Science and addiction

Radiolab-ADDICTION-The Fix

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Radio Lab

The Fix-Addiction & Recovery

Here is the original link to this show at radio lab.

This episode we take a sober look at the throbbing, aching, craving desire states that return people (again and again) to the object of their addiction … and the pills that just might set them free.

Reporter Amy O’Leary was fed up with her ex-boyfriend’s hard-drinking, when she discovered a French doctor’s memoir titled The End of My Addiction. The fix that he proposed seemed too good to be true. But her phone call with the doctor left her, and us, even more intrigued. Could this malady – so often seen as moral and spiritual – really be beaten back with a pill?

We talk to addiction researcher Dr. Anna Rose Childress, addiction psychologist Dr. Mark Willenbring, journalist Gabrielle Glaser, The National Institute of Health’s Dr. Nora Volkow, and scores of people dealing with substance abuse as we try to figure out whether we’re in the midst of a sea change in how we think about addiction.

Produced by Andy Mills with Simon Adler

If you are someone looking for help with a substance abuse problem and want to find health care services in your area, check out this map from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration.

For more on Dr. Mark Willenbring and the Alltyr Clinic visit their website.

If you’d like to hear more from Nora Volkow you can watch her speech from this summer’s American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting.

Or watch her and other top addiction researchers at last year’s World Science Fair

Recovery and healing

Silent Lucidity

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Recovery is a place you learn to face your fears. Walk through the fear. But not only that express the fear in a healthy way if need be to better overcome it. Writing, sharing, crying, praying, are all healthy ways to relieve the very fear that is at the core of addiction.

Recovery and healing

Please Help with a Kitty Donation

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https://www.gofundme.com/2myde2k/donate

Sick Cat

Hello,
My name is Pumpkin-head. I have been the best friend of Rick M. for close to ten years.  Rick is on Social Security and he is looking for work. You see, he’s trying to save/extend my life. Two weeks ago I was diagnosed with kidney disease. There is no cure, and sadly it will eventually kill me.
There is a special diet and there are medicines that will make me comfortable and extend my life, but they are very expensive–especially for  a man on a fixed income. Last week he put $2000.00 on a credit card that he wonders how he will pay, but he worries more about me than the credit card bill.
Until I am off of the medicines (in 6 weeks), it is costing him close to a hundred dollars a week to keep me comfortable and happy. I don’t know how much longer he can keep it up–but I’m so thankful to him. I love him, and do not want to leave him. He loves me so much.
Anything you can do to help him and me will be greatly appreciated.
Love You,
Pumpkin-head
Help spread the word!
DONATE NOW VIA gofundme
ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, ADDICTS IN AA

Legal Child Abuse and Parental Neglect Iced over with Ignorance

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What Beatings Did for my Self-Identity

Why I chose to become a drug addict.

Firstly who can justify beating with a belt or even an open hand little baby girls.  We were beautiful and innocent babies who had not even learned right from wrong.

My heart is broken.  I spent the first 17 years of my life learning from those I trusted and loved most what a horrible person I was.  I learned it from my father who I now loath.  Thing is I had no idea what child abuse looked like so I blamed myself for every beating, verbal belittling, rejections, abandonments, and violent strike my father gave me before the age of 5.  Who allows their little daughter of 3 or 4 to walk into a pile of hot coals?  I suffered 3rd degree burns on my butt and legs for my parents….neglect was it?  I remember the mail man bringing me home at the age of 3 because I wondered down the highway with no supervision.

Firstly how in the hell does a man justify beating a little 3 or 4 year old girl.  It sickens me.  Father; you taught me I was literally disgusting.  He taught me that my young and excited hopes and dreams were ridiculous and I could not possibly attain any of them.  He taught me who I was.  He was my teacher and he showed me I scarcely had a right to be on this earth.  All my feelings were wrong he said.  All my ideas were wrong.  By the time I was 4 or 5 I remember wanting to cut my body because it was reprehensible.

Here’s the kicker.  I didn’t know why I hated myself until the age of 50.  I spent most of my life as a drug addict entrenched in living up to what I was taught about me.

For me ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE IT’S A SOLUTION to shame and fear.  I feared every person on this earth because I knew they were so much better than me.  I was so ashamed that when I smoked pot I got paranoid and wanted to hide in a closet thinking someone would see who I really was.

I loved my father more than anyone on Earth.  I struggled for years and years to get just one kind and encouraging word from him…to no avail.  I am not sure why I ended up in the emergency room so many times that the authorities investigated my parents.  From what I remember mainly it was head injuries.  Even my older sister dropped me on my head saying she would catch me from off her shoulders before I splattered on the basement floor.  But instead I ended up with an egg size bump.   By the time I was 4 years old I was chewing on fabric so hard and gnawing cause I had no idea how to release the pain inside of me.

My parents sent me to a known child molesters house on a regular basis.  Yes I was sexually molested to boot by at least one grown man.  But even that didn’t compare to the damage of the beatings from my Father.

After living a horrific life of drug abuse and addiction related trauma, overdoses, sick relationships, and abusive marriages I finally got and stayed sober in 2006.  I had a year of group recovery trauma based therapy and many years of AA.  After seven years of meditation and prayer most of my trauma memories had re-surfaced.  It wasn’t until seven years sober that the worst of the worst trauma came up.

See, I loved my father.  That is I used to.  I didn’t ever couldn’t ever see him as anything but the perfect Daddy.  Even after my sister remembered the beatings and realized it was abuse.  Me and my brother called her “judgemental” and railed that the “spankings” were good and lessons learned for our own good.  Right.   These are the words of the blind child who cannot look at what their parents really taught them and who their parents really are.  Blinded by the pack mentality I had no idea why I was so afraid and ashamed.

Most people don’t do meditation for years on end and they never realize WHY they have anxiety attacks, panic attacks, depression, intense fear of people, low self worth, self loathing, insecurity, and invalidate themselves on a regular basis especially their hearts voice.

It is my heart that I shut down NO that you shut down Father.  I repressed all of my fears for so many years and every pain as if it were my fault until it’s a wonder how I survived.  I hid away all of who I was because of my shame.  A person can rarely achieve greatness in the face of over-whelming insecurity and paralyzing fear.

My ego had to take over and do the job little Lori was afraid to do.  My ego had to take me to where I needed to go while the true Laura hid in under the bed.  I had to latch onto false pride, vanity, and deception to get through the day.  And what sickens me is in my addiction I had a daughter with a father much like my own.  I was incapable of protecting her from his verbal abuse until she was nine and I finally got sober and began the work on myself.  She is a beautiful child but no matter how much I praise here and love her I cannot undo the damage the abuse caused.  I do whatever I can for her and if I had the world I would give it to her on a silver platter so she wouldn’t have to be afraid.

Right now I am struggling with the fact that I want to confront a 85 year old man who could die at any time.  I want to tell him how he destroyed my life.  My God I didn’t find out until I was an adult that my IQ was the third highest they had ever seen at my elementary school.  I thought I was stupid and so I didn’t try in school and settled for C’s.

So cruel were my parents they kept me back to take third grade twice because I was bad and didn’t deserve to go to fourth grade with my classmates.  Who does that?  They make me sick and I don’t know except by God’s grace how I would ever forgive such a horrific offence called ruining the entire life of a child.

I was so deeply ashamed of myself that if I spoke anything about my true feelings, ideas, or intimacy I turned so red with shame that my entire chest and face would heat up like a fireball to bright red.  I would feel like running and hiding.

Of course when I took opiates I got a reaction are you kidding?  Why do drugs react the way they do on addicts?  It’s obvious to me.  I got such a release from my shame and fear that I had to keep taking them.

Of course I was obsessed with drugs they were my only solution my only release.  Other than the Holy Spirit who I discovered at the age of 30.

I wondered why when I sat in group therapy with the other women in rehab who were repeatedly sexually abused why I had the same symptoms as they and even worse symptoms at times.

Now I share my feelings without shame.  I would rather hate my father than hate myself.  I have been clean and sober for over ten years.

So Father if you read this I now realize you are a faithless man who is incapable of love.  I bet if you did read this you would think it were all lies.

Why did you hate your daughters firstly?  And why did I end up in the emergency room so much?  Do you realize what you have done to me and my sister?  Look at your son the alcoholic.  What did you do to him Father?  Did you sexually abuse us?  Is that why you hated us?  Because when you looked at us you saw your crimes?

God will be your judge, MY GOD not yours because you have no God that is obvious.  My God will judge you so you better hope you have a good alibi for destroying at least 3 young and innocent hearts.

THE SOLUTIONS TO TRAUMA AND ADDICTION

What are the solutions to addiction?  Spirituality, meaning a relationship with God first.  Then we must process our past and learn how not to repress our intense feelings.  We must correct emotional disorder with emotional processing and empathic communication skills and exercises.  And lastly we will need to clear the wreckage of our past by working the 12 steps.  But not just wrongs done by us.  It is equally important to recognize and process wrongs done to us.  By process I mean a heart felt form of expression consisting of either sharing, writing, crying, guttural sounds, moaning, screaming and some physical exercises to expel anger, rage, hurts, pains, and shame.

By putting God first the rest of the solutions will fall into place.  Many people in recovery have not “recovered” because they won’t address their core issues and are satisfied with believing they have a disease rather than emotional issues.  They will always be at risk for relapse if they “let up on their spiritual program”.  Don’t blame them.  They are unaware of their true reasons for wanting to hide from reality.

They will quote the book of AA when you ask them why they used.  “Selfishness and self centeredness”, they will say is their problem “lack of power was our dilemma” .  And they are right except that is a generic and blanket psychological term of much much more.

Many  addicts in recovery are ashamed of being ashamed and addicts are entrenched in denial about their own childhoods.  They like I, had no idea what abuse really looks like.

Here’s 20 years of scientific evidence that spanking, hitting your child is never beneficial in any way.  That is except to scare the shit out of the and injure them emotionally for life.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201202/how-spanking-harms-the-brain
http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0101-corporal.html
And there are many more articles promoting non-violent child rearing.

Truth and Temperance

Truth & Temperance

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Truth & Temperance

 
What can be done in the name of “Truth”? Truth is a wonderful thing. But it should not be an excuse to carry out a character flaw or hateful act. Please candor and truth are two different things. Truth is easily used to carry out a hateful and malicious act. Truth must be tempered to be spiritual. It must be prudent and mature and ALWAYS, BUT ALWAYS BEFORE TRUTH SHOULD COME LOVE. Truth should not be used as an excuse for debaucheries such as these:
Murder
Disrespect
Controlism
back stabbing
Gossip
Hurtful and Critical and antagonizing verbal attacks
Hateful and demeaning character assassination
The ruin of a man’s life by character assassination
Vengeful Retribution
Wars
Disastrous destruction of relationships
The belittling of a young mind and heart that can never be repaired.
The tearing apart of nations.
A collapse in all that is personal, private, and sacred.
And much much more.
Are you capable of seeing how truth can be used to carry out these hateful and malicious acts?
There is a time to keep truth in it’s place….SILENT.

Recovery and healing

Recovery and Communication

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Communication the front line of Love

Inside our empathic sanctuary, we seek to re-discover the natural healing rhythm of our life flow, trusting that each wave of darkness will ultimately return us to the light.
Trusting our rage to return us to peace.
Trusting our shame to return us to self-love.
Trusting our fear to return us to faith.
Trusting our sorrow to return us to joy.
And trusting the guiding light within to lead us on, ever closer to our true nature.

Communications skills are vital for new healthy relationships. Starting with attentive listening skills. What are the distressful emotions that scare the addict so much. What are the feelings which make us bolt and run…especially early on in sobriety? It helps loads when journal-ling or during intimate sharing to verbalize the exact emotion so others can related, empathize, care, and validate during feedback. Listening is vital in any relationship.
Four Categories
1. Anger: frustrated, annoyed, irritated, agitated, enraged, furious, resentful.
2. Shame: Embarrassed, guilty, humiliated, small, low, unworthy, bad,
3. Fear: Afraid, concerned, nervous, tense, insecure, worried, anxious, terrified, shocked, scared.
4. Sadness: Hurt, lonely, abandoned, rejected, unwanted unimportant, put down ignored, pushed aside, neglected, left out,sad
5. Mixed Emotion: Dominated, controlled, tormented, tortured, confused, betrayed, attacked, disrespected, helpless, hopeless, unfairly treat

Become aware of communication traps: We retrain our usual tendencies and channel our expressions of discomfort in a different way. Instead of blurting out our demands or accusations without any amount of reflection we examine our own feelings. Strong reactionary feelings seldom originate in the present tense situations. We avoid becoming mired in toxic battles.
We detect our feelings are too intense. Our impulse is to lash out! Or to escape and run. We STOP and do self exploration. Instead of trying to get our partner to see our point of view and change behaviors to make us feel better our aim is to contact and release the feelings rooted in our past in order to deal more effectively with the present.
We need only accept the premise that something from our past has been triggered and seek to uncover it. If the anger is too strong we call an empathic listener or journal the feelings. We can also learn and use simple anger release techniques.
BY TAKING OWNERSHIP OF OUR FEELINGS WE STOP THE ARGUMENT.

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Deliverance, HEALTH

Father Knows Best…or does he?

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Ladies,

False pride has been my most besetting character defect.  I like to think even today that I am absolutely recovered.  I like to think all my intense emotional trauma has been talked out, written through, cried and screamed out of my lungs and gone for good.  God knows I have worked on my sobriety by spiritual, emotional, and 12 step work at a very deep level. I have learned to take responsibility for the way I feel and to find the root and process it, rather than blame some silly event of person in today.

I have learned the difference between the three types of healing and malady “emotional, spiritual, and 12 step/character defect” recovery.   By receiving the solutions to each aspect of recovery separately and at different times my recovery has been educational and worth sharing.  I harp on the emotional recovery because it’s my most recent form of deliverance.  Emotional recovery involves processing feelings and events of the past.  It involves core issues and core healing.

But in the last two years I have realized by the anger I have felt and the memories that have risen that something was buried deep deep inside me.  And here it is in a nut shell.  “Daddy why won’t you encourage me and let me know I have value to you?   Daddy why won’t you just once say you love me?  Daddy why am I always your “bad girl” and never good no matter what I do?  Daddy why do you treat me like I am gross and ugly?  Daddy why do I disgust you so much just for being me?  Daddy why have you taught me to be ashamed of my body?  Daddy every time I show you my report card or come home excited because of an accomplishment you have nothing to say?

My father taught me who I was at an early age and the picture was far from pretty.  He laid upon me a shame that was so painful and hard to live with that I nearly killed myself trying to numb it.  The sexual abuse I encountered by another family member paled in comparison to the rejection and emotional unavailability I felt from he man I always loved so deeply.  I have been angry and processing it in incriminates for a couple years now.  I pray God it is finally coming to a head by me sharing this with you.

There is a scientifically proven narcissistic phase of child development when children believe everything around them is about them.  If mommy and daddy are not happy it’s because of me…I think.  By the time I was a teenager I had subconsciously given up on my dad’s love and encouragement. I don’t know why I took it so hard ladies…I don’t know why.

When I turned 16 I used to stay out all night drinking and drugging.  My Dad would leave me ‘shaming-notes’ hanging from my bedroom doorway on a long string of tape.  He would tell me how let down he was by my behavior.  He let me know he was so disappointed and ashamed of me.  I was dirt I thought.  I believed I was the worst and dirtiest crust of scum that ever lived because that is what my father taught me.  The first time I got sober by a spiritual experience in a church I remember I felt the need to make amends to my father for (me) being such a piece of shit(so I believed at the time). But now I realize he was the piece of shit who was incapable of love.  And for some reason he projected all of his negative self image from his own sinful life, onto me.  I was a small beautiful and innocent child so precious, so beautiful.  How could he treat me that way.  Why?

During my first bout of sobriety by spiritual experience I attempted to make amends to my father by apologizing for being such a horrible daughter.  But my feelings overwhelmed me in an onslaught of tears that ran so deep Niagara Falls couldn’t have competed with the waters flow.  I remeber I was so ashamed of my tears.  I still believed that my emotions were wrong and bad.  If I was crying it was bad and I should stop it!  That is what I believed, it’s no wonder I relapsed after several years even after such an extrememe spiritual experience.  I didn’t know how to process feelings so even though God gave me eternity I still needed to learn about feelings.

He laid on a small innocent child the shame that no man can bear.  He laid on me the realization that I was bad and wrong and had no place on this earth where I fit.  He fit me as a child who thought every  man, woman, and child alive were better than me.  I had an insecurity complex that fit me for failure.  How was I to go through life as an inferior person.  I hid my body, I hid my personality, I hid my art, my creativity, my intellect, my beauty, my humanity all hidden. Little Lori hid behind the fact that she had to fear and hide who she was because surly if she was open and acted like herself, perused life goals, expressed her interests she would either get back-handed or made fun of.    I pity him now.  And it has taken me a long time to get to this point.

Even the first ten years of my sobriety this time when I emotionally processed all kinds of traumatic issues my relationship with Dad, I thought was the only healthy part of my child-hood.  My therapist said the deepest and most painful issues usually are buried the deepest and they  come up last in sobriety.  But my pain and anger toward him was buried by the love and admiration I had always felt toward him.  I had no idea it was at the core of my feelings of insecurity, and my hurting soul. sleepless nights.  I spent time in jails, hospitals, detoxes.

Solutions:

THERE IS NO WRONG FEELING.

Therefore my feelings don’t make me a bad person anymore.  My therapist taught the group of recovering addicts how to communicate with each other on an empathic level so we may heal.     We talked out our issues.  We brought all our intense feelings and thoughts before the group.     We no longer kept repressing and harmful secrets.  We journal.  We learned that crying IS A HEALTHY EMOTION.  Not something bad to hide away.  If your hurt you let your tears flow instead of festering.  Depression is anger without enthusiasm so we screamed the anger out.

We put our perceived abusers and negligent care takers  in the empty chair.  Then we tell them as if they were sitting in that chair in front of us just how they made us feel.  We write our abusers letters “The Fuck You Letter” is what we called it.  You do not send the letter it is for you to get out what you were never capable of saying as a child.

Sisters in recovery I resent my father and need to do yet another fourth step and pray for him.  My part in this is; to understand that he is sick but not before I cry my tears.  My father doesn’t share much.  Mom finally convinced him to show encouragement by the time I was about 30.  Too little too late.  I promise to pray for him and ask God to help me forgive him.

I could say my part is self-pity but I will not stamp my precious pain from acts that are real and wrong as a “character defect”.  I refuse to further condemn myself for the wrong acts of others toward a child.

         The damn of my heart has finally broken lose and I feel such a relief.  I have been emotionally constipated for a long time.  It’s OK.  Sometimes it takes a long time to get out our deepest fears and wounds but if we stay sober the tears and memories and feelings will connect…and if we are open minded we will realize why we suffered from anxiety.  Why we have been depressed.  And if we work hard and allow our selves to feel the pain and let it finally flow out of us.   Work the steps.  Esteemable acts build self esteem and AA is a perfect place to build self worth.  We have an ongoing opportunity for service and the comfort of being around people who “get” us and can relate when we share.  Get a home group, chair meetings, go to the jails and institutions with the group and share “what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now.”

In the following article I shared the process of guilt over neglecting my own daughter when I was using.  For that I have been deeply ashamed.  I did a ninth step with her and we went together to a healer.  We have come a long way
https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/aa-addiction-effects-children/
http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/category/emotional-survival-skills/

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, ADDICTS IN AA, Recovery and healing, Step One, Step Two and Three

Recovery from Addiction

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Jails, Institutions, and Near Death

Spring of 2006 I spent 2 months in jail getting sober for the last time. I spent my time locked up reading the Bible, The Big Book, writing ‘Paradise for the Hellbound’7, and praying that the judge would sentence me to Bridgehouse. Bridgehouse (B.H.) is a rehab center owned by Meridian Behavioral Health. I had been on the Methadone program there and I sent letters to my doctor to get me into rehab. He was all for it. He himself later landed in rehab too. Come to find out the doc was dipping into his own meds .How convenient.
On June 15th 2006 I got transported to B.H. by a Levy County Sheriff to begin my 28-day stay. Twenty-eight days…… twenty-eight days …. (reminiscent sigh). In the spring of 2006 28 days seemed like a very long time. The days were long and the nights were even longer. I had been in my addiction for nearly 35 years.

My hands shook and I felt as if I had a black bowling ball of fear parked in my chest at all times weighing me down. I literally felt so heavy. I could barely get out of bed yet I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted. I was getting healthier every day but I was petrified by the reality of everything coming at me from the present so crisp and so clear. I was not used to it. I would go home after meetings and hide under the covers and obsess about the day. My mind did not know peace.

My counselor who I later asked to be my AA sponsor (God rest her soul) was such a wise woman. She had been a “live under the bridge” alcoholic for years. I remember her saying “alcohol took me places way lower than cocaine had ever done” All I knew was Cocaine brought me some of the worst fear and anxiety I had ever experienced YET I kept doing it hoping to get that intense rush & high that only ether based cocaine made in the early 80s could provide.

I walked into one of the counselor’s offices. “Let’s talk” he said. He wanted to hear my story. “Why are you here? What happened to you to get you here?” he said. I started telling him my tragic and traumatic story of insane and unmanageable addiction and countless extreme near death experiences. While I talked I remember thinking subconsciously “I will not feel the pain resulting from and attached to the stories I am telling this man”. I laughed nervously as I told him about jumping to escape a moving car in fear of my life. After every paragraph of so I would let out a nervous inappropriate giggle.
The counselor looked at me and said, “Laura why are you laughing?” What your telling me is horrible and tragic yet you keep laughing.” I was silent.

Omg! I thought. The counselor had prompted in me a deep and meaningful realization. At that moment I realized I was hurting and afraid. He had managed to pull of my emotional mask. My heart had been separated from my body. I had taught myself not to feel anything. I had found a way to stop the pain by not only using drugs but also by stuffing and denying all and any uncomfortable feeling. But I was twisted and confused because of my solutions to pain which were now killing me. At that moment my brain and my heart became one again. They reconnected and I realized that my life HAD been severely tragic. I realized I was laughing to protect myself from feeling. I was twisted and emotionally inappropriate. I had learned how not to cry.

would learn how to process a life time of hidden shame and fear.

Emotions which I thought were wrong and bad had come back to haunt me.  Stuffed Feeling were ripping me apart.  Now I would learn how to not only feel but also how to accept my emotions as God given. I would honor my feelings while also not allowing them to paralyze me.

I would now learn how to process a life time of hidden shame and fear.

Emotions which I thought were wrong and bad had come back to haunt me.  Stuffed Feelings were ripping me apart.  Now I would learn how to not only feel but also how to accept my emotions as God given.

 

I would no longer deny my heart it’s voice.  My intellect would no longer seduce and condemn my heart by labeling my fears and vulnerabilities “garbage and weakness”

Everything I had been taught about my emotions was wrong.  Everything I had been taught about who I was, was wrong.

I had no idea how I would get to know myself or why I had been so sick for so long but I was about to take a journey that would reveal to me the answers which spirituality alone had not revealed.   Yet it was spiritually which led me to a place of emotional understanding and healing.  Closed-minded spirituality has no room for growth.  Open-mindedness combined with spirituality promotes change and learning.  Our state of being spiritual should never forbid other brands of solution.  We should be open to all possibilities instead of condemning certain brands as if they were cans of green beans that we refuse to taste because it has the wrong label.

When given the chance Spirituality cures everything that is sick.  But if an addict doesn’t identify and change the emotional behaviors that preempted his addiction in the first place, well then all that addict is doing in twelve step recovery is keeping a vicious dog that once ran wild locked up.  He baths the dog and feeds the dog.  He gives the dog chopped beef and gives him his shots.  But the dog is still crazy and danger ous.  The dog is still sitting in a locked pen just waiting for the chance to get out and rip the addict limb from limb.

When we learn he why behind our addiction then we can be taught new processes and new exercises that turn the evil dog into a harmless, and well-dressed normies.

NO! We do not want to drink again.  If you have to ask the question “can I then drink?”  Then you have not been converted YET.  The same man WILL drink again.  But a new man both spiritually and emotionally has no desire or reason to drink and drug.  He is recovered.

Recovery and healing

Does Your Doctor Get Paid by the Drug Companies?

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Find out if your doctor is on a list of recieving payments from drug companies.  Granted it doesn’t mean the perks affect the way he prescribes medications.  Or it may mean that he is out for the money and cares nothing about your health. Be sure to listen to the evidence first in the video below.
USE THIS LINK TO FIND OUT IF YOUR DOCTOR RECEIVES $$ FROM DRUG COMPANIES

HUGE METRONIC PAYMENTS RESULT IN DEATHS TO INNOCENT PATIENTS

http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/medtronic-infuse-bone-growth-off-label-use-side-effects-severe-pain-lawsuit

HEALTH, Recovery and healing

AA member -medications and other drugs

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Alcoholics Anonymous on Medications and other drugs

Let’s face it in my own experience some doctors have major prejudice against drug addicts.  Alcoholics not so much.  Doctors don’t care if you drank.  They do get angry though over the many dope fiends who have tried to hustle them for pills over and over and over again.  In retaliation (perhaps even subconsciously) they have been knows to withhold drugs from  professed drug addicts in desperate situations of illness, injury, emergency, and health issues.  In early recovery it’s vital we don’t walk out of a doctors office with the very instrument to bring us to our death.  But at the same time in hospitals and controlled settings, surgery, and injury WE ARE NOT MARTYRS.  We deserve the same pain relief as the next guy.  We should not be punished for our histories by which we have surely suffered enough.  I you want God to be your only pain relief after surgery fine, but don’t demand it of anyone else or infer we are not sober because we needed to take meds from a doctor.

http://draonline.org/medications.html  Another informative article with A.A. & N.A.’s views on the matter.  Though neither organizations takes into account the numerous pill pushing doctors who will be your best enablers is you take their advice.  Therefore to thine own self be true.

Here is AA’s Pamphlet on the Topic of  Medications

Alcoholics Anonymous® is a fellowship of men and
women who share their experience, strength and
hope with each other that they may solve their
common problem and help others to recover
from alcoholism.
• The only requirement for membership is a
desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or
fees for A.A. membership; we are self-supporting
through our own contributions.
• A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination,
politics, organization or institution; does not wish
to engage in any controversy; neither endorses
nor opposes any causes.
• Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help
other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
Copyright © by A.A. Grapevine, Inc.;
reprinted with permission
Copyright © 1984, 2011
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
475 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10115
Mail address: Box 459, Grand Central Station
New York, NY 10163
www.aa.org
REVISED 2011
75M – 10/15 (DG3)
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4
Introduction
Because this subject involves important medical
decisions, a group of physicians who are members
of A.A. and two physicians who are friends of
A.A. were asked to review this pamphlet.
Some A.A. members must take prescribed
medication for serious medical problems.
However, it is generally accepted that the misuse
of prescription medication and other drugs
can threaten the achievement and maintenance
of sobriety. It may be possible to minimize the
threat of relapse if the following suggestions are
heeded:
• No A.A. member should “play doctor”; all
medical advice and treatment should come from a
qualified physician.
• Active participation in the A.A. program of
recovery is a major safeguard against alcoholic
relapse.
• Be completely honest with your doctor and
yourself about the way you take your medicine.
Let your doctor know if you skip doses or take
more medicine than prescribed.
• Explain to your doctor that you no longer
drink alcohol and you are trying a new way of life
in recovery.
• Let your doctor know at once if you have a
desire to take more medicine or if you have side
effects that make you feel worse.
• Be sensitive to warnings about changes in
your behavior when you start a new medication
or when your dose is changed.
• If you feel that your doctor does not
understand your problems, consider making an
appointment with a physician who has experience
in the treatment of alcoholism.
• Give your doctor copies of this pamphlet.
From the earliest days of Alcoholics
Anonymous it has been clear that many alcoholics
have a tendency to become dependent on
drugs other than alcohol. There have been tragic
5
incidents of alcoholics who have struggled to
achieve sobriety only to develop a serious problem
with a different drug. Time and time again,
A.A. members have described frightening and
sobriety-threatening episodes that could be related
to the misuse of medication or other drugs.
Experience suggests that while some prescribed
medications may be safe for most nonalcoholics
when taken according to a doctor’s
instructions, it is possible that they may affect the
alcoholic in a different way. It is often true that
these substances create dependence as devastating
as dependence on alcohol. It is well known
that many sedatives have an action in the body
similar to the action of alcohol. When these drugs
are used without medical supervision, dependence
can readily develop.
Many A.A.s who have taken over-the-counter,
nonprescription drugs have discovered the alcoholic’s
tendency to misuse. Those A.A.s who have
used street drugs, ranging from marijuana to heroin,
have discovered the alcoholic’s tendency to
become dependent on other drugs. The list goes
on and will lengthen as new drugs are developed.
Always consult your doctor if you think medication
may be helpful or needed.
Note to medical professionals
Cooperation with the professional community has
been an objective of Alcoholics Anonymous since
its beginnings. Professionals who work with alcoholics
share a common purpose with Alcoholics
Anonymous: to help the alcoholic stop drinking
and lead a healthy, productive life.
As noted in the introduction, some A.A.
members must take prescribed medications.
However, our experience indicates that the misuse
of prescription medication can threaten the
achievement and maintenance of sobriety. The
suggestions provided in our introduction are
offered to help A.A. members find the right balance
and minimize the risk of relapse.
6
Some alcoholics
require medication.
We recognize that alcoholics are not immune
to other diseases. Some of us have had to cope
with depressions that can be suicidal; schizophrenia
that sometimes requires hospitalization;
bipolar disorder, and other mental and
biological illnesses. Also among us are diabetics,
epileptics, members with heart trouble, cancer,
allergies, hypertension, and many other serious
physical conditions.
Because of the difficulties that many alcoholics
have with drugs, some members have taken
the position that no one in A.A. should take any
medication. While this position has undoubtedly
prevented relapses for some, it has meant disaster
for others.
A.A. members and many of their physicians
have described situations in which depressed
patients have been told by A.A.s to throw
away the pills, only to have depression return
with all its difficulties, sometimes resulting
in suicide. We have heard, too, from members
with other conditions, including schizophrenia,
bi-polar disorder, epilepsy and others
requiring medication, that well-meaning
A.A. friends discourage them from taking any
prescribed medication. Unfortunately, by following
a layperson’s advice, the sufferers find
that their conditions can return with all their
previous intensity. On top of that, they feel
guilty because they are convinced that “A.A. is
against pills.”
It becomes clear that just as it is wrong to
enable or support any alcoholic to become readdicted
to any drug, it’s equally wrong to deprive
any alcoholic of medication, which can alleviate
or control other disabling physical and/or emotional
problems.
Some A.A. members who have required medication
share their experience:

Fran

“Each time I abruptly stopped taking my
medication my symptoms got worse and
my suicidal depressions came back.”
I came into A.A. not only with an alcohol problem,
but also with depression. Originally I started
drinking to remedy my depression, but when
drinking stopped working I went to a psychiatrist
who treated me with an antidepressant and a tranquilizer.
With my depression under control, I was
totally shocked at my first A.A. meeting when one
of the first questions I was asked was, “Are you
taking any pills?”
Because people in the A.A. program now knew
I was taking pills, there was constant harassment
from that day on to “stop using a crutch,” to “get
honest” with myself, and to “get away from the
shrink — A.A. is all you need.”
I vacillated for three years, until one afternoon
I just stopped taking all pills. Within 24 hours I
went on a trip from which I wasn’t sure I would
ever return— a trip of hallucinations, paranoia,
fear, and obsessions. When this happened, I went
into a rehab.
In the months that followed, I was hospitalized
many times. Doctors disagreed among themselves
about my diagnosis, and my problems
in my A.A. group resumed because of all the
“medical advice” I was receiving from some A.A.
members. I had to choose between my doctors
and A.A., and I chose A.A. time after time. Each
time I abruptly stopped taking my medication my
symptoms got worse and my suicidal depressions
came back.
Following a suicide attempt and another hospitalization,
I contacted yet another physician,
who diagnosed me as manic depressive and prescribed
lithium. Even though I had known something
was wrong with me since I was a teenager,
manic depression was a total shock. I now understand,
however, that it’s just another disease and
there are meetings for manic depression in my
community.
Today I have an entirely different attitude
about taking medication. I have only one judge,
my Higher Power, and it really doesn’t matter
who knows that I take lithium for my disease. I
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am aware that some people still talk about my
being “on something,” but that’s okay.
I stay sober today with the help of a home
group, with Step and discussion meetings and,
most important, with my Higher Power.
Julie
“Certainly, the decision to take medication
should be made primarily between a
doctor who is informed about alcoholism
and a patient who is informed about the
medication.”
My name is Julie, and I am an alcoholic. After
fourteen years of sobriety in A.A., I am under a
physician’s care for severe depression and am
taking an antidepressant medication, as prescribed.
When I first came to A.A., the main thing
I had to deal with, of course, was my alcoholism,
and that is what I did. I became active in
my home group, got a wonderful sponsor, and
began using the Twelve Steps in my life right
away. One of the first things that I learned in
A.A. was that I had to separate my problems,
which was a good thing to learn because I had a
lot of them on my mind.
Eventually it became clear to me that there
were many things that I had to face, including the
ramifications of the severe abuse I had suffered
as a child. So I went into therapy and started
working on these problems. When I became suicidal
my therapist suggested medication to help
me cope with severe depression. Unfortunately
my first consultation was with a doctor who did
not know anything about alcoholism. I obtained a
prescription for what I thought was an antidepressant
but later learned was a tranquilizer. I took
the pill and immediately wanted to take another. I
had to be honest. I debated with myself for about
an hour before I finally threw the pills away.
I then requested a second opinion from a physician
who had been the head of an alcoholism
rehabilitation center. She knew much more about
alcoholism from a medical point of view than I, and
she prescribed the antidepressant I am now taking.
9
During all this time, of course, I have been
close to the A.A. program and am being as honest
with myself as possible about the medication. The
medication has enabled me to continue working
on the root causes of my problems, and I know
that this work is essential to my staying sober.
I think it is very important for anyone in the
program who is considering taking medication to
get as much information as possible. Above all,
the decision to take medication should be made
primarily between a doctor who is informed about
alcoholism and a patient who is informed about
the medication.

Barry

“I had to trust my doctors with my medical
problems — not blindly, but with a
regular review of my healing program
and medical needs.”
After several hospitalizations for alcoholism
and serious gastrointestinal problems, I came
into A.A. on the advice of a psychiatrist at the
Veterans Administration hospital where I was
being treated. This doctor helped me see alcoholism
as my primary problem and the root of a
totally unmanageable life. I attended A.A. meetings
at the hospital and continued in A.A. after I
was discharged.
I have been happily sober in A.A. for many
years now, but during the first nine years of my
recovery I suffered from celiac disease. During
those early years I was physically miserable.
When I came into A.A., I was taking tranquilizing
medication under the direction of a physician
knowledgeable about alcoholism. Every month
I had the opportunity to review the prescription
with him. For about a year and a half, I continued
to take the medication, and my A.A. home
group, my sponsor, and other good A.A. friends
were supportive of my doctor’s orders. Others,
a minority, were not so understanding. Some of
them urged me to throw away the pills and “never
mind the physical problems.” This advice was
guilt producing and emotionally disturbing.
I stayed sober one day at a time and learned
how to use A.A. principles in my life. My prescrip-
10
tion was gradually reduced, and by the time I was
sober about a year and a half I no longer required
the medication.
In retrospect, knowing the nature of my physical
illness and the benefits of the medication in
terms of helping rebuild my intestinal tract, I
would consider the negative advice I received as
ethically irresponsible and dangerous. I had to
trust my doctors with my medical problems —
not blindly, but with a regular review of my healing
program and medical needs.
The time came when there was no need for
this prescribed tranquilizer. I stopped taking the
medication and have not taken anything since.
There was no physical withdrawal, but I did
experience a psychological attachment that was
uncomfortable. I shared this with my sponsor
and used the A.A. program to release myself
from that bondage.

Kathy

“I no longer felt that I was just trying to
cope by taking a pill. I had real symptoms.”
I started drinking at age 14, and I smoked pot
every day. If I did not use the marijuana, I think I
would have drunk 24/7. I could still go to school
when I smoked pot, but not when I drank. Later,
when I was 18, I started using cocaine along with
alcohol to try and stay out of blackouts.
After I graduated high school, I went to
business school, and then to a job in accounting.
I was still drinking and drugging, though,
and spent a lot of time sleeping at work, right
at my desk.
I am sober 11 years now. My last drink came
on my daughter’s second birthday. We had a
party for her, and I cracked open the keg a
couple hours before it started. I blacked out, and
to this day I don’t remember what happened.
Whatever happened, though, it shook up my
mother, who called in a crisis team the next day.
I felt somewhat relieved because I had been telling
myself that I should be put away, that my
behavior was insane. I told the team about all
the drinking, and all the drugs I was doing, and
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they recommended I go into detox.
My husband at the time did not want me to
have any part of A.A., did not want me to go
there “with all those losers.” I told the crisis team
that I couldn’t go to detox because there was
no one to take care of my kids. They wished me
luck, and I held on for about nine days on my
own. Desperate, I called Intergroup and went to a
meeting. I started going to meetings and eventually
I told my husband that I had joined A.A. We
had a big fight, but over time my relationship
with him changed. I started getting stronger.
Then, when I was two and a half years sober, my
husband died in a motorcycle accident. The night
it happened I went to a meeting. I knew that when
things are bad, I have to be at a meeting.
Some time later I met Gary, an A.A. member,
who is now my husband. Up until this point in my
recovery, I do not feel that I suffered depression.
Then I had my fourth child, a daughter. About a
year after her birth I started feeling awful. I went
to more meetings, but unlike in the past it wasn’t
helping. My emotions were either sad, mad or
who cares.
Finally I went to a doctor. I told her about my
recovery, and she prescribed an antidepressant.
I started getting used to the medication, and
it seemed to be working. But after a few months
I was feeling angry and sad again. I questioned
taking the antidepressant, fearing I just wanted
to use a pill to solve my problems. I started going
to more meetings again, and I picked up my
service work, but I continued to feel worse
and worse.
I felt as if I wasn’t working the program, that I
wasn’t doing enough, even though I went to meetings
every day. I was spiraling downward. There
was one day when I was driving to go get the
kids, and I wanted to go to the bar. On another
occasion I got very angry with my son and ended
up smacking him in the head. That was it for me,
because I did not hit my children.
I talked to my doctor about my concern that
I was using medicine when I should be able to
handle life better myself. He gave me a pamphlet
to read, which consisted of a bunch of questions.
The questions reminded me of our pamphlet, “Is
A.A. for You?” Reading the pamphlet made me feel
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better. I no longer felt that I was just trying to cope
by taking a pill. I had real symptoms. He put me on
a different antidepressant, and I felt much better.
Recently, I began having tremendous pain in
my hips, and my doctor prescribed medicine for
that too. I am very wary of taking anything new,
and my doctor starts me off slow. I value my
sobriety, so I question everything with my doctor,
and I try to be careful.

Richard

“One day, I came upon a billboard that
said something like ‘Depression is a
chemical imbalance in the brain, not a
moral defect.’”
I rode the pink cloud for over a decade in sobriety.
I was single and pretty much free to do as
I pleased, so I was able to give a lot of time to
A.A., and the rewards were great. I felt good
almost all the time. My career took off, and I had
a great relationship with my girlfriend. Even after
we married, and I needed to spend more time
being a good husband, I very much enjoyed the
benefits of living a spiritual life and being in the
Fellowship.
My career peaked when I was offered a vice
presidency at a large corporation. I did my best
to be humble and stay grounded. While all this
great career movement took place, my wife and
I started our family. When my daughter turned
two, we found out that my son was on his way.
We had a nice home and a good income, so everything
seemed great.
Trouble loomed around the corner. The business
started a very fast decline, to the point
where I had to cut the staff by eighty percent.
Then I got transferred to a much less prestigious
position. My two children both had problems that
we did not know about when they were infants. I
felt so angry with God. Why, when I did all that
I could for A.A., and the program turned my
life around, would God give my children these
problems? I felt betrayed, infuriated, devastated
and I went into a deep depression. I felt tired all
the time, angry with everyone, even suicidal. At
times, I couldn’t bear to be in a meeting where
people shared about their happiness or gratitude.

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Recovery and healing, The Cure for Addiction

For ANYBODY Who Wants to Understand ADDICTION

Sticky

Facebook Group  Addiction Professional Referral Group:  In response to the comment that addicts don’t understand healthy fear and that healthy fear (the kind we need to survive) is somehow the culprit of addiction.  (This article is based on my own experience therefore may have nothing to do with yours. Read Disclaimer)

In short-Addiction is a solution to an emotional disorder defined as an inability to process feelings in a healthy way.  It is comprised of Intense shame usually because of neglect, abuse, and childhood lessons dictating that our feelings and we are all wrong.  And the repression of fear which intensifies fear.  Addiction is a solution to terror and the fear of loss and feelings.  Then- the solution goes wrong and we must find another or figure out the core pain and fear so as to find healthy solutions to it.  Simply put addicts are scared to death and have been taught they are bad, and wrong at the core.  Imagine going through life like that.  We addicts made the grave error of taking to heart what our parents taught us about ourselves.  We have been sold a bill of goods that is not easily remedied.  I don’t have a disease because I have found the core reasons for my fear and shame.  If the reasons under the reasons to drink and drug are not realized by the addict then he does still have a disease, obscure, and incurable.  Without self-awareness there can be no cure.______Laura Edgar author of Paradise for the Hellbound

Healthy fear is not the problem with the addict. It’s the addicts solutions to the over-grown and nurtured fear of feelings and loss that gets the addict in trouble. No addict with common sense argues there are not healthy fears needed to survive in life. Addicts aren’t stupid…usually.   But they do however feel a much deeper terror of their own feelings and a sub-conscious fear of death at a deeper level than the healthy norm dictates.   But don’t expect many of them to admit or even realize it themselves.   Unless they have been either to a good therapist or take meditation seriously.   If I am in a state of Love then fear isn’t present. Granted it takes courage to move forward and there is no such thing as courage without fear.

A proclamation by the addict of fearlessness is bullshit most of the time.  Many times they just don’t realize they are afraid but there defensive actions speak.   Healthy or not people often think fear is weak, wrong, and something to hide. People are ashamed of their fears. They repress them and their fear grows. Then they become defensive and push love away.  Normal people do it too.

I have found that most people have an aversion to the word shame while shame is at the core of every addiction. Shame is the true culprit and a form of fear.   Normal fear is for survival sake.  Do I balk at looking both ways before I cross the street because I am in recovery and clueless of the advantage of healthy fear?   No , not at all and I don’t think my friends in recovery are confused about healthy fear either.

It’s the shame concept that people don’t get. They are ashamed of being ashamed.   But I get the denial.   Even sometimes my own sanity depends on my ability to stay in denial to a certain extent. Or at least keep certain truths at bay so I can have a good day. It’s just that some people take “keeping facts at bay” to another level. Complete blindness to reality.

Consider this: If you suffered, deeply suffered, for most of your life but felt you couldn’t tell anyone because you were taught that your feelings are WRONG so you believe what the adults taught you.  And then one day you find a solution to that horrible suffering.  And the solution works really well for a while with no negative consequences.   But then negative events start to happen slowly bit by bit (kind of like the frog being boiled slowly and not noticing the increase in temperature). How long would you yourself make attempts to quell your HORRIBLE suffering before you realized your being boiled alive by your own solution to your pain.

And then you halt the solution but the pain returns WORSE than the consequences of the solution. So you rationalize, just one more time I am going to try my solution because it’s better to suffer the consequences of my solution that may work this time than it is to live with the horrible suffering of deep and embedded shame of who I am.   But I don’t know what’s torturing me.  I begin to believe my malady is an obscure genetic problem called “the disease of addiction”.

I don’t know a healthy solution to my original pain because no one ever taught me crap when I was growing up. And what they did teach me about myself is killing me.

I no longer believe in the disease concept. People are running around in A.A. thinking they have some obscure genetic disorder, and they like that concept (like I did) because it meant none of my addict actions were really my fault. But the problem with the disease concept is people won’t look any further than A.A. or N.A. for their solutions.   And without the processing of core issues all A.A. can be is a Band-Aid on a wound that really requires emotional penicillin.  Like Bill W. said spirituality is just a reprieve.  People WILL let up on their spiritual program at which time the pain will return.  Then the spiritual program must reconvene of RELAPSE or SUICIDE are the only alternatives.

But if we work on core issues and maintain spirituality we find a cure NOT SO WE CAN DRINK AGAIN.  No drinking is a risk I am not willing to take in spite of my theories.  Hell-no.  Part of spirituality and emotional balance in remembering what happened when I drank and drugged and recoiling from it.  So what is the difference between someone who has addressed the causes and works the steps in A.A. and someone who has not addressed the causes and works the steps in A.A.?  Hmm well I don’t need meetings to stay sober for one thing.  I am not afraid of my feelings any more.  When I let up on my spiritual program I don’t drink and drug.  I don’t use sarcasm and passive aggression usually.  I am not on the defense, usually.  I don’t get mad when people disagree with my ideas usually.  I know how to process things like anger and hurt, jealousy, and fear in a healthy way.  I know how to listen.  I don’t deny that I am sometimes afraid.  If a man builds self esteem by working step 10 through 12 will it reap the same benefits emotionally as returning to our youth and processing our hurts and anger from then?  I doubt it but it can keep a man sober.  Can spirituality cure addiction?  Hell yes it can but God never removes free will and it’s likely the spiritual boost will wear off then other solutions are needed.

Rehab Centers, secondary addictions

Sober Relationships

Sticky

The same man will drink again.

 Not to mention most of us come into the rooms with horrible relationship skills.  We are skilled in the art of getting what we want at nearly any cost.

When I got sober in 2006 I swore the last thing I wanted was another relationship.  I would make my new life about working on me and taking care and getting to know Lori.  I had been in three failed marriages and numerous sick and abusive relationships in my life.  My mother was unavailable and my father had an instinctive aversion to encouraging his children in any way shape or form.  I asked my new sponsor “What are the signs that I am in a sick relationship?” In all her wisdom she answered “You will be in it that’s how you’ll know>”  Ha ha kidding!.

 

But really her answer would have been the defining factor prior to my year in recovery therapy.  My therapist taught me communication skills.  He also told me and several other women that he had never in all his years of counselling addicts seen any of them embark in a romantic relationship in their first year of recovery and stay sober.  Me and two of my friends were all dating men in recovery at that time.  We just looked at each other knowing full well none of us were about to jump off the lavish and fulfilling pink cloud of our new found relationships with the men we had hooked up with in the spring fever of 2006.

Jody found her man right out of rehab.  And a good man he is.  I can say that because he was in therapy with us which means I know him at a core level.  They married sometime in their third year of recovery.  Man we used to have some laughs and some cries in group therapy.  Jody worked her own program while her and her new boe grew up together emotionally. Some things are simply meant to be. Jody now has her masters in psychology and will soon be a full-blown licensed therapist. She has had many accomplishments since she got sober in 2006 in spite of being in a rehab spawned relationship. They are still happily married today.

My other friend and now sister in rehab therapy with me is Pam. Pami’s man a true Alcoholics Anonymous icon who has graduated to guru status by recently picking up his twenty seven year medallion was quite a catch.  They make All the bike week gatherings in Daytona.  She darts around town in the hot sports car he bought them both.  And their life is basically a year round vacation save the occasional renovations they themselves make on their numerous rental homes.  Her life is picture perfect on Facebook but she also shows the other women in recovery her vulnerable side to teach them that without embracing the hurt and scared side of ourselves there can be no healing.  I am very proud of my sisters who are the first women I have loved since high school.

Me… I found my guy at my homegroup in A.A. also.  He matched the description of a prophecy I had been given back in the nineties of what my true soul mate would look and be like.  My daughter was nine when I got her back.  I will never forget her running up to me so excited.  “Mom! He has blue eyes!”  She remembered the prophecy.  My daughter never liked any of my friends when I was in my addiction and her father was a very unhappy and mean man.  Thank God I got her from him when I did.

My man had seven years sober in 2006 and back then I thought that was a long time.  God it seems like a lifetime ago.  So much has changed.  Relationships in recovery can work.  Some things really are just meant to be but it takes work to learn how to love and respect another human being through your own pain.

Lesson One communications

NO SARCASM- PERIOD SAY WHAT YOU MEAN AND MEAN WHAT YOU SAY.  That is not a free pass to hurt people.  We don’t pay people disrespect by unconscionable remarks of how ugly they might be or how badly they need liposuction in the name of truth.  “Brutal candor” and “truth” are two different things and I do not have to be candid to be honest.

Lesson two responsibility

I am responsible for processing my own feelings.  People can hurt me by there words because I am human.  I am not the tough girl I pretended to be in my addiction.  I am not working at surviving on the streets of hell anymore.  I am learning how to live serenely.  Only I can do what it takes to work through the hurt so I will heal.  It is my responsibility to let other people (who I want to continue in a relationship with) know when I feel I have been disrespected by them.  But if I am newly sober my feelings will be coming up from the past triggered by events in the present.  Every time my new boyfriend triggered an intense emotional feeling and fear in me I thought it through. I did not say a word to him.   I picked up the phone and called one of my girlfriends in my support group.  I told her what happened and how it made me feel.  First she validates and relates to my feelings.  She mirrors my words so I know she cares enough to hear what I am saying.  Then she gives me feedback.   Did he mean to hurt me?  Did he really disrespect me or is it one of my fears/character flaws that are flaring up.  Is it my low self-worth telling me he meant disrespect?  Are my feelings coming from a traumatic issue of my past such as one of my divorces or maybe a daddy issue?  If so I need to write and talk about the original pain. Go back to the past and work through the issue I repressed for so long.  I can write letters that I do not send telling my father how he made me feel as a child.  I can do anger exercises, cry, beat the bed, scream all while focusing on the original pain.  Many of us fear abandonment, betrayal, REJECTION.  Omg did I have rejection and entitlement issues galore.  I saw rejection in so many of my new boyfriend’s actions.  I felt like he owed me because I was sleeping with him.  He was responsible I thought for fixing my car when it broke down.  But the thing is it was my choice to sleep with him.  He owed me nothing.  Was I a prostitute?  Then I should tell him the fee before he buys the product right? (just using this for an example).  Once we realize our partners owe us nothing except respect it clears allot of the confusion away.

Lesson three Boundaries

If he truly had disrespected me which he didn’t then it would have been up to me to let him know that I considered his behavior toward me wrong.  Then if it continued it’s up to me to set a boundary by walking away.  Staying in a sick relationship tells my partner that it’s okay for him to treat me bad.  Arguing and fighting in hopes things will change ARE NOT BOUNDARIES.  Me telling another adult how to act is not a true boundary.  I can’t make anybody treat me right it must be their choice.  All I can do is let them know what I consider wrong behavior toward me.  If it doesn’t change I should make my choice to accept him as he is and stay or leave.

COMMUNICATION and Trust Lesson four

TRUST IS VITAL.  Lying is wrong and it will destroy a relationship.  Sarcasm is hurtful and not only that it is also dishonest by its very nature.  Sarcasm is to say what we don’t mean and expect the hearer to repent by it.  Sure it’s better to understand than to be understood but also we need to know we are being heard by our partner and visa-versa.  We can teach our partner how to listen by being attentive.  We respond by mirroring, shaking our head in agreement.  We can say “I understand how you feel”.  “I understand why you feel”.  We need to learn to LISTEN.  We mute the TV when our partner is talking.  We shake our head in acknowledgment.  We try to understand where our partner is coming from and we look for the similarities rather than the differences.  We don’t make choices for any adult.  We allow our partner to grow emotionally by making their own mistakes.  We don’t take on our partner’s responsibilities.  We don’t bail them out of trouble as a habit.  We are not their emotional roller coaster or their enabler.

We do not manipulate people.  If we want a favor, we ask for a favor.  We don’t play games of neediness or fem-fatal.  We don’t play the helpless games of building him up so we can get what we want from him.  At least not if we are working on building our own self-worth.  These types of women’s allurements build our ego while cutting our self-esteem to the quick.  Our heart of hearts knows the difference between accomplishment and dependency.  Having a sugar daddy is belittling to a woman.  And although it takes a certain amount of intelligence and sexual beauty to manipulate a man.   A psycho-sexual manipulation conquest feeds our ego while depleting our true self-image.  We will crash and burn when our looks fade if we don’t grow up emotionally and gain independence.

Change Happens lesson five

We are happy to agree with our partners in the fairy tale phase of the relationship when passion is high but that phase WILL CHANGE.  It’s fun but it will change and we can flow with it or fight it trying to get that high back until it makes us sick.  Just because our lover isn’t chasing us and wooing us as he did when we were courting doesn’t mean he loves us less or is having an affair.  If we try to smother a man and hold him hostage we will lose him.

Lesson six Assertiveness NO MORE PASSIVE AGGRESION

It’s important to talk about my intense concerns before they come out sideways in a burst of emotional passive aggression due to the fact I held my feelings in because I was afraid he would not like me if he knew me.  TYPICAL ALCOHOLIC BEHAVIOR.  But what’s more typical is to NEVER ADMIT FEAR.  But we are as sick as our secrets.  Count yourself blessed if you know you are afraid.  Many a man walks the earth blaming others all day long for the way he alone has made himself feel.  He will tell you he is fearless while he skulks and hides in fright.  He lets no man ever see what is truly in his heart.  But his eyes reflect a man terrorized by a fear he does not recognize as his own.  Feelings are for sissies he says.  But not us by our assertiveness we will walk through our fear of loss.

More communication.  What do we want from our relationship with another human being?  If it is of a romantic nature we sit down and discuss our hopes, and wants.  What about sex?  Can we have sex with a man and be their girlfriend while that man plays the field and dates other women?  I had to ask myself this question.  When I was in therapy with the group sharing the highlights of my new romance my therapist asked me that question.  I didn’t think it was my right to tell a man I just started sleeping with that I could not date him if he dated other women.  Being that candid scared the hell out of me.  I guess I was afraid he would say “tough shit”.  Or “are you crazy bitch?”  But I had the backing of my group and I was embarking on a new way of communicating.  In the past I would have used far less assertive ways to express myself.  Passive aggressive was my code.  As long as I didn’t speak candidly about the way I felt about ANYTHING I didn’t have to worry about being labeled the fucking dreaded label of “WRONG & BAD” which I thought I was all of my young life.

But now well hell I had been exposed to every fatal addict type disease out there and come out of it scot free.  No H.I.V. AND NO HEP C…hell they even told me I wasn’t carrying and hep B virus and I knew for a fact I had it at least twice.  When I got that Aids test after years of risky behavior and at least two direct exposures I was not about to take the chance of contracting H.I.V. while in sobriety by God!  I listened to my therapist cause he ws right.  I loved myself too much to sleep with a man who could be seeing other women.  So we had the talk.

I used the words I had heard Oprah use.  I told my new boyfriend I wanted to “define our relationship”.  I told him I didn’t expect a commitment per say but he would have to get tested like I had done and make me the promise if he agreed that if he wanted to date other people he would tell me so then I would have the knowledge and option to walk away.  I was shocked that he seemed fine with all of it.  Soon after he and his friend both went down and got tested.  We held out on having sexing until that time.  And he agreed that if he did choose to date other women he would tell me.  It’s been ten happy years since we made that pact.  He truly is my soul mate and much like me.  Some things my friend, are meant to be.

MORE TRUST

We don’t fight or argue.   It’s funny I feel like we still treat one another the same way we did when we first started dating.  We are the type of people who take separate vacations.  I like to lay on the beach and he likes to fish in the sea.  About once a year we take a trip together and part ways when we reach our destination because he likes to do guy things and I like to do girl things.  We don’t cling to one another and that isn’t for everyone but we love it that way.  We spend quality time at home.  We don’t go out to dinner as much as we used to but we eat dinner together allot.  We are partners, help mates.  When I need him he is usually there.  He actually does more for me now than early in our relationship.  Reason being I was in a state of vital growth and needed to accomplish things to build my own esteem.  If he were to rescue me and take on my responsibilities I would not have grown into maturity.

He trusts me.  I have not earned distrust nor has he.  I have long term men friends in the town I grew up in who I have gone to visit many times and stayed.  But my boyfriend who is now my husband has made it clear he believes emotional intimacy with other men is a worse form of adultery than sexual betrayal.  Granted they are both a betrayal.  It’s not that I shouldn’t have conversations with my friends but I guess what he means is a confiding of deeply personal truths with another man while withholding intimacy from him would be a betrayal.  So I respect his views.  And I listen.  But truly it’s not in my nature to be intimate with other men while I am in such an intimate and trusting relationship with my husband.  Trust is the reason we can travel alone and not worry or fear what the other is doing.

More relationship articles:
https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/relationships/
https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/sober-relationships-part-2-the-mans-perspective/
https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/relationships-alcoholics-anonymous-3/
https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/relationships-alcoholics-anonymous/

Recovery and healing

SHOCKING Yet Valid Upside to The Rise in Heroin Overdoses

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Really?  An upside to Heroin Overdoses?

“Organ banks around the country have noted an increasing number of organs becoming available from donors who have died of overdoses.” Say’s Radio Host Robin Young

I was shocked when I heard the headlines on 89.1 WUFT Gainesville, FL.  The story is from the  Here & Now show with Robin Young who discusses the issue with Alexandra Glazier, president of the New England Organ Bank and Eileen Grugan, a Philadelphia mother whose son donated organs after dying of overdose in 2011.  Eileen Grugan did an amazingly giving thing at such a crucial time.  I think many mothers would shutter at the thought of donating their child’s organs right after they died.  Here are Mrs. Grugans very words.

“When that person, when that doctor, asked if we had thought of donation, it was like a hand of God had reached right through and grabbed us.”

– Eileen Grugan

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE NOW

The station has great news and heartfelt informative shows and hosts.   When I heard on the “Here and Now” show of the sharp rise in Heroin deaths in the U.S. I was dismayed.

Organ banks around the country have noted an increasing number of organs becoming available from donors who have died of overdoses. The New England Organ Bank notes that in 2010 there were eight overdose victims who donated organs in the region; in 2015 there were 54. Nationally, 848 organs became available from overdose victims in 2015.

Here is the link so you can read the story for yourself that I listed to on WUFT radio Gainesville.   http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2016/05/26/overdose-organ-donation

Charles Grugan, center, stands with his two sisters, Carolyn Grugan Noll, left, and Jennifer Grugan Whitehouse, right. Charles’ mother, Eileen Grugan and his father, Charles Grugan Sr. sit in the front. (Courtesy/Carolyn Grugan)
Charles Grugan, center, stands with his two sisters, Carolyn Grugan Noll, left, and Jennifer Grugan Whitehouse, right. Charles’ mother, Eileen Grugan and his father, Charles Grugan Sr. sit in the front. (Courtesy/Carolyn Grugan)
ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Recovery and healing

Recover-ING or Recover-ED? By Lori Edgar

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RECOVERED OR RECOVERING? Click here to read summary

Page 64 Big Book: Our liquor was but a symptom. We HAD TO get down to causes and conditions.

Here’s the thing.  Recovery is a process.  It can be dangerous for a person under approx. 5 to 7 years (w/variables) sober to adapt the “recovered” view point because you know what they might do.  I don’t believe anyone should stop going to meetings until they truly are fully recovered and/or know how to apply the steps in their daily life.

Who is recovered?

Those who have recovered have developed a connection with their HP.  They know how and have meditated for years. They stay in the maintenance steps 10, 11, 12, AND THEY RE-DO STEP FOUR/FIVE OR TEN WHEN RESENTMENT POPS UP.  They know how to revisit Step Three and say “That’s right, God’s got my back”.   They don’t pretend and wear a mask of constant serenity (excluding the pink cloud).  They write an occasional fear list and ask God to remove their defects, fears, and so on.   And they have built a network of people or at least one person who THEY CAN TELL ANYTHING.  They have done years of twelve step work relentlessly.  Or they work and are familiar with some semblance of these exercises.

Until a member has worked through the emotional issues which drove them to drink and drug to begin with all they are doing in A.A. is adapting a series of distractions and a spiritual safety net which is A.A. (there are exceptions like spiritual deliverance and healings that can happen in an instant, there are miracles and healings in and out of A.A.). EVERYONE LETS UP ON THEIR SPIRITUAL PROGRAM at one time or another.

The primary emotional pain and addict habits need to be expelled in an emotionally healthy way.  If the core emotional pain is not alleviated, then as soon as a person lets up on their spiritual program they are in danger of relapse (unless they have had a miracle).

Alternatively, if a person has worked with the right therapist or sponsor then when they let up on their spiritual program they won’t fall into a deep relentless depression, anxiety, fear of feelings and become paralyzed again.  Their shame and self-loathing has been healed.

These examples are my experience by years of working the program various ways with/without therapy.  With/without spiritual experiences and so on.  What I am saying is under normal conditions there needs to be other aspects of recovery besides the spiritual, and the 12 steps for a man to be safe in the “recovered” zone and safely stop going to meetings without mishap. Some sponsors do allow a person to work through wrongs done to them and the issues of shame, fear, and feelings of insecurity and the causes. But other sponsors consider “feelings” to have nothing whatsoever to do with or without recovery.  Meaning; they think their addiction is due to some obscure DNA or chemical make-up and that it has nothing to do with their life’s events.  Leaving them the freedom to deny reason for any deep heart-wrenching emotional processes.   Like addressing abuse, neglect, and a lack of childhood nurturing.  Granted the gene THEORY has it’s merit to an extent.  But DNA is by no means the whole ball of addiction wax.  (in my opinion) There are so many variables only YOU know if you have recovered.  What I share are the circumstances behind my own recovery and the people close to me who are/were in the program.

 

The same man WILL drink again

Spiritual health fades if the spiritual food is not taken in regularly.

 

If we let up on our spiritual program but our core reason for drinking has been worked through or removed (which can happen by working with the right sponsor, therapist, empath, brother, sister, priest,) sure we won’t be as fulfilled spiritually but we won’t be sick and diseased either. We won’t have a desire to drink.

You will just be a human who lacks fulfillment but does not want to drink and drug because you have nothing to numb out, blot out.  You have been restored.  And if you know how to use a fear list you got the lies in your head by the gonads.

 

SO IN SHORT-

Some people won’t ever truly recover no matter how many times they work the steps and no matter how many years they stay sober because they refuse or are incapable of going back to their real reason for drinking.  They won’t revisit their childhood and they won’t admit they are afraid to anybody.  That would be shameful to them.  And they won’t admit they are deeply ashamed of who they are and things they have done.  These people dare not stop going to meetings and they dare not let up on their spiritual program cause as soon as the spiritual safety net and distractions of A.A. are gone they will be right back to the pain.  GET REAL TO HEAL.  While others don’t keep embarrassing secrets pent up.  They know it’s better to save their ass than save their face.

 

WE ARE AS SICK AS OUR SECRETS!

Politics, Recovery and healing

Political Obamacare-Election Survey

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The “See More” will take you to FaceBook

Trump

Here’s the FB article for those who don’t want to click the link to FB.
That just sucks. It sounds like the drug companies have a magic halo over their heads and a free pass.What a joke, it’s as if this whole election is merely a play-write with actors taking cues from the one’s with the money. PLEASE HELP I AM TAKING A PRIVATE POLE!! I want to write an article NO NAMES WILL BE MENTIONED. I JUST WANT NUMBERS, STATISTICS FROM YOU. ARE YOU INSURED WITH OBAMACARE OR MEDICAID AND DOES IT WORK FOR YOU? AND DOES IT PAY FOR YOUR MEDICINES, does your doctor accept these insurances?? If you don’t want to answer publicly PLEASE message me. Public radio and politicians are clueless on this issue AND USING IT TO GET VOTES. No not clueless! Deceptive and I am appalled! On Point radio show 89.1 in Gainesville (Tom Ashbrook) are calling the premium hikes in O.C “growing pains” as if it’s acceptable to double premiums for people who can’t pay. I know people who were reeled in with cheap premiums then experienced DOUBLED PREMIUMS and half the coverage in the next six months. They call it growing pains as if The insurance companies didn’t know what the costs would be before the customers signed up. “We were unaware of the cost” said one of the expert guests (paraphrasing). They hacked up Trump by mentioning this: “Study: Trump healthcare plan would end coverage for 21M — “A new analysis reports that Donald Trump’s healthcare plan would result in about 21 million people losing health insurance and cost about $270 billion over 10 years. The analysis, from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), looks at the healthcare plan that Trump released earlier this month, which includes many popular Republican concepts.” (The Hill) They are using a lie to get votes. That just re-inforces my view toward Trump in a good way.

Bible, Deliverance, Gratitude, Step Eleven and Step thre prayers

Faith and The Offering

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Third Step Prayer short version

God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.  Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and The way of life.  May I do Thy will always!   http://www.sickasoursecrets.org/twelve-step-prayers/

My Offering To God

I was telling my sponsee and friend about a meditation I do.  Once I have settled into my meditative state after saying a few mantras such as the Lords Prayer.   Then I pray a step eleven request that I be given the knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry that out.  I close my eyes.  I put some of the heavenly crystals on my chakras, throat, forehead, abdomen.  Then I envision dancing before The Lord, my Higher Power.  The dance I do is an offering unto God.  It is an act of showing my Higher power reverence, tribute, veneration, High regard, and it is a testimonial of my honor toward God.  I wear a long white dress with a sash.  The color of the dress is relevant to my mood and color is symbolic in a spiritual way.

Last time I did this meditation I was given a gift.  I didn’t expect it.  What I got was a deep realization of my creator and His care of me.  I was zapped by God’s Spirit and then I laughed at myself.  God took the time, care and Love to create me.  He will not discard me like a piece of garbage.    I fear sometimes for the future.  What will become of me I worry to myself.  Will I get Alzheimer’s?   Will I be able to walk and get around at the age of eighty?  What will my death be like?  Will I suffer?  Will I even have a roof over my head?  And what about my daughter and loved ones?  I also worry for them.  Well God gave me an epiphany of His Love and care for me.  He let me know that He is not going to feed me to the wolves.  The realization went deep into my heart into a locked door which no human could have ever opened.  It was an empty room of my heart that only the creator of me could fill.  But if I don’t take the time to move near to God.  God if left out of my life in ways that only I can choose. God is a gentlemen as they say and He will not overstep the boundaries of my free-will.

When I rely on God my needs and unhealthy reliance on mankind fads to nothing.  My faith was increased that day.  My fears were quelled.  I trust my Higher Power a little more than ever before.

 

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Emotional Sobriety, EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS, Gratitude, Recovery and healing, Rehab Centers

WITH GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

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ACCEPTANCE IS A PROCESS NOT A LIGHT SWITCH

I WAS VERY SICK FOR A LONG TIME

When I got sober after 30 years of drinking, drugging, and sick relationships I was scared to death.  My self-esteem was zero.  I was afraid to make a choice about pretty much anything for fear it would be wrong.  I didn’t trust myself or my choices and hadn’t for a long time, that is unless I was in control-ism mode.  But once I sobered up certain behaviors stopped immediately other habits took some time to develop.

SOBER DREAMS DO COME TRUE

I met a nice guy in AA.  He had seven years sober.  I like him so much but I was scared to death.  That did not stop me from building a relationship.    Well the thing is I was also going through group therapy at the time.  All three of my close rehab girl-friends found men in A.A.  Our psycho-therapist told us he had never seen a relationship in early recovery work out well we couldn’t stop ourselves.  We were on the pink cloud of recovery.   Pami’s guy had over ten years sober and Jody’s had less than 90 days.  She had met him in rehab.  What a story this is…that was in 2006.  Seems so long ago.  We all wrote lists of what we hoped to achieve and obtain in sobriety.  We all surpassed our wishes and dreams over-abundantly.  We are still happy with the men we met fresh out of rehab.  It’s now 2016. Jody has got her Master’s degree in psychology.  She is the most empathic woman I know and has helped me so much.  Pami works diligently in A.A. and helps other women often.  Her life is one huge vacation as I watch her travel from beaches to Caribbean cruises, she has made peace with the ghosts of her abused past.  She has done the work.  Me, well I started a little successful business that I make a meager living with.  I got my daughter back and raised her in a peaceful house with a good man.  I took her to the wonderful places I dreamed of taking her as I sat in jail in deep regret and remorse.   I bought my very first brand new car.  I love to build websites.  Writing is my passion and my therapy.  I wrote a book and published it.  I started an A.A. women’s meeting at the club of my home group that ran strong for years.   I have sponsored countless women from that club.  They generally give up at step four.  People think they have a past that can’t be spoken out loud. Lol   Well there are only seven deadly sins and nothing new under the sun.  Your story is not so different my friend.  But it will kill you if you don’t tell it to somebody.  God simply blessed me and my sisters in sobriety.  We had miserable lives of abuse neglect and self-torment.  We all went to therapy together for a year and more.  Seems like a long time huh?  A year is nothing in the grand scheme of things.   And ninety days is a drop in the bucket.  If not for A.A., therapy, and God we would not be sober today. Find a good sponsor who shows caring, respect, and Love. These are the best years of my life.  Anxiety is a thing of the past.

HOW TO HEAL

Women went from being the competition to being my allies and the very one’s who aid in my healing.  Without empathic women I doubt I would not have healed.

A.A. only works if you do the steps in depth and share all your dark shame and guilt.  Feelings are a big part of a fourth step.  “What happened, and how it made me feel”.  We repress and hold our pain in until it turns to anger or character defects of some sort.  There is a reason most of us women need to ask this question for every resentment on our list.   We should explore the feelings behind our resentment.  We should write at least a page about “the cause” step four.  And the “affects my” is usually not just fear but rather self-esteem like Bill W. wrote.  Explore that self-esteem issue don’t just write a label and leave it at that.  Get to know who you are.  Fear of losing something we have, fear of looking bad to our fellows, fear of loss of security, or fear of losing a sex partner (jealousy, envy) are at the core of our resentments.  We must get to our core fears to see who we are.  We should add these topics to the regular shallow men’s version of our Step Four.

BILL W. WAS A MAN HE HAD NO IDEA HOW A WOMAN FEELS INSIDE OR WHAT SHE NEEDS TO DO TO BE OKAY EMOTIONALLY

I also recommend you start out by writing down all the deep intense feelings and thoughts behind wrongs done to you.  Cry about them.  Scream about them.  I don’t know…not one women in AA intimately who was not molested as a young girl.  If you don’t have group therapy or a therapist, then use the paper and pen first, second is saying it outloud.  You were wronged and you should be angry by god!  Don’t worry about seeing your assailant as sick, praying for them or forgiving them before you have gotten out the core hurt and pain behind the abuse and neglect.  When we are young we don’t know how to process our emotions.  So they fester.  Acceptance is a process not a light switch.  Tell your sponsor this if she shuts you down when you talk about the pain you have never talked to anyone about before.  If she continues to shut you down find an empathic person who will listen to you and use both of the women.  Talking about your feelings is different than a bitch and blame session.  Bitching and blaming won’t heal you.  That’s why we use the tool; “what happened and how it made me feel.” There is magic in getting out repressed feelings. Read about the “fear list” in step four Big Book and do your own.  Then pray about trusting God and re-visit your Step Three.  Changes come when we rely on the program and God for our recovery rather than ourselves.  Especially if we have numerous relapses in our past.

In A.A. people especially men don’t want a show of any emotions especially in meetings.  They are stoic and repressed.  When you show tears or pain it reminds them down deep of themselves.  They have their pain stowed away in a yellow box and DON’T WANT YOU REMINDING THEM OF IT.  They will shut you down quick and call your emotions character defects.  They don’t know the difference between healthy tears and self-pity.  You may need to grieve over past issues that you numbed away with drugs.  Some will tell you “the past is the past let it lie”.  Well that may work for them and they may go to their grave with it.  But if you want the panic attacks and anxiety to stop there are only two ways that will happen.

1. By doing the work in therapy, sharing, and writing.

2. An intense spiritual experience and deliverance.

And with number two you never know how long or which issues will come back up.  Who knows the mind of God?  People in A.A. will tell you not to ask “why” when really “why” is the beginning of wisdom.  The obsession over a question that cannot be answered is the only “why” that should be shut down.  If these stoic repressors don’t get to their own core issues before the fifteen to twenty-year sober mark, statistically suicide will be a greater option than relapse.  Not everyone in A.A. is helpful.  We should not judge a man by the number of years he has sober.

 

Recovery and healing

Just quit drinking or Really Recover?

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Page 64 Big Book: Our liquor was but a symptom. We HAD TO get down to causes and conditions.

In recovery we should have at least one person we can tell anything.  Step Five (skip to Star Trek clip) Captain Kirk talks about Spoks, Bones, and his own pain.

Sharing from our heart especially the things that bring us shame, are imperative to share if we are to recover.   Recovery is not just quiting drinking but also to emotionally heal. We won’t recover without the component of emotional transparency. Oh sure we can quit drinking by the art of distraction but we will need meetings the rest of our lives if we don’t address our real reasons for wanting to numb our capacity to feel.

And as soon as we let up on the spiritual program, and let-up we will, we shall crash and burn because the reason we drank to begin with is unchecked and will re-surface. We will find ourselves hiding in secret once again. How are you? Our friends may ask…”I am fine” we say. F.I.N.E. =fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional.

IS IT REALLY SUCH A SHAME TO BE NOT OK?  WE MUST REMOVE THE MASK OF FALSE STATUS.  PLEASE SHARE WITH THE NEWCOMER THAT IT’S OK TO FEEL LIKE SHIT.  LET PEOPLE KNOW THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT.  LET PEOPLE KNOW THAT IT’S NOT WRONG TO FEEL BAD.  ALLOW OUR FELLOWS TO BE REAL. I am not okay and you are not okay and that’s okay. 

When we finally quit struggling against our emotions, when we finally quit fighting to crush our pain and hide it away then we can cry, scream, let out the original pain that caused our emotional disorder for so many years.

“I DON’T WANT MY PAIN TAKEN AWAY, I NEED MY PAIN!” Cries Captain Kirk

in this priceless scene Star Trek V The Final Frontier – McCoy & Spock confront their pain. And he is right our pain is part of who we are and we all have it. But if it drives us to self destruct then it’s time to address the unexpressed versions of our most intense emotional traumas.

SEE MOVIE CLIP NOW

kirk pain

If we are to regain self-worth, esteem and a reason to stay sober we must set new life goals and have a purpose. But more importantly we must have at least one person we can tell anything. We must have an on-going way to process our intense feelings to more than just God. Confessing to God does not lend us humility. Our path to humility is in steps five and nine. These steps are merely blue prints of what needs done the rest of our lives. Not just once. And not just confessing the things we are comfortable confessing. OH NO! If we are not extremely uncomfortable when confessing then chances are we are still hiding our shame. “I was wrong” “I am afraid” “I am ashamed of myself” “I want people to like me” “I fear people won’t like me”, “I just want to be Loved”. “I am afraid other people are better than me.” “If I tell the truth people will not like me” “If I am truthful no one will love me”. “I feel insecure”. If you have not found this part of your humanity

Recovery and healing

When & How does Alcoholics Anonymous Work?

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My official position on Alcoholics Anonymous. I do not speak for the whole of AA or speak at a level to press, radio, or films as a representative of AA. Tradition 10 in no way means we should not have a vote or an opinion on issues of our time. Very few people ever do speak for the whole of AA at that level. I believe AA is god breathed. I believe AA works…to an extent. It works IF your sponsor teaches you the true program AND a person does a serious step 1 and 3 especially putting their sobriety in god’s hands to start with. It works if we read the books for ourselves and do the work. It works if a person learns how to make themselves transparent by sharing their deepest fears, shame, misdeeds, and hurts. Then that person moves on to clarity and does a more thorough step four than their first one, including all core issues. Then that same person enlarges their spirituality by step eleven ongoing. Then that person enlarges their self-worth by doing ongoing step 12 in a leadership capacity. Then that person does another 4,5 because of more clarity and stuff coming up.
As for character defects, ask god to remove them but good luck with that. At some point this person needs to realize they are human and will never be even close to perfect and let themselves OFF THE HOOK. Accepting that god created man to be flawed and flawed perfection is synonymous with being human.
At some point this person should quit labeling himself with negative terms including “alcoholic addict”. Unless the word “recovered” precedes the label.
This person should learn respectful communication skills with other humans. No sarcasm, no dishonesty, no veg bullshit. We say what we mean and mean what we say. We don’t hide insults behind the guise of “kidding” or a passive aggressive jab. We don’t use AA clichés to make ourselves look better and put a man down. “Some are sicker than others”, “keep coming back” we check our motives. We learn boundaries and what they really are. Realizing that a boundary isn’t something we tell other people to abide by. A true boundary can only be enforced by us whether it be walking away, saying no and sticking to it or not answering the phone only we can enforce our boundaries. Yes, we can let people know we won’t continue in disrespectful relationships but it’s up to us to take action. Not by directly telling people how to act. All that would be is controlism. Writers can write what they want that is a different deal altogether. If we think we can overcome character defects by exercising other character defects that’s wrong. And at some point…we should learn to have our own voice not just mimic what they say in AA. There are many popular clichés, phrases, and terms in AA that are total bullshit and just sound good are not in the books at all.
Lastly, we should have life goals in mind and work toward them. Help others do no harm is the will of God. AA and religion are parallel. The people at church are very much like the people in AA. It’s time to quit judging religion so harshly. AA has a boatload of dysfunctional members it’s time to write our own cliché’s. Find our own truths, and quit hiding behind the mask of AA. Who will you be when you no longer have AA? What would you do right now if AA were no longer available?

Celebrities, HEALTH

Oprah and Food Addiction

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Oprah and Food Addiction
Oprah’s Special Announcment
Oprah’s very public food addiction
Oprah’s Weight Watchers call
Oprah’s ongoing battle with food addiction
You must have seen the Tabloid headlines announcing to the whole world that Oprah hit the 200 pound mark again. Food Addiction is still, after all these years, a reality for her.
I actually read a whole article on this in her O magazine at the gym. I do not agree with the whole new age journey into self that she embraces. Unfortunately all of this is a far cry from her Christian roots, however, I do admire the woman’s openness about her struggle with food addiction (not that it is such an easy thing to hide). Could be that we never would have heard a word about it if it was a struggle with drugs or alcohol.

Recovery and healing

Founders Day 2016 Alcoholics Anonymous

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Founders Day 2016 Alcoholics Anonymous

For registration go to this official AA site
The cost for basic registration will be $25.00 during Pre-Registration and $30.00 at the event. Pre-Registration will run from March 1st at 9:00 am through May 15th, 2016 at 11:59 pm. Mail in registrations must be postmarked by 5/15/2016. Pricing for the Package Plans for those staying at the University of Akron has yet to be determined.
For registration go to this official AA siteFor registration and info go to this official AA site

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Emotional Sobriety, EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS, Recovery and healing

Why Are Addicts in so Much Emotional Pain?

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Why Are Addicts in so Much Emotional Pain?

Page 64 Big Book: Our liquor was but a symptom. We HAD TO get down to causes and conditions.

Why do addicts seem to have a proclivity towards self destruction?

Why are addicts so inclined to blame others for their own choices?

And the biggie, why do our sponsors teach us to not ask “why”?

Answer number one:  I was in so much pain that I needed to numb myself due to a life-time of hiding away my true identity.  By hiding intense feelings and thoughts away my pain lived inside me till I finally was taught how to let it all out.

Because of emotional neglect and a lack of spirituality I suffered pain.  Notice I said “neglect” not “abuse”.  Many alcoholics have good parents who have no idea how to emotionally nurture a child in their formative (young period of development in which our emotional patterns are formed) years.  Our parents basically without meaning to, teach us we are bad, wrong, lesser than, and don’t really deserve a good life.  At the age of 0-8 we have no idea what true love and caring should look like.  I myself did not realize this until the intensive work I did into my past by both group therapy and a brilliant psychologist who had been through the same neglect and tearing down of his self-worth.

Once I believed I was a bad person I reasoned that I would rather be a good person doing bad things so in an effort to fix myself (subconsciously) I engaged in a life of bad choices.  Always struggling for the attention and nurturing my parents were incapable of giving.   I started every day from the platform of low self worth, you can just imagine how that changed the coarse of my life.   I beat myself up endlessly in hopes that if I punished myself enough I would again be a good person who deserves Love. .  I hid myself and my emotions away because I believed they were all bad and wrong. Surly no one would like me if they knew who I really was.   There is a deep price to pay for holding in who we really are and how we really feel.  A body is not made to repress so many intense feelings.  I caught Cancer by the time I was thirty-five partly because of repressing emotions.  A large tumor had to be cut from my thigh.  I was the great “repressor”.  But the “screamers” (those addicts who yell at other people often) who also hide their true selves away, commonly suffer from heart attacks and strokes. ( My doctor’s theory not mine but I experienced that theory first hand.)

You see once I found a drug that numbed that pain it became my best friend.  People who don’t have the pain that addicts have simply don’t react to drugs and alcohol the way those in deep emotional pain do.  Common sense if you think about it.  We are way over-thinking addiction in America.  It’s really simple.

I was self-destructive because the fear of living so many years in great pain is a scary thought.

Blame is the most wide spread way of distracting and deflecting the responsibility of what I had done, who I really am and how I really feel.  If I am blaming someone else then I don’t have to look at my guilt, shame, pain,fear.

In AA they teach us to not ask why because they themselves have never had the opportunity to answer their own question of “why did I drink and drug, why did I need to numb myself”.

Unfortunately if we don’t look at the “why” behind our addiction then we can never really find a healing.

The program works if we get a God breathed miracle and IF we do an in depth fourth step that brings into the light all of our shame and fear.

If all we do is list our wrongs and not talk about our deep and intense fears, shame, and feelings then the program is just a band-aid.  And when the program is just a band-aid you will need that aid the rest of your life, just like so many people preach in AA.  That the old timer is just as close to a drink as the newcomer.  That’s true if the old timer hasn’t done the work on his core issues of shame, fear, and hurt.

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So what are the solutions?

The solutions are to rebuild our self worth and find ways to continually process the way we feel and what we think.  Also our childhood fears and intense feelings need to be let out.  Journalling, writing, crying, screaming, physical exercise coupled with an emotional out-pouring.  If we feel horrible don’t lay down.  Take a bat and beat the bed with it.  Take a whip and beat a tree with it.  Buy a punching bag if your a man and include a diary with your workout.  Start writing and find out what is really in your head.  WRITE DOWN CORE FEELINGS AND CORE FEARS.  THE ONES THAT WOULD EMBARRASS YOU IF THEY WERE DISCOVERED.  WRITE DOWN THE WEAK AND VULNERABLE THOUGHTS THAT HAVE HAUNTED YOU FOR YEARS.  Then share the ones that are ongoing.  We need at least one person we can tell anything to, even if it’s in confessional.  Work all the steps in depth including shame, fear, and core child-like thoughts and needs.  “I want people to love me”  “I am afraid” “I hate myself” “I want my fathers love” “Why won’t Mommy Love me?”  Our fourth step needs to work on our wrongs and on our deep emotions.  We must rebuild who we are by doing step twelve for many years.  Not only do we need to address our core issues to heal but we also need to develop new patterns of behavior.  We must take our step three seriously.  We need to admit that we don’t trust God or His choices for us.  And why would we?  Look at our past lives and what we have suffered.  We need to get real with God Himself.   “If your there show me”.  Pray from the heart not from some mantra robot prayer.

Lay on the bed.  Put your arms straight out to your sides leaving you vulnerable.  Now show God your true heart not hiding or covering any of it.  Admit to him you are lost and need help but that you don’t really know if He will help you or if He exists.  JUST BE REAL WITH GOD.

Join a home group and make commitments to do stuff that is scary to you.  Chair meetings, tell your story at a speaker meeting.  Chair more meetings.  Go to jails and institutions and share your story again.  Do this and keep doing it.  Every time your scared of relapse write it down and tell God your not trusting Him again and ask for help.  Remember the program works and it’s not you that is healing you it is the program/God which you are working that is healing and keeping you sober.  “so your OK and your going to be OK”.  Ask your self; am I OK right now?  Then that is good enough.

Do fear lists on a regular basis.  Then find your part (not trusting God/program) and realize your OK.  Do step Eleven regularly with positive affirmations of all the good things you have been doing for your recovery.

You are okay if you perceive that you are.  Write an autobiography of the most intense childhood experiences and feelings and share it.

Ask God to remove your character defects.  Do no harm.  Help others.  This is the will of God.  Never say negative things about yourself like name calling and putting yourself down in your own head.

Give thanks every day to God….aloud.  If you seek a spiritual experience to give yourself the supernatural boost that Bill W himself got then go to places that people seek God.  I recommend the Pentecostal church because of the laying on of hands and prayer.  I also recommend the Catholic Church because of the confessional.  Be Catholic for a day and go to confession.  The smaller Catholic Churches will accommodate you that.

Finally-make amends to those you have hurt without expectations of their reciprocation.  Use a dictionary.  Start learning, Set life goals.  Eat right.  Exercise.  Do not engage in sick relationships anymore.  If someone brings out the worst in you then it’s time to move on.  Quit reserving a beast of burden to blame for your feelings and actions.  No one can process the way you feel except you.

Tall order?  Yes.  Read the book I wrote for more help to really heal.  Not so you can drink again but rather so you won’t want to drink again.  You won’t want to change the way you feel because you will feel fine.  And sometimes you will feel great.  And sometimes you will feel like shit but you won’t hold it inside.  If your angry you will beat the bag or the bed and write down or share your feelings.  If your hurt by someone you will tell them “I am hurt by what you said.”  That is if you want an ongoing relationship with them you must quit acting like a stone wall.  You share not so people can fix you, No.  It is your sharing in itself that will fix you.  You NEED no one to fix you but you do need to start sharing the more intense feelings and thoughts.

Show all people respect.   All people.

“Paradise for the Hellbound” a book about change

 

Paradise For The Hellbound

 

 

 

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY

The Depth of Denial in a Sober Addict

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The Depth of Denial in a Sober Addict
Is it easier to claim a life-long genetic disease than to admit core issues and work on them to heal and move on. Generational curses can be lifted and addictions can be cured. It happens. But not while we sit redundant meetings never addressing the real reason we drank and drugged in the first place.
You cannot save your face and save your ass at the same time. If we want to really heal, really overcome addiction we must go to the places where we feel most vulnerable. Or label yourself “diseased” for all of your life and settle in with the reality that it’s much more kool to have a disease than an emotional dysfunction. Is it so shameful to admit core issues and address them that one would rather be a genetic misfit and un-fixable than to have a childhood trauma that can be healed. And when that trauma is healed there is no longer an intense reason to fataly numb ourselves.
Change can come to any of us if we do the work to get the results. When it comes to addictions, if we simply write off our issues as hereditary and non-environment connected then we have little chance of changing. We may stand firm in our denial and take no responsibility what-so-ever for our addictive tenancies. We simply blame our emotional condition on an obscure gene pool. Most addicts find for themselves it’s easier to blame our behaviors on a genetic twist of events rather than emotionally traumatic circumstances. Simply put, it takes too much work we think to delve into the origin of past hurts and pains. Not to mention our primal natures bent on protecting the pack (mom, dad, brother, sister, uncle, etc) are so strong protective ideologies step in where enlightenment is scratching and clawing to get out and our true hearts are desperately yearning to be heard. And then there’s the false pride screaming at the door of truth shaming us into submission. “Don’t share that truth!” our false pride screams. “If you share that truth no one will Love you. For sure, everyone will make fun of you if you express any kind of hurt or need.” So says our false pride. Yes our own intellectual false pride is at war with our true and feeling heart.

Our own intellect condemns what our heart wants to speak. Our intellect calls our heart “weak” and “needy” because it wants its truth to be heard and it needs to be loved for who it is.
We have learned through conditioning as adolescents that our truth is wrong and bad. That even we ourselves are wrong and bad. So we continue to stifle and repress every authentic truth that springs from our heart.
We submerge ourselves into our left brain where we don’t have to fear feelings like hurt and neglect. We go to the place which we know is safe from prying eyes that would tell us we are wrong. In our left brain exercises we are safe.
And be sure…our left brain artistic activities do soothe us and protect us from the pains of rejection and inferiority. However our activities are but a band-aid for the original wound that begs to be expressed so it can finally heal. Until we go back into the past and become a vulnerable child. A child who DOES care what other people thinks of her. A child who is allowed to say she is hurt and cries. A child who looks at her friends and says “I want you to like me” a child who wants to be thought of as good and is GOOD. Yes until we allow that child who craves mommies love and daddies attention to have her voice. Until we let our heart have it’s voice all our efforts of distraction are merely a band-aid on a wound forever seeping. Our emotional pain without a voice will stay infected. And many times the infection will come out sideways onto those we love the most, those we have no intention of hurting.

Recovery and healing

THE MASK MUST COME OFF

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THE MASK

It’s no wonder most people fear showing their true self even to their most intimate fellows, with everyone else hiding behind the mask of ego and the bravado of “it’s all good” the man who is truly self-aware and acknowledges a full scale of human emotion feels odd and alone: and so festers our society of anxiety, stress, panic attacks, depression, and lastly mental illness. Bring on the pharmaceuticals cry the Americans from their bed of deception. Seems like the theme of the day is healthy “risk taking”. Without the risk of making one’s self vulnerable in a safe environment we will never grow into the person who becomes who they really are. The person who follows their own heart and God’s leading takes emotional risks.

 

When we are stripped of all self-worth by the beast of addiction we come into the rooms broken and full of resentment. After our thorough working of the 12 steps we are a clean slate. We are then sponges ready to absorb even download if you will our new programs. Oh yes the “Same man WILL drink again” therefore, if we don’t download a new program we are destined to relapse. We absorb all the good we can around us in the rooms of AA, in the re-hab, from the sober friends we choose. We shut our mouths and listen and learn and grow.

 

When fear crops up & it will, we share it with empathic listeners who will hopefully validate our feelings. Please don’t confuse this with “validating or co-signing bullshit meaning co-signing wrong behaviors and actions. I don’t know about you but my heart and what’s in it is not bullshit. How can feelings ever be wrong when they come from our own heart? They are who we are and should be given validity otherwise we are still in a process of tearing ourselves down.

 

We cannot change our own feelings but we can validate and process them. If we don’t have some intimate fellows in recovery that are open and honest enough to admit their own feelings to us they are living behind a wall of ego and a mask of bravado. It is very important for our feelings to be acknowledged so we may then move on. Our feelings absolutely should not paralyze or control us.  However, if they are intense and not addressed (the reoccurring and intense feelings) they will come out sideways by the old survival skill of blame and judgment.

 

Granted children of God, the skill of fault-finding does work to brush off fear however it usually involves hurting either ourselves or others by developing and nurturing hate & accusation which pollutes our own heart. It is important to surround ourselves with sobriety and good Loving people when we are healing from a life of pain from self-induced abuse. We need not accuse my brethren for accusations are the first fruits of Satan’s own spawn…so says the word. Rev. 12:10 THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!

Recovery and healing

Step Three Father Martin

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Great commentary on step three. Made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him.  God’s will for us.  “Get well and stay well”.

Fourth Step Resentment. How do I get over a resentment? It is easy for people to say “GET OVER IT!” And peer down on us because we have a resentment. But what is the fourth step process by which we actually have God remove it?

HYPOTHETICAL:

I went to see Father Martin speak. He agreed to shake hands after the speaker meeting. But then after the meeting he was nowhere to be found. I get a profound and long term resentment toward him for this. Here is how I handle it with God’s help.

It’s easy for people to say “just let it go”. But there is a process in letting go of stuff like that and it involves the fourth step and some depth of awareness, and action. What I do is write down the incident “what happened”. Then I express my feelings about the event. First I feel anger because it’s an easier emotion than the feelings that make me appear weak and vulnerable. But underneath the anger “I was hurt, I felt insulted by FM as if I was not worth his attention. I felt inferior, I felt rejected and ‘lesser than’. What then is the “fear” that is driving my insecure emotions? I fear I really am not worth being liked or loved. I fear I am not worthy. That I really am lesser than and worthless. Please remember our intellect and our heart are two different things. MY HEART DOES NOT HAVE TO BE LOGICAL. BUT IT’S INTENSE FEELINGS DO NEED TO BE HONORED. People confuse their intellect as if it were at the core of a resentment. Sure I know I am valuable logically. But my heart has been taught different. It needs some healing attention and a faithful ear. These are the fears that drive most resentments. It takes a courageous man to really know his own heart and to show his heart the respect it deserves. And all these inferiority feelings come from the conditioning which my early years experiences taught me. My parents and others taught me to be ashamed and that I am lesser than, so my heart believed and trusted them as if it were true. Now I ask my HP to remove the fear that I am lesser than and the low self-worth which I was taught. I am a child of The King, I am royalty. I am worthy of both Love and other good things. So now I explore my part in the incident. I had expectations. I assumed the rejection was about me and really Father Martin’s actions had no bearing on me and who I am. I am not trusting God by my fear. I am not trusting that God loves me and gives me value. Step 12 will intensely improve my self worth. I realize I am not showing Love and understanding by assuming the worst about F.Martin. Did he really wrong me? Did he break an appointment? Maybe something horrific came up with him so he could not meet me. I ask God to help me forgive FM. I forgive FM in word and I ask that my heart follow my words of forgiveness. I am sure to write all this down and ask God to remove my fears of worthlessness, shame, inferiority. I pray for FM every day till the resentment is gone. If need be I confess my fears step 5. Most fears are about fear of loss, either sex, society, or security. I fear for my reputation. I do care what other’s think of me and I do not pretend that I don’t. This type fear is “society” based. If other people saw the instance I may have deep shame because I feel other people saw my rejection or lowliness. If you can grasp these core heart concepts I have just laid out then you have bitten off some huge truths about yourself and human nature. If you have a resentment and believe you have no fear behind it, well denial works too. Most people in AA I know like to pretend they don’t get resentments and are basically “perfect” except for their grave disease of addiction which most people like to pin on some obscure genetic mishap. Really addiction is no more than an inability to process feelings of fear/repression/and denial. All covered up by a host of character defects.  Step 12 will intensely improve my self worth. During Step 11 meditation I go over the good things I did today, like a meeting, charity, step work. Positive affirmations work.

Recovery and healing

ADDICTION= Nature? Nurture? or Both

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Learn the Why Behind the Addiction.

Countless professionals have identified repressed feelings from childhood as a major factor in addiction.

I used to revel in the fact that addiction is hereditary, genetic even.  I used to be conformed to the idea since addiction is genetic it relieves me of all responsibility and renders me powerless over the past, present, and future.  I thought I had to pick up.  I thought I had no choice.  I was compelled and even after years of sobriety I was convinced that I was basically a victim of the DISEASE of addiction.  And that I also would require treatment for that addiction the rest of my life.  Furthermore I was conditioned in AA to call myself a never-ending “alcoholic/addict” and if I ever thought I was getting well I was in grave danger of relapse and highly delusional.

Well it’s no wonder I adhered so staunchly to such precepts considering I do come from a long line of addicts.  These ideals relived me of much guilt.  I was finally able to put a “why” on my torn personality.  And torn it was, fighting itself to not do what I was compelled at the time to do.

So what changed?  What happened?  Why do I now believe that my addiction was not cause by some obscure gene pool swimming around in my DNA.  Why now do I believe it was nurture or more appropriately a lack of emotional nurturing which caused my sickness?  Well it’s like this, after ten years of prayer, meditation, meetings, and a year of very enlightening therapy I have realized the true “why” behind my drinking and drugging.  Not only that, I also believe most people drink and drug for pretty much the same reasons I did.  Reasons being 1.Shame, 2.pain, 3. an inability to process and deal with feelings.  4. fear of feeling feelings.  5. And finally a lack of God in my life.

Once I cried and screamed out the core issues from childhood which haunted me and were so, so painful I was able to quit being so afraid of my feelings.  Once I worked step 12 for so long I gained true self worth.  Once I realized God really does have my back and finalized my step three my fears were lessened.  Once I learned how to use a fourth step to my advantage including the “fear list” which people seldom talk about anywhere in AA.  Not to mention once I saw the popular misconceptions and scare methodologies in AA and moved away from such precepts of bondage I realized, I WILL ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE.  And I always had a choice.  I am not some genetic victim who needs AA for the rest of my life.  Furthermore that is NOT what is taught in the Big Book nor was AA ever intended to be a life-long dependency.

Oh yes I see the old timers sitting around in meetings talking about how they are just as close to a drink than anyone and that they are still so, so sick.  Well true if we don’t do the work both step work, spiritual work, and therapy work yes we will always have no advantages over the wet drunk off the street.  But if a man has done the work in these three areas and still considers himself as sick as the foggy eyed newly sober man, then he is a dry drunk and has done nothing to allow himself to heal.  And if we have truly worked the program for a number of years and are no better off than the new-comer who has done no work and has no knowledge of the twelve steps then that speaks for itself a program which is basically worthless.  To say I am still sick is to say the program does not work and my spiritual condition benefited nothing from steps 3 and eleven.  These dogmatic concepts are clearly “false humility” at work.  It is both dishonest and a false testament to lie about the progress which AA provides.  It is clearly rampant false humility to pretend we are in a no better position than the new comer.

Furthermore what man sits in meeting after meeting swearing that someone other than himself “is the most important one in the room”?  More bullshit clearly or am I the only one who goes to AA for his own sobriety?  I have no control over the new comer and he is not more important than me, sorry.  Really?

It’s a choice and I choose to be well.  http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/addict-gene/

MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS IN A.A.

 

EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS

Laura Edgar Author Page

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Hi!  My name is Laura Edgar and I am a writer.  My passion is to write about the changes I myself have experienced and just how they came about.  In “Paradise for the Hellbound” the book, I tell this story.  My book also addresses many spiritual and religious topics of which I have experience with.

I don’t think I or anybody should try to write a book about something they know nothing about.  I know about and have experienced profound changes in my lifetime.  I also write about emotional issues and how to get past fear, emotional pain, stress, depression, panic attacks, and addictions.

Change can come to any of us if we do the work to get the results.  When it comes to addictions, if we simply write off our issues as hereditary and non-environment connected then we have little chance of changing.  We may stand firm in our denial and take no responsibility what-so-ever for our addictive tenancies. We simply blame our emotional condition on an obscure gene pool.   Most addicts find for themselves it’s easier to blame our behaviors on a genetic twist of events rather  than emotionally traumatic circumstances.  Simply put, it takes too much work we think to delve into the origin of past hurts and pains.  Not to mention our primal natures bent on protecting the pack (mom, dad, brother, sister, uncle, etc) are so strong protective ideologies step in where enlightenment is scratching and clawing to get out and our true hearts are desperately yearning to be heard.  And then there’s the false pride screaming at the door of truth shaming us into submission.  “Don’t share that truth!” our false pride screams.  “If you share that truth no one will Love you.  For sure, everyone will make fun of you if you express any kind of hurt or need.” So says our false pride.  Yes our own intellectual false pride is at war with our true and feeling heart.

Our own intellect condemns what our heart wants to speak.  Our intellect calls our heart “weak” and “needy” because it wants its truth to be heard and it needs to be loved for who it is.

We have learned through conditioning as adolescents that our truth is wrong and bad.  That even we ourselves are wrong and bad.  So we continue to stifle and repress every authentic truth that springs from our heart.

We submerge ourselves into our left brain where we don’t have to fear feelings like hurt and neglect.  We go to the place which we know is safe from prying eyes that would tell us we are wrong.  In our left brain exercises we are safe.

And be sure…our left brain artistic activities do soothe us and protect us from the pains of rejection and inferiority.  However our activities are but a band-aid for the original wound that begs to be expressed so it can finally heal.  Until we go back into the past and become a vulnerable child.  A child who DOES care what other people thinks of her.  A child who is allowed to say she is hurt and cries.  A child who looks at her friends and says “I want you to like me”  a child who wants to be thought of as good and is GOOD.  Yes until we allow that child who craves mommies love and daddies attention to have her voice.   Until we let our heart have it’s voice all our efforts of distraction are  merely a band-aid on a wound forever seeping.  Our emotional pain without a voice will stay infected.  And many times the infection will come out sideways onto those we love the most, those we have no intention of hurting.

Recovery and healing

Hope To The Suffering Addict

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WHAT IT WAS LIKE

I know what it’s like to be torn in two.  Half of me desperately wanting to be sober and clean.  The other half tearing at me convinced that I am a slave to drugs and that I have no choice in the matter…I must use.  In this case it might have been better to have NO CONSCIENCE WHAT SO EVER.  But I could not tear the very heart of me out and replace it with a sober emotionally balanced and spiritually grounded heart.

I was squittled.  It seemed there was nothing I could do.  I was a slave to crack, methadone, morphine, cigarettes, alcohol and an emotional & mental mess I might add.  Denial was the closest thing to peace of mind that I had.  But denial was the counterfeit of Peace.

WHAT HAPPENED

On good Friday 2006 I was walking on the sidewalk when I got stopped by a cop.  I was in a county called “GilChrist”.  I had no idea it was Good Friday until the cop threw me in jail because of warrants.  Warrants I was also unaware of.  I was lost.  I screamed at the cop all the way to jail.

As I sat in the holding cell I prayed to God; “please lesson the withdraw symptoms”  The withdraw wasn’t nearly as bad as it should have been.  After about two weeks in jail my decrepit mind began to realize what I had done with my life.   The guilt in me for neglecting my nine year old daughter still eats at my heart.  Even after doing a step nine with her and all the rest of the steps.

I don’t know if a mother’s brand of guilt ever really goes away totally.  If I had a million dollars I would buy her the world to make up for my horrible horrible behavior.  Even though my crack days were limited to about a year on and off.  If was the second worst drug of them all. I was unavailable and when I did have my daughter I exposed her my addiction.   Clearly injecting Cocaine was the most horrific drug abuse.  It left me a basket case of panic attacks and shadows of experiencing the deepest fear you can ever imagine.  Those days ended in my twenties, way before I had my daughter.        I could not keep that up.  It’s a whole other story for another day.

In Jail

My head cleared up.  I prayed allot.  I remembered the first time I had gotten sober for a very long time due to a spiritual experience.  I had sought God in a little Baptist church in the meadow.  The pasture was a sweet old man.  There was also a minister woman.  She put her hand on my chest where all my pain lived as I was leaving the Sunday morning service.  She said; “God has something for you, come to the evening service”.  And so I did, and I received prayer and the laying on of hands from five or six Christian believers.

I recieved the Holy Spirit that night.  The story is in my book “Paradise for the Hellbound”    I spent a year as a student with that women Sister Petty.  She taught me allot.    There is also an article about my overdose here which lead me to seek God. .

Back to 2006

Between my first spiritual experience back in 1989 and my second stay in rehab, in 2006 and Alcoholics Anonymous I was finally able to release most of my fear and pain.  But I spent a year in therapy.  The right therapy.  It also changed me for the better.  Honestly one touch from God made me a different person.  Morally I was changed for ever.  Seek God my friend.  Seek with every fiber of your being.  God out into the world and follow your heart.  God to the church that draws you in.  And it will if you listen to the still small voice.  GOD DELIVERS HIS CHILDREN FROM BONDAGE ALL THE TIME WE JUST HAVE TO SEEK HIM.  SAY JESUS’ NAME ALOUD AND GIVE THANKS OVER AND OVER.. I found that the laying on of hands in prayer is magical.  Working the 12 steps is miraculous as well but in a different way.  Every addict should go to therapy for at least a year in my opinion.  When they get sober I mean.

WHAT IT’S LIKE NOW

When I got out of two months in jail and thirty days of rehab I began my knew life.  I raised my daughter in loving environment for the next eight years till she grew up and moved out.  I made amends.  I took meetings into the very jail I got sober in.  I shared my experience strength and hope with the women for two years straight before I got service burn out.  I started a successful business.  I wrote a book and published it.  I have been in a good relationship for ten years.  I have been sober nearly ten years also.  I have been healed by writing, sharing, prayer, meditation, telling my story, chairing meetings, doing step four and five over and over.  I love my life for the first time ever.

But without Jesus, God, I am hopeless.  Call your God by any name.  Names are not important but seeking is.  And seeking is done by the heart and the footwork.

 

 

Recovery and healing

Who are you buying Your Big Book from?

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The Big Book is in the public domain.  Therefore when Amazon sells it Amazon gets the money not World Services.

After much study and research I have concluded this article I found online is the best one on the topic of The Big Book, it’s profits, and it’s copyright laws.  Editions One & Two are in the public domain.  That’s why Amazon and other book manufacturers are selling it at full profit.  Meaning AA gets nothing from the sales.  There are a few theories as to why AA failed to renew it’s copyrights.  Read the article.

Is the Big Book Shrinking?
By Meg Williams 07/09/13
The Big Book remains the place to find AA’s program of recovery. But thanks to competing publishers and free apps, literature revenues are falling. Is there anything World Services can do?
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Will AA’s publishing revenues soon become small beer? Photo via
When the 63rd General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous met this April, the delegates representing AA groups from the US and Canada passed a motion to allow AA World Services (AAWS) to “use commissioned online stores to sell and distribute digital AA literature.”

AA literature is already widely available on the web. This includes the AA website’s links to the current edition of Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. But other vendors also publish editions of the Big Book online, downloadable for free or for a nominal charge. At this point, AAWS has already lost considerable business to these other publishers. Many would ask, “Why is AA allowing this?” The answer: AA has no legal recourse to stop it.

Individual AA members must choose whom to pay for the Big Book, if they choose to pay at all.
The first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous has been public domain since 1967, when AA failed to renew its copyright on the text. AA also failed to renew the copyright on the second edition, causing it to lapse in 1983. In both cases, most sources say that AAWS failed to act simply because of a lack of understanding of the applicable copyright laws.

Of course, other theories have been proposed. Some suggest that AA let the copyright lapse to dodge any liability resulting from the fact that Bill Wilson claimed he was the only author at the time the Big Book was first copyrighted. (Other people are known to have written portions of the book, including “To Employers” and “The Doctor’s Opinion,” for example.) Moving these works into public domain then re-copyrighting the third edition and not claiming that Bill Wilson was the only author would prevent anyone from suing AA over the original copyright. These same sources add that AA’s General Service Office (GSO) claimed to misunderstood the law in order to hide its true motives. This theory needs to be qualified by saying that these sources seem to have a bone to pick with AA in general. They present evidence to support their claims; however, it is very difficult to confirm its veracity, due to the lack of documentation available to the public from the AA’s service structures.

Whatever its reasons, this apparent oversight has caused a considerable headache for AAWS and the GSO as a whole, because a large part of their budget comes from literature sales. The projected net income from sales for the year of 2013 was $7,782,800. This figure represents profits after subtracting all costs for royalties, manufacturing and shipping. This money was expected to cover 54% of GSO’s expenses for 2013. The 2013 gross income was budgeted at $95,000 less than 2012—showing a decline in sales, though not a steep one. GSO hoped to compensate by reducing production and distribution costs in order to increase the profit margin.

Although the current laws would have extended the copyright until at least 2021, AAWS must adhere to the laws that were in place when the first and second editions were published. The applicable law, the 1909 Copyright Act, dictates that copyrights must be renewed in writing after 30 years. International copyright laws, on the other…read more at “The Fix”

I validated the claims of this article by researching all day.  Here are some of the verifications.

http://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/fair-use-policy  What happened to the triangle in the circle?

Sources http://aa-speakers.com/aa-big-book-copyright/

http://aamo.info/aa/history/mklibrary/openletter.htm

http://www.barefootsworld.net/aacircletriangle.html

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-pamphlet2.html

http://www.silkworth.net/gsowatch/1939/uslaw.htm

 

Recovery and healing

Recovery from Grave Emotional Disorder

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THERE IS A GOD AND I’M NOT IT!

WE DO NOT HAVE TO STAY IN DENIAL ABOUT OUR DEFECTS OF CHARACTER, WE DO NOT TAKE INVENTORY TO BEAT OURSELVES UP.  WE DEVELOPED OUR CHARACTER DEFECTS AS AN INSTINCT TO SURVIVE EMOTIONALLY.   WE NOW HAVE THE TOOLS TO CHANGE…BUT FEW CHANGES WILL COME WITHOUT COURAGEOUS SELF-APPRAISAL.

Most parents don’t have any idea what emotional nurturing is.  First instinct when we hear this parental blight is to protect the pack.  The pack are usually the very people (family) who inadvertently taught us to shut down who we really are.  Grave emotional disorder is at the core of addictive personalities.  “Grave disorder(How it Works)” is basically constipated and stifled emotions.  We addicts often  learned how not to cry and how not to share our heart.  We learned to wear a mask and hide who we are so we wouldn’t get hurt.  So we thought.  If your emotions are healthy and happy then why in the hell did you try to drink and drug yourself to death?  Come on now.  Oh right you did it because of an innate gene pool.   Well then for you there could be no cure.  But for those of us who have learned a twisted set of emotional responses and survival tactics.  We can unlearn them.  You can’t swim your way out of a gene pool.

We in AA have identified an array of character defects that are the culprits of our addictive patterns. Among these are the inclination to control everyone and everything around us. Some of us are painfully controlling while others are more passive-aggressive with their scheming. Our defects cause friends and family to run from us like we are ravenous wolves.
Some of us have learned to use other people’s control defect to our advantage. We can passively control others by handing over a certain amount of our own power to them.
Ah yes how we can puff up a gentlemen’s ego by asking him to make our choices for us. Handing over our decision making is a perfect way for a damsel to relinquish responsibility for any consequences of that decision. At the same time, it makes our Knight in shining armor feel so powerful and smart that he is more than willing to help us. The problem is the Knight is weaving his own manipulation, there are many invisible strings attached to his assistance.
When we snatch our power back and the knight inevitably becomes disturbed we will just label him possessive and take out a restraining order. Yikes! Don’t try this at home!
The damsel and the gentlemen is just one example of controlling behavior. We have all seen those who are painfully controlling, they are the one’s running around like directors on a movie screen. When the movie doesn’t play out like they want it to, they promptly fall apart or get very angry and spin around a bit screaming and yelling. Take controlism up another notch and you have obsessive compulsive disorder.
The fact is if resentment is rearing its ugly head you can bet there is a fear at the heart of it. (Pg.417 BB) Getting in touch with one’s own “God syndrome” is important during a fourth step. Once we have established the identity of our controlling side we can use that knowledge in all our tenth steps. Contrary to popular portrayal in The Rooms resentments do crop up and it doesn’t mean we are not “working a program”. People can be ass-holes and they are going to piss us off. Getting a resentment lets us know we are still [feeling] and still sober. Holding on to resentment is dangerous and can result in misery if not checked.
Finding the part of us who wants to play god doesn’t happen for everybody. Some sober people just never get it…the blame game worked for them for so long they are just incapable of trying a healthy solution. You will find them engaging in numerous sick relationships with train wreck break-ups that are never their fault.
The steps are in order for a reason meaning the third step must be done before a fourth will have that supernatural kick. With God’s help the revelation of self will happen during our fourth step.
If we realize our resentments are rooted in wanting to control other adults and the fear that accompanies a of lack of power pg. 45 Big Book then join the club, but consider yourself blessed you already know yourself better than many

Emotional Sobriety, EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS, Recovery and healing

You’re Right Where You’re Supposed to Be.

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You’re Right Where You’re supposed to be.

Link to Twelve Step Prayers.

Your Right Where Your Supposed to Be

So many times during the first two years of recovery I felt as if I was somehow doing something wrong in my recovery or that something was not right with my progress. I used to feel like my feelings themselves where wrong. Especially if I were sad or fearful, on the edge of depression or angry. I was fortunate to have effective group therapy which when combined with Alcoholics Anonymous kept me and several of my rehab-mates sober for a very long time. We all had sexual abuse in our past and took our addiction to places we were ashamed of. But I learned THERE IS NO WRONG FEELING, EVER.

Feelings come from our heart which will not lie to us.  We should honor our intense feelings.  We should explore our negative feelings.  Granted we don’t allow our feelings to rule or paralyze us but intense feelings should be processed.  What it means to say “feelings are not facts” just means that if we are afraid it does not necessarily mean we are in danger.  Or if we are distrustful it doesn’t mean a person should not be trusted.  But feelings are facts in the way that they are there because of our experience.  Maybe we have been betrayed in the past and now we are unable to trust people who has not earned our distrust.  So feelings are facts but they are often based in the past and we project them onto our present.

The reason we should process intense feelings is so we can move on with our lives not projecting our pasts onto our present.  It’s easy to tell someone to “get over it” which they are famous for in AA, but usually they don’t tell you how to “get over it”.  Writing down intense feelings and events is very effective in getting things out.  Writing our feelings is often a prerequisite to sharing them.  Once we write intense issues down then we are more able to say them out loud and really get them out.  This is why we benefit so much from telling our story to a group, over and over.
Feelings usually come from either a current, or past event.  Emotional feelings can also be intensified by hormones but not invented by hormones.
Our therapists taught us defining words to express how we felt on a regular basis.   Each morning I had to share with the group as best I could, what I felt like.  In meetings I was taught if I had intense emotions about something I should share, “what happened and how it made me feel”.  Words like “weird” and “funky” or strange are too vague.  I had to speak true feelings with appropriate English language words.  And for someone like me who was highly ashamed of who she was and what she felt, talking about what I did in my addiction was the easiest expression in the mix.  Bottom line, I had to get out those things for which I was most afraid, most ashamed, and kept secret.  Seldom do we hear in meetings the “fear list” which is included in the fourth step work.  But it’s one of the best tools for on-going long term recovery.(BB Step Four)

Group therapy was a safe place to bear my soul.  Meetings were a safe place to bear my feelings however there is usually an invalidator in the crowd. Someone who will shut you down by telling you your feelings and beliefs/actions are wrong.  Prepare yourself for that.  They get their self-image by cutting others down.  Remember AA is a room full of sick, recovering, and recovered people.  The attackers will crouch behind their judgmental look just waiting to shoot down anyone who appears the slightest bit vulnerable or new.  And unfortunately “vulnerable” is exactly what I had to make myself if I was going to recover.   I had to take off my mask and realize very quickly that IT WAS MORE IMPORTANT TO SAVE MY ASS THAN SAVE MY FACE (false pride).
You can’t get emotionally well while hiding behind a facade of “bad-ass” or “tough-girl”.  Sure that’s how we survive on the streets. But to actually heal emotionally, well that takes a stance of vulnerable, student eager to learn.

And if God is not at the helm of our recovery then it may not fall into place the way it could. We ask God to guide us in our recovery and to help us stay clean and sober and heal. Then we can say to ourselves every time we get scared or confused, “I am right where I am supposed to be God has my back in this”.

Therapy is important, but it must be the right therapy.  Meetings are important, but if they are not the right meetings they can do more damage than good. That’s why we pray first. Every morning.

Here is the prayer I have used. I learned it in jail ten years ago next month.
“God, guide me in my recovery. May the Peace of mind that surpasses all Earthly understanding guide my heart and mind into all Truth.  Let my words be your words and your words be my words. Bless the hearts and minds of all those I come in contract with. Thank you for this opportunity to do the next right thing.”  Amen

Gratitude, HEALTH

Oprah The Magic of Gratitude

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Please click the picture to see the precious video.
Gratitude Louis Schwartzberg

Oprah sits down with award-winning filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg to discuss his time-lapse nature photography and the inherent spirituality revealed through nature. Louie, whose TED talk on gratitude has been viewed more than 6 million times, captures breathtaking images on film that are often unseen by the naked eye and that celebrate the gift of life.

As Oprah and Louie view some of his most magnificent work, they discuss how nature can act as one of our greatest spiritual teachers. A firm believer that beauty is nature’s tool for survival, Louie also shares how the awe of seeing nature can make one more present and mindful and can help us connect to our inner voice. By allowing viewers to see that which can’t be seen, Louie hopes to cultivate gratitude and an awareness that nature is a reflection of the human experience.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Oprah-and-Louie-Schwartzberg-The-World-Beyond-What-We-Can-See#ixzz42FYkPj00

Recovery and healing

When Will My Loved One Finally Hit Their Bottom?

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“The Mystery of the Unpredictable Bottom”

No one absolutely no one knows when they or anyone else will hit the emotional bottom that it takes to get sober. Getting clean and sober is no easy task.

However, if we have hit a nasty emotional bottom, it usually causes a deep and lingering fear within us of returning to the horrible drink and drug that planted our guilt. That fear in itself can supply the momentum needed to stay sober long enough to get a sponsor and work the steps. Unfortunately we never know when that bottom will appear. We never know when a loved one will have had enough.

Sometime the fear of going back out hangs onto to us even after years of sobriety. Reason being most of us have relapsed so many times we just don’t trust ourselves. Think about it, even if another man betrays us we never fully trust him again. We do this same thing to ourselves (most of us) by setting out to stay sober over and over and failing miserably. Therefore we tend to feel we are on really shaky ground even after years of sobriety. As a solution for that fear I would tell myself. “Self, it’s not you that is keeping you sober, you are relying on the program now, as long as you work the program, the program works! You will not relapse. I knew it worked because I heard testimony upon testimony of just that in meetings.

Typically with addicts we may feel extremely guilty and remorseful about the the debauchery of the night before and quit for a day or two. But unfortunately again addicts forget so quickly the pain of a hangover or the pain of withdraw symptoms until directly after the next benge.

What the program does if we work it is remind us of the pain we have been through so its not so easy to justify that first drink or first drug. Therefore, the rationalization and memory lapses that are required to get drunk again do not happen as readily.

So many times we addicts get sober then hope and pray our loved ones will follow suit. We think if we just share what worked for us surely they will take the same route. Why wouldn’t they? We think. But very seldom do they follow suit until they finally hit their own pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

The more we harp on them to stay sober and preach to them about what worked for us the more it pushes our loved ones away.

So we pray “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Bible, Celebrities

Father Martin-Gratitude

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Gratitude “The Queen of the virtues”

“Gratitude is the only coin by which man can buy God.  The most appropriate depiction of addiction is soul sickness.”  Denial is a prostitution of the soul.”  “You cannot trample on your conscious without pain.”  He tells a joke.  WOW THIS MAN CAN PREACH AA!

Published on Dec 17, 2012
Father Martin speaks about “Gratitude” in this video in such an effective way. Allow someone to view this with you so that they can get the information that they need especially if they are in need of support.
“Fair Use” Section 107 through 118 of the copyright law title 17 U.S. Code for educational purposes

Published on Dec 18, 2012
Sharing such treasures like this is important. In this video Father Martin speaks about the importance of “Forgiveness” in the “Recovery” process. Hope that you get something out of watching this like thousands of other people in recovery has.

ADDICTS IN AA, Step One, The Cure for Addiction, Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

How To Become Who You Really Are

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Get To Work!

Building Self-Worth takes time and work.  But it is a priceless result when we become who we were really meant to be.  We Become who our heart screams and claws inside us to be.

Join a home group and open-up to the group.  You have to be a friend to make a friend.  Show vulnerability. (true feelings) Express your fears.  The truth WILL set you free. (don’t incriminate yourself legally) Share “what happened and how it made you feel.)  Get phone numbers of same sex members.  Call them and check in.  Get a sponsor.

Chair meetings, bring meetings into jails and institutions, go to detox to share your story with others.  Get in the middle of the boat, per-say.”  Set goals to accomplish that are fulfilling to you.  Work the 12 steps with all your heart, leave nothing uncovered where shame can get a strong-hold. 

Shame is at the core; it drives us to isolate and puts us humans on the defensive.  Put one foot in front of the other.  Do Step Eleven and don’t stop doing it.  Years pass quickly.  I challenge you and myself to meditate 4 times a week and see where that gets us.  So what I am suggesting here should supply both inner fulfillment and enlightenment. 

If we lie still, chant a mantra of our choice.  The demons (metaphor) will leave, they hate when we lie still and focus on finding our Higher Power. Or IT/HE/SHE finding us. 

Meetings every day or two a day.

Recovery and healing

Father Martin Steps Four and Five

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Father Martin Steps Four and Five


Published on Dec 17, 2012 share this video
Father Martin speaks about “Gratitude” in this video in such an effective way. Allow someone to view this with you so that they can get the information that they need especially if they are in need of support.
“Fair Use” Section 107 through 118 of the copyright law title 17 U.S. Code for educational purposes.

Gratitude

ADDICTS IN AA, EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS, Recovery and healing, Step Four AA

Addiction is “Fear Management”

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Franklin D. Roosevelt said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”.

WHY does it seem addicts are far more fearful than other people?   It is a fear of feelings that drives a man to numb all his feelings including the blessed ones.  At the core of addiction lies fear, shame, and an inability to process our feelings in a healthy way.

Panic attacks, anxiety, stress, shame, embarrassment, nervousness, phobias, freaking out,, shame, insecurity, shyness, inferiority are all bi-products of fear.  Addiction =”fear management gone awry”.

Some may highly disagree with the fear theory.  They will tell us they are ashamed of nothing and don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of them!   And as they approach life through a platform of anger and wrath what they say is in some ways true.   We bathe in anger to cover fear, hurt and pain.  This is the addicts basic false-pride and denial system born from a core of fear and shame.  Shame is a form of fear.  Shame is the belief that other people are better than us and will see that we are BAD so we hide. (I do wish I was not writing my own emotional story here).

But please, before we slip into a warm cherry pie of deep dish denial and hang the messenger.

Please realize, addicts are not at fault for their deep fear/shame feelings.  In the formative years of which we were sponges learning the basics of life itself and where we fit into it, some adult/adults who probably loved us (as much as they were able) convinced us that we were of less value than other people.  These influential moms, dads, uncles, brothers, sisters, priests, pastures,  coaches and teachers were in a position to literally form our self-image at a core level.  Most likely they themselves reflected their own self-image onto us. They felt worthless and so we were worthless.  At times addict-type parents are ashamed even of their own children.

Low self esteem breeds defensiveness.  

We wear our hearts on our sleeves and we flinch and lash-out at any remote suggestion that we are bad, wrong, ugly, stupid, or any other negative connotation such as these.  Feeling threatened we immediately switch-off to blame-mode and block out countless opportunities for fruitful and productive relationships.  We routinely cut-off our own nose to spite our face.

And so as young emotionally defenseless children, we walked around with our heads hung low separate from the flock, prime prey for the abusive and distorted sex offender who reels us in by telling us what we crave to hear more than anything; ‘WE ARE OF VALUE, WE ARE LOVED’.

This my friend is the story of many an addict boys and girls alike.

IF AN ADDICT DOESN’T KNOW HE HAS BEEN  DEEPLY ASHAMED HE HASN’T GOTTEN DOWN TO “CAUSES AND CONDITIONS”….YET, IN his/her RECOVERY PROCESS.   But this is the beginning of healing, realizing the malady’s core.

We formed temporary emotional survival skills for our deep shame, but our skills, primal in nature have become destructive and push away the ones we love most and those we could have loved.  Our slip-shot solutions are destructive and hurt others.  We set ourselves up not as equals but rather as better than everyone else.  We do this through harsh condemning judgments and endless fault finding and criticisms.   We had to find a way to live with ourselves.  When we drink and drug then we are beautiful, then we are strong, then we do not have to be ashamed.

But the drugs quit working that’s why we are here in AA to find new solutions.  Solutions that do not consist of blame as their pre-requisite.  Solutions that will aid in our sobriety and our emotional healing.  And hopefully somewhere in our recovery we learn it’s ok to cry.  That crying  and being hurt are part of being human.  We MUST FIND WAYS TO PROCESS THE MOST INTENSE OF OUR FEELINGS IF WE DON’T, THEN WE WILL CONTINUE REPRESSING EMOTIONS.

THE SOLUTIONS ARE HERE WE JUST NEED TO USE THEM.

What do we do?  An immersion into AA or any 12 step group is vital. We do a serious third step.

We do step four and list all prejudice, shame, resentment, silent judgement, guilt, and all hurtful actions.  We do ongoing step work. We make a FEAR LIST.

We do step 12 chair meetings in jails, institutions, and AA itself, all service work will build self-worth.  The more the better.

We get therapy and develop emotional processes that work for us.  We hournal, write, cry, scream, groan, beat the bag, share, beat the bed.  (There is no wrong feeling therefore we don’t have to hide and deny them.)  We confess past offences.

We write a biography of the intense times in our life-What happened and how it made us feel.

Practice Spirituality-Step Eleven is priceless and should be ongoing.

A connection to nature and the outdoors is very helpful.  We go to rivers, lakes, springs, snow, sky, caves, animals, walks and more.)

Got Your ACE Score?

I AM NOT AFRAID OF DYING!

What is terror management theory?

 

 

Recovery and healing, The Internet

Google is “The Teacher that Remains a Student”

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Why is Google both a Teacher and a Student?

We in recovery like to use the phrase “remain teachable” and “everyone is our teacher” and we had to become teachable to get and stay sober.  Sponsors teach us what they did to stay sober.  We pass on that information to our sponsees.

Google has to continually study the internet down to the last search and little homegrown website to continue to edit their search engine’s algorithm (the way searches are carried out) to suite all users from corporate hierarchy to the one man  entrepreneur like me.  The world’s largest and arguably its best search engine serves up over one billion results out of Mountain View, Calif., every day to people like me.  If they didn’t remain teachable they would be crowded out by better up and coming search engines.  Technology is a constantly changing field.

I just want to say Google I hope you remain an advocate of free internet and open source applications.  Thank you for your service to me and my writing.

Granted not all changes benefit big business either as shown in the article below.  And of coarse Google is a teacher who shows us how to develop a website which can climb in search results.  There are thousands of “helps” with which to learn Google’s requirements.

How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results

 

contempt prior to investigation

“FREE YOUR MIND”

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FREE YOUR MIND

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

“Contempt prior to investigation is as much a symptom of alcoholism as cirrhosis of the liver.   So says  https://www.thefix.com/content/contempt-prior-to-investigation-AA-Herbert-Spencer8042 .

But not always. If an alcoholic in recovery opens his mind, he then has twice the ability to help open the mind of those who are suffering from closed-mindedness. Why? He can relate to what its like having a mind shut tight as the locks on the gates of hell. Which shuts out the light of the Spirit. He is familiar with the mechanics of a mind suddenly opening experiencing the epiphanies and spiritual awakenings of a free thinker. He can share the method by which the blind can see.

En Vogue RFH

Apparently Herbert Spencer did not originally coin the contempt investigation phrase after all according to the article found at this link (THE FIX “CONTEMPT PHRASE”).

But one thing Spencer did not write is the immortal words about contempt and investigation, according to Michael St. George, who searched the digitized library of papers that Spencer left after his death and who detailed his findings in the essay “The Survival of a Fitting Quotation.”

“Contempt before investigation” was penned almost a century earlier by another British philosopher, William Paley, whose book Evidences of Christianity contains the following sentence: “Contempt prior to examination is an intellectual vice, from which the greatest faculties of mind are not free.” Paley was writing about Romans who scoffed at early Christianity.

WHAT DOES RECOVERY REALLY LOOK LIKE?
Step Four & Five’s primary result is the sudden awareness of character patterns of manipulation and dysfunction. Starting the day from the platform of humility means we are aware of our personality flaws and can adjust behaviors and ask for God’s help throughout the day. We don’t sit in meetings advertising how sick we are after years of step work and therapy (false humility).

We don’t take hostages or use the cliches as weapons to punish newcomers. We don’t tear down the newcomer to build them back up they are already torn down. Encouragement it not poison. Sarcasm is dishonest and should be a thing of the past. We say what we mean and mean what we say. We ask for help by choice.

Our 12 step work is by choice therefore we reap the self-esteem by doing the next right thing. Having an opinion on any issue outside or otherwise is part of self-confidence not a tradition ten breach. We do not speak for the whole of AA and seldom does anyone have that official power.

Facebook groups are not CNN or the Tampa Times. I vote and engage in National politics as my freedom and right. I make opinions on vital outside issues. I discuss important topics and learn to show respect for others and their opinions. I don’t shut anyone down or invalidate their feelings which are a part of them. Sometimes anger is the appropriate reaction to life’s circumstances. I get resentments but I know how to relieve them. I don’t’ rewrite the English language to suite my views.

I don’t whitewash AA and its members. In any large group of humans there is always error and mistakes. Quality sobriety sometimes looks like a boatload of tears and cries. Happy joyous and free is not constant. There is more to getting sober than just getting sober. If I don’t discover the reason for my attempts to numb my feelings, then I have more exploring to do. It’s not a sin to ask “why”. By exploring reasons and asking why empires have been built and humans have been saved.

There is no wrong feeling only wrong actions. To say my feelings are bad and wrong is to condemn myself as bad and wrong.   No but instead I learn what to do with the feelings that I have for so long feared. Stuffed feelings will come out sideways usually at those we love most so I write, I cry, I share, I find the fear behind the emotion and ask God to remove it. I admit when I am afraid. I walk through the fear.

Rehab Centers, What's Hot in the recovery news

YOU CAN’T BUY SOBRIETY IN SPITE OF WHAT BIG BUSINESS IS TRYING TO SELL

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Is AA really as horrible as some like to say it is?

pills

AA, rehab, and God all were and are the ingredients in saving my life.  In AA I have done the 12 step work many times and at many levels.  Demonizing rehab or AA as a whole would be drastically inaccurate.  I got sober at a $2 a day rehab called Bridgehouse at Meridian in Gainesville, Fl in 2006.  My therapists were nothing short of brilliant.  Not all the counselors were savvy.  The government paid for my stay even before Obama care.  http://mbhci.org/treatment-services/residential-inpatient-services/

I went to the AA bashing sites

https://aarmedwithfacts.wordpress.com/official-aarmed-blog-roll/comment-page-1/#comment-567

Recently I have done an extensive study on Alcoholics Anonymous.  Also I have been an active member for ten years.  I refuse to white-wash AA by pretending its processes and members are either ALL GOOD or ALL BAD.  I myself admit an annoyance of Club level sobriety which participates in much dysfunction in the name of AA.

That being said in my study, I have found several websites (listed at the link above) and people of reputation and high education who claim Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous are ALL BAD and literally killing people.  In some cases sick sponsors have been responsible for just that.  Because of my own open minded and sometimes  critical views on some widespread AA misconceptions, and bringing those into light I have been mistaken as an AA hater which I am not.  I have been badgered to say the least by some less mature new members.  I understand these members are in deep pain and need someone to blame.  For some newcomers if their perceptions of AA and all it’s members are not ‘perfect’ and whitewashed they delude that it reflects on them.  For their benefit I have curbed my critical articles.  In the beginning of sobriety it’s not uncommon for a member to attach their identity to AA.  Similar to my own search early-on for the perfect sponsor who in my mind had to be perfect AA to sponsor me.  Lol  I learned early on the ingredient of perfect-program requires imperfect people.  All my sponsor needs to be good at is staying sober.

THE CONCLUSION OF MY STUDY

We should go into our recovery with eyes wide open knowing that in any human arena things can go bad and people prey on weakness and vulnerability.  Desperation by family members to save their loved one’s life is being exploited full force.  We must be aware of that and not automatically trust these organizations.  At the same time we need to give both rehab and AA a chance as if we were shopping for a car from used car lots.  Pic and choose our meetings and rehab with prudence.   As you can see by my own financial rehab experience ($2 a day)  money doesn’t necessarily buy sobriety.

WILLINGNESS, OPEN-MINDEDNESS, AND HONESTY are the keys to sobriety.

A new documentary by a former rehab insider shines a skeptical light on the business of high-priced addiction centers.  However demonizing all of rehabs could be fatal.  Just as demonizing all of AA could be fatal.

It seems that some Insurance companies, big business, rehab centers will do anything to get the money of suffering addicts families, as shown in the following article:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/02/the-million-dollar-rehab-racket-that-drains-family-savings.html

The centers “paint this picture that they’re going to fix everything. These families in crisis are so vulnerable, and they want to believe what they hear.”

But in truth, Horvath says, the biggest motive of rehab facilities, some of which charged upwards of $50,000 a month, was simpler still: profit. One rehab he worked with, he said, had an employee whose job was to guide families through the process of refinancing their home to pay the tens of thousands of dollars charged for treatment.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/catferguson/the-rehab-scam

I believe big money is trying it’s best to sabotage and discredit AA so they can profit from our pain per-say.  And that they are behind many of these negative websites and are using disgruntled AAers to their advantage.  Granted these disgruntled often have truly been wronged by members.  However like addicts do they have gone to an extreme about AA.  And if it is big business behind many of these sites since Obama care agreed to pay for rehab, they are not doing a very good job of discrediting AA.   God is the author and finisher of AA in my opinion.

Recovery and healing

Glen Frye “Take it Easy” Rule 62

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“Take it easy, don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy. Lighten up while you still can don’t even try to understand, just find A place and make your stand and take it easy yee ha!” This line has helped me lighten up on myself many times. It is basically saying the same thing to me as the unwritten rule 62 in AA “don’t take yourself so damn seriously!” I gotta say I have never ever cried over the loss of someone I didn’t know personally. But I am crying now. Listen to the song “Take it Easy” and “Hotel California” now.
CLICK TO SEE/HEAR “TAKE IT EASY”

glenn snip

CLICK TO HEAR “HOTEL CALIFORNIA” Hotel California Glenn Frye (front right guitarist), Don Henley, Joe Walsh and the gang.
Glenn snip2

Glenn Frey

One of the founding members of the Eagles, Glenn Frey, died today in New York City, his family and bandmates announced on the band’s website.

He was 67.

According to the statement from his loved ones and colleagues, Frey’s death was caused by complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia.

“The Frey family would like to thank everyone who joined Glenn to fight this fight and hoped and prayed for his recovery,” read a statement on the Eagles’ website. “Words can neither describe our sorrow nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community and millions of fans worldwide.”

A Detroit native, Frey met Don Henley when they were in their 20s and new to the music business. Soon after, they formed the Eagles with Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon, quickly becoming one of the most popular rock bands of all time, with hits including “Take It Easy,” “Desperado,” and “Hotel California.” (Meisner was replaced by Timothy B. Schmit in 1977 and Joe Walsh took over for Leadon in 1975.) ABC NEWS click here to read entire article abc.com

13th Step, ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Emotional Sobriety, EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS

DEMONIZING SOBER-SEX

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Stop demonizing sober sex!

There is an un-written rule in AA that is not without merit.  “No sex for the first year sober” is the suggestion.  Unwritten indeed.  The rule teeters on a scale defined as either a beneficial and spiritual quest or controlling and insane demand depending on the context by which it is administered.

How can the rule be potentially either spiritual or character defect both?  It is a spiritual quest if we choose it to stay clear of distractions and deny the flesh to empower the spirit.  And it is a decision I can change at any time preferably without being called an evil 13th stepper.     If someone is demanding that I “stop all sex for a year” no questions asked and insisting I won’t stay sober if I have sex as a blanket rule for everyone…well then it’s insanity because there are a host of circumstances in life which could prove that newly sober sexual relationships can work.  It depends on the person and the situation.  Perhaps I enter the rooms married, or maybe I meet my soul mate in the rooms.   Him with 13 years sober and me 13 days sober.  We fall deeply in love and are still together many  years later, in harmony.  And yet the frigid and judgmental call it a 13th step.  The most horrid of the AA offences, that is other than relapse.

Live by the golden rule and show others respect.

In the words of our great guru, king of the 12 steps, validator of the suffering addict,  Bill W. himself.  “We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct.”   Well you sure as hell could of fooled me!  If “we” means the people at meetings I have been to that is.  Seems to me the rule forbidding sex in the first year of recovery supersedes many of the more important sobriety suggestions.   And Bill W. continues:  “We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised and loathed.”  He goes on to mention that “everyone has sex problems.”    I am sure that’s true also for the majority of humans, eventually.

Are certain members of AA mimicking religious fanatics?

Yes ironically, since the word “religion” is by far the most evil word in the AA pirate dictionary.

And the interesting part about all this shame inducing sex talk?  We hear a very similar message echoing from the pulpit of many churches.  Even though the Bible itself doesn’t talk much about sex.  But rather the Bible condemns the betrayal called adultery.  The word “fornication” in my opinion implies ‘betrayal’ and some sort of hurtfulness not sex alone.  Let consenting adults alone with their consensual sex.  Why, with all the violence, torture, abuse, murders, maiming, and molestation happening does an act of sexual harmony rate being called sin?  Only for the misguided, clearly only for the misguided.  Common sense tells me that harmonious sex is no more a sin than eating food.  Sex is right there in line with eat, sleep, drink water, have sex, have babies, and breath air.  Granted I am not referring to sex abuse that my friend is another mater.

What is addiction in the arena of substance abuse?  Addiction means un-manageability.  That is the difference between using a drug to help us and abusing a drug to hurt us.  But don’t think you escape un-manageability just because your sober. ha ha ha ha

Recovery is about what we do to recover not about what we are forbidden.  (excluding alcohol and our drug of choice of course)

Recovery happens when we go to meetings and do the work regardless of whether we are having sex with a newcomer who by the way used to be a prostitute.    The program works if we work it.  If you have sex you still make your meetings.  If you have sex with a newcomer you still make your meetings and if the newcomer doesn’t make his or her meetings, well that’s on them isn’t it?

We are adults, we make our own choices.  Newcomers make their own choices.  Some programs like to take away the power of choice, even imprison or restrain adults  but Alcoholics Anonymous is not one of them and the literature proves it.

WEBSITE ARTICLES THAT ADVOCATE NO INTIMATE, SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE FIRST YEAR

5 Signs Sex Is Undermining Your Recovery

http://alcoholrehab.com/addiction-recovery/romantic-relationships-in-recovery/

http://www.sobernation.com/romantic-relationships-recovery-avoid-early-recovery/

https://www.thefix.com/content/sex-and-dating-in-sobriety-10028

http://relationshipvision.com/article/no-intimate-relationships-during-the-first-year-of-sobriety
http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/custom-cam12345/-articleutm_source

 

Recovery and healing, Resentments are the Number One Offender?, Step Two and Three, The Cure for Addiction, Top Ten Ways You Will Die, Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

NOT ALL SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES ARE GOOD-“My Overdose”

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THE VISION I HAD DURING MY COCAINE OVERDOSE

From: “Paradise for the Hellbound” by author Laura Edgar
http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/paradise-for-the-hellbound/

____________________________________________________________________

“TRAPPED IN 1978″

I was deep into my Cocaine addiction. I had a few people who enabled my drug use and one was a guy name Ed. He was a drug dealer, not a street dealer mind you. He had a three hundred-thousand-dollar house in the late 70s and it was very nice. He drove a brand new BMW which was way too small in my opinion for his fat ass. Sorry I guess there is some resentment left. He was a greasy Italian not the beautiful kind like my daughter’s father. Those dark olive skin beauties with the almond shaped eyes that wear the top lid eye liner so well. My daughter is gorgeous and I am very proud of her Italian heritage. No! This man was a pale skinned sweaty, greasy, over-weight (yet judged anybody that didn’t have a models body) jet black hair, blood like ice coursing through his heartless veins, probably connected to the mafia, he sure as hell acted like it, Italian. I resent the hell out of him EVEN STILL because of what he nearly did to me and the fact that I have not let it go. I promise to work on it.
I remember one day I rode around with him back in Tampa in the BMW that smelled like cherries all the time. He stopped to drop money off to a woman at her house in Lutz. I asked him why she was receiving money from him. He talked in the “we” context about his organization of some sort. He said that basically one of his dealers (the woman’s husband apparently” went to jail while selling the organizations goods. So the woman was hand delivered compensation on a monthly basis since her husband didn’t snitch. My drug dealing friends taught me at a very young age YOU JUST DON’T SNITCH-EVER! Unlike the attitude of the people I have met in the later years of my rampant addiction who automatically snitched at the drop of a hat. I was taught that’s the lowest most worthless thing you can do to anyone.
I went to jail myself back then not long after that conversation. Recently one of my old friends from back in-the-day said the organization  almost had me killed for fear I would turn them in once I was arrested. Well, leaving town back then for a very long time may have saved my life. I refused to snitch and was on the run for thirteen years because of my principles. They didn’t know that I had refused to snitch. How would they know? I was over the deep end in their opinion. I couldn’t handle my drugs in their opinion. The drugs they supplied that is. Once I was arrested Fat Ed treated me like a bad tooth. He pulled me out and threw me away. My overdose happened prior to that. Allot went on back then but this isn’t a book about war stories. It’s a book about my recovery and how it all happened.

Our Dope Shooting Binge

We used to eat Quaalude and then break open the Cocaine bag. We snorted it, smoked it, shot it, and any other way we could find to get it into our blood stream that’s what we did. Me and “Fat Ed” as we called him were on a two-day coke shooting binge on this day. God blessed me with some very large and very strong veins. I rarely couldn’t hit myself once I learned how. However, this must have been before I learned to inject my own drugs because Fat Ed was hitting me up at this time. We were shooting up in the bathroom for some reason don’t remember why. We did shot after shot after shot but I wasn’t satisfied, it was never enough.   Long story short I kept complaining “Ed it’s not enough give me more, I want more, more, more!”. And on and on I went. I can’t say I blame Ed; he finally did what I asked him to do after many warnings. He kept saying “Lori it’s too strong, we must be careful”. But the nagging finally got to him as he fixed me up the lethal shot. He knew it would kill me, he knew what he made up would kill me. He knew it was way too much. He was sick of me hounding him. Fat Ed is still alive today from what I have heard, unlike many other of my old friends.

HE GAVE ME THE HUGE SHOT
I crashed to the bathroom floor. What they told me after I woke back up was they gave me C.P.R. and I finally woke up after a couple minutes. But it wasn’t because Ed saved my life. It was because his roommate Mike was in the house and refused to let me die. Mike was Ed’s longtime partner. He knew and didn’t approve of what we were doing in the bathroom. But it was what Mike told me about his best friend after I woke and he pulled me aside that really shocked me. Mike saved my life and then said “Lori, if you ever date Ed again after this I won’t have any respect for you.” Mike continued, “Ed told me to take you out and throw you into a dumpster. He had no desire to even try to bring you back.” He said. Those were the most words Mike had ever spoken to me. I remember his concern waking me up, “are you OK Lori, do you know where you are and what day it is?” I was so lost back then. I had no identity.   I didn’t know who I was emotionally or spiritually. I was back knocking on Ed’s door a few days later once I recuperated from my shocking overdose in spite of what Mike had told me. I didn’t know how to love myself….yet.

THE VISION

While I was out cold, apparently I fell flat on my back to the floor. I could feel myself as if I were shrunk down to nothing, my body left me. All I was, was a thought without a body. I was invisible as if I had been shrunk down into a minute fraction of my normal size so small the human eye could not have seen me. But my thoughts were still just as large as before.   My ideas were still alive. I had a consciousness about me.   I was not aware of why I was shrunk down in the center of a rock prison.   I didn’t know that I had, at one time had a body and lost it.   All I knew is I was crushed into the center of a rock and I couldn’t move.   There was no white light.  I was imprisoned and compressed inside blackness  without a body there was no time or space in that consciousness. There was no light of God’s Spirit that I could feel.  No warmth on my body from the sun, no wind on my shoulder.
Suddenly something happened to me abruptly someone was pulling me from the rock. It was horribly uncomfortable to come back out of the rock. Have you ever been awoken abruptly from a hangover sleep by a glass of cold water on the face? Magnify that by a million that is how it felt being brought back from the dead. My body screamed! My consciousness screamed! No! I wanted to be left in the rock, the rock would become my home even though I had no power at all to do anything crushed without a body or limb to move. I was ripped from the rock and my body ripped with the movement. I see the rock now it was white and black speckles. Like a rock you would see in a North Carolina river. But this rock was animated hanging me in anti-space where there is no time or space. Space is a wonderful thing I tell you. I never ever want to return to the prison I was in when I died. My overdose happened before I met my God, knew Jesus, before my third step. There was no white light my friend only a prison and a thought.   And Fat Ed would have left me there he didn’t care.   But I didn’t remember anything in my prison it was devoid of knowledge. All there was is a silent awareness. Mike was my angel that day back in 1978. Mike saved my soul from that rock prison. Mike acted in accordance with God, my God. Mike is in my prayers where-ever he may be. Please my friends seek God while it is still light. Get to know your maker lest you end up in that horrible place. Life and Love and having a vessel to call a body is the best way to be that I know of. My soul was imprisoned while I was alive, therefore when I died it was also imprisoned. I don’t know if I would have ever been freed from that prison had I not been brought back to life . In 1986 I was born again, born of the Spirit a second birth they call it¬¬. I came alive when I found that little Baptist Church in the meadow and God introduced Himself to me in a big way. (see “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit” chapter of Paradise for the Hellbound). http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/paradise-for-the-hellbound/#BAPTISM%20OF%20THE%20HOLY%20SPIRIT

 

HEALTH, Recovery and healing

HOW I HEALED MY FAILING LIVER NATURALLY

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Hi I am Lori a recovered addict

I can’t send you to this article until I share something with you about my own liver illness story.  This is the story of how God healed my liver from Hepatitis B and more.

Completely Healed from Hepatitis B (my story)

http://www.collective-evolution.com HERE IS THE LINK TO THE LIVER HEALING ARTICLE (someone elses story)

This past February, I was thrown off of my health high-horse. What first started as a headache, fever, and body aches, quickly escalated into an excruciating migraine, debilitating muscle stiffness, and an overwhelming sense of nausea. I was hit with what I thought was a nasty case of the seasonal flu, and it sucked. But I powered through, drinking my liquids and following the natural recommended flu-protocol, knowing that it would all be over within a few days.

My prognosis proved wrong, however. Over a week into my sickness I still couldn’t eat, and I was dropping weight like a Jenny Craig story gone right. The only word I could use to describe the feeling in my stomach was “gross.” My usually clear skin had broken out, and my urine and stool were also starting to look “off” to say the least, which caused some serious concern.

READ THE ARTICLE AT COLLECTIVE EVOLUTION

Recovery and healing

WHY THE GREEN PROFILE PIC?

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GREEN PLAIN
VFX SOLIDARITY, GET THE WHOLE STORY HERE
GREEN MULTI GREEN LIME GREEN GRASSWhy have so many profile pictures gone green? Well the company behind the Life of Pi`s stunning visual effects, which made the movie possible, Rhythm & Hues went bankrupt as the film just passed the billion dollar mark in global ticket sales. The 3D & VFX (visual effects) companies that make the Hollywood blockbuster movies possible, sign on to bad deals typically at a loss, the Hollywood production companies walk away with profits, and artists who dedicate their lives to their craft get short changed on salary, over-time and eventually job security. The green is a form of solidarity and protest for change in our industry.
Take your pic of green profile pics.  Click the image then right click and save image to you computer downloads.  Then upload the picture to your Facebook profile pics.
Recovery and healing

SANDY BEACH-The Famous “Drop The Rock” Talk – 1976

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SANDY BEACH CLICK THE PIC TO HEAR THE AUDIO “DROP THE ROCK”

There’s a great article in the Tampa Times about his life and legacy.  read the Tampa Times article here

AUDIO
CLICK FOR SANDY BEACH AUDIO “DROP THE ROCK”

Sandy Beach AA Life And Death

FROM THEWATERSHED.COM

THE DEATH OF RICHARD JOHN BEACH

An Alcoholics Anonymous member Randy M. brought Sandy to his last meeting on Sunday night at 7:30 pm. The two were attending their meeting at Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church. The meeting was supposed to have a speaker discuss a step. While Randy went to grab some black coffee for the man, Sandy waited, perhaps looking tired. “I asked him if he was okay,” Randy explained Sandy’s last words. “He looked at me and said, ‘Thanks for bringing me to the meeting, buddy.’” Randy went to grab the man some black coffee and came back hearing his friend abruptly fell forward onto page 23 of the Alcoholics Anonymous literature, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which ironically just so happened to discuss the first step – the most meaningful one to Sandy. As sad as the man’s death may be, Sandy lived a long life with an inspiring message sent about the gifts that sobriety can bring when you are honesty, open-minded, and willing to recover.

Celebrities, Recovery and healing

Khloe Kardashian: Lamar Odom Doing Well in Recovery

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Khloe Kardashian: Lamar Odom Doing Well in Recovery

ABC-READ ENTIRE STORY KHLOE KARDASHIAN SUPPORTS HUSBAND’S RECOVERY.

radaronlin-Khloe continues to support her husband in his recovery

Lamar Odom blows $75k at Nevada brothel

1016-lamar-odom-khloe-kardashian-2

Khloe Kardashian continues to give her public support for her husband Lamar Odom since his overdose at a Nevada cat house.

Khloe Kardashian says former NBA star Lamar Odom is doing well in his recovery from an apparent drug overdose last year in a Nevada brothel.

read more abc news

 

ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Recovery and healing, Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

12 Steps of AA with Father Martin “CHALK TALK”

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12 Steps of AA with Father Martin
CHALK TALK WE CALL FATHER MARTIN’S TEACHINGS IN AA
“Bill Wilson was the man who dreamed the impossible dream till he reached the unreachable star!” Beautiful quote!

SKIP COMMENTARY GO STRAIGHT TO VIDEO

Go to video and skip commentary!

If you are one of those people who automatically agree with everything any and all A.A. Guru’s say you won’t like my commentary on this video. Take what you need and leave the rest but please don’t white-wash or blind yourself to anybody’s rhetoric as if they were perfect or a God. We are all human and all make mistakes. We all occasionally engage in a little verbal error.

THE ALCOHOLIC AND HIS INFERIORITY COMPLEX

Father Martin says (paraphrased) “psychologists say, [you are alcoholic because you have an inferiority complex], his answer to that theory is, “maybe I have an inferiority complex because I AM inferior.” Hmm well I don’t believe that, not for a minute, I believe we are all equal, he is oversimplifying a profound truth about the alcoholic including himself. Maybe he is incapable of addressing his own inferiority complex. Step 12 builds the self esteem that is needed to walk in equality with our fellow man.

 

Step One “In weakness we are made strong” New International Version 2nd Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

INSANITY

The Priest says that Bill W. stated what the insanity of the disease is and described it as this. “When the alki is completely physically sober and yet picks up the drink of alcohol that is killing him that is insane.” Emotions, the priest says are dominating the alcoholic rather than intellect when he does this. This ideal is perfectly in line with my own theory that grave emotional disorder IS the WHY behind addiction. Furthermore that theory is why and how addiction can be cured. He says don’t use

STEP FIVE

“Admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs”                                                                                                                                                                                     He says Step Five is vital and a once in a lifetime job. Well I agree it’s vital but “once in a lifetime”,I question that. Obviously if I go out and murder a man I will need to do another fifth step for certain. How in the hell could a priest of all things not see that? That is baffling. Step Five should be a prescription that says “as needed” on the package. (i.m.o)

The Priest began a reference toward the human aspect of step five. “Admitted to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs”. He goes on to say with a hint of disgust in his voice “step five is the most humiliating thing that can happen to anybody>” WOW! If that is the way people really feeling about confessing their shameful misdeeds to another human being it’s no wonder so few people that cast a shadow in the doorway of A.A. actually do all 12 steps. I have had many many sponsees who have no problem doing steps one through three. But when they get to step four…they bolt. In ten years I have one sponsee who is still sober and did all twelve steps. I don’t blame myself.

“BILL WILSON’S BEST SLOGAN ACCORING TO FATHER MARTIN, IS” “THE GOOD IS OFTEN THE ENEMY OF THE BEST”  Interestingly enough I wrote an article on that slogan/topic back in June of 2014.

STEP 12

The Father Martin call step 12 a command.  Not a suggestion, not a request, but a command.  Interesting.  And finally he tells us that Bill W. wrote the steps for the first time with the word “God” in place of “Higher Power” but he realized that he had to change the title of the entity because people were just too afraid of the prospect of a relationship with “God” .

Share this with others please. Thanks. “Fair Use” Section 107 through 118 of the copyright..

Recovery and healing

YES THERE IS AN EASIER, SOFTER WAY TO GET SOBER

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‘YES AS A MATTER OF FACT THERE IS AN ‘EASIER SOFTER WAY’

sex robot
Men that want to marry cyborg sex robots.

But it’s not something you can buy or special order.  You can put yourself in a position to get it but there are no guarantees if you do get it how long it will last as your only source of recovery.    The white light experience straight from God is the only easier softer way.  Usually people who receive white light experiences go on to carry the message of Jesus Christ or God while not doing any of the 12 step work on their character flaws.  And why would they?  They are riding a pink cloud.  But pink clouds don’t last.  God will remove some flaws during this experience but seldom, well I have never ever seen God make anybody perfect…ever.  So usually these people fall into some flavor of character flaw.  Most likely they delve into judging others, get their resentment back and relapse.  Then they really hate themselves even more because now they are turning their back on a God they know exists.

I know, sad story…I am talking about myself during my first bout of recovery.  And I have seen this same pattern manifest often in others, usually Christians in recovery.  Never the less it does not mean God fails or Jesus has abandon us somehow.  It just means God clearly WILL NOT TAKE A HUMAN’S SELF-WILL.  He will enlighten us, but it’s up to us to go out and get fulfillment once we are enlightened.  Hence step eleven and why it works, it fulfills us spiritually.  Step twelve builds our self worth, and fulfills us spiritually.  Step Ten, well I have found that Ten really isn’t enough, but instead it’s step four that I need to revisit every six months to a year and do thoroughly.  When fear of relapse slips in, I remember two things, I have turned my life and will over to the care of God.  And the program works, I can turn to the program, work a step.  This is what keeps me sober after countless lapses.  Sure if I rely on me I will fail.  I rely on God, the steps, and the fact that I am being healed and healing by processing core issues.

So can I really call this a cure?  ABSOLUTELY! There are many things that humans have to do to stay well.  Such as eating, sleeping, nurturing and being nurtured.  We do not call ourselves sick because we require food.  why would I call myself sick because I require a spiritual program?

Science and addiction, What's Hot in the recovery news

TO THE SOBER ONES-WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

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Addiction and the Brain: Adapted from “We Are the Champions! By Dr. Vera Tarman, Renascent Medical Director”November 2,…

Posted by Kenny Glassman on Thursday, May 21, 2015

Recovery and healing

THE GAPING HOLE IN A.A.’s PROGRAM

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THE GAPING HOLE IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

ABOUT 12 STEP PROGRAMS

The only hole in the 12 steps of AA is the lack of empathy by the prerequisite that we are never victims.  The rule (paraphrased see below for full quote) that when there is something bothering us it is always our fault (that we are disturbed) makes way for more shame, guilt, and self punishment.   There is a horrific absence of a way to process abuse, neglect, and emotional trauma.  Emotional hurts and pains are often written off by members as either self-pity or unfounded and selfish character defects.  Furthermore insinuating that emotions are “wrong” says that I as a person am “wrong” because my feelings are a part of me and they emerge from my heart.

pg. 417 BB

“When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation- some fact of my life- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept my 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”

The notion that nothing happens in God’s world by accident, well that would mean we have no free-will and humans are nothing short of robots.  We do not have to go to such extremes to make the point that God works in our lives.  The reason people use extremes in conversation is they have spent a life-time not being heard and feel they must exaggerate to be heard at all.  Understandable.

If there were another set of steps to address the wrongs done to us resulting in deep wounds, and emotional devastation the program would be more successful I believe.  These deep emotional wounds have caused the addict much pain. Pain is the very reason that many of us drank and drugged.  WE NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PROCESS EMOTIONAL HURTS RATHER THAN BEING ASHAMED OF OUR VULNERABILITIES AND HIDING THEM AWAY.

Trauma is not an outside issue.  But rather it is THE Issue.  Trauma and emotional disorder is the WHY behind the addiction.

Please don’t hear what I am not saying.  12 step programs are good and have helped millions including myself.   There are some really twisted common belief systems running rampant in AA and NA  .

One common dogma I have seen often is a kind of jealousy over the program.  People will get angry and down right mean if you say that therapy or church or even rehab centers have helped to keep you sober.

We shouldn’t knock supplemental  healing and recovery methods till we’ve tried them.  If people have found “a cure” for addiction and are sharing it who are we to say it’s not successful?  Many  people find answers in places other than AA.  The problem is some addicts who still suffer from low self-worth often attach their own identities to the program.   These insecure addicts seem to think if there is another solution offered other than AA it is a direct reflection on them and not in a good way.

There is an unwritten rule if we don’t wear the identity of ‘sick addict’ or ‘alcoholic, addict’ then our egos will take flight and we will relapse straight away.  If we don’t repeatedly identify ourselves as addicts we will then believe we can drink and drug successfully.  Really, AA and NA are programs designed by addicts, there are bound to be some flaws.  But now advertisements on TV and online are claiming there is a cure.   So the dry drunk AA-er feels put-down by the prospect of a true cure.  The dogma of AA teaches us that the minute we feel cured and no longer need meetings we are sicker than ever.  When really the actual danger lies in the belief that we can drink like normal people.  But alcoholics have an allergy to alcohol that will not disappear except by some rare miracle.

What’s The Cure?

If we truly work the steps, open up in long term therapy, and find our Higher Power we will be cured.  Not cured to drink again, rather cured to not want to drink again, we won’t see drinking as a solution.  Still it’s important also to have fellowship, not necessarily in a program.    Anxiety and depression can be cured as well. Why do so many people get outside help, including Bill W?   We don’t have to fear the word “emotional disorder”. All it means is our healthy emotional process has been stifled.  Often the reason we have stifled it is usually that we were taught at a young age our feelings and processes were wrong. Regaining a healthy emotional process and using it on our most intense past hurts is how we heal core issues and truly recover with God’s help.   It doesn’t mean that AA or Bill W is bad or wrong, it just means that no one taught Bill W this aspect of healing. He was human and did not have all the answers.

Any Negativity is a Character Defect

You don’t take deep pains and hurts and tag them as character defects. That’s absurd and crying is not self pity but rather a key healthy emotional process.  The grieving process starts with feeling the pain not shutting it down.  If we move straight into the “my part (what I did wrong in the past)” and character defects without processing our core pains and hurts of how we were wronged then all we are doing is putting a band-aid on an infected sore.

Why do people scream “OUTSIDE ISSUE” in the rooms whenever someone starts talking about child abuse.  Abuse and neglect are why people become addicts and those who scream “outside issue” the loudest are most likely trying to further repress their own abuse as a child.  People love to sit in the rooms after a horrific bout of drug abuse and swear they had a wonderful childhood.  Many people have no idea what neglect and abuse looks like.  But I guarantee, if these people would actually take meditation seriously and do it on a regular basis, they would most likely remember some form of childhood trauma.

Resentments are never valid-false

All feelings are valid.  Feelings come from our heart, a place of truth.  We get angry for a valid reason.  It’s hanging on to that anger rather than letting it flow out of us in a non harmful way that gets us in trouble and gets us sick with resentment.

Children don’t usually get angry toward adults for no reason at all.  If we were harmed, and many of us were then we are legitimate victims.  Not everything is ‘our fault’ so we mustn’t treat it as if it were.  Sharing our trauma with an understanding and empathic listener who will point out the validity of our hurt and show caring understanding is where the healing begins.   Statements like “I know how you feel”  or “I was abused also and the man is a son of a bitch to do what he did”, shows support, relating, caring and validation.  Empathy not spankings are needed for healing wounds.  And the thing is, many addicts are badly wounded.    Emotional issues are not an outside issue separate from addiction, they are, I believe the biggest reasons behind addiction.

 

 

Step Two and Three, The Cure for Addiction

HOW DO I CHOOSE A HIGHER POWER

Sticky

DO YOU KNOW WHO YOUR HIGHER POWER REALLY IS?

Third Step Prayer short version

God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.  Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and The way of life.  May I do Thy will always!
TWELVE STEP PRAYERS
 

A DOOR KNOB IS NOT A POWER GREATER THAN YOURSELF THEREFORE IT IS NOT A “HIGHER POWER”

We want to choose a god deserving of our faith not an inanimate object that has less power than the man who installed it into the door.  Why not seek God with our heart in prayer?  Seek and we will find.  Could it be our resentment, pain, and hurt is much too deep to even consider seeking a god whom we feel is the reason we have suffered?   Or is our desire to control all things too strong in us to risk relinquishing control?   Our pain and consequences of active addiction must be more intense than our fear of the unknown and giving up control.  

In Narcotics Anonymous it has been said many times and is a popular belief that we may conjure up and name our own Higher Power.  Also members have said, if we want to use a door knob as a HP we can.   They say a door knob will work just as good as if we had one of the well-documented HP’s.  Perhaps the “Door knob” is the official-unofficial HP of N.A.  But again, a doorknob is not a power greater than any human.

Many people in N.A. have major prejudices against organized religion.  It is understandable that if we expect any group of people to be spiritually perfect or to adhere to all that their religion teaches we will automatically consider them hypocrites and not worthy of our respect when they falter, sin, or make a mistake contrary to their perspective rules of thumb.  These preconcieved type-sets that run deep in the neuron-pathways of our brain will have to be set aside or we won’t find a sponsor that we feel is fit to be our guide.  All addicts have character flaws and do all religious people.

The first mention of “God” in the 12 steps of A.A. is in Step Two.  “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”.  When I did step two I believed that my HP “could” restore me to sanity.  However I wasn’t so sure that IT would restore me (if I had ever been sane).  

My own HP is The Father that Jesus spoke of in the days of old.  My other HP is Jesus Himself.  If this pisses you off be sure to put your prejudice on your step four (I did).  Your feelings of resentment are there for a valid reason no doubt.  You were probably wronged by religious people.  However the steps are about releasing the baggage that deep hurt and resentments cause in our heart and soul.  

Anyway personally I also believe there are many other HP’s which could actually be used as a person’s main recovery HP.  And that any of these god’s have the power available to them to keep a person sober when they learn to rely on them.  Christian doctrine would call my beliefs sacrilegious but, oh well.    I didn’t make-up my beliefs concerning Gods.  I learned to seek God and meditated for many years.  I believe that “The Most High God” and creator gave power to many other beings we can call gods.  Gods such as The Moon Goddess, The God of The Sun, and many more to choose from.

A THOUSAND GODS TO CHOOSE FROM

HOW TO TRULY FIND AND CONNECT WITH YOUR OWN HIGHER POWER

In this article I explain how to really find YOUR higher power by seeking with your heart.  There will be no doubts when God reveals itself to you.  https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/vengeance-is-mine-sayeth-the-lord/
ADDICTION IS A SHAME BASED EMOTIONAL MALODY, Resentments are the Number One Offender?

Is Resentment the Number One Offender?

Sticky

Is Resentment the Number One Offender?

What is at the core of your addiction?  I suppose everyone must answer it for themselves.   But I think it’s important to answer it.  For me it was a deep wound.  An emotional constipation.  A deep hurt that I didn’t know how to express  in a way that was healthy and appropriate.  Shame was at the core it surrounded the wound.

So when I finally got the spiritual and emotional laxative (therapy, 12 steps, God)  it took quite some time to cry it all out.  All that’s left now of my malady is a scar and a few old habits that die hard called character flaws.  Many of the character defects I acquired through the years of addiction, like resentment were nothing more than a distraction from my painful shame.   Resentment was a place to lay blame on how a felt.   I needed to lay blame because it was myself I condemned deep in my heart.
No, for me resentment wasn’t the number one offender, shame was. I mustn’t be ashamed and keep secrets. I try to stay clear of shame and be an open book. Writing and sharing…the truth sets me free. Shame….no one wants to admit shame.  People are ashamed of shame because it is perceived as weakness.  It’s a dirty little word.
It wasn’t the wound so much as the shame I blanketed it in that made me so self destructive.

I was taught to be ashamed of who I was, and that my feelings were wrong.   And that basically I didn’t even have a right to be on this earth. That’s a hard one to shake…so I drank.

Resentment is the acceptable blame based emotion that distracts me from my hurt and shame.  I am too ashamed of being hurt cause I see it as weakness.  So I cover it all up in a nice package called “blame” and put a big bow on it called resentment.  And I carry the package around with me never having to look at what is really inside.

That is until  I got sober nearly Ten years ago.  But for the Grace of God, But for the Grace of God.

THE CURE FOR MY  ADDICTION IS WRITTEN IN PART 1 OF THIS TWO ARTICLE SERIES-RESENTMENT THE NUMBER ONE OFFENDER.  http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/resentment-number-offender/

Resentments are the Number One Offender?, The Cure for Addiction

Is Resentment the Number One Offender?

Sticky

What does it mean and who said it?  “Resentment is the number one offender”

Bill Wilson co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous wrote the phrase “resentment is the number one offender” in the Big Book.

Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry. In most cases it was found that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships (including sex) were hurt or threatened. So we were sore. We were “burned up.”

On our grudge list we set opposite each name our injuries. Was it our self-esteem, our security, our ambitions, our personal, or sex relations, which had been interfered with?

It means that if we hold onto resentments then we will relapse and resentment is the cause of our relapse.  But really how true is that?  Well at face value it appears that resentment toward others and anger is the cause of our relapse.  It seems to be the most dominant emotion addicts have when going back out.

However, I am not so sure the resentment for others has taken the relaps-er back out.  I rather think anger and blame in the form of resentment is the survival skill which helps us live with ourselves when we step back into a life we know will kill us.  There is actually only one resentment that sends us back out if you look deeper into our hearts, which is a resentment toward self.

But what lies underneath our self loathing?  Our self loathing is at the core of all our other resentments.  Ask any addict in the midst of a relapse and he will most likely deny to you his self-hate.  Addicts carry much shame and shame is at the core of our deception to self and others.   Un-processed shame, and hurt are at the core of our addiction.  These are the feelings stuck in our crawl.  These are what carries us to the dope man.

Addicts suffer from emotional constipation and Shame is truly at the core of that stuck place.  Shame is my #1 Offender Resentment springs from Shame to cover it up.  SHAME SUCKED MY LIFE FORCE AND LIED TO ME FOR YEARS

Bill W. touched on it when he mentions “emotional disorder” he just didn’t elaborate or realize that emotional constipation which is disorder was at the core of most addictions. (At least that’s my theory.)

Hurt transforms into anger and we can’t cope with hating ourselves so we bury the hate into a thing called blame.  We are constantly on the look-out for new people, places and things to blame for the way we feel deep inside.  We deceive us and others.  We must resent people and blame them to deal with and cover up the way we actually feel about ourselves.  The only true resentment that sends us back out is the resentment toward ourselves.

Why do people claim they have a cure for addiction?  Why are some people cured and others sign on to the belief “once an addict always an addict”.  Simply because they don’t know the cure.  Or they have done one part of the cure and left off another.

What is the cure?

Find the core issues of the original hurt and pain, usually stemming from a very early age, and emotionally process them. (cry, scream, write, share).  Transcendental meditation will show us our core issues.  While at the same time we must develop new routines, new habits, new people, places, and things.  Find new goals and a new purpose for life that is healthy.  Work the twelves steps and learn how to use the steps when needed including the fear list and steps three, four, eleven, and twelve.  Work step twelve for several years or some kind of service work to build self-esteem.  And the big one (included in the steps) get a Higher Power by seeking with your heart and stay in contact with that Higher power as much as possible.

That all sounds like allot.  Isn’t there an easier softer way?  YES AS A MATTER OF FACT THERE IS AN ‘EASIER SOFTER WAY’.  But it’s not something you can buy or special order.  You can put yourself in a position to get it but there are no guarantees if you do get it how long it will last as your only source of recovery.    The white light experience straight from God is the only easier softer way.  Usually people who receive white light experiences go on to carry the message of Jesus Christ or God while not doing any of the 12 step work on their character flaws.  And why would they?  They are riding a pink cloud.  But pink clouds don’t last.  God will remove some flaws during this experience but seldom, well I have never ever seen God make anybody perfect…ever.  So usually these people fall into some flavor of character flaw.  Most likely they delve into judging others, get their resentment back and relapse.  Then they really hate themselves even more because now they are turning their back on a God they know exists.

I know, sad story…I am talking about myself during my first bout of recovery.  And I have seen this same pattern manifest often in others, usually Christians in recovery.  Never the less it does not mean God fails or Jesus has abandon us somehow.  It just means God clearly WILL NOT TAKE A HUMAN’S SELF-WILL.  He will enlighten us, but it’s up to us to go out and get fulfillment once we are enlightened.  Hence step eleven and why it works, it fulfills us spiritually.  Step twelve builds our self worth, and fulfills us spiritually.  Step Ten, well I have found that Ten really isn’t enough, but instead it’s step four that I need to revisit every six months to a year and do thoroughly.  When fear of relapse slips in, I remember two things, I have turned my life and will over to the care of God.  And the program works, I can turn to the program, work a step.  This is what keeps me sober after countless lapses.  Sure if I rely on me I will fail.  I rely on God, the steps, and the fact that I am being healed and healing by processing core issues.

So can I really call this a cure?  ABSOLUTELY! There are many things that humans have to do to stay well.  Such as eating, sleeping, nurturing and being nurtured.  We do not call ourselves sick because we require food.  why would I call myself sick because I require a spiritual program?

I DO NOT NEED TO CALL MYSELF SICK TO BE RECOVERED.  THAT’S RIDICULOUS!  CALLING MYSELF SICK AND AN ADDICT IS NOT WHAT HEALS OR KEEPS ME SOBER IS IT?

NO.  I WAS AN ADDICT FOR 35 YEARS I KNOW WHAT SICK IS.  I WILL NO LONGER CALL MYSELF SICK UNDER THE ILLUSION AND FEAR THAT IF I SAY I AM HEALED I WILL RELAPSE.  THAT IS A.A. SUPERSTITION AND LORE WHICH IS DERIVED FROM FEAR.

The 12 Steps- every resentment, shame, every guilt, every hate, every prejudice, every intense hurt, every theft. We do this till a light goes off and we then recognize our character defect patterns.  I recommend at least 1 page of writing for each offense. Repeat the process every year and when we get bungled up.

New fellowship either church, AA people, somewhere we can start a new social life.

Therapy honest and thorough, we must go back and feel the pain and process it out in an emotional way.

God-find your God

Set goals

We can change who we are but it takes work.  So what Life is work.

Be Sure to read part 2 “Is Resentment the #1 Offender?”

Celebrities, Recovery and healing

IS OPRAH A NORMIE?

Sticky

IS OPRAH A “NON-NORMIE”?

Basically this guy Jack Thomas had a website called non-normies.  Don’t go there though it no longer exists.  This guy -with a belly full of al-anon and a heart full of deep and painful resentment feels that non-normies… are out to destroy our country.  But his definition of “non-normies” includes ALL non-normies not just addicts in recovery.     Non-normies to Jack are any non-conformist types who don’t walk his straight and narrow criteria.  If you don’t have the conservative right wing, Rush Limbaugh type viewpoints you are out to take over and destroy the world.  And now he is super shocked and dismayed that even Oprah yes Oprah the sacred mother of Africa is actually a non-normie at heart.  Yikes!  So below we have the “about Jack Thomas the author” and then the article itself.  You be the judge.

ABOUT JACK THOMAS, a Recovering and Developing “Non-normie”

Jack Thomas, a seemingly ordinary guy with one emotionally destructive compulsion, was thrust into the ranks of Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous. There he recovered. In the process he gathered cryptic data about what may be the largest laboratory of non-normal people in existence.

Jack was addicted to relationships with self-destructive alcoholic women, stemming from his alcoholic mother. Having had numerous relationships with this type, he married a woman with a progressively worsening drinking problem.

The more he tried to cure her, including years of expensive therapy and a costly move, the worse the drinking became. Jack’s Pastor referred him to Al-Anon—an A.A. program for the co-alcoholic (codependent) relatives and friends of alcoholics.

There Jack learned that he didn’t cause her drinking and couldn’t cure it. He could only set sane boundaries. Jack told her to either go into detox or leave. At first she agreed to the treatment and his insurance approved it but, just before entering, she backed out and left.

Devastated, Jack plunged further into Al-Anon recovery, faithfully working all of the Twelve Steps and acquiring an excellent sponsor. Within two years he was sponsoring many new members, himself, while hosting the Introduction for Newcomers. During this time Jack took over the Alateen program, for children of alcoholics ages ten to teen in Torrance, CA, and ran it for three years. Then his Pastor asked him to design and lead a codependency recovery group, which he headed for several years, and soon he became a lay counselor for the church.

Fascinated with helping people recover, Jack jumped into learning even more about emotional disorders. He read the DSM III (The Psychiatrist’s “bible”) cover to cover, took courses, finished his Associates Degree and veraciously studied everything on the subject that he found.

He began to notice more and more commonalties amongst the emotionally non-normal (“non-normies”), cataloging them in a six-hundred page workbook. Also, all of them had large internal deposits of repressed anger that they didn’t want to give up—even though it appeared to be the root of their problem. Stockpiled rage had led to their developing emotionally driven personalities.

This motivated Jack to ask: If stored un-grieved (unprocessed) anger was the basis for people becoming emotionally non-normal, why would they cling to it if it was destroying them psychologically? The answer came after years of probing the hidden agendas and psyches of thousands of emotionally non-normal people that he encountered.

Those findings, along with how the emotionally driven non-normal personality was negatively affecting society, eventually resulted in the creation of the Web/Blog Site titled: www.non-normie.com

 

oprah3

IS OPRAH A “NON-NORMIE”?  Jacks article starts here.

Our “non-normie” of the day, today, is Orah Winfrey.
Say it ain’t so, Jack. Not Oprah.
Unfortunately, self-help expert Jack Thomas is holding to his guns and conducting Talk Show interviews giving reasons why Oprah is (Jack’s term) a non-normie.

The following is a column written by Jack Thomas justifying his classification of Oprah.

A week ago Monday, Bill O’Reilly did an expose of our non-normie of the day, today, Oprah Winfrey, when he pointed out that during the past two years she has had only four personalities who were even close to being mainstream conservative on her show. Those included Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani.

Conversely, the rest of her guests were virtually all polar-left non-normies. Those were Frank Rich, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Al Gore, Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, Jim McGreevey and the like.

Bill went on to identify some best selling conservative authors who haven’t been on Oprah, like John Stossle, Pat Buchanan and Laura Ingram. Michelle Malkin called her a limousine liberal.

The reason why Bill was doing this segment was obvious. He has written four best selling books, including his current one titled “Culture Warrior,” not to mention 2005’s number one children’s book in America. Yet he has never been invited on Oprah’s show. Mr. O’Reilly was definitely putting pressure on Ms. Winfrey and it worked. Within twenty-four hours, he received a booking on Oprah to be taped today for a Friday broadcast.

Now what does that tell you about Oprah? I know what it tells me. It says, Jack you were right when you declared that polar-left non-normies are all cowards and that they have a hidden agenda which they fear being exposed. Oprah is obviously a polar-left non-normie who protects her caring and compassionate image as if it was the Holy Grail itself—because it is her holy grail.

This is not sour grapes. I don’t begrudge her success, nor do I envy her money. I do envy her power to influence, which is what I hope to do with my web site and radio interviews. But, contrary to her desires, I don’t wish to control people or their thought processes. I merely wish to provide information that they currently either don’t have or have neglected to understand. Once I accomplish that, I don’t even care if it’s attributed to me. My goal is to help normies comprehend the non-normie mindset and how insidious their subtle quest for power is changing our country for the worst. In fact, unless normies eventually do grasp the evil power of this emotional disease, they’ll be defeated by it and, later, they won’t even grasp why it happened.
FINISH READING at specialguest.com

EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS

DO YOU KNOW YOUR EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS?

Sticky

DO YOU KNOW YOUR EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS?

Very important to learn our emotional triggers in recovery otherwise…we will project every hurt, anger, and pain onto usually those we love most.  When we first get sober we are emotionally R.A.W. Ripe anger within.  Feelings follow actions not the other way around.  Meaning if I wait till I feel like doing something I am letting my feelings rule me.  At the same time denying and repressing feelings will make me sicker.  Emotional balance is what alcoholics often lack.  But for now, If we are not walking around with our hearts on our sleeve then we are not an addict in early recovery.  The thing is we usually want to Love and be Loved desperately but we continually push people away with our reactions to twisted perceptions.  WE ARE NOT BAD PEOPLE TRYING TO GET GOOD, We are Sick People Trying to Get Well.  We must rangle in our emotions long enough to get a sponsor and make some new recovery friends.

BLAME GAME HURTS ME AND MY RELATIONSHIPS

So how do we identify our emotional triggers so we don’t blame the world for our own feelings?  First we start the day with the precept of “I am responsible for my own feelings” even when I am wronged.  Even if I am wronged I am the one who must process the pain and hurt from that wrong.  I am the only one who can let it go.  So rather than trying to fix all my triggers in one day by taking my heart out of my chest and washing it off.  That would be impossible.  But what I CAN do and do have control over is my tongue and my thought processes.  I can intervene and basically “fake it till I make it” emotionally.

So when I suddenly find myself furious or deeply hurt, my face is turning red and I want to attack someone because it’s their fault that I feel the way I do…Instead I say.  “I am responsible for my own feelings.” I write out what I am feeling on paper.  I talk out what I am feeling with an empathic and understanding listener who WON’T POINT OUT MY SHORTCOMINGS AND DO MY STEP FOUR AND TENTH STEP FOR ME by taking my inventory.  My support group can help me see my triggers by their understanding and sharing their experience and their own past triggers.

DON’T BE ASHAMED OF FEAR

I must be able to admit fear or I won’t find my triggers.  I have to ask myself…”What is it that I am afraid of when angered and hurt?”  Am I trying to control everyone by making them have all my same viewpoints?  Am I playing God?  Am I afraid of losing something, like control or power?  Do I feel belittled and inferior as if the person I blame directly insulted me?  Do I feel I need to defend myself because I am afraid that I really am worthless, bad, inferior, stupid, or anything along those lines? (that’s the most common.)

HOW TO BUILD SELF-ESTEEM

We don’t come into recovery brimming with high self-worth and the self-esteem of an accomplished CEO of a large corporation.  Working on the 12 Steps however ALL OF THE STEPS will gain us the self improvement and esteem that we lack.  And that is exactly what we need to do to quell the incessant emotional triggers that hurt and anger us at a core level.

Know this my friend…nine times out of ten if I am triggered in early recovery IT IS NOT ABOUT THE PRESENT AT ALL.  It’s really about what lives in me and the baggage that needs worked through.  Repressing my emotions by denial will only make things worse.  I AM NOT AFRAID OF ANYTHING! This is the attitude that will keep me sick.  All humans have fears and when I start realizing mine that doesn’t give me permission to point out everyone else’s.  But it does give me the advantage of understanding people at a deeper level.  When I realize my fears and ask God to remove them I realize often the same fears in other people by their behaviors.

STEP 11

We must go one step further in our self-examination process by finding the original “hurt” behind the triggers.  Practicing meditation will help me realize what my past trauma emotional issues are.  And remember none of the self-awareness is so I can beat myself up or condemn myself for my past.  Self punishment never has and never will get me well emotionally or stop my addiction.  If it could it would have already.  If I find myself in a place of self abasement then I say “OUT OF THE PROBLEM INTO THE SOLUTION.” And I practice one of the programs’ many tools at that point.

By RUTH EDGAR -feedback welcome

If the grammar and punctuation of this article makes you crazy please contact Lori Edgar who is most likely willing to make you an editor on this recoveryfarmhouse website.

 

Recovery and healing, Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

REJECTION-WHY AM I AN ADDICT?

Sticky

Suffering Rejection As Children & Adults can be devastating and should not be minimized or invalidated.

Before we can truly heal from emotional pain we must have a chance to express the hurt in a way that is acknowledged and validated.  Crying is one healthy emotion.  Letting go of hurt is a process much like the grieving process.  If we have learned to shut down pain we are omitting the first step to healing.  We must feel to heal.  Then and only then can we move on to “our part” in injuries and neglect suffered as children or resentments that have stemmed from abuse and neglect.  Often the only part we had to play in the core reason for our pain and addiction is that we were not taught a healthy emotional process.  We therefore had to resort to unhealthy solutions.

SOLUTIONS

Rejection should be acknowledged and worked through.   There is much more to recovery than just staying sober.  There is much more to working the Twelve Steps than just writing down resentments and finding our part in it.

We all have a life flow, a Spirit if you will that needs both nurturing and Love.  Nurturing includes a validation of who we are and our right to be ourselves.  When rejected at a young age by caregivers we shut down our life force in shame.  And we hide who we really are.

Rejection can take many forms.  It may be direct and obvious or indirect and subtle.  (“Your brother is doing so well.  Don’t you want to do well too?”)  It may be all encompassing (“You can’t do anything right.”  or focused on certain parts of our personality (“Stop being so curious about everything.”).  It may be depriving (neglect) and distinctly lacking in emotional contact and nurturance or it may be dominating and controlling-suppressing our natural desires and over riding fundamental boundaries.  It may be shaming and create within us a feeling of being “bad” or “defective”.  Regardless of the form of rejection, we quickly learn that simply being ourselves will not get us the Love and acceptance that we so desperately need.

REJECTION-WHY AM I AN ADDICT?

Rejection injures our emotional healing process and our ability to express and release our pain.  Without empathy, this impulse is stifled.  In homes of deprivation, we cry out in vain because nobody is there to listen.  This is nothing short of tragic.  Dominating parents might say “I’ll give you something to cry about!”  Maybe we are allowed to cry alone, but not to show our tears, and certainly not to protest against our parent’s wishes.  Usually we don’t even know that we have been emotionally injured.  Into adulthood we may admit we are addicts but never connect the dots to why we ended up so self-repulsed.

Hearing from our teachers that most of our natural impulsed are bad or wrong, we quickly learn to hide away these aspects of ourselves.  We learn to hide away our pleasure as well as our pain; our thoughts as well as our feelings.    All that brings a negative reaction from our caregivers is hidden away in order to try and get their Love.

Now we are susceptible to sexual molestation, drug addiction, or sick relationships we have not been taught what Love really is.

To survive the overwhelming pain of rejection and un-met childhood need, we shut down our life flow and shut off the pain.  We do this through defense mechanisms that block or divert painful feelings and memories away from conscious awareness.

Defense mechanisms may come in the form of extreme behavior patterns, suck as over-eating, compulsive behavior self-sabotage, crisis creating, people pleasing, leaving before being left, rebellion, etc.  Our defense behaviors serve two basic purposes:  We either struggle to meet our unfulfilled needs through someone or something else or we deny our needs and detach from our pain.

The struggle defense is an unconscious attempt to correct the past.  If we had to struggle to get our parent’s love, approval, help or understanding, we may re-create situations that elicit the same struggle and then strive for a different outcome.  In some cases, we may get into abusive relationships similar to our childhood experience.  Often we project our past feelings toward the care giver onto our partners.

Ever wonder why addicts relationship statistics are so sparse and unhealthy?  We are not bad we just were not taught, shown how to love.

We are now in defense mode not just emotionally but also physically.  We repress our breathing.  Maybe our diaphragm expands when we exhale instead of expanding when  we take breath in.  We start by correcting our breathing.  We learn deep breathing and deeply expand our bellies as we take air in.

PLEASE, we are in recovery, we mustn’t allow self or others to tell us to “get over it, it’s in the past.”  It is not in the past emotional trauma is our core reason for using and needs to be processed.

Solutions to resentment.

http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/solutions-depression-anxiety/

WHY AM I AN ADDICT?

http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/solutions-depression-anxiety/

Shame the number one offender-http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/resentment-number-offender-2/

secondary addictions

TRUE BEAUTY LIES WITHIN? SICK RELATIONSHIPS IN RECOVERY

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Before recovery and the 12 steps, in a room of 100 men I would be attracted to the sickest and most abusive.  This audio has some answers to why.

When is it safe to date after narcissistic abuse?  Part 1  By Empowered Love Radio  Relationship Recovery Expert Melanie Tonia Evans

This audio show starts a little slow but picks up volume and speed.  It turns out to be very informative and full of healing ideals and precepts.

More Co-da and Narcissist Info at Melanie’s Website

A Thought on ‘True Beauty Lies Within’

True beauty is found within but don’t pretend it can’t be found within and with-out. simultaneously   Or is Suzanne Summers the only one who realizes the prejudices that transpire toward  the beautiful?  All humans suffer from prejudice in one way or another.  Is there a man alive under the age of  60 that could overlook this woman’s beauty

perf5

long enough to hear what her heart speaks?  Or how about  a woman out there who was dealt a crappy hand in the “looks” department.  The ugly duckling is tempted  to say “beauty is skin deep”.  The envious woman insinuates that all beautiful and voluptuous women are incapable of caring love, and charity .  People the phrase our of jealousy infer the absence of inner beauty is the punishment for possessing outer beauty?  HOGWASH!  Are all unsightly women drenched with a kind and giving heart?  Certainly The wicked Witch of the West can attest.   The rejected and abandoned tend to seek out such prejudices as for-mentioned.  As for this beauty below?  Her heart is as kind as Cinderella and  her beauty as stunning as Snow White.  Rather than jealously I think an awe of God’s handy-work is in order. ________The Writer

Liz Ashley Dahl

 

https://www.facebook.com/1nkedandSexy/?fref=photo

cover photo (black hair) Inked and Sexy

Media/News/Publishing

What's Hot in the recovery news

Brilliant Website Artists

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Brilliant website artist depicts the consequences of drinking alcohol.

I never play games but this intrigued me.  It keeps asking me if I can see the cannon ball.  I cannot find a cannon ball to save my life, I just keep trashing the set for fun!!  Click on the link below to play the game.

Screen-Shot-2014-10-22-at-7.04.04-PM Animal-Ratio-still-2_670

“A venue-trashing, drumset-smashing interactive music video for psych-pop geniuses Celestial Shore.” http://glander.itch.io/animal-ratio

http://julianglander.com/filter/beer/Celestial-Shore-Animal-Ratio

I ran accross two very koooL web-pages.  These artists have done work for some of the largest corporations in the country.  But this isn’t just web-art this is moving web-art.  Graphic design to be precise.  Is it CSS or is in memorex?

This one posted by Md Jewel Patoary is extremely unique

The Beer Game

http://guillaumekurkdjian.com/

 

ADDICTS IN AA, Recovery and healing, Step Four AA

Entitlement, Expectations, and Gratitude

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Gratitude is the opposite of entitlement. I have heard in the rooms that expectations are premeditated resentments.

One thing that can make me dissatisfied often if I allow it to creep into my life is an attitude of entitlement. Entitlement is a feeling of being deserving of certain things. My entitlement issues could spring forth in any area of life really. Maybe I feel I deserve romance, sex, Love, cars, boats, money, decent family, certain behaviors out of others, even good health. But what am I really entitled to? More precisely, upon which areas of my life shall I invest my deep feelings of entitlement? Best answer: None.

Naturally we are completely valid in expecting many things. Things like getting paid for a job we are hired to do. Or, to be treated with respect and with loyal regard by those who are named as loved ones and friends. If we buy an item from the store, we expect it to do what is advertised. These are valid expectations that are natural to have. However, the fewer and more cautious our expectations the happier we will be. Hope is the spiritual replacement for expectations.

Assuming and expecting are pretty much the same thing. When we “assume” we expect without having all the facts we should but when we “expect” it’s supposed to be “based in” fact.  Some situations are highly predictable and others are not.  Some people and situations catch us totally off guard.

Firstly, we should expect human beings to act like humans

that way we won’t put too much stock (trust) where it is unwarranted.  People will mess up repeatedly, intentionally and unintentionally including ourselves.  Keeping an open mind especially were dating and commitments are concerned will save us from emotional crash and burn. If all we see in our potential life partner is the good, then we probably don’t know them well enough to marry them- yet. Granted there are exceptions to every rule but going into a relationship commitment with a well balanced view of who we are committing to is better than going into it with eyes half shut. Sometimes we want something so bad we white-wash it and then when the fairy tale phase is over…it all comes crumbling down. Addicts are famous for marrying prematurely.

Alcoholics and addicts tend to see things in an all or nothing, good or bad light sometimes. But truly good people do bad things and bad people do good things and even more appropriately,

human beings should not be labeled good or bad but rather just human.   And humans have a good side and a bad side.

It’s important to understand and know ourselves in depth so we can know others. Working the 12 steps is one of the best ways to gain wisdom and understanding of ourselves.

As children of God we deserve good things. As recovering addicts, we can’t afford to plant our hearts in entitlement. And so- we cautiously hope for good things and when they don’t happen we keep our eye on the prize which is meeting our maker. And we stay grateful for that which we DO have.

Celebrities

“Phuc Dat Bich” HOAX!

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Man gets kicked off Facebook for having an odd name…or did he?  Amanda Meade and Elle Hunt

Original story at this link.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/25/man-says-he-made-up-vietnamese-name-hoax-to-fool-news-media-and-facebook

A man who claimed that Facebook discriminated against him because of his name, attracting global media attention, has announced that it was a hoax.
Wow!  See how easily this average Joe fella fooled the largest media organizations.
“What started as a joke between friends, became a prank that made a fool out of the media and brought out the best in the people who reached out to me. It didn’t bring out the anger and darkness that we often see on the internet, but it brought a levity and humanity in a time we need it most.
“Out of this ordeal I’ve concluded not to trust the credibility of the media, it’s twisted by the hungry journalists who mask the truth … It goes to show that an average joe like myself can con the the biggest news sources with ease.”

Claims that Vietnamese man with an Australian passport in the name ‘Phuc Dat Bich’ had been discriminated against by Facebook were false

In January, a man posted to Facebook a screenshot of an Australian passport that appeared to show his full legal name was Phuc Dat Bich, claiming that he had been accused of “using a false and misleading name” and had his account shut down multiple times.

The post went viral in mid-November. Media including the Sydney Morning Herald, news.com.au, SBS, BBC.com, the Herald Sun and 9news.com.au, and news organizations in India, Argentina and other countries – reported the story, though Phuc Dat Bich gave no interviews.

In a mea culpa posted to Facebook, still titled Phuc Dat Bich, on Wednesday afternoon, the 23-year-old Melbourne man admitted that the name change and doctored image was part of a prank intended to fool the news media and highlight shortcomings of Facebook’s “real name” policy.

In a post signed “Joe Carr” (understood to refer to “joker”), he wrote: “Facebook needs to understand that it is utterly impossible to legitimize a place where there will always be pranksters and tricksters.

‘Phuc Dat Bich’: man says he created name hoax to fool media and Facebook

READ MORE AT THE GUARDIAN.COM ORIGINAL STORY

Bible, Emotional Sobriety, mental illness, Recovery and healing

CHARACTER ASSASSINATION ON FACEBOOK

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FACEBOOK IS A PRIME PLATFORM FOR CHARACTER ASSASSINATION.

So what is the legal definition of defamation of character and who does it really hurt.
Defamation of character occurs when someone makes a false statement about you that causes you some type of harm. The statement must be published like on a Facebook page(meaning some third party must have  heard or seen it).  It must be false, and it must result in harm, usually to the reputation.
Defamation of Character Lawsuits happen all the time.

In recovery, if we are in a 12 step program that means we are trying to live by spiritual principles.  It means that we have put our life in God’s care and we are making an effort to trust God with our well being.  This spiritual recipe for living takes revenge and doing harm to others off the table.  It means that when we are wronged we pray for our enemies and try to understand that when someone trashes us on Facebook they are a sick person and their actions are rooted in fears of various flavors.

WHERE THERE IS A RESENTMENT THERE IS A “MY PART” GETTING TO THAT CORE FEAR IS WHERE I FIND MY SOLUTION TO HATE

So when I see my picture plastered all over someones FB wall with lies and vicious comments and I want to destroy the person I don’t  Furthermore I may want to call their parole officer and report them for this real crime of defamation of character.  But I don’t.  Also this is a man that I have done many good things for.  I helped him in many ways and with charity.  So, I pic up my prayer tool and pray for him.  I ask for  all the blessings of heaven and earth to cover him.  I never argue and engage in defensive strategies.  I call another person in the program and vent my anger.  I write a Step Four resentment grid that might look something like the following.  And remember just because I know that I am right and good in my intellectual mind my feelings have a mind of their own.  My heart does not have to be either logical or reasonable.  To expel the resentment I examine my own core fears.

“I resent John Doe because he told lies about me on Facebook.  He said I am bad and a liar.  He said that I have stolen from the most innocent and needy of victims.  He said that I am greedy and a pirate thief. ”  I ask myself “what is my core fear behind the resentment?”

FEARS

I am afraid that others will believe the accusations.  This fear is rooted in my own insecurity.  My heart thinks I am not good enough and not as good as other people.  I fear at my core that somehow what this man said about me is true.  (illogical but real and important to recognize).  My carnal reaction is to run to my own defense and argue and send out messages to the people reading the lies.  I fear I am not good enough. I fear that God will not protect me and that certain and sure damage will be done to me by these evil posts.  My society fear kicks in (reputation), my security fear kicks in because he is also crucifying my business websites as being unfair, evil, and dishonest.

Although I have taken no wrong action since I have resentment and want revenge I now have a “my part” that needs addressed before I can let it all go.  So what is my part?  I am not trusting God and I have certain insecurities called “fear of what people think of me”.  This is why the mans sin angers me and I am resentful.  I want this man to be righteous and he isn’t.  So I have some “controlism” in there also.  Please know that at the same time my anger is just and my feelings which want my reputation clear are just as well.  Nevertheless I want the resentment and obsession over it to be gone so I….

KARMA AND POWERFUL LOVE

I ask God to remove my character defects of fear, control and distrust of God. and to replace them with Love and understanding  I DEPLOY LOVE IN DEFENSE OF EVIL AND FEAR.  I ask God to help me trust Him and to give me understanding toward the man.

Jesus said pray for those who despitefully use you.  It is also written In Proverbs that to “return evil for good” is one of the most dangerous sins because of the karmic laws in place.  I helped this man and had good motives and actions toward him.  He took my charity and crushed it under hate and fear.  So me and this man bot have fear it’s the actions which define us, not our fear.  Without fear their is no such thing as courage and overcoming.

Proverbs 17:13

Evil will never leave the house of one who pays back evil for good.

My anger is valid and the proper reaction to being attacked.  But I am responsible for processing my anger.  The man that told the public lies cannot relieve my anger and resentment this I must take action to relieve.    And so I have done the work to fend of bitterness.  I am no longer hurt by the wrong done to me.  However the man that did the deed, unless Grace intervenes to block the karma of “evil will never leave his house” he is majorly squittled.  His hate and wrong actions toward me will never relieve his feelings of fear and wrath.  By his actions he intensifies his short-comings and he works on separating himself from his God.  He is making a spectacle of himself to the people who see through his actions.

NOW THEM BY WHO THEY SHOW YOU THEY ARE, NOT BY WHO THEY TELL YOU THEY ARE

A good and spiritual man will rarely engage in rallying support for the direct punishment of another human being.  Good people know that if we are wronged we pray for that person not trash them on Facebook.  We recognize that if someone is trashing another person on Facebook it is most likely the man doing the trashing who is actually the guilty party.

 

Emotional Sobriety, Recovery and healing, STEP 10, Step Four AA, Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

ANGER AND WRATH

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https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/solutions-depression-anxiety/

WHAT CAN I DO TO OVERCOME DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY?

Click here to read SOLUTIONS

HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE….YES BUT

Hurt people usually hurt themselves first and foremost by their limited ability to accept new people, new places, and new things.

What do we do if we are so hurt from our addict driven past and horrific childhood that we are unable to Love and accept others?  And why is it that a lack of acceptance and the alcoholic go hand in hand?  Our parents didn’t teach us healthy emotional coping skills or we would not reach for such destructive emotional survival skills like the drink and drug.  The thing is as long as our using (drug abuse) and blame-based coping skills worked to keep us reasonably numb & feeling shame-free we had no reason to stop using them….right? 

Why is it that the serenity prayer is an addicts most valuable coping skill known far and wide?  The Big Book reads that a lack of power was our dilemma.  Meaning when we feel we are not in control within and without we buck, we freak.  We lack acceptance when we are sick and suffering on such a grand scale that we block new, different people and ideas out of our lives.  We can’t cope with any kind of change…it’s too scarey.  But again Why? (Oh I’m not supposed to know the answers to any “why’s”? that’s first 90 days sober AA jargon.  If we are going to really be healed of our underlying emotional issues we must allow ourselves to seek & find some knowledge.)

Blame, criticism, and looking for the wrong and the bad in other people and their ideas is the most wide-spread destructive emotional coping skill on the face of the Earth used by addicts and normies alike.  AS LONG AS I CAN PUT A “BAD” LABEL ON SOMEONE TODAY MAYBE I WON’T HAVE TO SEE THE PAIN LIVING INSIDE ME.  IF I CAN JUST BE “RIGHT” AND FEEL THAT I AM “BETTER THAN OTHERS” THEN I WON’T HAVE TO SEE THE SICKNESS THAT LIVES IN MY SOUL.

I need to ask myself some questions and I have …how long have I been sober and why am I still having anxiety attacks and suffering from intense rage and depression?  Why am I having repeated migraines?  Why have I pushed all the people I love out of my life?  Why am I still isolating and beating myself up?  Have I left something out of my program? BETTER YET DID BILL W. AND THE GROUP LEAVE SOMETHING OUT THAT IS VITAL.?  Could my prejudices toward religion and therapy be hindering my healing? What can I do to really overcome depression and anxiety?

The serenity prayer and twelve step work are two grand survival skills for us.  When we share our story of what it was like what happened and what it is like now, if sincere & heart-felt processes out a little bit of our pain and sickness bit by bit.   Telling our story builds self-worth and confidence.  However it also feeds our ego and can be a deflection from our own emotional wounds.  Step 12 and chairing meetings are mere band-aids covering a wound that needs far more healing and medicine.  We need a deep and searching moral inventory we need to address our underlying issues or the infection in our soul will just keep hurting us and those around us.  The symptoms that are screaming at me are depression and anxiety.

SO WHAT THEN?  WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS TO DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY AND HOW DO I APPLY THEM IN MY LIFE?  Know this solutions will go against the grain of the disease and make us feel very uncomfortable.  PLEASE KNOW THERE IS NO WRONG FEELING, ONLY WRONG ACTIONS.  EVERY FEELING IS BECAUSE OF A REASON, AN EXPERIENCE, A REACTION TO AN EVENT THEREFORE WE SHOULD NEVER SAY…I SHOULD NOT FEEL THAT WAY.  YOUR HEART IS THE PLACE THAT FEELINGS COME FROM AND YOUR HEART DOES NOT LIE.  WE WILL NO LONGER BE ASHAMED OF WHO AND WHY WE ARE OR HOW WE ARE.  BUT WE CAN LEARN TO OVERCOME AND WORK THROUGH NEGATIVE FEELINGS RATHER THAN ALLOWING OUR FEARS AND FEELINGS TO PARALYZE US.

SOLUTION 1
Well firstly I need to work the steps more thoroughly starting with my spirituality and lack thereof.  I need to seek God with every fiber of my heart and being.  Ask my Higher Power to guide my step-work and my actions.  God answers the heart, every testimony of spiritual experience I have ever heard or had began with an intense seeking of God with one’s heart, mind and very depth of soul.  Please, shallow prayers reap shallow rewards.  Then I keep seeking, I go to churches, tent revivals, Unity God-self type temples,  Mausks, Catholic church.  I recommend Pentecostal church because they praise and more spiritual miracles happen there than other dry churches.  Just don’t let them kidnap your life.  Pentecostals are easily as dysfunctional as alcoholics.  But Jesus came for the sick He said it Himself.     People are not on their knees praying in meetings, people are not crying out at the alter for healing in meetings.  If I am not willing to take this action to seek my Higher Power then I must not be depressed enough or maybe I have just gotten comfortable in my depression.  Depression is anger without enthusiasm to that I can attest.

SOLUTION 2

Therapy, I need to open up my deepest and most vulnerable self to me and a therapist or a friend who won’t shut me down, who will let me show my pain.  I need to share my fears that I am ashamed of, I need to share my feelings that I think are wrong, stupid, weak and I am ashamed of.  I need to share my shame and guilt.  Not just in my journal but also out loud to a human or in group.  I need to let down my emotional protection in a safe place and tell people who I really am.  The child within needs to be heard.  If I was abused I need to talk about it.  If I was neglected and rejected and need to share it.  If I was sexually abused or abused others sexually I need to share it.  First write it down that makes saying it outloud much easier.  My deepest darkest shames need to be exposed to the light.  I need to get real about who I resent.  I need to put myself and God (most likely) on my resentment list.  My fourth step should have “The cause” or what happened to start the resent ment and delve into what my fears are behind the resent me.  Do I think I am unlovable, ugly, stupid, not good enough, that the person who accused me is right?  There is always an insecurity and fear of some sort crouching behind the hate for mankind.  I need to get at my own insecurities and express them on paper and then out-loud.  I need to accept my weaker-self and make myself vulnerable to others.  This isn’t part of the fourth and fifth steps it’s part of a honest and thorough fourth and fifth step.  Notice the “(fear)” and “(self-esteem)” that was written in the fourth step grid in the Big Book?  What I am explaining to you…the shame the feeling of not good enough that is what’s meant by self esteem and fear in  that fourth step grid.  If we can’t address this stuff we most likely will not heal from depression and anxiety.

SOLUTION 3

STEP 12, I need to allow the steps to work in my life.  I need to open up and say what’s really going on with me in meeting.  If I am depressed I need to share it, If I am happy I need to share it, if I am angry I need to share it, I should confess all my resentments not leaving out organizations and groups of people.  People with certain appearances.  And the big one I need to write down and confess anything I am ashamed of and am keeping secret.  I should work these 12 steps in an orderly fashion with a sponsor that will not shut me down.  I should attend step-study-meetings.  I should regularly go to jails or institutions of some type to tell my story of what it was like, what happened and what it is like now.  I should do a very thorough step 6 & 7.  Out of the problem into the solution.  Every day I should shower, put on my shoes and do at least TWO things towards my recovery.  I should clean my house and do my dishes.  I should get sober phone contacts and call people.  If I have an emotional upheaval and think I have been wronged I call someone and talk about it.  And of coarse if I want to drink or drug I confess it in a meeting and or call someone.

SOLUTION 4

I keep doing what works, I don’t stop, I don’t slow down.  I am relentless.  Four meetings a week, Church of some sort (meetings are not church) one day a week.  

SOLUTION 5

I learn and practice real meditation.  I lay down, I get quiet, and I do a mantra by trying repeatedly over and over to concentrate on only one thought.   When my mind drifts I reel it back in and concentrate on only the mantra.  I picture each sentence in my mind.  If my mantra is the Lord’s Prayer I picture each line, I see my father in heaven I think about his/her sacred name.  I picture his kingdom-coming etc. etc.  I practice meditation daily for at least a half hour a day.  I begin my meditation with a prayer.  I can use crystals or props, candles, and incense I make it a ritual.  My mind will wonder but eventually I will train my mind to stay on one thought.   After practicing for quite some time my mind will naturally empty…and I will hear God.  I will be more patient, self-aware, more tolerant, more likely to think things through rather than being sporadic and impatient.  Sometimes in the beginning it’s necessary to just moan during meditation.  When trying to lye till and quiet because of the negative energy living inside it’s hard to be still.  I remember feeling like there was an alien inside of me trying to get out so I moaned like I was taught to do to release that energy.  Then I can better concentrate on the mantra and meditate.

SOLUTION 6

GUTERAL SOUNDS

Release guttural sounds from your body on a regular basis in private in your car, alone at home.  Guttural sounds come straight from core and underlying issues of the emotions and the soul.  Moaning, Screaming, shrieking, and sound that needs to come out.  Try it, it will feel weird and insane but it works to get out the very energy that is causing the depression and anxiety.  Do it for years as long as needed.  It releases the poison from our bowels that we have stored there by pushing down our anger and hurt until it makes us sick.

SOLUTIONS 7

Diet, exercise, and nature.  These are self explanatory stick to natural foods as much as possible and to to the beach or just take walks in the woods but get outside and exercise.  Get fresh air daily, drink lots of water.  Eat lots of fruits and veggies.  Sometings exercise alone relieve a huge part of our anxiety.

 

And remember “OUT OF THE PROBLEM INTO THE SOLUTION”

Don’t stay in the problem spinning around.

REMEMBER NOTHING CHANGES IF NOTHING CHANGES.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The next article works too.

 

Anger & Wrath  “Out of the problem into the solutions.”

“It’s not what goes into the body (food) which pollutes it but rather what comes out (my hurtful words).”

Depression is anger without enthusiasm.  Depression is a final succumbing to the relentless feelings of anger.  When I am angry I still hold some form of control of my situation even if it is an illusion.  When my feelings switch to depression I have emotionally given up.   These additional solutions are a mix of therapy and the 12 steps.  I have added an example form of a mini fourth step.  Well actually now it’s a Fifth step.  “Better to save my ass than save my face.”  I am past shame of who I am and my human condition.

Anger is a feeling which produces a reaction in us emotionally.  Wrath is an action produced by rage that usually hurts people.  One thing sure if I am angry it’s most likely myself and God I am angry with primarily.  People and circumstances are rarely at the core of my anger.  I use people and circumstances as a way to blame and vent.  I usually have a choice who I want to hang around and whether or not I am going to argue, scream, yell, or fight.  Walking away is a great solutions to wrath.

Recovery is the time for me to take responsibility for my own feelings including anger.  Even if I am wronged no one can process my feelings of anger to work through them and get them out except me.   So when I accept that I am responsible for all my feelings I can then take charge and start the endeavor toward the solutions to negative and intense feelings.  As long as I blame people, places, and things for the way I feel and can’t begin to consider the solutions.  Staying in blame is an old survival skill which I know all too well.

Exercise is a great solution but it’s a generic one, meaning it doesn’t address the core.  It’s more of a distraction that does help.  Start out with some journalling and see where it takes us.    I may find that I get the answers to what I am angry at in the words I write.  I am usually surprised at the result.  If I have deep resentments toward myself or others I do a mini fourth step on them.

My Anger/resentment List

I am angry at myself because I have not accomplished the things I know I could if I was focused.  I am angry at me because I don’t get enough exercise, I don’t eat right, I am overweight, etc.  I spend way too much time on the computer and don’t get out enough.  I neglect my spiritual exercises.  I don’t do what I know is good for me.

What is my part in my resentment toward me?

Perfectionism, critical, fear of people(isolating), sloth.

I am angry at God because of the circumstances of the human condition.  God won’t give me what I want.  I want money and I want to be a success in a new career and I have tried so hard and worked to the point of obsession.

Self-pity,playing God, I think I know better than God.

MY FEAR LIST

I am afraid.  I am afraid of getting old.  I am afraid of being homeless.  I am afraid of not getting what I need.  I am afraid my car will break down.  I fear allot.

My part in the fear list

I don’t trust God, I lack sufficient faith, (God will supply my needs He always has.  And even though times are hard sometimes God has given me so much).  I lack gratitude.  I lack Hope.  I lack Love/charity/Faith.

Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death?  Praise be to my Higher Power Jesus Christ and The Most High God whose name cannot be uttered by man.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SOLUTIONS

My writing has helped me realize that under my anger was hurt.  It helped me cry.  I honor my feelings by crying which is a healthy emotion.  I ask God to remove the fears and character defects I have listed.  I am separated from God and I do feel that separation.  But there are people out there who are in a much worse place than I.  I believe God has trusted me with His Vineyard it’s my job to be of help to mankind.  I revisit my Step Three and If I have not said the Third Step Prayer I say it now.  I promise you it will help.  The Higher Power hears even our weakest prayer.  And  it doesn’t matter how long or how short your clean time is.  There is always room for emotional and spiritual maintenance.

I remember that beating myself up doesn’t help anything.  Self abasement is not a solution.  I get up I put on my shoes and I go help somebody.  I openly praise my Higher Power aloud.  If I have deep trauma issues from abuse I write a “fuck you ” letter to those who have hurt me. (don’t send)   I write every little thing that I want to say to them.  I do not mail the “fuck-you letter “it’s for me to help heal.  Then I cry, I beat the bed, I beat a tree with a plastic bat or a whip.  This is the best kind of anger processing when I am in touch with the core reason for my anger.  Core anger is usually from a childhood event.

What I am saying is if I have a focus on the core issue instead of “my husband called me a bitch” or “I got cut off at the green light” when I do my anger exercise I will get the core issue attended to and begin healing.  If it’s just a blame type distraction from the present I am not processing the core trauma.  That’s why writing works so well, the pen tends to carry us to the root of our pain.

If you were abused, put the bastard in the empty chair (literally an empty chair pretend your abuser is in it)  and scream out everything you were too afraid to say to them when the abuse occurred.    There are some seriously wicked people .  Or maybe you were neglected and deprived of emotional nurturing.  Being ignored as a child is trauma as well.  We are raised often by people who have no idea what it is to nurture a child’s soul and spirit.  But you have walked into the sunlight of sobriety.  God has It’s hand on you and will not let you go.  God, I promise will protect you even from yourself.  You are a beautiful child of God.  You have suffered a lifetime and now is your time of peace.  The peace which surpasses all earthly understanding is at your doorstep.  All you need do is pick it up.

 

 

 

 

Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

Recovering Addicts/Alcoholics Persevere

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Alcoholics are strong

because of what we have endured and what we have learned in AA.  We have felt the depths of despair therefore our hearts can soar to great heights.  We have a capacity for faith even though we don’t always trust God.  Yet the steps taught us how to rely on God and that fear equals courage not failure.

Alcoholics Anonymous offers us a program of spiritual maintenance in the form of steps ten-twelve.  And if we use the steps we stay flush with gratitude and our eye-glasses are clear or rose colored.  No, this does not mean we are always happy and full of joy.  But we are free of guilt and shame if we have done the twelve step purging.

Men and women who experience the pains, trauma, oppression, depression, psychic and extreme emotional stresses of addiction and then over-come that addiction by whatever means tend to have a much greater capacity for spirituality, faith, and Love than people who have not gone through taxing suffering, whether they be              addicts or not.  We have come through the fire and now we can rest on the knowledge that God has our back.   If we fear we are backsliding we have the program to work and strengthen us back up.  “Out of the problem, into the solution” is the most valuable cliche’ of all.  The good part is we now have the solutions, we don’t have to return to our Hell.  These solutions when done in depth not only keep us clean and sober  but are also a remedy for depression, anxiety and self loathing.

For one thing we usually are forced to seek a Higher Power diligently, in which case we become enlightened spiritually and psychicly.  We then realize that there is a process by which we get fed spiritually on a regular basis.  Either by working  the Twelve Steps and 10-12 maintenance steps or by attaining our daily bread in a religious way.  We in recovery tend to set new life goals at a later age than most people which helps us to be more open-minded with a fresh new outlook on life.  All men are equal as a rule but all men are not walking the same walk.

Getting sober in our thirty’s or forty’s tends to awaken us and our brains are jump-started into a new way of thinking far from the stagnant wasteland of the alcoholic muck.  Upon awakening we consider the day.  We ask God that our thinking be divorced from self-centeredness and self-pity.  We make an effort to help others and do no harm.  Clearly a person working the program of AA joined to a fellowship of both Love and weakness are there for one another.  Many normal people have basically the same things the best of AA offers.  It comes under different labels in different flavors and colors but the same basic spiritual tools are available to most people.

The Big Book and A.A. works for so many   because the malady of addiction produces common behaviors and personality traits among addicts.  Please allow me the same luxury of speaking in the “we” context even though “we” does not necessarily mean “you”.  Even though we addicts have many similarities we also have many differences .  I am well aware of that.                                                                                                                                     We do tend to wear our emotions on our sleeves in the first few years of sobriety after all we have been through allot and usually no one taught us healthy ways to deal with our feelings.  We have the fourth step fear list which helps so much when we get bogged down with any negative  emotion.       If our sponsors have taught us the fourth step in full then we have done our fear list..  I have found that I use the fourth step when anger becomes too much for me.  Thank God for AA.

Recovery and healing

WHY IS EVERYBODY’S PROFILE PIC RED AND BLUE?

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The Paris National AA Convention just took place not  one week prior to the terrorist attack on Paris.

I don’t usually post non-recovery articles but this ISIS thing is completely out of hand and our brothers and sisters who stayed over from the recent convention could have been injured or killed.   The NATIONAL CONGRESS 55th anniversary AA France Paris 2015
SATURDAY 7 AND SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015 Just happnened.  I hope you join me in prayer for them and all those suffering from this terrorist attack.

Info on the Paris convention

Why is everybody’s profile pic red and blue is a very good question.

France came under attack late Friday Night and we by changing our pro-pic are supporting the French against the machine gun and bombing attacks.  Isis has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Three teams carried out the attacks in the French capital which killed 129 people and left more than 352 wounded, the Paris chief prosecutor says.  Ninety-nine of the wounded are reported in very serious condition, he said.

“We have to find out where they came from… and how they were financed,” Francois Molins, Prosecutor told reporters.

He said seven attackers had been killed, and that all had been heavily armed and wearing explosive belts

ISIS claimed responsibility in an online statement. The statement said eight ISIS militants wearing explosive belts and armed with machine guns attacked precisely selected targets in the French capital.

It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, in which 191 people died. And it came less than two weeks after after a Russian plane crashed in Sinai — downed, intelligence officials believe, by a terrorist bomb — killing all 224 people aboard.
CNN-Find out more about the attacks
Mark Zuckerberg turns his profile pic blue and red in support of France, Paris which has come under attack recently
Facebook Safety Check Helps Parisians, Company Responds To Those In Beirut Asking, ‘Why Not Us’
Facebook deployed its Safety Check feature for Paris Saturday morning, making it the first time it was ever used in connection with terrorist attacks.

Zuckerberg’s Support for Paris

Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows his support for France by changing his profile photograph.
Paris was the first test of Facebook Inc.’s Safety Check role in helping improve quick communication during acts of terrorism. The company said in a statement Saturday afternoon: “Safety Check is a relatively new feature and until yesterday we had only activated it in the wake of natural disasters. The product will continue to evolve as we learn more about how it’s used during different crises. We hope to never be confronted with a situation like this again, but if we are, we are of course open to activating the tool given how reassuring it has been for people in Paris.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE I.B.T FACEBOOK PROFILE PIC SUPPORT ARTICLE
Story by Laura Edgar
Sources CNN News Online
International Business Times
BBC Interview with Molins procecuter.

Crystal Sex Meth, mental illness

WORST TWEAKER YET?

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Worst Tweaker Yet At Wal-Mart Oh my god!  This is seriously so sad and I said to my partner, maybe she is just obsessibe compulsive we don’t really know do we?  Tweaker is a good guess and an obvious appearance if you have been around that sort of thing and know the behaviors.  But still all I can do is pray for the girl she doesn’t really look that bad appearance wise, skin, hair etc.

12 Step programs really do work if yo work-em.

Recovery and healing

Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Cult?

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AA

BLAME

CULTS

Is AA a cult?

Well that depends on who you ask the question.  One thing for certain about the human race…we get some kind of fulfillment out of stamping a “BAD” label on groups of people, organizations, types of people etc.   We don’t want the karma or negative consequences that harsh judgement could bestow on us so we should definitely be careful about using the word “cult”.    There are lots of articles labeling AA a cult.  But really what are the characteristics of a true cult?

  • An organization that insists on separating you from your friends and family.
  • A group of people that want to control your behavior, the way you look, act by lots of rules and regulations that are invasive and contrary to freedom.
  • A religious group that insists they are the only one’s who know God.   They drill into you that all other spiritual and religious groups are bad, wrong and evil.   And they  insist that they are the “way” to God.  Without them you will be lost and doomed to a fate worse than death.
  • They often claim to be the only prophets on the face of the Earth.
  • They make themselves as God by requiring that you worship them, him.  They require that you give you self wholly to them.  All of you your mind, body, time, and work.  They require that you give all your worldly possessions to them.
  • They ultimately require that you cross your own moral boundaries and good conscience to obey them even unto death or group suicide.  The ultimate sacrifice.
  • A cult usually condemns everyone else they claim to be all-knowing when it comes to who and what is evil.  Their primary purpose is to manipulate you into handing over all your power and choices.

Pretty vicious!  These are evil characteristics at best and clearly just another form of blame by a cults condemnation of all other things religious/spiritual .

Is AA a cult?  No, not by it’s doctrines, which are the 12 steps and 12 traditions absolutely not.   Granted that does not mean that there could never be cultist sects working within AA.  Made up of people that practice AA completely contrary to the 12 steps and traditions, but that goes for any large group within organizations.  Any group of people can go awry.

However, few if any religious organizations have the liberating and non-controlling foundation that AA has by its 12 Tradition.  Nor does any other religion suggest that you seek God and put your own vision and label on God.    AA does not hand us God on a platter served up with a cocktail of legalistic regulations of what HE looks like acts like dresses like, wants us to dress like Nor do they serve a desert of descriptive visuals of the punishment and torture God will smite us with  if we don’t obey all the rules.

Spirituality does not come in a box.  We do not come to know God by other people’s seeking God for us.  We must seek out our Higher Power on our own.  That way when we reach that pie in the sky the great creator of human life will recognize us and know exactly who we are because we prayed, meditated, sought God with our might and even helped a few addicts along the way.

Out of a desperation that only the fear of utter emotional pain, death, suffering and worse can induce.   Yes by this woe we found God and by this woe we learned that Love is an action that we take to receive back that same Love.

(thanks to Erwin Guillem for the gorgeous photograph that can be found on “your shot” National Georgraphic.)
Step One, What's Hot in the recovery news

WHY DO MEN RECOVER MORE OFTEN THAN WOMEN?

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Statistically Why Are More Men Staying Sober Than Women?

Why is it that there are more men getting and staying sober in the program of AA than women?  Why is it that we women seem to have more emotional issues that need addressing than men?  Partly we just talk about our issues more, men repress on a much larger scale.  Nevertheless we woman that do stay sober are usually more of the “tomboy” type.  The very feminine and highly fragile woman rarely can get through what it takes to stay sober.  Experience teaches that us rough types even often bi-sexual type women have a much higher chance statistically of staying sober than do the frail and feminine. 

Clearly experience teaches it’s the “alpha” females who stay sober in much greater numbers than the more submissive woman.  But we must learn to make ourselves vulnerable emotionally rather than protecting ourselves emotionally. “Sobriety ain’t for sissies!”  So bone up ladies!  You can do it but it’s gonna hurt!  The bad news is…we can feel again, the good news is…we can feel again.  Yes and we have a boat load of emotional issues and character flaws to give to our Higher Power and to ebb-away at. 

Firstly, in my nine years of recovery which ya, hey it is allot of clean-time and I won’t pretend that it isn’t even if it is by the Grace of God.   I have done a hell-of-allot of work on myself, with the help of other women.  And what I have seen in AA is there is only one woman in AA that I have met whom was not sexually abused as a child.  I have silent theories this is the “why” behind most addictions.  The guilt and shame a young child will place on her-self for something she really was not equipped to resist is astounding even life-changing.  We addict woman have learned by the age of ten or younger that we can use our sexuality against men (or women) to control them, manipulate them, and force feed them guilt to get whatever we want from them.

 

We are in recovery now it is time to do our sexual inventory not absent of crimes done to us.  We write how that made us feel but rite now we are addressing our side of the street and cleaning it.  On page…ok ya page 69 in the Big Book Itgives us a long list of questions to ask ourselves.  These question help us with this inventory of our sex based wrongs.     It is imperative for our emotional sobriety that we go over this list honestly and thoroughly and own up to all those that we have manipulated with our sexuality.  Usually the men on our Fourth Step resentment list will also be a big part of our sexual inventory.  In spite of how these men have wronged and abused us it is vital that we see “our part” so we can learn to Love and keep Love close to us and in us.  Yes I am saying Love is of greater importance than anything however we are usually incapable of showing Love and acting out of Love when we are deep in our addiction so that sets sobriety up as a priority before anything else in our lives even Love.

 

Most of us when abused,  didn’t run to an adult and snitch the assailant out, we wanted someone to Love us.  We confused affection with Love and we thought to get Love we had to drop our moral boundaries.  We thought we had to be hurt to get what we needed.  Perhaps that’s what our parents ingrained in us.  And so we turned things around because we are survivors and we used our sexual power accompanied with lies and deception to get what we thought we needed at the time…usually money, drugs, & the basic things like food and shelter.

 

Some of us even sold our bodies outright for money to get drugs.  We were exposed to many disgusting and painful situations.  Some that we barely made it out of alive.  It’s no wonder we learned to hate men.  It’s no wonder we learned to hate women!  They were our competition they betrayed our confidence!  Screw woman! We could not manipulate them as easily.

 

But now we must put our “woman’s issues” on our fourth step.  We will need other women if we are to heal and stay sober.  So we pray for God to put the right woman in our lives so we can experience the “sisterhood of The Spirit”.  Men absolutely are incapable of relating to many aspects of our personalities therefore they are of limited use to us in recovery when working through these core woman’s issues.  If we have a chance to get into a woman’s meeting we DO IT!  These meetings are much more intimate and women will share things that  absolutely will not hear in a regular meeting, shares that are vital for our healing

 

We begin to let our abuses out of our bag of secrets.  We expose some shameful actions of our past in our fifth step with a sponsor and we expose other secrets in the rooms with the woman.  We will find that doing so will put in place the connection that we need to other woman.  When we listen in our women’s meeting we train ourselves to LOOK FOR THE SIMILARITIES RATHER THAN THE DIFFERENCES!

 

Finding someone to criticize is an old survival skill that deflects self-guilt.  Criticism feeds the ego that which it needs to go-on however, criticism is not what we need now…we need empathy, we need healing and that will never come whilst seeking differences so we can criticize others.  We write ourselves a note “seek the similarities don’t criticize!” and we put that in front of us in every meeting we go to until we have trained our brains and have built a bridge over the sick neuron-pathways called addiction.  Our brain-bridge is called “survival for the sober”.  Building a sober brain-bridge takes work and a supernatural kick so we start by ninety meetings in ninety days and we pray for willingness, clarity, guidance, healing, and for HP to make a way where there seems no way.

 

We have deep and imbedded trust issues that simply must be ignored to an extent so we can get what we need.  We may not be able to trust but we will nevertheless choose a sponsor and work the Fifth Step leaving no debauchery uncovered.  That which we want to keep secret the most should be at the top of our fourth step.  The Truth will set us free.

 

We put the “blame-game” in the garbage.  We are responsible for processing every feeling that comes into our hearts.  If we have sex with a person they owe us nothing!  It is our choice weather we have sex and unless we tell the person up-front a price for that sex…they owe us nothing.  Not a phone call, not to fix things for us, not to make our choices for us, nor a place to stay they owe us nothing.  If we expect something from a person we are in bed with then we should be up-front about it.  We can propose that if they are screwing other people we will have to leave the relationship.  They are adult they can do as they please.  They can make promises that they won’t keep.  If they don’t respect us then we leave the relationship it is our choice if we stay therefore blame is off the table.  Granted we can command respect but it is us who must draw the line in the sand and walk away when it is crossed.  We cannot make other adults do anything we can only request and suggest.

 

If we feel we have been wronged we should call a woman and talk it out.  If a law has been broken we may call the cops.  We may find if we talk things out with another woman that it is our unresolved issues that are haunting us rather than the person we are in bed with in the present.  We addicts tend to carry an ink-blotter stamping “guilty” on anyone we are intimate with once the fairy-tale phase of the relationship is over.  Not anymore!  Now we journal, we write “fuck you” letters (do not send) to vent our angers.  We scream in our cars if we have to.  We beat the pillow, we talk it out with woman but we do not blame anyone anymore for our feelings ever.

 

Even if we are wronged…can the person process our emotions?  No!  If others had the responsibility of processing and dealing with our feelings then we would be slaves to other people which we are not.  We are learning how to take responsibility for our lives and our emotions.  It is not easy, not for sissies but you can do it my dear because you are stronger and capable of a deeper Love than most women can even imagine.  Why?  Because of the deep pain you have suffered.

 

Your emotional pain has carved out a deep dark hole in your heart.  You will process that hurt and replace it with Love.  That is why we women in recovery are more capable of a deeper Love than anyone who has not been through the trauma that we have.  Seek God and The Sunlight of The Spirit and you shall be a vessel of joy, Love, and happiness amidst the tears that have gone un-cried for too long.

WHY ADDICTION DIFFERS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

 

 

 

Crystal Sex Meth, Sex and Drugs

CONFESSIONS OF A METH COOK The Untold Stories NOW TOLD!

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CONFESSIONS OF A METH COOK

BLOG TALK RADIO OWNS ALL RIGHTS TO THIS CONTENT AUDIO, FACEBOOK OWNS ALL RIGHTS TO THE POSTED LITERARY CONTENT WE THANK THEM BOTH FOR THEIR KIND AND GENEROUS ONLINE SHARE POLICIES. THE LINK TO DALE GARRETT’S AUDIO LIBRARY IS BELOW. Know this: Once you post to Facebook, it belongs to the world.

The Untold Stories NOW TOLD!

Confessions of a Meth Lab Cook is an audio by blog talk radio and Dale Garrett.  Dale Garrett is a wonderful guy who takes his experience strength and hope to the people who need to hear it most.  He makes weekly audio shows at blog talk radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thereslifeafterdrugs

“AS TIME HAS PASSED MANY HAVE SENT TO ME THEIR STORIES OF HOW THEIR LIVES HAVE BEEN TURNED INSIDE OUT BY THE DECISIONS AND ACTIONS THAT THEY MADE, NAMELY ALL LEADING BACK TO THE USE OR MAKING OF METHAMPHETAMINE, NOW THEY HAVE ASKED ME TO SHARE THEIR STORIES IN HOPES THAT BY DOING SO IT WILL SHOW OTHERS THE HORROR AND DEVASTATION THAT COMES ALONG WITH THIS SO CALLED GLAMOURS LIFESTYLE,, SO I INVITE YOU TO JOIN BOTH MYSELF AND MY HOST SARAH BETH AS WE TAKE YOU ON A JOURNEY THROUGH THE LIVES OF 3 YOUNG LADIES LIVES WHO GOT TRAPPED IN THE METH GAME, AND NEARLY LOST EVERYTHING,BUT….THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL, FOR YOU SEE, THEY WERE BLESSED TO BE ABLE TO MAKE IT OUT OF THIS EVIL MADNESS THAT NOW PLAGUES OUR SOCIETY, SO JOIN US IF YOU WILL..FOR OUR SHOW “CONFESSIONS OF A METH COOK “THE UNTOLD STORIES” By Dale Garrett
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thereslifeafterdrugs

WHO REALLY OWNS YOUR FACEBOOK POSTS?

Your Words and Information http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/who-legally-owns-your-facebook-posts.html

While Facebook may say that you “own” your posts, it turns out that much of the legal impact of your ownership boils down to your privacy settings. Facebook is constantly making changes to its privacy policy, but the bottom line is this: Whatever words or information you post under the “Public” setting are fair game for anyone to use.

That means if you share your recipe on Facebook, and celebrity chef Bobby Flay decides to appropriate it for his next cookbook, you won’t be getting any royalties. This is partially because recipes generally aren’t available for copyright, but most of your posts containing words and information aren’t either.

Your Photos and Videos

Facebook users have slightly more rights to the photos and videos which you post to the site, as those works are easier to protect via copyright. However, Facebook’s terms allow them “a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.” In layman’s terms, Facebook has license to use the photos and videos you post (which you own) in any way it sees fit, without paying you, and it can transfer that license to third parties.

Typically, you could sue a company like Facebook for using your image without your permission (or without paying you) under your rights of publicity. But by joining Facebook, you’ve essentially given the company carte blanche to do what it will with your images and videos, not to mention whomever Facebook decides to share your media with.
READ MORE WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS, FACEBOOK POSTS

New International Version

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

New Living Translation
God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.

English Standard Version
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Berean Study Bible
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Berean Literal Bible
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

New American Standard Bible
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

King James Bible
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
The peacemakers are blessed, for they will be called sons of God.

International Standard Version
“How blessed are those who make peace, because it is they who will be called God’s children!

Emotional Sobriety, Recovery and healing

They Say…”Addicts Stop Maturing Emotionally When They Start Using”…

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I was not able to find any scientific evidence stating addicts stunt their emotional growth the minute they start drinking and drugging to cope with their feelings.

What is emotional maturity?  A mature person takes responsibility for their own feelings and actions and learns what to do with their emotions  (contrary to repression or blame).  Coupled with the acceptance of others and the ability to NOT PLAY GOD.  They show respect toward their fellow man and do no harm to themselves or others of any form.

ANGER THE ACCEPTED EMOTION

But it’s obvious and common-sense that when we no longer use healthy emotional coping skills we resort to unhealthy ones.   Drinking and drugging to mask intense fear and inferiority issues causes emotional stagnation.  This emotional numbing process goes hand in hand with suppressing feelings.  For instance instead of crying when we are hurt we pound down a twelve pack and become an angry drunk because we think to be hurt shows weakness so we never address the core “emotional hurts” behind our anger.  The supposedly “recovering” addict can engage in a similar sick emotional process while sober.  Just substitute blame or any character defect in place of the twelve pack and we can still repress our emotions and stay in denial of fear and pain.

My own inadequacies are haunting me even after years of twelve step work, therapy, and spiritual experiences.

There seems to be no permanent remedy to character defects and perfectionism.  But rather it takes spiritual maintenance (steps 10-12) to stay positive and emotionally healthy once sick emotional processes have been introduced to the brain (especially in the formative years).

I really do dislike the fact that I can’t be fixed once and for all and that I will always need spiritual solutions BUT there are worse things.

“FEAR” THE UNACCEPTABLE FEELING

Here is what Bill W. said about “fear”;

“this short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.  It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn’t deserve. But did not we ourselves set the ball rolling?”

Before we can mature emotionally in sobriety we need to learn how to process our feelings.  Sounds like psycho-babble right?  Emotionally healthy people use processes like this for instance.

“HURT FEELINGS” THE UNACCEPTABLE  EMOTION & SOLUTIONS

First we admit our emotional pains, insecurities and fears.  We moan, scream (not at anybody)  or cry them out, that’s why God made tear ducts.  And we write them down.  We share them with someone and then we give them to God.  Fear itself is not the character defect because it’s a feeling and feelings are part of us.  Actions however, can be defective.  We are clearly not trusting our Higher Power if we are paralyzed by fear.  We ask for God’s help with our lack of faith and trust. We can use a God box to help us let go of the things that we are putting in God’s care.

Now if you or your sponsor have labelled any part of natures healthy emotional processing techniques as “character flaws” and have deemed crying as “self-pity” and labelled sharing and writing our fear list as “self-centered & self indulgent” then it’s time to fire our sponsor and find one that is compassionate and understanding even empathetic.

Steps Ten through Twelve do work just as step four and five works to clear the wreckage of the past.  But when it comes to fear addicts and alcoholics seem to be loaded down with more fear than the average person.   I believe this is because we were introduced to fear as a result of some childhood emotional trauma and it set the ball rolling in our brains.  And so we set out for a solution to our fear based feelings and double helping of shame that came with it.

It’s imperative that in recovery we learn to open up about who we are and how we feel.  The tough girl, tough boy facade must be left behind.

We will mature emotionally if we allow natures process to flow through us rather than getting stuck.

Celebrities

Robin Williams Wife Finally Breaks the Silence

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IT WASN’T DEPRESSION THAT KILLED ROBIN WILLIAMS IT WAS DEMENTIA AND A RARE BRAIN DISEASE (Louie body demntia)

“Was he losing his mind?” Susan-“Yes”.

SEE VIDEO NOW ORIGINAL ARTICLE NY DAILY NEWS.COM
Beloved comedian Robin Williams’ widow, Susan Williams, says she doesn’t blame him “one bit” for committing suicide — and that his final act was simply a way to wrest back control from a “sea monster” of a disease.

In her first interview since her husband’s Aug. 11, 2014 death, a tearful Susan opened about her husband’s demons on a “Good Morning America” interview airing Tuesday.

“I got to tell him, ‘I forgive you 50 billion percent, with all my heart. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known,'” she recalled of the day Williams, 63, was found after hanging himself with a belt. “You know, we were living a nightmare.”

Susan compared the “Mrs. Doubtfire” actor’s “endless parade of        symptoms” in the months leading up to his death to a game of Whac-A-Mole, admitting she thought he was a hypochondriac at first. He would’ve had “maybe three years” left if he was lucky, she said.
>READ MORE SEE THE INTENSE VIDEO NOW

Celebrities, Recovery and healing

Paul Williams Tells his story of Hitting Rock Bottom

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Paul Williams: Coming Back from Rock Bottom | Super Soul Sunday | Oprah Winfrey Network

Watch both video’s.  They are very short at these links.

http://realestate.aol.com/blog/videos/real-estate/518511534/
Songwriting legend Paul Williams says that, at the height of his fame, an addiction to alcohol and drugs nearly destroyed him. After hitting bottom
a bunch of alcoholics in Oklahoma City prayed in a prayer circle for him and that night in a black out Paul Williams finally called a doctor and went to rehab.  Above is the link to the video and also after the P. Williams video is the Oprah show that talks about Normies needing recovery too.

See him tell the story of what saved him at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROgkQnrGUic

OMG He wrote “Just an old fashion love song” that Three Dog Night made famous but here’s his version with the mupputs. Too funny.
PAUL WILLIAMS AND MUPPETS. Also wrote “Rainy Days and Mondays” that the carpenters made famous. And

ADDICTS IN AA, Recovery and healing

I WON’T CO-SIGN YOUR BULLSHIT!

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“I WON’T CO-SIGN YOUR BULLSHIT!”

Scream the 12 step sponsors to the detriment of their heartsick fellows! There is a great need in AA to understand the difference between co-signing bull shit and showing Love by exerting understanding, compassion, and care.

There is a great need to understand the difference between self-pity and the expression of valid feelings such as anger, and hurt.

Human feelings that result from an abusive past need expressed for us to stay or get sane.

The words, “I know how you feel, you have a right to feel your pain, grieve and to process your hurt…even if, the feelings derive from years prior” are words that can heal a heart. Most addicts have stuffed down tears for years that desperately needed to be cried for us to attain emotional balance and healing. Usually when we get clean & sober all our un-cried tears come to the surface and scream to get out. We then ask ourselves: “What’s wrong with me, why am I so depressed, nothing bad is going on right now? Next our sponsors quickly tell us to “get over it and write a gratitude list” as they watch us slam the door in the face of AA.

Gratitude lists work great for those stomping their feet because things are not going their way (self-pity). However when it comes to the horrible feelings of grief that result from abuse, abandonment, neglect and other childhood trauma all our sponsors suggestion does is add to our low self-image and push us out the doors.

The most common “grave emotional disorder” that addicts in the rooms suffer from is the inability to process deep hurts and trauma inflicted as children & sometimes through adulthood. We have turned our hurt to anger and continually search for a scape-goat to blame for our intolerable feelings. Our hurts have morphed into anger because “grief”, unless short lived and a result of the death of a loved one is unacceptable in our society. When we experience any other cause of emotional pain except what’s socially acceptable we are often told to just “GET OVER IT!” So driven by shame we bone-up, pretend we are tuff-girls and boys, file our feelings under the “wrong and weak” category in our hearts and make ourselves sick till we have no other solution except to numb that which we have labeled “Invalid feelings”.

Is it no wonder that when one of us relapses so many seem to be so devastated by it…

even when we scarcely know the person who went back out? We are desperate to let out some of our grief in a way that is acceptable to our fellows. We all step up our meetings and talk about our pain and loss when it usually has nothing to do with the guy who just relapsed who we have never invited to our home by the way.

The need for validation of our deep hurt is huge and necessary for healing. It’s hard for us in recovery to see when we are stuffing down a pain that really needs to be expressed. Few of us were taught by example or in school that it’s ok to scream and cry feelings out, or that crying is a part of emotional health.

Grave emotional disorders

are not healed by just writing down [our part] and transferring all the blame from one scape goat to the next; [ourselves]. Please don’t hear what I am not saying…we addicts have boatloads of character defects that we need to work on however, not all grave emotional disorder is solved by doing a guilt based fourth step. Furthermore, if Bill W. would have had a course in empathic healing and were taught that his feelings are valid and how to emotionally process them he may not have spent at least 12 years sober and depressed trying so many therapies and pharmaceutical remedies.

Typically Bill was too hard on himself. There comes a time when we must pause from blaming ourselves for where we are at emotionally if we are to find answers and heal. There comes a time when we should realize that we were dealt a mistaken hand where our understanding of emotions is concerned and the steps don’t fix everything.

THERE IS NO WRONG FEELING

Celebrities, Recovery and healing

Suicide and Addiction The Hemingway Curse and Emotional Battle

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MENTAL ILLNESS, ADDICTION AND SUICIDE ALL ROLLED INTO ONE COURAGEOUS AND CANDID DOCUMENTARY OF THE LIVES OF THE FAMOUS HEMINGWAY’S  Originally aired on April 23, 2013

Mariel Hemingway

Get the instant video or DVD of this compelling documentary only on Amazon

GET THE INSTANT VIDEO OR DVD ONLY ON AMAZON HERE

 

Mariel Hemingway opens up about suicide, molestation and her family’s curse in ‘Running from Crazy’

(More about sexual abuse and addiction at RFH )

National Suicide Prevention Hot Line

 Mariel admits she saw her father sometimes enter the girls’ bedroom when they were young and sexually abuse Muffet and Margaux. “I didn’t know what he was doing, but I knew it wasn’t right,” she says on camera, adding that she was never herself abused — though one is nevertheless left wondering if that is actually true. Further, she hypothesizes that unfortunate past as something relating to how extremely close to their father Muffet and Margaux were, while, again, Mariel seemed to be on the outside of the unit, closer to her mother than anyone else.

Amid all of this, Mariel struggles with the “Hemingway curse.” Ernest’s 1961 suicide is legendary but two of his siblings also killed themselves, as did his father. This in addition to Margaux. That curse is theorized as a suicide gene and the very potential of such a thing leaves Mariel racked with fear for her own daughters as she participates in charity work and suicide prevention initiatives.

READ MORE at Huffpost Live

SEE VIDEO CLIP OF MARIEL

Politics

HEAVEN BY WAY OF HELL

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My Own: “Orange is the new Black”

My sobriety date is April of 2006.  I got clean on Good Friday and spent Easter weekend in a small holding cell going cold turkey off numerous drugs and alcohol.

All my senses were heightened as the withdraw pains increased and I listened to the guards just outside my dark holding cell  drink, party, and play adult games.  Not long after I heard them torturing a woman in what they later refereed to as the “Black Chair”.

Needless to say the black chair had restraints.  Granted the tiny female prisoner was drunk, delusional and played her own part in the torture I heard her endure that night.    The guards used the “black chair” title as a threat to keep inmates in line.  After several weeks of recuperation that inmate was moved from medical into the women’s pod.

After my second month of sickness with painful gull bladder attacks I was sent to ‘medical’ where another women suffered from seizures in the room next to me.  Apparently seizures are a criminal infarction in the Levy County Jail.  I ‘saw’ nothing that night but what I heard was both scary and alarming.  Let’s say I lived years on the streets, in crack traps, bars, with felons but what I witnessed in that jail to me was shocking.  I couldn’t have imagined that a female nurse could be so utterly brutal.  Funny…we never saw that patient/inmate again after the night of her seizures.  All I know is I heard her hit the floor and she went silent.  Just a few feet from me with a wall between us.  She went silent as that nursed screamed brutalized her .  She kept screaming, “your faking your seizures”!  Word was she was mysteriously released even though prior to her visit to medical there was no chance of her getting bail and her court date was a long way off.

That wasn’t the first abuse I witnessed in that jail.  But that’s not what this story is about.  Idk…maybe it should be, maybe that is where it’s taking me.

Perhaps I should mention the prettier younger girls

who got to leave jail to take trips to “McDonald’s” if they were chosen by the guards.  One of  the inmates was also my friend on the outside who just happened to be younger and prettier than me.  She said the guards would not only take them to McDonalds but also get them their drug of choice on occasion for their trip to Micky D’s.  I think we all know what the girls did for the guards, and they were happy to get a McDonald’s hamburger for their pleasure.

The pod we were in consisted of about 30 inmates 15 upstairs and 15 downstairs.   We were allowed to choose the location of our own bunks.  How it usually went down was ‘if’ NO ‘when’ someone pissed us off we would grab our gear and bunk as far away from them as possible.  I ended up grabbing my gear and heading down those stairs.  We all ended up right where we were supposed to be.

One thing sure, we were on display, literally.

We had an audience called the “Screws”.  Up high straight across from the inmates second story was the guards own second story room with a huge glass window facing down on our pod.   The glass was even set at an angle so they could see everything.  They could look right down on the ladies day or night…with good intentions of coarse.  They were keeping us safe you see.  And at the same time, well lets just say as it all turned out, the ladies upstairs had much different personalities than the ladies of the downstairs levels of the pod.

The ladies upstairs kept themselves up at all hours of the night.  They were active and the guards loved it.  Apparently they knew how to put on a show.  The guards had their own big screen real-time stripper show with girl on girl pornography and it was all live.  I guess they just couldn’t resist the temptation to watch the show and buy the burgers.

The downstairs ladies used to rise in the morning and say a morning prayer together in a circle right there in jail.  We were tired of the life as addicts and criminals.

We were generally kind to one another.  There were spiritual things happening to us.  We were having a common dream about water and baptisms, pools, and rivers.  We went to church on Wednesday nights and we had AA group on  Sundays.  In between we had the library and all its recovery literature.  We were women who wanted to change.  (even if some of us did take the occasional trip to McDonald’s).  I remember that jail-house preacher told us “God is here walking the halls & working miracles.”  I believed him, somehow I just knew I was going to get my miracle.  That preacher was one judgmental, assuming son-of-a-bitch but he had some good things to say too.  We ladies were soaking up as much positive energy as we could find.

But the girls upstairs…well they hated us ladies down stairs.  My girlfriend from the outside basically couldn’t make up her mind she kept switching back and forth from upstairs to down.  She would fill me in on what was going on up top .  I considered her credible I knew her.  We were hypocrites to them.  To them we were showing pitiful weakness and they despised it.  If I had not been released when I was, well there was a women who was picking a fight with me and it was reaching a head.  She screamed at me because she was going to prison and I wasn’t.  She swore she would see me in prison and then she would have my ass.  I feel pity for her at this moment.

You know you are in recovery when you take A.A. meetings into the very jail which incarcerated you for sixty days.  Yes, for two years I walked freely in and out of that same jail.  By the Grace of God, AA and therapy with Randall Mayrovitz at Meridian Healthcare Bridge-house outpatient therapy and inpatient both I learned how to live sober.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2012/apr/15/state-by-state-prisoner-rape-and-sexual-abuse-round-up/

Chadwick Buford Holmes, 32, a jail guard with the Levy County Sheriff’s Office, was arrested on June 30, 2011 on a third-degree felony charge of sexual misconduct. He is accused of repeatedly having sex with a female prisoner in a bathroom, and was booked into the same jail where he is alleged to have committed the sex acts.

I was coming off Xanax, Crack, Methadone, Cigarettes, and Caffeine

Not to mention I kept having gull bladder attacks omg.  It’s a wonder I survived it.  But for the grace of God.  I finally got my day in court after two months and the judge gave me a sentence to rehab.  I got to ride to Meridian in decked out cop car with sixty days detox time under my belt.  I was well on my way to full blown recovery.

Jail saved my ass.  AA taught me coping skills and how to get sober.  Therapy taught me what to do with my emotions and helped me work through core issues.  The 12 steps are the essence of my religion.  Without my higher power I would not have survived addiction.  All good things are from the Great Spirit of Light and Life.  Tapping into that strengthens my faith.

Inside me is a good and loving dog and a fearful and criminal dog which ever one I feed the most will become stronger.  Lately I have been tempted to shop-lift.  Time to feed the good dog.  But one thing for sure while I am alive, I will be human.  The human condition is by default corruptible.  The program works as long as I make the choice and take the action to work it.  But without the outside help I would be screwed.

By Laura Edgar

Celebrities

Robin W. Alcoholic

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Robin W., Alcoholic (from the writers at https://aspiritualevolution.wordpress.com)

Note: This is the first time I’ve written about something outside my own personal experience, but it’s been on my mind enough that I felt moved to.

.

When Amy Winehouse’s body was found with a blood alcohol content of .4% (five times the DUI level), lying among scattered vodka bottles like so many smoking guns, most of the media and public understood that her death was caused by alcoholism.

Not so with the loss of Robin Williams – also caused by alcoholism, but in a much subtler sense. The press does note that he had checked into rehab a few weeks prior, but his prolonged suspension of active drinking causes them to dismiss his addiction as conquered. It seems to me only my fellow alcoholics are able to intuit the close relationship between his alcoholism, depression, and the unbearable-ness of being that led him to take his life…read more…

What's Hot in the recovery news

PIERCING ABUSE HORRORS /SERENITY PRAYER

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Do Not Do this to Your Tongue
CLICK HERE TO SEE PIERCING ABUSE HORRORS

TOTALLY RAD MAN…OH DO PEOPLE STILL SAY THAT? A MUST SEE.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
If I surrender to His Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next.
Amen.

Recovery and healing, Step One

Step One of A.A.

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Step One

A sponsor is a person who has completed working the 12 steps and now teaches others to work them. One common first step assignment is to read “How it Works” and “The Doctors Opinion” in the Big Book of AA. Another assignment is to write five examples of powerlessness over alcohol or drugs in our own lives. And so we have begun the journey of recovery with a sponsor who has managed to stay sober themselves. What this first assignment does is brings our addiction into the light by listing our powerlessness it keeps us from forgetting we are addicts and prevents us from lying to ourselves by saying…”Yes I can drink responsibly…this time.”

The Doctors opinion shows us that we are definitely not alone and we are not the only ones who have experience the powerlessness of addiction. Powerlessness and the “insanity” of addiction are hard to differentiate between. All powerlessness associated with addiction is insanity but not all inanity exhibits powerlessness.I promised myself I would only have one drink however I woke up after a three day bender asking myself “What in the hell happened?” I promised myself I would never drink or drug again but I did it anyway. I promised myself I would never hurt my loved ones by my addiction yet, again I stole money from my daughter’s piggy bank to buy crack. Ouch! That is serious powerlessness.

Premeditated and guiltless thievery to support my addiction is insane but it is not a show of powerlessness. Accusing my ex-husband of being the reason that I drink and drug because of the way he treats me is insanity but it is not powerlessness. Good luck with your step work!

When we write our examples of powerlessness we should write also how it made us feel. The thing is we addicts usually want to be in complete control. Most of us have intense control issues even. And so we internally beat ourselves to a pulp when we cannot stick to our own using guidelines. Simply put we are expecting ourselves to control something that we are completely incapable of controlling.

We find ourselves in a subconscious state of self-loathing by which we hate us and the world. We did not create our powerlessness nor did we sign up to become addicts. We have no right to condemn ourselves for our powerlessness. We merely accept it and move on to step two.

OUT OF THE PROBLEM INTO THE SOLUTION!

Politics

Is AA Spiritual or Religious?

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U.S. Courts find that AA is a religious organization

By Linda R.

Inside AA, one hears members frequently repeat the well-known phrase “AA is spiritual, not religious.” AA takes pride in saying it’s not religious. But what do outsiders, such as the court systems, think about AA’s claim?

In the ten year period between 1996 and 2007, five high-level US courts — three federal circuit courts and two state supreme courts – did take a long and hard look at AA’s claim. Each of these cases involved a person who was being forced to participate in AA meetings, either as a condition of their parole or probation, or while actually incarcerated. These cases reached the highest level of judiciary scrutiny — only one level below the US Supreme Court — because they involved the critical issue of separation of Church and State. This separation is a fundamental aspect of US law, known as the Establishment Clause, and is explicated in the first amendment to the US Constitution, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

The parolees, probationers and inmates in each of these cases claimed that the State was using its power to force them to participate in a religious activity. They claimed that AA meetings were religious. Thus, their required attendance was a violation of the Establishment Clause, which requires governmental neutrality with respect to religion and a wall of separation between Church and State.   READ MORE AT aaagnostica.com

secondary addictions

Church Releases Jarring Video: Battling Sex Addiction With Honesty

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Church Releases Jarring Video: Battling Sex Addiction With Honesty

Scroll down to see video now.

The name of the Mormon website is LDS Living

In honor of National Addiction Recovery Month, the Mormon Channel is releasing a series of powerful and raw videos, which focus on the struggles and triumphs of those overcoming various addictions.

The 12-part series focuses on the personal experience of 12 former addicts who share startlingly honest and real experiences of their fights to overcome drug, alcohol, food, sex, and pornography addictions. read more…

Here is the link to the video

secondary addictions

SCOTT PETERSON To Be Featured on ‘Murder Made Me Famous’

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FAMOUS SEX ADDICT AND CONVICTED MURDERER SCOTT PETERSON, UPDATE:  Show Airs on Reelz August 25, 10pm, 9 ep/pt

The Scott Peterson, Laci Peterson, Modesto, California murder case will make the next episode of Murder Made Me Famous on Reelz.  Read more in the inquisitor…                                                                                                                                (Please know the partial story printed here was written by

Sex addict Scott Peterson lives a cushy life on death row  after murdering his pregnant wife and unborn child.  It’s said that he did it for his mistress Amber Frey who he was seeing at the time.  Consequently,  Peter Reynosa filed a lawsuit late Wednesday in Fresno County Superior Court, seeking either $250,000 or Frey’s renewed cooperation on the book, titled “Memoirs of a Sex Addict,” and the screenplay, “Myths of the Flesh.”

It is unclear if the book was fiction or a memoir by Frey, but a document attached to the lawsuit that Reynosa said is a contract says authorship would be listed as “Amber Frey as told to Peter Reynosa.”  Talk about a can of worms.

The screenplay — which is fiction, Reynosa said — was at one point known as “Orgasms of the Dying.”  Read more here:

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/crime/article24614536.html#storylink=cpy

Scott Peterson “The Perfect Husband” Crime Archives Scott Peterson Trial – Scott & Laci Home Video – July 4th, 2002
Geraldo video from March when he appealed his death row sentence.

see original article in new tab

The Scott Peterson, Laci Peterson, Modesto, California murder case will make the next episode of Murder Made Me Famous on Reelz. Last Week, the Inquisitr reported on the debut of the new Reelz show. Tonight’s Murder Made Me Famous will detail the actual events of the murder of Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant, and her unborn baby, Connor. Laci’s death made headlines in 2002 after she vanished on Christmas Eve. When her body washed ashore several months later, her husband, Scott Peterson, was charged with murder. Today, he still sits on California’s death row, where he seems to be living a “cushy’ life,” according to Daily Mail.

Laci Peterson was a bubbly, cute, dark haired beauty. By all accounts, she was a talented young woman with many friends and was a beautiful homemaker. She enjoyed being a housewife, and she loved putting together exquisite meals for her friends and family members. When you were invited to Laci’s house, you knew you were going to have a good time. And this is exactly the kind of image that Laci wanted to portray.

According to the Movies Based On True Stories Archives, Laci emulated Martha Stewart, and other shows that encouraged women to be the perfect homemakers. Impressing her friends with her beautifully organized Modesto home sure made people feel cozy, and it gave Laci lots of pride. Her husband, Scott, liked that about her, too—in the beginning.

Scott Peterson was a handsome dark-haired man who appeared to be a successful businessman. From the outside looking in, it seemed that life for the Petersons was just perfect. In reality, Laci was not was not happy with Scott. Though at times he could be charming and reassuring that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, behind the scenes, he was longing for life as a single man. Scott loved three things: money, porn, sexy women who loved lots of sex, and himself—so that makes four. see original article in new tab
More on the Scott Peterson appeal
FULL BLOWN SEX ADDICT
Scott Peterson’s ex-girlfriend sued over ‘sex addict’ book

Recovery and healing

What is Sin?

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What sin is depends on the person who is defining it for themselves. What is sin to one person may not be sin to another. My own conscience is what guides me as to whether I am committing a sin or not. If I feel guilty, truly guilty about an action then it is sin to me.

Many people suffer from false guilt at times by feeling responsible for other people’s condition. However that happens to people who feel they have way more power than they actually do. Unless I have wronged a person by literally physically or verbally disrespecting them I am not responsible for their condition. Furthermore even if I do hurt someone emotionally by my words, it is ultimately up to that person to work through their own emotions. I can’t process anyone’s emotions for them. I can’t work through your hurt for you. I can’t cry for you to get it out and I can’t let it go for you by praying to God the Serenity Prayer.

We are all responsible to process our own emotions. I can no more cry for you than I can tell you what is sin for you. Granted there are the clear cut cases of people who have no conscience and therefore have nothing to label as sin. And there are the clear cut cases of violent crimes against others that on a universal standard are easily defined as wrong. But if I am a person who can go out and kill with no guilt feelings what so ever even if I am killing the innocent, then there is no such thing as sin to me only right and wrong as defined by other people. My own conscience is what defines my sin.

“Sin” is a religious and moral term, some people have no morals in their heart, these people should abide by the law. Then there are those who feel even a cuss word is sin or masturbation or sex is sin I have one word for these people. KEEP YOUR SINS TO YOURSELF, no adult has the right to tell other respectful law abiding adults what to do. So I say bugger-off sinner.

step 12

My Seven Seconds In Hell

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My Seven Seconds In Hell Dale Garrett’s story and Mark Buckner’s story of a meth lab explosion
Dale Garrett on fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MByysaBSKU

 

 

DALE GARRETS STORY

On December 14th 2011 the meth lab I was operating blew up and set me on fire leaving me to die in my own destructive ways. But then a miracle happened- God had plans for my life and he reached down and put the flames out. I spent several months in the hospital receiving surgeries and skin grafts and then sentenced to 10 years in the Iowa state prison. I am now out on parole and doing what I feel God has called me to do- reach out to others still struggling with addictions. I have written a book about my accident and how I have found recovry with God. The book is called “My 7 Seconds in Hell the Complete Story” and is available through Amazon both online and paperback. Anyone who is experimenting with making meth I strongly urge you to check this book out. I may very well save a life. A miraculous story of survival SEE MORE…

Or just watch his testimony/his story:

Recovery and healing, What's Hot in the recovery news

Sex Addiction

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From Anonymous Sex Into the Right Body  

Huffpost On Sex Addiction

 

Eventually I landed in the hospital with a “fever of unknown origin” (FUO, the doctors called it), which lingered over 105 degrees for a week and kept me shivering under an electric cold blanket, hallucinating all the while. The following week I was right back at it, having anonymous sex as soon as I was discharged — until, sure enough, I returned to the hospital with another FUO. This time I was worried, and alone: my boss from the theater where I had started working straight out of college didn’t come to visit, as she had the first time. I was trying people’s patience; things could only get worse.

 

And then what movie aired on TV as I lay in my hospital bed but Philadelphia, in which Tom Hanks plays a lawyer who’s fired for being gay and ultimately dies of AIDS.

 

“Okay, God,” I said. “I’ll stop.”

 

But of course I didn’t. I am an addict.

 

I acted out for ever more potent highs with, paradoxically, ever more debasing behavior, so that demoralization imbued whatever self-worth I had left, until I saw myself as deserving nothing more. I began to believe what I believed other people believed about me.

 

*

 

Years and years into the cycle, reprieve would come at last in the form of recovery meetings. I needed to show up in the rooms to stay abstinent, not from sex altogether, but rather from the addictive behaviors that made my life unmanageable: phone sex, cybersex and pornography, in addition to the anonymous sex — all forms of sexual activity which were, for me, attempts to rub out the unease of being in the wrong body through forms of self-effacement.

 

The root of the problem was that I did not want to be in a male body; I never had. Anonymous sex provided an avenue for assuming the role in which I was comfortable, while covering up the longings I felt inside, if only for as long as I acted out. Since the sex was over before it began, and I never knew my partners, the underbelly of my gender dissipated upon expression. Thus I sought to suppress myself under the illusion of control.

 

But denial only exacerbated the discrepancy between my reality and my potential. The mirror of life followed me everywhere, and the shame in which addiction coated me obscured the reflections I saw.

 

Impulsion distorted any sense of self-worth, which worsened the disgrace of being unable to control my addiction. After engaging in behavior that I’d promised last time I would never do again, here I was doing the same thing once more — again, and again, and again and again — and again.

 

I ventured further into the abyss each time I acted out. Yesterday’s rush fell short of what I needed today — riskier danger, steeper precipices and more, always more. There was never enough of anything because my addiction craved annihilation above all else. Every letdown fanned the flames of the hell that life became when I acted out.

 

And yet I sought even more.

 

I wanted to stop. I promised myself I would stop.

 

I could not stop. read more…

Recovery and healing

A.A. THE CURE FOR ADDICTIONS

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THE BIG BOOK (on pg 85 and more) CLEARLY STATES THAT THE PROBLEM OF ALCOHOLISM “WILL BE REMOVED IT WILL NOT EXIST FOR US ANYMORE:  

That is provided we do a certain amount of spiritual maintenance.  I suppose technically it is a cure that requires maintenance and action.  “Cured” does not mean we can drink normally, it means now we have no desire to drink and we do not consider alcohol a solution to anything.

So why is it that people in AA so often have the attitude that they are chronically ill and will never be “recovered”.  The only CHRONIC part of this disease that cannot be healed is the allergy.  We will always get a different reaction from alcohol than normal people get.

But the real reason for the apprehension to say “cured” is that most of us have relapsed so many times before we reached AA that we feel it is a disease that we are powerless over.  And just after the paragraph where Bill W. writes “the problem has been removed it does not exist for us” he also writes “We are not cured of alcoholism.  What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

So What about this “Never Recovered” attitude?

Personally being a recovered addict/alcoholic I think it’s a negative fail-safe constructed by the addicts reasoning like..waiting for the other shoe to drop.  If we don’t accept that we are “well” then we won’t relapse because we are always working toward getting better.  Therefore hypothetically we never “rest on our laurels because we never get well enough to lighten up.  I guess the theory has it’s advantages.  This attitude is clearly akin to the fear of success and sprouts from the low self-worth that repeated relapse ingrains.  BUT NOW we rely on the program NOW we rely on God.  THE PROGRAM WORKS!  So as long as we work our program and rely on God we are good.  ANYBODY can grow into a complete and miraculous recovery if they learn the program and work on core issues.  You gotta feel to heal.

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BIG BOOK QUOTES:

We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part.  It just comes!  That is the miracle of it.  We are not fight it, neither are we avoiding temptation.  We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality–safe and protected.   We have not even sworn off.  Instead, the problem has been removed.  It does not exist for us.  We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.  That is our experience.  That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

Title Page: “ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism” (I totally agree with him on this one we absolutely do recover, at least I have.)

 

Page 20, paragraph 2: “Doubtless you are curious to discover how and why, in face of expert opinion to the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body.  (here, here!)

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SPIRITUALLY FIT

Ok then what is a “fit spiritual condition” and how do we attain it? The Program is simple not complicated, simple but not easy.   “Fit spiritual condition” does not mean I am happy all the time or my life is perfect.  I am a human with human emotions.  I did not come to AA to learn how to further repress my emotions, put on a mask of happy joyous and free, and walk around saying “life is good” every three seconds.  NO THAT IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!  Life is not good all the time and just because I am sober it doesn’t mean that it’s a good day.

If people die or get sick it sucks.  If I break my toe it sucks.  If my lover has an affair IT HURTS!  Crying is a healthy emotion to relieve emotional pain.  Tears are a sign that my emotions are balanced and I allow myself to feel what my heart is saying.  Fit spiritual condition means that I have an on-going relationship with my Higher Power and I have learned to rely on Him/Her/It.  It also means that I have worked on my core issues and learned what to do with my intense emotions when they do surface.  It means that I have worked the 12 steps and know how to implement them when I need to.  I know how to revisit step three and remember God has my back.  I know how to do a step four and five when I get a resentment.  I know how to make amends if I hurt someone.  I recognize when I am slipping into complacency or insanity so I formally work all 12 steps again.  I take time to connect with nature and I get peace from that.  I eat right and show others the respect that I desire.  The wreckage of the past must be processed I must not hold on to the worst offences.  No secrets.  We are as sick as the secrets we keep.

THE CURE

The three things that cure addiction are this= 1. therapy, working on the core issues that made me want to numb myself in the first place, 2. The 12 Steps combined with the fellowship and service work, learning and recognizing my dysfunctional patterns so I can guard against them in the now, furthermore the steps teach me humility, honesty, and more  3. spirituality= a relationship with my Higher Power to RELY on God and soak up God’s strength and Love.

Leaving out any aspect of this healing recovery recipe could result in a return to addiction, dry drunk-ism, possible eventual suicide or hurting others.

Recovery and healing, What's Hot in the recovery news

Robert Downey Jr. Speaks About His Addictions

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Robert Downey Jr. Speaks About His Addictions in and interview by Vanity Fair

Scroll:

to see video of Robert Downey Jr. at home by the pool talking about addiction and recovery.

For some folks it’s just a function of age,” Robert Downey Jr. tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Rich Cohen, on the topic of beating one’s demons. “It’s perfectly normal for people to be obsessive about something for a period of time, and then leave it alone.” When asked about the incident in 1996 in which Downey’s neighbors came home to find the actor passed out in their 11-year-old son’s bed, he tells Cohen this was “an uncommon occurrence for me. Happened to be a very public one. I was not a guy who blacked out.”  

TREATMENT CENTER AND STATE PRISON

Talking about his time at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison and the process of returning to his old life, Downey says, “Job one is get out of that cave. A lot of people do get out but don’t change. So the thing is to get out and recognize the significance of that aggressive denial of your fate, come through the crucible forged into a stronger metal. Or whatever. But I don’t even know if that was my experience. It’s funny: five years ago, I would’ve made it sound like I’m conscious of my own participation in seizing the similarities. But so many things have become less certain. I swear to God. I am not my story.” see video and read more…

 

What's Hot in the recovery news

James Taylor ‘A big part of my story is recovery from addiction’

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James Taylor: ‘A big part of my story is recovery from addiction’ By Paul Sexton

At the age of 67, James Taylor has made his 16th album, his first in 13 years. After spending his early career addicted to heroin, he’s surprised he made it this far In the center of Florence, a short walk from the Ponte Vecchio, a rangy, bespectacled figure in a baseball cap clutches a cup of coffee and slips back into his hotel unrecognized. He is perhaps the definitive singer-songwriter of his generation, he has come to represent everything noble and dignified about American artistry, and he is preparing to tell me how he is amazed to be alive.

At 67, James Taylor has an air of low-key statesmanship that most senior politicians can only aspire to. A lifelong Democrat (‘I inherit my politics from my father, and my aesthetic, probably, from my mum’), he has sung for presidents, calls Bill and Barack by their first names, and is vehemently backing Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House.  See Video at this link.
read more….

Recovery and healing

Miracle’s Do Happen

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Recovery Farmhouse wants to thank “Miss Anonymous” for this miraculous story

GET PAID FOR YOUR RECOVERY STORY

MIRACLE’S DO HAPPEN By Stacy Roach

My drinking problem started at 12 years old, drinking myself to sleep every
single night just to deal with (or not deal with) what my cousin was
doing to me every night after my parents went to bed. My mom found a
whole garbage bag full of empty Jägermeister bottles from where I was
drinking a whole bottle every night. My mom tried getting me help after
that for my alcoholism but I was nowhere near ready to receive that help.
My addiction flourished to popping pills and self-harming and still
drinking. When all of that stopped numbing me the way, I needed it to, I
started smoking meth. For a while, I smoked it socially (every weekend and
sometimes during the week). However, my addiction made it very clear
that socially was not enough… By 17 years old, I was a full-blown meth
addict. I met my first husband when I was high on meth and on a run for
more and he happened to be the dope man. Nine solid years of pure hell
started from that night on… Meth was my best friend and every time we
were even close to running out of her, we had to go chase her down for
more. My ex-husband made it as well so the search was never but a cook
away. When he went to prison, I was still on meth but needing something
more to numb me from the pain I felt from missing my husband so bad. I
was introduced to crack cocaine and was instantly hooked. Spent every
penny I had then whatever I could steal to get it. I was brutally raped
and beaten by the crack dealer in his trap house one night and my mom
found me the next morning walking, eye swollen shut and eyes lifeless
with tear stained cheeks. I didn’t want to live anymore. The cops treated
me like the criminal because I was a crackhead at a crack house and they conveniently lost my rape kit to prosecute my rapist. He walked free. I
never smoked crack again after that but my addiction spun more out of
control than ever after that… Abusing so much benzos, I lost many days,
not remembering much of anything. Just the way I wanted it. I didn’t want
to remember. I just wanted to forget. Every time I spoke to my husband on
the phone and every visit I came home from, I was balling like a baby. He
was so verbally abusive and mean to me. He blamed me for the rape. Mom
stayed up with me countless nights from the torture I was in mentally
from the rape and feeling like my husband hated me. It was all my fault.
When he got out of prison, on my birthday weekend we went to my sister
and her then boyfriends house and got drunk and high. I went in the guest
bedroom we once stayed in and passed out. I woke up to being punched in
the back of the head and him screaming at me and tearing my underwear
off. He beat me so bad that night and anally raped me. Telling me how
much I deserved it for letting the crack dealer f*ck me… What little
bit of soul I did have left, he murdered that night. My own husband raped
and beat me unconscious. I screamed and begged for help, nobody came to
my rescue… No one. I started shooting meth very soon after that. I was
also shooting and popping large quantities of opiates with it. Everyday,
we stayed on the road wheeling, dealing, and finding our next fix. The
beatings from my husband became a normal part of everyday life and
honestly, I didn’t care anymore. Just get me my next dose so I can block
it out. When I got pregnant with my oldest daughter, I was excited and
full of life for the first time in several years. I felt like I was
getting a fresh start to do things right and would finally have someone
who loved me unconditionally… I couldn’t even succeed at that. My
husband beat me throughout my pregnancy, cheated constantly and although I didn’t do meth during my pregnancy, I okayed it by taking opiates my doctor was prescribing me and I smoked weed. When she was born, she was the most beautiful little girl I had ever laid eyes on.

When I looked at her,
everything else faded. The pain, the shame, the guilt, the fear,
everything… In that moment, all I felt was love. God I loved her so
much and wanted to protect her so bad… But, I was a junkie. I loved her
as much as I was able to love her. I protected her as much as my
addiction allowed me to. She seen him beat me and choke me unconscious
so many times. She never should have seen that. She seen me high.
God, what have I done? In my addicted mind, I just used even more to
cover the guilt and shame I had. I got pregnant again… I was heavily
addicted to Spice. I did not use anything but Spice during my pregnancy
with her but I used so much of it daily. My ex-husband cheated on me with
someone very close to me during the last part of my pregnancy. When I found out, it tore me to pieces. I smoked even more Spice. I was so selfish…
When my baby was born, she cried so much. My husband swore she wasn’t his (she looks just like him) and he would scream at me and beat me when she wouldn’t quit crying, sometimes while she was still in my arms. I held
her pretty much 24/7 and the crying never stopped. It was my fault… I
used more. My parents got custody of my girls, rightfully so. They could
provide and do for them what I was nowhere near able to do at the time. I
was so sick and tired of being sick and tired. Tired of being a junkie.
Tired of him beating me. Tired of being a worthless mother. Tired of it
all… In 2013, my husband beat, raped and poisoned me. I was transported
to the best hospital in Alabama, UAB, and one of the best surgeons in the
world spent countless hours trying to keep me alive. I had to have
several blood transfusions from bleeding to death, my kidneys and
intestines had shut down and the doctors only gave me a 20% chance to
live. The odds were against me. This was it. He finally succeeded in
killing me… God wasn’t done with me yet, though. Eight weeks later,
after a very long painful fight to live, I got to go home. I had 30
something staples in my stomach and a feeding tube hanging out of my arm
to go home with… My poor mom had to get up at three and 4am every single morning to change out my feeding bag and when the home health nurses wasn’t there to nurse my wounds, my mom was doing it and bathing me. She helped save my life. The addict in me was still raging though… I ended
up going back to the very man who tried killing me. The beatings
continued and shooting dope was still my daily life. This was the
insanity of addiction… Repeating the same thing over and over expecting
different results every time. Different results never came. I finally
left my ex-husband for good, There is a protection order in place and I have been tempted but have not gone back. I still had not gotten clean YET. I would go on binges of shooting massive amounts of dope to popping opiates and benzos every day. When I was not shooting dope, I would rationalize my pill popping and drinking by telling myself it was better than shooting dope.

I had several overdoses, several detoxes also mental hospitals later and losing my family and homes. I was so miserable. Drinking enough to kill a horse from the time, I woke up until I passed out at night, popping tons of pills, smoking lots of weed and when able, still shooting up dope. I had lost my family. I had lost every home I ever had. I owned nothing anymore but a few cloths and pictures of my kids. Everything else I had sold or pawned for more drugs.
I had lost every decent relationship I had. I was completely alone in my disease.
Even when others were around me, I was still so alone. I was intoxicated
one evening and a friend of mine, who I call my guardian angel, made it
clear I needed help NOW… At the rate I was going, I would not have lived
another two weeks. I would wake up every single morning and cry, cursing
God for waking me up another day. Why wasn’t I dead?! This wonderful
friend (who I’ve never even met) called and got me into a halfway house
in Delray Beach, FL, the recovery capital of the world. I was on a plane
early the next morning and there was no looking back…

I knew I HAD to have a change. I could not keep going as I was. I did not want to keep going as I was. I stayed at the halfway a few days and the house manager got me a scholarship to one of the best rehabs in America called Palm Partners. I stayed there 40 days and that broken down girl that
walked in there was leaving a happy, healthy, strong woman ready to face
the world. I had some rough patches in the beginning but when I fully
surrendered and let God lead the way, change started happening. I soaked
in every single thing they taught me at rehab and brought back with me
some very valuable life lessons… Rehab was the best thing that is ever
happened to me in my life. I’ve had a complete physical, mental and
spiritual makeover. I am not the same woman I was several months ago.

For the first time in my life, my mom is proud of me. I have my relationship
back with my parents and my children. I have happiness in my heart
instead of hate. I am at peace now. Has it been a walk in the park? No,
some days have been hard. I lost a dear friend of mine that I was
in rehab with to this sickening insidious deadly disease within my first
week out of rehab. That was so hard! Nevertheless, God brought me through it.

All I have to do is get through 24 hours without using and each day that I do
that, I have succeeded in my goal. I get to my meetings and I do my step
work and I firmly believe in giving back to a program that’s given so
freely to me. I can honestly say my worst day sober has still been better
than my best day using. I may have been a sick girl before but today, I am
a healthy woman in recovery. Today, I am clean. Today, I am happy, joyous and free. Nobody ever said this journey would be easy but it’s so worth
it.
ANONYMOUS

Recovery and healing

It’s None of My Business What People Think of Me?

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From the time we snuggle close to our mothers breast as new-born infants till the day we lye on our death-bed we crave care and Love.   Perhaps we are praying we won’t die alone.   It is a natural and good thing to care that our friends, lovers, and  family do love us enough to be near.  Even to our neighbors who we don’t really know we hope to look good.  We dress well, and buy nice things to make us look good.   Its natural to the human condition to want to be admired.  Socially humans are built to care about their reputations and what others think of them.

It isn’t weak or demeaning to want to be loved.  On the contrary it is a natural desire to want to be desired and cared about. A “good reputation” is a valuable component of our self-esteem.

Caring what people think of us is an important human societal trait.   Social structural norms like working toward a good reputation can change the coarse of a life for the good.    To put a healthy value on what people think of us can highly impact our goals, careers, accomplishments, and the way we treat other people.  We should treat others the way we want to be treated , this ties in closely to the desire to be liked and respected.

It is when this desire runs rampant to the point of fear and obsession it isn’t good.  Fear of what people think of us moves us into unhealthy behaviors.  We don’t need to swing to a polar opposite in a struggle to overcome the fear of what people think of us by pretending we don’t care at all or by saying  “it’s none of my business what people think of me”.  Which if you don’t go to AA you probably don’t know this statement is said allot around the rooms.  It’s a coy verbal act to overcome fear.  Even the phrase “It’s none of your business” is crass and disrespectful and typically used abruptly as an angry response.  That is not the tone I want to use toward anyone.   Saying ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks of me’ supplies a false sense of superiority.

If I truly didn’t care what anyone thought of me  I may be more prone to irresponsible actions with no value of what people would say or think, no social consequences per say.  Best I keep my natural desires to please others.  Who doesn’t like to hear the words ‘I love and care for you’?  Sociopaths, folks that thrive on hate and narcissists.

Step Four AA

The Fear List

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The “FEAR LIST”  is in the Big Book in Step Four pg.67-68  If you are happy, joyous, and free don’t read any further this article is not for you.  “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

If we expect more out of the program of AA than just sobriety we will have to go deeper into our fourth step.  The fourth step in depth can cure anxiety, depression, resentment, co-dependency and fear.  Best to begin step work with a prayer for guidance and revelation.


If the pop up window doesn’t work in your browser click here for full page link.  Big Book fear list

The fear list is an important part of on-going maintenance in recovery.  The fear list is in Step Four of the big book.       Some people teach we only do step four once.   And few sponsors teach sponcees to write down fears not associated with a resentment.  For me step ten wasn’t enough until I formally worked the 12 steps at least 5 times and learned how to use a fear list.  When resentment, depression or anxiety pops up and won’t go away no matter how much service I do  I do a mini fourth step coupled with a fear-list inventory.  The purpose of the mini fourth is to hone out what my core feelings of self-image are which triggered the fear or resentment.  Once I get to the core fear/feelings I ask God to remove them it works like magic.  

Surface fears are associated with sex, security, and society.  Meaning fear of losing a girlfriend/boyfriend, not having a roof over my head or money or losing my reputation among my friends and fellow AAers.  

Root causes and feelings go even deeper than that, they are the ones that most often we WILL NOT ADMIT MUCH LESS ADMIT TO OTHERS.  Core issues that drive fears are anchored in inferiority, unworthy feelings and low self image and are usually a little illogical, often we dismiss them by intellect.  

But the heart does not have to be logical.   Our heart needs to be heard or at least acknowledged.  It’s quite natural for an addict to feel inferior, unworthy, bad, wrong, ugly, gross, pitiful at the core of our being. Not just addicts, it is often the human condition.   It’s not our fault, we were  taught who we are at a young age it sticks in our heart until it can be released by a fear list or confession.   If  a shameful human condition weren’t common the world would not be in chaos and disarray.  When we feel high self-worth and are trusting God we are not prone to fear, anxiety, anger and depression.  Emotional balance depends on a healthy self-identity.  

SOLUTION:   First do the regular step four and five.  Then GET TO THE CORE FEELINGS ATTACHED TO THE FEARS on your list AND ASK GOD TO REMOVE THEM all.  Apologize to our Higher Power for our lack of trust and ask for help with that.   Confess to someone the way we feel no matter how illogical or even un-true those feelings are, they come from a valid place, our heart which is only guilty of believing what it was taught.

Disclaimer:  This does not apply to everyone.  This is mainly for those of us who were traumatized, neglected, and abused when we were children or young adults.

secondary addictions, STEP 10

PLEASE NO MORE FEELINGS!

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Which Feelings Need Addressing is Step 10 enough?

I woke up in the middle of the night with an intense feeling of impending doom. I felt like I was somehow in a position where I had no safety. I felt like I was dangling miles high in the air with no safety net. In my heart and mind I must be putting my wellbeing in the hands of the wrong thing. It is not uncommon to sub-consciously put our faith into a cigarette or a pill while in recovery from a traumatic addiction. When in that addiction our neuro-pathways had been trained to take the direction where drinking is a solution. Sometimes in recovery our brain takes a wrong turn if you will. All we need do is put our faith back on the right neuro-road where we depend on our spiritual God rather than a person, place, or earthly thing.

When I was a very young child I remember having an intense realization that one day I would die. It frightened me because there is no earthly solution for death. It prompted me to seek and connect with my Higher Power.

When I experience impending doom all I have to do is pray and tell my Higher Power how I feel (fear) and remember that He/She/It does have my back and the feeling of fear will leave me. Maybe it was the prospect of death itself that haunted me. Perhaps I had awoken from a nightmare that I don’t remember. Do I need to write a fear list? If the feeling does not let-up by prayer alone then “Yes” back to Step Four!

The fear list is an important part of our on-going maintenance in sobriety. You will find the directions for it in Step Four of the big book. “But that’s Step Four I should be over that!”….So some say. However my experience is in the matter of emotional sobriety and overcoming grave emotional disorder I revisit the fourth step as often as needed and Step Ten is far from enough maintenance to keep my emotions in check.

In Step Ten the book reads that we are pretty much cured of regarding drink & drug as a solution, this is true to any extent. “The problem has been removed, it does not exist for us.” However emotions and emotional sobriety are another matter, if I don’t stay emotionally balanced I will eventually see alcohol as a solution. Absolutely we do “recoil” from alcohol if we work the steps but will we “recoil” from being self-destructive or hurting others? Or will we just switch to another self-destructive habit?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

STEP TEN-“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

This is a very limited prospect of which is useless without the rest of the 12 steps.

Step ten works good enough for a quick apology or when simple self-acknowledgement of a defect then a little prayer will resolve resentment, shame, guilt or fear but if it doesn’t rectify my deep negative feelings a little more work may be necessary even though I have worked the steps thoroughly. Truly Step Ten is not much of anything without the rest of the 12 Steps actively in place in our lives. Furthermore without prayer and meditation we are usually not spiritually fit enough to take our own inventory anyway.

Do I have any unresolved resentments I ask myself? If so I need to pray for that person and if that doesn’t work I do a step four and five including “my part” and not eliminating “wrongs done to me” and how both of those have made me feel. If it brings up deep feelings I let myself feel them and I cry.

If I have a reoccurring memory of an event in my past and it is attached to an intense feeling; that is when prayer is not usually enough. That does not mean I don’t pray. It just means that there is something in my past that I need to explore with an empathic listener who can hopefully relate to the event. I write down what happened. Have I wronged anyone? Do I feel guilt or shame? Remember our heart does not have to make sense it just needs to express itself, raw, & without editing. I share my feelings with a listener whom will neither shut me down, shame me, nor invalidate me for my feelings.

Staying disconnected from our feelings is an old survival skill that worked. To truly process core feelings we need to connect with them 100% and write, cry, scream, talk, moan, run, or even punch (the bag, pillow) them out.

Let’s face it folks some AA, NA members are in the business of invalidation. These members will always look for the differences instead of the similarities. Furthermore they will look for the “wrong” in anything you propose to them. This may work for some people…but blame is a principle of co-dependency not a principle of healing in recovery.

Do I feel dirty, wrong, and bad? We must not allow our intellect to cloud our fourth step by invalidation. Admitting core feelings like “bad, dirty, wrong, disgusting, or cheap sounds embarrassing but these are the common human feelings that surface after living an addicted life. These deep feelings need to come out or they will make us sick. Let’s face it not only have most of us crossed our own moral boundaries when in addiction but we also have core issues that need addressing from childhood. Oftentimes adults taught us that we were just plain “wrong” and that we don’t even have a right to be who we are and feel how we feel.

Remember we in recovery usually reach out for some secondary dependencies or lesser addictions when we get sober. You won’t hear it talked about in the rooms much but that’ what we do.

There are two kinds of people in AA those who struggle and admit it and those who struggle and don’t talk about it. We certainly don’t struggle at all times and we do reach a place of peace if we work the steps but we are never finished doing the work while human and alive.

Do not be too hard on yourself for that is a character defect within itself! Come on folks! We are all doing the best we can for right now. From what I have experienced in Narcotics Anonymous the way they sometimes ostracize fellows for secondary addictions it feeds into the sickness of keeping secrets, repressing emotions, and feeds our shame issues. Some groups forbid members to chair meetings if they are on much needed psyche meds or pain meds even non-narcotic meds. Intolerance and a lack of acceptance for others and their personal medicinal status is just that…a lack of understanding and empathy.

In recovery we often struggle with sick relationships (co-dependency), cigarettes, food, sexual promiscuity, anger issues, even your non-narcotic prescription drugs…nevertheless we are doing way better than we were before AA and the 12 steps. Do not think that your recovery is counterfeit if you struggle with one of these? Believe me we all struggle at times. You will find that when one of us overcomes ALL of our little crutches we then become highly judgmental, and our control issues hit their highest peaks. It’s always something! Not a justification just fact. Best we accept ourselves and other as human and remember “OUT OF THE PROBLEM INTO THE SOLUTION”!

HEALTH, parasites, science, worms

Parasites-Evil or Good?

Omg. Have you heard of the Parasitic wasp that only preys on Cockroaches? It paralyzes the roach and literally makes the roach his bitch till the babies bust out of the stomach, kind of like “Alien”. Check it out. “In Defense of Cheats” .  You guys must listen to these radio shows. The middle one may be the whole show (not sure) Start with that one cause it’s the beginning. Who knew that hook worms can cure diseases. And the story of the parasitic wasp that preys on roaches is out of this world crazy! I have discovered “SCIENCE LAB” on NPR Radio it’s awesome, very educational and entertaining at the same time.

Here’s the link to the actual page for more info if you like: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91689-parasites/

Sculptors of Monumental Narrative-The Hookworm Cure

Beginning of show, Listen here first.

Have you heard of the “Parasitic Wasp” who preys only on Roaches?

 

We pay tribute to the ingenious (and stomach-churning) ways that parasites hook up with hosts in our Parasites episode. Case in point: the parasitic nematode, which turns an ant’s rear end into a ripe-looking red morsel that, to a hungry bird, looks like a juicy berry.

Recovery and healing

Wells Fargo is Being Hacked I Have Proof

I apologize to everyone that the proof I had mysteriously disappeared from my files so I deleted the webpage.  However if you have questions just email me at edgarlaura826@yahoo.com

I will say this.  Wells fargo posts to “pending transactions” first at which time the money is deducted from your balance.  Then once the authorization and transaction have been completed the “pending transaction” disappears and is placed just below in “posted transactions”.

The way I was being hacked was this; Once a legit charge of mine went from pending to posted it would then disappear from posted.  Then it would reappear in pending as a new charge and the process would start again.   The money would be deducted a second time.  The only difference was the date of the authorization had changed to 24 hrs later.  And the routing numbers which the money is sent to of course would go to the hackers.  So the only way to verify weather I was hacked or not is by the date and the routing numbers which only Wells Fargo has.  I feel I should have access to any banks routing numbers if I am sending them money.  I shouldn’t have to call Wells Fargo to verify that what says is “Wal-mart” is in fact a “Walmart” bank account.  Just because it says it’s Walmart doesn’t mean the money is actually being sent to a Wal-mart bank account.  This is a duplicate charge except the money goes to a different place.  I cannot believe Wells Fargo doesn’t have safe guards against sending money to an account that says “Walmart” yet is actually Joe Hacker.

Recovery and healing

What is TOXIC SHAME?

What is TOXIC SHAME?

Although shame is a form of fear “fear of people” to be precise, coupled with a deep inferiority complex.  I believe all addiction is fear based but there are different varieties of embedded fear.  Not all fear relates to other people.

Step Six Twelve & Twelve

“If we would gain any real advantage in the use of this Step on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to make a brand new venture into open-mindedness.”  Bill W

I have experienced the freedom of releasing my own shame by the Grace of God & being given the opportunity to incorporate group addiction-therapy with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Experience, Strength, and Hope

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