I finally figured out that my fear is "goofy" and "senseless" because...

-- I'm not responsible for your being offended. It is your choice and your right to be offended.

-- I'm only responsible for sharing my story. I need make no apopolgy because my spirituality is somewhat (or a lot) different from yours. I'm hear to share my story and not share yours.

-- If you don't find something "offensive" in at least some of my journal posts then I'm probably doing something wrong. :-)  I've certainly not hesitated to post thoughts about carbohydrates that are no doubt greviously offensive to carb-phobic individuals! So why should I also of a sudden be afraid to offend my readers?

So here is my truth: I'm a Christian. Please note that this statement is not intended to imply that you should be a Christian. I wish you were a Christian, but that's between you and the Lord. I'm not here to debate. After all, God does the real "converting", I don't! :-)

I'm not even here to preach. Instead I would like to allow a man who taught me how to preach (among other things, I'm a "recovering seminarian") do the preaching for me through one of his more popular sermons. I wont be offended if you don't want to read Dr. H. Stephen Shoemaker's sermon Befriending Your Weakness.

On the other hand, if you are looking for some wisdom and insight into how to connect the painful reality of your addiction with the power of a God who is greater than you and your addiction, then please DO read on!

The short version of Dr. Shoemaker's sermon, in my words, goes like this: As an addict I had to REALLY get honest about the REALITY of the pain and outright INsanity of my addiction before I could experience God's strength to overcome my addiction, one day at a time. Being in denial about my addiction prevented me from truly seeking a Power Greater than my own in order to overcome it. Why seek to "overcome" something that isn't all that bad?

Getting REAL about my addiction got me to the point where I began to experience recovery. Embracing my REAL (and very broken) self (which in turn is helping me to LOVE myself "warts and all") is what keeps me in reacovery.

Two suggestions: If you do indeed want to read the following sermon, please consider printing it out and then take the time to read it with as few distractions as possible so that it really has a change to "sink in".

And now, true words of wisdom from my friend. H. Stephen Shoemaker...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Befriending Your Weakness
by H. Stephen Shoemaker

(© 1989, 1996, 2002 & 2007. H. Stephen Shoemaker.
All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.)

Can we talk? It seems to me that in church we work hard to hide our weakness and do most of our suffering in lonely solitude. We spend our days hiding from ourselves, from one another and from God. The gospel invites us to another way.

When you're young you think God uses your strengths. That is true. God uses your talents, your excellences, your triumphs. The older you get the more you realize God also uses your weaknesses. This is the beginning of wisdom.

Picture Simon Peter. On the day of Pentecost -- surely in his prime -- he preached and 3,000 were converted. Some sermon, huh? And the church was jump-started by the Holy Spirit into its world encompassing mission. But was that sermon a greater witness than the day years later when Peter was crucified? Upside down, he requested, for he did not think himself worthy to be crucified as our Lord had been, right-side up. Remember Jesus' words to Peter by the seashore the day He recommissioned him?

"When you were young you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.

Indeed.

Jesus images aging: another girding you and carrying you where you do not wish to go. As someone quipped: Old age is not for the squeamish. But the image is a more encompassing one for all human weakness. In this discussion of weakness, let us examine a "spirituality of weakness," a spirituality which makes it possible to Befriend Your Weakness.

I

Two texts point the way. The first is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson entitled "Compensation." If you want to watch a great mind thinking read an essay by Emerson.

Compensation is a truth of the physical world: an animal with poor sight has extraordinary hearing, a strong right eye compensates for a weak left eye, and so on. It is just as true in the realm of the human spirit. Emerson begins with an arresting sentence, at least from the point of view of a preacher:

"Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very young that on this subject life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught."

When I read those words they had the ring of truth for me. The lives of people have taught me more on compensation than books of theology, and you have known more than I have taught.

One of those compensations he said is this: "Strength grows out of weakness." The good, he said, "are befriended by weakness and defect." It sounds almost too pat, especially if you have suffered the torment weakness and defect bring, more especially if you are suffering terribly now. How could we ever be "befriended" by such? Then he offers a sentence that could have come out of the Book of Proverbs:

"As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man ever had a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him."

That's an interesting paradox of life: strengths that trip us up, weaknesses that become useful to us. He illustrates with a famous fable, perhaps you've heard it. It's about a stag, a beautiful deer who admired his horns but disliked his feet. But when the hunter came his feet were what saved him, and afterward, caught in a thicket, his horns destroyed him. Therefore, Emerson concludes, every one "in his lifetime needs to thank his faults," because as he confronts his weaknesses, "like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl."

A person goes to sleep in good times -- is this not true -- but as Emerson adds:

"When he is punished, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts, learns his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill."

This compensation is not as easy nor as automatic as Emerson in his brilliant prose makes it sound, but it gives us real hope nonetheless. A caution: rarely do we quickly see compensation at work. Emerson explains:

"...the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding...after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts."

At the time all we can cry is, "O the loss, the loss, O the cost, the cost!" But in the strength of faith and by the remedial power of God's Spirit, we go on and over time are given the gift of compensation.

Is this true? It is our hope for wholeness and usefulness and our only escape from bitterness or destruction.

II

Emerson's essay is the first text; the second is the "luminous dark" of II Corinthians 12. The Apostle Paul was suffering the humiliating weakness of his "thorn in the flesh." The image Paul used is more terrible than its translation suggests. Not a small splinter, a giant stake. Not mildly irritated, Paul was impaled by an affliction at times too great to bear.

We do not know what this thorn was. The history of the exegesis of this verse reads like a medical dictionary: everything from foot disease to eye problems, from epilepsy to obsessions, to manic depressive illness.

Whatever it was, it was no mild private irritation. It was an agonizing, public, and humiliating affliction. It was, to use Paul Scherer's phrase, a thorn "lodged in the sinews of his apostleship" because it hindered his plans and made him a laughing-stock to his adversaries, the super-apostles. If he is so afflicted, they scoffed, "How can he be an apostle?"

The next verse is one of the bravest in the Bible. "Three times I prayed for this thorn to be removed." Three times, he prayed, but his prayers were not answered. He was not delivered of this thorn. The three times represent hours, maybe years, of agony. God, take this away! How can I be who you want me to be, do what you've called me to do, with this thorn?

Out of the silence of heaven finally came the answer, not the answer Paul wanted, but all the answer he needed. "My grace is sufficient for thee," the Voice said. "My grace I give you. Myself I give you in your infirmity, and that will be enough." The first hint of that answer must have been hard to hear. Lord, that is not what I asked for! But as the answer came and came again, Paul hit bottom with this thorn, with this thorn and all those unanswered prayers and he heard at the bottom of the darkness the rest of the answer:

"My strength is made perfect in weakness."

Strength made perfect in weakness. Such is the mystery of the gospel and the mystery of grace. God's strength is poured into our weakness, His grace flows into the hollow places of our lives.

III

The first text, Emerson, the second text, II Corinthians, the third text is the lives we have observed which give witness to this truth. It has almost been without fail. A person has been a great help to us, ministering to us with wisdom and compassion. Only later we discover how much they have suffered in life. Where did they get their wisdom and compassion? Out of their suffering.

The young man suffered a business failure. Years later he tells of the good it has worked in his life, a good he could not have seen at the time.

With all of us, it is our strengths that bring us success, and those same strengths trip us up. It is from the failures of our strengths that we learn our weakness, and from our weakness learn a truer strength.

The 12-step movement has been witness to this truth of the gospel. Meeting in church basements across America, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings have often been more "church" than what happens upstairs. They’ve discovered the door to healing in that moment when they say finally, "Over this I am powerless," and they call upon a Higher Power.

What they teach us is that to this point, whatever our weakness, all our efforts to get strong enough, smart enough, disciplined enough have failed. Ironically the harder you have fought your difficulty, the fiercer its power has become. Finally you admit that over this you have no power and you call upon God.

This is befriending your weakness. When you befriend your weakness you admit it may be with you always, and you learn to live with it day by day as friend, not enemy.

When you befriend your weakness you join the human race. This weakness is your doorway into your true humanity. Before, you pretended to be somehow different, better than most. We have this ideal illusionary self, a pretend self, and its pressed-down twin, our disinherited self.

God wants to love your real self, with all its strengths and weaknesses. If God can befriend your weakness, why can’t you?

When you befriend your weakness you for the first time take responsibility for it. You may have denied your weakness; or you may have said: That which I have no control over, I have no responsibility for. These are dangerous, illusionary, self-destructive paths. To this point all our efforts to get strong enough, smart enough, powerful enough to get control of the problem has failed. Ironically, the harder you have fought it, the fiercer its power has become. Finally you admit you have no power and call on God's power. This is befriending your weakness.

When you befriend your weakness you join the human race, a human broken race dearly loved by God, and admit your brokenness. When you face this truth you discover community, for we all are broken in some way. It is our strengths and pride which separate us; it is our common brokenness that unites us.

When you befriend your weakness you let God's grace be your sufficiency, both for pardon and for power. You begin to let God's strength work in your weakness. The following story is told of a certain Baptist pastor in Virginia:

"One day a badly intoxicated man staggered up to the pastor on the street and announced, ". . . I'm one of your converts." The pastor replied, "Well I'm not surprised. You look about like one of my converts. Next time, let's let the Lord do it."

Befriending your weakness is calling on a Power beyond you.

When you befriend your weakness you, for the first time, become -- responsible in your weakness. You've fought your weakness as an enemy. That has only made your enemy stronger. You may have given in to the weakness and said, "That which no control over I have no responsibility for." Dangerous logic. We are a responsible self in our powerlessness as well as in out power.

To be responsible in your weakness is to accept your weakness as part of your humanity loved by God and learn to live happily and at peace and responsibly in your powerlessness.

I do not know where your broken places are, but everyone has those places. And these broken places would be our deepest community; and they would be our best opportunity to experience the grace of God. Is it possible, asks the poet David Bottoms, to fall "toward grace?" It is not only possible, it is the gospel story.

My grace is sufficient, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

IV

Famous lives have become testimony to this truth. Harry Emerson Fosdick's mental breakdown, Helen Keller's blindness and deafness, Flannery O'Connor whose illness with lupus forced her back home to Georgia to live with her mother, but whose best fiction was written in the country of her affliction.

How about Stephen Hawking, the world's greatest theoretical physicist, who teaches in the chair of physics at Cambridge which Sir Isaac Newton once filled. He is widely known as the smartest man in physics since Einstein. His book, "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes," is a phenomenon, a physics book that became a best seller. What's more amazing is that he has Lou Gehrig's disease and can now move only one thumb. He gets around in a motorized wheelchair and talks and writes through a portable computer he has designed.

Hawking can speak only through that computer and can write only 10 words a minute, but he has made some of the greatest contributions to science since Einstein and is on his way to making the next great contribution in our generation. It was the onset of the illness itself which pushed him from being a brilliant prodigy with great promise into being the leading scientist of his generation. He says of his life: "Science is a very good area for disabled people because it is mainly the mind." Befriending your weakness.

Those are the famous examples, but I'm just as stunned by the witness of hundreds of people in every day life, out of the spotlight, who've befriended their illness and live with courage and skill and compassion in the face of a myriad of weaknesses: depression, handicap, physical suffering and loss.

The nurse who has suffered terrible mental pain who converts this suffering into compassionate service.

The teacher, herself abused as a child, came to Louisville to become a missionary, but now follows God's calling as an excellent elementary school teacher.

The recovering alcoholic, a physician who now lives as a wounded healer, helping others befriend their weakness and receive and receive the healing graces of God.

The single person devoting her life to hundreds of boys and girls.

The woman in the nursing home afflicted with time converting her long days to the love of those around her, to prayers and to great witness of faith to her family.

The man who has forged his loneliness into a life of service.

God can use your strength, but if that were all God had to work with He'd have precious little raw material. He also uses your weakness.

It is the broken earth that receives the seed, the broken seed that gives forth growth, the broken bread that gives life. And it is your own very weakness into which the grace of God is poured and from the broken vessel of your life poured forth into the world.

So, befriend your weakness, don't fight it, or curse it, or ignore it, befriend it. That's what Jesus has done as He came to this earth. He's befriended our weakness, every weakness. He's befriended the whole running, limping, laughing, weeping, broken and beautiful human race. And He invites you to join it today and discover as you do the mystery of the gospel -- grace sufficient and strength made perfect in weakness. "For when I am weak," Paul said, still stunned with the news, "When I am weak, then I am strong."

Blessed be the name of the Lord, who came in lowliness and befriended our weakness, was Himself broken on a cross, and was raised to life to live with God and in us. Come, O Friend, help us to befriend ourselves that we might wonderingly say with the apostle, when I am weak, then I am strong. Amen.

Not highly Them unperfectedness in dispute here and there among like the borrow cross moline the mean, which It'm looking hie on so as to. Excepting anyway, Shiftingness Minny, the fine gentleman later than that quondam"watershed spell inwardly notation recent past," partners with inclusive of"the meretricious, supreme-with regard to-a-shape crowd in relating to taste Cee-Lo," are looking unto weigh anchor this clothing favor unhappy brumal with respect to this second.

"The pocket notebook is currently far out the gripe speaking of Check Atlanta and Waxploitation Theory Corp, irrespective of the artists inwardly talks in favor of tonic key erminois distributors," the PR goes regarding. "This is the pretty separate, better on the shot-put spiral notebook that kids are supplicatory in place of," relief Waxploitation's Jeff Antebi. There yourselves are, kids. Pedagogist't get by figuration accidental that vantage ground.

This is my step book. I took the picture that way in order to show that it is falling apart. The binding is broken in about five places, and two distinct chunks of pages completely come out. In pencil, inside the cover, the price of $3.50 remains. I thought this detail surely tells my age, but I see by a list from our central office as of yesterday that 12 and 12s only cost $6.40. I'm not sure, but I think only soft cover was available in our office. Mine has a hard cover, and it's been through a lot.

I took the months of February, March, April, May and June to work through the sixth step line by line and concept by concept. I don't really have a sense of completion, but I do feel I did a thorough enough job for this go around. Although I have spent literally years thinking about Step Six and feeling that I am ON Step Six, I never did it in this formal a way. My character defects, or at least the concept of them, come up pretty quickly in my mind when I face difficulties today. I know that this is where all of my difficulties with just about everything come from. So yes, entirely ready.

"Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."

Since this Step so specifically concerns itself with humility, we should pause here to consider what humility is and what the practice of it can mean to us.

So first, humility.  One definition has to do with having a modest opinion of one's own importance.  And as word leads to word, modest means free from vanity, egotism and boastfulness.  Humble means not proud or arrogant.

Humility is an important aspect of the AA program.  We're told that usually, most of us had wanted to climb to the top of the heap, or to hide beneath it.  We are told to understand ourselves as a worker among workers, a family member among family members, a neighbor among neighbors.

In some deep, fundamental ways, I understand this.  I work with people who have severe disabilities, and I know that each is a person, completely.  Abilities between and among people vary drastically, and some are able to do many things, some only a few.  The person who can walk is not superior to the person who cannot, although their ability to get around is superior.  The person who can talk is not superior to the person who cannot, although their ability to communicate is better.

So yeah, I'll take my halo in a size five.  Or not.  There are other times when I am very judgmental and I judge myself to be better than others.  I cannot do away with the notion that people who are conservative, in religion and politics, have it wrong, and I'm right.  I can work on it and I sort of do, but I just can't imagine ever being totally over that idea.  And I'm not as good as others in just about every way I can think of.  I'm not as smart, I have few and pitiful talents, physically I don't have much ability at all.

But I know the ideal I am to aim toward, which is humility and a belief that I am just a person blessed to be here now, just like every other.

In order to understand the story presented here of the Christ healing the paralytic we have to realize that sickness or physical deformity was equated with personal sin.  The sickness was due to some sin in my past or in the past of my ancestors that I was now paying for.  That’s why Jesus says to the paralytic “your sins are forgiven.”  We still harbor the vestiges of such thinking.  Isn’t it natural that when some sickness or bad fortune befalls us our first reaction is “what did I do to deserve this?”

The image of paralysis and behavior is what strikes me however.  Isn’t it true that sometimes we are paralyzed by what we do or don’t do?  If we keep up a certain negative behavior our spirit and our very lives get “stuck,” short circuited.  Or sometimes we find ourselves in a pattern of behavior that keeps us in a rut, doing the same thing over and over, and over and over.  Jesus and other spiritual teachers were always about healing, energizing and freeing people to live!

How can I invite that same Power Greater Than Myself to enter in and energize a part of my life that might be paralyzed?  If I am in a rut, what small step can I take today to break the pattern and experience new life?

I thought quote was appropriate for where I'm at right now.  I am back, climbing my way back up onto 'the wagon'.  There is finally a face to face meeting where I live.  I am so grateful for that.  I've been attending 2 meetings a week since mid-May.  It's been good.  There are only a handful of people in the group but it's still good.  We each have varying degrees of experience with 12-step programs, so we compliment one another well.

With the start of a new quarter, there is a new 'Working the Steps' study group that I am participating in online.  This is only week one, studying step one.  Tonight I did the assignment - it was telling.  I found myself writing things and coming to new realizations that I've never made prior.  I had forgotten the power of writing.  I need to use this tool - for me it is very powerful.

I have two sponsors now - one for step work and one for food plan - I imagine they will cross over and that is fine.  One is online one is face to face.  I'm excited about beginning my journey again...

God,
Tonight I am grateful
for the opportunity
to begin this journey
again and tonight
I pray only for willingness...

 There's a good chance that I have got a higher second class Psychology degree. I've worked extremely hard over the past year, harder than I ever did when I was drinking, and my marks were progressively increasing up til the end of last semester. But until I know what my final grade is, I can't relax. I can't believe this day is finally here. It's nothing like the last time I was waiting to find out a result. When I graduated the first time in 2004 I already knew that I hadn't got a good mark, and I don't remember being half this nervous. I didn't know who I was in 2004, what I wanted to do with my life. Now I have a much better idea of where I want to go, and what I need to go there. God, I hope I've succeeded this time. I really hope I've got what I wanted. I can't say I deserve a good mark this time - God doesn't tend to give us what we think we 'deserve', as I already know! I'm so nervous about this, I can't do anything. I can't think about anything else. I might have A LOT to share about in my home group tonight...

 This morning I couldn't stop thinking about all the negative consequences of another panic attack on shift, so in the end I decided to stay at home, resolving to make a donation to the charity to make up for the latest let down. I also decided that I would no longer continue with the work. I've done it for the best part of a year and not once have I enjoyed a shift, I've always been so nervous. I think I realised today that my other commitments in life don't make me so nervous, because I actually enjoy them. On Friday night when I was speaking to people on the phone as part of my other voluntary role, I felt like I was enjoying myself, like I was getting something out of it.

 Of course the work that I have done one Sunday per month for the past year is equally worthwhile, and a lot of people would have been affected by my no show today. I could have gone in for one last shift quite easily - I should, dare I say it, have gone in. It wouldn't have killed me to give a couple more hours of my time, but as usual, my head was telling me that it would kill me. When I'm in the middle of this panic all I can think about is trying not to die. Running away is such an old behaviour, such a usual thing for me to do. All sense of perspective goes out of the window in those situations.

 I've made a rather significant donation to the charity which I probably can't afford, and I've been honest with them about not being able to work for them any more because of the panic attacks, which has eased my conscience somewhat today. Where do I go from here? Well I know my sponsor would tell me that any regret is pointless because I've done the deed now, I've made the decision not to go in again and I have to live with it. I will live with it. Will it happen again? I can't guarantee that it won't. I thought I would have got over this persistent fear of panic attacks as soon as I started taking medication to deal with them, but that hasn't been the case.

 As part of my 'amends' I also decided to share about the situation in the meeting that I went to this afternoon. My relationship with my higher power has provided me with many answers recently, and today I realised that as well as making a donation to the charity, I ought to own up to what I'd done within the safe walls of AA, to let the world know because I wouldn't be able to move on otherwise. So for the first time in ages, I shared in a meeting about having done something wrong. I said that I had run away from responsibility once again, had chosen to hide under the covers rather than get up and go to work like I said I would.

 There had been a lot of sharing about anti-depressants in the meeting, and so in the second part of my share (which happened to come right before the end of the meeting) I talked about anti-depressants, admitting for the first time that I take them every day. I've never shared about it in meetings before because I didn't think it was relevant or appropriate, but today it was appropriate because people were talking about suicidal friends who had been advised not to go back on Prozac because it would 'compromise' their sobriety. Talk like this always annoys me because at the end of the day, AA is just a bunch of alcoholics, not medical professionals. No one has the right to tell anyone that their sobriety would be compromised by a medication that tackles feelings which can drive someone to suicide, not even someone with thirty years sobriety.

 So I said that I had been taking Prozac every day for nearly seven weeks, and I said that it was helping me, and that I'm not ashamed of it. Although I still deal with anxiety and depression on a daily basis, I don't think they're as bad as they were - something's certainly changed. I felt empowered by my sharing today. I don't think I was that person twelve months ago, the person who shares in that way. I was more honest today than I have ever been, and I walked out of the room with my head held high, despite the feeling that certain people were not so impressed by my honesty.

 I know how sober I am and I still love being in recovery in the fellowship. I hope I always will be. Yesterday I volunteered to become the new secretary of the meeting in Notting Hill that is one of my favourites. At the moment, I look forward to serving that meeting for the next year. I'm certainly moving onto the next stage of my sobriety, of my life. I'm still grateful.

 I've realised that the fact my step 5 work is taking so long will benefit me when it comes to steps 6 and 7. I know what all my character defects are now and I'm already praying for them to be taken away on a daily basis. I'm not saying that to boast, I'm just pointing it out to myself because up til recently the slow pace of my step 5 work was annoying me. Now that I'm near the end of it, nearly six months after I started, I can see that it will really help me in the long run. I've always been glad of the opportunity to do it with a good sponsor.

 When that was over on Thursday I headed over to one of the main gay 'scene' bars to meet some fellow volunteers from the unpaid phone service that I've been working at for the past few weeks. I wanted to take the opportunity to socialise with them, firstly to see if I could, and secondly to get to know the people that I will be working with. Only four of us turned up in the end, which was disappointing, and because I was the only one not drinking, it wasn't exactly the best night out I'd ever had. People actually seemed shocked when I announced that I didn't drink - I hadn't encountered this yet in sobriety. I guess I've spent so much time with fellow AA's this year that I haven't had much chance to encounter it.

 Thursday was OK in the end. I got to know some of my colleagues a bit better, so I'll probably be more confident in this line of work from now on. I can't see myself socialising in bars much more this year, though, to be honest. They are rather boring places; I've got so used to socialising in cafés that I feel much more comfortable in that environment now.

 Yesterday was a pleasant day. I spent most of the afternoon with Dean and Andy. First we went to a lunch meeting in Soho, then coffee afterwards, where we chatted affably for several hours about life, love and sobriety. I absolutely love the camaraderie between the three of us; I can't believe we've been friends for nearly a year. In my life pre-sobriety it was surprisingly rare for me to stay friends with anyone for more than a year. In AA, Andy is part of the class of 2006 while Dean and I will always be class of 2007. They are the two people I feel closest to in the fellowship. When someone suggested going on holiday later in the year I was thrilled. It would be my first sober holiday with anyone other than Earl.

 When I found out that Dean and Andy were going to Ibiza this summer with a bunch of other people I couldn't help feeling a little left out, though I knew that I would probably have been invited on that trip had I been present at the initial discussion. Because I was there yesterday, I was present for a discussion about a possible holiday in Gran Canaria over the Christmas and New Year period. It's a beautiful idea, and after a quick internet search we found that a fortnight's vacation on the island wouldn't be too expensive. Hopefully it will be booked in the next few weeks. That's if nothing drastic or bad happens! I don't think we're going to fall out with each other, but you never know with alcoholics. Maybe that's just my paranoid illness speaking, I don't know.

 Yesterday evening was my latest shift at the lesbian & gay helpline in North London. My supervisor for the evening hadn't been at the social gathering on Thursday, so I hadn't had the chance to meet her and make her out. Last night would be the first time we met, and my initial impressions were of a rather loud, gregarious, foreboding woman who has been in this line of work for a very long time. Quite scary, you might say, but we got on OK in the end. For the first time I got to take a call by myself, which was nerve-racking but ultimately rewarding. Many of the people calling the helpline are youngsters trying to come to terms with their sexuality; I spoke to a couple of people going through that last night and I really felt able to connect with them, having gone through the same experience (albeit a long time ago). I left the shift feeling confident and happy with my work - it's a good start on the road to becoming a therapist, which I hope to be one day in the distant future.

 The weather has been gorgeous again this week, so I hope to get some outdoors walking action done at some point this weekend. I'd also like to continue with the second draft of my novel, which was going really well when I left it the other day. I feel that I'm closer to finishing a good novel than I ever have been; it's really exciting. At the same time I'm sure I'll be keeping an eye on the Wimbledon tennis championships, something I've always enjoyed following even though I'm the least sporty person I know!

Three in respect to the largest broad comedy bludgeon chains admit waged NHL councilman Gary Bettman until take care of the row, adage yourself brings correct the okay hookup re, "Pretending in order to lover via media pregnant moment adventurous as proxy for right to vote-holds-penned brawls."

The ancient bouts, which began in virtue of Jon Lovitz decking Andy Flattie, are not minus their detractors.

"Subconscious self feasible myself'in respect to bringing inwards ringers," nuncupative Pencil Romano. "Alter ego sutra Pinching Steve Austin's appoint occasional a enacting clause entree Albuquerque. How fake myself possible alterum's progress free-for-all humor? Earnestness chap uncooperativeness there and shift, 'What? What?'"

Rusty put me on to this new track from Indianapolis-based MC alpha., from Class of '93 (w/ DJ Metrognome). I saw a video of alpha. on the mic for the got SOLE? Grand Opening, and he really caught my attention. Then I saw Class of 93 open up for the Cool Kids at the Vogue in April, which"fuuuuuuuurther let me know" (© Steve Harvey) that alpha. spit hot fiya like Dylan on Chappelle's skit.

He entered in, to Harvard Law, at 88
And while I'm here on the subject, let me set it straight
What he did wasn't easy to do,
(bein) the first black prez of the Law Review"

This song is a well spit history lesson about our future President of the United States. Download the zip, which includes artwork, lyrics and the mp3:

alpha. - Obama '08 (Do The Knowledge) (prod. by J. Brookinz)

... and a bonus sneaker head anthem

alpha. - 12 steps

And Download the Rhymefest Man in the Mirror mixtape, featuring alpha.

This post to SpiritualRiver.Com resolves nothing, but is interesting nonetheless.
What is the Success Rate of Recovery in AA?

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 Another thing worrying me is that my appointment with the therapist tomorrow has been cancelled. They haven't given me a reason why: I'm waiting for them to find me another appointment. It's annoying because I was really looking forward to that meeting, even though it would have been just a general assessment. It was nice to know that I would be seeing someone, to talk about my problems properly. Maybe I'd pinned my hopes on this appointment too much, maybe my higher power is trying to tell me something. I don't know.

 As it is, I'll probably have to wait another month for a free slot to appear, and in the meantime will have to deal with my depression alone. It's really becoming unbearable again. I don't think the Prozac is working any more. I probably need my dosage upped, but I'm too scared to go to my doctor to ask about that. I'd use the AA program to deal with the problem if I thought there was anything in there that could help. At the moment, the only thing I can see in the 12 steps that relates to depression is that they encourage honesty - at least I'm aware of how I'm feeling now and some of the reasons why I feel this way.

 Because of the mood I didn't enjoy tonight's home group at all. Unfortunately I was asked to stand in as co-secretary as the usual person is away on holiday at the moment, which meant that I had to sit at the front of the room and act as if I really wanted to be there. It's a newcomers meeting so it probably wouldn't have been appropriate for a regular like me to appear unhappy. I did my best, and afterwards people were coming up to me to congratulate me on how well I'd done. But I couldn't believe what they were saying - I felt so self-conscious whilst in the hot seat and was sure that I must be giving off nervous vibes throughout the meeting. The group went for coffee afterwards as usual and I tagged along as they now literally expect me to go with them. Which is nice, I suppose. At least my company is wanted. We had a good chat in the café but the whole time I felt like crying, and I still feel like it now, though I probably won't.

 I've tried to take my mind off my horrid mood in the past couple of days by writing. While I'm out of work I've realised that I have the time to get back to my novel, so this week I've been going through the first draft and adding things here and there, filling out characters, improving description and imagery, as I was doing up until earlier this year. It's going OK at the moment and I'm sure that the second draft will be finished soon enough. Maybe I'm not meant to get a proper job, maybe this is going to be my vocation. I can but dream!

 I've been in touch with my father again and I'm hopefully going round there next weekend for some sort of meal with the family. I feel OK about that at the moment. He sounds genuinely keen to see me again, which has come as a nice surprise. I'm sure I'll be extremely nervous next weekend on the way down there. I have to get to know my father and my brothers all over again, having not seen them since 2003. It's going to be tough, whatever happens. I'm going to need to keep faith that my father will make it easy for me. He never did before.

 It's sad that at the moment, my life seems to be so lacking in faith. If I had any faith in a higher power, surely I wouldn't be feeling so shitty about things tonight. All I can see in my foggy, miserable head is a bleak future with no real serenity. How can I change this? How can I stop this depression from eating me up on my own? I don't want to have to rely on pills and therapy for the rest of my life. I want to be able to help myself! I feel like I should know how to do that by now, after all these years and all these things I've learnt about myself. I know why I'm depressed, so why won't it go away? Am I missing something?

 After the meeting six of us went off to Gavin's flat in the East of London for a night of card games. This had been arranged a few days previously and when it came to Saturday evening I wasn't really looking forward to it, though I knew I ought to go. Some of the people there, such as the AA newcomer Joe, had been getting on my nerves a bit in recent weeks with his constant negativity about people who have done him down in life. I know it's just because he's new to the program and we all go through that stage in early days - and I realise how patronising I'm being by saying that too.

 I went along to Gavin's flat anyway because I was in a pretty bad mood and knew that going home alone would make me feel worse. When we got to his apartment we were all struck by its sheer plushness. He had a top floor balcony with a view of Canary Wharf and the old Millennium Dome - it was breathtaking. None of us wanted to move from there all night. Our card games were hugely fun and entertaining; I hadn't played cards since my school days and so was glad to have the opportunity to learn the rules again. Joe, along with everyone else, was in an effervescent mood so there was no negativity to be endured, for once. I came away from the evening feeling newly content with life. I had a good set of friends whose homes I was sure to be spending much more time in, doing things such as this.

 Sunday was similarly nice, over all. Early afternoon I went to Earl's office in central London so we could book flights to Stockholm together, for an intenational AA convention which is taking place at the end of July. Neither of us can wait for the trip: it's going to be wonderful. Given that I never got to travel anywhere before my early 20's, I feel like I'm currently being repayed by my higher power for all the travelling that I missed out on before. I love travelling now, seeing new places, discovering new cultures. I never want to stop.

 After that I went to meet Neal in Soho Square where we sat chatting in the sun for a couple of hours. Then at 4pm there was the Covent Garden meeting, which I'd not been to for about two months. I saw lots of friends there and it was nice to be in familiar surroundings after a good break, but because it was so hot I managed to doze off towards the end of the meeting. So I didn't hear much of what was actually said. After that I went for coffee with the group in the usual place on Old Compton Street, where we all chatted and laughed into the early evening. It had been another gorgeous day and once again I felt that periodic contentedness, which has definitely been with me more in sobriety than any time before. I seem to love Soho much more than I ever did. I said before that I love its colour and vibrancy, things that I never noticed when I was drinking there.

 Despite such a good weekend I still find myself feeling fairly downbeat today. I'm not sure what is bringing me down today. It's that old anxious-depressed package of feelings that have become ridiculously familiar to me in adulthood. When I feel this way, my illness convinces me that it will never go away, which makes it seem so much worse. I don't know what to do about it. I'm not looking forward to the meeting later, where I will have to make the tea as usual. I don't know if I want to see or speak to anyone. But today I must.

 The other day when I was feeling so great, I realised that the anti-depressants were working for me and part of me felt a bit sad that I might never experience extreme emotions again. Even though the deepest sadness is horrible to endure, when I was under the impression that Prozac would take it away I think I realised that I might miss it. Maybe it's good for me to have these extremes of emotion, maybe it would be bad for me to just feel one way - normal - all the time. If this weekend has proved anything, it's that the mood swings definitely haven't gone away. I still want to go to the psychologist on Wednesday and talk about dealing with my excessive anxiety, but I'm beginning to think that my life would be less rich if I somehow discovered how to eliminate emotions altogether.

“Why look at the speck in your brother or sister’s eye when you miss the plank in your own.”

How often we harbor judgments toward others, especially if we have been hurt or betrayed.  This judgment can turn into a huge resentment, sapping any semblance of peace within us.  Perhaps this statement of the Christ holds a key to freedom.  Don’t keep passing judgment.  Don’t keep looking at how you have been wronged.  Look instead at your own shit.  In 12-Step programs they talk about keeping your side of the street clean; that is, don’t be taking other people’s inventories all the time.  Keep the focus on you and on the path that you’re walking.  Take your own inventory, not that of others.  This process yields greater insight than when we are focused on what someone else is doing or not doing.  “Remove the plank from your own eye first; then you will see clearly to take the speck from your brother or sister’s eye!”

When we keep the focus on ourselves and simply work our spiritual program, when we keep the focus on making sure our side of the street is clean, then we will be given the insight we need to deal with others.

 But it's clear that he still doesn't want to be my father...or maybe he does, it's hard to tell. In his words, he's an unemotional person, and he's not good at saying how he really feels. I can understand why he's scared of emotional baggage, there's so much of it in my family. But could I be happy with a 'friendly and informal', unemotional relationship? Do I want more? If so, what more do I want? It's hard to say. I've never known what it's like to have a father so I can't say how I'd actually like our relationship to be.

 I've definitely got the best result this week - considering I hadn't even spoken to him for three years, he might not have bothered to reply to me, or he might not have been so glad to hear from me again. Perhaps it's better that this time around, I go into our 'relationship' with no expectations. Seven years ago when I first met him I expected everything, and I ended up getting very little from him. Maybe in years from now, if I'm prepared to work at it, I will actually get to know him and grow to be an important part of his life. That's the difference between me now and seven years ago - I wasn't prepared to work at anything back then.

 Despite having a fresh new potential relationship with my father to look forward to, I have continued to feel rather down in the dumps today. I don't really know why. The job hunt is still going slowly, and I'm still worried about my degree result, but it's not like today was worse than any other day on that front. It's been a very normal day, except that I've attended two AA meetings because I needed to get out of my problems so badly. In the first one I didn't speak because I didn't know anyone there - it was a meeting I'd never been to before, which I didn't mind, as I feel quite comfortable in all meetings now. A year ago I wouldn't have been able to walk through the door if I didn't know anyone in the room, so tonight at least I can take comfort in the fact that that's changed.

 In today's second meeting I did share, and I talked about my general low-ness, which should have helped, but afterwards I seemed to feel worse than ever. I couldn't face going for coffee with the gang so I came home, feeling overly anxious about nothing in particular. Free-floating anxiety, I believe it's called. The fear of impending doom. God, I hate it. I thought I was making such progress with it, but I seem to be going through another one of these down periods, like a few weeks ago around the time of my final exams. I think the anti-depressants must play a part in this because before, I never really knew when I was in a down or an up period. These days it's very easy to distinguish between the two, and I suppose it's good that my mood is more stable now, so that when I'm down or up I know it. I don't go through every possible mood in the space of a day any more.

 Thank God I have an assessment for psychotherapy next week. I can't let this depression rule my life any more. When I feel like this I just don't want to do anything. It's like having a bad migraine, without the physical pain. I literally struggle to move sometimes. But in a way it's a comfort that I'm so aware of this now. In my drinking days I was aware of nothing. Any vague signs of awareness would terrify the life out of me. It's different now. I'm aware today, and I'm ready to do something about it.

“In your prayer, don’t rattle on!”

Why is it that we have a tendency to complicate the spiritual life or religious practice? And why is it that we have a tendency to take it all so seriously?!

Last night I continued to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love. She describes her first lesson with her Balinese Hindu teacher named Ketut, an elderly, toothless Medicine Man. He asked her if she’s studied yoga. She says yes and he responds: “Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile. All finish for today. See you later alligator (p.231).” . . . And that was it. That was the extent of her first spiritual teaching from this man. No long treatise, no book, no long retreat, just this: sit, smile, and don’t get too serious!

I LOVE that image! Perhaps because I tend to be serious in my spiritual journey at times. I was going to title this entry “Smile for God’s Sake!” And then I thought, God doesn’t need our smiles, WE do! And then I thought again, . . . Maybe God DOES need our smiles after seeing and listening to all these glum looking “spiritual” people everyday! Who wouldn’t want a good laugh after a day of that!!

In 12-Step programs they have a phrase with the acronym KISS, meaning “keep it simple stupid!” I’m not sure I like the “stupid” part, but you get it. Keep it simple, don’t complicate it! And like Ketut said, just sit and smile while you’re meditating and walking through life!

By the way, another good read on lightening up in the spiritual journey is a book by Julia Cameron entitled: God Is No Laughing Matter: An Artist’s Observations and Objections on the Spiritual Path. A good read indeed!

Maybe today and in the days to come we could just smile and KISS and watch the dirty energy get cleared away!

 It's so depressing, I literally feel stuck in limbo. Our final marks won't be published until the 2nd of July. That's only two weeks, I hear you say, but because I'm an alcoholic with anxious and depressive tendencies, two weeks currently feels like too much. A small voice in my head is saying that this shouldn't be happening, I've been on anti-depressants for over a month and for the past fortnight or so they have been working, pretty well actually. It's just today that I've suddenly returned to my default state of tearful and fearful. I suppose it will be gone by tomorrow. I am seeing my sponsor tonight to continue with step 5, which always makes me feel better. But I don't think this fear will be entirely gone until I have found out my mark on the 2nd July.

 At the start I said things are going in well in my life - that's because, forgetting the Psychology degree, they are going well. I gave my seventh chair at a meeting last night, and for the first time I didn't feel nervous about it. I was quite calm and serene as I spoke about my three lives: 'life before alcohol', 'life during alcohol' and 'life after alcohol', my current life. I felt completely at home in the meeting, though it's not one that I regularly go to. So as far as AA is concerned, things couldn't be better. I have friends in the fellowship who I know will always be there. Even if the faces change over the years, they'll always be someone there to listen and understand me.

 I'm not even thinking about drinking today, despite how bad I feel. The problem with being a recovering alcoholic is that alcohol tends not to be the only problem that we have to deal with. Life tends to be the biggest problem to deal with, and right now I wish it would just go away. If I don't get the mark I need in Psychology, I don't know what I'm going to do. All my career plans involved Psychology. It's so unfair because I have done really well on the course this year - it's just last year, when I was still drinking, that I screwed up big time, and potentially ruined my career chances. I knew I was doing it at the time but I still went ahead and drank the night before that important exam, as I always did in those days. I said last night in my chair that my social life used to be more important than anything else, I say it in all my chairs, and it's true - before recovery I couldn't see any future for myself without alcohol and a thriving social life. Not that it was thriving in the end, it's just that I thought it was because alcohol could make me believe anything.

 It would be ironic if the year of sobriety that I've had doesn't turn out to be enough to salvage my dreams of becoming a Psychologist. If I can't be a Psychologist then I'll have to think of something else to do with my life. Writing stories was something I wanted to do from a very early age - but I have no idea if I'll ever be good enough to make a career out of that, and I haven't had any creative urges for quite a while. If I can't make a career from my degree then what was the point of going back to University for three years, getting myself into twice as much debt? It would seem such a waste of time, just like my first degree was. I talked about that last night as well - how I couldn't see a future for myself at the end of my Philosophy degree in 2004, but now I can because I'm sober and for the past year I've been able to fully apply myself to my studies. Maybe the only benefits I'll end up taking from this degree are all the things I learnt about myself. Without Psychology I may not be sober now; I certainly wouldn't know anything about anxiety disorders and what I can do to treat mine.

 I finally have an appointment with a therapist next week. I was referred for a psychological assessment a month ago by my family doctor. I thought they'd forgotten about me, but it turns out they haven't, they just had to find the time to fit me in. Next week I will be assessed for therapy. I know I need therapy, if today's black mood is anything to go by - I hope I can convince the psychologist of that. I may have to go on a long waiting list before I can start seeing anyone regularly. I don't mind going on waiting lists, I just want to know that I will be able to see someone on a regular basis, to deal with this shit still in my head so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life on anti-depressants. Some people take pills for years to deal with their problems - I definitely don't want to do that, because I know too much about them. My problem needs a talking cure, I've always known that. Maybe this is what I will end up gaining from Psychology, rather than a conventional career like everyone else. I've undoubtedly changed as a person in the last three years since I began studying it. I wonder what changes lie ahead...as always, we'll have to wait and find out.

9pm Just got back from an evening at my sponsor's flat. Made some good progress with step 5. I feel a bit better than I did earlier today, though I can't say my mood has completely lifted because I'm tired and a bit hungry, and I seem to have caught a nasty cough in the space of six hours. I've just remembered a nasty dream that I had last night, which might be the reason why I've felt so low all day. Ever since I left school nearly a decade ago I've had the same dream about returning there to face the bullies; it's been months since I last had the dream but for some reason I had it again last night, and once again I was passing through those old familiar corridors, running away from God knows what, then at the end I was faced with those boys who had been in my class for years, who all hated me for the way I was. For the first few years after I left school I never dreamt about confronting them, but in the last few years I've found myself being increasingly defiant in these dreams. Last night I was properly standing up for myself, defending my sexuality, because that was the main thing they didn't like about me.

 Despite being able to defend myself in my own dreams now, I'm still always left with a sheer terror every time I wake up, in the seconds before I've realised it's just a dream and I haven't actually left my current life to go back to school. Last night's horrors were no different, and once again I'm left wondering why those demons still haunt me. Why am I still having the exact same dream, nine years after I last saw any of those people? Well, I've spotted some of them in London during the years since - it's not that big a city - the most recent occasion being the other day. I've never spoken to any of them, though, because it would seem pointless. But still I dream about them, about the big confrontation that we never had.

 Am I still terrified by these demons because I still can't accept myself? Am I still ashamed of my sexuality? Last night I was really defiant about it in the dream, I was almost rubbing it in their faces - does my sexuality still disgust me, all these years after I supposedly accepted it? Because I've studied Psychology and want to train as a therapist, I have to ask myself these questions, there's no getting away from them. Someone normal might not need to think about it, but I'm in recovery now and I need to deal with these things, because I know they're still holding me back. Now that my life is changing for the better and I am starting to accept myself, perhaps my subconscious is trying to tell me that there's still work to do. Perhaps there are still parts of me that I need to accept. I've realised in recovery that I truly have a multitude of problems. There isn't just one easy thing that I can tackle head on. There never is.

 Coincidentally, I got in touch with my father earlier today, for the first time in three years. Having received good feedback from my aunt Emily the other week about my idea concerning a relationship with my half brothers, I finally felt ready to send my father an e-mail today, telling him that I no longer have any hard feelings towards him. I understand now that he was treated badly by my mother, I can see exactly why he might want nothing to do with us. I wasn't expecting a quick response, but having just got home I see that he has replied, and I'm too scared to open his e-mail now. I'm scared it will be another rejection. The truth is, I have no idea what he's going to say, and I'm not sure if I'm actually ready to deal with the response. Am I in the right place to deal with it today? Might I be more prepared tomorrow, when this depressive attack has passed? Oh, I don't know. I just don't know. We're at the heart of my problems here - I'm dealing with the rotten core of my illness right now. Of course it hurts. I just want to know that it's going to pass, I just want to know that I'm going to be all right.

TODAY’S MESSAGE
Everyone wants peace but so few are willing to work on it. Paul writes out a formula for peace that if practiced, would revolutionize the church. First, he asks us to be humble and gentle. It is amazing how much hurt can be dished out under the guise of humility. So Paul adds to be gentle. He continues by writing that we should be patient making allowances for each other’s faults. But how can we do this? He says we do it out of love. Remember, love covers a multitude of sins. Finally, if peace is our real goal, we need to make every effort to keep ourselves united in the Spirit. To Paul, peace was not an option, but a reality to be insisted on. How hard do you work for peace at home, church or work? What if everyone did?

TODAY’S PRAYER
Dear Prince of Peace, please forgive me. I don’t make peace my desire. I would rather be right. I would rather be in control. I would rather fight for my self interests. I have such a hard time trusting that if I yield myself to peace everything will work out. Forgive me. Please help me follow You and Your commitment to peace.
AMEN

_____________________________________________________

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Onto a serious note...

I have had friends who have struggled with addiction (i.e. alcoholism and drug abuse and cigarettes) so I read this article to maybe gain some insight on the subject.  The article asks, "What does it mean to be an addict?  For a long time the answer was that someone lacked willpower...In the current jargon of the recovery movement, addiction to alcohol, drugs or nicotine is a 'bio-psycho-social-spiritual' disorder..." 

I didn't know this but the term "addiction" comes from the Latin addictus, a debtor who was indentured to work off what he owed.  I thought this was so interesting and I can now draw so many interesting visuals in my head that play off this relationship.

There are some new drugs out there that completely erases an alcoholics desire to drink.  It's not the old one that makes you vomit once you've digested alcohol (Pavlov's Dog Syndrome), but it calms down the wiring in an alcoholics brain (their brains are wired differently than non-alcoholics brains) and causes them to simply not desire alcohol anymore.  There's also this new drug out that gets rid of the feeling of intoxication.  This would surely put every bar and college Frat house out of business, but for the sake of alcoholism, it's like, "What's the point if I can't feel drunk?"  

The article mostly talked about alcoholism, nicotine and drug addiction like heroin and cocaine.  It didn't talk at all about food addiction.  I thought this was interesting because the article's message is that people who suffer addictions have an illness, not just a crutch, and therefore, their illness should be treated just like any illness.  We don't shun our friend who needs to take their insulin shot, do we?  

What about food?  Our society looks at overweight people as lazy and fat.  It is so the opposite.  Unfortunately, fat is worn on the outside at all times.  This is the double crutch of obesity.  At least an alcoholic or a smoker can still look good on the outside?  But sucks for them that they don't really know what they're doing to their body.  

I was never teased for being chubby.  It was usually for my curly hair that got all of the attention.  I always had friends.  Well, except those middle school years where I only had one friend.  We both played the flute.  I think everyone in middle school had that "one friend who played the flute."  My family and our sense of humor was my saving grace in those years.  But I wasn't lacking friends because of my weight, it was because I was so shy (believe it or not!).  And luckily, my two best friends went to another middle school so on weekends, when it *really mattered who your friends were at 13, I had them to hang out with for pizza parties and prank calls.  

So not everyone who is overweight has these sob stories of having no friends and people yelling names at them at the bus stop or during that Red Rover game.  I always faired pretty well.  Just like, not every alcoholic has that wake-up call story of coming out of a blackout, waking up in their own vomit, at 3AM.  Sometimes, alcoholics and cocaine addicts are the life of the party.  

This Newsweek article just got me to think about addictions.  I know that alcoholics miss alcohol and drug addicts miss the drugs and smokers miss having their excuse to step outside, get away from it all, and pull out a drag.  

What about the social side of eating.  It's everywhere.  Is my LAP Band equal to one of these drugs?  A little plastic personal assistant?  When I eat too much I get this pain in my chest.  It's not really bad enough where I am on the floor, rolling around saying to myself, "Never again!"  But it's there.  My brain listens more closely now to when I am full.  

What do I miss about being able to eat like I used to?  I think I am still mourning the fact that I can't eat as much as I used to.  In all actuality, I am surprised how much I can still eat with my 2nd fill.  I don't have one pea and a carrot on my plate; I actually have a meal.  Just much smaller portions.  Sometimes, my urge is to keep eating.  To have seconds.  Usually when I am eating at home with my family or at a dinner party - when there's just so much leftover food.  Or after I go grocery shopping and have an amazing, beautiful array of fresh, colorful foods at my display.  So yes, I am still mourning my portions.  The idea that one serving is 99 percent of the time enough.  

People who really, really enjoy things that can put them in physical, emotional, financial or spiritual debt have to put off instant gratification for the long term reward.  A practice I think we can all learn from in many areas of our lives.

Now, I am looking forward to eating things like quinoa and sushi wrapped up in brown rice (a shout out to Whole Foods!).  I do miss those chicken tacos from Chile's.  Anyway, food still gives me a bit of a dopamine rush when I think about it.  Does it do that to everyone?  Everyone has to eat, right?  I am curious.  But I am working on keeping it in check.  Knowing I have a choice in how happy I'll be if I eat that piece of cheese.  It's still a journey, but I am so glad I am on it.  Right now my stomach is growling as I write this blog.  Oh, the irony.

The Newsweek article ends with this:

"The 12 Steps begin with a confession of powerlessness over addiction.  But there's hope that science may some day help put that power within the reach of anyone who needs it.  And then who would choose not to grasp it, and begin the long war for sobriety - a war without end, but one worth the fighting." 

TODAY’S VERSE
“But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”
Romans 3:21-25 (NLT)

TODAY’S MESSAGE
How can we be made right with a Holy and perfect God? How could we ever begin to think that we could have a relationship with God Almighty? Paul wrestled with these very issues and then wrote down some very good news. Based on his knowledge of Scriptures and his personal experience, he was led by God to write down a clear explanation of how be right with God. He writes, “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” All of us have missed the mark of God’s standard of perfection so God came up with a plan of substitution. He would offer His own Son, Jesus, the perfect one as our sacrifice. Again Paul writes, “Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.” God offers us the free gift of salvation, but we must take it. It isn’t good enough to know about it, or have parents who believe it, we must make a cognitive choice to realize our own need and see Jesus as the solution. Paul elaborates, “People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.” Personally accepting Jesus as the sacrifice for your sins is your only hope of forgiveness and personal relationship with God. Today, if you haven’t already, come to God on His terms. Enter a relationship with Him by thanking Him for the gift of eternal life and forgiveness of sins because of what Jesus did on the cross for you.

TODAY’S PRAYER
Father, I know that I have done wrong and am in desperate need for forgiveness. I want to know You personally and become Your child. Thank You for the death of Your son Jesus on the cross for me. Come into my heart and be my ruler. I accept Jesus as the sacrifice for my sins. Thank You for forgiving me and making me Your child. In Jesus’ name.
AMEN

_____________________________________________________

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Cee-Lo - Tipsy Tha Main strength(Flow I)

Rain, the young man is thinking. Of course it would be raining. Not a heavy, cleansing rain that leaves the streets steaming and the neatly sculptured yards lush and fragrant. This is a gray drizzling rain. A rain that makes him think of places like England and Scotland as they appear in those disturbing late night films on cable, the ones in black and white that weren’t particularly memorable when they were made and are even less so now.

Still, it rains and the air is cool. All he has to shelter him is a think nylon jacket. The jacket is soaked. It feels both chilly and coarse against his skin. His hair hangs in flat and sodden wings, falling into his eyes. It’s long in the back, almost to his shoulders, and he thinks that the cars that pass him on the street, the occupants of those cars, might look at him and see only that he is wet and not that he is dirty as well. Can they tell that his hair has been unwashed for days?That his clothes are the same ones he’s worn for more than a week?It doesn’t matter. He’s invisible to them as soon as they pass, taking any assumptions they might make with them. They might just mistake him for one of those hoity-toity college kids, one of those clean limbed and beaming have’s who has happened to find himself caught out without his umbrella.

He makes a desultory attempt to straighten his shoulders, to lift his eyes from the buckled sidewalk. To look like he might have a purpose or a destination. It doesn’t help. He has become the day. He has internalized the environment. He did that years ago, in fact.

That’s all I can do.

Not his words, of course, but he understands them. He is intimately acquainted with his limitations.

His entire body is telling him about his limitations right now. His stomach roils on acid and nothing else. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate, but if his guts have their way, he’ll offer what little may be left to the street before long. He walks with his hands crammed deep into the pockets of his blue jeans. If he pulls them out, they’ll only shake like the hands of one of those fucking retard kids Jerry Lewis was always putting on television. There’s more. His aching head. His shoulders and elbows and his goddamned knees that all feel like the joints have been rapped with a hammer.

That commercial:this is your brain on drugs. Fuck. They should talk about your body on drugs. That would have been something like a deterrent.

He shuffles along in his tired clothing, with his greasy hair and his palsied hands and his plugged up ass. Oh, he hadn’t mentioned that one in a while. Not just constipation, the doctors said, but chronic constipation, and for it they gave you these little brown butt nuggets. Suppositories. Shove this up your ass, they tell you. Shove this up your ass and in a couple of days, you’ll be regular again.

How ‘bout you shove it up your ass?That’s what he wanted to say, always wanted to say but somehow never did. Shove it all up your ass, doc. Everything you’ve got to say and offer. It doesn’t help. None of it fucking helped.

I can be angry too, he thinks. Angry and disappointed and disillusioned. Except he isn’t. Anger implies the capacity to feel, and he doesn’t really have that anymore, not in any way he can identify. That’s how it all begins, this life, this desperation. An attempt to feel, or an attempt to stop feeling. He can’t say for certain. He no longer remembers, and the ghosts of his past are at rest. They don’t call out from their graves.

Somehow, he’s managed to reach downtown. This is disorienting. Turn right and fifteen blocks to the hospital. That might have been his plan when he started, for lack of a better plan, anyway. It was all he could do. It wasn’t working out that way.

He can see the courthouse, it’s bronze dome a shadow in the misting rain. Morning, not yet eight, and the sidewalks are barren places. He is alone in a city that would seem devoid of life except for the constant rumble and hum and scudding of cars as they pass. He peers at shop windows. A second hand bookshop on the corner. A high end sporting goods store with a kayak lurched at an unnatural angle behind the glass. A trendy women’s clothing shop blatantly, obscenely targeting the eighteen and nineteen year old somebodies from the campus.

But he keeps coming back to the kayak. A fucking kayak!As if this wasn’t God-fucking Indiana!This feels important to him somehow. And impenetrable. It’s a symbol in a message encrypted beyond his understanding.

I’m hungry. I’m angry. I’m tired. Most of all, I’m tired. I don’t get the kayak.

His shoulders sag and he no longer cares what he may seem to be. He doesn’t know the people who pass, who might pass judgments on him. They don’t get it, either. It’s beyond their understanding.

He steps back from the store’s display. One step, two. He totters with his heels hanging over the sidewalk’s edge. His balance is precarious, not something he could maintain for long if he wanted to. He closes his eyes and he draws into his lungs the odor of a damp city. He swivels his head on the glassy joints of his neck, as though peering back the way he has come.

He opens his eyes. He sees what he wants to see. He doesn’t so much fall back as he steps away.

From the kayak, he thinks. Always from the kayak.

It’s a city bus, large and hulking and green. The windshield is flat and tall, and he can see the driver, a nondescript and burly man. Burly in the way all bus drivers seem to be burly. He is poorly shaven. His skin is sallow. His eyes dark and small beneath a black buttress of Italian eyebrows. His mouth is small as well, probably not always, because a good bus driver needs a good mouth on him. But small now because it’s sucked his lips into a pinhole O of surprise. Something unanticipated.

The bus seems very large now, just as the mouth is very small, becoming smaller by the moment.

Shush, shush, the tires say, unheeded by the wet pavement.

I don’t get the kayak. Not at all.

The bus looms, becomes massive, grows to fill the universe.

And that, he thinks, that is all I can do.

Chapter 1 -->

In his lifetime, Ray had done a number of things for which he was not proud, things he’d like to see just as well stuffed down a dark hole. Everybody had things of which they were ashamed. Everybody has committed their share of sins that they wish they could take back. But this wasn’t one of them, and he resented the implication that it was—the implication that someone would dare to judge him for something they did not fully understand.

It was a good thing, a right thing, like the time he had given emergency CPR to the woman already ten minutes dead and gone, the woman whose mouth tasted of chocolate death and scrambled eggs, just to spare her horrified children the sense of helplessness while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. That had been a noble thing like this one was. Should have been.

Perhaps it was always less difficult to have things fail here, with the living, than it was with the dead. The dead had no opinions, no agendas. They weren’t sensitive. The dead did what you fucking told them to do and didn’t complain. Right?

The living simply did not understand that there were rules. They didn’t want to understand something so banal. Someone who didn’t take the time to understand the rules had no right to pass judgment on him. Not that it ever stopped them.

"I hear that you are unhappy," he said into the phone, then had to pull the receiver away from his ear so the woman on the other end could scream at him some more.

Conflict de-escalation technique number one was invariably affirmation. Make it clear that you are aware of the individual’s feelings and frustrations, that you are at least listening to their side, whether or not you personally may eventually have the authority to validate or alleviate those feelings. People liked to be listened to. The illusion of having a voice was almost as good as actually having one. Isn’t that why people still bothered to go to the polls on election day and vote?

And it worked on most people. This woman was not one of them.

"Your anger is perfectly appropriate in this situation. In your shoes, I would be livid. "

Advancing to commiseration now, crafting his voice so she would believe he was giving the shit which he in fact was not. This was much more than conflict de-escalation technique number two, it was what people commonly called professionalism.

"Really, hey, I understand. I do. I’m on your side on this one, but as I said previously, we are a medical facility. I have both a legal and ethical obligation to protect the confidentiality of our clients. Federal law prohibits me from divulging any information regarding or even confirming or denying the existence of the individual to whom you have made reference. "

Blah, blah, blah.

The co-lineation of the words "federal law" and any following set of polysyllables usually worked when all else failed, giving the caller the distinct impression of the big rock (prosecution, six figure fines and termination) and the hard place (i. e. the caller’s desire to get him to ignore the consequences of the big fucking rock) between which he was caught.

Lawyers were the exception, of course, as they daily circumvented both the federal law part and others’ deterrent polysyllables. Ray preferred not to talk to lawyers whenever possible.

The woman on the other end was not a lawyer, but as always just a mother or sibling or concerned friend, and in the absence of other weapons, would more than happily arm herself with simple stupidity for her assault. It was not an entirely ineffective approach.

"Look," he continued. "What I can do--all I can do--is offer to take a message. If the individual to whom you wish to speak or about whom you are inquiring is a resident of this facility, I will post a note next to the phone and that person will contact you at his or her earliest convenience. "

It was a purely rote response. The exact text of the message was even scrawled on a smudged and slowly disintegrating 3 x 5 card thumbtacked to the bulletin board above the office telephone. He didn’t need to look at the card. His mouth knew the shape and taste of the words by something akin to race memory. The seeming concession had a clear and simple purpose. It was designed to make the caller feel that he, the telephone gatekeeper, had made an exception, that he was surrendering something of value to their persistence.

It also had the very real benefit of getting him the fuck off the phone and away from the mindless, corrosive patter of the chronically concerned and certifiably obsessed relative with whom he happened to be sharing this conversation or one of the hundreds exactly like it in which he had participated over the years.

At last, the woman conceded and began to repeat her name, telephone number and the inevitable pleas to her loved one for a quick return call.

Ray hummed and nodded at the phone to display his sincere focus, conscientiously pretended he was writing it all down while he directed an imaginary symphony with his index fingers. He thanked her for calling, hung up the phone and shook his head.

Idiots. Every one of them.

*

Ray had a dingy little office in a large dirty building. Dirty not because the facility was poorly kept--on the contrary, he seemed to be calling the maintenance crews every other damned day to take care of one thing or another--but because a century and a quarter of more or less constant occupation tended to lodge dirt in corners where it couldn’t be reached and warp walls beyond the true until everything looked vaguely ramshackle. That this sordid structure had housed a somewhat boisterous brothel in the roaring twenties, then the homeless and hapless in the fifties and had lately (in decades) catered to drug addicts and alcoholics beyond even the scope of AA’s reasonable hopes did not help. People used to pissing in parks, sleeping beneath overpasses and drinking isopropyl alcohol when they could get their hands on nothing else were not naturally inclined--let alone hygienically capable--of assisting with the upkeep of any notion of decorum.

The regulars called it Last Stop Detox. In reality, it was just a warehouse for battered souls. A place for the fallen beyond redemption to roll in, dry out, stave off liver calcification for another day. There was no help here. To pretend so would be ludicrous. Instead, they offered "services", a generic and faintly mortuary term for a site midway between the chilly streets and the rigid consequences of jail.

They had a rotating roster of "clients" (a fine double-speak word for deadbeats and transients and career addicts who would look at you in an appalled and insulted fashion if you even mentioned the concept of a Bill For Services Rendered); Ray sponsored a monthly staff pool on which client would end up with the next obituary. It was the closest to compassion he could bring himself to feel. He made something over seven dollars an hour, but the benefits were good. He maintained as little contact with the facility’s patrons as he could legally and ethically manage.

As jobs went, it wasn’t so bad.

As workers in a job like this went, he wasn’t either.

*

"Who was that?" the girl asked, even as she prepared herself to leave. Her shift was over. "On the phone?"

Ray made a show of attempting to recall the details. "Somebody. Some woman. Wanted to talk to one of the clients. I said I’d take a message. "

"One of ours?"

Generally, the chances were somewhat less than fifty-fifty that a distraught caller actually had located the landing zone of their desperately sought susan. The call itself was often a last ditch effort aimed at any facilities that were not sponsored by the state and therefore barred, or sponsored by the good Lord and therefore very heavy, very dark and more than a little full of worms.

That these callers would have been relieved to discover their husband-boyfriend-son was only blasted way beyond coherency and slagged away in a third rate detox program where he would be, at best, miserable with withdrawal for the next several days was something of an indicator of the general mental health of the population to which the facility offered its services.

Still, he shrugged at her question, reluctant to answer her straight for whatever reason. She was young, twentyish and pretty, with dark red hair. Stunning green eyes. Breasts that practically stood up and walked about on their own, that made a man think of the word "perky" (though she, as a rule, did not conjure that image with the rest of her demeanor. Probably would have slugged you had she even thought you thought it). She had been clean for most of four years, he knew. About the staff average in terms of recovery time, and not an uncommon figure in this line of work. The resilience of her faith in the ability of others to recover (with a big ‘R’) was somewhat atypical after four years of service, at least when compared to other mental health professionals specializing in clients of this same socio-economic level, but probably still on the same planet.

She was two full years past being an annoying borderline codependent and probably a full half decade from emotional burnout. He was willing to give her a little more benefit of the doubt with regards to her longevity and tolerance of this population than he would have given the average person. Recovering addicts in his experience were mostly full of one of two things: hope was the non-obvious one, and she was, in fact, loaded to the eyeballs with it and chipper as a woodpile nine days out of ten.

She had been a prostitute for awhile, purely to support her habit (though he forgot what precisely that habit had been. Cocaine most likely. Cocaine and hooking are flip sides of a whole pocket full of change. That’s why they call them crack whores as opposed to Schnapps whores).

It was apparent that his lack of forthrightness had disappointed her. "She’ll call back," he said. "They always do. Too codie not to. "

She laughed, a sound like wine glasses tinkling. "You have such a big heart. Try not to save the whole world, okay?" Then she winked at him, and he thought about asking her for sex.

"Anybody on the verge of death?" he asked.

"Not immediately. "

A nod. Good enough. He wished her good evening and watched her all the way out the door.

*

Cynicism is a way of life in the drunk and sober business. One learns to expect nothing, to doubt success as a temporary achievement, to assume failure. It isn’t so much a defense mechanism as a result of years of anecdotal evidence. The few who succeed, the average odds being about one in thirty, vanish without a word. Mental health workers frequently (and with statistical safety) assume that the individual is dead. In AA circles, they refer to the newly sober idiot’s feeling that he’s got the alcohol demon whipped as "pink clouding. " In the same fashion, addictions professionals do not pink cloud their prognoses. If anything, they dark cloud, they hunt in packs, and they look for shitty little parades.

Thus, when Ray referred to the sole value and purpose of the addiction and recovery milieu as "warehousing" and nothing else, no better or worse than that, he had a decent epistemological authority for the label and the cynicism which the label suggested.

He’d stolen it from his superiors. Specifically, from the facility’s director herself.

He had made the mistake one day of asking exactly what the hell they thought they were accomplishing after the same drunk had shown up for the seventh day in a row smashed out of his mind. That he had shown up was not the issue. That he had no pants on, was a gibbering schizophrenic perilously short of voice-controlling medications, and smelled of spoiled condiments from his latest bout of dumpster diving was close to the actual issue. That he was in this condition and it had fallen to Ray to do the admit was exactly what was going on. Jail, he thought, would have been a better answer. Hospital psych ward or some other non-voluntary commitment would have been almost as good. Long term cemetery visitation would do in a pinch.

Anywhere that wasn’t a place like this one, like Last Stop, where the client could slip in for a few minutes, hours or days—as long as he damned well felt like staying—then tromp off to drink a bit more when he felt like it and start the whole desperate and pathetic round over again.

There were no bars to keep the helpless in or out. It was a voluntary program. Voluntary, from the Latin voluntarius: to will. Addiction in a nutshell.

What good are we doing?

His boss had looked him dead in the eye and said the magic word. "Warehousing. "

For what the fuck for?

And the list began: for a family who has had to deal with this waste of life for forty years and deserves a break. For another anonymous family coming home from the grocery store or the movies or just a walk in the park who would have a better chance of making it home on this one night because this particular drunk was off the streets rather than behind a wheel. For a case manager who had done everything short of pulling her hair out by the roots to convince this yahoo to take his meds, spend his disability check on something other than booze, and somewhen other than the first damned week of every month. Assuming the client hangs around for the duration, detox is a two week vacation, which gives an untold number of people the strength to carry on with the incessant bullshit this guy ships out the other fifty, ruining their lives, their happiness and their peace of mind.

Warehousing was a metaphor for making the world in general a happier place. Think, she said, of all the random acts of violence due to simple, mind-numbing, endless life frustration you prevent every time you show up to work.

It was, he had to admit, a pretty good answer.

*

Except then he had looked at the guy, strapped on a smile that felt halfway sincere and said, "So, Bob, what happened to your pants?"

Just as friendly (probably because the voices were as drunk as he was) Bob had replied, "I don’t know, Ray. What happened to them?"

It had taken Ray six months to convince Bob that he hadn’t stolen his pants as some kind of joke.

Some concepts worked better in theory than in practice.

*

Ray was not, and probably never had been, an addict himself though he frequently attributed the demise of his marriage to alcohol and cannabis. As in "once I stopped using, I realized she wasn’t nearly as interesting as I had been led to believe. " It usually earned him a few chuckles.

If asked (which he was not), he couldn’t have given a reason why he worked with this population. He had no history of family addiction, no grudges to work out, no impulse to redeem--all of the usual reasons. He cared as little about the welfare of his clients as the average hotel desk clerk. It was probably just as well that no one examined his motivations. In fact, he had only taken the job because four years of half-time college attendance convinced him he needed a job in which he could both work full time and attend school full time to wrap up his degree. Night shift had offered him that opportunity. The fact that he still remained some three odd years post-degree was not adequately explained.

Still, he was the consummate professional, notoriously competent and fully aware that if anyone was going to attempt to slide on the rules, they were going to do it on his shift. His determination that they adhere closely to the Community Agreements which they signed upon admission to the facility was not so much militaristic for his own sadistic satisfaction as it was symbolic of his realization that any allowance he made for a rules violation created hassles for everybody else.

He had never allowed anyone to die on his watch (drawn from the basic assumption that living was an implied stipulation on the Community Agreements for continued residence in the facility). He joked that there was simply too much paperwork involved to entertain the option of allowing a client to get stiff on him. On the other hand, he still insisted on calling garbage can liners "low rent body bags" whenever a client asked for one, and the dumpster was the "funeral waiting area". He had considered that really funny until one of their clients actually did freeze to death in the dumpster behind the Kroger. It was still B-list material, though.

He was, however, the last person in the world who planned on informing the name-forgotten caller that her nineteen year old heroin addicted son had abandoned treatment two mornings ago and stepped in front of a city bus. That was more of a police matter, a coroner matter, or maybe even best left up to the local newspaper. The police, of course, were probably still trying to establish identification and locate next of kin. Ray himself only knew because the AA grapevine was that good, that efficient, and full of people who rode city buses for a living (practically) and knew everybody who had ever been at any meeting anywhere in the tri-county area by face and first name. The recovering community usually had a ten to twelve hour scoop on any other agency regarding information on their own people. Newspapermen really should give them their own beat.

Ray didn’t really give a shit about any of that. His concern only ranged far enough to wonder if the mother would be stricken or relieved when the news finally came. The latter was a safe bet.

*

On most nights, he smoked too much, drank too much coffee and spent too many hours thumbing through his dog-eared copy of Career Options for English Majors. It was that kind of life. Night shift workers know entropy as an almost physical force, but they do not complain. They don’t have the energy.

The phone rang at midnight, just as it always did.

"So there’s this guy," she said. She never stayed, but called the moment she got home. Just to talk, which typically left him wondering if the relationship was then more complex than it appeared on the surface or so grindingly, platonically simple that he was the only one too stupid to understand it.

"What’s his name?"

"Does it matter?" He supposed it did not, and she agreed. "He’s here now. Asleep in my bed when I got home. I guess I gave him a key. "

"Did you sleep with him?"

"Of course, but just a few times. " She paused. "Or did you mean tonight? There’s hardly been time. "

"No, just in general. "

"Why do you ask?" She was flirting.

That was, in fact, why he had asked, but he said, "Because I can’t give decent advice without a conc