WHEN "HOPE itself has become DEGENERATIVE," STRIVE [anyway]!

(proclinical.com)

Addiction is a degenerative disease characterized by progressive and sometimes irreversible deterioration and partial or total loss of all matter of bodily functions and organs.
Some changes are unchangeable (I'm getting a little choked up here).
Imagine being the sibling, parent or child of someone deep into their addiction. Now imagine wondering if the addict doesn't stop now, they may be on the road to where certain changes to their brain will become permanent. It may be too late already, you think.
You know that the addict or alcoholic is still using because with your own eyes you see that they have been slowly dying. You are glad when they get arrested because you know that when they are behind bars, their disease has also been arrested. It's not living, but it's not dying either. You squeeze a little hope out of this jail cell interruption. This is wearing on you, has been wearing you down for years now. Your hopes are slowly eroding, hoping for the best, but beginning to expect the worst.
Each time, each relapse, each arrest, each drama more like the countless times before. Hope itself has become degenerative.
Unwillingly, you are swept up in your user's addiction too.
You, too, will now need help.
Whether you can feel it yet or not, you are becoming the victim of a victim of addiction. Twice removed from reality you may begin to wonder about those around you. Are they becoming a victim of a victim of a victim? Thrice removed.
Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters.

None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent.
You have long felt that everything you do and/or don't do has somehow become part of the problem.
"You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."
You'll hear this in an Al-Anon meeting. The 3 C's. Cause, Control, Cure. "You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."
There are no 100% right or easy answers. Every situation is different. Every person is different.
It is easy to forget that Change is possible.
"Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters. None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent."
*****
"Hope is still possible," I tell you.
You are reluctant. You've heard it all before, from the addict, from others in recovery, from deep within your own heart (I'm getting a little choked up here).

Change is possible.
I've seen it before.
I warn you that I've seen people suffer permanent brain damage. Suicide. Complete and utter hopelessness. But I have seen change, too. The possibility of change. The reemergence of hope after the smallest hope seemed nothing less than foolish. 

I have seen too, that recovery may miraculously spread outward from the human pool, purifying the waters. All may begin to heal. These waters may become restorative and resilient.

*****

"It is not the most intellectual or the strongest of species that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself."- Charles Darwin

*****

These are the waters in which we find ourselves. These are the waters of addiction and these also are the waters of recovery. Every flick of our fins may move us towards the Beauty of Recovery and away from the complicit and degenerative qualities of Addiction. 

Swim in the direction of Recovery and away from the progressive, downward pull of Addiction. There are 10,000 ways forward. 

Find your way forward because "nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

Recovery is possible, doable, irreplaceable.

Strive.
Strive on.
It is the least, the most and sometimes the only thing that we can do.
Strive!

*****

Journey with this Author through this Autobiographical Fiction.

#Read ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

Find it on Amazon. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

5,800+ Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4 

*****

SHARED COURAGE: Gateway to Recovery

(Hubble-Image)

"Some people who survive a life-altering disorder or experience develop special sensitivities, insights, and skills to help others similarly afflicted." - William L. White

Striving to motivate others is fodder for my own recovery. Brick by brick, a life in recovery is built. Fast and slow, in uncertain measure, the days go by, and years of recovery are built. "It takes a village to raise a child" and I could not have been raised out of addiction (SUD/Substance Use Disorder) by my own bootstraps alone.
I encourage courage because courage will be necessary.
Shared Courage is the Gateway to Recovery.

Delete the Scientific Jargon and the Religious Jargon and pretty much the only thing left, for me, has been others. By myself alone, I am lost, or will and would become lost again.
I LIVE IN A PERPETUAL FEEDBACK LOOP OF RECOVERY. No alphabet soup of the letters on diplomas or sworn testimonials by people of faith are enough alone to keep me sober.
Connection is key.
Recovery is constructed from the debris of the persistent pummeling that is Addiction. I was nothing, left with nothing, when I first got sober. Recovery constructed itself from Ground Zero. 

This post is a single wave of Recovery, a single inhalation and exhalation, one continuous brushstroke forever repeated. My celebration is solemn, quiet and life-affirming.
Recovery is life itself to me (to US).
GATEWAY to RECOVERY: Shared Courage.
BECOMING UNBROKEN: Waves of Recovery.
I Live in a Perpetual Feedback Loop of Recovery.

Do what you must, what you will, to get there, stay there and live there.

Recovery is Possible, Doable, Irreplaceable.

You + Me = WE (Shared Courage)

*****
Enjoy my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon, Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
5,800+ Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/JimAnders4

Bipolar Disorder, Crystal Meth (& lest we forget... My Alcoholism)

"Bipolar disorder can be characterized by extreme mania followed by dark depression - but so can using crystal meth."- David Sheff in Clean, p. 242.
*****
My daily intake of alcohol followed a wide curve, a roller-coaster much as David Sheff expresses in the quote, above. Up, then down, Up, then down, my pattern of use and misuse continued for me emotionally, long after all alcohol was drained from my system. 
The first few drinks of alcohol elevated me until their accumulated effect was to bring me down. Up, Down, Pass Out, Come To. This pattern repeated itself daily for 30 years.
If three separate sheets of graph paper are drawn showing the up and down cycles of bipolar disorder, crystal meth use and alcoholism, they might (minus words of explanation) easily be mistaken for each other.
It's no wonder when I first got sober that I was misdiagnosed as having a bipolar disorder.
Long after a ship's engines are shut off, it will coast forward in the water under its own momentum before it slows to a stop.
After 30 years of daily drinking, the ups and downs produced by alcohol continued in my early sobriety. 
",,, extreme mania followed by dark depression" is only the slightest exaggeration of my worsening 30 year ride on a sea of alcohol.
*****
Stigma slows the treatment and recovery of these 3 disorders and a boatload of other disorders that I have not included here.
Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. To each and all.
No matter what boat you're on or off or in or out or under or around or through.
Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.

*****

"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****

#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

*****
You may also enjoy my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

"HEALING: Preparing for the Next Wound"

(lizarch.com)

"A man who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary." - Seneca

"Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but doesn't get you anywhere." - Anonymous

*****

Learning to live without the next drink prepared me for whatever battles I will have had to face without that drink. And I've had plenty.

My Recovery from Alcoholism prepared me for my diagnosis, treatment and eventual Recovery from Cancer. 

"HEALING: Preparing for the Next Wound" may sound a bit Ouch-y!, but life is tough and as a young kid, the only tools in my toolbox were alcohol and other drugs. I would and did get through practically everything with a drink in my hand.

Alcohol was my solution to everything, yet it solved nothing (much like worry in the opening anonymous quote). And alcohol, so much like any other addictive substance, caused me unnecessary suffering, much more, in most cases, than any pain it was attempting to offset or relieve. 

I used alcohol preemptively to kill the pain of any impending doom I may have anticipated. As a preemptive measure, alcohol failed miserably. 

Addiction is a cul-de-sac, a road with no apparent end or escape.

RECOVERY. RECOVERY. RECOVERY. 

Recovery is healing, learning to cope with all of life's issues, large and small, without dependence on a substance to deaden any possible future pains.

"HEALING: Preparing for the Next Wound" is another way of saying that Recovery taught me to live life on life's terms. 

After overcoming alcohol, cancer was a little bump in the road compared to what it may have been had I not learned to survive my Substance Use Disorder (SUD) first.

Nothing about Addiction is empowering, but Recovery from Addiction IS empowering.

RESILIENCE: Recovery taught me resilience. 

And the Next Wound?

I am Ready. I am Willing. I am Able.

ALCOHOLISM: Loving to drink. Living to drink. Dying to drink. Dying from drinking.

RECOVERY: Wanting to live. Learning to live. Loving to live. Living with love.

Addiction prepared me for nothing. Recovery has prepared me for everything.

Period.

*****

[Please NOTE: The quotes excerpted here are two of the 180 found in All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal]

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4  

"The Distinction Between a User, Abuser, and Addict...

(madinamerica.com)

"The distinction between a user, abuser and addict is irrelevant when a person is sentenced to prison because he was driving high and killed someone, or when he suffers permanent brain damage or a stroke, or when he OD's." - David Sheff, "Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy," p. 77.
*****
Sheff's quote left me speechless, lost in reflection of my own slow descent into addictive hell.
*****
Escalating forms of denial accompany the up-and-coming addict as they go down-and-out.
*****
How well I remember that "by the time I had a reason to stop drinking, reason no longer had anything to do with it." I flowed seamlessly from user to abuser to full-blown addict.
Lickety-split.
Truth and consequences took a back seat once addiction was in the driver's seat.
As I've heard in the rooms of recovery, 'Jails, institutions and death' are addiction's usual destinations.
Even after recovery has been achieved, addiction seems patiently to lie in wait, to take up where it left off.
User, abuser, addict?
Irrelevant.
*****
"Loving to drink. Living to drink. Dying to drink. Dying from drinking. This is the progression of alcoholism. Wanting to live. Learning to live. Loving to live. Living with love. This is the progression of recovery."
Love will solve what stigma has dissolved.
*****
Quotes which follow David Sheff's are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4 

Book Review of "Unbreakable Mind: Channeling Your Survival Instincts after Catastrophic Injury"

by Jim Anders

A Book For Everyone Recovering from Anything (5***** Stars)

Steven Quigley's  spinal cord injury was his Lemon. "Unbreakable Mind: Channeling Your Survival Instincts after Catastrophic Injury" is his Lemonade.
The 18 Chapters of "Unbreakable Mind" contain many seeds of wisdom (Lemonade pun intended), far too many to include in this short 5***** Star Reader Review, but here are a few I found particularly Awesome:
1. "... quietly, below the surface, each of us has a wound we need to heal." (Chapter 12)
2. "It is only twelve inches from the mind to the heart, but so few manage the journey." (Chapter 1)
3. "Doctors and hospitals do not heal you- you heal yourself!" (Chapter 3)
4. "... masking pain can be deadly, it only hides the underlying problem and can lead to an escalation in the use of painkillers or creating a dependency." (Chapter 9) I masked my pain with alcohol. Let "Unbreakable Mind" serve as a tool of introspection so that you may become Unbreakable, too.
5. "Your team is everything- so built it wisely and strongly." (Chapter 10) This book is powerful. Reading it will put Steven Quigley on YOUR Team.
6. "The physical fight is only the first of many battles in your recovery and some will be broken by it before they begin their journey to a new life." (Chapter 17) To paraphrase Steven Quigley, the biggest fight exists in your mind.
From deep within yourself, through connection with others, you will "find a way to help other people." (Chapter 18) "Unbreakable Mind" is engrossing, thought-provoking, inspirational. Dive deep, connect, emerge more fully whole. Pass it on. 5 Stars.

Here's the link to "Unbreakable Mind" https://www.amazon.com/Unbreakable-Mind-Channeling-Instincts-Catastrophic/dp/0692129901/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=%22Unbreakable+Mind%3A+Channeling+Your+Survival+Instincts+after+Catastrophic+Injury%22&qid=1564506413&s=gateway&sr=8-1

(DRUG COURT is now called RECOVERY COURT)

"Ninety percent of people who need help never receive it. Indeed, people with addiction are more likely to wind up in prison than in rehab." - David Sheff, "Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy," p. 15
*****
Our so-called War on Drugs has turned out to be more a War on Addicts.
It goes beyond lawyers and laws. If David Sheff's quote (above) is correct, which I believe it is, it points to larger problems than our criminal justice system.
Blaming the victims of addiction by stigmatizing substance use disorders does nothing to help people striving to get their lives back together. Stigma kills. It makes the recovery process ever-more difficult. Punishment doled out in the form or employment and housing discrimination are among a host of other below-the-belt punches, far beyond and after an addict is released from a jail cell. Looks of disgust and mistrust will accompany them for years to come. Social barriers to recovery are so prevalent, so part and parcel of expected behavior as to be nearly unnoticed by the uninformed John Q. Public.
Stigma for those still using. Stigma for those struggling to live in recovery. Looked at in abhorrence, an anathema to be scorned without pity, recovery for many and most has not been made any easier by the social-fabric-of-the-day. Injustice. The War on Drugs has hardened our Culture to the Core.
I am an alcoholic in long-term recovery. I had been dehumanized by alcohol, humiliated by the world-at-large. The Stigma Enigma, as I've called it elsewhere, is the punishing by the outside world of those already punished by addiction. The stigma continues long past the last drug use, long after the prison door of addiction has opened.
The slightest glimmer of hope sustains me.
*****
HOPE!!!
The smallest of changes may have the most profound effects. Here, where I live, there used to be an institution called DRUG COURT. This is a place where addicts on drug-related offenses are given the opportunity to start a new life in Recovery.
The smallest change, miraculous, has been a simple change in language. DRUG COURT is now called RECOVERY COURT.
My job is done here. Check out this wonderful article: https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/employment-key-to-recovery-court-graduates-success-judge-says/article_978893e3-c46a-5cf3-9b3b-763864296c0b.html
One simple change: Someone said something like let's call DRUG COURT something that better describes its purpose. Let's call it RECOVERY COURT.
This reminds me of my wonder as a child after giving a kaleidoscope a simple quarter turn: Everything changes.
One small change. A simple change of focus can move mountains.
It's a start. It's a start. It's a start.
*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
[NOTE: I've never been in jail, but I know full-well the prison of addiction. You might enjoy my book: ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal ]
Find it on Amazon.com here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

*_*_*_* Street Drugs, Quality NOT Controlled vs. Alcohol, the Deadliest Drug *_*_*_*

The quality of street drugs is NOT controlled.People die every day and hour from ingesting, snorting and shooting up different substances than what they presume they had just purchased.
Alcohol IS a controlled substance. In my home state, Pennsylvania, liquor is sold by the state and monitored by a Liquor Control Board. You are certain of the quality and purity of every substance you purchase.
So alcohol is safer than street drugs, right?
Absolutely.
Except for me.
It's not safe for me.
Not safe.
Presumably never was. A long, hard lesson had to be learned.
A 30-year look back on my drinking experience has proven to me beyond doubt that it is not safe for me to drink under any circumstances or conditions. Ever. No matter how many decades between sips. Alcoholism and its attendant consequences have always been progressive for me. My life has always gotten progressively worse each and every time I have picked up a drink.
No matter the purity and proof of the alcohol I might ingest, it's me who is out of control whenever i drink. I'm a blackout drinker who continues to drink well after my ability to form memories has evaporated. My brain's desire for all else dissipates.
Alcohol replaces what alcohol displaces.
Illusion, delusion and insanity ensue. The only gain is loss. And loss is all.
After years of sustained sobriety, all street drugs, alcohol and prescription drugs (except as prescribed by a doctor) are off my Wish List, Bucket List and a List of other Lists. With no illusion of control over addictive substances, my recovery continues to flourish in their absence.
Period.
Pretty Poison, Sweet Poison, My Alcohol is the Deadliest Drug of All.
Recovery is my substance.
Period.
*****
You may also enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

Find it on Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4 

*_*_*_* PTSD & The Tomb of the Anonymous Addict *_*_*_*

(hope found: on pinterest.com)

In 17 short sentences, here, combined, my heart opens to expose my pain for those who suffer, survive and sometimes die from post-traumatic stress and addiction. Because both posts are spare in words and similar in sincerity, I share them both here for any and all who allow themselves to feel and share with me the multiple traumas briefly laid out here for all to see.
*****
PTSD
(In a few short sentences, 154 years of history are traced by the different names we have assigned to PTSD... and how it has changed us):
*****
A Soldier's Heart is what they called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during the U.S. Civil War (which ended in 1865, 154 years ago). They did not know what else to call it. It was at the core of what they felt. "He's suffering from a Soldier's Heart," they said.
Time marches on (and did march on) and during World War One the same sick soldier would be called Shell-Shocked. The munitions changed and the positions changed, the diagnoses altered slightly from the Soldier's Heart to the shell-casings of bombs dropped too near.
The concentric circle of war overlapped once again in World War Two and combat stress reaction and a spray of other diagnoses erupted as the medicalization of symptoms evolved and the prescriptions changed.
Today we call it PTSD and for a second we may look upon that same soldier as if under a microscope whose magnification may bring us closer to the truth found possible through advanced scientific methodologies, yet somehow far further from the man, the man an echo beneath a barrage of symptoms...
Do Not Forget a Soldier's Heart...
*****
[Please note, when I had first heard about Soldier's Heart, I was immediately reminded of PTSD and of how I had felt when I first hit bottom in 1996... lost in terror.]
*****
.
.
.
*****
THE TOMB OF THE ANONYMOUS ADDICT
(No words minced, the hope for change is submerged here, emptied out by deaths too soon in addiction's wake.):
*****
Sometimes walking down the street you think you hear the sound of leaves scuttling along, but these are the plans, hopes, dreams of the dead. Wind barely whispering over the green lips of empty bottles, syringes puncturing the silence in their stillness. Sentences gasping for a last breath, forever unfinished.
The Tomb of the Anonymous Addict is really many tombs in many doorways, further down anonymous valleys than any still alive have ever ventured.
No such monument truly exists. It's undedicated, the dead remains unidentified. It is truly unnamed and unguarded.
It tires me, this Tomb of the Anonymous Addict. It exists in my mind only.... And it makes me weary.
*****
[Truly, I do have hope today, but for however briefly, it had been eroded here. Hope is Our Renewable Natural Resource. Give yours to those in whom you find it lacking.]
*****

"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." 

*****

#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

*****

You may also enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

Find it on Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

Recovery Tweets: https://twitter.com/JimAnders4 

*_*_*_* #Addiction: Reptilian Stairway to Nowhere *_*_*_*

(mc escher lizards ixora.pro)

Alcohol was certainly not the only drug I used. True, it was center stage, but co-conspirators often stole the show, beyond over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and including prescription drugs, street treats and sundry hallucinogens. 

It was only after I had come off this one particular LSD-like trip that I realized I couldn't have climbed a staircase in the jailhouse I was being held in because there were no stairways in that one-story building. No basement. No second floor.

Trust me though, some reptilian (me, so very high) had climbed that stairway that was not there.

*****

"Climbing an invisible, hallucinated staircase, high on organic belladonna plucked fresh off the tree by me hours earlier, high in the Guatemalan mountains, Gene and I were arrested on suspicion of substance abuse, awaiting release through bribery. Some memories, like this Guatemalan belladonna one, bring flashbacks" of me being not fully or even partly there, melted into a drug-induced haze. Sometimes I have to remember these moments to fully appreciate that I have surrendered to recovery, that I am savoring the present moment and that I have survived all of it.

*****

All the other drugs involved in my 'other' life were dissolved by alcohol, always alcohol. It took me half my 30-year drinking career to understand, fully to understand, that alcohol was both set and setting in the unreal play being acted out in my addiction. Drugs dissolved in alcohol, my universal solvent. So smooth. So soothing. I did not know until I, too, had become dissolved in alcohol and the curtain had begun to draw closed that I was a chronic alcoholic nearly beyond help.

Such a romantic-sounding dying it seemed to be, until the too-real catastrophes began exploding around me, all-the-while my life imploding until there was nearly nothing left. I, a spitball on some mad scientist's floor. I, too small, the door of recovery too large, too large. It would not seem to budge.

That I am alive today seems mostly luck, some hard, hard work and a reptilian brain learning, unlearning, relearning. 

A wild animal, unleashed from addiction's cage, takes years to tame.

I am free. I am human. I am me again.

I built a stairway to recovery that had not been there. 

Shared courage opened the door to recovery. I could not have done it alone. 

Gratitude unbound for all who helped me find a way, my way.

Reptilian stairway to nowhere... nowhere to be found.

Recovery built on solid ground.

Shared courage.

No way.

Yes, way.

*****

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery

*****

You may also enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

Find it on Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO

Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4