Crystal Meth

This post was originally published Feb. 10, 2008 and was taken down pending adjudication of another case. Now that has been done and I am restoring the post. To choose what is difficult all one’s days, as if it were easy, that is faith. W. H. Auden They tell me I seemed relaxed; that I did not [...]

Thou canst not travel on the path before thou hast become that Path itself. - Helena Blavatsky Several years ago, during an especially unmanageable part of my addiction history, I had a dream that I was driving. I was desperately trying to get somewhere and I seemed to have the wrong directions. I was talking [...]

I am a head injury patient. I am. There is hardly another explanation. I sat in a meeting and shared about it and of course I was told to work the steps. Of course there is some truth in that, truth I sometimes ignore out of an objective bias against people [...]

I am a creature of habit. I am not as flexible as I imagine myself to be. I am not unique. Sometimes I am able don a guise of pliancy convincing enough to fool everyone, including me, but it is made of denial and pride. Underneath that guise I find myself [...]

  “Easy doesn’t do it. Easy never did it. Nothing worth doing has ever been easy.” - Unknown That’s one of the mottoes I (pretend to) live by. There are others, of course, important ones. The more important they are the harder they are to live up to. For example, “Remember who you [...]

It’s amazing to me, I guess it shouldn’t be at this point in recovery, but it’s amazing to me how quickly I return to my default setting; to return to the way of thinking, if not behavior, that always gets me back to where I came from unless I take purposeful action. Like when [...]

I am, now, officially freaked out. Between yesterday and today I have accumulated enough ‘Close, But No Cigar’ kind of experience to have convinced myself that I am, like an old boyfriend once said, “a complete failure as a human being.” Intellectually I know that it isn’t true, that my problems are surmountable, [...]

I went to Gooding recently to speak at the treatment center I went to, which in and of itself was really cool. Even cooler is the fact that out of that someone decided that they wanted me to show them how I’ve stayed sober. And even cooler than that, the coolest thing, something [...]

is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics (and addicts) achieve sobriety. When you’re first coming in, when you’re on the morning side of the mountain, tradition 5 seems like the dumbest or most obvious thing in the world. Duh. There is a song by Patty Griffin, I’ve talked about this before, called [...]

I have a friend, Joe K. who has been sober something like 38 years. Joe has worked with hundreds of alcoholics and addicts, not just here in Boise, but all over the country and continues to do so. A couple of weeks ago I was in a meeting and met this dynamite guy [...]

I’m terrified of trusting God with anything important. I shouldn’t be. I have an indication or two that He’s at work in my life, yet I struggle with letting go of something so big as what I’ve been facing. And why? Because I don’t have His phone number? He doesn’t [...]

in about three days. Sunday I started feeling poor and by Monday morning I was well and truly sick. A trip to the clinic Monday afternoon confirmed what I already knew and put me at home in bed with a fistful of antibiotics to prove it. Since I got home from [...]