It’s kind of like being forced to eat vegetables, except for the part where I really like vegetables. I’ve taken on a few writing projects lately that are making me tired, and I just committed to one more. They aren’t work projects…they are my own. It’s been a long time since I’ve written stuff, just for me, outside of the recovery writing I do here and that I did on my old blog. I’ve done tons of freelance writing work over the last few years, but very little writing.

Just writing. Just me and some words, wrestling it out.

I’ve been doing…

I met with one of my sponsees to talk about her stepwork for a few hours last week, and she also brought some yarn and crochet hooks. She wanted me to show her how to make a hat, so she could give handmade hats to her relatives as Christmas gifts.

I’ve been crocheting for years. I can make all kinds of beautiful things. My stitches are fast, even, and fancy. I don’t mean to brag - at least not much. It’s just something I do well, as I’ve practiced a lot.

She kept getting frustrated that her stitches weren’t as even as…

For years now I have used the understated elegance of many Buddhist practices to work toward living life in the present moment, and to being an integral part of this earth, while allowing myself not to be attached to it.  There is no success or failure rate in the Buddhist path.  There is only the awareness of the ebb and flow of living, the constancy of change and the acceptance of things as they are.

That is why I am totally smitten by Joni Kay Rose’s book,  “The Joy Beyond Craving - A Buddhist Perspective on Addiction and Recovery.” In this…

Soon, I will be taking a sponsee through the 10th step. I am excited.

It’s my favorite…or at least I think it is. I really like all 3 of the maintenance steps. It’s all spirituality and cleaning up after yourself and accepting your human-ness and helping others…what a refreshing change after the muck and mire of 4-9! 

As I was working with her on the 9th step, I had this wonderful realization that I don’t owe anyone any amends at this point in my life. It’s not because I haven’t screwed up, but it is because of the wonder of the 10th…

It’s not the first time it’s happened, and won’t be the last.

I get a call from a family physician. Do I want a really tough case? Well no, not really, unless there’s really decent compensation. And there is, so I take it.

(I’ve changed the real details) A VERY depressed man in his late fifties, out of work for two years, he says. That’s a bad sign right there. Ex-addict.

So not unusual, I tell the doctor. Problem is, of course, that chronic depression tends to end with suicide in the sixties for guys like this. Is he using now? The doctor…

This is my first post as Rah Covery Miles. However, you know me. I am the blogger formerly known as A.Miles. I know it is hard to address someone as “A.Miles,” in the blog comments. So most of you used my real name. You can now call me Rah, ok?! My anonymity is very important to me. While most of you know me because I do behind the scenes work at TSR, that should not imply I am comfortable being addressed by my public name. The name that future employers will use and that will show up on a thorough…

I met with a mentor recently to talk about some stuff I’m struggling to let go. I do alright as long as I keep busy, as long as I have other things to think about…as long as I’m juggling tasks, people, ideas, and the other noise I keep going to keep the underlying voices quiet. But when I have moments of solitude or peace, out it comes like  apack of wild dogs. Resentment. Bitterness. Painful memories.

I wanted to know what I need to do to get rid of this stuff…what work I have to do to make the resentments fade,…

A big red C. There it was, heartbreakingly plastered on the front of the report I had worked for weeks on. I had painstakingly drawn a wombat on the special mottled pastel paper, neatly stenciled the title (”All About Wombats”), and enclosed it, along with the several pages of notebook paper that constituted my report on these marsupials (native to Australia!), in a plastic report cover. Under the C, in tidy teacher’s handwriting, were the words: “I would have given this an A, if it were an individual project. I had to lower the grade because you did not work…

” Guitar Fairies, Sobriety Fairies, and other tales from the dark side, light side and which side is up?

By RUkiddingme?

Rule # 1; Don’t take a drink one day at a time.

Rule # 2; Never take three and a half hits of Purple Haze double domes without waiting between doses for it to catch up. This is very important!!!. Some say that’s what happened to me.

Rule # 3; Middleton Group #1. Rule # 62; “Don’t take yourself too damn seriously.”

Especially me, or anything I write in this blog.

Middleton Group # 1. Rule # 62. That is from the Twelve and…

Hi all,

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

Today, I listened to some of my favorite people in the world do another part of their fifth step, and I shared some of my own story with them. It’s the third time I’ve been through this process now, and each time, I feel like it gets me closer and closer to the truth…the truth about me and about the people around me.

Today, I shared the part of my story that involves sexual abuse. I shared about my resentments toward my mother and father, and I talked about the new set of resentments I have for my husband since he’s…

Through the years, I’ve noticed an odd propensity among people being treated for all sorts of maladies: the tendency to take medications until they feel better, and then stop.

You see this in a variety of situations.  Folks taking antibiotics take them for two or three days, and then when the symptoms begin to abate, they stop even though it says on the bottle to take the entire prescription. Then the infection comes back, and they have to take an entire new course of antibiotics to knock it down, assuming that the bug hasn’t developed an immunity from having been allowed to…

WTF???

by William C. Moyers

No politics, no pontification over policy, and no sparring with public officials. This week’s column goes back to the fundamentals of helping people get help.

Dear Mr. Moyers: Professional treatment is not the only way to get sober. For people who can’t afford or won’t go for treatment, why don’t you refer them to Alcoholics Anonymous? It works! Be sure to tell them to go to a lot of different AA groups so they get to know many sober members and see that there are many different kinds of AA meetings. It’s in those meetings that people find…

Many years ago, I was in a relationship that was extremely dysfunctional and unhealthy for me; so much so that my marriage to a sex addict has always (even at its absolute worst) seemed to me to be healthy by comparison. In that previous relationship, I exhibited all the behaviors of a textbook codependent: changing myself (from my hairstyle to my taste in books and music) to make my partner happy and trying desperately to get him to change as well. I was convinced that we would be happy, if he would just be more romantic, listen better, pay more…

I am a liar.  I keep secrets.  I do these things to protect the people I love, to protect myself, to make myself look better, and, I must confess, sometimes to set up people so I can slam them whenever I deem appropriate.  I keep feelings, emotions, past actions and hurtful memories in my back pocket, so I can have them easily accessible when I need to shoot a bullet.  I don’t tell my son how really angry I feel about the legal situation he has gotten himself into because of his speeding tickets.  He’s going through enough pain that…

Wind lashes the trees.
The water churns angry white.
I can’t let this be.

Sacrifice a goat.
Strike a deal with the unseen.
Beg storms for respite.

I’m too busy to
board windows, batten hatches
or leave the storm’s path.

Against all my will
the storm comes rushing in, then
skies clear without help.

This, my fool’s errand:
To prevent the hurricane,
save him from himself.

I am powerless
over the rushing maelstrom:
over addiction.

Do I think I could
command the winds or the sea?
Or reason with them?

I can fight the rain
or admit powerlessness
and find true power.

I give patients the option of calling me and rambling to my voicemail, no promises that I’ll listen, but usually I do.  I tell them to call me back, after they have talked themselves silly, when they’ve figured out exactly what it is that I need to know.   They’re to mark the one that summarizes it all by saying, “Okay, this is all I what I wanted to say.” Then say it in a couple of sentences.

Strangely enough, the people who use this option tend to be alcoholics in recovery.  They’re in 12 Step programs and know how to use the…

I went out to dinner a few weeks ago with some old friends who were curious about my recent 12 Step work, having had no experience with 12 Step or recovery work themselves. I told them that I was finding the exercise of working the Steps around particular issues to be really helpful new tool for me. So they asked for an example.

“Well, for example, Mark often gets home late on nights when he knows I have yoga or meditation or 12 Step. He knows I can’t leave until someone is there to take care of the kids, he promises…

by Dr. Allen Berger

As we begin this new year we face many challenges. Our economy is in dire straights, terrorism poses a real threat to our security, our planet is suffering from overuse and abuse, but despite these ominous conditions we can maintain recovery and sustain our peace of mind and serenity. That’s the marvelous fact about recovery, we can remain clean and sober regardless of what is happening around us: Regardless of success, failure, conflict, pain, fear, disappointment, loss, or trauma. Recovery is not dependent upon what happens to us - it is however dependent upon how we react…

If you read my posts at Everyone Needs Therapy, especially the more recent post about Friend Poaching, then you know I go to a lot of weddings.  I’m at the age where the children of my friends are all either married, or they’re getting married.  Not everyone, but enough of them to really give my credit cards a beating.

I’m not complaining.

The last wedding had an open bar.  I personally appreciate this very much.  I like to walk into a shmorg and either get a mixed drink or a glass of wine, because the two go together so well sometimes, appetizers…

For the past several months, I have been working the 12 Steps around my own codependency, and this week, I completed Step 12. You may think that I am typing this post out for you to read, using my human arms and hands, but actually, having ascended to a higher plane of being, I am now a ball of pure white light, controlling the computer with the energy of my thoughts alone. I wish you could see me. I’m blinding. Actually, I suggest you turn the brightness on your monitor up while you read this just to feel the connection.

Ok,…

I’ve found that Life likes to pound me over the head again and again with the same lesson until I get it. It’s sort of reassuring; there are no real mistakes, because I know I’m always going to get a chance to work the problem again. I’m finding that working the 12 Steps has given me an ultra-condensed version of Life: the same problems come up over and over again. And the 12 Steps are apparently feeling the need to wallop me repeatedly with my problems around rules and authority.

The Junky’s Wife has been reading Kevin Griffin’s One Breath at a…

I was recently working with my online step group on Step 8 of the 12 Steps. This is the one where we make a list of people we’ve harmed and become willing to make amends with them. One of the exercises we completed asked us to name the person we’d harmed the most and think about how we were going to make amends.

So, I looked over my list and thought about all the people I’d hurt most in my life. Should my parents be at the top? They’re the ones who have known me and put up with me the…

Boy, that sounds severe. Especially from someone who thinks of concentration camps, “Work Will Set You Free” propaganda, Hitler’s design to convince Jews to work themselves to death.

But some people who work the Steps tell me that they don’t get five minutes off. No time to play. They’ve played for as many years as they used and abused drugs and alcohol, and want to make up for time lost. The world needs them. People need one another, and as a person, they’ve joined the human race.

So people in recovery work when they work. They don’t cheat the boss, and when…

This is a hopeful country, right now. Perhaps a hopeful world.

After a decade of what felt like partisan bickering for bickering’s sake, it feels to me as though we’re abruptly willing to slow down, chill out, and start looking for each other’s  good qualities again. All around me, I’m aware of people reaching out to one another, finding  areas of agreement instead of dispute, open  to working together addressing  the world’s formidable problems.

Boy howdy, does it feel good.

Of course, many credit our president-elect for the resurrection of hope in this country. I saw Senator Obama speak and would be hard-pressed…

As part of the process of working through my Third Step, I did a two exercises designed to help put me in touch with my Higher Power.

In the first, I was supposed to meditate on people I’d admired and the spiritual gifts I’d received from them. But it was like trying to keep the foreground and background of a picture in focus at the same time. I’d think about the people, and God would slip out of focus. I’d quiet my mind and feel closer to God, and the people would slip away. Eventually, fuming with frustration, I decided to…

I am happy to be at the end of another week; the second week of being a full time employee and a full time student.  And I am happy to be at the end of a week when I have accomplished more that I believed I was capable of just a few short months ago.

In 12 step meetings we sometimes read what are called the nineth step promises; and it’s big stuff; things like being amazed with the results, knowing freedom and happiness, not regretting the past, knowing serenity and peace, feelings of uselessness and self pity will disappearing, and…

Sometimes I try to give people who are struggling with addictions a little chizik.  Chizik (rhymes with whiz-ick, hard “ch”) is the Hebrish (Hebrew/Yiddish) word for strength. 

I tell them a quick story a patient told me a long time ago, but the message still works.

I imagine the old-timers in the 12 Step programs tell annecdotes like these over and over again.

An abused teenager cuts school to get high, with or without her friends. She’s severely depressed. At some point her family garbage has worn her down. She used to get good grades. She used to care about people.  No longer.

She’s only 15 and already has a…