Byline: Keith Howard

One thing I know about addiction, or at least my addiction, is that it’s nearly impossible for the addicted to learn from the past. Or the present. Or even the almost-certain future. For example, the following four data points demonstrate that drug and alcohol use have a negative impact on my ability to hold a job. Before I left home at 17 to go to basic training, I’d been fired a number of times, including each of the following data points. 

Recovery has taught me a lot of things, beginning with how to live life without chemical assistance. When I was using and drinking, chemicals—whether powdered, pilled, herbal or liquid—solved all kinds of otherwise overwhelming problems. These solutions, of course, came with their own problems, but those challenges could be handled with more and different substances.

While I have new thoughts bubbling up all the time, I’m not above stealing borrowing employing the fair-use doctrine to create derivative works for the purpose of satire.

You know you’ve got a problem. You’re using every day, maybe drinking to black out every night. Maybe dope has stopped being a once-in-an-ever-increasing-while thing and has become a habit—which is what you suspect you’ve got. You feel like you might be powerless over the substance, but you’re pretty sure you can quit on your own.

I haven’t had a drink or used any mind-altering substances since May 21, 2007, which seems a long time to many of you, long enough to raise the question of why I continue to go to various meetings and focus daily on my recovery. 

Recovery is a journey and not a destination. The path each of us chooses to experience that journey can involve a lot of pieces from a bunch of different sources. Until a few years ago, Farnum Center, the local treatment center, incorporated Three Principles Recovery, drawn from the work and thoughts of Sydney Banks.

My problem was not alcohol.  My problem was that my only solution to life was alcohol.  It may have been a solution that carried lots of future complications, but alcohol was the one surefire way I knew to feel significantly better about life.  

After two hours, the faculty hosts asked us if there was anything we wanted the students to take with them. Since I’m not aware of any taping being done, I hereby state the following is an accurate recollection of what I said. If a recording does exist, I will either claim it’s been edited or that this is what I wish I’d said.

In early recovery, I spent a lot of time in church basements and parking lots. Like the Roman catacombs during the early church, these basements were filled with a lot of joy, a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. Unlike the catacombs, the laughter came primarily from a speaker telling a story of his drinking or using days, usually one about the foolish or heartbreakingly inappropriate ways he’d acted while messed up.

Today, Bret was given two ten-dollar bills, one to pay for bus tickets from Hope on Wilson Street to the Starbucks on South Willow and back, and the other for a cold coffee drink.  For any auditors, Hope paid for the tickets and I paid for his drink—I want him to be able to afford a house in a dozen years.

Andria owns, operates and is the spiritual center of WorkStuff, a staffing solutions company in Manchester. WorkStuff is the Hope Recovery Festival’s platinum sponsor, with a generous $5,000 donation. You’ll have a chance to hear her at the festival, and would be wise to listen closely.

I don’t know the secret of successful long-term recovery. I do know one of MY secrets is to express gratitude multiple times a day. I’m not much for organized religion, nor disorganized religion or even chaotic religion. Still, growing up in this culture at this time, I find it appropriate to attach the word “God” to my messages to the infinite.

I’m the director of Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, New Hampshire’s premier recovery community center, but that’s not what I want to talk about today.

For the non-using addict or the non-drinking alcoholic, life demands some kind of solution.  There are a lot of them, and over the course of this month we’ll explore some of the major ones.

I keep my means of recovery to myself. Oh, I’m proud of BEING in recovery, of having returned to the land of the living after existing in the shadowland of drink and drugs for 35 years. I’m proud of the work I do and the people I work with and work for—Hope staff and Hope members are among the finest, fairest and funniest people I’ve ever known. I’m proud of the changes I’ve made in my life, and that today I am much closer to the man my parents dreamed of when they brought me home from the pound.

Ninety-eight years ago, Bertrand Russell published a little book called, What I Believe, an extended essay on humanity, meaning, morality and purpose in a godless universe. Unlike Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, Believe is not necessarily a light read. It’s not quite a slog through a swamp, but it’s at least a muddy hike with wet shoes. 

September is National Recovery Month. It’s also the month for celebrating honey, bourbon, prostate health, gospel music, yoga, and guide dogs. While my squirrel mind would love to find an organizing principle among these diverse topics—recovery, bourbon and guide dogs as a trio almost writes its own jokes—I’m going to write about what I know and stick to recovery.

Extroverts draw energy from others, losing energy when alone. Introverts, contrariwise, charge our batteries when alone and steadily use them up with others.  As a boy, I envied Superman his Fortress of Solitude, and regularly escaped to a crawl space or basement room or tree house or spot in the woods. I liked people, or at least most of them, but I needed to be alone.

On my computer desktop, I’ve got a folder called “To Be Finished” containing more than a hundred files of ideas I thought I wanted to write about. Some of these are a few thousand words, others a few sentences. Today is Sunday. I’ve spent the day hiking in the Todra Gorge—as beautiful as anything in Arizona—and poking around the city of Tinghir. I am tired, too tired to move more files into that graveyard of a folder. Instead of writing a full piece today, I’m copying and pasting the things I’ve started this week, then abandoned. Thank you.

Five hours of silent driving today. Just as one can wake from a dream and examine it all morning, I spent today pondering last night in the desert. Nothing has formed, I have no lesson or, God forbid, moral to offer, but I’d like to share some of the thoughts that came to me last night and today. They may eventually combine to form a wonderful mental meal, but for now they’re just ingredients sitting on the counter.