Monthly Archives: May 2008

How To Remain Un-Memorialized on Memorial Day

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Memorial Day Weekend is the official beginning of the Summer season in the US, where it’s traditional to eat, drink and be merry, get outdoors, get sunburned, and enjoy various other excesses.

For those of us in the Sun Belt, it’s also officially the weekend that the snowbirds finish their northerly migration and we get our streets, supermarkets and beaches back for about four months. Anyone who spends June through September in South Florida has either to be a native, underprivileged retiree or persona non grata above the northern border of South Carolina. No one else is dumb enough to put up with our weather. (And yes, I do fall into one of those categories. Y’all will just have to figure out which one.)

And of course, for a notable number, it’s one of the hot summer excuses for getting squashed, fried, pickled, or embalmed (pick one or add your own). Memorial Day was always one of my favorites, and if you’re in recovery you may by now have remembered some of the shenanigans with which we came close to getting memorialized ourselves.

Can you say “Trigger?” Continue reading →

Examining alcoholism and madness in literature and film

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Here’s a statistic you won’t pick up in English 101: Of eight native-born Americans awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, five were alcoholics, including Sinclair Lewis and Eugene O’Neill.

“Alcohol is a factor if not the central focus of the three top modern novelists – Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald,” says Michael Carolan, an M.F.A. candidate and instructor at the University of Massachusetts. “As novelists they were addressing how man lived in the 20th century, and the answer was, ‘through drinking.’ ”

Examining alcoholism and madness in literature and film

The Psychology of Cyberspace – Computer and Cyberspace Addiction

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A heated debate is rising among psychologists. With the explosion of excitement about the internet, some people seem to be a bit too excited. Some people spend way too much time there. Is this yet ANOTHER type of addiction that has invaded the human psyche?

The Psychology of Cyberspace – Computer and Cyberspace Addiction

The Second Road

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Here’s the deal. I just finished the second draft of my second book, which has the working title, God Is. Now What? It’s basically about having a working faith in God outside of the confines of organized religion. The manuscript is up at my agents, but I’m frankly hungry for feedback. Below is a piece of the “Note,” which opens things up. I’d love to hear reactions just to this tiny portion. What I’m trying to do is be part of what I see as a change in our conversation about faith.

Bouncing Off The Bottom

Hooked on a feelin’

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LOVE addiction might sound fun and exciting, but the truth is the condition might be at the heart of thousands of failed relationships.

Rooted in childhood abandonment and shame, Love Addiction sees sufferers using denial as a protective, coping mechanism and become reliant on fantasy to escape the reality of their relationships. Are you hooked on a feeling? – The Daily Record

Love Addicts Anonymous

I AM NOT A FOOD ADDICT! …am not…am not…am not………. — by Bill

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Of all the addictions, food has to be one of the most elusive. Let’s face it: we don’t really need tobacco, heroin, cocaine, booze, shopping, sex, religion and so forth in order to survive — although we may think we do. It’s hard to convince an addict who’s shaking it off cold turkey, or an alcoholic who’s in the midst of an unsupervised detox*, but people do survive these things every day and, despite how it may feel, no one is going to die if he doesn’t get laid today.

Food — well, that’s a different issue. Continue reading →

Recovery Café helps fill the inner emptiness

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AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA tore the roof off her fifth-floor apartment in Miami, Cora wanted to get as far from Florida as she could. She left her job at a nursing home and caught a bus for Seattle.

During the five-day trip, her money and credit cards were stolen. On arriving, Cora found a bed at a homeless shelter. She found something else there as well — temptation. Once an addict, Cora had kicked her habit years before. But now drugs were all around her. Hurricane and homelessness might have triggered a relapse if Cora hadn’t found her way to Recovery Café. Recovery Café helps fill the inner emptiness

No more happy hour in France — Telegraph

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France is planning to ban happy hours in bars in a bid to stem the rise of “le binge drinking”, until recently seen as a uniquely British problem.

The government proposals follow calls from doctors and politicians to tackle excessive alcohol consumption. France to ban happy hours

Interesting approach. Guess they’ll have to get plastered at home.

Twelve Steps …

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Prairie Preacher: Twelve Steps …

I had a friend who once spoke of the Twelve Step Two Step … he noted that it is too easy for recovering addicts to take the first and the last step of the 12 Step Programme and skip the 10 steps in between … we spent many an hour discussing the implications and the transformative power of engaging and living ALL 12 steps one careful step at a time.

I’ve always thought the challenging steps are the Fourth and the Eighth.

The fourth step being: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

And the eight being: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” …

Bill comments:

A proper amends involves the three elements of the old Talmudic reparations: Responsibility, Regret and Repair.

  • I must admit and accept responsibility for what I did. I may not say, “I’m sorry but…” or make excuses. The purpose of amends is not to create a balance; rather, it is to right a wrong and repair a relationship — not the same thing.
  • I must then look the other person in the eye and say, “I’m sorry,” and mean it.
  • Finally, I must inquire what I can do to try to right the wrong, if it is not obvious, and make an genuine effort to do the next right thing, whatever it may be. Furthermore, I must carry through with it.

These efforts may lead to a reconciliation, or to total rebuff. That doesn’t matter. I am doing them for my peace of mind and the cleansing of my spirit, not for the other person.

Hi, My name is Bill.

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My sobriety date is September 14th, 1989.

I’ve been writing about recovery in a variety of places for some years. A couple of years ago I started a blog related to Buddhism — my own path toward spirituality (as opposed to religion) — and incorporated a bunch of articles and essays that I’d written as sort of a sideline. Those pages have gotten a bunch of hits, and a couple of the articles are quite popular around the Web, especially the one on Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS).

It has always bothered me, though, that the recovery stuff was relegated to a inner page of the site, and that it wasn’t in a location that could easily be found by anyone who was interested in addiction and alcoholism. Information like that saved my life, and might well have gotten me into treatment sooner had I known about things like the disease concept and similar matters.

Finally I determined to get the links out where they could be found. More…