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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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy.
I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world
as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

~Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book)

This past week has been one of those in which I look at my life, not with gratitude for all that I do have, but in despair for all that I don’t. I have been craving the things that others seem to have: time, money, older independent children (or no children…

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…

NORML’s planning it’s next steps:
This week, Massachusetts became the 13th state in the country to decriminalize marijuana when voters approved Question 2 on the ballot, which made getting caught with less than an ounce of marijuana punishable by a civil fine of $100.

The change in the law means someone found carrying multiple joints will no longer be reported to the state’s criminal history board. The law will require those younger than age 18 to complete a drug awareness program and community service, and for those who don’t, the fine will increase to as much as $1,000.

The vote in Massachusetts follows a…

Ethan Nadelmann looks forward to drug policy reform opportunities under the Obama administration:

“…he has said that America should start treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. He supports repealing the federal syringe ban and ending the DEA’s raids on medical marijuana patients. He is also co-sponsor of Senator Biden’s bill to eliminate the 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity.“

All great news. I’m hopeful about the new administration, but I believe he may be more pragmatic than many people think. We’ll see. Know hope.