However, after about 2:00, I started wondering where he was. I wondered half out of dread of him coming home, and half out of fear that he wouldn’t come home. Especially after realizing that he’d been going through my email and reading on my blog, I was worried about him. I don’t want him to be too sad after taking an opportunity to look into the window to my head. I don’t want him to feel pain about the image of himself he must have seen there.

But I recognized the insanity of my feelings: “Don’t come home! Come home now! Stay with me always and never!”

I’m still processing my feelings. He did come home, and I was glad to see him. He’s still sulking about what he found on my blog, apparently, as he went straight to bed and won’t talk to me. We’re going to have to talk about this stuff, though, eventually. It would be a stupid thing to ignore for both of us.

It’s always so damned complicated.

However, being a shining alcoholic specimen, I will now relieve you all of such potential sappiness. Today, for reasons which do not matter, I was a lump. I was tired, and forlorn, and negative, and pessimistic. Colorado was still beautiful, even though it rained. I bought a fishing license, which took two hours after B left his cell phone in the office which was closed when we went back to retrieve it. I went trout fishing, although I first wrapped the line and lure around a tree, and then around an underwater log which culminated in a snapped rod. I got a migraine headache and slept the afternoon away in an effort to escape it. I volunteered to make coffee for everyone after dinner, and being unfamiliar with the machine, ran coffee over the countertop–twice–instead. I’m moping. It’ll pass.

One of the focal sayings in my recovery community is “24 hours today.” It means I can start my day over at ANY time. My day does not have to be from sunrise to sunset or from 12 AM to 11:59 PM. I can start it over whenever I need to start it again. Today, I had a lot of re-starts (see above paragraph for clues!). The Serenity Prayer also came in handy. It was just one of those days. It was just one of those days. Shit happens. Perhaps I’m actually lucky. The way I figure it, getting all the shit out of the way in one day is better than spreading it out over the entire week! Don’t you think? I’m quite confident tomorrow will be a much smoother day. If not, I’ll just start it again.

and again.

and again…

In all outward appearances, I appear to have taken good care of myself. I had projects, a good career, hobbies, and lots of activities that I enjoyed. However, I also thought that a lot of my activities in the past were related to a need to validate myself through my accomplishments in order to get approval by others. My relationships were also those in which I molded myself to what others wanted me to be (the chameleon syndrome). Now I think that through my program, I’ve learned that I’m a pretty neat person and that I can enjoy being who I am. I’m also learning that criticism and angry outbursts from those that I love have nothing to do with me. By taking my own inventory and asking whether I did anything to bring on an angry outburst, I can determine whether I need to offer an apology or just keep quiet (”Never miss an opportunity to keep my mouth shut”). What I’m finding is that I don’t always have a role to play in someone else’s script. It’s their issue and not mine that brings forth anger most of the time. I’m now willing to own something that I do have a part in, but no longer will I try to smooth things over when I’m not even a bit player.

By Rob Hiaasen|Sun reporter

June 29, 2008

More than 30,000 people have been treated there, including supermodel Niki Taylor, pro football player Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, the late Michael Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy, and the late former White House aide Michael Deaver. Lynda Carter Altman, TV’s former Wonder Woman and an Ashley alum herself, performed before 540 guests who paid $250 a seat to attend a silver anniversary gala last month.

Father Martin marked his own milestone this month: It was 50 years ago that the young Baltimore priest entered treatment. He has congestive heart failure now and endures dialysis three times weekly. His blood pressure sinks dangerously low. Takes a week of energy to decide to belch, as Father Martin says. Public appearances are seldom.

“I pray for him every day,” says Mary Royals, 49, of Bethesda. “He has an immense amount of compassion because he is one of us. He gave people back their lives.”

In 2003, Royals, once a serious binge drinker, spent a month at Ashley, which is about the prettiest place for the ugly business of getting clean. Bald eagles, wild turkeys and osprey inhabit the grounds of the former estate of Sen. Millard Tydings of Maryland. While there’s nothing idyllic about detoxification, a patient’s road to recovery is paved with creature comforts at Ashley.

“At Ashley, I found people who had been in situations similar to mine. The disease had no prejudices. It is a great equalizer, whether you are in the public eye or not,” Deaver wrote in his book, Behind the Scenes.

For $20,800 for 28 days, patients undergo a regiment of instruction, therapy, fellowship and something about having to get up at 6 in the morning. “This campus is routinely inspected by detection canines,” says a sign in the lobby of the nonprofit. The only permitted “contraband” is candy. A media blackout is imposed; no cell phones, no BlackBerries, no TV - except during Super Bowls and World Series. Sixty percent of the patients are men, after all.

Until a few years ago, Father Martin regularly visited and welcomed patients with his trademark: “The nightmare is over.” He held court afternoons in the sunny dining room, as patients gathered around.

To know Father Martin is to know his penguin joke: A police officer spots a drunk walking down the street with a penguin. Tells the man to take the penguin to the zoo where he belongs. The next day, the officer sees the same drunk walking the same penguin. Thought I told you to take him to the zoo. “I did,” the drunk said. “He loved it. Today, we’re going to the library.”

The joke, emblematic of Father Martin’s disarming approach to addiction, is immortalized in Ashley’s chapel, where a 1-inch figure of a penguin was inserted in one of the stained-glass panels. The penguin is part of a tour of Ashley, as are the hundreds of nametags stuck on the ceiling of a waterfront gazebo by patients on their last day at the facility. Along the fence line above the Chesapeake Bay, markers still remain for Molly and Bonnie, Father Martin’s Labs that once escorted patients on walks and chronically retrieved balls.

Adorning the walls of Ashley’s rooms, portraits of Father Martin and Mae Abraham hang inseparably. Mae still speaks there every month, while Father Martin has stayed home. He watches the news, waits for her return, and steels himself against more dialysis.

“I live tired,” he says.

But he’s not alone.

At the Abraham home

At Mae Abraham’s Havre de Grace home in early June, no one is enjoying the pool - too hot for that. Her manicured gardens feature plants just high enough, as she points out, to avoid the urinary wrath of the Labradors, which her 52-year-old son, Alex, field trains. The home was built out in the back to make a bedroom for Father Martin. A crucifix hangs over his crisply made bed, where a stuffed penguin hogs a pillow.

In the family room, Father Martin sits in what must be his favorite chair. He’s watching Fox News. I’m probably a McCain man, he says. Mae sits behind him on the couch and consults the man’s biography, One Step Closer: The Life and Work of Father Joseph C. Martin. She knows their narrative by heart but the dates get fuzzy. In fact, it was 1958 when Father Martin was admitted to a treatment center. Ordained a decade earlier, he had discovered his taste for alcohol that same year during a Thanksgiving dinner with fellow priests.

“There are people who have to acquire a taste for gin, but I didn’t - I loved it immediately. I had two or three doubles that day,” he said in his biography. His drinking escalated. “It never occurred to me that perhaps there was something odd about a priest walking toward a garbage dump in the middle of the afternoon carrying two suitcases filled with clanking bottles.”

It occurred to his superiors, who noticed Father Martin’s careless teaching habits and troubling behavior. In 1956, he was admitted to a psychiatric ward of a California hospital. No one suspected alcoholism, so when Father Martin left the hospital appearing healthier and happy, he also returned to his double martinis and drinking shots of vodka from bottles he kept in his bathroom. By 1958, Joe Martin could no longer keep his drinking and behavior under control, much less a secret. The Archdiocese of Baltimore ordered him into treatment at Guest House, a Michigan treatment center for clergy.

There, he was exposed to the tenants of Bill Wilson’s Alcoholics Anonymous program. Wilson, a Wall Street businessman ruined by drink, had developed a 12-step, faith-based program that treated alcoholism as a disease and stressed staying sober and helping others achieve sobriety. Father Martin saved his notes from the lectures and conversations during his time at Guest House. He also got sober.

In the 1960s, Father Martin distilled Wilson’s 12 steps into literally a blackboard talk. He made the rounds of AA meetings with his direct, self-referencing lectures on addiction. The U.S. armed services, which had begun mandatory addiction training for servicemen, used Martin’s 90-minute Chalk Talk on Alcohol, as did private businesses and rehab centers. Poorly lit and single-angled, the training films featured one bespectacled priest and one chalk board. “No singing or dancing,” as the host says. (The films have gained a new audience on YouTube.)

We alcoholics drink because we can’t NOT drink.

I must not make myself a part of the destruction of someone I love.

Drug your conscience and see where your behavior goes.

What are you worth?

But why did he drink?

“Oh, a thousand reasons,” Father Martin says. “The point is I crossed the line until I could not NOT drink.”

Growing up in a Hampden rowhouse, the seven Martin children were exposed to drinking. Father Martin’s 81-year-old brother, Edward Martin, says their father drank on Friday, payday. The rest of the week, James Martin, a machinist by trade, was fine, but Friday nights were not pleasant. Three of the four boys developed drinking problems.

“They say children of an alcoholic get used to the idea of drinking,” says Edward Martin, who lives in Georgia. He was spared the attraction. “I never had the money to buy the stuff.”

His older brother, Joseph, was clearly the popular one, winner of oratory contests at Loyola High School, the gift of gab. He grew up to be a devoted and enormously generous priest - with a quirk to his personality, his only living brother says. In a crowd, Joseph dominated the conversation with his humor, “as if he felt inadequate to socially bond with people or be comfortable in their presence unless he was entertaining them. He doesn’t converse; he gives a humorous lecture.”

In 1964, Father Martin crossed paths with Lora Mae Abraham, a mother and housewife from Havre de Grace. Her drinking was out of control and threatened to upend her marriage to Tommy Abraham, the owner of a Greek restaurant in Aberdeen. Days after a lost weekend at Rehoboth Beach, Del., Abraham agreed to attend a lecture at the Johns Hopkins University. Former Iowa Gov. Harold Hughes was to talk about his alcoholism. Filling in for the governor, however, was a Catholic priest from Baltimore. Mae looked for the exit.

Hello, I’m Joe Martin, and I’m an alcoholic. … Then, the Catholic priest told her, a Southern Baptist, that she wasn’t to blame for her drinking. That she wasn’t evil.

“He removed the shame from me,” she says. “It changed my life forever on.”

A lifelong friendship and partnership were born. Mae took everyone she knew with a drinking problem to hear Father Martin’s chalk talks. But despite his sobriety and popularity, he was suffering another crisis by the end of the 1960s.

Assigned to St. Mary’s Seminary on Paca Street, Father Martin no longer had any assignments or classes, nothing to do anymore. He felt useless. He stayed in his darkened bedroom and became increasingly reclusive and depressed. He turned to Mae. “I’m 45 years old, and all I have to show for my life is the blackboard talk,” he told her on the phone in 1970.

They had all become close friends - Father Martin, Mae, her son, Alex, then 14, and Tommy - Father Martin especially liked the babaghanouj Tommy made at his restaurant. So, it wasn’t unusual when Tommy and Mae asked Father Martin if he would like to come out to their home in the country and spend a few days resting.

That was 38 years ago.

“He’s the man who came to dinner, and he’s still eating,” she says.

He moved in with his German shepherd, Casey. Mae and the dog did not get along, so she sent both dog and priest to canine-training class. That got Father Martin driving and out of the house again. Next, her house guest needed, well, a job. Father Martin went to work for the state of Maryland’s new Division of Alcoholism Control. Mae suggested that he also travel the country to give his chalk talks. They started their own production company, Kelly Productions, which offered nearly 40 Father Martin film titles. (In 2007, Mae and Father Martin sold the rights to his books and films.)

In 1978, Mae suggested they open a treatment center.

“You’re going to die, and everything you have done will die with you,” she told him.

After an initial $1 million grant, it would take another seven years to raise enough money to open Ashley - named for Mae’s father, the Rev. Arthur Ashley. In 1983, the 22-bed facility opened on Oakington Farm, the former estate of Millard Tydings, a native son of Havre de Grace and U.S. senator from Maryland. Six staff members hovered and fussed over all five patients. Expenses were paid from the film profits. And over much time, Ashley built a national reputation as it grew donation by donation, building by building.

Father Martin became a celebrity - his picture was taken with former first ladies Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan. In 1993, he was invited to the Vatican. Father Martin, then 65, helped celebrate Mass with Pope John Paul II. “The most profound experience of my life,” he says.

Before he left, the priest from Harford County handed the pontiff a brochure from Ashley.

Retirement years

In retirement, Mae Abraham has become Father Martin’s caretaker. On days when his blood pressure plummets, she props his feet up and feeds him broth and monitors his numbers. In January, he was near death in an area hospital. Last rites were given. Mae rushed to the hospital and insisted he be placed on a respirator. There had been confusion about his living will, she said.

One recent afternoon, Mae, who has been sober 45 years, steps outside to give a tour of her garden, but needs to get back inside. She doesn’t like to leave Father alone (she has never called him Joseph). At night, her son, Alex, helps Father Martin into bed and wonders if he’ll still be with them in the morning. You just don’t know on those dialysis days, Mae says.

“He’s afraid of leaving this place,” she says. “But I told him I made him a promise a long time ago. As long as I’m alive, you’ll be here.”

In the family room, Father Martin turns the sound down to Fox News. As a Sun photographer takes pictures, he whispers, “You can use some of these pictures to keep the mice out of the basement.” One of the black Labs lopes over with a toy in his mouth. Just like the Labs years ago at Ashley.

“Like everything, I miss it.”

No blackboard lecture, just a tired and sick man whose simple and smart words helped a lot of sick people while giving him something very much to do with his life.

“Mae and I know what we’ve done. We stand before God with it,” says Joseph Martin of Father Martin’s Ashley.

“And if they mess it up and don’t keep our philosophy,” Mae Abraham adds, “we’ll come back and haunt the hell out of them.”

They aren’t kidding

The nature of consciousness is to sort, order, categorize, label, associate, attribute, and differentiate sensory and cognitive information. Our very brains are structurally designed for this purpose. Look at the picture above, and see if it is possible for you to forget the name of the thing, it’s purpose, it’s form. Try to disassociate this object from every other object like it you’ve ever seen. Try to consider that you have never seen another object like it. You see what I mean? Raceseh at Cbimargde Uisnetvisy sgugtses taht msot of us are so good at tihs taht we sohlud be albe to raed tihs.

The simple act of placing a name on a higher power can cause problems for anyone trying to embrace a ’spiritual’ recovery program. Virtually all of us, socialized in the western cultural paradigm, have known an idea of god, and found it to be lacking. Most of us abandoned that idea of god long before we got sober. In The Higher Power of the 12 Step Program, Glen F. Chesnut observes, “[T]hat no one — absolutely no one — learns to work the twelve-step program well, who has not cut the umbilical cord connecting them with their childhood religious beliefs. As an adult, you cannot truly go back to your childhood religious beliefs. . . The sermons and the worship services and the traditional language simply throw them back into their childhood religious beliefs, which contain major errors and misunderstandings. The emotions they start to feel, and the attitudes which they once again take up, put them into intolerable emotional states or drive them into unconsciously self-destructive behavioral patterns once again, and they finally go out and get drunk again (or whatever their addiction is) to relieve the pressure.”

I live in a fairly evangelical community in one of the most conservative states in the U.S. Meetings around here closely mirror the general ideology of our town. It is a very interesting place for a gay drug addict with significant religious baggage to try to recover in. Meetings are replete with references to God, Lord, Jesus, and Heavenly Father; words which immediately associate with the erroneous and insufficient idea of god.

For me to have a spiritual experience I had to stop using the name “god” and lean on some of the other names the program suggests, like “higher power”, “spirit of the universe”, and “creator”. I had to do that in much the same way my friend used “the God of Unintended Consequences”. It was only a starting point. As we grew in sobriety our concept of a higher power grew.

What did you have to start with? What did you have to put aside? What did you do to get a new concept? What has changed over time?

-Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up In Blue”

I heard this song not long ago in the car with my husband. It made me cry. I’m not sure why.

It was these lines, specifically, the ones about finding just the right words. It wasn’t so long ago when I felt like a love poet when I thought about my husband. Even when I first started blogging about my experiences with his addiction, I was still so smitten by him.

I’m not now. I still think he’s handsome, and I still think he’s got potential to do wonderful things…but he’s no longer magic to me. I don’t look around for glowing words like coals pouring from pages. Love songs don’t appeal to me. Love poems don’t move me.

What moves me now is different…stories of healing, recovery, self-discovery. The love poet in me is dying, and I guess I’m glad. She was an interesting woman, but she was very unhappy much of the time. I like this new me…

So I guess I do know why it made me cry. I’m mourning the old me, the old him. I’m mourning my vision of who we were together, who we were separately, or who I understood for us to be.

However, it isn’t guidance that I was able to accept while I was still active in my addictions. Addicts, alcholics and codependents don’t really have the capacity to deal with inaction (which is what, in most cases, the Serenity Prayer mandates). We want to be doing something, making things go our way — starting with the control of our surroundings and extending to other people and our inner environment as well. We want to be humans doing, not humans being.

I controlled emotions and setbacks with booze and drugs. I attempted to control my wife and kids in a variety of ways — practically all of which were doomed to failure. I tried to manipulate the other aspects of my life in such as way as to facilitate my drinking and drugging, with varied levels of success that led eventually to a collapse of the house of cards I’d built.

When I got into early recovery, I was like “oh, yeah,” when I heard the prayer, but I still didn’t get it. There was one critical part that I missed, that I’ll get to shortly. To start with, however, my initial understanding was a big help.

God, grant me the serenity

I had no real idea what serenity was, but I knew it was something better than I had. I came to understand that it wasn’t being happy or sad, but simply OK with things as they are. That took a while.

To accept the things I cannot change

Damn near everything, I discovered. In fact, the next line

Courage to change the things I can

was a big jolt, when I discovered that most of that was me!

And wisdom to know the difference.

That was the hard part: knowing the difference. It took me several years to accept the that the only thing I have power to change is me. I can put a gun to someone’s head and influence them to cooperate, but I’m not really changing them — or certainly not in any constructive way. PTSD, maybe.

Once I got “the difference” through my head, I had yet to figure out the hidden lesson behind the prayer. I might never have gotten the idea, except for something someone said at a meeting. He changed the last line to

“And the wisdom to know that the rest is none of my business.”

And there it is. What you do is none of my business, as long as it has no direct impact on me or mine, unless you have given me permission to comment — and even then there’s little or nothing I can do to change things. It isn’t even any of my business if you don’t like me. My business is to do the next right thing, live the best life I can, practice the principles to the best of my understanding. Then, if you still don’t like me…it’s still none of my business.

So now, that’s how I recite the Serenity Prayer: “…wisdom to know the difference, and to know when it’s none of my business.”

Very useful, the Serenity Prayer. My friends and family think so, too.

Footnote: As I was preparing to post this, I opened an email announcing that one of my oldest friends died with virtually no warning from a fast-growing brain tumor. I’m having a bit of an acceptance problem right now…but I sure do know the difference.

I don’t think about the physical compulsion, the craviing, much because my craving for methamphetamin left me long, long ago. I rarely experience the mental obsession anymore, either. I do have the occasional though of using, but that thought is quickly dismissed.

I am super aware of the phenomenon of craving right now because I decided recently that I must stop smoking. When I was with my family at my grandmother’s funeral, my cigarette smoking was cut in half. It took no effort on my part. I was around non-smokers all the time and I simply didn’t smoke as much. When I came home though my smoking doubled. I am on my sixth cigarette just since I sat down to research and write this. The pack I bought four hours ago only has 7 left in it and yet I haven’t hit that little happy buzz that cigarettes give me.

This craving which seems to be universal to all types of addiction can best be described as a rare and significant, unusual, abnormal sensory experience. Like all phenomena, it is susceptible to description and to explanation. When I put chemicals of any kind in me, I want more. This always happens. And not just with drugs and alcohol. I want to stop smoking. I smoke twice as much. My cupboards get bare. I’m twice as hungry.

Curious then that recovery is also called a phenomenon by Dr. Carl Jung, one of the major well-springs of 12 step recovery. He attributes recovery from addiction to be the result of vital spiritual experiences. “They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.”

I know that the steps worked for me in respect to the other drugs of addiction when I was finally broken enough, when my ego collapsed under it’s own weight. I wonder what it will take to apply the same willingness to surrender my nicotine addiction. I know intellectually that the phenomenon of craving will pass shortly after I remove the drug. Can I manufacture the phenomenon of recovery?

Bagged up so. much. crap. today and took it to be donated. Oh, that felt so good. I had this huge pile of “stuff to be donated” gathering in the corner of my bedroom for like a year, and now it’s gone. And, I scored a pair of in-line skates for $7, thanks to J’s eagle eye. Turns out they retail for 180 beans and they’re barely even used. I love getting rid of all that extra junk. The psychological benefit seems even greater than the spatial benefit.

My vacation from parenthood is nearly over. Little C will be back from Alaska tomorrow morning. I’ve both reveled in my alone time and missed her profoundly, and I’m ready for her to be home. Looking forward to skating with her while she rides her bike, going swimming and getting ready for her birthday party.

You know, I don’t really have anything profound to say today. I’ve been sitting here for a while, trying to think up something wise, or at least interesting, about life and recovery and growth. But it’s just not happening. I’m worn out, but in a good way - the tired that comes from being super-productive and spending time in the sun. Not exactly conducive to deep thoughts.

I have stuff to write about. I’ve been reading a wonderful book, and doing more meditating lately. I’d like to share what that’s all about, but I’m afraid you’ll have to check back

Until then, let me just say that life is good and I’m so glad to be here.

I was on the phone with a friend one day and she commented on the fact that I was obviously not present in the call. First of all I had no idea what kind of language is “present in the call.” Second, if you were trying to figure out what you could smoke without out harming your unborn child (and I’m not talking Pall Malls) or whether you should deal with that strange wailing coming from your basement you wouldn’t be present either. Third, shut up. She told me she would be right over. Gross.
pllleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaase go away!

I would so much rather hide and try to deal with intense stress ANY other way than to get help. But there she was all showered and coiffed and chipper. “I’m taking you to a past life regressionist”, she said. “Great, get me out of this freaking Steven King house.”
For the next hour I was introduced to the world of Reiki. After I rolled my eyes the fourth time and said “wha?” the therapist explained that Reiki is an ancient healing modality that deals with releasing the tangles and blocks in our electrical system. “Think about it.” she said. “If the electrical brain is working smoothly and calmly think how the rest of
your body will respond.” I left there feeling like I HAD relapsed… only better.

Two weeks later I had taken my level one and two training, and a few years after that I went on to my master level. I have been a Reiki practitioner for eight years now and
use it to help me literally everyday. It’s gotten me through and to the memories, but you know what I can remember NOW? How much we all deserve compassion and honesty, how incredible we all are, and how swirling rooms and wailing cries, whether they are from my throat or my basement, are all the same thing - life “lifeing” along, giving us a chance to learn how to love and pass it on.

by William C. Moyers

In the past few months, I’ve had an opportunity to speak to students at a high school for adults in Minnesota and criminal defendants in the judicial system in Texas. The students know almost nothing about addiction. The felons know everything. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum that separates fiction from fact. And both are crucial to changing the debate about alcoholism and drug addiction in America.

At the Lehmann Center School, in a gritty Minneapolis neighborhood of emigrants from all over the world, older students striving to get their high-school diplomas never had heard about alcoholism or drug dependence from somebody who was addicted. Recovery rarely, if ever, is discussed openly in the countries they came from. Their experience is limited to what they’ve seen since arriving here, and it is not good.

They wrote thank you notes to me after my visit to their class in May.

“I never knew this disease called addiction is real and needs treatment like other diseases,” wrote Suchi Ali, a Somali immigrant. “I thought people who do drugs are bad people and they choose to be that way. After your visit you changed my attitude and my feelings of discrimination that I had about them.”

Giovanny Mora is from Colombia, where the cocaine cartels reign in spite of a U.S.-funded war on drugs that has all but failed over the decades. He already knows the violence and crime. He never saw the solution:

“I can understand better how bad drugs and alcohol can affect our lives, especially for people like you,” he told me. “In my heart, I never before have sympathy for drug addicts until I listen to your story. Now I see this from another side from your vivid experiences.”

Nearly all of the students shared with me that their neighborhoods around Minneapolis are rife with alcohol and drug problems. They’ve seen the homeless people, the harassing panhandlers on the street corners, and they’ve tried to steer clear of the crime while they themselves work hard to make it in their new country.

“Before I hear your story I think the only way to deal with these problems is to put them in jail,” wrote Essotom, from Togo.

“There are hundreds of thousands of new people who can be saved (with treatment).”

The Dallas County Judicial Treatment Center is one place where such people are being punished, but they also are being given a chance to find help. It’s in the tiny town of Wilmer, Texas, where I spent many idyllic summers on my grandparents’ farm when I was a kid. In January, I went back to find common ground with strangers just like me, sharing my story and listening to theirs.

“What you told me about yourself, your struggles, your falling down and getting back up and finally making it, gives me strength and hope to make it too,” said Linda P., who was facing felony theft charges but given a chance by the judge to avoid prison time, provided she successfully completes the treatment program. “I’ve done bad things, I know. But I am a decent woman who doesn’t have to do drugs any more in my life.”

She was not alone. I heard the same story over and over again that night and in letters they wrote later. Her story was Jim’s story, and his story was Deana’s story, and her story was mine.

“Sir, you’ve inspired me to get my life together so I can go back home to Dallas and tell people what I’ve gone through to help them like you helped me,” wrote DeShawn J. “Your message is about helping ourselves by helping others.”

From the classroom to the courtroom, it is time to talk openly about addiction. The practical lessons of intimate knowledge can help to overcome public ignorance. There is a lot to learn.

William C. Moyers is the vice president of external affairs for the Hazelden Foundation and the author of “Broken,” a best-selling memoir. The paperback edition was released in August 2007. Please send your questions to William Moyers at William@WilliamMoyers.com. To find out more about William Moyers and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

I never really lost my passion for recovery, something I see happening to lots of people. I’m grateful for that. All that had happened was that I had learned everything that I had been taught. There was nowhere else for me to go with what I had been given, and I had given all of it back to the men I work with. And I felt like I was cheating them. That was the most uncomfortable part; reaching the end of what I had to give and finding it lacking.

The weird thing is that I’m not actually getting new information or a new solution. I’m just getting another perspective. Very often, it seems, that a miracle is simply a change in perspective, and being renewed is simply starting over.

I think the reasons are more basic than that: some of the same reasons that gave us an excuse for our abuse of chemicals. Quite simply, human beings instinctively avoid pain (sometimes even sponsors and therapists).

When we tell people that pain is their friend, most tend to look at us as though we have gone ’round the bend. Nonetheless, it is true that pain is our body and mind’s way of telling us that there is a problem that we need to deal with.

In the case of physical pain, we tend to pay close attention to the details of its suppression. If we have a broken leg, we willingly submit to the necessary treatment. When we have a strained muscle or a sore back, it is not difficult (although perhaps inconvenient) for us to take the bed rest and heat treatment that a physician may prescribe.

Emotional pain is a different matter. The only ways to escape it are to work through it or to suppress it by shutting down our emotions more or less completely using chemicals. The problem with that procedure is that nothing is done to deal with the causes of the distress, and it is always there when the drugs and booze wear off.

The American poet Dave Van Ronk wrote:

I broke my heart the other day
It will mend again tomorrow
If I’d been drunk when I was born
I’d be ignorant of sorrow.

All of us in recovery know exactly what he meant, in that and in the verse that follows:

And so we drink the final toast
That never can be spoken
Here’s to the heart that is wise enough
To know when it’s better off broken.

How like an addict, eh?

But just as our pain, of whatever kind, gave us our reasons and excuses to self-administer chemical therapy, so can it make us so miserable in recovery that alcohol and other drugs may seem an attractive alternative. That is why dealing with grief (for emotional pain almost always involves grief) in recovery is a critical component of the process.

The amazing thing is that the only things needed for the grieving process are to face the fact of the grief and have a little guidance in moving beyond it. Grieving is actually one of the most simple emotional healing processes, because it is perfectly natural. It is our way of dealing with and accepting loss, we do it instinctively, and once that state of acceptance is reached — often in an amazingly short time — the healing begins and proceeds rapidly.

We need to grieve many things. Abused children must grieve lost childhoods, lost innocence, lost parenting. We may need to grieve for lost loves, lost careers, lost friends, lost hope, lost aspirations — especially if our behavior was the cause of the loss. Some of us grieve friends who overdosed and died in our arms, perhaps even with our assistance. Athletes grieve lost careers. Divorced folks grieve lost families and opportunities to live out life in the ways they had always expected to. There are many things to grieve in an addict’s experience.

Finally, we all need to grieve the loss of our drugs of choice. To have our worst enemy and best friend combined in the same needle, glass, capsule is to live in a nightmare, but we as addicts crave the familiar, just we crave freedom from it. The knowledge that we are to be separated, one day at a time or not, is often difficult to bear. And afterward, when we realize how much we hid behind the drugs, we may miss them even more.

We need to allow our grief to happen, and that of others as well. Adjurations to “Be Strong!” are the blather of people who misunderstand what strength is about. Strength is facing issues and dealing with them. Cowardice is — well, being “strong” and suppressing them.

What do you have that needs grieving?

What I’ve come to learn through Al-Anon, is that the alcoholics in my life don’t drink because of me. They drink because they are alcoholics. Nothing that I can say or do will change that. Instead I have learned through the steps to deal with my own issues and to take care of myself. When I do that, then I can begin to recover from the effect that the disease has had on me.

Little C left on Sunday for Alaska, and contrary to my grand plans for my time during her absence, I’ve accomplished basically nothing.

Sure, I’ve been looking forward to cleaning out the closets, scrubbing the bathroom floor, decluttering the house and having a yard sale ever since her grandma planned this trip. They’re gone for a week - what a perfect opportunity to do all the stuff I never do because I have a 5-year-old under foot. And I’d even have time to hit the gym, go for walks, cook some delicious food, and plant some flowers. Well, they left on Sunday and so far I’ve read, surfed the intertoobz, read, napped, and watched reality tv.

The messed up thing is that I haven’t been enjoying any of it. Instead of just relaxing into my laziness, I obsess about what I’m NOT getting done. I notice the time and think: Oh, Sh*t, it’s 3:00 and I’m still in my PJ’s, and I need to: clean the kitchen, do the laundry, take the donations to Goodwill…you get the picture.I look outside and see the beautiful sun, trees swaying in the summer breeze and I think: I should really go outside and enjoy the day, what am I doing, sitting in here? What is Wrong With Me????

Finally, J asked me to stop beating myself up, to try to recognize that I must need this down-time. I struggle with that though. I know it’s not productive to worry about what I’m not doing. I know I should either stop worrying and relax and enjoy doing nothing or do something. Sometimes that’s easier said than done.

I made some progress this morning though. When the alarm went off at 7am, I opened my eyes and thought: I really want to sleep more. Immediately my mind kicked into guilt-drive with my never-ending list of crap I should be doing. But I was able to stop it. I took some deep breaths and tried to get in touch with how I was really feeling.

I wanted to snuggle back down into my soft, warm bed and sleep. I was tired and achy, and I’d been having a nice dream.

So I told myself: Today I will sleep and relax until I’m read to get up, and I’m not going to feel guilty about it.

And that is exactly what I did, and it felt great. When I did get up, I got right to work on cleaning my bedroom - and that felt great too. I worked until I wanted a break, and then I took a break.

I know this isn’t rocket science, but it is a small revolution for me. I’m not used to taking care of myself: noticing when I need rest, and resting; eating when I’m hungry; moving when I need exercise; getting away when I need quiet time to recharge. Which makes sense, since I spent a long time numbing myself to both my surroundings and my inner self by taking copious amounts of drugs.

So this is probably part of the continued “thawing out” that we go through during recovery. It’s definitely a process of self-discovery, and while there are sometimes those big “ah-HA!” moments, most of the discovery is made up of these small epiphanies that allow me to keep moving forward as a person, growing spiritually and physically into the person I want to be.

For the rest of C’s vacation, I’m changing my goals and plans. Since I seem to be in the midst of a mild fibromyalgia flare-up, I’m going to focus on self-care. Early to bed tonight, spend a little time at the gym tomorrow, and get what housework done that I can without too much stress and self-flagellation. We’ll see how well I do.

Now I know more than I want to believe. My friend has a terminal illness. My bubbly, happy, laughing, sarcastic, always-lively, middle-aged, sober friend has cancer–inoperable cancer. It could be a made for tv movie, the characters are so predictable. The happiest woman in the room, the one everyone knows and loves to be around, the successful, respected, self-made business woman is the one who gets sick. Hallmark couldn’t do it any better than that.

But why?

Why?

In one swift moment my reality becomes clear. This is a problem. Cancer is a problem. Me? I think I have problems, but in reality I have problems of luxury. Suddenly my problems bring gratitude rather than consternation. How lucky I am…

I pick up the phone, call another friend, and ask what I can do to help.

Please say a prayer for my friend, Jeannie. Please.

I wish I had it in me to tell him that I need a break. I wish I could believe that there’s a break that’s possible in marriage…a break that isn’t permanent. I won’t risk asking him to leave temporarily for fear that he’ll stay gone forever…I’m afraid, like all the codependents, that I’ll miss the good part. I’m afraid I’ll miss the miracle.

When I’m not so overwrought on my own, I’m able to appreciate that I’ve found myself in spite of how much hurting I’ve had to do. I’m able to see that I’ve got new friends, new resources, a new spiritual center that I’d never had before, and I’m grateful. When I’m in the midst of this madness, though, I have a hard time seeing very far in front of or behind me.

I’m being self-destructive with this crazy work thing I’m doing. It’s necessary in a lot of ways, but I’m using the necessity to justify running myself into the ground. I don’t know what I’ve been so busy my whole life tearing myself up for…I’m all I can be sure of. Why do I want to break me so much?

I’m using work as a shield from making decisions. I don’t have time right now to get my husband out of my life. I’m too busy. I’m too tired. I’m not ready for pain, decisions, hurting, crying, sleepless nights. I’m not ready for peace, ease, clarity, the whole bed for myself. I’m not ready for any of it, so I keep trudging through. Occasionally, I sit up and realize that it’s my life I’m trudging through, and I’m missing it.

It is what it is, though…and I’ll make my moves when I’m ready. Tonight, though, I’m going to bed.

I’ve had to learn hard lessons with keeping boundaries because I’ve been a boundary breaker. I’ve been involved in a marriage in which I’ve had to gradually learn to establish boundaries.

In the beginning, I put a lot of time and emotional energy into the relationship. I was willing to sacrifice a lot and give much more than I got. That’s definitely not a good thing and indicates my lack of boundaries. I basically let myself experience feelings of caring and love towards a very needy person who was an alcoholic. By not keeping any semblance of a boundary, I lost my own identity by giving so much of myself.

Probably my biggest lack of a boundary came from having an image of the way the perfect relationship is supposed to be. It was a fantasy, and reality was far from pretty. This resulted in my giving, with the hope of having the fantasy become reality, but it never did. I had a belief that I couldn’t fail and if I persisted, all would be okay.

Through the Al-Anon program, I’ve learned that healthy boundaries will allow me to focus on myself, my own needs, and my personal integrity in relationships. By having boundaries, I’m able to have energy to focus on all aspects of my life instead of focusing on one person. I’ve also learned that I can’t have a healthy relationship with my partner if I’m trying to fix or take care of them.

When dealing with those that I care about, I have to work at healthy intimacy but not over-dependency. I’ve been guilty of being dependent on another and thinking that I needed them in order to feel fulfilled and happy. By focusing on myself and respecting the boundaries of others, I have become more independent and have accepted responsibility for my own happiness. I can’t get that from others. I’ve also learned that I need to be based in reality and accept my relationships for the way they are rather than the way that I want them to be.

One of the issues that I hear a lot when it comes to the alcoholic is that fear of letting go of the control in a relationship stems from thinking that the alcoholic will drink if their needs aren’t met by another. This is particularly hard when the alcoholic makes a threat to do something to themselves if bourndaries are established. Fear makes it hard to establish boundaries because you’ve become a hostage to someone who is needy, helpless and manipulative. What I’ve learned is that I cannot control or determine the outcome of the life of anyone else no matter how hard we try. The only thing I can control is my own thinking, feeling and actions. Then, I can hope that the alcoholic accepts personal responsibility for their own life and the consequences of their own actions and decisions.

I’ve felt a lot of pain over the years that I’ve lived around alcoholics. I understand what emotional bottoms are. I’ve been there and have been told over the years by my alcoholic that I was a lot of things, most of them not any good. It’s fairly standard alcoholic rhetoric. What