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A meeting topic this week focused on guilt. It seems to be something that rises up for various reasons and can drag us down if we let it. Guilt is defined as having remorse for having done something wrong. What is important is to decide to forgive ourselves by letting go of what others have done to us. Forgiveness is where healing occurs.

I know that it’s easy to slip into the feelings of guilt. But guilt is like almost all feelings, best just felt and let go. The danger for me comes when guilt turns into shame, the feeling that…

Today, at a meeting a nicely dressed woman showed up drunk. She is a designer who has been coming to meetings for a while. She had been out partying and was completely messed up, laughing and generally making a lot of commotion. A couple of guys got her quieted down so that the meeting could continue. Later she picked up a white chip, still drunk.

I know what this does to me. It creates a gut-wrenching reaction. I have to force myself not to move. My eyes tell me that this isn’t anyone that I know but my heart tells me…

There are things in life, situations, whatever, that I still don’t navigate so well.  I don’t know if that’s the part where I’m “recovering” and have a ways to go, or if it’s simply endemic to being an addict, recovering or not, or if perhaps I’m simply an outright mental defective.  You’d think I could figure it out.  I haven’t.  All of these things have something to do with living life “on life’s terms.”

So, it’s getting cold, right?  It’s getting cold. And I commute 23 miles one-way to my job.  At night it’s another 16 miles bo school, in the…

I don’t expect altruism, but this and this are creepy.

I’ve spend this whole, entire day not calling my husband. All I can think about is how much I want to call him, and I know that I can’t call him. When I’m feeling this deep need to connect with him, he can hear it, and he will use it to hurt me.

I have a lot of plans for the weekend, so I’m trying to focus my attention on looking forward to them. I’m trying to focus on ways I can lift my own spirits. I did yoga today, and I have a big yoga workshop tomorrow. There’s a meeting…

Sure, Sunday nights are perfect for spending time with fellow recovering addicts. Sunday’s here are even better, because you have a chance to hang out with your favorite bloggers in our chat room. Our guests of honor want to share their experiences with you and open the room up for questions and comments.

This coming Sunday, Novemeber 16, at 8:30 pm EST, our very own Ginger Bauler will be the hostess!

Ginger is the content manager for The Second Road and, for most of her “other” professional life, she was the manager of a research laboratory at The University of Virginia Medical…

I’ve heard a lot of jokes and humor regarding the Al-Anon program. I don’t take offense at them because there often is a misunderstanding of what the program is about.
What it isn’t is a program that bashes or promotes criticism of the alcoholic. In fact, Al-Anon encourages compassion towards the alcoholic. It is really about those who have been affected by the disease of alcoholism.I’ve listened many times over the past few years to a lot of pain coming from women and men who are living with active alcoholism. They cry in pain because someone they love is either dying…

Day One
Monday night I told my partner, “I want to quit smoking.”
This is very different than agreeing with family members, “sure I need to quit smoking.”  They always start THAT conversation.

I woke up and took the dog for a really long walk, about 2 miles. I made a point to breathe deeply, to take in my surroundings.
Maine is damp right now. Really damp. A few leaves cling reluctantly to the trees, the majority are already decomposing in wet piles. It was neat to walk fast and breathe deep; to avoid my usual cig routine.

Back home I popped open the Smokers…

Holidays are a time of stress for so many in recovery. Whether it’s relatives’ alcoholic behavior or just plain screwed-up dysfunction, our families have special access to our triggers. Who but family can elicit the reemergence of every character defect, personality flaw, and long lost resentment that we thought we’d conquered? There may be others able to negatively revert us, but families do so with uncanny efficiency, don’t they?

Families tend to pigeon-hole us into the characters we once were, rather than honoring us for the people we’ve become. It’s amazing really. My brothers and father still treat me as 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…

Unfortunately, access to longer term treatment is often limited to those who can afford to pay out of pocket, but it looks like long term treatment may be making a comeback:
In fact, data suggest 30 days aren’t nearly enough.

• Research published in 1999 by Bennett Fletcher, a senior research psychologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has shown that though 90 days isn’t a magic number, anything less than that tends to increase the chances of relapse. One study, of 1,605 cocaine users, looked at weekly cocaine use in the year after treatment. It found that 35% of people…

One of the things that relatives of alcoholics do is put forth a happy face to the world that masks a mess underneath. I’ve always liked the saying that “Happiness is an inside job”. But one of the challenges in recovery is to understand how to go about fixing my inside so that I am able to feel the happiness that I know is buried within.

I’ve read something in one of the on line forums that it’s best to “live life, and allow happiness to find me”, as opposed to trying to pursue happiness. This is a lesson that is…

I found a kitten in a gutter yesterday! It’s the best thing, ever. She’s soft and cuddly and has a beautiful white belly, and all she does is sit on my shoulder and play with my hair and poop on the floor and sleep and love!

Ωxxxxg

That was a message from her, a beautiful message from my sweet new kitty. I am not sure what it says, but I bet it’s very, very wise. I have to respect kitty’s anonymity, or I’d post a picture of her so you could all see.

Nothing in the world has gotten me back in the…

Paul Krugman posts a picture announcing that “The Civil War is over.” Well, yes, it is, but blatant racism still exists in our country, despite our new Presidential flavor.

Meanwhile, Makani Themba-Nixon offers a better illustration:

“If anyone doubts that racism is alive and well in American politics, the fact that more than 55 million people voted for McCain in spite of his negative, racist and politically vacuous campaign; his lack of charisma and terrible media performance; his scary choice of running mate and inconsistent positions on virtually every issue of importance; and in spite of his obvious ineptitude for the bread and butter…

He mentioned his life partner died a year ago. That caught her attention. It was her first clue. She assisted him as he limped into the hallway with his new walker. Purposefully, she asked, “How long were you and your partner together?” It was only a slight variation from the routine question she usually asked. After all, most of her patients were elderly Midwesterners, and relationship longevity seemed to be their most common denominator.

She loved interacting with these long-term couples. The enduring love between them was endearingly transparent. Coming from a splintered family, a couple of foster homes, and her…

Oy vey.

What is there to say. More of the freak show.

Truth is, most addicts will tell you that they started with tobacco or alcohol. For several years, I’ve been seeing more young clients report pot as the first drug they tried. Now, it looks like pain relievers may be overtaking pot for initiation into illicit drug use.

The other night, my husband and I were watching The Amazing Race, a show in which teams of two people follow clues to race to various destinations around the world. Many of the teams view this challenging competition as an opportunity to work together and become closer to each other, and this is true of one of the current teams, a married couple named Ken and Tina.

In the most recent episode, Ken expressed frustration at where their relationship was and said (I wish I had the direct quote, but I’m paraphrasing here) that he wanted to see more rapid change,…

The new issue of Addiction has a provocative editorial on mandated treatment. It’s an issue that I’m very interested in and posted about recently.

The writer makes the case that autonomy is usurped by addiction, making it ethically justifiable to coerce treatment for the purpose of restoring autonomy.

The author then goes on to propose naltrexone as a candidate for mandated treatment. He proposes that mandated addicts could regain their autonomy by complying with involuntary treatment. Kafkaesque, no?

Anyone who witnesses the suffering and insanity of addiction first hand can easily find themselves thinking, “If only we could get this person in treatment and make…

Depression disabled me. I was unable to work, even unable to care for myself at times. Then, after deciding alcohol was good medication for what ailed me, I became an alcoholic! I got sober and my depression symptoms have been slowly improving, finally, over the last several months. I haven’t been in the hospital for over one year, the longest freedom tenure since this odyssey began eight years ago. Yes, eight years now. Eight years ago this month, November 2000, my new, uninvited life with depression began. It’s been a long road.

But now, I am looking at going back to…