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.