In my own case, I knew it some time before I got clean and sober, but I just didn’t think it was possible. I knew what happened if I went even for short periods without alcohol or a substitute, and there was no way (that I could see) to quit. But did I want to be free? Oh yes, desperately!
Read more… Sunrise Detox Blog
Therapists use a variety of tools to help newcomers and those formerly sober folks who felt the need to do some additional field work. One therapist I know likes to use the concept of the AA “Askit Basket”, adapted to a mixed group of alcoholics and other addicts, where participants put anonymous question slips into a basket or jar, and then the group uses them at random to stimulate discussions. With the permission of the group, she passes the anonymous questions on to me, and I try to craft explanations for a wider audience.
Lately there have been a lot of questions about sponsors and sponsorship, so I thought I’d devote a couple of posts to questions about that important subject. Read more at the blog…
As wired as I am, spending hours a day online, working on a computer, a smartphone with me 24/7, I still find myself oddly resistant to some of the cutting edge aids to recovery. I understand how the old-timers feel when they say “all I needed was the (whatever), and that’s all anyone needs now,” and speeches to that effect.
And yet, I’m committed in my own way to “cyber-recovery,” as is apparent from what I do. I have to remind myself that the digital natives look at the world differently than us digital immigrants who learned to type on typewriters — and, in my case, not even an electric. They communicate differently, relate to the outside world differently, have different kinds of relationships, and are in touch with each other and the rest of the world with a scope that was unimaginable when I was their age back in the 1950′s and ’60′s.
Researchers now tell us that our grandchildren have begun to think differently than any other humans in history. They are restructuring our language, our ideas of community, and doubtless their own concepts of self. It is totally unreasonable to think that they won’t recover differently, using different resources, or to assume that they will not do so as successfully as my generation or that of their parents.
So us old-timers need to understand that we are dealing with an evolving species. If we’re not to be left in the dust of their changing worldview and thought processes, we need to force ourselves to understand and admit that we don’t have all the answers. In fact, when it comes to these newcomers, if we don’t keep up we are likely to be left behind entirely.
There is absolutely no reason why addicts shouldn’t attend AA meetings. However, AA has traditions that are important to the fellowship and to many of the members. One of those is that they generally confine their discussions to alcoholism and recovery from alcoholism….
http://sunrisedetox.com/blog/2012/03/29/addict-aa-recovery-addiction-alcoholism/
Glamorous tales abound of high-rollers losing millions in a night, but the sad truth is most gambling addicts go bankrupt one scratch card at a time.
http://www.thefix.com/content/scratch-card-gambling-addiction7901
One of the first things we hear in recovery, both in treatment and around the rooms of the support groups, is “No new relationships in the first year.” If it’s not one of the first things we hear, it’s certainly one of the first things that get our attention.
That’s hardly surprising. Emotions that have been suppressed by alcohol and other drugs are suddenly bubbling to the surface with none of the edges knocked off. Add to that the fact that we’re feeling at loose ends, with all that time on our hands that we formerly spent using, and the fact that we really don’t want to face life directly yet, and we’re ripe for distraction. Since rehab romances are one of the most common issues in early recovery, it crosses our minds, “Why not, as long as the other person is in recovery too? We’ll have so much in common!” Read more..
Bill Wilson, ca. 1939 - The Fix
Bill Wilson was no saint. He smoked like a chimney and acted like a pig—cheating on his loyal wife and demanding a glass of whisky on his deathbed. Working with him was sometimes so difficult that decades after his death, many colleagues were still angry at his behavior. The January 1971 nurse’s logs for his last days at Stepping Stones, the house in Bedford Hills he shared with his wife, Lois, show an unhappy man struggling for breath—he was dying of emphysema—who repeatedly asked for a drink and was irritated when he didn’t get one.
And yet. If there is a special place in heaven reserved for those who permanently change the world for the better, Bill W. is certainly there.
Read more: http://www.thefix.com/content/in-search-of-the-real-bill-w8998
Previously we mentioned that the pleasure center is a portion of the brain over which we have no conscious control, and that it can be stimulated by a variety of chemicals — some of them produced inside our bodies and some that we introduce from outside. We said that the pleasure center rewards us for activities that it interprets as contributing in some way to our survival, whether they be social interactions, exercising, or more prosaic things such as eating. We also stated that these pleasurable feelings, when pursued too far or for too long can create problems. Now we need to examine how that happens….
http://sunrisedetox.com/blog/2011/08/24/addiction-alcoholism-compulsion-2/
Both of my faithful readers will by now have noticed that I’m not posting very regularly on this site. It’s not though lack of interest, and I didn’t relapse (in fact, I just celebrated my 21st sober anniversary on 9/14/10).
Thing is, I’ve taken a part-time job writing for a recovery site, and I don’t have time to maintain both blogs. Since the other (paid) job covers the same territory, and since I have the potential to reach more people, it was a no-brainer. I’ll continue to post here from time to time, but it will be irregular at best.
I invite you all to subscribe to my posts at the Sunrise Detox Blog. (Click the thingy at the bottom left of the page.) Thanks for visiting WhatMeSober.Com, and thanks for your interest.
Keep on keepin’ on,
Bill
I’d like to thank all my friends for their help over the years. You know who you are. Seven thousand, six hundred and seventy days! (But who’s counting?)
All 12-step programs use some variation of the following as their first step: “We admitted we were powerless over (insert addiction here)–that our lives had become unmanageable.” Many of us had trouble admitting to ourselves that we were powerless, and in some cases were unable to come to terms with the idea that our lives were unmanageable. So here’s as simple an explanation as I can come up with.
http://sunrisedetox.com/blog/2010/08/27/the-first-step-is-no-theory-part-1/
Want to know why relationships are the number one cause of relapse?
Of course you don’t. But here’s the reason, anyway:
…love is comparable to a drug addiction: It activates the parts of the brain associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings, according to new research from Stony Brook University.
Researchers were able to show a connection between romantic rejection and a cocaine craving via brain images….
So…we fall in lust, our addiction center is stimulated again, something goes a little bit wrong — or we feel the need to celebrate — and boom, there’s Mrs. Jones.
Why Breaking Up Hurts: Similar to Addiction, Says Study – TIME
Say you’re a college student who was recently dumped by the person you thought was the One. You’re moping around campus in your I’ve-given-up sweatpants and eating crappy comfort food when you come across a flyer seeking people who are still pining for their exes. You think, at last, someone to talk to!
Well, not exactly. When about 15 sad sacks responded to the flyers, which had been distributed around the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Rutgers University, they discovered they were actually being invited to take part in a psychological study: researchers wanted to gauge the kind of pain felt by people on the business end of a breakup.
The corollary to these findings, that the early lust of a new relationship has qualities almost identical to addiction, is old news to addiction specialists. It also helps to explain why relationships are the number-one cause of relapse. They render us incapable of thinking about other, more realistic issues.
On Dec. 14, 1934, a failed stockbroker named Bill Wilson was struggling with alcoholism at a New York City detox center. It was his fourth stay at the center and nothing had worked. This time, he tried a remedy called the belladonna cure — infusions of a hallucinogenic drug made from a poisonous plant — and he consulted a friend named Ebby Thacher, who told him to give up drinking and give his life over to the service of God.
Wilson was not a believer, but, later that night, at the end of his rope, he called out in his hospital room: “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything. Anything!”
As Wilson described it, a white light suffused his room and the presence of God appeared. “It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing,” he testified later. “And then it burst upon me that I was a free man.”
Wilson never touched alcohol again….
