Who is "The Fifteenth Stone"?

(Vatchi): Sotto, you just reminded me here of something I thought long forgotten. It's called "The Fifteenth Stone" and I can't recall if it's a true story or an allegory, or what. But let me explain of stones and elephants.
Somewhere, Japan or China, who knows? San Francisco? A garden exists somewhere, a rock garden: let's say the size of a tennis court. You can walk completely around it, but you are not allowed to cross its borders. This rock garden contains fifteen large stones of varying sizes, say, knee to chest high. And this rock garden is so constructed that no matter where you stand on the garden's perimeter, only fourteen of the stones are ever visible. One stone, forever changing, is always hidden from view. Fifteen stones in the garden, and no matter where you stand, only fourteen are visible.
Which stone is Jim, Sotto?
Which stone are you, Surimi?

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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

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If not You, Who?

This excerpt is from "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal," an Autobiographical Fiction, linked here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO

View my LinkedIn Recovery Posts here:
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/0_38_vTSmQYaW33a9H_bIcA7?trk=prof-sm

& find a few Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

"Do not kill her in front of me. Show me her body when you have finished." - Thandi Shezi's mother

(Sept. 1988, on the occasion of being forced to watch the savage beating of her daughter by South African police prior to her arrest.)*

Another mother, on Facebook, spoke to my core recently, expressing the same brutality exacted upon her daughter by addiction.
This is the third mother in my recent memory, exasperated, who had reached that point of overwhelming heartbreak.
Somewhere, tonight, a mother is crying out in anguish over the power that is addiction. Addiction is killing her daughter, out of reach. "Do not kill her in front of me. Show me her body when you have finished," she begs.
Everybody is recovering from something and sometimes that something is another person's addiction.
Grief. Anguish. Pain. Addiction spreads in ever-widening circles.
The chains of addiction must be broken. 
Hearts will heal, must heal. Thoughts unspoken, silent meditations shatter the night.
Ever-widening circles of hope.
Hope must conquer, will conquer.
Remember that there are whole worlds in recovery, that recovery is possible, doable, magnificent.
Recovery lives.
Strive on!

*(from "Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering" by David A. Kessler, M.D., p. 253)

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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery #Books
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Jim Anders is also the Author of "All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal," an Autobiographical Fiction, linked here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

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

"Inject Me Slowly, Truth"

WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

"Slow the injection of truth. Insert the needle of truth into my vein, into my brain, slowly. First, hold the needle upright. Squeeze out any air. Leave only the clear, the liquid, the truth. Inject me slowly. I want to watch that crystal clarity enter my vein. The truth, too fast, could only scare me. Inject me slowly, or quickly watch me die."

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The passage above is excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

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

10 Favorite Recovery Tweets

In no particular order of relevance: 

 1. This is your glass talking... "An empty glass told me that I had been drinking."

(After 50,000 drinks, they'd start talking to you, too.)

 2. "When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place." - Jimmy Breslin

(This is one of 180 quotes by the famous, infamous and anonymous in my book*)

 3. I chain-smoked when I drank. Two Cycles of Addiction Have Been Broken.

(They go together like arsenic and cyanide/)

 4. The Flow of Alcohol is Beaten by The Flow of Life. The River of Time is Slow & Deep.

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

(Complaining, gossip and worry are three activities I attempt to side-step, but it's not easy. Taking action where possible and accepting what's not possible just about covers it!)

 6. "Sometimes a majority simply means that all the fools are on the same side." - Claude McDonald

(The majority of my friends were mere mortal social drinkers for most of the first decade of my drinking career. But don't worry, that changed over time. Drinking alone was the end of that inevitably long road!)

 7.Question for Today: What is the radioactive half-life of addiction?

(Yes, this is from my book. It occurred to me after a few months of not drinking because the after-effects of a lifetime of drinking subside so slowly. Actually, my alcoholism was more like not-at-all living, so speaking of a radioactive half-life of addiction explodes with irony for me)

 8."The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."

- Alfred North Whitehead

(Maybe I will change my name it Jim North Anders? I need a Recovery Compass to point me in the direction of continuing recovery. Let that dark place in which I once lived remain a fading memory, an old scar that is merely a reminder of days and years gone by.)

 9. "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

- Samuel Johnson

(So deeply profound is this statement that I am profoundly jealous. Wish I'd said that. Eighteenth Century, no less!)

10. I drank long enough and hard enough that eventually there was no bar big enough to hold my emptiness.

(Yes, I wrote this and No! It's not in my book. I'm still growing, moving forward. My Sober Life is a treasure trove of possibilities. Let me end here wishing everyone a Great Big Happy New Year!)
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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

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Most all of these Tweets are excerpted from *All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here: https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

Find more of his Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

"The Drinking Life"

(Unapologetically, I present a short & simple verse I wrote. When one has moved from a space of chaos to a place of tranquility, simplicity seems the order of the day.)

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A man jumps out of a burning building...

"A man jumps out of a burning building, his clothing consumed in flames. Ripping off his clothes, some of his skin and burning flesh comes off with the shirt he was wearing. The blisters are now just forming, the smoke and stench of burning hair in the air. Paramedics struggle to put him on a stretcher, his arms and legs flailing from the pain of his suffering, his screams drowning out the screams of the sirens. Suddenly, he breaks free from the paramedics and runs back into the burning building, the walls now consumed in flames.
This is the insanity of alcoholism. This is Relapse. And this will happen again and again, each time just a little bit differently, each time progressively worse. Insanity, according to Einstein, is 'doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.' The insanity of my disease wants me to cross through the threshold of that door, cross back to drink, to think that more is more."

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The passage above is excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here:  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

Scratch the Surface Until the Truth Runs Clear

"Here you are drunk and walking the hallways of the Taj Mahal Casino, picking cigarette butts out of ashtrays. You break off the filters and re-roll the butt ends with new cigarette papers. This is a way to survive, to think that you're surviving. This is when the only food is the juice in this vodka and cranberry. This is when it takes you two solid hours to get out of bed and put on a pair of shoes. This is when there is no next drink, there is just this one long drink that goes on forever. This is where there is no up or down and you can only move sideways. This is where waking up is like falling through a stage prop wall. This is where you carry your addictions in a cardboard box as if you were moving to another location. This is finding no location and the box is empty. This is standing and not being able to move. This is drunk and crashing, falling, falling through a bottom, tumbling. This is where a hospital wakes you up and you do not know who you are or where you are..." 

Scratch the surface until the truth runs clear.

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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery

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

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The passages above are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here:  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c 

Flying Rivers of Hope

"Flying Rivers of Hope," is not part of All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal (an Autobiographical Fiction by Jim Anders - linked here):  https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

The Drunken Fox & The Grapes of Sobriety

An urge submerged leaps forward in this fox. A hunger overcomes him seeing a cluster of grapes glistening in the sun. Out of reach. Out of reach. He can not attain them alone, sly as he may be. "They're probably sour anyway," he says aloud, turning around, looking down. Sobriety will not be his today. "They're probably sour anyway." A victim of familiar pain, afraid to choose the path that only help can help attain. "They're probably sour anyway." Sobriety will not be his today. Another drink will come his way.

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"The Drunken Fox & The Grapes of Sobriety" is by Jim Anders, but not part of his book All Drinking Aside. an Autobiographical Fiction - linked here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO

Visit his Niume Recovery page here: https://niume.com/pages/profile/?userID=26056
& find his Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

The Tomb of the Anonymous Addict

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. 

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Jim Anders is also the author of All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, an Autobiographical Fiction, linked here :https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

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