Posts by Keith Howard
I’ve decided it’s time to buy a home, preferably one with running hot and cold water, a flush toilet and more than the box’s 72 square feet, of which fewer than 27 square feet is floor space. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
No, what really and truly galls and angers me is a single sentence, used as the headline for the piece: “What is critical for our community to understand is that relapse is part of the recovery process.” No, my friends, that is exactly what we in the recovery community know to be false, misleading, and potentially fatal for anyone who puts it into practice.
He ordered two quarts of vodka along with a stand-alone pint, a six-pack of beer and two packs of cigarettes. At the end of my drinking, when mouthwash had become my drink of necessity, John’s order would have been answered prayer.
That ambulance ride was the last positive part of the medical response our family experienced. Really. The Hub-and-Spoke Model touted by the state at a cost of $45-million dollars, offered nothing — in fact is banned from the emergency room of the hospital she was taken to. Three or four hours after Meri arrived, our family was escorted by security off hospital property. Apparently my manner, calm as I may appear in writing, made them very nervous indeed.
Like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Farmer and Cowman, treatment and recovery folks should be friends, although that’s not often the case, with treatment folks relying on a clinical model and recovery people favoring peer-based supports. In short, and perhaps unfairly to both, treatment partisans believe letters after one’s name are important while recovery supporters see lived experience as key.
Getting stoned is not a big deal for non-addicts. Getting stoned is nothing more than a form of relaxation for the vast majority of Americans. Getting stoned, for people like me, can be the first step backward into the abyss, the beginning of an end that can come soon enough.
The Hope Improv Theater comes into the world Saturday Feb. 2, from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. with an initial training for actors. We’re looking for enthusiastic folks with a hankering to change the world, spread recovery and have fun. Experience is NOT preferred, but a willingness to explore communication through improv theater is.
Today, the addict faces not just opiates — chemicals derived from poppies — but opioids —synthetic and much more powerful versions of the drugs of days gone by.
You see, as an intro to the piece, I talked about how every man wants to be remembered for his uniqueness, and included comments about three genuine Guinness world-record holders. Among them was—you guessed it—Brad Ladner, who owns the world’s largest collection of Batman collectibles.
In other words, I’m calling for all of us in recovery to look unflinchingly at our earning power today versus when we got sober and to give 10% of our income to charity.
oday, as in 1840, 1900, 1920 or 1980, getting sober is hard for an alcoholic; staying sober is nearly impossible without some kind of active program of recovery.
As I write this, it was a week ago that I spent my last night in Pittsburg, five miles from the Canadian border, alone outside the Tiny White Box. Wanting to mark the occasion, I built a small campfire in a fire pit as the sun was going down. There, I meditated on what I’ve lived in the last nine months, reviewed the writing I’ve done (and left undone) and thought about the next stage of my journey.
Although my first novel began “I never intended this, of course,” when I came to Pittsburg in mid-August, I intended to stay for a year or so. I intended to finish another novel. I intended to write a memoir. I intended to learn some things about myself…I had a lot of intentions.
I came north last August, planning for the beauty of the fall, the frigid isolation of winter, the softness of spring and the joys of summer. Some of those things have happened. The rest won’t, at least not for me, but I’ll get to that by and by.
Mr. Lefave was a kind man, a smart man, a patient man. In other words, he was the sort of teacher I wanted to upset, whose face I wanted to turn red, whose tongue I wanted to turn to butter with my nonsense. In the words of Bugs Bunny, I was a stinker and I wanted to make Mr. Lefave my stinkee.
Having folks reach out to ask my advice on running nonprofits is better than a sharp stick in the eye — or indictments being handed down — so at some readers’ request I’ve put together some things I believe about me and nonprofit leadership.
Disregarded long enough, a man questions his existence. Disregarded long enough, a man hates himself. Disregarded long enough, a man stops acting like a man, forgets he is a man, loses sight of his human nature.
Suicide. Offing yourself. Doing yourself in. That seemed like the only option to me 10 years ago, and that’s where Larissa is now. Each night she passes out with the hope she’ll die in her sleep, and when she wakes up in the morning with a foggy and throbbing head, shaky hands and a bellyful of dread, she asks for the courage to kill herself today. So far, thank God, she hasn’t found it.
An arrhythmic tuba player does not blend in. Just as gluttony leads to weight gain leads to mockery, so a bad tuba player’s sins are readily apparent to all with ears to hear. Or plug.
