“My name is John, and I am an addict.”

These words used to mean so much more when I was active in a 12-step program and in my own recovery.

They used to mean more than just another part of my self-description.

Nearly eight years have passed since the first time I said those words in a meeting. Almost eight years since reaching the decision that this disease would either kill me, or stop having such a powerful grip on my life. Have I been sober since that day? No, I have not.

I have been sober today. Right now, that’s all that counts.

Before my treatment for addiction, I had been treated for depression twice: first when I was in high school, then in a hospital during my freshman year of college. I guess I was too intoxicated to realize it at the time, but perhaps the use of illegal drugs, or the abuse of legal ones, contributed majorly to my depression.

That’s why we call it “hindsight.”

Eight years later, I have found that neither struggle has gotten any easier. The events in life that we are never quite prepared to deal with are a bazooka shell to the fortified walls I have tried to build around myself. In my weakness, I have failed to maintain the integrity of these walls, allowing too much through.

Too much.

My experience with depression has never been a great one. What I mean to say is, who has a “good” experience with depression?

I’m an extreme introvert. I am an extreme self-critic. It really doesn’t take me long to convince myself that nothing is worth anything, that life isn’t worth anything. It’s easy to focus on what I have done wrong, versus what I have done right, on what is “wrong” with me instead of what is “awesome” about me.

I’m not too fond of taking antidepressants. They don’t really seem to help that much. I remember taking them in the past. Not very effective.

So what is my tendency? To hide behind cough syrup and caffeine. To drink until I can do nothing but laugh. Seems a lot easier and a little more fun doesn’t it? Truth is, it’s not fun at all. It’s not easy, it’s not glamorous, and it’s not cool. It is destructive, forceful, and unacceptable in my life.

I am tired of being a coward.

Accepting that things may not be okay is not the hard part. Not for this dude, anyway. What makes things all the more difficult is setting out to change them? Setting out to be okay. It’s like going through physical rehab. There is going to be pain that has to be accepted in order to heal, and return to normal activity. So it goes when dealing with depression and addiction.

There are going to be many demons to face and closets to empty. Frankly, I am scared to turn the doorknob. It is easy for me to see my issues. Not so easy to face them. Yet, healing calls me to face them once and for all. Progress calls me to finally lie to rest those things that I have not been able to put down before. My wellbeing calls me to man up.

I’m not okay, but I accept that. I accept that I am not “damaged goods” or “irreparable.” I am not wrong for being not okay. I am not a monster. I am not defective.

I am a man. I am a human. I have feelings. I have strength, and I also have weakness. Show me one man on Earth who has no weakness, and I will show you God, walking amongst men.

Call me a baby. Call me a “whine-o”. Call me whatever the hell you want.

But me? I call myself a man. A man who has had enough, and is ready for something better. A man wanting a better life for himself, his family, his world.

Is that so wrong? I’m going to do more than just “suck it up.” I’m going to sucker punch the hell out of my life. That’s my masculinity. That’s my choice. This is my life.

And it’s all I have.

Website Link: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/my-name-is-john-and-im-an-addict/

Some people don’t use words like spirit or spirituality at all because they bring to mind other worldly or even guilt laden ideas from their upbringing. When you hear stories like the one I heard this week, I’m not surprised. This is horrific and it’s the sort of situation that makes me question whether I want to be associated in any way with religion. A local family moved to our area about 5 years ago from San Francisco. Their daughter walks with a frame. When they first moved here, their daughter was playing with some neighborhood kids. One of them took her aside and asked her what school she went to. The kid then said, “I’m sorry but I only play with kids from the Christian School.” The daughter was upset as you can imagine and told her parents. The mother was talking to her neighbor soon after and brought this conversation up. Sure enough the mother confirmed that her kids were only allowed to play with kids from the Christian school. That is bizarre enough, but it gets worse. She then went on to tell the mother that her daughter’s disability was a punishment for her sin. That’s quite a welcome to the neighborhood. A basket of muffins would have sufficed.

As Anne Lamott said, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

What a demoralizing worldview, and self-righteous too. It’s strange enough to imagine a divine being sitting somewhere out of harm’s way, poking and prodding at our lives, pulling strings from beyond. Its stranger still to try and guess what each event, illness and recovery means. It’s downright cruel to manipulate someone else with one of these “messages”. And it’s confusing when these messages clash with each other. For example, we had a flat tire a few nights back while driving a group of students home from a function. The parents came to pick up their kids while I waited for AAA. Unbeknownst to me, one of the kids left his backpack in the car. The mother came back to pick it up and told me she had been praying that I would still be there. That’s odd because I had been praying that I wouldn’t be there. IT WAS COLD and late and I was missing Desperate Housewives.

The basic problem I have with this sort of worldview is that it’s narcissistic. You create a spirit world in the image of your personal hopes, and it feeds the need to feel special and cared for. Therefore you end up looking for validation and meaning in all the wrong places. It’s even more elusive than looking to your partner, or parents, or authority figures for validation.

Ask a different question instead. Whatever you think spirit is, do you think it’s personal? Does it have an agenda, a preference for how your life unfolds? Even if you don’t use the word “God” but replace it with other words like universe or consciousness, ask similar questions. Does the universe have an agenda? Is illness a punishment from God or the universe, and is being cured a gift from God or the universe?

Let me be very blunt here. And this is one of those truths that will set you free, but may first piss you off. As I see it, spirit has NO preference for whether you are sick or healthy. As the Mad Men Ad man, Don Draper said, “I hate to break it to you, but there is no system. The universe is indifferent.”
For me the issue is not so much whether there is any such thing as divine intervention. That’s an unanswerable question. A more fruitful question is whether we NEED divine intervention from outside of ourselves and whether a belief in divine intervention lets you off the hook when it comes to taking personal responsibility for your life and choices.

This may disappoint some people. Maybe you comfort yourself with the thought that even when you feel very alone, or if you are struggling with challenge, there is some invisible force holding your hand. I prefer to see spirit as an inner sense of wellbeing. It creates the sort of inner peace that feels surreal, as if it’s coming from beyond you. But its not. YOU have access to it ANY time.

Some might say, “Just let me have my external God. It’s a harmless belief and it gives me comfort.” But it’s elusive and dependent on circumstances. I believe that both the personal responsibility and the inner mastery to conjure your own comfort are more sustaining and sustainable than a belief in an external force. This is the key point. What may seem like an inconvenient, and uncomfortable, truth that spirit is NOT personal will actually set you free because you will stop taking things personally. You’re not suffering as part of some cosmic plan, and you’re not well as part of some divine reward program. You are what you are because of all sorts of genetic and environmental factors and life choices. The young girl has a walking frame because she likely has a spinal problem. Period. It means nothing about who she is as a person, or who her parents are. You have gout, coronary issues, a bad back, fading eyesight and every other frailty under the sun because you are a human being who is getting older.

It may seem a harsh truth, but it sets you free to live fully no matter what the circumstances. Once you stop taking spirit, and your health personally, you are liberated to live while you are alive and stop wasting time asking pointless questions like “why me?” and looking for deep and dark reasons for every challenge you encounter. Take responsibility, take nothing personally, take two aspirin, get a good night’s sleep and get up tomorrow ready to live what’s right in front of you. Reality is always there waiting for you, ready or not.

Aldous Huxley said,
“The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.”

More From Ian Lawton: http://www.soulseeds.com/grapevine/

http://frandancingfeather.com/blame-game/#more-460

By Missy Wilkerson

Described in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book as “cunning, baffling, powerful,” addiction often seems as inscrutable as the human mind itself. Its reach is widespread: Else Pedersen, executive director of Bridge House, estimates 10 to 15 percent of the population has an addiction. “We all either have this or have some strong primary connection to it,” she says. “This is everywhere, and it needs to be dealt with like the medical issue it is. We need to give it the same attention we give other diseases that are progressive, pervasive and potentially lethal.”

Last month, The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) made a big step toward widespread recognition of addiction as a medical issue rather than a behavioral issue or moral failing. It released a new definition which states addiction is a chronic, underlying, largely genetic brain disease.

“The disease is about brains, not drugs,” former president of ASAM Dr. Michael Miller stated in a press release. “It’s about underlying neurology, not outward actions.” Miller oversaw a four-year effort by more than 80 addiction experts and neuroscience researchers which yielded the new definition.

Dr. Ken Roy, medical director of Addiction Recovery Resources Incorporated in Metairie, calls it a game-changer.

“This is a definition based on a consensus of expert opinion and scientific literature that changes the understanding of addiction from a choice or a self-treatment to a condition of brain structures that basically compels behavior outside the ability to choose,” he says. “It’s also pivotal in the sense that it equates a compulsion to use chemicals with compulsions to have other kinds of behaviors such as food or gambling or sex. (It is) the same disease state. Addiction is not a choice.”

The new definition reveals addiction to be a primary disease, much like diabetes or cardiovascular disease. It can be a root cause behind other behavioral, social and psychological problems like depression, cognitive distortions, social isolation and anxiety. According to ASAM’s definition, “genetic factors account for about half the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction” — meaning if one of your parents is or was an addict, you are genetically predisposed to developing addiction.

Since addiction has physical, neurobiological causes, one would expect the brains of addicts to function differently than the brains of non-addicts. This is exactly what happens, says Dr. Howard Wetsman, medical director at Townsend, a network of local outpatient addiction treatment centers. Many (not all) addicts have a morphology (or mutation) in the genes associated with the production, release, reuptake and metabolizing of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. Wetsman refers to the intricate factors governing normal dopamine levels as “dopamine tone.”

“Generally, people who have a low dopamine tone are not able to make great attachments and feel rewards from normally rewarding activities, and that is when the drug or behavior comes along,” he says. ” Our society likes to think that drugs cause addiction. It’s actually the other way around for most people with addiction. The addiction causes the drug use,” he writes in his book, QAA: Questions and Answers on Addiction.

The genetic factor is so pervasive that Wetsman has instituted genetic testing as part of Townsend’s intake procedure. “The test identifies two dozen genetic mutations in the brain that relate to symptoms of addiction,” says John Antonucci, an intake coordinator at Townsend who also is recovering from addiction. “This information helps fine-tune medical interventions, and it is amazing when you take a patient and their family members, and they realize it really is a biological brain disease. I like to equate it to seeing the X-ray when you have a broken arm. And I have seen family members break down and cry when they realize all this time, their kids weren’t doing this to spite them. They were doing it because they were sick.”

Though Antonucci says nine out of 10 of Townsend’s patients report addiction in their family trees, there are some addicts without a family history or genetic indication of the disease (but because addiction can express itself through many different compulsions, from overeating to compulsive spending, it can sometimes be hard to trace, Wetsman says). New Orleans native, Xavier University alumnus, father of five and recovering addict Darryl Rouson, now a Florida state representative, had no known family history of addiction.

“My mother was known to cut her beer with 7-Up, and my dad drank three or four times a year,” says Rouson, who began drinking and using cocaine in the ’80s. “I wasn’t drinking for the social nature, I wanted the effect, and I wanted it quickly, and for a long time. For me, it started out filling what I thought were voids in my life, low self-esteem: I never thought I was cute enough, strong enough, athletic enough or smart enough, and I was always doing things to compensate for these lacks.”

Rouson says he has been through eight treatment programs and is well-versed in the genetic component of addiction, but he has never been tested for the morphologies. Though genetic testing can provide clarity to a diagnosis of addiction, and a basis for what medications will best normalize individuals’ brain chemistry, neither testing nor medications are necessary for recovery. “There are millions of people who have gotten sober by going to 12-step meetings (like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous). For some people, that works,” says Jo Cohen, clinical director of New Orleans Bridge House and Grace House. “We support the science, but like everything else in treatment, it’s an individualized approach.”

Although people do not choose to become addicts, they do have choices over how they manage the disease. Addiction requires ongoing treatment, which varies from person to person — some may benefit from ongoing use of medications like Suboxone, some may require long-term inpatient treatment, others may stay sober simply by attending 12-step meetings. Antonucci stresses that a strong routine of recovery-related activities like meetings or volunteering helps people maintain sobriety, as does access to help from addiction doctors. “This is a chronic disease like diabetes or hypertension,” he says. “If you are diabetic, you get exercise and take insulin, but there are times you need to check up with your endocrinologist.”

Rouson manages his addiction by attending 12-step meetings, sponsoring other recovering addicts, reading Alcoholics Anonymous literature, and giving back to the community by sharing his story at prisons and recovery centers. He will speak at Xavier Wednesday, Sept. 14, to celebrate National Recovery Month.

“One of the critical reasons why I got clean was I was given a choice,” he says. “(My wife) Ruby was dead and I had taken her $80,000 life insurance policy and spent $60,000 on cocaine. I was in a courtroom with my wife’s family and they were trying to convince the judge to take my four-year-old son. The judge said I could either choose Daniel or drugs, but after today, I would not have both. I chose my son.”

Antonucci and Rouson both say their community outreach work, which is a tenant of Alcoholics Anonymous (the 12th step states, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs”), is essential to their ongoing sobriety. And though there may seem to be a disconnect between the scientific, biologically based addiction definition and the spiritually based 12-step programs, ASAM’s research scientically supports the activities recovering addicts undertake in 12-step recovery programs as ways to maintain sobriety.

“Our medical approach to addiction dovetails very nicely into 12-step recovery, because there is a scientific basis behind how it works,” Antonucci says. “Part of my recovery is, I serve food to homeless people every Saturday night, and afterwards, I feel great. Why do I feel great? My hedonic tone has gone up. Doing something really healthy for the community has changed my brain chemistry.”

Wetsman agrees that engaging in charitable activities can normalize dopamine levels. “You get dopamine lowering from being isolated and feeling less-than,” he says. “You can’t feel isolated and less than when you help somebody else — dopamine receptors actually physically gain in number. The receptors are much more plastic than we think.”

Pederson, Antonucci and medical professionals across the board hope the new definition of addiction will serve to remove much of the shame and stigma surrounding the disease, which in turn will facilitate recovery for the millions who suffer from addiction.

“When people have a strong understanding about the disease, that’s when the miracles happen, and treatment can be extremely successful,” Antonucci says. “Don’t be afraid to get better. This can work for you, too. Give yourself a chance.”

RESOURCES:

Alcoholics Anonymous: 838-3399 (24-hour helpline); www.aa-neworleans.org

Addiction Recovery Resources: 4836 Wabash St., Metairie, 780-2766; www. arrno.health.officelive.com

Bridge House: 4150 Earhart Blvd., 522-4474; www.bridgehouse.org

Grace House: 1401 Delachaise St., 899-2423; www.gracehouseneworleans.org

River Oaks Hospital: 1525 River Oaks Road W., 734-1740; www.riveroakshospital.com

Townsend: 888-504-1714 (24-hour patient line)

3600 Prytania St., Suite 72, 897-5144; 4330 Loveland St., Metairie,

Suite A, 454- 5172; 19411 Helenberg Road, Suite 101, Covington, 985-893-2522; www.townsendla.com.

She wrote the outstanding book, Women, Food and God which was featured on Oprah. One of Geneen’s articles was featured on Soulseeds’ Seed Exchange. This article was first published in Good Housekeeping.

There are some things in life you take for granted: Your children will outlive you. No matter how tough it gets, you won’t poison your spouse with arsenic-laced toothpaste. And if you have a best friend, you will attend her wedding.

But life sometimes upsets our most basic assumptions. And although I haven’t resorted to the arsenic (yet), I did have this surprise: My best friend from college got married today and I wasn’t there. Never in a million years did I think I would miss her wedding. We’d been talking about it since we were 18. And yet, when it came down to deciding about making the trip from California to New York, I did something radical, something I rarely do: I took my own needs into account.

I stepped away from my notions of what a good person would do, what any loyal friend would do, and considered the facts: I’d just returned from teaching an exhilarating but exhausting weeklong retreat; I had a broken ankle and a sprained back and could barely walk; my friend decided to get married rather suddenly and told me she wasn’t expecting me to come. And I realized that although I would miss seeing her walk down the aisle if I didn’t go, I would be a hobbling, exhausted wreck if I did. So I stayed home, sent champagne, and wrote my friend and her new husband a wedding story. It was an agonizing decision but not nearly as painful as the tale I told myself about it: If I don’t go to my best friend’s wedding — the very friend who held my hair back the night I drank a bottle of Cold Duck and threw up on the sidewalk — people will finally discover how selfish I am and I will lose every friend I have. I will spend my dying days alone, dribbling Diet Coke on my chin with no friends or family around. As soon as I realized I’d made a leap from taking care of myself to visions of dying alone, dribbling and friendless, I understood that I considered looking out for my own needs a radical concept — so radical that it scared me to (a pathetic, lonely, and potentially sticky) death.

I should know better. In working with tens of thousands of women over the last two decades, I’ve found that there is a whole set of beliefs called “the bad things that will happen if I take care of myself.” I’ve heard things such as, “My son will choke on a fish bone the minute I leave him alone and take some time for myself.” “My husband won’t be able to make friends without me if I stay home from this party and rest.” “My friend will hate me if I don’t make brownies for her bake sale.”

Think about this: Do you feel it is right to put yourself at the center of your own life, or is your secret fear that if you consider your own needs, you’ll alienate the people you love and end up homeless, rifling through old chicken bones in a dark alley? Are you afraid that a “me first” attitude will get you drummed out of the “good people” club?

Most of us secretly believe that good people, especially women, take care of others first. They wait until everyone else has a plateful and then take what’s left. Unfortunately, most of us make decisions based on our ideas of who we think we should be, not on who we actually are. The problem is, when we make choices based on an ideal image of ourselves — what a good friend would do, what a good mother would do, what a good wife would do — we end up having to take care of ourselves in another way.

Enter food. When you don’t consider your real needs, you will likely fill the leftover emotional hunger with food. (Or another abused substance. Or shopping. But most of us opt for food.) You eat in secret. You eat treats whenever you can, because food is the one way, the only way, you nourish yourself. You eat on the run because you believe that you shouldn’t take time for lunch; there’s too much work to do. You eat the éclair, the doughnut, the cake, all the while knowing this isn’t really taking care of yourself. But to really take care of yourself, you have to think of yourself first.

“Is that possible?” you ask. “What about my children? I’d die for them.” Have you ever considered why, on an airplane, the flight attendant tells you to put on your own oxygen mask first, before you help your children? It’s because your kids’ well-being depends on it. If you aren’t grounded, present, calm, and able to breathe, there is no one to take care of them.

What would your life look like if you acknowledged the truth that working nonstop for 10 hours, taking care of other people, leaves you so spent and weary that there really isn’t much left of you for your kids, let alone yourself? What would your life look like if you realized that you need to set aside time every day to fill yourself up — even if it’s only by taking a few 15-minute breaks during which you stare at nothing or go outside or lie down? What would the pace of your life be if you went on “soul time” instead of clock time, even just a little?

It’s possible. A few days ago, I spoke with a first-time mother. Her baby son had colic, and she was completely exhausted. She was so afraid she wouldn’t be there when he needed her that she couldn’t sleep even when he was napping or with her husband. And she was turning to food to calm herself down. I asked her what it would be like to do something very simple for herself: to sit down and breathe. That’s all. No big deal. Nothing to achieve. Just let the body do what it was already doing and give herself a break. She said she could try that. She just breathed.

At the end of five minutes, I asked her how she felt. She said she was relieved, immediately calmer. She said that since she’d had her baby, she had forgotten all about herself and her needs, and while some of that was natural (“I’m so in love with him,” she said; “I’ve never known love like this before”), she was not serving him best by exhausting herself. She said that caring for herself was doable — maybe not in the same ways she did before she was a mother, but in new ways. Taking small rests. Eating well. Going outside for even five minutes while he naps. “I can do this,” she said. “I can treat myself with the same kind of care that I give him.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said. “And the better you take care of yourself, the more he will know as he grows up that it’s fine for him to take care of himself, too.”

If you operate on what you believe a good mother/partner/friend would do and you leave yourself — what you need, how you feel — out of the equation, your relationships will suffer.

I’m here to tell you that cherishing yourself by making yourself a priority in your own life is possible. You can take care of your needs and your relationships with family and friends can thrive. I know, because I am making this my daily practice, and I am confident I will not go out either alone or dribbling.

copyright 2010 by Ian Lawton. All rights reserved.

Thank you Oscar for coming forward.

From an interview with Teresa Rodriguez

Three months ago, to everyone’s surprise, former boxing champion Oscar de la Hoya confirmed that he    had checked into a treatment center to battle addiction. Almost immediately speculative reports about addiction to alcohol, drugs, even sex, began to swirl.

Since that shocking day, De la Hoya has spoken to Teresa Rodriguez, host of Univision’s ‘Aqui y Ahora (Here and Now)’ to open up publicly about his decision to hide his alcohol addiction, which began at 9 years old, from fans, friends, even family, and his abuse of cocaine, which he began two years ago. De la Hoya also shared how his wife, Millie Corretjer, and their five children, forced the boxing champion to cling to life. Here we share what boxing’s once “Golden Boy” confessed to the journalist, and the world.

“It was my secret. I felt so invincible just drinking and doing those bad things … But I also found myself crying and feeling alone. I acknowledged my addiction. I come from very good values and a good family. That monster that grew strength came from within me.”

“At 9 years old I started drinking. At times there are family parties. The men are with the men and the women are in the kitchen. My uncles would say, ‘let’s ask Oscar to bring us some beer,’ I’d go and open the beer, have just a taste, and they wouldn’t scold me for it. After 20 to 30 times of making that trip to the refrigerator, I was drunk.”
“My mom did scold me, hit me, but I thought it would be the last time.

However, it wasn’t, and that’s how it was for many years. I came to need it. Because I was an athlete, I didn’t drink every day, only when I could and when I could hide it. And that’s how my life was for many years. There was a void that was eating at me inside. And that was the love and affection that a child needs from his mother, his father.”

“On many occasions I would cancel fights, or I would fake injury so that I wouldn’t have to fight because I was out partying. I needed it by choice. At times I would drink a tequila before a fight, and as an athlete you can’t do that. This addiction ruined me. All the while, I would hide to do these things.

No one knew anything. I never did it in front of friends, not even my family, no one. It was my secret. To try to maintain a business, be a father, husband. I was sick and tired of having to keep up the lie after partying the night before with friends, only to arrive at 3 or 4 in the morning, then go run at 5, was difficult. At 23 one could do that, but by 32 I noticed a physical change as a result of alcohol.”

“I’m very ashamed to say, but I did fall into drug use. It happened about two years ago, and I almost died. The cocaine, the partying, my supposed friends … It was a very bad life. I didn’t want to think about my kids, my wife, my family. I just wanted to party in my addiction.”

“In 2009 I overdosed on cocaine and alcohol and wound up hospitalized. They didn’t say anything. I figured they would give me some medication and that I’d be released. I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but I couldn’t continue. I was going to end up dead, or in jail.”

“I got out of work, called Millie at 1 in the morning, crying, with a bottle of tequila in my hand, telling her that I didn’t know why I was doing this. She told me to throw away the bottle. I came home and slept in another bedroom. The next morning, Millie was at the stairs. I approached her and said, ‘I’m done. I can’t do this anymore …’ I was tired of asking her for forgiveness all the time. I said to her ‘I’m leaving. I’m going to do this for me because I have to’ and I checked myself in.”
“I remember that when I entered the center, for the first days, I didn’t want to be there. I was having second thoughts. The monster that used to wait for me at the first door to my house was talking to me again. During the first days they let you rest and give you many medications to sleep, then the process begins after three or four days. It’s a 30-day program, but I stayed an additional three weeks because I didn’t feel I was ready. I was afraid to walk out that [rehab] door. I felt so safe in the center. I don’t know what it’s like to be in heaven, but that’s how it felt to me. Everyone wanted to be your friend, truly your friend.”

“I’m super in love with her. She’s the love of my life. There’s not another woman I could ever think of and I love her with all my heart.

I don’t want to talk details but, yes, I was unfaithful, but I want to take this opportunity to say: “Please, forgive me …’ because we’re, I don’t want to say we’re fine, but Millie is a very good person and it hurts me a lot …

We separated for a time. I was coming to the house to visit my kids. We were trying to work it out for our kids. There was a point where she had her attorneys, she was ready. But she very much believes in God, in [the sanctity] of marriage, and thank God she forgave me.

I made her suffer a great deal and really, I’m very thankful that she stayed by my side. We’re both going to therapy, both individually and together, but it’s not easy because every day I have to work to show her that I want a life with her.”

“Yes, it was me … I’m tired of lying about it, of lying to everyone including myself. In the photo I was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. It was the first time I did that. I now know that I need the alcohol more than the drugs, but I got involved in some very bad things. There were women, drugs, alcohol. That’s all true. I’m remembering everything now because I think

Those nights when I was drunk and on my own, I asked myself, ‘Is it really worth continuing to live?,’ and then your kids come to mind, your wife and those that love you. I’m incapable of doing something like that, but I did think about it.”

“Now, I honestly feel as though I was born again. I’m living day by day. And I feel better than ever. I’ve abstained from drinking for 109 days and from cocaine for 110. I thank God that my mom is taking care of me. That’s how I feel. If she were alive, things would’ve never gotten to that point. She would’ve straightened me out with the famous sandal. It would’ve been a different life. Addiction is going to be the hardest fight of my life. Day and night I feel as though someone from above gave me a second chance in life, and I’m going to take care of it to be a better person. This is sort of like training for a fight that never comes.”

We are all story tellers and that innate ability has helped many of us share about ourselves and uncover truths, as well as assist others find keys to their own recovery.

Your anonymity will be protected. We do request that you tell us something about yourself to help us qualify you as a prospect for this project and a way to contact you.

There will not be any fees or dues associated with your submissions. We only want to tell stories to help others in their recovery.

Love and Tolerance.

The solution is multifaceted and starts with carrying this message to the sick and suffering alcoholic no matter where he/she is, nothing has a more profound affect than one alcoholic talking to another about our problems with this disease. Family members, law enforcement persons, doctors, clergy and counselors can appeal to us and try to reason with us about the devastating consequences of our actions, but with little success. The experience, strength and hope of another alcoholic can start a path to recovery better than any other means.

My story is one of hope. It starts with how my defects of character developed within me, how I used alcohol and drugs to numb the pain, how my life was unmanageable and my powerlessness over addiction. The solution I found in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is a story that anyone who wants to change their life and become useful productive members of their community can follow and succeed.

The elimination of my drinking has only been a beginning; the relationship and partnership with my spouse, the participating in my children’s lives and my contributions to my community has changed my life.

It is my belief that the retelling of our experiences, what we have leaned from them and how we have changed our lives in recovery is key to helping others. What I am about to do is share “how I became what I used to be like, what I used to be like, what happened, and what I am like now”.

I invite you to share your stories and do what our co-founders Bill W. and Dr. Bob found to be the most successful treatment for recovery, work with others.

Addiction isn’t just about willpower. It’s a chronic brain disease, says a new definition aimed at helping families and their doctors better understand the challenges of treating it.

“Addiction is about a lot more than people behaving badly,” says Dr. Michael M. Miller of the American Society for Addiction Medicine.

That’s true whether it involves drugs and alcohol or gambling and compulsive eating, the doctors group said Monday. And like other chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, treating addiction and preventing relapse is a long-term endeavor, the specialists concluded.

Addiction generally is described by its behavioral symptoms — the highs, the cravings, and the things people will do to achieve one and avoid the other. The new definition doesn’t disagree with the standard guide for diagnosis based on those symptoms.

But two decades of neuroscience have uncovered how addiction hijacks different parts of the brain, to explain what prompts those behaviors and why they can be so hard to overcome. The society’s policy statement, published on its website, isn’t a new direction as much as part of an effort to translate those findings to primary care doctors and the general public.

“The behavioral problem is a result of brain dysfunction,” agrees Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

She welcomed the statement as a way to help her own agency’s work to spur more primary care physicians to screen their patients for signs of addiction. NIDA estimates that 23 million Americans need treatment for substance abuse but only about 2 million get that help. Trying to add compassion to the brain findings, NIDA even has made readings from Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night” a part of meetings where primary care doctors learn about addiction.

Then there’s the frustration of relapses, which doctors and families alike need to know are common for a chronic disease, Volkow says.

“You have family members that say, ‘OK, you’ve been to a detox program, how come you’re taking drugs?’” she says. “The pathology in the brain persists for years after you’ve stopped taking the drug.”

Just what does happen in the brain? It’s a complex interplay of emotional, cognitive and behavioral networks.

Genetics plays a role, meaning some people are more vulnerable to an addiction if they, say, experiment with drugs as a teenager or wind up on potent prescription painkillers after an injury.

Age does, too. The frontal cortex helps put the brakes on unhealthy behaviors, Volkow explains. It’s where the brain’s reasoning side connects to emotion-related areas. It’s among the last neural regions to mature, one reason that it’s harder for a teenager to withstand peer pressure to experiment with drugs.

Even if you’re not biologically vulnerable to begin with, perhaps you try alcohol or drugs to cope with a stressful or painful environment, Volkow says. Whatever the reason, the brain’s reward system can change as a chemical named dopamine conditions it to rituals and routines that are linked to getting something you’ve found pleasurable, whether it’s a pack of cigarettes or a few drinks or even overeating. When someone’s truly addicted, that warped system keeps them going back even after the brain gets so used to the high that it’s no longer pleasurable.

Make no mistake: Patients still must choose to fight back and treat an addiction, stresses Miller, medical director of the Herrington Recovery Center at Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc, Wis.

But understanding some of the brain reactions at the root of the problem will “hopefully reduce some of the shame about some of these issues, hopefully reduce stigma,” he says.

And while most of the neuroscience centers on drug and alcohol addiction, the society notes that it’s possible to become addicted to gambling, sex or food although there’s no good data on how often that happens. It’s time for better study to find out, Miller says.

Meanwhile, Volkow says intriguing research is under way to use those brain findings to develop better treatments — not just to temporarily block an addict’s high but to strengthen the underlying brain circuitry to fend off relapse.

Topping Miller’s wish list: Learning why some people find recovery easier and faster than others, and “what does brain healing look like.”

As sleepy sunrise glows behind the north east mesa during monsoon season, the sky is streaked with deep gray clouds illuminated by a salmon glow that promises the day ahead. The insects who will fill the day have not yet began their mission and the path is silent and filled with the serenity of an extraordinary beginning. Ancient Tribal honor songs echo in the human soul as the new day begins. Each sunrise presents the possibility of yet another miracle of healing and recovery. We can learn to expect miracles!

Many of us had lost all hope of any kind of miraculous recovery. Where had our Creator gone? Why had he abandoned us? How had we become so alone and filled with only expectations of doom and death? As we recovered we learned about the many miracles of recovery with whom we shared the process of the twelve steps. Hope grows among us as we discover healing and entirely new opportunities for freedom and accomplishment. Before long we find the eternal hope inside us and our thinking changes. If we continue to be honest, open-minded and willing to grow along spiritual lines, we find that anything is possible. That tiny spark of life that remained even at the end of our drinking has become a blazing celebration of gratitude. Like the salmon who swims upstream, we find that we were unwilling to completely give up on ourselves. Had we given up, we would have not survived the journey through our disease and ended up instead, enjoying recovery. Deep inside us lives the great need to survive and reach the highest upper waters of the unexpected, that provides us with the will to continue.

When the salmon begins the excruciating journey to the highest place they reach in life, they change. They express new determination and are empowered with a divine will to reach their goal. Those who have observed the way of the salmon often share about this supernatural mystery that brings about the continuing survival of the species. As the seasons constantly change and evolve the morning sky brings to mind our incredible strength and renewed life. We discover that if we expect miracles we find them all the time. The negative expectations of the past begin to melt away. Each new sunrise is filled with promise, hope and renewal.

This daily journey up the mesa began with physical problems. High blood pressure and weight gain presented the challenge for more cardiovascular exercise and a better diet. The result is the observation of the miracle of each new day. The weight came down along with blood pressure until they both reached my exact goal. Something else quite unexpected happened too. Each day the uphill walk became easier and growing spirituality came more effortlessly. No two days begin the same. Each sunrise is unique and supernatural. The creatures of the mesas are never in the same place twice at the same time of day. What began as a difficult chore grew into one of the most valuable daily experiences of living. The playful early light and shadows never repeat themselves. Each morning brings new smells, tastes and experiences. The seasons express themselves with the manifestation of the Divine. I am healed by the challenges of this life.

As we are faced with the challenge to get sober, get healthier, develop a better work ethic and be of service, we may be intimidated by the tasks before us. We may be especially intimidated by the eleventh step that suggests developing a conscious contact with the same Creator who had seemed to abandon us. As we grow we find that God is either everything or He is nothing. If we keep going from there the Creator becomes absolutely everything and we become free. The brokenness of our past actually becomes our greatest asset as we work with others who have suffered the same way we have. We are like the salmon of the sunrise who have made the greatest journey of all time, to the top of our mother earth. The poison has become the medicine of our today and all of our tomorrows.

http://frandancingfeather.com/salmon/