Corking the Bottle

I am going to Denver to visit my daughter, which means I won't add to this blog until September 29 or after. If you are accustomed to checking this site every day or two, please keep in the habit. Turn back and read some old posts. I'll be back with you. Meanwhile, stay -- or become -- sober.

My niece referred me to a website written by a recovering alcoholic she used to work with in Philadelphia. I feel moved to share with you a segment from her blog: And it’s funny; I think that when the fog starts to lift from your brain and you don’t have anything to reach for to dull your senses whenever you’re feeling uncomfortable, you open yourself up to these little amazing moments because you notice things you didn’t notice before. You’re more present in the moment — which is a miracle in itself. It’s a bit of a challenge when everything you notice makes you want to  cry,  but I’m told the emotional instability stuff will calm down the farther I get into sobriety.   https://jenwielgusjournalism.blog/2019/09/15/miracles/ I'm reminded of a Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation I pasted in my notebook when I took a mindfulness workshop last year:      Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.      He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day w

“Perhaps people felt there was nothing more they could do, you know? After all, how can someone be helped who doesn’t see the need? A Christian counselor I saw for a while described such situations as, “a White Elephant everyone can see but no one wants to deal with; everyone hopes the problem will just go away on its own.” Just like with my mom. Back then it seemed women were almost expected to go a little loopy sometimes. After all we’re the ones with raging hormones that get out of whack – by our periods, PMS or pregnancy and childbirth – and cause craziness and bizarre behavior. And because of those uncontrollable hormones, women are also more emotional and predisposed to depression. These are things my mom was actually told by her parents, her family, her husbands and friends... even her doctor. Eventually, she made herself believe that her erratic behavior stemmed from PMS, not mania or alcohol.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/alcoholism?page=2

(Reprinted from my blog post August 9, 2018) Being an alcoholic can be a gift. Yeah, that's right. Wrap it up and tie it with a nice little bow. You have the power to turn a curse, like being a fall-down drunk, into a blessing from God. Theresa, at my home group A.A. meeting, said, "It's not what happens to me. It's what I  do  with what happens to me." Like makin' a silk purse from a sow's ear, I guess. We get stuck sometimes holding that sow's yucky ear. God probably didn't drop it into our laps. We went Van Gogh on that poor piggie all on our own free will. So what are you going to make from your sow's ear? I like to quote  The Purpose-Driven Life  ( https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/711.Rick_Warren ). "God also planned where you'd be born and where you'd live for his purpose. Your race and nationality are no accident.... He planned it all for  his  purpose." He also gives us free will. We can pawn the mower w

I am in the process of reading Coming Clean by Seth Haines ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25910321-coming-clean ). He writes about his battle with alcoholism, fed in part by his pain over his toddler son who is unable to ingest food. Doctors can't seem to help the little boy and so he probably is dying. The author also describes unresolved pains from his own childhood, and does so through analogies and metaphors that help me see what has led him to alcohol abuse and the detox process. In my drinking days, I too anguished over truth and lies and my history that left me with only positive memories. "What is the truth about truth? If it is absolute, if it is not subject to interpretation, why can I not perceive it? Where does it hide? Behind the eyes and between the ears? Is is secreting away in the nooks and crannies of my brain; does it burrow down somewhere between the folds where it waits to be germinated? Is it a seed? Does the soil sometimes turn on it, refuse t

PSA sign behind home plate at the Arizona Diamondbacks game: Drive Hammered... Get Nailed

"So much wasted time." These were the last words of David Cassidy as he died of liver shutdown due to alcohol poisoning. He was a heavy drinker and alcoholic going clear back to his Partridge Family days. Much later, he was arrested for DUI in 2010, 2013, and 2014. He was sentenced to three months of rehab. After his release, David told Piers  Morgan, "If I  take another drink, I’m going to die, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I’m dead. … It’s very humbling, and it’s also humiliating,” adding that admitting to his disease gave him hope. "'I dropped  to my knees, and I felt something go through me that was like, I felt this experience that was just, thank you God. I felt this relief,” Cassidy said. “I begged it, and I was crying and weeping like a little boy, like a, like a sobbing little infant, like I’m sure I did many times as a kid. And I felt this incredible sense of relief, because I stopped lying to myself.'” ( https://us.blasting

Step 10, 11, 12 Step 10, 11, 12 Step 10, 11, 12 I'm not being redundant, but I am being repetitive. When we work A.A.'s Twelve Steps, 1-9 are complete -- until you feel like you need a refresher do-over. But steps 10, 11, and 12 are supposed to be repeated and repeated often. Continuously. Here are those steps. Please read them, if they aren't already burned into your brain, and note that they are meant to be practiced all the time. 10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

We never know when God is going to give us an opportunity to make a difference to someone. My friend Makenzie wrote this on Facebook: Three months ago, I received a message from a stranger who told me she was about to shoot heroine into her arm, she almost relapsed. Life just felt too hard to handle in that moment. She told me she never had seen my page, but there it was out of no where, my posts about what I was going through with Sawyer (Her child born dead). And she was able to find her own strength in mine. She said, “It made me feel weak to think of giving in like that when you were holding onto so much hope and optimism.... I  guess it was contagious and it got me through another day.” I told her right away I believed in her and knew she could get over this obstacle, with or without my daily inspiration. That the strength she found was within her THE WHOLE TIME. She thanked me for being the only light in her life when the rest just felt like darkness. In that moment, my messa

I found this in the Faces and Voices of Recovery online group. I'm glad I never experienced the same kind of pain as Paul did, but at the time my pain was excruciating. So don't give up: Paul Noiles When things become incredibly fearful, difficult and unpleasant and we want to give up –------DON’T!!! Because there will always be days when the pain seems unb earable and we want to crawl back into our shell. Trust me; I wanted to when my wife left me for a Toronto cop and then, my new fiancée died in a car accident five years later. When I squandered almost half a million dollars on substances to fuel my addiction, and I ended up homeless. When twice, I was robbed and beaten within an inch of death. I wanted to give up with each relapse, and every time someone saw me as hopeless. But I didn’t give up, no matter how terrible my life seemed. I remained standing and fought for a better life! Eventually, through GRACE, all the elements came together, and I had a profound awake

And now a word from Brad Pitt: "With starring roles in two of 2019's biggest movies, 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' and 'Ad Astra,' Brad Pitt spoke  to the New York Times  about a particularly cathartic experience that contributed to his health and success this year, when he quit drinking and began going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “'I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,' he said, before praising his AA group, which was comprised solely of men. 'You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard. It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself.' "Despite his status as one of Hollywood's most recognizable movie stars, Pitt shared that nobody in his group sold his stories – told to the other members in confidence – to the tabloids. "'It was actually really freeing just to expose the ug

(Reprinted from my blog post August 7, 2018) Excuse me, but I disagree with something. In the book  Staying Sober -- A Guide for Relapse Prevention , by Terrence Gorski and Merlene Miller, the authors seem to be saying that why we drink doesn't matter. Just attack the problem itself. "Searching for the cause of an addiction (such as emotional or family problems) is usually nonproductive. Treatment that recognizes the addiction as a primary condition rather than a symptom of something else, has been found to be most effective."  ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/293618.Staying_Sober ) My symptom is alcoholism. The disease is self-centeredness, unfulfilled dreams, regrets, and other character defects. As I work through my character defects, I will eliminate the resulting symptom. Let me draw an analogy. My car started going kerlunk kerlunk kertwottle. I couldn't solve the problem unless I knew the cause. Well, I never would figure out the cause unless I took

(Reprinted from my blog post August 6, 2018) We pray the Lord's prayer. We hold hands in a circle and repeat it after most A.A. meetings. We say it every Sunday in church. When I was little, we said it before each school day began. But did you ever notice that there's a catch to it? Everything is asked straightforward: Give us our daily bread, don't lead us into temptation, deliver us from evil. Right in the middle is a scary action item for  us , a do-this-for-me-and-I-will-do-this-for-you deal we make with God. "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." In the Presbyterian church where I grew up, we replace "trespasses" with "debts." It seems like Presbyterians are worried about money we owe and others owe us. Un-Presbyterians promise to obey God's "No Trespassing!" signs, the same as we allow others into our yards.  "Trespasses" and "debts" don't get to the main

(Reprinted from my blog post August 4, 2018) "Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now. Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have -- the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them." --The Big Book page 124 I am grateful for my dark past. No, I'm not masochistic. It's just that we learn more from our losses than from our victories. Fortunately, my dark past only goes back 10 years or so, not somewhere along life's road miles before I came to this rest stop.... If I hadn't driven through the dark past, I never would have come to know myself and how to repair the damage I caused to myself and others. Only because I had bad times did I find God and pray for His will to be done through me. I see results of that prayer every day. Stanley Lake in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains Whe

Here are some thoughts on alcoholism I can relate to: “I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.” ―  Craig Ferguson,  American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot “If there’s one thing I learned in Alanon (sic), it’s that you got to face the music because it just grows louder when you ignore it.” ―  Vicki Covington,  Bird of Paradise “Those unexpected morality lessons provided by the trip had jolted me into some kind of action. It was time to jettison the past before the present jettisoned me. This was my first veiled attempt at recovery. Although perhaps I was just running away again....” ―  Craig Ferguson,  American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot (Emphasis added) “I felt empty and sad for years, and for a long, long time, alcohol worked. I’d drink, and all the sadness wou