed my discomfort, and he’d stop. It wasn’t the biggest deal in the world, but I always wondered why my parents didn’t stop him from coming into my room.

Today, in counseling, I recalled a time I’d even spoken up to my parents about it. I’d come out of my room and said, “I wish he wouldn’t come in my room and shut the door like that. It’s really inappropriate and it makes me uncomfortable.”

My mother told my father that he should do something, and he never did. The man continued to come over and come into my room and touch me. I never said anything else.

It frustrates me to no end when I recognize that all of this childhood stuff has such profound impacts on my present situation. I am accustomed to feeling safe and unsafe, beloved and discarded, trust and distrust all at once in the people I love. My husband’s addiction recreates those conditions wonderfully, and apparently, I’ve sought him out so I can relive this pain again and again.

Yuck.

A 2004 study carried out at the University of Colorado found that around 15 per cent of Caucasians have a genetic variant, known as the G-variant, that makes ethanol behave more like an opioid drug, such as morphine, with a stronger than normal effect on mood and behaviour. This variant seems randomly distributed among the population: it emerged through mutation, although the factors affecting its selection remain unknown since, like all genes, it does not operate in isolation. . . . The Colorado study tested the DNA of moderate-to-heavy drinking students to determine whether they had the G-variant gene. They were divided into two groups accordingly, before having alcohol injected directly into the bloodstream (to eliminate differences in absorption rate). Those with the G-variant produced a slightly different version of what is known as the mu-opioid protein, which elicits a stronger response in the brain. As a result they reported stronger feelings of happiness and elation after their shot of alcohol. This initial euphoria is usually followed by a longer state of relaxation, lasting several hours.

This feels a little too close to THIQ (#36). We’ll see if it holds up to scientific scrutiny.

[Hat tip: Alix's tweet]

Technorati Tags: research, alcoholism, genetics

When I clicked the link, I was expecting to see it focus exorbitant salaries in boutique treatment programs. It’s a little surprising that this is happening in the program with so much public funding. The current market is rewarding programs with entrepreneurial spirits and that is a double-edged sword. It can be good because it rewards programs that respond aggressively to community need rather than waiting for someone to hand them capital. The downside is obvious, from this article. It can foster an unhealthy emphasis on financial matters that has led to the demise of many programs over the last century.

Technorati Tags: history, exploitation, treatment

Many addicts in recovery are likely to agree that the truth, for us, is: “It has taken more out of me than I have taken from it.”

While a direct genetic link between alcohol and creativity has not been discovered, one study has identified a small population, 15%, whose genetic makeup processes alcohol more like an opiate.

Prospect, a British magazine, reports on a 2004 study that found “around 15 percent of Caucasians have a genetic variant, known as the G-variant, that makes ethanol behave more like an opioid drug, such as morphine, with a stronger than normal effect on mood and behavior.” This allows some “to remain healthy and brilliant despite consumption that would kill others.”

What are your thoughts on this discovery?

Intervention, on A&E, is a popular show examining various addictions and the effects on the addict and their families. Click on the image above to see the lineup for this season, as well as past episodes. Full video can also be found on their website.

Tonight’s episode:

After being molested as a child, Nicole developed an unusual eating disorder–she was unable to swallow. By age 16, she weighed just 68 pounds, and doctors inserted a feeding tube into her stomach. The tube was supposed to be temporary, but 16 years later, Nicole still relies on the tube and can’t swallow any food or liquids. She also abuses prescription drugs and neglects her two daughters. Her husband plans to divorce her if she continues to neglect their children.

I like certain events; don’t get me wrong.  I love having dinner with the kids and their families, excursions to the marsh to look at birds and critters with my honey, granddaughters’ birthday parties, visits to family in North Florida, the occasional movie, meetings, a new gadget to play with.  Stuff like that.  But it seems to me that one of the rewards for growing older in recovery is a reduction in Events Scheduled Today, things like “talk to bankruptcy lawyer,” “look for job,” “visit pawnshop,” “buy beer,” “contemplate suicide, “go to rehab….”

This life is better.  There are things that need to be done, the routine stuff: chores,  shopping, clean the cat box, sign up for Medicare.  We still work.  Even though we’ll be collecting Social Security soon, we’ll continue to work.  Our checkered past pretty much precluded nest eggs and 401-K’s, and that’s OK.  Given the current state of affairs, there’s no telling whether any of those things would have survived in much of a state anyway.  The retirement resources we’ll have are the ones we can scare up on a week to week basis, combined with those that we were unable to screw up back in “the day.”  And that’s OK, too.

I regret the cost to other people, but it took all of that to shape who I am today, so I can’t regret it for myself. I like who I am, and I don’t mind being a slow old grasshopper.  Seems to me that it’s better than being a twisted up, burned-out ant.  But of course if I were in a different situation I might view that differently too.  Who knows?  Do burned-out, twisted ants recognize their condition?  I’ll never know.  And, of course, being a burned-out grasshopper was no fun at all.

But I know this: apart from work, which is mostly just boring, I get up every morning looking forward to the day.  I look forward to the little events that Google doesn’t predict.  I look forward to sitting at the computer and exploring the world, and to banging out these little bits of — what?  Philosophy?  Wisdom?  Utter hogwash?  Drivel?  Who cares?  It’s all part of the small stuff, and today it’s all small stuff, mostly.  I’m cool with my status as a human, being.  Human Doing is no longer part of my job description.

My name is Steve and I’m an alcoholic. I did write a short bio on TSR in May 2009, but otherwise I try to find someone with which to chat (next to impossible at 3 AM…why?) and I lurk. I used to lurk before lurk was a word. (I just looked it up. Geezum ™ I didn’t know it was used like as in “ambush” and “sneak”).

Ah, did I notice someone raise their left eyebrow, at my exclamatory “Geezum”? Well it seems a person affiliated with TSR has been using this word for a long time. But not before I used it, and made it my own. I first learned it from a Franciscan Brother who, when angry wanted to shout out, “JESUS!” But the brethren frowned on that usage of “their Man”, hence “Geezum!” was born or re-born.

This blog, which by its nature will be brief–and here’s why. It is dedicated to A. Miles, aka Alix.

Now just how much, or for how long can one write about a girl he’s never met, would not know, even if she were sitting right here? -grin, grin!  Or riding a stallion through the ‘hood?

There are just a few things I might guess about my friend Alix. First of all, when someone writes me a poem, they are a “friend”, Let’s see, how many friends have I? Well, there’s Alix, and…well…anyway, I feel an affinity with her. We think a lot alike, I just do not write my stuff down much. To check out THAT lie, see my daily BLOG -grin!

Without further adoooo, I am going to copy a note I received from Alix a while back–WOW, do I hope this does not offend her. I can tell you for sure, good friends are hard to find. This is from April 28, 2009.

BEGINNING
“Hi, my name is Alix and I ride scooters.

I can’t stop riding. For instance
I went quite the distance
Scooting 22k miles
Almost all traveled with smiles.

I make bad poems
But that guy, Steve E., I owe him
Because he makes me laugh
When I’m sober, it doesn’t take a carafe

He hits the button, sometimes to the wrong person
But either way he hits his mark for certain”
END

I cannot copy more of that note because those of you who really know Alix realize the intimacy with which she writes to her good friends -grin!

Well, I guess you know by now, I’m writing in jest…but the Email message from A. Miles is real. This girl has learned what it is to live “life on life’s terms”. Alix is well-loved by many, and I am one of those many. Alix deserves all the good words ever said and written of her, because of her untiring (or ‘tiring’!) efforts to keep TSR on track in the “people” department. She blogs, comments, Emails, chats, travels keeps track of us peeps, and does all the things she does with humor, with smiles, with enthusiasm, with a spirituality known to few, and with unabashed love for all. She is ever truly one-of-a-kind.

I cannot speak of her recoveries, etc., but I can speak of mine. I am recovering. How’s that? Actually, for a long time. I’ll never forget at one meeting, I had been sober about 20 years, and a beautiful, newly sober (1st day) black (real black!) girl sat right next to me on the couch. When I said “I’m Steve, an alcoholic, and I’ve not had a drink for over 20 years”, she glanced at me sideways, and said fairly loud, “You LIE!”

Well, I was startled, thinking back, “Geezum, did I slip, and not remember?” Nope. As it turned out, she just simply could not believe that someone who used to reach under his bed for the bottle in order to get OUT of bed, could now bounce right out, say a quick prayer, be dressed and on his scooter heading to a 6 AM meeting!  All in 20 minutes.

Though this might not read like a lot of blogs…a blog allows some wonderful freedoms of expression. And God does show Her/His Face in almost every writing. I am so full of gratitude–gotta go out and find me a couple drunks to eat dinner tonight–that did NOT sound right–eat dinner WITH! OK? Dammmit?

Mainly on my first real TSR blog, i wanted to mention my friend Alix, and to say to her–and all you other members of our world-wide search for health and a peaceful life…thank you, thank you, thank you. Love to you all, and especially to Alix,
from Steve E

I’m only a few chapters in, but I’ve already been floored. So far, the emphasis is on restoring sexuality to its spiritual center…recovering the human-to-human connectedness that can get lost when we objectify each other. It’s beautifully written, and it seems a bit more like a poem than a book in some ways.

The author is distinctly Christian in his descriptions of God, but as I read it, I keep thinking how much all of my recovery friends will love this book and the emphasis on God being touchable, fleshly, and made human…the emphasis on how each of us carry bits of a divine spark.

I picture two people, perhaps my husband and I, knocking against one another again and again, until finally, our divine sparks burst into flames.

Here’s an excerpt:

The writer of Genesis makes it clear that in all of creation, there is something different about humans. They aren’t God, and they aren’t going to become God, but in some distinct, intentional way, something of God has been place in them. We reflect what God is like and who God is. A divine spark resides in every single human being.

Everybody, everywhere. Bearers of the divine image.

My daughter Janie, like any younger sibling, has been tagging along after him almost since she was born. The walking that had taken him so long to learn, she mastered confidently without ever stopping to crawl and she was behind him on those playground ladders, making her way up the rungs without having to be guided hand and foot, time after time, like her brother. So, when she saw him reach the top of the structure, even though he was older and his ascent was born of years of practice, she was determined to do the same.

He had tromped off, sweaty and tired, to the car with my husband as she wavered, unsure of the of the best path up through the maze of ropes to the top. She would climb up for a bit, then find a point where she was stuck, too small to reach the next handhold. She’d try going straight up again, only to find herself again in the position of having to back down. Finally, she called out, “Mama, can you help? I can’t figure out how to get up.”

I stepped closer and could see a path, something like a spiral staircase, by which I thought she could make it, slowly and indirectly revolving around to the top. So, instead of straight up, I told her to go sideways a bit. She did. The next big step up she’d have to take was straight in front of her, and I pointed to it. She made a grasp and missed. I could see (too late) that she’d have to go sideways again a step to get closer, but instead, focused on the goal I’d pointed out, she leaned further forward, lost her balance, did a spectacular flip around a rope, scraping her arm as she went before deftly catching herself.

I felt terrible. In trying to help and figuring things out for Janie, I hadn’t made her journey easier; I’d made it more precarious. I’d jumped further ahead of her than she was ready to go. I’d forgotten that although she learned to walk or climb a ladder more quickly than her brother, they both had to learn to put one foot in front of the other or one hand over the next. I’d gotten caught up in the goal, rather than trying to be with her where she was in the process.

And it struck me that this was so much like my tendency to help other people in other areas, the helping that’s tied to my codependency. I focus on the goal: newcomers want to sweep past the anger and hurt and I want to help sweep them there. Sometimes I can see a path, one that looks promising or like one I followed. And rather than letting them be where they are and climb as far as they are ready, I point them on a little too far ahead, in a direction that’s actually not the right one for them at all. If Austen got to the top of the play structure, Janie will too. It took practice for him, and it will take practice for her. And it will take practice for me to help her (and others) in a way that respects both where she wants to go and where she is now.

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

Since then I have been tempted a few times to just check in, you know, and make sure his old lovers still have fewer Facebook friends than I do (because we all know what an important measure of a human being’s worth that is), but thankfully I’ve been able to recognize that I’m standing there, ticket in hand, ready to jump on the crazy train, and have stopped each time. (Actually, just writing about it has me itching to do it. “What harm could it do?” the little voice in my head is saying,”You can just check real quick. No one will even know. And then you don’t ever have to look again. Just this one last time.” Yep. Craziness. Still.)

But in spite of being cut off from the good stuff, that little crazy part of me has been weaseling its way around the rules and getting some cheap thrills lately anyway. You see, if you’re in recovery around your relationship with a sex addict (go figure!) you tend to meet other women whose partners have been unfaithful and you tend to be the one that your existing friends call with they’re dealing with infidelity. This week, a friend fresh in the pain of her own cyberstalking adventures shared some of the information she found with me. And I found myself thinking, “Looking up my husband’s lovers is obviously bad for me, but it doesn’t hurt to cyberstalk someone else’s lovers a little, right? After all, they didn’t do anything to me. So there’s no harm in looking at their pictures and bios and résumés and Facebook friends and tweets. I’m just getting enraged on my friend’s behalf, and that’s not nearly as bad.” So I poked around beyond what I had been given already.

But spending time googling other people’s lovers is obviously (when you’re not off in Crazytown) a healthy way to spend time. In fact, in a lot of ways, it seems crazier than obsessing over my husband’s lovers. At least when I’m focusing on his acting out partners, I’m feeding off my own pain rather than voyeuristically engaging in someone else’s drama. And I’m seeing that the fact that something like this feels like a safe way to indulge myself only shows how deep the need to indulge is. But spending my time googling people in my friends’ lives can’t really be a harmless new diversion for me, any more than beer would be a smart recreational choice for an alcoholic who has given up hard liquor. It’s a simply a crazy new twist on the same old unhealthy behaviors.

The boys chatted for awhile about small talk, but eventually, the topic of his child and wife came up. He explained that his wife had asked him to leave several times while he was struggling with heroin at his worst, but that they’d frequently reunited to provide some semblance of stability, or something, for their baby. He said his wife started drinking heavily herself, and that they’d both found themselves unemployed at one point.

I thought a bit about my own choices, and I kind of wanted to smack my husband for not appreciating my response to his out-of-control behavior more fully. I didn’t fall apart. I didn’t start drinking or using along with him. I didn’t lose my job. I got help, and I got through it to the best of my ability.

I’m not judging, though, my husband’s friend’s wife. It wouldn’t have taken many twists of my own fate for me to have joined my husband on his trip to the bottom of his disease. At the beginning, I had a hard time going to work when I knew he was using. I had a horrible compulsion to stay around him, as if I could keep him from using by being watchful. I can only imagine the added pressure of a newborn in a situation where there was lots of alcohol and few tools to get through the darkness that comes with the disease.

This couple didn’t make it to the other side. They are still working together to raise their child, but the relationship didn’t make it. I’m glad our friend is doing better right now, and I hope his wife is as well. I wish, though, that they’d made it. I wish she’d been out with him tonight. I’d have liked to hear her story, and I’d have liked to tell her mine.

I’m sure glad I’m just a recovering drunk.  It’s so much easier than being a King.
 
 

I was one of only five people on the planet who didn’t own a copy of Thriller, largely because I like to be contrary; it allows me to feel superior and rebel against alcoholic absolutism by being absolute in a different direction. But because I grew up in the 80’s, I couldn’t escape knowing every song on the album whether I owned it or not. (And then secretly singing them to myself when there was no one around to see me being anything less than contemptuous of their choices.)

When Michael Jackson’s skin whitened and his nose became skeletal, when he was accused of child molestation and and sued for debt, when there were reports that he bought the Elephant Man’s bones, when he nicknamed his son Blanket and built an amusement park in his back yard, when the tabloids dubbed him Wacko Jacko, I liked to tell people “I told you so. I always thought there was something wrong with him.” As if that were really the reason I pretended to disdain him when he was at the height of his popularity and continued to mock him as his untreated mental illness* played out on a global stage.

But my relationship with Michael Jackson (as with so many people in and out of my life) has changed as my relationship to myself in recovery has changed. Instead of seeing him as someone to mock in order to feel clever and healthy, I started to see a someone who was aching enough inside to have visibly mutilated (or paid his plastic surgeons to mutilate) his body. I saw a talented man who lived imprisoned in his own deep pain, a man who self medicated through fantasy in many of the same ways I had myself. As I came to better understand my own love of Peter Pan and the fantasy of Disney and my own desire to escape into some fantasy childhood, I suspected I better understood his too. And I used to, in my own way, pray for him. I thought about how hard it must be for someone so insulated from the world by money and fame to finally reach a point low enough to break through denial and bring desperation for change, and I would hope that he would finally lose enough to get help.

When I learned of Michael Jackson’s death, I felt the same sadness I felt at the death of my father-in-law: the grief that he died without ever finding relief, redemption or recovery (in its broadest sense) in this life. But I am grateful, as I see my own progress mirrored in my changing perceptions of him, that I can finally crank up “Thriller” and spin a bit in his honor.

And now I find myself stopping attending meetings. I don’t mean to be stopped, but I am stopped, anyway.

I’m not sure why. I heard from my sponsor tonight, and she said that folks are asking about me. I should call folks. I miss my friends, but I can’t seem to get myself to a meeting.

I’m working on my steps with my Al-Anon sponsor still, and I’m planning to meet some sponsees tomorrow to continue their fourth and fifth step work. I’m still engaged with the steps, but I’m resisting the meetings. Partly, there are schedule conflicts. My summer school teaching is intense, and there is only one meeting a week I can make. My new church just started a new Bible study for women on that night, and I really want to go. It’s a schedule conflict, but it’s one I’ve chosen…

Maybe part of what has changed for me is that the urgency of the substance abuse crisis has passed. The last few times I’ve been at a meeting, I feel a little useless. I’m not useless, I know. I have a good story, and the program of recovery I’ve found in Nar-Anon has worked well for me for a long time. Even though the crisis that has been passing over my house isn’t substance-related, it’s certainly addiction related…and I can continue to gain from attending the meetings. Most importantly, though, I know that I have an obligation to continue to show up for the meetings. I am responsible, as the old AA responsibility statement says: Whenever anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of (AA, NA, Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, Etc.) always to be there. For that, I am responsible.

And I am failing in my responsibility, at least for now.

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Lots of folks will take a break from meetings. It’s not the best thing to do, but it is normal. It’s just not normal for me…

The Bible study is only 8 weeks, though, and summer school will end. I can get myself back on my meeting horse again soon enough. Perhaps I’ll think of this as an experiment to see what happens…

I met some new friends tonight, and we were kind of talking about our life stories. I realized that I have something of a testimony, now. I’ve been brought to my knees, and seen the light…like what I always heard might happen to me in my childhood, in hymns and sermons and stories. I heard these things, dismissively. I heard them like background noise…like so much blah, blah, blah.

Until I was hurting so badly that I found myself looking for the light.

In telling my story tonight, I began with what a mess I was when my husband and I got married. I was deeply in love with him, and I had been for years…that part is the only thing that is clear. Other than being so sure of my love for him, though, I wasn’t sure of anything. I’d barely out of a previous relationship for 2 months before I was marrying my husband. I’d been on a long, spiraling kind of downfall for years…from my substance abuse, self-mutilation, and sleeping around in college to the constant battle with depression to the spiritual malaise that had marked my adulthood, I’d been searching, pointlessly, and making bad choice after bad choice.

Water seeks its own level. In my husband, I found a beautiful, creative, wonderful man who had been in jail for his own spiraling drug problem. We were both messes. We got together, and we made an even bigger mess.

I am realizing, though, through the lens of gratitude that I’ve gained in recovery and through getting closer and closer to God, that my husband’s mounting struggle with his addiction helped me to find my own still center. For a while, we both spiraled around each other…it was a kind of beautiful, passionate chaos, and it was something that could only sustain itself temporarily. Once he found heroin, I couldn’t keep up with his descent anymore. I had to find an anchor.

Yes, rest assured, people will whisper about the cause being his bitchy wife (she must be or he wouldn’t have done it, right?) and someone, somewhere out there, will use this as an opportunity to bemoan our culture’s moralistic attitude toward sex. It’s a charge that is sometimes leveled at partners of sex addicts (sometimes by the addict or even by ourselves): that the problem with affairs lies in our own uptight attitudes about sex and if we’d just lighten up and not get so upset about sex outside of marriage, everything would be fine. Which completely misses what every partner of a sex addict knows: the pain of infidelity doesn’t have nearly as much to do with the sex as it does with being lied to.

Ask nearly anyone in a relationship with a sex addict what the worst thing about active addiction is and they will almost universally tell you that it’s not the sex, but the lying and the horrible breach of trust that comes with it. Sure, the sex part of it matters; it’s not like I would have fallen down on the bathroom floor sobbing and hugging the toilet in sickness if my husband had lied to me about his secret life helping poverty stricken orphans. The lies hurt because they were about something as intimate and personal and hurtful as a breech of sexual trust. And yes, I wanted the sexual acting out gone, but I know wanted the lies gone still more.

When my husband disclosed his activities to me, I laid into him, “If you wanted to have sex with other people, why didn’t you tell me? If you want an open marriage, I need to know that. Hiding your actions and covering things up and lying shows a total lack of respect for me. I didn’t have what I needed to make an informed decision about this relationship. You didn’t give me the option to decide for myself, like an adult, you decided for me based on what you wanted. If multiple partners is what you want, let’s talk about it. If that’s what you’re going to do, then tell me. I can deal with the sex, but I can’t deal with the lying and the hiding and the deception.” (See, it was early in recovery, I still “youed” at him a lot then. Also I bargained and tried to control him. Please do not try this at home.)

And in my husband’s most major relapse since starting recovery, it wasn’t the details of his acting out that hurt me (I wasn’t even interested in more than the barest outline at that point in my recovery), but the fact that he would lie about going to a meeting (a sacred meeting) and then cover it up for a year before coming clean. I know he’s an addict, I knew chances were slim that he would enter recovery and go the rest of his life without another slip ever, but I didn’t care what he had done with this other woman so much as I cared that he had deceived me about it.

What are my attitudes toward and beliefs about sex and relationships? To be honest, I’m still working that out; they’re ever changing as I grow. But I do know that I didn’t, and couldn’t, even begin to explore them until my husband and I both started talking honestly and openly about our wants and needs, our hopes and fears, our goals and values.

This is what drug warriors don’t understand: There’s always market competition, whether you like it or not. Prohibition just means that the competition is between legal and illegal products. To beat illegal products in an already-addicted market, you need sufficiently at