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Hazelden Betty Ford Makes Dr. Joseph Lee, First Physician, Non-White, & Youngest President/CEO

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

IT MUST BE 2021 –

Feb. 25, 2021 – As a Hazelden Betty Ford Trustee, Susan Ford Bales, daughter of former First Lady Betty Ford, is proud to have Dr. Lee taking the esteemed institution’s helm. Discussing his appointment, she says with conviction, “Humility, empathy, grace and love—those are the values that define Dr. Lee the most. They’re also values that were important to my mother during her 33 years of recovery… Dr. Lee is a deeply thoughtful and insightful person who understands the human condition, the needs of the human spirit, and the power of community and connection.”

As the author of Recovering My Kid: Parenting Young Adults in Treatment and Beyond, Dr. Lee is nationally known for his work with teenagers. As a front-line doctor, he has seen how addiction and mental health conditions tear families apart for many years. Answering a question about the trauma behind addictive disorders from the Addiction Recovery eBulletin, Dr. Lee brings up the lasting effects of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic:

“Most people now understand that people suffer alone and that people heal together…  Still, there is a kind of universal pain… Part of the solution is to build a network and try to engage people at where they are at. You’ve heard that term before, but I’m going to use it a bit differently. It’s not just meeting people where they are at from a psychological state of mind. We have to be more creative about engaging people in treatment wherever they’re at, quite literally, from a physical perspective, that’s going to involve a lot of virtual services and technological advancements.”

In other words, you have to find a way to reach people and bring them together in their microcosms, regardless of the difficulties being faced in the greater macrocosm.

Dr. Joseph Lee on the Legacy of the Pandemic in the Recovery Industry

Despite these services, Dr. Lee knows the post-pandemic challenge will be a big one. Beyond embracing diversity and focusing on inclusion, the root mental health challenges need to be addressed. Even if COVID-19 goes away as a physical health threat, becoming more like annual flu season or the common cold, the pandemic’s lasting mental health impact will remain.

Pondering this difficulty, Dr. Joseph Lee states with an undeniable passion, “On its tails, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth another pandemic—a pandemic of despair, suffering, loneliness, depression and overdoses. We’re seeing escalating needs firsthand at Hazelden Betty Ford and expect them to persist for months and possibly years to come.”

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Many Paths – Fredericton, New Brunswick       

By Tyler M.
Many Paths Member

Many Paths is the first secular AA meeting to be established in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and at its founding in September 2019, was the only secular meeting in the large Area 81 encompassing the eastern Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island – nearly a million people.

Our meetings began in-person on Sunday nights at the Unitarian Fellowship of Fredericton, and our hosts have been very welcoming and helpful in our mission to help alcoholics, with a particular focus on supporting atheist and agnostic members. Our meeting format generally consists of a few standard readings, followed by a topic reading chosen by the chair to serve as a focus for sharing by those attending. These are brief, specifically the AA Preamble, a Bill W. “Responsibility is our theme” quote, a statement about sponsorship, and “safety and respect” in our meeting. These readings, presented by volunteers each night, set a tone in the meeting focusing low on dogma and high on mutual respect and inclusion; importantly, they are brief in order to maximize time for the evening’s topic and sharing of attendees. Typically, the chair-chosen topic readings are taken from secular-recovery type literature such as Joe C.’s great daily reader Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for Twelve Step Life, other non-AA canon sources, as well as occasional use of Grapevine articles if they are highlighting a particularly practical approach to recovery with limited mystical or religious overtones.

We also have a special “step study” topic the first Sunday of each month, currently using the 12-step text “Staying Sober Without God” by Jeffrey Munn. A central guiding principle in our literature and topic selections is to describe practical resources for recovery, relapse prevention and dealing with life’s issues while staying sober. Our group and meetings do not impose any belief or lack of belief on attendees, the group as a whole takes a strictly neutral stance in terms of spirituality or religious beliefs. Our meetings, however, enjoy the participation of individuals of a wide range of beliefs and valued perspectives.

The founding of Many Paths

The Many Paths group was conceived in the spring of 2019 by two Fredericton AA members who recognized the need to have a local meeting with minimal religiosity, which could foster the recovery of alcoholics who had greater-than-average difficulties with “the god bit” prevalent in most other local AA meetings, and offer fresh and different perspectives on recovery to others in AA. The Fredericton area has a strong and lengthy presence of traditional AA, with structured and predictable meetings easily available through the week, which greatly aids with the recovery of a wide swath of the local population. However, in this somewhat conservative and traditional area, most of our meetings open with lengthy, prescriptive and god-heavy readings such as “Chapter 5: How It Works” and most close with the Lord’s Prayer.

In this environment, our organizing of a secular group was initially met with interest and encouragement by a few, a mix of confusion or incredulity about the need for it by others, anxieties about whether it “was real AA” from many, and even some scattered hostilities with dueling “12 Traditions” battles waged mostly in private Facebook groups. The greatest problem distilled was: it was new, different and our District had nearly no knowledge of secular type AA meetings and groups. Our approach, therefore, was to thoroughly research the experience of other secular AA groups, and the websites aaagnostica.org and aabeyondbelief.org, and related podcasts and Facebook groups became indispensable resources.

Additionally, two of the founding group members took a “fact-finding” mission to attend a meeting of the We Agnostics meeting of Halifax, Nova Scotia (neighboring Area 82) and to meet with group members to discuss their founding experiences. Two planning meetings were held in the Summer of 2019 in Fredericton, with invited members of the local AA District and anyone else interested. During this research and planning stage, several other local members joined our effort, ultimately leading to six committed group founders. The founders chose the name “Many Paths” for the group, in recognition of the many ways an individual may find their way toward recovery in sobriety, and in a nod to the Many Paths to Spirituality AA pamphlet.

The online resources, help from other secular members in the region, and open planning meetings with local AA members allowed us to design a meeting that would help underserved AA members in our community, respect AA traditions, and answer any lingering questions of our legitimacy among our local AA. Critically important was our involvement and openness with District representatives and other local AA groups. Our first meeting was thus held – on schedule – on September 8th 2019, in the open and without interference by other local groups or the District.

While our group was tolerated at this point, true acceptance and inclusion still required some challenges to be overcome. Chief among these was that before our group would be allowed on the local meeting list, voting participation in District and recognized service commitments, we were required to be “officially recognized” by GSO. We completed the relevant paperwork for GSO New Group Registration, and on receiving our official group number from New York – and to the great credit of our local District members – we were then listed and given a seat at District without delay. We also successfully advocated for the addition of a new meeting type designation “SE” for secular on our local meeting list. Immediately and consistently since, our group has been very active in local service activities such as hosting special holiday meetings and Roundup conference marathons, as well as District governance activities and financial support.

COVID-19

In our group, District and AA as a whole, the sudden arrival of COVID-19 caused a major upheaval. Many Paths had been meeting routinely for 6 months when our final carefully distanced in-person meeting occurred on March 15th 2020, and the last AA meeting in our District followed the next day. Because of the experience of other secular AA groups in using online Zoom meetings from long before pandemic times, it encouraged us to quickly take up the technology. Along with another cooperative group in the District, we were the first up and running with ad hoc daily meetings on Zoom, and a few local groups starting back over a few weeks into “regular online” meetings; Many Paths itself did not miss a single weekly meeting in the transition.

Our group members, among others, were very helpful in supporting and teaching other groups how to migrate online. This crisis management, “one-day-at-a-time” and “whatever-it-takes” attitude to help get our local AA back online gained our group considerable visibility and respect locally, and our attendance quickly and consistently doubled with many new local members, and some growing number of distant visitors.

Early during the pandemic, we recognized that there were a significant number of members in Atlantic Canada that had no local access to secular AA meetings and were very keen to participate in them and be of service to help run them. Many Paths, and members from the two active online secular groups in Nova Scotia (We Agnostics and The Only Requirement groups of Area 82), and several of these “at large” members scattered across the more rural parts of the provinces thus came together virtually and launched East Coast Secular in July 2020.

This is a loosely organized group that is wholly online, with many of its founding members never having met in person. By design, it will remain online regardless of the inevitable easing of pandemic restrictions, to serve the widely scattered members in need of secular AA meetings not available locally. It meets every Tuesday evening on Zoom, and has somewhat outgrown its Atlantic Canada beginnings. At least half the weekly attendees typically come from outside the region geographically, with active group members serving from as far away as New York.

Because Many Paths and East Coast Secular are among the few secular meetings in Atlantic Canada, we frequently advertise our meeting not only on local meeting lists, but also on international lists and private Facebook groups, which generate a significant number of visitors to our meetings.

The future of Many Paths?

Many Paths as a group has grown stronger, larger and more diverse due to the pressures and opportunities imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, though some of the founding members have drifted away from attending the online meeting. The pandemic threat has ebbed and flowed in the past year in Fredericton, with many groups returning to in-person, with restrictions and occasional re-closures.

However, Many Paths has remained online throughout, without a missed meeting. It is run by a dedicated core group of members from the Fredericton area, and since going online, attracting a valued group member living in a different country but active at every meeting. Attendees range from 24-hours sober to 40+ years, with regulars from across Canada and USA, and frequent repeat guests from as far as Europe and Australia.

Currently, we vote quarterly whether to remain online with Zoom, though there is a strong sense among members that we may remain as an online meeting long after COVID has passed; our sister meeting East Coast Secular, by founding mission, will remain online indefinitely. It has been our experience that we best serve our members this way, and our responsibility is to try to best serve those members and those reaching out. As a group we try to keep true to the Responsibility Statement that closes our meetings.

Tyler M. came to his first AA meeting in February 2014 and found there people that would save his life. But being a life-long atheist and active member of AA caused him increasing pain and difficulty for several years, with enormous mental friction between his core beliefs and traditional approaches to recovery in AA. This was overcome with the help of service, fellowship and secular program resources now so widely available. Tyler currently holds a service position in District 5, Area 81 and is an active group member of the Many Paths, East Coast Secular and Canberra Freethinkers groups. Tyler lives sober and content (and still a skeptical stubborn atheist), helping with his partner to raise two boys, three girls and a granddaughter from his home in Fredericton.

For more information about the Many Path’s group experience, or details on how to attend its weekly online meeting, please send an email to [email protected].

 

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Getting Drunk on Manischewitz

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

JEWS AREN’T ALCOHOLICS? – 

Feb. 18, 2021 – Being Jewish, having family members in addiction recovery, and now working for a treatment center for alcoholism and addiction, I wanted to learn more about Purim, and the commandment to drink. I had the opportunity to (virtually) sit down and learn with Rabbi Dr. Chaim Meyer Tureff to learn about the roots of Purim, how serious is this commandment, and what does it mean for the recovery community and their and loved ones?

While earning his Ed.D in Jewish Education from Gratz College, Rabbi Dr. Chaim Meyer Tureff focused on the role Judaism and spirituality play in helping recovering addicts, and received the L. Bernard Rabinowitz Memorial Award. He is the founder and director of STARS based in Los Angeles, which helps individuals struggling with addictive behaviors, he is the school Rabbi for Pressman Academy, and a spiritual guide on the Soberman’s Estate team. He also was named on the Mensch List from the Jewish Journal.

What is the Essence of Purim?

“Purim is about unity, salvation, connection, and giving back, which is why we give gifts to the poor, and give gifts to friends and acquaintances; it’s about showing gratitude” said Tureff.

Purim is one of the they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat holidays. We learn the Purim story from the Megillah, also known as the Book of Esther, recorded around the 5th century BC. In short, King Achashverosh of the Persian Empire had a secondhand man, Haman, who initiated a decree to execute genocide of the Jewish people. After Queen Esther’s brave reveal of her Jewish faith, the King sentenced Haman to death. Although the original decree could not be annulled, he let Esther and her cousin Mordechai write a new decree of their choice, and the new decree allowed the Jewish people to fight back and defend themselves, and we were saved! In remembrance of this salvation, we feast and celebrate different activities specifically from the Megillah.

I appreciate the new perspective Tureff gave me on celebrating Purim, and other traditional holidays. “The Rambam codified laws for everything. In the Mishneh Torah, he’s got a whole section on Purim and Chanukah. He says any holiday that you’re celebrating where you are not giving back, that is not a real celebration. If you’re only thinking about the food or the fun you will have, rather than what you can give back to others, you’re not really celebrating correctly.”

The Commandment to Drink

Mordechai recorded the events of the Purim story and charged the Jewish people to observe the 14th and 15th of Adar every year as days of feasting and merrymaking, of sending gifts to one another and the poor (Esther 9:22). The word מִשְׁתֶּ֣ה, feast, can also be translated as drink, drinking, banquet, or board.

Based on this, in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 7b, Rava said: A person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between how cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.

How significant is this obligation? It is debated whether or not drinking is a minhag or a halacha. A minhag is a communal practice or a custom. Minhagim are different than Halacha, which is Jewish law grounded in Torah or later rabbinic rulings. However, all agree if it will make you sick, or cause danger, you should not do it.

“I would say drinking falls into a strong category, and it’s codified that we drink, but it’s not if you don’t drink, you’re breaking a mitzvah. For example, not eating pork is a commandment, drinking doesn’t fall into that category at all. Neither is it one of the four mitzvot that are specific for Purim” Tureff said.

“When I go to Purim meals I don’t drink, some people do. Some people will just drink more than they normally do. If they’re not drinkers they might have a drink, if they normally have a drink, say at a Shabbat meal, they’ll have two, some get drunk. I’ve been to places where people drink quite a bit. They don’t get in a car and drive or anything like that, but they definitely drink a lot. Depending on where you’re at, some people encourage you to drink, and some people don’t.”

Outcomes of Drinking

Jewish teachings provide contrasting opinions on alcohol consumption. On one hand, there is a Yiddish saying that Jews don’t get drunk. Yet another concept is a Farbrengen. “I remember in Yeshiva they would have farbrengen which is a Chabad gathering where you learn deep mystical things, and many of the people would do shots of vodka. The idea is sometimes when we have physical constraints, we don’t allow ourselves to hit a certain element spiritually, because sometimes spiritual elements are [harder to connect with]. You have to be in a certain frame of mind. Drinking was a way to open up your portal, or open up your soul” said Tureff.

Jewish teachings also recognize the risks and consequences of taking alcohol consumption too far. 18th Century codifier R. Abraham ben Yehiel Michal Danzig said it is better not to get drunk on Purim if one knows it will lead to likeliness of them acting in a lightheaded way, or neglecting other mitzvot, such as praying and hand washing.

The Megillah 7b states, “The Gemara relates that Rabba and Rabbi Zeira prepared a Purim feast with each other, and they became intoxicated to the point that Rabba arose and slaughtered Rabbi Zeira. The next day, when he became sober and realized what he had done, Rabba asked God for mercy, and revived him. The next year, Rabba said to Rabbi Zeira: Let the Master come and let us prepare the Purim feast with each other. He said to him: Miracles do not happen each and every hour, and I do not want to undergo that experience again.”

Like Jeffrey Spitzer said, a car can be like Rabba’s sword, and one cannot count on a miracle. Tureff volunteered as an EMT for Hatzalah, a Jewish volunteer emergency ambulance organization, and remembers materials sent out for Purim reminding people, especially young people, to drink responsibly. “You’re supposed to be having this good time and happiness, and then it gets marred by alcohol poisoning, or somebody having a drunk driving accident, passing out, or worse.”

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski zt”l, world renowned addiction expert, doctor, and author said, “Experience shows that particularly young people who drink to excess on Purim are likely to engage in shameful and dangerous behaviors. Hatzalah cannot keep up with the calls to take these young men to hospital emergency rooms! Can anyone conceive that this is a mitzvah?”

How to Celebrate Purim in Recovery

1.     Go somewhere that fits your ideology.

“There are a number of shuls in Los Angeles that do not allow alcohol on the premise for Purim and Simchat Torah, another drinking holiday, and value being a model for the community’s young people. There are other synagogues you go to, and when you walk in, you can smell the alcohol. That wouldn’t be the one you necessarily should go to. You can hear the Megillah and be part of the festivities, and not put yourself in a situation fraught with danger.

If I had a dollar for every time I was offered a drink at Purim or Simchat Torah, I could be retired in Hawaii right now. It can be tough, when you see other people, as recovering addicts, sometimes doing things, things that are legal, and all kinds of people are doing it, you might think why can’t I do that? Then that ‘terminally unique’ mentality may creep in, where you start feeling sorry for yourself. I can have one drink, what’s wrong with a drink? Come on, just one.’ Why put yourself in that situation? You can focus on the wrong thing about the holiday. The holiday doesn’t need to be about drinking at all. Like a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, the party is great, but it’s not the essence of the event.

You can find a synagogue where the spiritual practice lines up with your own spiritual practice, where the essence is about the strength of Purim, and not necessarily about how many shots you can do, or how drunk you can get” said Tureff.

2.     Celebrate in a sober way.

“It depends on where somebody is at in their recovery, but I would always encourage a sober Purim. There’s no reason not to have a sober Purim. There are specific mitzvot for Purim, including giving gifts to the poor, sending gifts to friends or acquaintances, eating the Seudah (Purim feast), and hearing the Megillah reading. These are the four commandments of Purim. Drinking is not included in this category. [Drinking] is like a side dish. Without that side dish, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the meal” said Tureff.

3.     Advocate for yourself.

“If you’re invited somewhere to a meal, I think it’s a fair thing to ask [about the alcohol]. Maybe it’s a Los Angeles thing, but people have no problem when they’re invited to a meal to say if they are vegetarian or gluten free. Nobody’s embarrassed to say that at all, so what’s wrong with saying “Thank you so much for inviting me to Purim, I’m so excited, I just want to know is there going to be drinking, and if so, what does that look like?” That’s advocating for yourself” said Tureff.

Hannah Prager is the Community Relations Specialist for Soberman’s Estate, and a volunteer for Moishe House. Soberman’s Estate is a treatment center for men with alcoholism, substance use disorders and co-occurring issues, and provides kosher food accommodations and rabbinical support. To learn more or for personalized resources, call the Admissions Director at 480-595-2222 or visit www.SobermansEstate.com.

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400K Egyptians Benefited From State’s Addiction Recovery Programs

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LET MY PEOPLE GROW – 

Feb. 16, 2021 – Egyptian Minister of Social Solidarity Nevine el-Qabbaj announced that a total of 400,000 citizens benefited from the state’s addiction recovery programs during the past three year.

She made her statements during the inauguration ceremony of a number of heath projects in Ismailia on Tuesday.

The minister further said that there is a network connection between both ministries of solidarity and health to follow up on the Egyptians’ conditions. She further stated that a total of 300,000 state administrative employees were examined for drug abuse in 29 governorates, citing Minya and Sohag as recording the highest rates of smoking and drug abuse among the examined sample.  

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Guitarist Lee McKinney Discusses Xanax Addiction

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

GETTING OFF – 

Feb. 17, 2021 – Lee revealed his anxiety developed during Born Of Orisis’ grueling touring schedule. “It was probably the peak of our touring schedule. We were on ‘Mayhem’ [festival] with Rob Zombie and Children of Bodom and Five Finger Death Punch, huge tour, and it was like our biggest meet and greets every day and probably our biggest partying every day too, so it was just all on 100%. So many people, so many drinks, drugs, everything full force, like women, whatever. And I don’t say that to sound cool, but that’s just what it was. I ended up meeting my wife on that tour and that’s why I can say that.

“But then I came home and I booked a motorcycle trip. And I got an hour down the highway, and I suddenly felt like my back tire was doing this… which obviously it can’t. If you can take riding a bicycle, for example, it’s terrible, that feeling. So the thing I mentioned with my ego riser moving, it wasn’t moving, and my back tire wasn’t moving either.

“So then I started feeling like, OK, think about this, you’re riding, you’re on a treadmill right so you have forward motion, but instead of what it looked like to me, instead of me moving forward, it looked and felt like I was on a treadmill. Everything is bad. The problem with that is that if you ever come to a dead stop on a bicycle, what happens? You tip as you have no forward momentum. So even though I was moving forward down the highway, it felt to me like it was coming at me, which means that I wasn’t actually moving, which meant to me I had no momentum. And so I started freaking out, and so I didn’t know. I thought it was a vertigo.

“For years I thought it was all these different kinds of things, couldn’t stand on the ego risers like I used to. So that was when it came, that was the [answer to the] question of when it started. But, yeah, I used to have to have towels in front of my amps on stage, because I would walk around on stage and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m slipping on water, and I would have to just rub my feet on these towels to dry them off to make sure that there was no water. So I was just a victim in my mind about this stuff.”

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“I Wanted Oblivion. I Just Couldn’t Bear Being Me”- Alcoholism and the ‘Loveliness’ of Sobriety’

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

A BETTER LIFE – 

Feb. 14, 2021- And then in college, I drank so much, I drank everything and from much earlier it was all about alcohol.

“It’s not trouble, but it’s not funny either. There’s compassion for myself because I hadn’t a clue. I hadn’t a clue how to be in the world, I hadn’t a clue how to manage my own feelings, I hadn’t a clue how to manage relationships, I was just lost.”

The Watermelon writer explained that she drank at such extremities because it helped her feel normal.

“So, when I started drinking I thought this is the thing I need, this is what is going to help me get through the world like the rest of them. “Suddenly I could be normal, I could be like the rest of them, I found my crutch, my insulin, whatever the bit that was missing in me I found it now.

“So it was huge relief. And so it stayed the most important relationship of my life until I had no choice but to stop,” she said.

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Why I Got Sober at 24

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

NEVER TOO YOUNG – 

Feb. 16, 2021 – My drinking started properly in 2001 at age 16. I’d recently moved high schools and although I’d begun to make new friends, I felt anxious. The instant relief drinking gave me felt amazing. Although I was quite a social and active teenager, when I would drink, there was no off-switch – I was convinced the more I drank the better I would feel. Instead, I would often black-out. This pattern progressed over the next eight years. By 21, I was studying for a communications degree, living in university halls, and drinking alone in my room. It also wasn’t unusual for me to carry vodka around in my drink bottle. I always drank for effect. When I was sober, I felt irritable, restless and discontent and I needed relief from my head. 

In mid-2006, when I was still 21, I attended my first recovery meeting. I drank before the meeting and subsequently decided it wasn’t for me. I thought I was too young and I hadn’t done half the ‘bad’ things that some other people had. 

Over the next three years I moved flats around eight times, always seeking to ‘start-over’. I was still at university and my alcoholism had progressed even further. I always needed to make sure I had enough alcohol at home and would catch taxis to liquor stores if I ran out. By this stage, I’d pushed a lot of my friends and family away as a result of my drinking. In hindsight, I’m lucky they had strong boundaries – this ultimately assisted my final demise and entry into recovery.

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Texas Father & Son Build Farm-Model Treatment Center

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – FAMILY GROWTH – 

Feb. 15, 2021 -Ranch House Recovery was good distraction for Dylon, and was a way to channel his energies. But two weeks before the farm was to set to open, Dylon relapsed.   

“The underlying drive was this was going to keep my son sober. Here we are opening our doors … and it’s just like a gut-punch,” said Brandon.

It was a difficult moment for Dylon and for his father. Ranch House Recovery would have to start without Dylon.

More than 105 clients have come through the program at 30, 60 and 90-day stays. The group grows crops like cabbage and onions, and tends to the animals on the farm like goats, donkeys and chickens. Just recently, the center welcomed a horse. 

WFAA connected with Jim Dauster, who works closely with the group’s nonprofit wing called Simple Promise Farms. Dauster struggles with alcohol. The onions he plants will be harvested and sold to restaurants. The profits will help fund scholarships for men who cannot afford to be at Ranch House Recovery. 

“We’re kind of like layers peeling back to get to that core,” Dauster said. “Giving the right care and the right space and the right nurturing.” 

They all know true sobriety is a journey. 

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History of ‘shot,’ has its Roots in Morphine Addiction

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

MARVELS OF MEDICINE – 

Feb. 15, 2021 –  One of the earliest “shot” mentions Jon found was in the San Francisco Chronicle of March 2, 1889. A story headlined “The Hypo-Gun. How Morphine Victims Are Fed” describes the scene inside a drug house. The quotation marks and explanations suggest the writer thought much of this would be new to the reader:

“The morphine victim is cared for there — as long as he has money. In all the houses frequented by the ‘fiends’ is a man or a woman who sells the drug and injects it for a small sum. This useful person is called the ‘gunner,’ the syringe is termed the ‘gun,’ and administers to the fiend an injection, that is ‘a shot,’ for which he is paid 5 cents.” It looks like “shot” comes from “gun,” the euphemism for the apparatus that delivered the morphine.

“Shot” had a negative connotation in the waning years of the 19th century, used often in conjunction with morphine addiction:

“Defendant claimed and testified . . . that he was at home, about a half-block from Rathja’s saloon, administering what he calls a ‘shot’ of morphine to one Boyden.” (From “Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of California,” 1892.)

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Finding Sobriety Patrick Flanagan Opened Lion House

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

SOBER LIVING FOR GOOD – 

Feb. 22, 2021 – Flanagan believes that the five months he spent living in a sober house on St. Paul’s Summit Avenue cemented his commitment to sobriety. 

“I lived with 14 guys who were between the ages of 20 and 55. I stayed in real structured living between inpatient treatment for 40 days and sober living for five months. The structured living saved my life.” 

This realization that living in community with other people working toward long-term sobriety was key to his survival ultimately led Flanagan, a former private wealth manager, to make major changes in his life. He wanted to help others take the next step toward lifelong sobriety, so he decided to purchase a house and convert it into a sober-living residence.  

more@MinnPost

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