27 December 2020

Remembering THE TERRIBLE TWEET STORM OF AUGUST 8TH, 2020*

 

(art.com)



I posted 21 Tweets on Twitter on August 8, 2020. Here they are in chronological order as posted:

1. "Can my past, too, be infinite or are all the stones already carved?"

2. "How come if alcohol kills millions of brain cells, it never killed the ones that make me want to drink?" - Author Unknown

3."At least I'm not an addict." That's the sense of moral superiority I once had. Today, that statement would be sadly laughable.

4. "Alcohol separated him from the world in his addiction and loneliness can take him back out there."

5. "No one ever knew he needed help because he was so good at hiding it from himself and from others. Sweet oblivion. Pretty poison."

6. "Not that I'm making excuses, but it just seems that once you slide so far down into your alcoholism after so many years, you are so entrenched that it seems the only answer is another drink."

7. "Where do you turn when more is too much, too empty, too lost?"

8. "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without also helping himself."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

9. "I don't think we get more alcoholic. I think it just shows more as time goes on." - A New Pair of Glasses, Chuck "C"

10. "I don't know if I can ever feel as empty as Jim has felt. Knowing the cause does not erase the effects of his emptiness. I don't think I've ever felt an emptiness quite like his."

11. "A mind stretched by a new idea never shrinks back to its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

12. "Being drunk allowed me to deal with the drunk in me."

13. "But when he turns his back on empathy, he turns his back upon himself."

14. "Diplomatically searching for others equally high, we (my disease and I) would manufacture memories out of blackouts like free-range intoxicated chickens."

15. "His sobriety, at first, was like a bad translation."

16. "How many keys did I have to lose before I would learn that alcohol no longer opened doors?"

17. "I measured my life in pints instead of hours."

18. "If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we could not." - Emerson Pugh

19. "It's not trespassing when you cross your own boundaries." - Anonymous

20. "When I thought I could stay sober alone, I wound up drinking alone."

21. "You are what you eat, but what are you when you are only what you drink?"

*(All quotes, except where noted are by the author of All Drinking Aside. All 21 Tweets are excerpted from this same book.)

*****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 
(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both Books are Available in Print and Kindle Editions.

19 December 2020

This illusion offers us comfort.


In our vain attempt to make sense of where we are at any particular moment, we tend to tie the story of our lives together in such a way that past events are twisted into conforming to the narrative we write for ourselves. Where we are today, when explained as inevitable, gives us reassurance, explains us to ourselves. How did I get to this point, we ask ourselves and it seems in retrospect it couldn't have been any other way. 

This is not destiny, although to many of us it may certainly seem that way. Every moment, thus, has the potential to be a sort of Deja Vu. It most certainly couldn't have been any other way. No wonder it feels so familiar, as if we had known this very moment had somehow already happened before. Deja Vu.

An almost forced inevitability threads our narrative as we move forward in our lives. This illusion offers us comfort. We find evidence where none exists because we want to continue to believe that where we are is right and good and could not have been any other way.

Were we to travel at the speed of light and then come back to ourselves, we might be younger by some small fraction. Questions of Destiny and Freedom of Choice are best left to Philosophers, we tell ourselves, all the while living it out as self-explained. The answers to our questions seem obvious because we ask the questions that will be supported by the realities of our strings of moments. 

All of this is an illusion. Or none of this is an illusion. Or so much a most curious mixture of both and neither that we rarely give it a second thought. By now, we have already reassured ourselves and so pay little or no attention to all of the above.

*****

I almost hate to say it (but said with a certain relish) but some of this post is part of the questioning that went on for me as I moved from Victim of Addiction to a Person Responsible in Recovery.

The things that unite us (and by Us, I mean those of us who have survived addiction, those of us who still feel a sense of entrapment and those who have never been addicted to a substance or a behavior) are far greater than the things which divide us. Our common humanity, truthfully, is the framework upon which my recovery (falteringly at times) has been built.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

*****

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

Find it on Amazon. Book it here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Find 5,900+ Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/jimanders4 

08 December 2020

Reader Review, "ASTONISHING," by Jan Trew-Smith (From ACROSS THE POND)


Reader Review of ALL DRINKING ASIDE

"Astonishing" 

by Jan Trew-Smith

"This is not just a novel but a journey into the mind of Jim and you as the reader. The author's writing left me stunned and, at moments, frozen in my own thoughts. Be prepared to have a light shone into your subconscious. I cannot recommend this book more highly."

*****
Read all the Reader Reviews of ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 
Find it on Amazon. Book it here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c
Recovery Tweets here: twitter.com/jimanders4