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

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…

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…

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 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…

I don’t remember seeing a study looking at sexual abuse in men and its impact on treatment outcomes. The findings look a lot like what studies of women have found:

Men with a history of physical or sexual abuse had more severe drug
problems at intake, but by 6 months, there were no group differences in
drug use. However, relative to men without an abuse history, men with a
sexual abuse history had more severe psychiatric problems at all three
time points and were more likely to report significant suicidality at
intake and 6 months. Findings suggest that men with a history of sexual
abuse benefit from SUD…

It’s too late for that, but I do have memories of Mr. Franken running as a joke on Saturday Night Live.   But maybe I’m dreaming.

I have grown children, political creatures, strangely enough, since I tend to be very apolitical. Maybe not so strange.

One of them is also in “the business” which is not a family business at all. The “business” in California is television and movies, and he plays around in this world. The only reason we let him watch so much television growing up was that he swore he would go into the biz.

You can’t deny a…

Yesterday I spent eight hours at the local polls, volunteering for Equality Maine. We all know that November 4, 2008 was a historic day. Hopefully, at the very least, people realized that their vote does count.
Certain red states turned blue. My home state of Virginia turned blue for the first time in 44 years. Ironically, Obama will be the 44th President. It could not have happened without the turnout from those who generally think the system is futile.

Whether or not you are a hockey mom, a junkie, or a sushi devotee–your vote counted. It turned many red states blue. It…

The BBC reports that retired drug dogs have found work in the private sector–sniffing out teenagers bedrooms.

The company, appropriately called Sniff Dogs, operates in New Jersey and Ohio, and was founded by a mother with a guilty son.

For $200 a parent can rent the dog and handler. That amount of time should allow the room to be fully searched.

These animals have been trained to detect illegal drugs and have such a keen sense that they can smell marijuana up to 15 ft. away, as well as two day old smoke residue.

It is nice to see a business that helps parents…

A version of this video was played on ESPN this morning in conjunction with their World Series coverage. If this doesn’t remind me to keep life in perspective, nothing will.

John Challis\’ Final At-bat

Challis apparently has inspired many, including current World Series manager, Joe Maddon. Maddon writes Challis’ message, Courage + Believe = Life, on each game’s line-up card. Challis passed away at home on August 18, 2008.

Sometimes I think my problems are huge and insurmountable.
Thank you, John Challis, for reminding me they are not.

I read an interesting talk by Bob Pearson who was General Manager of the AA General Service Office from 1974 to 1984, and then served as Senior Advisor to the G.S.O. from 1985 until his retirement. During the 1986 General Service Conference, Mr. Pearson made these interesting comments:

“Let me offer my thoughts about A.A.’s future. I have no truck with those bleeding deacons who decry every change and view the state of the Fellowship with pessimism and alarm. On the contrary, from my nearly quarter-century’s perspective, I see A.A. as larger, healthier, more dynamic, faster growing, more global, more service-minded,…

Here’s an excerpt from an interesting article from AlterNet about two schools of thought in addiction treatment:

…

One camp, usually made up of law enforcement, prison guards and the “tough love” crowd, think we need to threaten people with jail in order to get them to comply with treatment. If someone relapses or drops out of treatment, they want to throw the person in jail for their failure to take treatment seriously. It is not uncommon to hear stories, whether from judges, to family members to people in recovery, all explaining that they needed the threat of jail in order to clean up.…

I apologize for being out of the loop lately.  I recently had surgery and have been down for a while.  This brings me to my recent blog about medication in recovery.  Such a fun and always heated topic in meetings.  I recently went to my first meeting yesterday after being laid up for a while with my surgery.  I brought up the topic and sure enough sparks flew!  There is such an interesting and overwhelmingly diverse opinion in recovery about this topic.  It is one of the reasons I love recovery—it is one of the places where vast opinions can…

I never thought it would be Tylenol that brought about my father’s demise. The past three days I’ve been holding the hand of a man who will die from acute liver failure– due to Tylenol. We always suspected it would be the lifetime of drinking–not an over-the-counter pain reliever.

Of course, the man has a case history of liver disease, something that was unknown to me, but it was not something that was going to kill him, because he has ceased heavy drinking for 4 years now. He has relapsed just a few times, supposedly only for a day or two…

I got a call from a sponsee last night. He started about 4 weeks ago with me. He seemed willing and wanting to work but for a couple of weeks I had begun to notice that he wasn’t doing much of what was suggested.

I like to have daily contact with a sponsee for a while. That happened at first but then there would only be a call if he was down. And then there was the reading of the first four chapters of the BB. That wasn’t happening nor was he reading over the printed material that I had given…

Spirituality is a difficult subject for many people in early recovery. There are a variety of reasons, but what they usually boil down to is a bad experience with religion.

Forgetting, for the moment, that religion and spirituality are not the same thing, we need to help newcomers reach some sort of accommodation with their possible misgivings about all the discussions of higher powers, God as we understood him, spiritual awakenings and all the other recovery jargon that flies around the rooms.

This is sometimes an awkward situation, and one that needs to be dealt with gently — perhaps passed over altogether…

by William C. Moyers

Another star has fallen from the heavens of Hollywood, and it hasn’t taken long for the inevitable question to follow: Why doesn’t Mackenzie Phillips get it?

I am not in a position to defend Phillips, who reportedly has entered a treatment program after being arrested last month for possession of illegal drugs at Los Angeles International Airport.

But unlike Lindsay Lohan, whose trials and tribulations in the tabloids have included repeated trips to and from treatment during the past two years, I know Phillips. And while I haven’t seen her in almost a decade, to me she never shirked…

About a month ago, I wrote a post here about my trials and tribulations with dating again. Well, the saga, which I thought was over, continues. And I need some help on this one!

In a nutshell: cool dude asks me out via online dating service. Met for coffee and a walk. Dude revealed that he had “quit drinking” years ago, but he doesn’t really work an AA program, although he attends meetings “with friends” sometimes. I’m a bit concerned. I did it that way for awhile, too. I was still an asshole–maybe more so without alcohol! Made more plans for…

An urgent call to action from Faces and Voices of Recovery:

Dear Recovery Advocate,

We need your help once more because the US House of Representatives is likely to vote on what is now named The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act as early as Monday.

The language in the bill is the compromise that was worked out by House and Senate negotiators earlier this summer. The House leadership plans to bring the bill up under what is called the Suspension Calendar - there is only 40 minutes of debate, the bill can’t be amended and a…

Today I had some work I wanted to avoid, so I opted to use the time completing a chore–one that had been put off for awhile now. Nice cycle, huh?
But, it was the perfect temperature out to mow the lawn, so I did. I mowed a pretty Peace sign right into the lawn; my neighbors gawking skeptically. See, I’m new around here. But you know what–it’s my lawn and it’s a damn good way to showcase my beliefs.

I realized that was probably the last time I’ll mow the lawn until May, because I live in Maine. Then I realized that…