Corking the Bottle

This is a challenging post to write. If I tell the whole story, I will threaten the anonymity of an A.A.newcomer. But I'm going to try, because the serendipity with which God works is blatantly obvious in what is happening in her life. I was friends with a family 20 years ago. More precisely, I had a love and concern for the children, who I saw growing up in a high-risk environment. I later watched the kids pass into adulthood from a distance, with occasional contact with some who demonstrated sad results of their troubled childhoods. I didn't come to know one of the kids because she was just a baby then, waddling through the house wearing only a diaper -- or less. Later, I heard some heart-breaking, second- and third-hand stories about her as she grew. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..." She and her siblings were among those "things." Through Facebook, her father confided concerns for the now-young woman. She came up ...

“If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.” ―  Bill Hicks Happy Monday!

I like the BeeGees a lot. I still enjoy listening to their music; the old stuff and the disco songs. Yet I didn't know all their close harmony hid divisive secrets. I watched a documentary last night about Maurice's death. I never heard what happened to him. First, there was the death of younger brother Andy due to drugs. Maurice, I learned, shared a love of the white powder. In addition, he drank heavily and smoked like a smoldering campfire. He was just in his early 50s when he had severe stomach pains. He went to the hospital and, after much debate, doctors performed emergency surgery. Apparently, he had a congenital intestinal problem that took all those years to go bad. Based on the autopsy, it's also likely that abusing nicotine, drugs, and alcohol  contributed to his early death. If anything, that deadly trio prevented Maurice from overcoming a coma after surgery. His family made the devastating decision to remove him from life support. I thought of Maurice t...

[First published on May 20] I have been told and read since I was knee-high to a bourbon barrel that alcoholism is a disease. That's still my opinion and I'm sticking to it. But a book I am currently reading,  Scripts People Live   by by Claude Steiner, contains a different view (page 233). I will save you the wordy reasoning, but he writes that "real" diseases require micro-organism changes to some organ. No such bodily alterations cause mental illnesses and no drugs cure them, leaving afflictions like addictions as un-diseases. He goes on to claim, "At present no drug has proven effective to cure depression, madness, or drug abuse ... since these tragic scripts are not the result of chemical or micro-organismic changes in the body but the result of the scripted interactions between people.... Thus, alcoholism is not an illness." Not so fast, Claude. The Big Book disagrees. So do  Staying Sober  authors Terrence T. Gorski and Merlene Miller (page...

If I ever needed a stiff drink it's now, watching my Louisville Cardinals being disemboweled on TV by Clemson. I'm kidding about the drink but, unfortunately, not about the game. When you watch football and consider a drink because of heartbreak or celebration, don't do it. I found something else to consider. Everyone is familiar with the crime of driving under the influence. According to Alcohol Rehab Guide ( https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/ ) drinking to excess can lead to other criminal acts: About 15% of all robberies are traced to alcohol use. "Alcohol can intensify a robber's feeling of desperation and cause them to steal someone's money or property." Some 37% of sexual assaults can be traced to drinking. "For perpetrators, drinking may intensify their aggressive behavior. This can make them become more forceful when someone tries to resist them." Approximately 27% of aggravated assaults are committed by people who ha...

I have been told and read since I was knee-high to a bourbon barrel that alcoholism is a disease. That's still my opinion and I'm sticking to it. But a book I am currently reading, Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner, contains a different view (page 233). I will save you the wordy reasoning, but he writes that "real" diseases require micro-organism changes to some organ. No such bodily alterations cause mental illnesses and no drugs cure them, leaving afflictions like addictions as un-diseases. He goes on to claim, "At present no drug has proven effective to cure depression, madness, or drug abuse ... since these tragic scripts are not the result of chemical or micro-organismic changes in the body but the result of the scripted interactions between people.... Thus, alcoholism is not an illness." Not so fast, Claude. The Big Book disagrees. So do Staying Sober authors Terrence T. Gorski and Merlene Miller (page 39-40): "Addiction is a physical ...