Episode 184: Talking About We Agnostics with Dale K. #holistic #health

Angela and I have a conversation with Dale K. about the " We Agnostics" chapter in Big Book. Dale wrote a secular version of the first 164 pages in the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous, and in this episode, he explains why. 

The post Episode 184: Talking About We Agnostics with Dale K. first appeared on AA Beyond Belief.

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Seconds and Inches #health #holistic

(The following is an excerpt from a longer work)Chapter 19:Liar, LiarI called my mom and told her how horrible the college therapist was. “Mom, he wants me to sign a suicide contract.”“A what?”“He wants me to sign a contract promising I won’t kill myself.” I heard her catch her breath.“What is he going to do if I don’t follow through with the contract?”“Carly, how much are you using?”“I don’t know.”“Well, are you using a lot?”“What’s a lot?”“Are you using a lot? Like two times per week?”I am not a liar. I am a truth-teller. I was not using a couple of times a week. I was using every single day. From morning until night. Therefore, I was not using “a lot,” which is a couple times per week. “Not a lot,” I said.At the time, I believed I had answered her question honestly, but looking back, I was not capable of being honest. I wasn’t being honest with myself. I had to construct my own house of cards in order to be okay with all of my choices. I always had a justification in my mind, just in case someone asked.She never hesitated; she never kept quiet with the sobriety talk. “What about trying to not use anything at all? Could you do that?”I’d never tried to not use at all. Not since high school, and that sucked.“I’m just worried that the using is making your moods worse. You know, making you more depressed.”“Mom, I’m depressed because I’m not on the right medication. They can’t find the right medication.”“But what if you just tried to see if it helps to be off everything else?”I was sure her support group had told her there was nothing she could do for me, but she didn’t stop trying anyway. Instead, she sent me pamphlets and care packages and letters and called me and wrote to me and checked on me every single day. I would tell her how much I was struggling, and I would write plays in playwriting class about a young woman who couldn’t look in the mirror and was dying to get help but couldn’t take care of herself. I did not see the connection.“Are you asking God for help?” My mom had taught me to talk to God when she first got sober. She taught me the Serenity Prayer and to ask God for help when I needed it. Before she got sober, we never talked about God in our house.“I can’t hear God anymore. He can’t hear me.”I began snorting Special K, which is also used as a horse tranquilizer. Theo and our theater friend christened me with my first K bump one evening at his apartment. I heard Radiohead screaming in the background, and the cinder block walls of his basement started coming closer. The two of them pushed me into his tiny shower stall, saying that’s what you’re supposed to do your first time on K. So I stood there, fully clothed, dripping wet, clueless as to how I got into the shower or where my hands came from.On K, the dreamlike atmosphere inside my head accelerated. K removed the safety lever in my head and allowed every choice I made to be unfiltered—no more considerations of logic. I put every and any drug I got my hands on in my mouth. The world around me felt like a ride I couldn’t get off of. At night before I passed out, I would beg God to not let me wake up. And when I did, I felt betrayed. Chapter 20:Restless, Irritable & DiscontentIn the late fall of my sophomore year, my mom must have been tired enough of hearing me complain to offer me a challenge: “Can you go just three weeks without getting drunk or high?” Other than that pitifully short time in high school when I was dating the football player who didn’t like girls who drank, I had never tried to stop. “I don’t think you can,” she said. And that was it. I’d show her.Within the first few days of stopping, I could no longer sleep. If I did nod off, I was tortured with constant graphic nightmares. During the days, it was as though my skin had been removed and someone had pushed me out into the sun. I wanted to physically harm people who pissed me off, which was everyone. But that was rarely an issue because no one wanted to be around me.I clawed my way through those three weeks by staying mostly alone in my room, smoking, and watching TV. But I made it through three weeks with no drugs or alcohol, which convinced me that alcohol and drugs were not the problem. Because I felt so out of control without anything in my body, I knew there was something really wrong with my mental state. I decided I just needed to find the right medication to make me feel normal. And that until I found the right medication and the right doctor, I should have a little drink or a little hit off that bowl to calm down. What I felt when I got high for the first time after those three awful weeks was what it feels like when you’re swimming at night and you have to get out of the pool to go to pee, and you’re wet and freezing, and then you run back to the pool and jump in and feel the warmth all around you. That was how it felt when I came back to what I loved. It felt like someone had turned up Led Zeppelin, and the sun was shining on my face, and my feet were on the dashboard, and everything was perfect. After that first night back, I said that there was no reason to ever stop using again. And off I went.I’d been isolating, so I was cut off from the usual people I partied with. One night, I had a party at our apartment in an attempt to reconnect with the crowd. But during the party, something I took made me believe all the people were intruders trying to attack me, so I made everyone get out and locked the door. I curled up on the floor in the middle of the room, and trembled, and smoked. Someone banged on the door and shouted, “Carly! Let us in! Carly!”I covered my ears and curled tighter. I couldn’t get comfortable. No matter how I moved, it was as if I was lying on nails. There was nowhere I could place myself where I could rest.Copyright 2020 by Carly Israel, from the memoir SECONDS AND INCHES, to be published September 7, 2020 by Jaded Ibis Press, submitted with permission from Jaded Ibis Press. Available on Amazon and elsewhere.Tune in for a live discussion with the author on September 8, at 7 pm (EST) on FB Live.

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When Is the Right Time to Seek Treatment? #health #holistic

Even during a global pandemic, many people feel busier than ever. The idea of putting your life on hold for 30, 60, or 90 days can seem impossible. Because of that, it’s easy to delay treatment for drug or alcohol addiction even when you know that you have a problem.When you’re looking for a reason not to go to treatment, there are a million excuses. The kids need you home for the transition back to school. You’ll go as soon as you finish that big project at work. You’ll wait until being without you for weeks is more manageable for your spouse.The truth is, there’s never a convenient time to go to treatment. In almost every instance, now is the right time to go to treatment — as soon as you accept that you need help and find a treatment center that meets your needs. Here’s why:Addiction is a chronic, progressive disease. Substance use disorder, commonly called addiction, is a chronic, progressive disease. Chronic conditions are those that last a year or more — generally for a long time. For many people, addiction and alcoholism are chronic conditions. That doesn’t mean that you’ll be living in active addiction forever, but it does mean that you’ll be managing this condition for the rest of your life, through steps like staying sober.It’s also very important to recognize that addiction is progressive. Medically, that means it’s a condition that gets worse with time. If you found out that you had cancer or diabetes, you wouldn’t delay treatment hoping that you’d get better on your own — you would quickly take advantage of any treatment option available to you, and intervene before your disease got worse. You should approach addiction treatment with the same mentality.Addiction is fatal.It might seem dramatic to compare substance use disorder to cancer. But the truth is that, if left untreated, both are fatal diseases. Last year, more than 67,000 Americans died from overdoses. While opioids get a lot of attention, it’s estimated that an additional 88,000 Americans die each year from alcohol-related illnesses.That’s more than 150,000 lives lost each year because of substance use disorder. If you recognize your drinking or using drug use has become problematic, you could be one of them. Getting treatment for substance use disorder can quite literally be lifesaving.Acting now can save your reputation and relationships. It’s true that addiction is progressive on a physical level — as you use a drug or alcohol your body will need more and more just to function normally. This is known as dependency. But addiction is also progressive in the way it affects your relationships.As your addiction grows and becomes more powerful, it begins to have consequences in your life. You might be late from work; “borrow” money from a loved one to fund your habit; or miss your child’s birthday. Each of those actions chips away at the relationships that you have. Over time, there may be nothing left to lose.On the other hand, going to treatment builds relationships. It not only prevents you from doing further damage to the people who you love and respect, but it also shows them that you are taking responsibility for your actions. The work that you do in treatment can help you build thriving relationships in the real world.There used to be a saying that people needed to hit rock bottom before getting treatment for their addiction. However, that’s a dangerous approach — rock bottom could be death or the loss of everyone you love.Getting into treatment now, rather than waiting, is one way to fight back against the disease of addiction. It shows that you are able to take control of your illness and do the necessary actions to repair your life. Delaying treatment is a losing gamble — and in almost every case things will get worse before they get better. You have nothing to lose — and lots to gain — by enrolling in treatment today.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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With Facemasks Politicized, Alcoholics Anonymous Faces a Conundrum #health #holistic

Gravity exists.Gravity exists whether or not Donald Trump questions its legitimacy on Twitter, triggering a right-wing media assault on the Radical Left theory of “what goes up must come down.” Despite any attempt to politicize it, gravity is a fact as sure as water flows downhill or a dropped stone plummets to the ground.Masks protect people from COVID-19, a virus whose combined contagiousness and lethality have caused the most devastating pandemic in a century. Expert simulations have shown that if 80 percent of the population wore masks, infection rates would plunge by more than 90 percent; a study published by the World Health Organization on June 1 aligns with these findings. Most recently, amid soaring coronavirus cases in mid-July, Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield wrote a piece with the plain-as-day title “Universal Masking: The Time Is Now.”By guarding both wearers and those around them from potentially pathogen-rich respiratory droplets, masks steeply mitigate the risk of transmitting a deadly virus that has infected nearly five million Americans and killed more than 150,000. That’s a fact, as proven and indisputable as gravity, and attempts to politicize this fact make it no less true.So why, then, can’t I utter this fact in a place where I've come to value and benefit from honest, open dialogue?Why can't I declare this fact in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous?Much has been made about the pandemic’s impact on AA and other 12-step programs. Typically, these accounts discuss the obvious drawbacks of social distancing: the clunky awkwardness of meetings held online instead of in-person, and isolation’s erosion of the motivation and connectedness addicts and alcoholics feed upon to stay clean and sober.However, as businesses reopen and society emerges from lockdown, another COVID-related issue has adversely affected AA. And unfortunately, one of the organization’s well-intending, decades-old principles has allowed this fresh wound to fester.To explain: Alcoholics Anonymous and similar 12-step programs are, understandably, staunchly apolitical. AA’s Preamble, read aloud at the inception of most meetings, states that “AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes.”This strict neutrality on outside matters has allowed AA to focus on its primary purpose: helping suffering alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety. Since quitting drinking in 2011, AA’s life-saving single-mindedness has let me attend meetings with the “first things first” goal of furthering my recovery, recognizing that blessings accrued in sobriety would likely vanish should I return to alcohol.AA’s appropriate aversion to politics, then, is reinforced by success. It has served as a sturdy guardrail against outside influences, and played a sizable role in AA becoming the most proficient and prolific recovery program in history.And despite the creeping politicism of facts – the proven yet still-divisive issue of climate change is a prime example – no partisan dispute has been significant enough to put a noticeable chink in AA’s apolitical armor. Not even a fact-averse, race-baiting, violence-inciting president could do that.Until now. Until COVID-19.It has taken a combination of the worst pandemic in a century and the worst president in US history to profoundly penetrate AA’s apolitical bubble. That is as much a credit to AA’s effectiveness – the program works; I am living proof – as it is an indictment of any political figures or mask-refusing, virus-spreading fools fueling the contagion.Donald Trump, and the conservative media outlets that aid and abet him, have successfully convinced a significant set of Americans that a life-saving, science-backed fact – that masks are vital in the fight against COVID-19 – is instead a political issue. They have turned a plain piece of health-preserving fabric into the most hot-button symbol of a culture war, citing "personal freedom" as an excuse to infect and possibly kill others in the name of self-determination.AA is a part of society. Its meetings invariably include the substantial minority of people who think mask wearing is partisan subjectivity rather than common sense objectivity. They have been hoodwinked by an amoral president and agenda-driven, irresponsible conservative media, and I truly feel bad for them.That said, their ignorance has placed a pall over AA, the likes of which I've never experienced.Folks with long-term recovery, like me, are typically in no immediate danger of relapse. Rather, we continue to attend AA because the same program we used to arrest alcoholism also works to diminish the emotional issues – anger, fear, selfishness, envy – that drove our drinking in the first place. We came for our drinking, and stay for our thinking.AA is most effective – for recovery veterans and newcomers alike – when meetings are rooted in honesty. I need to be able to discuss the challenges I've been facing in the real world, so that others can help me apply AA principles in all my affairs – a pivotal part of AA's 12th Step.Here's the rub: as people emerge from lockdown, the most prominent challenges in my life – and, I'm sure, the lives of many others, AA members or not – involve the legions of maskless morons content to sacrifice my personal safety for their cherished personal freedom.In the age of COVID-19, the obstacle causing me the most fear, anxiety and stress isn't emotional but rather existential. I'm scared for my life, and the lives of my loved ones. And when I can't express that in an AA meeting for fear of violating the "no politics" rule, it significantly diminishes the program's effectiveness.It is a failure of society that we allow facts to be arbitrarily hijacked and fractured by politicians. These days, that generally means anything Donald Trump wants to turn into a wedge issue.But it is a failure of AA that it has allowed a straightforward health issue, mask wearing, to become a topic non grata due to this dangerous, disingenuous politicization. It is an act of communal cowardice playing out in nearly every meeting I've attended since the pandemic's inception, and has led me to significantly limit my participation.In doing so, AA is setting a terrible precedent. It is essentially giving members the equivalent of a self-declared trigger-warning – a means of shutting down honest, fact-based discussion on the basis that it might be considered political. This is a slippery slope to something an honesty-driven recovery program must avoid at all costs: phoniness. And phoniness by exclusion – the refusal to acknowledge an inconvenient truth, one that has swelled into an elephant in AA's COVID-caused cyber-rooms – is phoniness nonetheless.The result has dissuaded reality-residing individuals like myself from expressing our most pressing, protracted concern – contracting coronavirus through the irresponsibility of others – for fear of self-appointed politics police crying foul. I find myself walking on eggshells in an environment I've long considered an enclave of honesty, and therefore of healing.I got sober so I can live in the real world, not deny reality for the sake of preserving someone's right to be dangerously, irresponsibly wrong about matters of life and death. When one of the most important facts in recent history – masks save lives – isn't welcome in AA, many of its members, myself included, don't feel welcome either.

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Why Wine Doesn’t Really Fix Your Anxiety #health #holistic

It can feel as if wine is the only thing that will fix your anxiety…

Especially when you’re overwhelmed, frustrated and stressed out. 

You know a glass of wine (or three) will take the edge off. 

You want to drink less… but alcohol helps you fix your anxiety and get a break from your own brain.

If this sounds like you, then you’re not alone.

Let’s talk about what’s really going on… and introduce a new way of thinking about this.

Key points

Alcohol makes anxiety worse

Studies have shown that long-term drinking can increase our susceptibility to anxiety problems. So the big picture isn’t good, but even in the short term, most of us have experienced hangxiety – i.e. increased anxiety the morning after drinking.

 

Get the 24 hour picture

Don’t judge alcohol on how you feel when you’re drinking. You’ve got to consider your mood for 24 hours following a drink. When you wake up, sleep-deprived and feeling bad, you start the day with high anxiety, making you more likely to crave a drink later. 

 

Smiley stickers

Would you ever put a sticker on your car dashboard to cover up a warning light? Doing this might give you some temporary relief but eventually, your car would break down. Wine is that sticker. It’s not fixing anything – it’s just helping you ignore the warning lights. 

 

How to really fix your anxiety

Sobriety is not about learning how to just resist wine whilst keeping everything else exactly the same. Successful sobriety requires you to address the real issues behind your drinking. 

Perhaps you have too much on your plate and not enough support. Maybe you’re not great at asking for help or you’re worried what people think. Focus on finding real solutions. This work takes a little time, but it’s worth it.

 

If you’d like some help and support to quit drinking – and create an alcohol-free life you love – click here for details of my online course.

 

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The post Why Wine Doesn’t Really Fix Your Anxiety appeared first on The Sober School.

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Swept Away by the Raging Storm #holistic #health

Of late, I notice how desperate I am to hold on to happiness and joy and to push away anger, sadness, and grief. I often try to insulate myself and to live in a news and current events bubble

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Episode 183: A Brief History of Secular AA #holistic #health

In this episode, Joe C. from Rebellion Dogs Radio joins Angela and John for a brief overview of the history of secular AA groups. This episode was recorded live on YouTube and Facebook on July 10, 2020. We live stream every Friday night at 7:00 pm on the AA Beyond Belief YouTube Channel, public Facebook page, and our private Facebook group. Come join us! 

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