Tobacco products are the only products legally sold in the United States that are known to be deadly when used as directed .

That being the case, how can anyone who is still using them claim to be in recovery from addiction? Who but an active addict would do that?

Addiction is addiction, and denial is denial. Get over it. I’m not saying we have to quit everything all at once, but if we’ve been off the sauce or drugs for more than a couple of years and are still smoking, we needn’t be bragging about how we’re recovered” addicts. We ain’t there…

Since being in the program, I know that I haven’t been totally present in a couple of relationships. One has been with my wife, who I love but have also pulled away from in recent years. I think it’s mainly been to protect myself and make myself less vulnerable. Sometimes my body has been present and my mind hasn’t been. Sometimes my mind has been present but my body has shut down.

I think that at the time I entered Al-Anon, I needed time out in the relationship. Maybe it was appropriate and healthy to shut down at that time. As…

People sometimes say that taking Suboxone just delays the inevitable. They assert that Sub is just as addictive as the drugs I’m trying to quit, that there is no “easy way out” and I will eventually have to suffer through withdrawals to “get clean” and have genuine sobriety.

 Since I started the tapering process and experienced uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms, certain people have indulged in a bit of “I told you so” attitude. They think I should have toughed it out in the beginning, or that I’ve wasted a year of my life on this medication. They say Suboxone is a bunch…

It’s sort of hard being an agnostic in the 12-step rooms.  Mostly my problem is my intolerance.  It’s not so much that folks believe in something that I do not.  I’m a Democrat, and there are a lot of Republicans; a recovering addict, and there are a lot of Earth People who don’t understand us, or want to.  I’m used to differing opinions, and if I find them objectionable it’s generally easy enough to avoid those people (except for family).  My problem is that I have very little tolerance for people who judge others, especially in the rooms, and when they…

Call your legislators today (9.10.08) to end insurance discrimination
September 10, 2008

Advocates around the country are asking people to call their US Senators and Representatives today and tell them to “pass the mental health and substance abuse parity legislation before Congress adjourns.” This long overdue bill requires health insurers to provide the same coverage for substance abuse and mental health issues as they do for any physical illness.

Use this link, Take Action and Call Your Representatives Today!

For More Information on the bill: PAUL WELLSTONE MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION EQUITY ACT OF 2007, H.R. 1424

I haven’t written much recently, as I have been struggling with fatigue, or more definitively, somnolence. My doc and I have slowly figured out that one of the major causes of my slower-than-normal running pace is a significantly increased heart rate. Recently, we realized the culprit behind the increased heart rate was one of my most beneficial medications. It is a med I take primarily for fatigue. Fatigue became a significantly debilitating symptom of my depression about 2-3 years ago. This med, once I started it, changed my life. I was able to function again.

One significant piece of my functioning…

I’m a curious kind of guy and I am super interested in me, so even though I’m not an educated person, I know quite a bit about the neurobiology of addiction. Therefore I have an intellectual understanding of how behaviors such as gambling, debting/spending, eating, love, and sex, can be addictions. An intellectual understanding really isn’t much, though.

I learned that today when I was at the courthouse. I’m on felony probation, you see, and my judge really, really, really wants to make sure that I either succeed or be placed somewhere else. Every couple of months I get to go…

Last night, I took a friend to an AA meeting. To protect the friend, let’s just say that he has had a drug problem for years but isn’t alcoholic. It was a closed AA meeting so before making definite plans, I called the local AA Intergroup to see if this was going to be okay. They assured me that it would be. I’ve heard conflicting stories about addicts going to AA meetings. One only has to read the AA approved Problems Other Than Alcohol to realize that Bill W. didn’t envision AA to embrace the addict.

“Our first duty, as a…

There is a Sunday morning meeting in my community that is very popular and that, being like I am, I haven’t attended in many months. But I didn’t have to work today, and I was up this morning, and I thought maybe I’d go.  So I got on my scooter at a quarter to 11 and headed over to the Sunday Spiritual Meeting, only to find that it started at 10.

That’s fiine. Really, I should be doing laundry anyway.  But on my way home I stopped at my favorite coffee house for an iced mocha and ran into someone from…

Allen Berger, Ph.D.

Psychologist and Author of 12 Stupid Things that Mess Up Recovery

In this article I want to discuss how our culture sets us up for becoming an addict. Before I do it’s important to realize we are all in a trance. We are hypnotized by our culture. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it just is the way things are. It happens in every culture, It has to.

Culture is transmitted through the family. Parents teach children their culture’s world view. This world view is like a filter, it defines what is real and what isn’t, it proscribes…

POV is a camera direction, not a writing technique. Do not use a POV notation unless the imagery seen from one character’s point of view is distinctly different from the rest of the scene and, more importantly, that difference is integral to the plot.

Don’t let these problems ruin your screenplay - Surviving the Muse

Have you ever looked through a telescope? Or try to drive with one eye closed? Did you notice how everything turns flat? It becomes two dimentional and distance becomes hard to judge? Therein lies a problem: staring monocularly at any situation affords a singular and often useless…

Every year SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) promotes recovery in a BIG way during the month of September. This year is no exception. The theme of The National Alcohol and Drug Prevention Recovery Month for 2008 is Join the Voices for Recovery - Real People, Real Recovery.

One of the services provided is a monthly webcast, focusing on an important issue in the recovery community. I was asked to be part of the August webcast entitled Accessing Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Online where I, along with three other professionals, discussed the changes that have occurred in the…

by William C. Moyers

People struggle to explain to me their problems related to alcohol or other drugs. The result: Oftentimes, they expound in minute detail about their circumstances before finally punctuating their e-mails or letters with the questions they want answered.

But sometimes, it’s the other way around, and they drive right to the point, leaving me to struggle with how to keep it simple with succinct responses.

Dear Mr. Moyers: As a 30-year-old man with 10 years of sobriety now, I find myself in a perplexing relationship with a woman who is a wine connoisseur (and beautiful and funny and intriguing,…

Whatever 12 step program (or programs) we come from, we are a fellowship; “an elite group of experienced people who work together as peers“*, sharing our experience, strength, and hope with each other in the pursuit of a solution to our common problem and to help others to recover. The price for admission to our little society is higher than for any I know of. The price we pay to walk into the rooms truly sets apart from the rest of the world.

My sponsor/mentor/adviser/friend, a man who has been sober for 38 years, told me that there have been times…

This issue is especially important to people in recovery. Many doctors make it clear by their statements and attitudes that they know little or nothing about addiction.

I was once sent by my dentist (25 years sober) to an oral surgeon for some tricky extractions. The DMD and I had a long conversation about my recovery, addiction, and the fact that I was unwilling to take mood-altering medications. He agreed that was a good idea, and assured me that he was up on such things. He then went on into my treatment planning, and his first two ideas were Valium to…

The Big Book of AA doesn’t describe alcoholism as a disease but rather an allergy in which there is a physical craving and a mental obsession. More recent medical information since the publishing of the BB indicates that there are definite physiological differences in the brains of those who crave alcohol and those who are normal drinkers. Regardless of the medical determination, I see alcoholism as a disease of dis-ease.

I know that accepting the disease description helps me to better understand the individual. I can accept and have compassion for a person who has this “cunning, baffling, and powerful” disease.

I…

Afghans fight an addiction to heroin

Chris Sands, Foreign Correspondent

from an article in “The National”

More Afghans are turning to home-grown heroin, creating a serious health threat that officials say could be as dangerous as the insurgency. AP

KABUL // More and more Afghans are turning to cheap home-grown heroin, creating a health threat that is potentially as serious as the insurgency, narcotics officials and community workers warn.

The drug’s easy availability has become a major problem since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, despite efforts by the international community to stop poppy growth and the production of opium, from which heroin is…

by Mark Harris

I am a mandatory reporter for a system I would not trust a single blood relative to. Nor could I wholeheartedly, unreservedly, recommend or refer any person who looks like a blood relative of mine. I have to honestly say that even if you are blond haired blue eyed and wealthy, that the system will take adequate care of you. To be sure, many parts of it will be happy to take your personal wealth, or insurance wealth, in the elusive pursuit of mental health and well-being. For the most part it will do well by you, by…

I have to admit that I typically will defend the inappropriate, senseless, hurtful and sometimes illegal actions of an active addict or alcoholic as being a part of their disease almost 99.9% of the time.  What I mean by this is that, being an addict myself, I know the depths I went to achieve my next high, sometimes I hurt people emotionally, broke laws, stole from people, cheated, lied etc.  I did all these things because the driving force was my addiction and I didn’t care of anything but that.