Thirty Wonderful Years and Still Going

When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me.

-- Mary Karr

Fight or flight...

or

Flow!

Fight against the negatives

Flee the hopelessness

Flow with life itself.

Go with it.

Embrace your shortcomings,

knowing they can lead you to something greater. 

Trust that life can be different.

That says it all- one day at a time!

Saint Day for an Addict Who Kept Showing Up

He was an opium addict who couldn’t receive the sacraments. But he’s a martyr and a saint.

St. Mark Ji Tianxiang was an opium addict. He died an addict. But he didn't die from his addiction. He died a martyr. He was a respected doctor who treated himself with opium and then got hooked. He went to confession, but couldn't stay clean. He kept trying but was eventually forbidden from taking the sacrament since he obviously wasn't serious or he would have been able to remain sober. (No one knew of the disease in those days. It was a shameful, moral failing.)

When the Boxer rebellion occurred in 1900 he ended up imprisoned with his family as many other Christians were. He begged his executioner to allow him to be killed last so none of his family would die alone. And yes, he was finally released from his addiction.

On the website Aleteia, Meg Hunter-Kilmer wrote:

St. Mark Ji Tianxiang is a beautiful witness to the grace of God constantly at work in the most hidden ways, to God’s ability to make great saints of the most unlikely among us, and to the grace poured out on those who remain faithful when it seems even the Church herself is driving them away.

On July 9, the feast of St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, let’s ask his intercession for all addicts and for all those who are unable to receive the sacraments, that they may have the courage to be faithful to the Church and that they may always grow in their love for and trust in the Lord.

Question: "If you had a magic pill that would cure your alcoholism or addiction, what would it do?"

Answer: Give me my life back.

No one said it would allow them to use without consequences. This is a disease and it would never allow that to happen.

Obvious next statement: There may not be a pill, but being in recovery will do the same thing.

The Problem with the Biggest Losers

Three years ago a group of us at work did our own version of "The Biggest Loser," the popular TV reality show that gets highly obese people to lose a lot of weight. None of us were at the level of obesity seen on TV. Some of us even had a relatively healthy habit of exercise when we started the competition. We did all need to lose weight, though.

Over the next several months we did our weigh-ins and kept doing whatever we each wanted to do to lose the weight. I cut back my sugar consumption, added a boost to my exercise, and counted calories. I was successful. I placed second in the group. I had started at 211 and, over the two months I lost around 25 pounds. I continued on my regimen. By November 2013 I was at 176 pounds.

Two things happened then.

1- I semi-retired and got out of what had been an almost daily six-year habit of exercise because I was no longer working every day.
2- I had a minor surgery that slowed me down a little.

The results:

• By March 2014 I was consistently above 185: +10 pounds in 4 months.
• I went over 190 for the first time in mid-year 2014.
• By May 2015 it was 203.
• My cholesterol and blood sugar crept back up to borderline levels by Fall 2015
• I peaked in March 2016 at 214. Back up 38 pounds. 

With all this in mind I saw the news articles last week on a study of "Biggest Loser" TV participants:

"Biggest Loser" study: Why keeping weight off is so hard

Here's a little bit as reported by CBS News:

It's well known among obesity experts that when people lose weight, their resting metabolic rate slows, meaning they burn fewer calories while at rest. Their rate is often slower than it would be compared to other people of the same size who hadn't lost a lot of weight.

"The phenomenon is called 'metabolic adaptation' or 'adaptive thermogenesis,' and it acts to counter weight loss and is thought to contribute to weight regain," wrote the authors, researchers from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland.

To learn more, using blood, urine and other tests, they calculated the resting metabolic rate and body composition changes in Season 8 contestants six years after the end of the weight loss competition.

The results are both shocking and not surprising with even the small, personal anecdotal evidence in my own situation:

...only one of the 14 contestants succeeded in maintaining their slimmer weight. The rest regained a significant amount of the weight lost during the competition, and their resting metabolic rates (RMR) remained unusually low.

And obesity experts said it supports previous research and what they've seen in their patient populations -- that it's really hard for people who've been obese and then lose a lot of weight to maintain their lower weight, or to lose weight again after they've buoyed back up to a higher weight.

Yep!

I know I have faced the problem talked about above. Along with the medical findings I have seen two other factors involved:

• Judgement of others who wonder why you can't exercise will-power. This breeds our own self-esteem issues as we buy into it. We wonder why we are so weak and powerless.Then the second factor kicks in:
• Instant gratification. We want to lose the weight quickly. We can't be patient and let it be a slow, daily process. That is partly because slow daily progress only shows up in the long-term, the big picture that few of us are able to sustain.

In the end we become losers at being The Loser.

It may very well be that we have been pursuing the wrong goals or missing some important points. Back to the news articles:

Dr. William Yancy, director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, said "The Biggest Loser" perpetuates the idea that the recipe for weight loss is simple: diet and exercise and you can drop the weight. But he said the study helps show how much more complicated an equation it is to keep the weight off for the long term.

"There's that constant mentality that if you diet and exercise to lose weight it can be fixed. But it's a lifelong challenge and we've struggled really hard to make it be seen like diabetes, that it [obesity] needs to be treated like a chronic illness," said Yancy.

He said that he's seen people manage to keep the weight off when they've approached obesity with the attitude that it's a chronic illness.

Yes, I realize the danger in making everything into a "disease" or "illness." That can easily become a cop-out, a reason to give up and just keep on eating and gaining. It is the issue that I have faced every day for the last 27+ years with addiction and alcoholism, both personally in recovery and professionally as a counselor. It can lead to a denial of responsibility and a fatalism that can be truly fatal.

What if our ability to lose weight and keep it off IS an illness? Well, I don't know the details of how that works, per se, but I do know how it works with addiction. As a result I also know that there is a key element that we need to bear in mind.

Responsibility. I am not a victim of my disease.

As a recovering person I have the responsibility (!) of daily managing my disease of addiction. I have to:

• take responsibility for the actions I take each day 
• live in a way that allows for daily management of my symptoms and
• be willing to change my lifestyle to deal with the symptoms and the consequences of my disease.

This could be a description of the disease of not being able to keep the weight off, a disease that could be called pre-obesity or food-ism. I have to give it a name that is meaningful to me and describes my situation. Borderline obesity and borderline diabetes could be my description of it in my situation. It is not a disease of will-power. It is, as indicated above in the studies of the Biggest Loser participants, a disease of metabolism. Just losing the weight doesn't change the metabolic system very quickly, if at all.

I am not sure at this point where all this takes me. I can, however, begin to apply what I know about addiction and see if it works. Things like "turning it over" and daily prayer and meditation. It could be things like awareness of triggers and urges- cravings- and the many ways I have discovered and used over 27 years to deal with chemical cravings. It may be as basic (though not simple) as "easy does it" and "one day at a time."

• For today I will practice a different lifestyle.
• For today I will be aware of the urges to eat in unhealthy ways
• For today I will ask for help and support to deal with stressors
• For today I will be grateful for the healthy opportunities ahead of me
• For today I will be good to myself, not allowing my impatience to overcome my daily movement toward health.

There are probably more that I could add. But that's a start.


Link to CBS News article referenced above.

More Distance of Miles

I have obviously been thinking a great deal about the legacy of Miles Davis this past few weeks. I read his autobiography and have been digging into the making of his seminal album, Kind of Blue. He died in 1991 after making more innovations in jazz music than anyone except maybe Louis Armstrong. Even Ellington did not go as far as Davis went in changing the music. His influence on jazz (and hence American music) in the 2nd half of the 20th Century is beyond description.

Underneath all the change and innovations and legacy lie several pieces that are of interest as well. The first is his up and down wrestling with addiction. He was a heroin addict, used cocaine and pain pills for many years, even long after kicking heroin. He had alcohol problems but they were pale in comparison to the broader addiction issues. He was not alone in the heroin habit, of course. It was epidemic in the jazz world he inhabited. He fought it; he was clean and then he would do the things that addicts often do, believe they could handle it. So he would keep on drinking or using cocaine, "socially" of course. It never worked as he would spiral backwards.

Perhaps it is amazing that he managed to accomplish as much as he did. Unlike many of the others so hooked, he did not die young. He lived out his potential, although I wonder what it might have been like if he had managed to completely kick the addictions? He never said that his drugs helped him be creative. He was not stupid; he was an addict in a time and place that did not understand the disease and its ability to control the brain. I began working toward my addiction counseling license the year Davis died and we knew next to nothing compared to what we know today.

The second part of Davis' compulsive side was his inability to maintain healthy relations with women. He was not monogamous and probably never even tried. He kept looking for something that he was unable to experience, love and stability. Some of that was his endless curiosity and creativity that encompassed everything. He was guided, even imprisoned by his sexual needs and searching. This, we know today, as having the same roots as addiction. The process of the human brain is biochemical, regulated- and dysregulated- by neurochemicals that carry everything from memories to pleasure, fear to ecstasy. Davis' relationships were almost as controlling of his life as his addictions. He admits that his use of drugs did get in the way of his sexual drive. Not a surprise.

This side did not have the kind of periodic impact on his creativity that addiction did. Addiction is powerful, overwhelming, and ultimately in complete control. That did prevent him at times from performing to the level he could have.

In that way, Davis' story is a cautionary tale. There are those who, in spite of incredible personal dysfunction, can change the world. (Steve Jobs' narcissistic, even anti-social personality comes to mind.) As I have been reading these different accounts of his music and accomplishments I have at times been in awe of what he was able to do. He was a genius who heard what he wanted in his head and moved with it. He was able to pick out people who would work within the framework he dreamed of. He turned many of them into music leaders in their own right.

I was also deeply saddened by many aspects of his story. Some of it- perhaps even most of it- was beyond his control. That's the old idea of powerlessness found in the recovery community. He was unable to ever see that. But that was also why he was as creative and innovative as he was. He refused to be told that something wasn't possible- that it was beyond his ability or control.

The paradox of a person like Miles Davis, then, is that tension that for many a lesser person will drive them into an early grave. He was who he was and for that the world has been given insights and music that the lesser person would never have been able to give.

A Quick Thought

In my reading recently I have found a lot of research about how the brain works efficiently- and often- not so efficiently. For lots of evolutionary reasons our brains respond to novelty. We react to wanting new things and getting a rush (of dopamine, often) in response.

Interestingly, many of the reasons for this evolutionary development no longer hold true. We don't need to remember the exciting things in order to survive (i.e. where that great food was located.) Now we can just look at our credit card receipts.

But the reaction is still there. Evolution doesn't move fast enough considering we are very, very recently out of that kind of survival mode.

Which brings me to the cellphone, the Internet and Facebook.  Do you find yourself refreshing your Facebook feed every few minutes? Do you react automatically and reach for the phone when that little *ping* announces a new text?

Well, the *ping* causes dopamine to be released. Pleasure. Excitement. Reach for the phone. I was sitting next to a young woman who kept her phone in the top of her high boots. Even in the midst of other things happening, I knew when her phone went off. Not because I heard it, she had it on *buzz*. But because she reacted. With the automatic reaction of her hand going instantly to reach for the phone. Instantly. No matter what she was doing or what was happening around her.

That, of course, is why the cellphone has become even more dangerous than drinking and driving. The *ping* or the *buzz* releases the dopamine that distracts us, no matter how much we think it doesn't. It is instantaneous. Even more so than the ADD reaction of


It is quite frightening how much is does impact all  of us. All  of us!!!

So,


Oops. I gotta go- there's news on Facebook I have to check.

Is It Over?

Black Friday (and whatever you want to call Thursday other than Thanksgiving) are now past for another year. Time for the war on Christmas to begin.

(Removing tongue from cheek.)

What a load of baloney!

I think Pope Francis is on to something important about our culture. We are materialistic; our financial health is based on buying more than we did last year so profits go higher this year than they did last year. And if the sales don't increase, well, just raise the price before you discount it so the new, cheaper price is the same as last year's old regular price.

Make sense?

Yes, I agree that growth is important- stagnation of anything, including economies, can be harmful. But when the push for more and more overcomes common sense and the importance of saving and planning, perhaps it has gone too far.

Unrestricted growth, unplanned and unmanaged growth, is what happens in our bodies when cancer occurs.

I have a hunch there is a parallel there.

No, I am not Scrooge. I have this addiction to the newer and better, too. I am in many ways an early adopter. I keep reading the Best Buy ads for what I want next in computer tech, smart TVs and camera accessories. But then I think of all those "newest and best" that I have bought over the years that are now long gone into trash and landfills.

Sure they were worth it and with some exceptions (leisure suits, for example) are not regretted. I am simply thinking about a little restraint, not the rush to madness we see every year on Black Friday. Governmental management is not the answer, but somehow to get to a point where we as a nation are able to make sensible judgements about our finances and futures without making or materialistic addiction so visible.

Changing the Laguage

This came across my Facebook feed today about language and addiction. It was in the Science of Us section of New York Magazine online.

Think of the words and phrases we use to describe drug and alcohol addiction: “clean and sober,” “addicts,” “junkies.” It’s a vocabulary loaded with moralistic connotations. This isn’t good, argue the authors of a new editorial in the journal Substance Abuse, because the use of those terms can inadvertently lay the blame solely on the behavior of the person with the drug or alcohol addiction. And when people struggling with addiction internalize that attitude, it can undermine recovery.
-Link

My first thought was it reminded me of language usage 30 years ago as the AIDS epidemic was just ramping up and becoming really scary. The general phrase "AIDS victims" was often used at first. Then the AIDS activists decided that gave a bad morale to the individuals with HIV/AIDS. From then on it became "People with AIDS" or PWAs. It worked so well that I had to stop for a moment to even remember what we used before PWA. It also changed the face of AIDS in the country, most prominently for the people with AIDS themselves.

Victims is not what we want to make people with a disease feel like. That can engender self-pity, ongoing victimization,hopelessness.

I then put the two thoughts together in my head and realized the power of that insight. Dirty -vs.- clean? Drunks and junkies -vs.- people with addiction? The article even goes on to talk about the results of urine drug screens. For many years the phrase has been, a "dirty urine." (As if there is such a thing as "clean urine?") It is the difference language places on things. Dirty is bad- inherently bad. It is a negative state of being.

We have been working for years to change the metaphors of addiction language. We have been struggling to get beyond the ancient and incorrect moral judgements that we have often put on addiction and alcoholism. We have been wrestling with the greater society as well as the medical field itself to see the disease as real and not just some immorality.

Maybe part of it can become the language we decide to use. Even moving from a pathology to a healing language can help.

Here's a quote from another section of the editorial itself:

Recovery-oriented language refocuses the lens from pathology and suffering to resilience and healing. Recovery-oriented language also changes the discussion from one rooted in notions of one-time, acute treatments or interventions to one that appreciates the long-term modalities and strategies needed to sustain recovery.
-Link

In Memory: Robin Williams

I watched the story break across Facebook yesterday after supper. Robin Williams, age 63, had died, most likely of a suicide. A man who brought so much laughter and joy to our world over the past three decades is gone. Reports started coming that he had been wrestling with depression recently. He was also well-known as a recovering alcoholic-addict who at times has struggled with sobriety.

The combination of addiction and depression is a lethal mix. While one does not necessarily cause the other, they can be difficult to untangle. Both need to be treated.

Fortunately that message also spread across Facebook last evening. Like the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman from a drug overdose last winter, Robin Williams death raises awareness of this deadly disease.

We will miss Williams' humor and insanity. May there be a lesson for all to learn as well.

One More Week for Now

I am coming to the end of one full quarter (13 weeks) of being at work "full-time" even though I went to a type of "semi-retirement" last December. By this time next week (actually Thursday at 4:30) I will be back as a supplemental employee working one to three days per week, depending on the week. I got back from our month in Alabama back in March to find that I was needed to come back and do some filling-in for a colleague on leave. I said yes for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was going back to the position I held for about 4 full years that I loved the most of all that I have done in 20 years as an addictions counselor. It was also still winter around these parts, but that was only a small part of the reasoning. I truly liked the job and was excited to get one last chance to go back and do it one more time.

So, for the past 13 weeks that is what I have done. I have not regretted it for a moment.

Over there on the right sidebar is a quote that for me describes what I have been doing for most of my adult working life.

Some want to live
within the sound
of church or chapel bell;
I want to run
a rescue shop
within a yard of hell.
-- C. T. Studd

As a pastor and substance abuse counselor I have been along one of those front lines where people come to do something unique and different with their lives. Most of the time these amounted to standing with them as they attempted to turn from the "gates of hell" itself. When I first saw that quote about 10 years ago it jumped at me, grabbed me, and I knew it was mine.

It brought to mind an incident back about 22 years or so ago. A member of the church was in a bad situation and was threatening suicide. They showed up at the front door of the parsonage and I spent the next three hours talking with them in my living room, attempting to contact a counselor they had been working with and finally contacting a treatment center in a neighboring community. At the end of those three hours I took them to that center for an evaluation and care.

A few days later I was at my own therapy appointment and was describing the event to my therapist. My counselor looked at me and said that she never thought about those of us who were there on the front line of situations like that. She, as an outpatient, hospital-based counselor only saw people after they were stabilized, "talked-down" so to speak. She commented on how important that front-line work was.

I remembered many other such times. Some were being there with a family as their loved-one died. Sometimes it was sitting in the ICU waiting room as life was artificially upheld long enough to make arrangements for an organ donation. It has also been the young mother who has discovered her husband was abusing their daughter and was shaking with anger and a sense of deep betrayal. Or it was baptizing a baby who may not make it. Once it was being a "shaman-like" presence in a wind-swept cemetery as a few family members, the funeral director and myself paid our last respects to a recently found homeless relative who had died of tuberculosis or AIDS or both.

I could go on and on. There are many I no longer remember in detail but in that spiritual place in my memory where rest the spirit of those souls who were facing the gates of hell. These moments of seeming hopelessness, fear, sadness, panic or just plain numbness at the depth of ones soul need not be faced alone. We humans have known this for millennia. We seek the people who can stand with us and the places where a sense of peace can begin to permeate the emptiness that has suddenly or even slowly taken over our world.

To be a counselor, a presence of hope and healing with those facing the devastation of addiction and alcoholism is to be at the same kind of junction of hope and despair, life and death. No, I don't believe that is too strong. Many people in that position are at the place where life is teetering. They are facing hell- or perhaps realize they have just stepped back from an abyss that can only be described as hell. They do not know if they can make it. They are aware of a sense of powerlessness. To be there with them is at once humbling, scary, and challenging. It is a place where the deepest compassion and acceptance is needed. But they must be tempered with a willingness to speak to the truth of what they are facing, to not sugar-coat it or make it seem less dangerous.

It is to run a rescue station at the gate of hell- their very own personal torment of hell.

So for the past 3 months I have had that privilege one more time as a full-time counselor. It was developing the helping and healing relationship that can hopefully break through denial and uncertainty.

It is a great way to work and I am grateful I had the chance to do it again. I am sure there will be other ways I am called to do that work in the future. But for today, as much as part of me doesn't want to stop, I know it is what I am going to do next that needs my attention.

Back in December I spoke of my move to part-time employment as beginning my Third Career. I have no doubt it will continue as part of my lifelong call to be part of that rescue shop. It may not be as immediate or quite as close to the gates as I have been, but it is where I have been called.

So it's back to semi-retirement. I have lots of music to make, especially over the next two months, lots of genealogical research to do for those ghosts in my family that are nowhere to be found prior to 1940, time with my wife and daughter and her boyfriend, time to write and read and dream of more ways to be what I am called to do next. Yet always to be one who can help bring healing and to continue to build my life in secular ministry- ministry beyond the doors and walls of the institutional church where I am now called to serve.

Overheard in Recovery: Freedom

One of the "secrets" of recovery is to stay away from resentments, something tough for an alcoholic or addict. Addiction feeds on resentments, loves them, turns them into giant mountains.

One of the classic ways of dealing with resentments is found in one of the stories in the back of the Big Book of AA. It is titled "Freedom from Bondage" and is one of the best stories that sums up the AA program. The anonymous writer gives her solution, which she credits to some unnamed clergy writing in an unnamed magazine. It is classic recovery-

And actually works.

If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.
--Alcoholics Anonymous, P. 552

Reflecting on Reading

The Goldfinch (1654), by Carel Fabritius

Some books are beyond description. They start out with reality and simplicity. They are clearly a slice of life that you can appreciate. Then as you go along you realize you have been trapped, pulled into a web of wonder and fear, hope and desolation. In short, words have done their job.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction (as well as shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle and the Amazon Book of the Year.) It centers around a terrorist bombing, a young boy caught in the middle of it and a painting of a captured goldfinch, the painting here. It follows the boy, Theo Decker, over the next 12 years in a series of events and stories that keep you engaged and entranced. That is all I will say about the contents. If you are planning on reading it- do not, repeat DO NOT read the Wikipedia article on it.

It is, though, a book that celebrates the place of art in life and even in society. It is a celebration of the power of all kinds of artistic endeavors from the centerpiece painting to working with antique furniture and finally, the power of words. Books. Literature.

As a reader I was bowled over by the ease of the book but the incredible depth that each page brought to light. I would read past a phrase that was simple and yet wove a sense of place and person. I was carried along on waves of words crashing over me. Never a tsunami, but more like the consistent and refreshing presence of the tide at the shore. But then it would get roiled by the events, but never submerge you.

As a writer I was in awe- deep, unending awe of her imagination that came up with this incredible story and its never-ending detail, the ability to make it readable and her understanding of the human condition. That of course is a pretty good summary of all great literature. Donna Tartt does not come in second to any of the greats before her.

As an addiction counselor I was even more amazed by her ability to put into words the mind of an addict. She takes us into the harrowing place where life is at its rawest. You may not understand the actions of addicts any more clearly than before, but you will see the incredible way that alcoholics and addicts make sense to themselves.

This is a book of hope and life in the midst of what often looks hopeless and meaningless. It is about the power of art to bring redemption even when you don't know that this is what you are looking for.

It is a big book- 700+ pages. It is an even bigger book of ideas and character and writing. It is remarkable!

Now I Wait

Yesterday was a tense day. It was my day to take the workshop/tests for certification as a Group Fitness Instructor with the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA). It was a short story with a long prelude.

Back around a year ago when I was beginning to head toward my semi-retirement I came across a story in a local paper about a fitness instructor at a local center. He was in his early 80s, taught water aerobics (among others) and started in the fitness field when he was in his early 60s.

Over the past 8 years I have slowly but surely worked toward a broader and deeper understanding of fitness. It began when I wanted to do 60 miles of biking for my 60th birthday. For an uncounted time I joined a health club. I was periodic in attendance, but I did keep going. I then moved and joined the healthy living center at my new residence.

That has continued for most of the past 5 years through three surgeries and a few other physical concerns cropping up. As I got into biking and I even commuted to work on my bike. When I read the article on the fitness instructor in town it was like an "Aha!" moment. I have something new to offer, even as I have (now) passed age 65.

So I began to pursue that angle. I took a couple online courses from AFAA on getting ready to be a group fitness instructor and a personal fitness instructor. Yesterday I did the day-long certification workshop ending in the four-part examination. Three of those are "practical," something that AFAA is known for and, I think, is an essential part of becoming a fitness instructor. In this part of the day we had to demonstrate that

1) we knew two strength and one stretching action for each of 10 muscle groups;
2) could do a 3-minute warm-up and five-minute cardio routine; and
3) lead the group in one activity showing beginning, intermediate and advanced options.

There is then a written exam with 100 matching or multiple choice questions. Perhaps the largest single group of questions dealt with the different muscles and muscle groups along with their locations and actions.

I won't know for 4 - 6 weeks how I did. Since no job is hinging on passing the test and getting the certification I am not in any hurry, other than to know.

What will I do with this? At this point I don't know. I would like to be able to help others my age- or approaching my age- to know that age doesn't have to be a reason to get out of shape or even to get back into shape.

I have also discovered Yoga and Tai Chi as important mental supports and mindfulness practices. I don't think I will get special certifications in either of those areas, but you never know how I can use those experiences as well.

In addition all this has a big part to play in addiction/alcoholism recovery. Specialized groups in fitness centers or community programs for recovering people to help their sobriety would be a good move. But at this point, I am not trying to shoehorn this into something. Rather I am trying to be open to whatever directions come.

By the way, the experience yesterday at the workshop was wonderful. I learned a lot and was directed well by the instructor. The field of fitness and exercise is changing rapidly and there are obvious needs for good instructors and trained leaders.

But for now, I wait. Since I am also back to work full-time for a while, it will give me time to think through how this can fit into my semi-retired life.

Words So Sadly True

Listening to music the other evening, a Neil Young song came on the mix from Folk Alley. I was only half listening as I was studying for a certification exam today. As the song ended the words came through loud and clear:

Every junkie's
Like a setting sun

It was from Neil Young and a song from 1972- The Needle and the Damage Done. It speaks to what will never come to life or be seen by others thanks to the destructiveness of heroin addiction.

As one who works in the addiction field these lines are as true as any can be. I have seen too many "junkies" die from the effects of their illness. Some are heroin overdoses; others are the slow and very painful death of alcohol liver disease; then there's lung cancer and heart attacks; or the death in life from "wet-brain."

All are horrible to watch or be impacted by as a family member or friend.

Hearing those words again in Young's plaintive vocals raised the pain of addiction to depths of pain and sadness.

Moments of silence are always appropriate

• for the addict who continues to suffer, 
• for family members and friends who are as powerless as the addict,
• and for the losses our world sustains with each death.

Addiction Sucks!

That is stated as succinctly as possible:

Addiction sucks!

I listened today to two interviews that Terry Gross had with Philip Seymour Hoffman on Fresh Air. He was a remarkable talent. He had the ability to make his characters come alive.

Of course we never really knew his demons. He had been sober for 23 years and then relapsed.

That relapse took his life this past weekend.

Addiction is never gone.

It is always lurking to take one more grab at the addict-

one more toke,

one more shot,

one more snort,

one more pill

one more needle.

It takes away all that we think we have.

It makes us think we are invincible- or even more to the point-

it makes us think we are gods of our own domain.

I heard a recovering heroin addict on radio talking about the truly scary part of Hoffman's death- the cautionary reminder to absolutely every addict out here that they are in danger. It should make every recovering addict stop in the moment and be grateful for what they have today

BUT at the same moment

to never forget that the addiction is patiently waiting,
doing push-ups, waiting

and waiting.

Don't ever be complacent. Don't think you have it made.

All one has is a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of one's spiritual condition.

I have had alcoholics and addicts question whether they have hit their bottom yet. They wonder. They look for ways to continue using. They look for all the excuses whispered in their mid-brain, just below consciousness:

"What if this isn't the bottom?" they ask.

I have two things I tell them.

• First, if you are still alive and breathing, you haven't hit the ultimate bottom of addiction. It will only get worse if you keep using.

• And second- you know you have reached bottom

when you stop digging.

So stop digging and start building a new life.

Addiction sucks!

What's worse is that it also kills.

Rest in peace, Philip. Rest in peace.

Trivializing Addiction

Catchy as a headline is supposed to be. It grabs you, makes you want to read it.

Oreos as addictive as cocaine

It's an article about some good, informative science about the brain, how we get hooked on things- like sugar- or cocaine. Yes, our brains ARE wired to like- even crave- sugar. Yes, the results include things like diabetes and obesity, heart problems and even cancer.

Sadly, though, my reaction is that the way the article is presented, the way the information is packaged, does a great disservice to those who are fighting addictions to sugar or cocaine or alcohol. There's this cutesy, trivializing about addiction. You get this silly image of a guy sitting in his dark room slowly twisting apart the cookie, licking the creamy filling while furtively making sure nobody is watching him.

Or the guy at a meeting, Hi. I'm Joe, and I'm a cookie-a-holic.

Cookie monster would have a new home.

That is not the reality of addiction. That is not what the science is all about. It is a major affirmation of what addicts of all kinds- including food addicts- have said. They are hooked. It's not as easy as putting the Oreos in some locked drawer. It's about the power of the brain and the neurochemicals that control everything we think, feel, and do. This science is much more powerful than craving cookies. It's about why some people do what they do.

It also can give us some important information about dealing with these different forms addictions may take. It is another step in the ongoing research that is opening up many avenues of awareness and hope.

It's good science. It's even better information that may help get rid of the stigmatizing of addiction. But don't trivialize it, minimize it. Read the science and you will see how powerful the engines of addiction can be.

Warning! Warning! Dreams Approaching!

In addictions we often ask people about their dreams about using. Most have them, especially in early recovery. They can take all kinds of forms and themes. They are powerful and among the most real dreams we have. In general, we usually explain them as the brain trying to deal with its loss of a favorite substance. We also see them as warnings- how easy it can be to slip. It has been 23 years, for example, since I quit smoking. About once a year I still have a dream where I am smoking a cigarette. The overwhelming sense of guilt and fear can be amazing... and truly scary.

After yesterday you can't convince me that doughnuts AREN'T addicting.

I haven't had one since March when I started on my weight loss plan. That doughnut- a lot of empty calories that I had many evenings- was the first to go. Well, I had a using dream yesterday. In the dream I bought a doughnut, was caught in the act and you should have heard my denial and rationalizing.

Could have used it in a lecture at work.

But it sure was a good reminder of how easy it can be to get back into those old patterns.

The Answer

It is probably the most often quoted passage in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. It is, many will tell you, The Answer. I agree. It is on page 417 in the 4th edition, page 449 in the 3rd. Dennis S. quoted it to me and introduced me to its importance over two decades ago. I strive to live it each and every day. It is why this week with the theme of acceptance is so much fun for me.

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. 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 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.

Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. A.A. and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we each have a right to be here. When I complain about me or about you, I am complaining about God’s handiwork. I am saying that I know better than God.

On the Power of Language

I continue to reflect on the amazingly powerful production of A Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. (Previous post 1 and post 2.)

As I said in those earlier posts the power of a great American stage play needs the power of the actors to make it believable, of course. Stiff or poor acting would get in the way of the intensity and emotion of the drama. The audience has to accept that his is not just a play- but that it is reality being acted out for them. We know that the people on stage are not really the characters, but you sure have a tough time convincing your brain of that in a great production like the Guthrie's of O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning play.

As I continued my reflection's this past week, another item struck me. This has to do with Eugene O'Neill's amazing ability with words. The play was originally written in the 1940s and not produced until the 1950s about a day in 1912.. In many ways that was a really different time, even in drama. The acceptance and use of "vulgarity" was quite low. Thus the language that O'Neill had at his disposal was very different than if he were writing today. For reality's sake today that play would include a lot of strong language, i.e. the F-bomb. We have seen that in movies and stage plays quite regularly. It makes the language more "realistic" and the settings seem more contemporary. We may also hear that to use these strong words would help get the intensity of emotion across.

That wasn't acceptable in O'Neill's time, or even perhaps in the family at the time the action is supposed to be taking place. So O'Neill had to do something remarkable- he had to get that intense feeling across in his non-obscene dialogue. The characters had to let us know the amazing depth of their feelings and the devastating intensity of their lives with how they spoke, interacted, reacted and described their feelings. Instead of saying they felt like ----, they had to explain it so we would know how they felt, and allow it to penetrate us. O'Neill, like any great playwright mastered that and then some. Which is why he won four Pulitzer Prizes for drama!

But, again, to give the Guthrie crew their due, if these actors couldn't bring those characters to life, we would have walked out of the theater with a feeling or two, but not so wrung out by what we had just seen. The actors needed us to know those feelings and express them in inflection, actions, body posture, stage movement, etc. They were not just going through the motions- they were living them.

I don't know how they do it, actually. They have to walk off that stage and back into their own lives- and then get ready to do it again that evening or the next day. What class and motivation.

Thank you for an amazing experience.

Here are two videos of scenes:





And a video interview from Twin Cities Live with the two actors who play the brothers: LINK

Sharing Sobriety

Came across a few posts at Recovery Now about celebrities and their ongoing sobriety. Here are some of them- and their years of sobriety.

• Bob Dylan, 47 years clean from heroin
• Buzz Aldrin, astronaut, more than 30 years
• Tim McGraw, country singer, 3 years
• Bradley Cooper, actor, 7 years
• Diana Ross, singer, 4 years
• Neil Young, 1 year
• Ringo Starr, 25 years
• James Taylor, 29 years
• Eric Clapton, 25 years
• Ben Affleck, 11 years

If these stars (and others) who live in the midst of a drug and alcohol-soaked culture can maintain sobriety, it sure must be possible!