Online Secular AA Meetings 24/7 #holistic #health

The website 247 AA Online has an option for secular AA meetings held 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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Fundamentalism’s Foibles & Follies #holistic #health

Eighty years after the initial publication of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and two decades into the new millennium, AA has never been more divided.

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Amidst the Chaos About Me I See #holistic #health

Amidst the Chaos About Me I See: Aubrey and Floyd, Cooper and Karens, masks and no masks, pandemic and hoax, guns in state capitals and Minneapolis burning, ... 

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What Is a Sober Coach? #health #holistic

When you’re dealing with active addiction, it can feel like you’re all alone. Many treatment centers try to cut through that feeling by providing group activities and sessions meant to highlight the fact that other people are facing the same struggles as you. Still, it can be difficult to connect with people in a group setting, particularly as you’re navigating your own transition into sobriety and addressing the demons from your past.That’s why having a sober partner is such a great idea. A sober partner is someone — usually a person who is in recovery themselves – who is able to connect with you one-on-one and help guide you through treatment. Knowing that you have a partner walking alongside you can help give you the strength you need to get through the difficult moments of treatment and recovery.What does treatment look like with a sober partner?If you have a sober partner, or sober coach, you’ll proceed through the expected phases of treatment, if you choose: detox, inpatient, intensive outpatient, and sober living. You’ll still meet with professionals like counselors or a psychologist, and you’ll still attend group meetings.The major difference is you’ll have someone at your side to talk through all this. Your sober coach can discuss recovery with you while you engage in activities that you love, like golf or walking on the beach. Having a sober coach allows you to process what you’re learning in early recovery with someone who has been in the same situation that you are in now.Does having a sober coach work?Peer support has a long history in recovery. The connection to other people in recovery is what makes 12-step programs so successful. In fact, relying on peer support groups was the main way to get sober in this country for many years.Now, there are more options than ever for medically-supported and other forms of treatment, but the connection to peers remains important. There’s a lot that you can learn from someone who has overcome addiction and established a life in recovery. Your sober coach is able to understand where you are now, and help you to grasp how the lessons you’re learning in treatment will help you in the long term.Research shows that having a sober coach can improve outcomes for people who seek treatment for substance use disorder. A 2019 scientific review found that working with a sober coach reduces the risk of relapse, helps people have better relationships with their treatment provider, and increases the chances that they stay in treatment. Having a sober coach also gave clients a more positive view of treatment — something that’s essential as you start your life in recovery.Sober coach optionsSober Partners, a pet-friendly treatment center in Newport Beach, California, specializes in intensive treatment with one-on-one support. Sober Partners offers three levels of sober support:Sober companion: A sober companion is the highest level of individualized sober support available. The sober companion provides constant support, whether you’re getting sober at home, or in a treatment facility. The companion is focused on helping you abstain from drugs or alcohol, and is also trained in crisis management to help you handle any unexpected challenges that arise during your recovery.Sober coach: A sober coach will meet with you 3-4 times a week while you’re in treatment, and provide constant ongoing support. You’re matched with a sober coach who shares the same profession, background or age, and therefore is able to help you navigate the issues specific to your recovery.Sober advisor: Getting through the first 90 days of treatment is a huge accomplishment, but there are still major challenges ahead. A sober advisor will help guide you through the first year of recovery, meeting with you once a week to discuss your successes and any problem points you’re having.Getting into recovery is daunting, and the more support you have, the better your chances of staying sober long-term. Having a sober coach who knows you personally and understands what you’re going through is critical. The coach can offer guidance and support that your friends and family who haven’t dealt with addiction just can’t provide.Sober Partners provides residential treatment in Newport Beach, California. Get more information at their website, by calling 855-982-3247, or on Facebook.

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Episode 171: Carmen X. at the KC Secular AA Speaker Meeting #holistic #health

This episode is a recording from a talk given by Carmen X. in Kansas City, Missouri in February 2019. Carmen begins by noting that she believes she was born with two genetic variations. One that made her a trans woman and the other that made her an alcoholic. She briefly shared her story of recovery, and then the microphone was passed around the room for comments from others who attended the meeting. 

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Don't Relapse Now #health #holistic

Reader, I will make a deal with you. I will talk to you like an adult and say some uncomfortable things. I won’t be your sponsor and I won’t throw the Big Book at your face. But in exchange, you need to promise me you’ll read this to the end. No skips, no tag outs, no skimmy skims. Okay? Okay, great.I understand the urge to relapse right now. I’m feeling it too. A lot of us have severely diminished responsibilities – my work has nearly dried up. I hate the Zoom meetings, which feel like impersonal shadow plays where I have to stare at my new fat face. All our other distractions that can’t be done from the couch have been cancelled. My normie friends are mixing up quarantinis before the 5 o’clock news starts. Most importantly, we are all being treated to a daily blast of death, inequity, and press conferences where a poorly tanned moron tells us to shoot up with bleach. It is so much. It is a daily mental weight that is difficult to bear even on the best days.If you are saying to yourself, maybe I can’t hold out on this, maybe I am going to break, that is a sane response. It is, in some ways, a rational response. Time has paused, life has paused, why can’t sobriety pause too? The other day I found myself telling a friend that I won’t be jobless, locked down, without the beach (my favorite distraction), and sober. In full Scarlett O’Hara mode, I declared, “Sorry, but I won’t do it!” It felt good to say, the way forbidden things sometimes do. Total, unapologetic narcissism has its pleasures.I could probably get away with it, too. I could probably go on a few-days bender and maybe my boyfriend would figure it out (he is sharp!), but no one else would. I could even keep my day count! Why not?!? This is the sort of self-dealing I’ve been doing. I am so good at it. I am the Clarence Darrow of fucking my own shit up.But it is wrong. I know it’s wrong. If you are having similar thoughts, you probably know they are wrong too. Even now, with life halted and pain and injustice ascendant, there are reasons both practical and metaphysical that it is crucial for you and me to keep our sober time. Even if every word we ever heard at an AA meeting was false, even if the Big Book itself is a decades-long scam to sell us on religion.Practically, you are going to regret it. You know you are! Sorry, but you do. You are going to be annoyed, at the very least, that you need to restart your day count, which yes, you eventually will be forced to do because you won’t be able to lie to your support network for that long. Whatever bender you have in mind is going to come to an end, in what will feel like the blink of an eye, and all you’ll have left is regret and likely, a terrible headache or worse. You also, of course, might take it too far and die.If things get really bad, as they very well may, people are going to know what you did and that is going to suck for you. Your family and friends are already extremely stressed out right now (just like you!) – the last thing they need is to hear that you relapsed, in your tiny apartment in some faraway city, and no one can travel to you to make sure you get it together. Your mom is going to cry.On that note, if you need hospital care because you overdose or can’t stop, great, you are taxing an already overtaxed healthcare system and exposing yourself to COVID19 at the same time. From a million different standpoints, any decision to relapse right now is selfish, even if it feels like the only person being punished is you.Okay, who cares, right? I hear that. When I was first trying to get sober and in a relapse cycle, other people’s problems were some theoretical concern that was a not-close second to my immediate ego gratification. I did not give a shit, and honestly I didn’t care much if I died, either. What worked for me, though, was spite – not giving my enemies the pleasure of seeing me fall.Spite could be helpful right now. Picture Donald Trump, in all his 300 pounds of dense mass, standing over you as you take that first drink. “I was always right,” he says without laughing, as he never laughs, “You’re weak. Libs like you, weak, lazy.” Do you want Donald Trump to think he’s better than you? How about the maskless crowds begging states to let them kill themselves, and each other? Should these yahoos and sociopaths be allowed to feel morally superior to you? Or picture a little closer to home. Do you want your douchebag ex to hear that you fucked up again? No you do not.The time we’ve all spent cooped up indoors losing our gourds has been an achievement which can be measured in days and lives saved. We’ve been doing this for well over thirty days now. In New York and elsewhere, we’ve flattened the curve. Your sobriety is the same. It’s not some fungible commodity that can be lent out and borrowed back at will – it has a character in itself composed in part of a temporal element. Your sobriety after you relapse is not the same as your sobriety before. When you give it up, you give up effort, sacrifice, things you can never get back. That might not feel important now, but it will feel devastating later.Look, I am not Mr. Lockdown. I eat loaves of bread as a snack. I stay up most nights until 5 AM and I sleep till 11. I bleached my hair. I play Nintendo Switch and try to get one or two productive hours into a day. My sheets smell like farts. All of this is fine! You do what it takes to make it to the next day. The people doing pilates every morning, learning a second language, making OnlyFans, whatever – they are fine, too. And it’s even fine to hate them!“One day at a time” is a relentless cliché in sobriety circles. But right now, it feels appropriate, as all of the stupid sayings eventually do. The world is a miserable place, maybe always, definitely right now. Don’t add to the misery by giving in to the demons you fought so hard to keep at bay. Be strong, stay home, save lives, stay sober. Good luck.

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Caring for Your Mental Health During COVID-19 #health #holistic

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year, more than ever, it’s important to talk openly about mental health and take care of your mental well-being. The coronavirus pandemic has made the mental health crisis in America even worse. One telling piece of data: anxiety medication prescriptions rose 34% between Feb. 16 and March 15. It’s likely they’ve continued to go up since then. After all, many of us are living through a trauma experience.The pandemic and the economic consequences are out of our control, but there are things that everyone can do to help control the mental health effects of the pandemic. This is especially important for people who are in recovery. When you’re stressed or anxious, your risk for relapse increases, so it’s critical that you stay ahead of your mental health. Here’s how:Limit your informationIt can be tempting to try to constantly keep up with the latest breaking news about the pandemic. But since good news is limited and there is bad news aplenty, checking the headlines constantly is likely to put you into a constant heightened state of stress and anxiety.So, set boundaries for yourself. Rather than keeping your favorite news site open in your browser, check the news only three times a day: morning, noon, and evening. It’s best to skip the pre-bedtime check so that you don’t have stressful thoughts in your head as you’re drifting off to sleep. If this is still too much, consider scaling back more. If you’re worried about missing something, ask a partner or friend to let you know if anything serious happens that you should be aware of.Be mindful, however you canWe talk a lot about mindfulness in the recovery community, and it may be more important now than ever. It’s easy to spiral, thinking about everything that is out of your control right now. But, that’s fruitless. It doesn’t solve the problem, it just leaves you feeling stressed out.Instead, pick an activity where you can be fully immersed in the here and now. Meditation and yoga are great options, but they don’t work for everyone. It’s okay if your mindfulness practice is as simple as a walk in the neighborhood, cooking a beautiful meal, or knitting a scarf.A good exercise to help you connect with the present moment is to check in with each of your senses. What is something you see? Smell? Hear? Taste? Feel? Naming the sensation you’re experiencing can help ground you.Get movingRight now, gyms and even many beaches are closed, so it can be tempting to stay at home and not exercise. But, exercise is great not just for your body, but for your mind as well. The endorphins that your body releases when you exercise can help control and limit cortisol (the stress hormone).It’s okay to take it easy. Go for a walk, or do a ten-minute online workout at home. The key is to incorporate a bit of movement into each day. If you’re having trouble motivating yourself, ask a friend to be your virtual exercise buddy. You can do your own home workouts and then check in with each other, or talk to each other on the phone while you’re on a walk.Seek help when you need itMany Americans are avoiding emergency or routine care because of the pandemic. But if you are feeling overwhelmed by your anxiety or depression, it’s critical that you reach out for professional medical help. Many services can be delivered via telemedicine right now, and you can even get a prescription delivered to your home.Of course, if you’re experiencing a mental health emergency, go to the ER as soon as possible. Hospitals have protocols in place to reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 if you need to seek other medical care.Getting through this pandemic is stressful for everyone. People in recovery might feel like they’re especially vulnerable, but the truth is that you’re experienced. You’ve already been through times that felt overwhelming, and persevered. You’ll do the same this time.Learn more about Oceanside Malibu at https://ift.tt/2YrFRKm. Reach Oceanside Malibu by phone at (866) 738-6550. Find Oceanside Malibu on Facebook.

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Why Alcohol-Free Living Creates Choice And Freedom #health #holistic

When I first quit drinking, I kept thinking about everything I’d lost.

I used to wonder – will I ever get used to this? Will it always feel like something is missing? 

I was so caught up in these thoughts I nearly missed what was happening right in front of my eyes. 

Alcohol-free living had quietly started to give me more choices than I had before. 

It gave me more freedom. Options. And a surprising lifestyle upgrade…

Sobriety isn’t about what you’re losing – it’s about what you’re gaining:

Key points:

Where is your focus?

When we think about sobriety, we naturally tend to zoom in on the thing that’s gone away – the alcohol. So right from the get-go, we’re in a deprivation mindset. We can be so focused on what’s gone and what we’ve lost, we miss the freedom that’s coming into our lives in its place.

 

Practical choices and freedoms

When you’re not drinking, you can spend your money exactly how you like, because you don’t have to keep fuelling your habit. You get the option of starting your day right and waking up exactly when you plan to (not at 4am!) 

You can jump in the car at any time of night and call friends without worrying if they can tell you’re drinking. When you’re with others, you have the freedom to be totally focused on the present moment, rather than wondering where your next drink is coming from.

 

A free mind

When you’re sober, you are freed from the decision hell that comes with using a drug like alcohol and trying to control your intake of it. This extra brain space gives you so many choices and options to do more and be the person you want to be. 

 

Lockdown freedom

Now more than ever, we need to be making lifestyle choices that give us maximum freedom. Alcohol puts you in a little prison – a mini lockdown of its own making, where it takes options away from you. None of us need that.

 

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The post Why Alcohol-Free Living Creates Choice And Freedom appeared first on The Sober School.

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Breath #holistic #health

I’m easily swept away by uncertainty into a spiral of fear. Fear-created,- heart beating out of my chest- panic. For much of my life, I woke gagging on anxiety most mornings. I woke gagging with dry heaves regardless of whether my life was good or bad. It was worse when things were difficult and challenging. But there all the same.

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Episode 170: Acceptance #holistic #health

Is acceptance the answer to all our problems, or is it only a starting point, or maybe it's where we end up after going through a process? That's what this episode is all about. How we understand and incorporate the concept of acceptance into our recovery.

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When Acceptance is Not the Answer #holistic #health

In traditional AA circles, one of the most frequently cited stories in the back of the Big Book is “Acceptance Is the Answer” (407-420). What is more or less its main point is apt: Focusing on ourselves is a far better recovery strategy than trying to control what other people do.

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Episode 169: The Human Glitch #holistic #health

This episode features a conversation with Gary Chattaway, a recovery advocate from London, England whose work can be found on his website thehumanglitch.com, and his YouTube Channel. Gary is the author of The Human Glitch a short book that briefly describes his experience with alcohol addiction, and he is currently working on a new book that will delve deeper into how he overcame alcohol cravings and what he learned that can help you kick start your recovery. 

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Sober Reflections From the Dance Floor #health #holistic

For Mary.I got sober here almost thirty years ago. That’s what struck me last December 31, as I danced my butt off in the basement of St. Anthony of Padua’s Roman Catholic Church on Sullivan Street in New York City, welcoming in the New Year with a mob of sober drunks. Yes, here I was dancing under the influence of something more heady than Moet this New Year’s Eve, surrounded by mylar waterfall curtains, and the familiar pull down shades of AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, changing color with every turn of the disco ball.In the fall of 1991 I was sitting in the second of sixteen rows of folding chairs, a box of Kleenex on my lap, flanked by massive columns that supported both church above and my shaky sobriety below. Now here in the countdown to midnight, voguing to Madonna with a Woodstock hippie in pajamas, I realized this was the very spot I had counted my first 90 days without a drink or a drug decades ago. This was where the Soho Group of Alcoholics Anonymous met, and still meets today. Flash back to me in gold tights and a green suede mini skirt, crushing on a rockabilly cat across the aisle. Thank you Johnny Cash wannabe in the stretched T, you kept me coming back to AA for that first year—you and my sponsor Cindy, the big sis I never had. After the meeting, Cindy and I would hit the Malibu Diner on 23rd Street for oversized Greek salads with extra dressing and bottomless cups of decaf. Cindy taught me how to stay away from the first drink and how to smudge a make-up pencil to get that smoky eye look. From September to December, 1991, the Soho Group, the boy with the ducktail, and my glamourous sponsor, poured the pillars of my foundation for a life lived without mood-altering substances, one-day-at-a-time.. . .Around midnight on December 31, 2019, wearing frames I’d picked up at the dollar store that flashed “2020” in three speeds, I felt safe—safe and happy raving with a few hundred personalities swigging seltzer. In my drinking days, going out dancing never felt safe. There was the time I fell off the stage GoGo dancing on the boardwalk at Coney Island, and once I walked home alone over the Brooklyn Bridge, at 3AM, in a red sundress. I meant to take a cab, and had even tucked a twenty dollar bill in my bra for that purpose, but I ended up spending it on more vodka cranberries instead. Staggering barefoot in the pre-dawn down an unlit staircase onto the off ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, heels in hand, fear overtook me and I started running. For blocks and blocks I ran down the middle of the street, where it felt safer, where I could spot shadows lurking between cars, all the way home, until I reached my building—relieved, ashamed and baffled by my behavior. Scared of waking my landlord, I tiptoed up three flights—this was not new—but every creaky step betrayed me. I dreaded passing Babe the next morning, sitting on the bench in his dooryard, combing the supermarket circulars. He was less like a landlord you write a check out to on the first of the month, and more like an Italian uncle who would scold you for parking too far from the curb, or wasting money buying coffee out, instead of brewing it at home. I knew Babe always heard my key in the lock as dawn broke over South Brooklyn, and I knew he saw those empty bottles of Chianti, tucked under tomato cans in the recycling bin. . . .Yes, now I felt safe—here clasping hands with a little girl and her sober mom, twirling around a church cellar at the Soho Group’s New Year’s Eve Dance. I felt safe, happy and damn lucky to be back here on the very spot that I had clung to for that first year, that spot where I first surrendered to sobriety and felt safe, as I cupped warm urn coffee, and took it all in, in small sips. Tonight I knew where I was, and I knew I’d get home safely. I knew I’d remember everything the next day, without remorse or a sour stomach. “Some don’t make it back.” I’ve heard that said often in the rooms of A.A. After sobering up in my mid twenties at the Soho Group, I stayed alcohol-free for thirteen years, making Brooklyn Heights my home group for years, until just after the birth of my first son. The promise of A.A. as “a bridge back to life” had come true. I had a life: a husband, a house, and now a fat baby at the baptismal font. But I was doing zero maintenance on that bridge—my connection back to AA was crumbling. I’d drifted. I’d moved deeper into Brooklyn with my non-alcoholic husband and away from my homegroup. I’d lost touch with my sponsor and most of my sober friends. And then it happened. I slipped. But I was one of the super lucky ones. I didn’t have a full out sloppy slip, with blackouts and benders and smash-ups with the family KIA. It started with just a sip. In my mind I’d decided it was safe to start taking communion wine with my wafer at Sunday mass. No matter that countless practicing Episcopalians take the host but pass on that sip from the silver chalice. And for years, this was the extent of my drinking, one sneaky sip I looked forward to on Sunday mornings. Then other things happened. I’d heard that beer was good for breast-feeding. I latched onto that rumor, like a babe at the breast. I started downing O’Douls “non-alcoholic” ale at our weekly mommy nights. When I went to my dentist for a routine filling, I insisted he tap the tank of laughing gas, when novocaine would have numbed well enough. I remember that buzz which settled over me in the dentist’s chair. Relief, I thought. From everything.Soon after I woke up and realized my marriage was over. I was a wreck. Day drinking seemed like an option. A friend offered me a mimosa in her home. I took one sip—panicked—snuck to her bathroom and poured the rest down the drain. Soon after that, I climbed up one flight of stairs over a fish store and entered a crowded room with flies circling. I started counting days, for the second time around. At forty-eight, I was a humbled newcomer again. My sponsor was twelve years my junior. It was awkward, yes, but it felt honest and right to reset my sobriety clock. And thanks in large part to these no-nonsense oldtimers of Old Park Slope Caton, my kids have never seen me drunk.. . .In my twenties, before I poured that last bottle of Four Roses whiskey down the kitchen sink, my twin loves were drinking and dancing. I started drinking fairly late, at 19, when I’d help myself to my father’s scotch, put on his headphones, raise the volume on his Ohm speakers, and burn rubber to The Gap Band. Booze and boogie shoes quickly became my dream couple, allowing me to float in a fantasy stupor where all care and self-doubt slipped away. From there I went on to be a “maniac on the dance floor”—a self-destructive eighties girl flash dancing her way through four years of college—squeezing that last cup of beer from a warm keg.For fun, my alcoholic brain sometimes likes to play this game where I remember fondly (but falsely) occasions where liquor paired perfectly with certain activities like ball games with Budweiser, or tailgate parties with pina coladas, picnics with blushing Zinfandels, or art gallery openings with jugs of Gallo red. But the winner of this stagger-down-memory-lane game is always dancing with drinking. Evenings out started the same: plug in the hot rollers, mix a cocktail, and get down while dolling up, still in my underwear, to the Saturday night line-up of DJs on WBLS and Hot97. A whiskey sour next to my make-up mirror was the kick-off. Stepping out an hour later, with coral lips and cat eyes, and Run-DMC in my head, I felt just fine. And that’s how it went, in my twenties. But over time, nights out ended in close calls with questionable characters and near scrapes in unknown neighborhoods. Every one of those nights, however, had started out just fine. From Halloween dance parties in Bushwick lofts with Solo cups of mystery punch, to doing the twist on the Coney Island Boardwalk while taking nips from a hip flask of Jack Daniels, it was always a good time. Until it wasn’t—until someone flicked a cigarette and started a fire, or until I fell off the band stage on that Coney Island boardwalk.. . .If only evenings could have ended as safe and fun as they had started out. It really only ever felt safe to drink at the start of my drinking, as a teen, in front of my dad’s turntable, moving to Stevie Wonder coming from his Koss headphones, in the safety of my childhood home. And if only my drinking and dancing partner Mary was still here. Mary, who dared me to put down my rum and Coke and never-finished Times crossword, and climb up onto the bar with her at Peter McManus Pub in Chelsea. Dear, departed drinking playmate and party girl Mary. Quirky, curly-haired writer Mary, in rhinestone glasses and GoGo boots. Loyal friend Mary, who helped me through heartbreaks and hangovers. Subversive yet wholesome Mary from Michigan, who baked soda bread, wrote thank you notes, remembered nieces’ birthdays and snorted lines of heroin. I never made the connection between her non-stop runny nose and her habit until years later, when her boyfriend called me to say he’d found Mary dead from an overdose. I pictured her slumped in a fake Queen Anne armchair, pale as parchment, her dark curls against floral upholstery. She was forty-six.Indeed, I danced my way through my drinking twenties, but I was hardly dancing with the stars. I was working as a waitress at the LoneStar Roadhouse near Times Square. At closing time I’d do lines at the end of the bar with the manager, and once, with a customer who talked me into leaving with him. I went home with this grown man who, as it turned out, still lived with his parents somewhere way the hell out on Long Island. I remember feeling increasingly unsafe passing exit after exit on the LIE, riding unbelted in the death seat of a stranger’s Toyota. I remember turning up the volume on the radio and singing along to Chaka Khan: “I’m Every Woman... It’s all in MEEE…” Any drug that can delude you into believing you’ve got the pipes of a 10-time Grammy Award winner, well, that’s a great drug. Until it isn’t. He led me to a mattress on the floor of his parents garage. I’ve heard it said in the rooms of A.A. that God watches out for children and drunks. Which maybe explains how I got myself out of that one—while still fully clothed—and was able to call a cab to take me all the way home in those pre-Lyft late-eighties.. . .One gift of sobriety, along with holding down a job and not losing my kids to the courts, is that I now get to do something I really love, dancing—safely. I’ve hit many an A.A. group anniversary, where I’ve joined Friends of Bill W. on subterranean church linoleum, cleared for dancing. I still start getting ready at five, with my own creation: The Magoo (cranberry juice, sparkling water and two wedges of lime, served up in a fancy glass.) I still tune into WBLS. I wear less make-up now, but still move to the music. At six I head out to scoop a friend in my KIA beater. The koolest legend, Kool D.J. Red Alert, is blowin’ it up over the airwaves and through my car speakers. I pull up, safety-belted and chair dancing in the driver’s seat. My date is tall and her dress is short and sparkly. “Damn girl, who's your target? These all gotta watch out!” Beatrice has all the head boss and eye looks as Mary. And a wit just like Mary’s too, drier than a Wasa cracker or top-shelf vermouth. It’s going to be a fun night, I think. Throw your hands up.I really love Alcoholics Anonymous group anniversaries. They are feel good phenomena that pretty much follow the same format: a meeting, followed by a potluck, then sometimes, dancing. I gravitate to the ones where there’s dancing. Everyone shows up bathed and beaming to celebrate the founding of their “homegroup,” the group they most regularly attend, where they know other people, and are known in return. Sober drunks with sixty years and sixty days come to these. A church basement or parish hall is dressed up in balloons and crepe garland; Hershey kisses scatter folding tables, covered in plastic cloths. The speakers are often old-timers with good stories to tell, pulling in outrageous details of their “drunkalogues” or firsthand details about the group’s early days. The dinner spread is legit. A line of volunteers dish out baked ziti, collards and fried fish from foil casseroles set up over sternos. Urn coffee and birthday cake for dessert. I’ve developed a taste for those giant sheet cakes with piped icing. The ritual of eating that 2” square of cake, along with every alcoholic in the room eating theirs, is a highlight for sure. A centered feeling comes over me as I lick frosting off a plastic fork under twinkle lights. I am safe. And this is fun. Details may vary from group to group, but every space feels hallowed on these nights. The people who populate it are thankful for their lives, freed from the hamster wheel of addiction, just for today. Then dancing happens. I bring the DJ a bottle of Poland Spring and I’m “setting it off” to one-hit-hip-hop wonder Strafe, while folks are still on the food line. When the clean up crew starts collecting cola cans and rolling up tablecloths, I’m still on the linoleum with any takers I can pull up off their folding chairs. I can’t say Beatrice and I have shut down every A.A. party from northern Manhattan to the outer banks of Brooklyn, but the bulletin board of Alcoholic Anonymous’ Intergroup is a good place to start for leads on sober dance happenings.We head home a little after eleven. DJ Chuck Chillout has pulled out his airhorn. I drop Beatrice off, she bends into the passenger window and smirks: “I had a great time tonight. Maria N. gets a second date.” . . .Group anniversaries and sober New Year’s Eve parties aside, I dance mostly on my yoga mat, to the line-up of Saturday Night DJs on WBLS, or to my own ‘80s Hip Hop and New Wave playlists. I’m still self-conscious when I share in meetings, or read at open mics, or take my top off to new a lover, but at home or in public, I’m comfortable on the dance floor, even if I’m the only one dancing. I don’t claim to quite find my Nasty with Miss Jackson anymore, but even well into middle age, and without a craft beer in hand, dancing still brings on my happy—more than ever. Clear-headed, I tap into that elusive “conscious contact” with my higher power. I feel everything in the present moment—neurons firing through my fingertips, the beat beneath my bare feet. I am a consenting adult at my own one-woman rave, enjoying this gift of sobriety: a healthy body doing what it loves, and hurting no one, especially not itself. Of course, when I’m out dancing, there’s the bonus of connection with other abstaining alcoholics. Doing the Electric Slide with fifty friends of Bill—in-sync, or close enough—well, It’s Electric.. . .“We drank alone. But we don’t get sober—then stay sober—alone.” It’s 1:30AM and I’m still on the dance floor, throwing hands up with oldtimers and seven-year-olds. The Woodstock hippie shuffles in his drawstring polar fleece, cotton wadded in his ears. But no amount of cotton can drown out the cheer that went up at the stroke of midnight and echoes even now.If it’s in the cards, in twenty years, on New Year’s Eve, 2040, I’ll be 75 and I’ll be here, surrounded by these poured cement columns, getting what’s left of my groove on with a beautiful group of sober drunks. . . . Where can you go to dance yourself happy? For one thing, the International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous of New York City (ICYPAA NYC) throws a serenity dance cruise on the Hudson in July. But if AA dances aren’t your thing, consider “Conscious clubbing,” a term coined by Samantha Moyo, founder of Morning Gloryville, a sober breakfast rave phenomenon launched in East London in 2013, and which has spread to cities worldwide. Some Morning Gloryville events have been postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but online raves are happening right now. And LOOSID a sober social network, with a mission to make sobriety fun, puts out playlists, and pairs subscribers to events of interest too.Tonight, still sheltering-in-place here in The Baked Apple, New York City—one hot spot of the COVID-19 pandemic—Beatrice invited me to Reprieve, a clean & sober non-stop dance party. I registered for free through Eventbrite and joined the dance floor, courtesy of Zoom. By the end of it we were doing backbends over our sofas to Total Eclipse of the Heart. Before signing off, I reached out to Beatrice in the comment thread : “Let’s do it again,” I typed. “Totes.” she typed back. Sure, I’ll return this Saturday night to dance with sober drunks. It looks like it’ll just become the latest turn in my healthy sober dance move.

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Coronavirus, ‘Plandemic’ and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking #health #holistic

The conspiracy theory video “Plandemic” recently went viral. Despite being taken down by YouTube and Facebook, it continues to get uploaded and viewed millions of times. The video is an interview with conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits, a disgraced former virology researcher who believes the COVID-19 pandemic is based on vast deception, with the purpose of profiting from selling vaccinations.The video is rife with misinformation and conspiracy theories. Many high-quality fact-checks and debunkings have been published by reputable outlets such as Science, Politifact and FactCheck.As scholars who research how to counter science misinformation and conspiracy theories, we believe there is also value in exposing the rhetorical techniques used in “Plandemic.” As we outline in our Conspiracy Theory Handbook and How to Spot COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories, there are seven distinctive traits of conspiratorial thinking. “Plandemic” offers textbook examples of them all.Learning these traits can help you spot the red flags of a baseless conspiracy theory and hopefully build up some resistance to being taken in by this kind of thinking. This is an important skill given the current surge of pandemic-fueled conspiracy theories.The seven traits of conspiratorial thinking. (John Cook CC BY-ND)1. Contradictory beliefsConspiracy theorists are so committed to disbelieving an official account, it doesn’t matter if their belief system is internally contradictory. The “Plandemic” video advances two false origin stories for the coronavirus. It argues that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab in Wuhan – but also argues that everybody already has the coronavirus from previous vaccinations, and wearing masks activates it. Believing both causes is mutually inconsistent.2. Overriding suspicionConspiracy theorists are overwhelmingly suspicious toward the official account. That means any scientific evidence that doesn’t fit into the conspiracy theory must be faked.But if you think the scientific data is faked, that leads down the rabbit hole of believing that any scientific organization publishing or endorsing research consistent with the “official account” must be in on the conspiracy. For COVID-19, this includes the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, Anthony Fauci… basically, any group or person who actually knows anything about science must be part of the conspiracy.3. Nefarious intentIn a conspiracy theory, the conspirators are assumed to have evil motives. In the case of “Plandemic,” there’s no limit to the nefarious intent. The video suggests scientists including Anthony Fauci engineered the COVID-19 pandemic, a plot which involves killing hundreds of thousands of people so far for potentially billions of dollars of profit.4. Conviction something’s wrongConspiracy theorists may occasionally abandon specific ideas when they become untenable. But those revisions tend not to change their overall conclusion that “something must be wrong” and that the official account is based on deception.When “Plandemic” filmmaker Mikki Willis was asked if he really believed COVID-19 was intentionally started for profit, his response was “I don’t know, to be clear, if it’s an intentional or naturally occurring situation. I have no idea.”He has no idea. All he knows for sure is something must be wrong: “It’s too fishy.”5. Persecuted victimConspiracy theorists think of themselves as the victims of organized persecution. “Plandemic” further ratchets up the persecuted victimhood by characterizing the entire world population as victims of a vast deception, which is disseminated by the media and even ourselves as unwitting accomplices.At the same time, conspiracy theorists see themselves as brave heroes taking on the villainous conspirators.6. Immunity to evidenceIt’s so hard to change a conspiracy theorist’s mind because their theories are self-sealing. Even absence of evidence for a theory becomes evidence for the theory: The reason there’s no proof of the conspiracy is because the conspirators did such a good job covering it up.7. Reinterpreting randomnessConspiracy theorists see patterns everywhere – they’re all about connecting the dots. Random events are reinterpreted as being caused by the conspiracy and woven into a broader, interconnected pattern. Any connections are imbued with sinister meaning.For example, the “Plandemic” video suggestively points to the U.S. National Institutes of Health funding that has gone to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. This is despite the fact that the lab is just one of many international collaborators on a project that sought to examine the risk of future viruses emerging from wildlife.Learning about common traits of conspiratorial thinking can help you recognize and resist conspiracy theories.Critical thinking is the antidoteAs we explore in our Conspiracy Theory Handbook, there are a variety of strategies you can use in response to conspiracy theories.One approach is to inoculate yourself and your social networks by identifying and calling out the traits of conspiratorial thinking. Another approach is to “cognitively empower” people, by encouraging them to think analytically. The antidote to conspiratorial thinking is critical thinking, which involves healthy skepticism of official accounts while carefully considering available evidence.Understanding and revealing the techniques of conspiracy theorists is key to inoculating yourself and others from being misled, especially when we are most vulnerable: in times of crises and uncertainty.[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]John Cook, Research Assistant Professor, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University; Sander van der Linden, Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, University of Cambridge; Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol, and Ullrich Ecker, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Western AustraliaThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Lovely Little Things About Alcohol-Free Living #health #holistic

There are many things to love about being alcohol-free.

Waking up without a hangover. Having more energy. Less anxiety. Looking better. Feeling proud of yourself.

Those are some of the big benefits. But sometimes, the little things matter just as much. 

I’m talking about the super specific stuff. The mini moments that only you would notice. 

This video is all about the tiny, silly and magical moments that make sobriety awesome:

Key points

The little things are the big things

It was Kurt Vonnegut who said, “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you`ll look back and realise they were the big things.” 

Getting up early enough to have a few moments with your partner – or driving to work feeling ready for the day – might sound like small things. But the cumulative effect of these positive, small moments is huge.

 

Start a list

Put a reminder on your phone to prompt you to write down one thing every day that you love about being alcohol-free. Just one thing. It can be as small or as silly as you like. 

If you take a break from drinking for 6 weeks (which is what I recommend) then by the end, you’ll have 42 things on your list. That is very useful data to have when it comes to deciding what to do next.

 

If you’re not ready to take a break

Here’s what I suggest: on the days you don’t drink, add something to your list of little things you love about being alcohol-free. But when you do drink, write down – on a separate list – what you love about it.

Sometimes it can feel as if sobriety means giving up so much. But you might be surprised by just how little ends up on your ‘what I love about alcohol’ list. With time, you might see that booze isn’t the only way to get that particular benefit. 

If you joined my stop drinking class with a very specific list of things you love about booze, you’d be way ahead of the game – we could quickly get to work on tackling those beliefs. My next class starts in July, so you have time to prepare!

 

Stay sober tonight - listen to my free pep talk!

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Building Self-Awareness During Quarantine #health #holistic

Right now, most of us are stuck at home for the foreseeable future. It’s easy to focus on what we’re missing out on: the graduations, the trips, the dinners and laughter with friends. Thinking about all of those things can make you overlook the fact that quarantine is a good opportunity to spend time with yourself, building your self-awareness and learning how to engage in self-care that works for you.“Healthy people rely on themselves for direction. Those vulnerable to addiction, however, rely on the external world to keep them amused,” says Geoff Thompson, program director at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, a rehab in British Columbia, Canada.And yet, you can’t always rely on the outside world. It’s important to be comfortable being alone with yourself. This can help build your awareness of who you really are, when the external world is stripped away.Expect to be uncomfortableIf you’re used to constantly being surrounded by other people and obligations, being still and alone can be uncomfortable. Thompson sees this at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, where clients often complain that there’s not enough programming on the weekends.“It’s a common saying among those in addiction that ‘Sundays are boring,’ with the curious implication that Sundays should get their act together and be more interesting,” Thompson says.Really, though, people don’t need more activities or programming, they need to adjust to having downtime and quiet space. That will take some time, so don’t give up if it feels awkward to start.Study yourselfWho are you? Most of us answer these question with external references: We’re a teacher, an athlete, a dancer. But who are you when you can’t do any of those things? Knowing that can help strengthen your resiliency to deal with challenging times, like the ones we’re in right now.“By far, the best protection against any form of adversity—a diagnosis of cancer, loss of family in an accident, and so on—is self-awareness: having an authentic awareness of personal values, beliefs, strengths, limitations, desires and wants,” Thompson says. “Those vulnerable to addiction have very weak self-awareness.”Take this time to build your self-awareness. Thompson suggests keeping a journal. Spend two weeks asking yourself multiple times per day: ‘What is it like to be me right now?’ and briefly writing about the answer.Or, reflect on the movies and art that you love. What about them draws you in? What engages you?“Each of these exercises is simply about paying attention to yourself,” Thompson says.Recognize the value of self-careOnce you start to delve into who you are, you’ll have a better idea of what makes you feel cared for and loved. Then, you can do these things to keep connected to your true self, even when life eventually returns to normal.It sounds simple, but many people with a history of substance use disorder don’t have healthy habits when it comes to looking after their physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental health.“Those vulnerable to addiction have little experience practicing self-care,” Thompson says. “A colleague of mine stated that the most common defense mechanism for those who suffer from substance use disorders is the ‘F-it attitude,’ which really means ‘F-me.’”When you put in effort and strive for something, you make yourself vulnerable because it’s possible you’ll fail. So, it’s tempting to say “f-it” and just not try. But really, that only hurts you, and keeps you from fulfilling your full potential.Instead of pushing away opportunities for self-care, open yourself up to giving them a try. This can be indulgent and frivolous things, like a long, warm bath or a freshly-baked cookie. But self-care also means doing the hard work to keep yourself physically and mentally healthy. Now, more than ever, that’s important.Few people would choose to be in quarantine, but it’s our reality for now. Since we’re in this situation, we might as well make the best of it. If you can emerge from isolation with a more robust understanding of who you are and a better ability to take care of yourself, you’ll be able to meet the challenges of your new life in recovery.Sunshine Coast Health Centre is a non 12-step drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in British Columbia. Learn more here.

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Helping Others #holistic #health

Sometimes, when people fully make contact, they look each other in the eye and see things finally falling into place.

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Episode 168: Teachers in Recovery #holistic #health

In this episode Angela and John talk with Sam S., who teaches History and Social Studies at a high school in a rural area of Kansas. After sharing her recovery story, an interesting discussion ensues about the challenges she faces as a teacher and person in recovery, and how parents, teachers, and students are dealing with the unique circumstances resulting from the social isolation brought on by necessity as a response to the Covid 19 pandemic.  This is a recording of a live stream that we broadcast on YouTube and Facebook every Friday night at 7:00 pm Central. Please join us as we take calls from listeners and respond to questions and comments posted on YouTube and Facebook. 

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Trapped in a Trance #holistic #health

 The notion of character defects that need be removed in Steps 6 and 7 and in popular books such as Drop the Rock, “…A big part of Twelve Step recovery is learning to recognize and let go of the character defects, shortcomings and attitudes that would otherwise sink us…” present a conundrum for me.

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Recovering from alcohol addiction: Joshua's story

Episode 167: Chad H. #holistic #health

Although alcoholism runs through his family history, Chad's growing up years seemed normal to him. He felt loved and secure in his home environment. Looking back if there was anything about him that seemed unusual was a general sense of unease and a tendency toward perfectionism. In this episode Chad talks about his experience with alcoholism, recovery, and the secular AA meetings he attends in Arizona. 

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Capitalizing on Smoking Cessation Could Curb Coronavirus Deaths #health #holistic

Politicians have been hyper-focused on the drug hydroxychloroquine lately, hoping it will be a silver bullet for curbing deaths from coronavirus. Physicians, on the other hand, are less convinced it will be helpful. But we’ve already got a medical intervention that could dramatically alter the course of the pandemic: smoking cessation. Fighting the smoking pandemic could curb coronavirus deaths now and save lives in the years to come. Many people smoke and vape to stay calm. So with rising rates of coronavirus anxiety, it’s no surprise that cigarette and vaping sales are booming. But emerging evidence shows smokers are at a higher risk of serious coronavirus infection. If there were ever a time to quit, it’s now. The data we have so far show that smokers are over-represented in COVID19 cases requiring ICU treatment and in fatalities from the disease. One study from China estimated that smoking is associated with a 14-fold increased odds of COVID-19 infection progressing to serious illness. This might be because smoking increases the density of the lung’s ACE2 receptors, which the coronavirus exploits to infiltrate the body. On top of this, smoking weakens the immune system’s ability to fight the virus, as well as heart and lung tissue. All of this damage increases one’s risk of severe coronavirus infection and death. While less is known about vaping’s relationship to coronavirus, research suggests that it impairs the ability of immune cells in the lung to fight off infection. This appears to be related to solvents used in vaping products and occurs independent of their nicotine content. Vaping also shares another risk factor for coronavirus with smoking—it involves putting something you touch with your hands into your mouth over and over. Unless you’re washing your hands and cleaning your vape religiously, you’re putting yourself at risk. On top of this, we know that many people—especially those who are younger—like to share their vapes, which really increases the chances of catching the virus. Most smokers want to quit and find that their stress levels drop dramatically when they do. Many vapers want to stop too. Quitting alone can be nearly impossible though. Luckily, support is available. Primary care physicians are still working via telehealth, and they have a wide range of effective treatments for what doctors call “tobacco use disorder.” If you can’t reach your doctor, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has created a national hotline for support and free counselling: 1-800-QUIT-NOW.Psychotherapy is one approach to quitting. However, medications such as bupropion and varenicline are also effective and can be obtained with a phone call to your doctor. Nicotine replacement products like gum, lozenges, patches, and inhalers also greatly increase the odds of success and are available over the counter. Few people are aware that you can purchase these with your health savings and flexible spending accounts. 34 million people in the US smoke, and there have already been nearly 700,000 documented domestic cases of coronavirus. Given the number of deaths we could face from people smoking during this pandemic, lawmakers should be doing everything they can to make it easier for people to quit. When patients have better insurance coverage for smoking cessation treatments, they’re much more likely to use them and quit smoking. Federal law requires insurers to cover cessation treatments, but they get around this by restricting access through the use of co-pays and limits on the amounts covered, while also forcing physicians to spend hours on the phone getting them to authorize coverage of medication. With people dying by the tens of thousands, Washington needs to close these loopholes now.Amid the widespread panic around coronavirus, it’s important that we stay clear-headed and not overlook easy fixes that could save lives. We know that smoking cessation interventions could prevent deaths, so let’s make sure we’re taking advantage of them.

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8 Ways Your Environment Can Support Recovery #health #holistic

What’s your environment like? When you were living with addiction your environment might have been filled with people coming and going, so-called friends that you couldn’t actually trust. It might have been loud or unpredictable.Just like a negative environment can contribute to the chaos of addiction, a healthy environment can help you thrive in recovery. While you’re in addiction treatment, you start learning about the benefits of a positive and healthy environment, but once rehab is over you might need to create one of your own.Here are 8 steps toward creating an environment that will make staying sober just a little bit easier.Find a safe and stable place to live. Knowing that you have a safe, warm and stable place to live removes a ton of stress. Think about where you will live when you leave rehab. Do you have a place to go home to? Would you benefit from the accountability of a sober living house? Do you have a friend or sober family member who would welcome you for a few months?Cut ties with the people who enable your addiction. Now that you’re creating a healthy environment, you need to protect it from people who encourage you to use drugs or alcohol. Old friends from your addiction days might undermine your sobriety, intentionally or unintentionally. Changing your phone number or purging your social media is a great way to start distancing yourself from people who are unhealthy.Establish your boundaries. On that note, there will be people in your life who might trigger you, but who you still choose to have an ongoing relationship with. Think about what boundaries you want to have with these people. For example, you might ask a family member to not contact you, but promise you will call them once a month. Or, you might be willing to meet someone in public, but ask that they not come to your house. Once you’ve decided what your boundaries are, tell the person. Then, be prepared to stand firm if that person doesn’t respect your boundaries.Keep things tidy. Having an environment that is clean and tidy can help you feel that you deserve order and stability in your life. Take a day to organize your space — whether that is a bunk in a sober living or a whole house. Then, each night before bed take 5-15 minutes to tidy everything and reset it for the next day. This simple habit will make your mornings much more streamlined.Focus on calm. Once you have a clean space, you can fill it with tools to help you calm yourself. You might want to buy some noise-canceling headphones, for when you need a moment way from the world. A candle, scented spritzer, or soft blanket can all engage your senses and help you feel at peace when you have a tough day.Evaluate your digital environment. These days, social media is everywhere. While scrolling can be a great way to zone out, spending too much time online can take a toll on your mental health. If you find that reading the news is contributing to your anxiety, or that looking at Facebook makes you feel bad about yourself, limit your time online. Instead of checking in constantly, limit your media use to ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon.Find a recovery community. When it comes to sobriety, there’s safety in numbers. Having sober friends who you can hang out with or who you can call when you’re having a tough day will help you navigate recovery. Check out a meeting, keep in touch with your treatment program’s alumni network, or join sober social media groups to find like-minded people in your area.Establish a routine. In early recovery, you’re trying to do a lot: going to meetings, rebuilding your relationships and career, starting healthy habits. A routine is very useful for making sure you accomplish all you’re trying to do. You don’t have to adhere to a strict schedule, but having a loose routine will provide your days with structure and predictability.At first, creating your sober environment can be daunting. Remember, you don’t have to do everything at once. Over time, you can create a sober environment that makes you feel calm, safe and centered in order to meet the challenges of recovery.Sober Partners provides residential treatment in Newport Beach, California. Get more information at their website, by calling 855-982-3247, or on Facebook.

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3 Tips For Navigating Wine O’Clock In Lockdown #health #holistic

“I am not going to drink anything tonight!” 

Before I got sober, I used to say that most mornings. I’d promise myself I was going to ‘be good’ and have the night off. 

Yet when the clock hit 5pm, my motivation always faded. I’d tell myself it’d just be one glass… but you can guess how that worked out.

Navigating wine o’clock can be challenging at the best of times, but when we’re in lockdown – and life is strange and stressful – it can feel even harder. 

I’m getting a lot of questions about this right now, so I wanted to share some tips for surviving wine o’clock in lockdown…

(You can download the wine o’clock survival guide I mention in the video at the end of this post)

Key points:

Remember that wine o’clock is a reflection of your entire day

A common mistake is focusing solely on the moment you crave alcohol, e.g. wine o’clock. But when we do this, we forget to look at the big picture. The way you feel late afternoon will be influenced by everything else that happens earlier on.

If you’re flat out all day, you’re going to feel it later. So rather than seeing cravings as a weakness or something to be ignored, see them as a sign that something in your day isn’t quite right and needs to be changed.

 

Check your self talk

Do you spend all day judging yourself or being critical of the way you’re responding to the current situation? If your inner dialogue is a constant stream of negativity you’re bound to want to drown that out at night. 

Using a drug like alcohol in order to escape yourself is a sign that something is off with your mindset during the day. Our thoughts are a choice and we can choose good ones that make us feel better. When you feel good, it’s easier to make the right choice at wine o’clock. 

 

Identify what you’re really craving

This is where the real work of sobriety comes in. What is the real need underneath your craving? Hint: it’s never truly about booze. Cravings are nearly always a symptom of something else. 

For example, if you’re spending a lot of time alone right now, you might be yearning for connection at the end of the day. Or if you’re in a busy household, you might need the opposite. It’s going to be different for all of us. 

Underneath the craving there’s often a need that isn’t being met. You can choose to smother it with alcohol, or take action to treat the need itself.

 

Download your free Wine O'Clock Survival Guide!

(It’ll help keep you on track tonight)

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A Lesson from Sobriety: You Are Allowed to Feel Hopeful #health #holistic

Imagine waking up one day and everything has changed. Overnight you’ve lost the ability to go to work. All the places you eat, drink, and socialize are closed. You walk down the street and people cross over to avoid your path. You are living the definition of empty. Void. Vast nothingness. You have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but if it’s more of the same, you might not want to have another tomorrow.Welcome to the reality of COVID-19. Many of us are currently living under stay at home orders where the situation feels similar to what I’ve described. Overnight, jobs lost or sent to work from home, daycares and schools closed, the few restaurants remaining open offer take out only, and, for some reason, toilet paper has become the national currency. I’ve noticed life during a pandemic has some clear parallels to life when contemplating going from substance abuser to sober.Fortunately, most of us can survive this pandemic if we practice some safety guidelines and weather a storm that has an uncertain end date. Again, the same can be said for sobriety. When I first contemplated sobriety, the uncertainty of what the future would look like kept me from moving forward. Eventually, I had to embrace this. I looked at what my life had become versus what I wanted it to be and I knew even uncertainty was better than the present.I made the decision to become sober six years ago. For me, sobriety meant losing a routine I’d become comfortably habituated to. A destructive routine that involved daily consumption of alcohol, often until I couldn’t drink any more on any given night. Right now, we are being told our normal routine could lead to a worsening of the pandemic, the potential to spread the disease and expose those most vulnerable to its fatal effects. We’ve been asked to willingly adjust our routines with the absence of an end date.In sobriety, I had to define a new normal. This happened both purposely and organically. Part of what I did was attend counseling and AA sessions. That was on purpose. I also started writing more and performing better at work. That was more organic. I didn’t order alcoholic beverages while out with clients and colleagues. That was on purpose. I fell in love with ice cold seltzer water. That was organic.We don’t know what our new normal will look like after this first round of COVID-19. There are some behaviors many of us have adopted that will probably persist: wearing masks, avoiding handshakes, increased hand washing. We will adopt other behaviors or adapt in ways we can’t foresee in the coming months. Many of these will bring us joy, or at least decrease potential future situations like our present condition.The Present and the Presence of HopeEveryone--sober, drunk, or indifferent--is facing some unexpected hardships right now. We’ve been told by experts we are experiencing loss and should feel permission to grieve. This is true. But we have permission to feel hopeful as well. Hope is what led me to embrace and eventually thrive in sobriety. Hope will get us through this pandemic.I could have never imagined the wonderful things waiting for me on the other side of sobriety. A marriage (later a divorce, but hey), a child, Saturday mornings, physical health, mental clarity, reduced anxiety, and vomit-free carpets are only some of the things I wouldn’t have accomplished if I were still drinking.Having hope during a terrible situation isn’t the same as false hope. Hope is a fundamental ingredient of human resilience, a mechanism that sets our brains apart from other species. Hope has kept individuals and societies moving forward to better ourselves since the time our external gills disappeared, and our tails fell off. Or we were fashioned from dust. Whatever you choose.Hope is what countered the fear and uncertainty I felt initially entering sobriety. Excitement for a future without the shackles of alcohol. We are in the same situation now; there’s no other motivation to go through this if we have no hope the future will bring something better than the present.We have some time before this will pass. Spend some of it dwelling on hope. Make a list of things that might be better post-pandemic. Plan your dream vacation (we will travel again). Do something you’ve always wanted to do for yourself. Along with anxiety, fear, or grief, you are allowed to feel hope and excitement in our current situation. Something different is waiting for you. Potentially something better than you can imagine.

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A Fellowship of Bleeding Deacons? #holistic #health

In the previous essay, I described the increasingly negative interactions between my fellowship’s Phone Meeting Intergroup and me in the first two years of my recovery, after 20 years away from the program.  I had initially been impressed by their services because of the quality and variety of the phone meetings I attended, which reflected a solid body of past effort in developing formats for the different types of meetings and overcoming technical and human disruptions on the phone lines.

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Fragments #holistic #health

So often, my thoughts are fragments. Unknown fears that grab me and will not let go. Regret that I cannot forget. Scars I thought healed, plucked revealing old pain born anew. Disappointments become resentments that create walls between me and (you).

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Episode 166: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Addiction #holistic #health

Inspired by an article published by Aces Too High News on May 2, 2017, this episode features a discussion about the role that adverse childhood experiences plays in the development of addiction later in life. Is addiction a disease or a normal comfort seeking response to childhood trauma, or is it a little of both?

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A Life Concussed #addiction #sober #sobriety #alcoholism

The following is an excerpt from a longer work. Every now and then, I wake up with the small, warm bodies of my pets sniffing my face, wrapped up in a clean and cozy blanket, and I marvel at the simplicity of a healed mind and a life in bloom on the other side of it. In person, I do, at times, like to stretch a tale, usually for comedic value. But for the purposes of this writing, I have checked and re-checked, and made an appraisal to share with the reader some basic facts, plain and simple; along with some remedies I found that have become a foundation of sorts, a path to wellness. As I mentioned before, other parts of that path have been omitted altogether, things that have proved to be a great panacea which are best kept personal.It has been my living experience to discount myself, often writing things off altogether, as if I had no value and was not worth the time of day. I mentioned earlier, after my second concussion, in the middle of the most tragic emergency of my life up to that point, the only thing I could think of was to apologize for bleeding on that clean, white carpet, as if nothing else mattered at all. In my soul, that set up a pattern; somewhere, deep down in the well, I always felt as if me just existing required an apology, to whom, I was never sure. Through a process of deep self- examination, I have been able to hold some things, such as that, up to the light. I know, now, why, after being rear-ended in my car,I told the other driver, “Just give me twenty bucks, man. It’s cool.” My life played out from that basis, a ‘Walking Apology’ maybe washing dishes for a meager wage or riding a bus. And needing to apologize for all of it: for living, for breathing, for being alive.I began my teenage years with a dark secret that I kept well concealed, well below the surface. A quiet, little truth between me and myself, never to be held up for public examination. My thinking, as it were, had changed, drastically so, an unexpected jaunt down into a dark well, where uglier things breathed, lurked, wrapping themselves up in my thoughts, painting grotesque visions in my mind’s eye, things I did not want to think about or ruminate on, yet, there they were. Though, eventually, I adapted, there was a suddenness to the beginning of all that that alarmed me. It is quite a thing for the sunshine of childhood to go into eclipse, another for the sun never to return. I have a friend, David, in Los Angeles that once made mention that on some level, we are like cats: our eyes simply adjust to the darkness after a time.But the secret that I am referring to was became a malevolent and growing violence inside me. I think, on some level, I have the soul of a pacifist; I abhor cruelty and violence; it makes the hairs on my neck stand up, and I squirm in the presence of it. There were some years where I fancied myself a ‘street tough,’ but that never exactly measured up to who I have ever truly been. This, of course, created great difficulty when, at an earlier season in my life, having been knocked in the head severely, more than once, my thought-life became overflowing with dark and scary content — the bells of a lower level of hell ringing clear through my thoughts. A door opened, and I never knew how to shut it. I only knew — or thought I knew — if I were to talk about my dark secret, it would not be well received. And, in truth, it most likely would not have been. The science of thought patterns and the prognosis of that is but in its infancy. If you talk about hurting things — even if you had not nor even wanted to — well, that is still a bad thing. I knew that as fact, even as a young boy. If I could change anything about that very early time, the suffering consequence from having a brain injury, I think I wish I would have found some type of working faith much earlier — be it real or imagined — a higher shelf onto which to place my troubles and cling to for the sake of being okay. But that was never to be.My homeostasis, as it were, went over a cliff before it had even fully developed. I dreamed of and thought of typhoons of razor blades tearing me to pieces, or dead factories full of squirming things with doors that would not open. I questioned my sanity early on, as young as fourteen, and many times later to close friends in my twenties.As mentioned, I discounted all of that. Whatever changed inside me was not important enough to mention, even when the shroud of secrecy faded, because, beneath it, I thought I did not matter.**********************I was driving one day asking the Power that I believe in to give me a means and an idea to correct my own thinking somehow, one that lay outside the realms of pharmaceutical intervention and heavy medical imaging of injecting dyes and scanning for patterns and results. It was perhaps a day later when a simple but comforting image came to me: the image was my head surrounded by a group of small hummingbirds in flight. Iridescent yet without form, I could hear the flicker of their tiny wings beating madly about as they would circle my head. I could feel — literally feel — a gentle poke from their narrow beaks as they would re-harness and sew together damaged or lost connections, pecking away at old neural pathways that lay long-dead, tying together the strands of nervous tissue regarded for mental health. Every morning, for weeks and months, the same visual would come to me. I would sit, quietly sipping coffee as a track with chimes and bells would draw me into a relaxed state, while the simple and effective imagery of my head surrounded with birds would unfold. They would peck away, correcting and sewing, like small creatures making a neat and tidy nest fit for bearing new life. After fifteen or twenty minutes, I would let the image fall away finishing my coffee and go about my work for the day. It was this — I can say with some finality — that silenced decades of old ruptures in my psyche, where the darkest parts of my soul used to live.Excerpted from A Life Concussed: A Memoriam of Brain Injury, Addiction & Homelessness, available at Amazon. 

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