Category: source

Chauvin Defense ‘Weaponized’ Stigma For Black Americans

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

JUSTICE DEFERRED IS JUSTICE DENIED – 

April 16, 2021 – When George Floyd’s girlfriend Courteney Ross took the stand for the prosecution, she described the couple’s struggle with drugs as part of the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic.  “It’s a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids,” Ross testified. “We both suffered from chronic pain. We both had prescriptions.”  During the opioid crisis, millions of Americans became addicted to prescription painkillers, then turned to street opioids including fentanyl. 

“We tried really hard to break that addiction many times,” Ross said.  Her account broadly matches the way scientists, addiction care specialists and many law enforcement experts now think about addiction: as a chronic illness.  It’s dangerous and challenging for the person with substance use disorder, but is most often treatable with proper health care.  

Yet during Derek Chauvin’s trial, his defense has worked to frame the addiction of George Floyd, a Black man, as something criminal, dangerous and frightening.  “This is what’s called a speedball, a mixture of an opiate and a stimulant,” said Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson, referring to a pill found at the scene where George Floyd was killed.  Taylor has written extensively about racial bias in the treatment of people with addiction.   

He notes most people who use drugs face stigma. But studies show people of color with addiction are often viewed far more negatively than whites — as dangerous criminals rather than sympathetic patients.  Taylor says this framing is racist, and he believes it has been used deliberately by Chauvin’s defense team to sway the jury.  “The idea that the presence of drugs in George Floyd’s system should somehow be weaponized against him to justify someone killing him is incredibly painful,” he said.

more@NPR

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In My Hometown, Opioids Are Still Stealing Lives

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

THREE WEEKS LATER IT HAPPENED AGAIN – 

April 14, 2021 – “Nobody wants their child’s life defined in one moment of a bad decision,” Ms. Whyte said. “My daughter was more than one night, more than an overdose. She was defined by 23 years of greatness to my family.”

While we planned David’s funeral, Christmas lights began to blink awake throughout the neighborhood, and new reporting in The Times that week cast light on the nature of the crisis that killed him. McKinsey & Company, the prestigious consulting firm that helped Purdue Pharma “turbocharge” opiate sales, had proposed awarding Purdue’s distributors with a rebate for every OxyContin overdose, as a way to maintain sales. Earlier reports revealed that McKinsey had strategized how “to counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed.”

The heinous documents confirmed that so much about this crisis was manufactured. There is no amount of money the odious Sackler family can throw around to counter the emotion here. Especially because these days, things are worse than ever, since heroin has been largely edged out by the far more lethal fentanyl. It’s difficult to even find a block in North Philadelphia that sells just heroin anymore; even cocaine is being cut with fentanyl.

The drug has closed the door to many hoping for a path back to their lives. David presciently said of fentanyl, before the drug turned up on his own autopsy report, “It’s much harder to get off of, because it’s so much stronger, and much easier to overdose on, too.”

more@NYTimes

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How DMX Found God

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

MAY HIS MEMORY BE A BLESSING – 

April 13, 2021 – so he found himself “possessed by the darker side,” bound to a cycle of drug dependence and insufficient rehab. Fame changed his life, but not in many of the ways that mattered … 

“Slippin’” is a stunning centerpiece in DMX’s catalog, a liberating sermon where he got to purge his long-standing demons. Thirty seconds into the video, he’s shown in the back of an ambulance on a stretcher as paramedics try to revive him. Nearly 23 years later, he laid in a hospital bed on life support for a week as fans hoped for a miracle—though it was already a miracle that he survived for as long as he did. He died at 50 after an apparent overdose and a heart attack, following a long battle with drug addiction. Many prayed for him, but it wasn’t the usual stock prayers. These were acknowledgments of DMX’s faith and how he moved about the world with it. “A Love filled praying child of God named Earl has been called on,” Q-Tip tweeted on April 9. Missy Elliott wrote, “Even though you had battles you touched so many through your music and when you would pray so many people felt that.”

Many pop stars co-opt religious imagery, but few did it as earnestly and seamlessly as Earl Simmons, who made spirituality his mantle in life. He tucked his hardships into lyrical scriptures and tried to reconcile the struggle to be good and the temptation to entertain evil forces. DMX made gospel rap for the unconverted and for those who’d long lost touch with religion, for those who couldn’t manage their family trauma because no one had taught them how. His music reflected a generation of Black children left unprotected by the world and its systems, who suffered but dared to emerge victorious anyway. 

He revealed the fragility of being young and uncared for, and his entire rap career was a search for meaning.  DMX’s salvation was inevitably tied to hip-hop’s. It’s no coincidence that, because of his gritty vulnerability on records and in his performances, he contributed to the explosion of rap into the mainstream in the late ’90s. During an era when the genre was defined by endless yachts and flashy clothes, he offered brave, hardened, and angry songs that more gravely reflected the tragedies under which the culture was born, not where it had arrived. His frenetic energy was nothing without his spirituality, though it was also a reflection of his lifelong addictions. After a show on the pioneering Hard Knock Life arena tour in 1999, he questioned his good fortune: As producer Irv Gotti once recalled in an interview, X broke down backstage after performing and screamed, “Why, why God, why me? I ain’t supposed to be shit.”

more@Pitchfork

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A Higher Power Outage: Zoom Meetings & Spirituality

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

by Christopher Dale

WHAT WOULD BILL W. DO? – 

April 20, 2021 – Undoubtedly, Bill would be impressed with, and grateful for, the technology. But unlike an airborne Washington, for Bill the novelty would soon wear off. “No coffee-pouring or seat-saving? No hearty handshakes and welcoming hugs? No common ground-creating warnings against crosstalk and extraneous discussion? No Steps and Traditions posted on walls?”

 Soon, I’m confident Bill W. would notice something else omitted – something that so many of us have found lacking over the year-plus-long Zoom rooms experiment. Someone as perceptive as Bill would soon realize that the missing ingredients were far more than physical. “Where,” asks Bill, “is the spirituality?” In short order, WWBWD becomes another acronym: WTF. Not “What the f—?”, mind you, but “When the f—?” As in “When the fuck are you people going back to real AA meetings?”

 Let’s be honest: We’ve all heard old-timers in AA wonder aloud what the founders would do when faced with one modern-day issue or another. For one, I’ll admit to rolling my eyes and wishing some folks would accept the fact that we’re far closer to 2035 than 1935. By incessantly theorizing and speculating about Bill and Bob’s intentions, well-meaning AA members have become the boys who cried Wilson. And that’s unfortunate. But this is more important than some squabble du jour. With the pandemic finally winding down, whether or not to continue wide-scale Zoom meetings, even as doing so becomes less and less necessary, has far-ranging consequences. Continuing Zoom rooms indefinitely post-COVID would represent one of the most seismic paradigm shifts in the program’s near-century-long existence. That’s not something to be taken lightly.

If Zoom rooms become a permanent part of AA – if they are “new-normalized” rather than disbanded as short-term necessities – the effects will be far-reaching. For starters, with meetings bifurcated into online and in-person versions, attendance at each will be lighter, meaning less fresh faces and more “same old” stories from well-meaning yet long-winded regulars. 

 But as Bill would have seen as clear as his laptop screen, the more important consequence lies in the spiritual. Simply put, for a sizable swath of AA members, there is a spiritual essence at in-person meetings that cannot be replicated online.

 I cannot quantify that italicized statement. There’s no spirituality meter to gauge, no surveys to link to, no studies to cite. But I know many of you reading this know exactly what I mean. And for those of you who don’t, with in-person meetings returning, I highly recommend seeing for yourselves.

more@AddictionRecoveryeBulletin

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The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings

By Chris M

The first 7 to 8 years of my sobriety, I attended meetings almost every night of the week. I live in a small rural area of Southwest Georgia. I was accustomed to driving up to 60 miles several nights per week to be able to attend a meeting every night. In years 8 to 11 of my sobriety, I was undergoing a “de-conversion” process from theism to atheism. There was simply not an availability of secular meetings in my rural area to meet my desires and I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. So, I never really considered finding any online meetings.

The only secular AA meeting that was in driving distance from me was a meeting in Tallahassee, Florida. It met one night a week on a Friday night. Tallahassee is about 60 miles from me. Due to conflicts in my work schedule with the time the meeting started, I was typically only able to attend it once or twice a month. I was continuing to attend nonsecular meetings about two to three times per week. I tried to start a secular meeting in the summer of 2019, but I found myself sitting in a rented room by myself for two months.  So, I closed the meeting.

In late 2019 to early 2020 before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, I remember seeing a small list of online secular AA meetings on a Secular AA website. I recall contemplating whether to attend one. Once the pandemic was declared and we began to have a shutdown of face-to-face meetings, I took another look at the small list of Secular meetings available. Most of the meetings were during the time of day that I was working. There were a couple that were taking place outside of my working hours, but it was only one or two nights a week.

Also, some of the nonsecular groups were asking me to start a zoom meeting for them on nights that they would meet. In February and March of 2020, I began doing this for them. Attendance was small as most everyone was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with online meeting platforms. Due to lack of attendance and other groups starting their own personal zoom meetings as well as using “covid protocol” for face-to-face meetings, I abandoned hosting any more zoom meetings. However, hosting these zoom meetings for the traditional AA groups gave me enough confidence to start attending secular online meetings.

In March to April of 2020, some secular groups began posting information about the zoom meetings they were starting in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook Group. The list of secular meetings began to grow slowly. I was not seeing those meetings on the Secular AA website for inclusion on their list. So, I started creating my own personal list of secular zoom meetings in the Notes app of my iPhone. I created a list by day of the week. Every time I saw a secular group post their zoom meeting information, I added it to my list. My list grew to a nice small selection of meetings for every day of the week.

“Service work” has always been a staple of my sobriety. Whether I was serving on a Group, District, or Area level, I have always found great value in serving. Throughout the pandemic, I was always looking for a way to be of service to the recovery community. I had the idea that others might benefit from my list of meetings. I began posting them daily in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook group. As I did this, I would have comments of other meeting information to add to my list.  My list began to grow.

I began to see a Google doc spreadsheet link being shared in the private recovery groups. It had even more meetings than were on my list. I thought about abandoning my list and just start using the Google doc spreadsheet. For my own personal preferences, though, it was a little hard to read and navigate using my iPhone. So, I kept using my list and the format that I preferred for a list of meetings. I continued to post my list of meetings each morning for the particular day of the week and my list continued to grow. As the list expanded to about 10 to 15 meetings each day in July of 2020, I created a simple single web page to list all the meetings. I wanted to make the web page easy to read, navigate, and easy to copy & paste from using a smart phone into the Zoom app.

Click on the above to visit the web page.

In July of 2020, my web page list of secular recovery zoom meetings had 207 views. In March of 2021, my web page had 3,019 views. Each month the number of views has continued to increase as people have become more comfortable with online meetings. Today there is an average of 35 to 45 meetings listed for each day of the week on my list. My list of meetings is not as heavily used nor as popularly linked to as a couple of other larger lists out there like the Google doc spreadsheet and the Cleveland Freethinkers list. I cannot imagine the number of views they are having each month.

It has been exciting to see the secular recovery community come together through these meetings. In just one years’ time due to the pandemic, I have personally gone from attending 1 or 2 secular meetings per month to attending no less than 15 to 20 per month. I have seen secular groups attendance go from an average of 5 people to an average of 30 people in the meeting. Some online secular meetings have 100 or more in average attendance! As I stated earlier, I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. My experience over the last year has proven this to be a fallacy. Do not get me wrong, if I had the availability of secular face-to-face meetings as I do with online secular meetings, I am sure I would be attending more face-to-face meetings than online meetings. For where I live, though, this will probably never be an issue. There are simply not enough secular people in recovery in my area. So, I will continue connecting to online secular meetings for a long time to come.

As the pandemic begins to fade, the ultimate question is will online secular meetings fade away as well? I do not believe they will. There are too many like me that simply do not have access to face-to-face secular recovery meetings. Sure, we can start our own secular recovery meetings. I have plans to eventually restart a face-to-face secular meeting with a couple of people. I met them in an online secular zoom meeting! I had no idea they were in the same tiny rural hometown as me. Zoom meetings made this possible! I have heard many online secular meetings state that even after the pandemic is gone, they will continue to host online meetings as well as their face-to-face meetings. This is exciting news for people like me. I have grown attached to several groups and I feel like a homegroup member of a few that I regularly attend each week. I would miss them dearly if they discontinued their online meetings.

For all it’s worth, the pandemic has brought many of us pain, misery, financial hardships, and death. But it has also brought us together as a secular recovery community in ways that probably once seemed unattainable. The pandemic brought us a multitude of zoom recovery meetings. The Zoom meetings have changed how I view online meetings and how I participate secularly in my recovery. I look forward to the secular recovery community within AA continuing to grow after the pandemic. Though the number of secular online meetings may shrink a little after the pandemic, the connection will not.

Chris M. is from Donalsonville, GA. He has been around 12 Step Programs since his early 20’s and has stayed sober since the age of 40. His date of sobriety is January 24, 2009. He has served in many positions at the Group, District, and Area levels. The past four years of his sobriety has been converting from theism to atheism while experiencing all the obstacles that confront the secular person within nonsecular 12 step program. He is the webmaster of his local district 12 step fellowship and created a web page listing of International Secular Recovery Zoom Meetings.

 

The post The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings first appeared on AA Agnostica.

The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings

By Chris M

The first 7 to 8 years of my sobriety, I attended meetings almost every night of the week. I live in a small rural area of Southwest Georgia. I was accustomed to driving up to 60 miles several nights per week to be able to attend a meeting every night. In years 8 to 11 of my sobriety, I was undergoing a “de-conversion” process from theism to atheism. There was simply not an availability of secular meetings in my rural area to meet my desires and I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. So, I never really considered finding any online meetings.

The only secular AA meeting that was in driving distance from me was a meeting in Tallahassee, Florida. It met one night a week on a Friday night. Tallahassee is about 60 miles from me. Due to conflicts in my work schedule with the time the meeting started, I was typically only able to attend it once or twice a month. I was continuing to attend nonsecular meetings about two to three times per week. I tried to start a secular meeting in the summer of 2019, but I found myself sitting in a rented room by myself for two months.  So, I closed the meeting.

In late 2019 to early 2020 before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, I remember seeing a small list of online secular AA meetings on a Secular AA website. I recall contemplating whether to attend one. Once the pandemic was declared and we began to have a shutdown of face-to-face meetings, I took another look at the small list of Secular meetings available. Most of the meetings were during the time of day that I was working. There were a couple that were taking place outside of my working hours, but it was only one or two nights a week.

Also, some of the nonsecular groups were asking me to start a zoom meeting for them on nights that they would meet. In February and March of 2020, I began doing this for them. Attendance was small as most everyone was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with online meeting platforms. Due to lack of attendance and other groups starting their own personal zoom meetings as well as using “covid protocol” for face-to-face meetings, I abandoned hosting any more zoom meetings. However, hosting these zoom meetings for the traditional AA groups gave me enough confidence to start attending secular online meetings.

In March to April of 2020, some secular groups began posting information about the zoom meetings they were starting in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook Group. The list of secular meetings began to grow slowly. I was not seeing those meetings on the Secular AA website for inclusion on their list. So, I started creating my own personal list of secular zoom meetings in the Notes app of my iPhone. I created a list by day of the week. Every time I saw a secular group post their zoom meeting information, I added it to my list. My list grew to a nice small selection of meetings for every day of the week.

“Service work” has always been a staple of my sobriety. Whether I was serving on a Group, District, or Area level, I have always found great value in serving. Throughout the pandemic, I was always looking for a way to be of service to the recovery community. I had the idea that others might benefit from my list of meetings. I began posting them daily in the private AA Beyond Belief Facebook group. As I did this, I would have comments of other meeting information to add to my list.  My list began to grow.

I began to see a Google doc spreadsheet link being shared in the private recovery groups. It had even more meetings than were on my list. I thought about abandoning my list and just start using the Google doc spreadsheet. For my own personal preferences, though, it was a little hard to read and navigate using my iPhone. So, I kept using my list and the format that I preferred for a list of meetings. I continued to post my list of meetings each morning for the particular day of the week and my list continued to grow. As the list expanded to about 10 to 15 meetings each day in July of 2020, I created a simple single web page to list all the meetings. I wanted to make the web page easy to read, navigate, and easy to copy & paste from using a smart phone into the Zoom app.

Click on the above to visit the web page.

In July of 2020, my web page list of secular recovery zoom meetings had 207 views. In March of 2021, my web page had 3,019 views. Each month the number of views has continued to increase as people have become more comfortable with online meetings. Today there is an average of 35 to 45 meetings listed for each day of the week on my list. My list of meetings is not as heavily used nor as popularly linked to as a couple of other larger lists out there like the Google doc spreadsheet and the Cleveland Freethinkers list. I cannot imagine the number of views they are having each month.

It has been exciting to see the secular recovery community come together through these meetings. In just one years’ time due to the pandemic, I have personally gone from attending 1 or 2 secular meetings per month to attending no less than 15 to 20 per month. I have seen secular groups attendance go from an average of 5 people to an average of 30 people in the meeting. Some online secular meetings have 100 or more in average attendance! As I stated earlier, I had always heard that online meetings were not as beneficial as face-to-face meetings. My experience over the last year has proven this to be a fallacy. Do not get me wrong, if I had the availability of secular face-to-face meetings as I do with online secular meetings, I am sure I would be attending more face-to-face meetings than online meetings. For where I live, though, this will probably never be an issue. There are simply not enough secular people in recovery in my area. So, I will continue connecting to online secular meetings for a long time to come.

As the pandemic begins to fade, the ultimate question is will online secular meetings fade away as well? I do not believe they will. There are too many like me that simply do not have access to face-to-face secular recovery meetings. Sure, we can start our own secular recovery meetings. I have plans to eventually restart a face-to-face secular meeting with a couple of people. I met them in an online secular zoom meeting! I had no idea they were in the same tiny rural hometown as me. Zoom meetings made this possible! I have heard many online secular meetings state that even after the pandemic is gone, they will continue to host online meetings as well as their face-to-face meetings. This is exciting news for people like me. I have grown attached to several groups and I feel like a homegroup member of a few that I regularly attend each week. I would miss them dearly if they discontinued their online meetings.

For all it’s worth, the pandemic has brought many of us pain, misery, financial hardships, and death. But it has also brought us together as a secular recovery community in ways that probably once seemed unattainable. The pandemic brought us a multitude of zoom recovery meetings. The Zoom meetings have changed how I view online meetings and how I participate secularly in my recovery. I look forward to the secular recovery community within AA continuing to grow after the pandemic. Though the number of secular online meetings may shrink a little after the pandemic, the connection will not.

Chris M. is from Donalsonville, GA. He has been around 12 Step Programs since his early 20’s and has stayed sober since the age of 40. His date of sobriety is January 24, 2009. He has served in many positions at the Group, District, and Area levels. The past four years of his sobriety has been converting from theism to atheism while experiencing all the obstacles that confront the secular person within nonsecular 12 step program. He is the webmaster of his local district 12 step fellowship and created a web page listing of International Secular Recovery Zoom Meetings.

 

The post The Pandemic and the Explosion of Zoom Meetings first appeared on AA Agnostica.

Take Three Degrees. Add Alcohol.

Chapter 16:
Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA

Martine R.

The decision to stop drinking alcohol, once and for all, is one I shall never regret. I will soon celebrate 13 years of sobriety, after three decades of active alcoholism. Because I am now a different, better person, my life is a different, better life. It is that simple. And yet, the journey to that simple and logical decision was long and hard and painful.

I was born and raised in France in a well-to-do family which included ancestors in the Bordeaux wine business. Being able to appreciate good wine was an indispensable part of good breeding. I never in those days associated wine with alcoholism. In fact, although wine was always served at meals, I do not remember ever wanting to drink it in large amounts.

My teen years were not happy. I was molested by my father. He was well-educated, respected and successful. In our social class, girls were expected to be proper young ladies, so they could marry respectable men. I therefore lived in an irreconcilable situation, where the very person who was supposed to raise me properly was in fact an aggressor.

When I was about 16, I drank whiskey at a party, and become drunk and sick. However, I felt grown-up and sophisticated. After that first whiskey-induced drunkenness, I loved drinking, for many reasons. First, when I got tipsy, my confusion and shame would abate for a while. Second, I was told that many of the great poets and artists were heavy drinkers, so I felt that creativity and originality went hand-in-hand with alcohol. Also, what was happening in secret at home gave me great disgust for the traditional image of womanhood all were trying to mold me into. I was supposed to be well-bred and proper? Oh no! I would drink and smoke and curse a blue streak, which was my way to rebel… I was doing very well at school and wanted more for myself than just finding a good husband.

One summer when I was 18, my favorite aunt took me to the United States for summer vacation. There I happened to meet a boy my age and we fell in love. He came to France the next summer and as he was about to return to the States, we found out I was pregnant. There was an uproar and much disapproval in both families, of course. I went to the US, we were quickly married. We lived at first with my husband’s parents. Our daughter was born there, at about the time her father was graduating from college. Then he went to Medical school for four years.

We had almost no money. Buying alcohol of any kind, even cheap wine, was impossible. I took whatever small jobs I could find, I was a waitress, a nanny, and eventually I taught French in a small private school.

After my husband graduated from Medical school we moved to California where he did his internship and residency. Our financial situation was improving a little; I was also able to get a scholarship for a Master’s degree in French. I wanted to have better credentials to get better teaching jobs. We had a second child. Then after having obtained my Master’s, I was offered another scholarship to do a Ph.D. There was a lot of work and a lot of juggling between work and child care.

Every once in a while I could buy a bottle of wine to drink with meals. I felt civilized again. Every once in a while, I did get drunk. I was not worried about it. I felt it was a necessary outlet, it hurt no one, it was all in fun. And it was only wine, which, as everyone knows, is good for you…

The major event of those years was my husband being drafted and having to go to Vietnam for a year. I remember that year almost as if in a dream. I was completely petrified that my husband might be hurt or killed. I lived in terror of not being a good enough mother to protect the children while I was alone with them. Somehow we all survived. I probably drank a little during that year, but not much. I did not dare. Obviously, I was then at a stage where I still had some control.

A doctoral dissertation – “Experiences of Atheists and Agnostics in AA” – is based on the book Do Tell. For more information click on the above image.

Our next move after that year in Vietnam was back to the East Coast, to Baltimore, where my husband got his first real job teaching and practicing in a hospital. I found a teaching job at a nearby university. We bought a house and put the kids in good schools. We met a lot of nice people in our new neighborhood and we began to have a busy social life.

I was too busy to take much time to reflect and wonder about my life. What I considered quiet time, was to sit down with a glass of wine, I never ever questioned whether I was perhaps drinking too much. I had several episodes of getting drunk at parties but thought nothing of it.

Any reproach from my husband or snide remark from a friend I would dismiss, because they had no idea what I had gone through, no idea that drinking was an absolute necessity. I felt that without it, I would go mad. Wine was holding me together.

There was love and many other good things in my life. Our daughter got accepted at a prestigious college, the same one her father had been to, when she was just 16. Our son was doing well in a good school. He ended up going to the very same college. As far as I knew, I must be a good mother, since my kids were doing so well.

Despite all these appearances of success and happiness, I was feeling restless. I decided to go to Law School. I managed to pass all courses despite a lot of drinking. After graduation I got a good job as an associate in a small but well-connected firm. I was not a great success there. I had started drinking at lunch time, running home from the office to have some lunch and some wine. I went to bed early instead of working long hours and it had been noticed. Already, my drinking “a little too much” was no longer a secret. When I said we were moving, no one said they were sorry about it.

We moved again because my husband now took a position in Massachusetts. During the next fifteen years, I lost almost all control over my drinking. The children were no longer at home. My husband was busier than ever at the hospital. At first I got a job at a prestigious law firm, the best-known in that area. Then I left them when it became obvious they did not really “appreciate” me. I went to another firm, who thought, erroneously, that they were “snatching” me away. Little did they know that the prestigious firm was very happy to get rid of me. After a few years in that second law firm, I left again and ended up practicing law by myself.

As I look back on these 15 years, from where I am now, I see clearly the disaster that was unfolding, which I could not see at the time. There was a repeated pattern: First, I would impress people with my credentials (three graduate degrees, imagine that!). Then I would start surprising them by how little actual work I was doing and by not being at all a team player. There were a few times where I accomplished something, in or out of court, which was brilliant. But one does not build a career and gain a good reputation by just a few strokes of brilliance.

What was happening is that I had become a full-fledged alcoholic; I was moody, unpredictable and untrustworthy. I have no good memories from these years. At some point, I realized that I was drinking much too much. I decided I would reduce the amount I was drinking.

At this point of my story, my narrative becomes totally predictable, because I went through all the moves every desperate alcoholic goes through: drinking only after a certain time of the day; drinking only certain days of the week; stopping completely for a time, then starting again (because I was surely cured after stopping for three months!)

Nothing worked and my life was miserable. I did not want to live any more. I no longer had much of a family life or social life. I had no hope; I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

And then my husband announced we were moving again, to a town near New York. I welcomed the move. It meant an end to my law career unless I could get admitted to the New York bar, but I did not care. I announced to everyone that I was going to practice law in New York State, but not immediately. First, I was going to take a sabbatical.

My sabbatical consisted, of course, in drinking more and more for about 18 months. I did not look for a new job. I did not try to make friends with anyone. I just drank. I was desperate, even suicidal. I kept telling myself “today is the last day drinking, I cannot go on like that”. I wanted to stop drinking more than I had ever wanted anything, but I could not.

One day, about thirteen years ago, I was picking up our son at the railroad station to drive him somewhere. Once he had gotten in the car, he looked at me and said: “Mom, you look tired”. “Tired” was the word he had always used when he saw that I was drunk. And he was right: While still able to drive, I had been having already a few glasses of wine and it was not even noon.

I had been caught being drunk many times before. This time, however, for some reason, it felt like the end of my world. I was so ashamed I almost collapsed. I did bring my son to his destination and returned home. Then I called AA.

I had heard about AA many times. As a lawyer, I sometimes took care of clients who had got into some scrapes because of drunkenness. When passing sentence or decreeing probation, the Court would usually demand that they attend AA meetings. Once, I had even gone to an AA meeting. There, I discovered that in order to become sober one must not drink AT ALL. I was horrified. That would not do for me. I needed my wine!

When I called AA that day in February thirteen years ago, a man told me he would meet me the next day at a meeting not far from my house. I went to that meeting. He greeted me and spoke to me kindly. It was February 22nd and the beginning of my new life.

I could not bear to say in public those words “I am an alcoholic”. I started sobbing every time I tried. But I eventually managed to say it. By now, I have said these words thousands of time, and I know they are true.

All these years of struggle trying to stop drinking on my own ended with that first meeting. The obsession to drink was lifted. Something in me changed irrevocably when I heard one person after another person just like me, as sick as I was. The relief was enormous. I was not unique after all, not bad and shameful in a unique way as I had thought.

Then, I heard people tell about how much time sober they had. One woman had 25 years! Her husband had just died, she was obviously grieving, BUT SHE WAS STILL SOBER. When I realized that, I felt a surge of hope… a sensation I had not felt for so long. I, too, could become sober, it was possible! (That woman became my sponsor. She has helped me immensely by her gentle counsel, as has, by mere example, the man who introduced me to that meeting.)

It did not bother me much, at first, that the meeting often ended with the Lord’s Prayer. I did wonder, though, about using a Christian prayer to close the meeting, in a country with so many different religions. As I attended more and more meetings, I began to be concerned about the very religious attitude of many AA members, especially when leaders of meeting aggressively declared that, in order to be sober, one had to “let God into one’s life”.

I happen to be an agnostic. While I respect the right of everyone to his or her own philosophy, I was disappointed that AA did not make itself more inclusive. That did not deter me from coming to meetings. I just resigned myself to hearing a lot of “God talk” and to keep my own counsel.

Then one day when I was about three years sober, as I was glancing at a list of AA meetings in Chicago, I saw the word “agnostic”; I was thrilled! I had never heard of agnostic AA meetings. I made inquiries and soon got a list of such meetings in New York City.

When I went to my first agnostic meeting, I felt some of the relief and hope I had experienced at my first meeting. This time it was the relief of being able to express myself freely. Basically, I felt fully included, which I had begun to despair of in regular meetings.

Now I can truly say that my sober life is more authentic and joyous and free than my drinking life. Those years of hiding the extent of my drinking are over. I no longer have to engage in constant damage control to hide all the failures and mishaps caused by drunkenness.

I did not return to the practice of law, but I found other uses for my new free time in sobriety, including doing service for AA and volunteering for a political cause I am passionate about. I now feel that my life is useful, not a total waste as before.

One does not escape entirely the “wreckage of the past”. I did not get a blank pass for my past behavior. I have a difficult relationship with my grown children. I know they feel hurt by so many things I did or failed to do, and by my becoming sober so late in my life. They grew up with an active alcoholic, nothing can change that.

From Day One in AA, I felt hope. That has not stopped. I still have hope that somehow, by dint of dealing calmly and courageously with the after-effects of the past, I will be able to help others as others have helped me. I know this is not the end of the story.

Do Tell! [Front Cover]This is a chapter from the book: Do Tell! Stories by Atheists and Agnostics in AA.

The paperback version of Do Tell! is available at Amazon. It is also available via Amazon in Canada and the United Kingdom.

It can be purchased online in all eBook formats, including Kindle, Kobo and Nook and as an iBook for Macs and iPads.

The post Take Three Degrees. Add Alcohol. first appeared on AA Agnostica.

…You’re Addicted to Likes

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – MIGHT AS WELL FACE IT… – 

April 6, 2021 – A lot of people are seeking out constant recognition and approval from people like bosses, family and friends. It is an issue called “validation addiction” that can cause low self-esteem and stifle one’s true character. 

FOX59 spoke with Mory Fontanez, the CEO of 822 Group and a purpose coach about the signs of this addiction and how to break it. 

For more information on Fontanez’s work, click here.

more@Fox59

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Kate Gunn on living sober: “The benefits were extreme and that’s what keeps us going.”

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN – SO EASY TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE – 

April 4, 2021 – Kate has written a book called ‘The Accidental Soberista’ which details the unexpected bliss of an alcohol-free life.

Speaking to Alive and Kicking Clare McKenna, she explained that she was a social drinker who, while not having a problem, found alcohol ingrained in her life.

“I was a social drinker, a normal drinker in Irish society, I suppose, I would have had the normal teenage years, drank quite a lot through my 20s, never to a worrying degree, it was always acceptable,” she said.

“Then in my 30s when I had kids it was more wine at home in the evening and then in my 40s I was drinking at the weekends and once during the week, so pretty regular levels I guess.”

Kate’s partner decided to give up alcohol for a month in 2016 so she decided to join him for 30 days.

She said it wasn’t too difficult to abstain and the process was different to dry January which involved the “deprivation of alcohol”, rather than a mindset of “what can we gain” from the month.

“Having said that, the first couple of weekends were difficult and it was boring because you’re so used to going out and using alcohol as your reward,” she explained.

“So to take that away, it took a while to get used to.”

At the end of the month, Kate and her partner released they had enjoyed the benefits of not drinking and decided to do another 30 days to see if they could get to the 90-day mark.

more@NewsTalk

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‘Portraits of Recovery’ paints a hopeful picture of Native addiction treatment

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – IT TAKES A TRIBE – 

April 5, 2021 – The video, Norris-Barrett explained, shows White describing the traditional nature-based approach he took to recovery at Red Lake Chemical Health. “You see Carl pick the cedar,” she said. “For us, the cedar is a medicine. The video is a beautiful way to show how he did it, how he found sobriety. It shows the lake and the land. Spiritually, Native people are connected to the land, and that’s where everything around us comes from. We connect to that in the video.”

Funded by a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), “Portraits of Recovery” was created as a way for members of the Red Lake Band to share the successes of their reservation-based recovery programs with the wider community. Too often, the news that comes out about Native Americans and addiction is bad, said Reyna Gonzalez-Rivera, Red Lake Chemical Health project director. Not so long ago, she and Norris-Barrett attended a training that emphasized the importance of establishing positive community norms around addiction. They took that message to heart.

“What we took from that conference was that we wanted to spread positive stories in our community — especially stories that highlight recovery,” Gonzalez-Rivera said. “We’re always hearing about overdoses, about addiction, about the negative things that happen in our community. We decided we need to hear more inspiring stories of recovery, stories about people who are working to recover right here in Red Lake.”

more@MinnPost

The post ‘Portraits of Recovery’ paints a hopeful picture of Native addiction treatment appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.