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I needed peers, not professionals. I needed to be surrounded by folks who knew and understood me almost instantly—and who still seemed to like me. I did not need a DSM diagnosis of Alcohol Use Disorder. I did not need to explain myself to someone who’d never been within a thousand psychic miles of me. I needed recovery, and recovery was all around me.
Distance is the major disruptor of relationships. It can be either a tearing experience or a liberating one. It offers an opportunity to remake yourself. To start from scratch and associate with those whose views and personalities are new and different. The result, however, is that it makes it easier to leave behind what and whom you have, indeed, left behind.
Two days ago, I lost a friend to overdose. That’s a sentence I could have written dozens times over my time at Hope Recovery. I could also write of the thousand or so people I’ve met here who are still in recovery. They go to meetings, work a program of some kind and stay away from drugs and alcohol. Still, the losses mount and my heart gets broken.
A recent (August 18, 2023) U.S. District Court ruling denied a request to copyright a piece of digital art because it had been created without human input. The Copyright Office was ruled to have acted properly because the work was created without any human involvement.
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.
Every life has seasons and everyone experiences change. Some change is for the better, and some change is difficult and may result in setbacks. But one thing is for sure…change is inevitable.
If you haven’t thought about the primary, please take time to do so.
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.
The only money that belongs solely to me exists in a Venmo account where I’ve squirreled away my earnings from various writing projects over the years. The money was intended to be a little scratch with which I could gamble and make frivolous purchases that would incense my wife, such as a reprint of Leroy Neiman’s painting of the final frame of “Rocky III”.
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.
I wholeheartedly endorse June Trisciani for Mayor of Manchester. June possesses a unique blend of leadership qualities, a deep commitment to the arts, and a vision for our community that aligns with the cultural aspirations of our city.
Simply put: We need to build more housing. But four main factors stand in the way: the cost of lumber, the lack of labor, limits on land supply, and laws and regulations. To put it more succinctly: lumber, labor, land, and laws.
One individual who stands out as a true leader is Will Stewart, who exemplifies the best our community has to offer. He does so by showing up to diverse spaces humbly and open-minded, recognizing that he is continuously growing and learning. He is dedicated to bringing results to our city.
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.
While I’m still working through the trauma with a therapist, here is the quick-and-dirty: After consuming far too many whiskey sours at the open bar of a wedding where I was one of the groomsmen, I was loose, feeling the groove, cutting the proverbial rug with my girlfriend on the edge of the dance floor beside a bay window with crimson curtains.
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.