Meeting Makers...Well, We All Know What They Say About Them...

My very First attempt at recovery and working with a sponsor or listening to anyone other than myself was a place I wanted no part of...lol.  I got a sponsor or a" person I thought I could get to co-sign my bullshit"..Ha..That's another story...Anyway this guy is still in my life today and has been a blessing to say the least. The first thing he told me was to call him every night at 10 pm and every morning at 6a.m. Didn't even mention step work.I had no idea what a step was for. I just wanted them to show me the secret handshake that would make me feel better.

The first suggestion was do not use no matter what ,when my knees knocked kneel, 90 meetings in 90 days. Hell I had learned that in rehab. So off I went "tap dancing" making sure everyone saw me and liked me. Living totally in my twisted mind...lol  At the time here in the mid-south, you may have to drive a lttle but you can make a meeting every other hour starting at 5 am and ending at 3 am, so  By day 45 I had already been to 101 meetings.I made sure everyone new it especially the guy that had suggested me to do it. He would smile and kinda scratch his head and simply ask which meting I was going to next that day/night or tomorrow.  I still remember seeing a number of people i would see at almost every meeting i attended and they had been around for a while...like years!  I remember thinking how odd that seemed at the time..lol   Twisted thinking!!

on day 90 I had went to 164 meetings in 90 days/nights. My sponsor new I was truthful and had attended every single one of them.He was at most of them himself. I remember him telling me there was a meeting at such and such place at 10;00 and that I needed to be there.I would say ok Ill ride with you that's on the other side of the city you can drive I'm tired and hungry we can stop and get a burger on the way.....STOP!! I didn't say that I needed to be there...I said you need to be there.The kids are with Valerie's mom & dad so Val and I are going to enjoy each other relaxing at home....   He had gotten clean in that area and at that time he had 7 yrs clean. all he had to do was ask someone that went to the same meting to verify. The fool i was would be hard to miss.   Great relationships were formed during this and I was introduced to what was soon to became my family.

That night after the meeting My sponsor and his other 2 sponcees and I went to eat pizza. A weekly event we still do. I missed several pizza nights due to my relapses..but no one ever gave up on me.

That night I payed for the pizza and as we were walking out sponsor put his arm across my shoulders and gave me a hug... told me he was proud of me.......But Now I had To Do What I Was Told To Do....He didn't tell me to go to 164 meetings in 90 days.....he Told Me To Go To 90 Meeting In 90 Days.but as he said it was just a suggestion...same as its suggested that you pull the rip cord on your parachute when you jump out of an airplane....He looked me in the eye and said this is about learning how to following directions...directions on how to do something that you do not have a clue on how to do it and if I didn't take directions from him or someone who had been right where I was, That more than likely I would die from this disease.... he told me he would be honored to freely give me directions on how to live my life clean and sober just like it that had been freely given to him.

Ya know...90 in 90 may just be what I need to do again...I know that practicing the willingness to do so will be an opportunity to surrender a little more.

I only need one meeting a week at this point in my recovery.....So I go to seven to make sure I don't miss the one I need!!

There Aint No Easy Way Out....Looks Like an Excellent Opportunity To Surrender

I made it through yet one more time. Weekend before last, Friday night at about 11:30 p.m. a blood vessel rupture (Gastric Varises) in my stomach.By Saturday morning I was sick and so weak that I couldn't even walk. Had no idea I was bleeding out internally. Thats when there was no more room in my belly for any more blood. My digestive system reversed all gears! All that blood came out. Not gonna get to in depth in describing this part. You get the Idea.

Luckily I was at my mothers house. The doctors told me to not stay alone because of what just had happened to me was happening. Got in her van somehow and off we went to the ER. Should have called 911, Bad mistake on my part. But hey, I'm notorious for making bad decisions Lol !!  Got to the ER and was immediately rushed to a room. Then x-ray and then to the O.R. 

Woke up sometime Monday afternoon with what felt like a dull wooden dagger stuck in my abdomen. I had  IV's in both arms and one in my neck. I had to have 3 units of whole blood and 2 of platelets.They put a band on the vessel that had ruptured by EG scope down my throat. No cutting on the outside. But I felt like I had been cut in half and was very surprised to discover no bandages, Just a pain from hell!! 

so they immediately IV'ed with my drug of choice and nothing happened.
No relief and No rush. They did finally get enough in me to relieve me some. I could have it every 3 hrs. and I got it every 3 hrs for the next 4 days and nights. My disease was working hard on me with the fact that I was getting medicine not dope. My burnt brain can not distinguish the difference.

Since this cirrhosis  has progressed, I have had some very bad times with very bad intense pain. I stayed in almost constant contact with my sponsor and others in recovery. I actually made it through some events and did not have to have any pain meds. My mother has control of the meds and she makes sure I only get them AS DIRECTED !

Anyway, I have improved greatly and the doctor says I am healing fine. However I am as sick with addiction as ever. I started using again. My doctors, all of them from my Primary Care doc to The Transplant Team Knew I am a recovering addict from day one. I informed them of all my addiction issues and they work with me not against me. They have been Great through all of this.However  I am still the one responsible for my recovery.  And the reason i picked up was simply because I wanted to. I through away all those years of daily work. It has given me a chance to get to a level of surrender that I must go to if I want to stay clean. I thought I had surrendered everything. But for this addict I have to go a little deeper.  God saw fit to get me through this alive and I am very Grateful to be here. Thanks to God and all of you in these rooms, who have shared with me there recovery and what they do to stay clean Just For Today.

Now I get another chance to do something different. They way I was doing it did not work or I would have not picked up if it did. Thanks again to God, the recovery programs and fellowship of AA and NA and all of you who show up at these meetings to share what worked for you with a desperate dying addict like me.  Very simple.....is it not????

Jerry

ONE PILL.......or........TWELVE STEPS ?????? Just Keep It Simple...That Part Is ALREADY Proven

By Jodi Sh. Doff for The Fix

Who needs AA when you've got naltrexone? Anyone with a screaming void in their core that they've filled with alcohol, of course. People have strong feelings about Alcoholics Anonymous--it's that program we love or hate, it's everything or it's nothing. A recent Atlantic article that lauded the drug naltrexone while denigrating 12-step recovery is part of the growing firestorm of anti-Alcoholics Anonymousism.

Naltrexone was developed 20 years ago to treat drug addiction because of the way it competed with opium, heroin, and morphine for the opioid receptors in the brain--those tiny little receptors that can bring you oh-so-much pleasure, or so much pain. Based on the theory that if it could also stop the endorphins released by alcohol from reaching those same opiate receptors, it would reduce your urge to drink and gradually your cravings would subside. You'd learn to control your consumption and be free of your alcoholism, right?

But craving Georgi or Jameson isn't the problem. Stopping is not the problem. And really, even drinking is not the problem. Drinking, as every alcoholic knows, was the solution. Alcohol helped us feel whatever it was we didn't: brave, beautiful, handsome, smart, funny, enough, attractive, older, younger, bigger...better. Even those of us who wound up vomiting it all up on ourselves remembered the part where it made us feel better for a while. When it worked, booze made the pain go away. It made us more of who we wanted to be.

Most alcoholics don't even start thinking about rehab, or detox, or AA until the day comes when they drink and it doesn't work. When that happens, if you're an alcoholic, you'll take another drink, and another, and another because if the booze has really stopped working, it's just you and that overflowing barge of shame and garbage and fear floating around inside you. When the booze stops working, you are left with no way to quell that screaming void in your core. That, my friend, is a problem.

Naltrexone stops the booze from working--it speeds up the inevitable.

You can't take away a person's solution--even one that doesn't work anymore--without offering them something else, some other way to handle whatever the problem was that left booze as the solution. Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't claim to be the only way to stop drinking for everyone, but for millions of alcoholics AA has been that something else that has made the post-booze difference between a life worth living and one that is not. The spiritual aspect of AA--what detractors label religious or cultish--the part that all the finger-pointing always seems to focus on, is not necessarily religion or prayer. Some recovering alcoholics are active in organized religion, attending services at their church, temple, mosque, or synagogue. Others find they're more comfortable with something smaller or more intimate such as private prayer, a regular yoga practice, nature walks, meditation, or music.

It can be as simple as being part of a recovery community--a gathering together with people who are alike in one essential way: they understand what it feels like to need a drink, several drinks, something, anything, to get through, sometimes, something as simple as putting on your makeup. When people of like purpose gather together, they're stronger. That's simply a fact. You see it in the success of everything from cancer support groups and bereavement groups to armies. Recovering alcoholics in AA come together in that place where no matter what our outside circumstances, our inner lives intersect. This is the place in our lives where we need support, we learn to accept someone else's experience and advice, where we come to know for sure that we're not the only one out there struggling with fear, darkness, alcohol, self-loathing or self-doubt.

You'd better believe if we could do it alone, we would. If we could take a pill, or an injection, or slap on a patch and be done with it, we would. What's missing from most medical equations is that "bridge back to life" part those AAers are always going on about. What the alcoholic needs help with more than putting down the drink is living life without the drink. Sans buffer between ourselves and the outside world, and even more so, between ourselves and our inner world. The inability to be in one's own skin is a hallmark of the stories you hear repeated when you listen to alcoholics talk about life without a drink. The drink enabled us to do that, wear our own skin out in the world.

In general, alcoholics haven't a single clue how to just be in a social situation without booze, or pot, or Valium or something; how to be comfortable in their own skin and not drown in self-hate or shame. Alcoholics Anonymous is a set of instructions for how to get through the process, heal, and then pass the knowledge on by helping someone else going through the same thing. Those instructions are best passed on through the community--the fellowship--of recovering alcoholics who have already done the work. More than a century before Bill Wilson met Dr. Bob Smith, before either of them were even born, Native Americans had "sobriety circles" and encouraged recovering alcoholics to come together and get in touch with their ancestral heritage and beliefs. They understood that the alcoholic needs something bigger to believe in to stay sober, and bigger is only defined as bigger than the alcoholic themselves. The "we" part of the equation.

The program of AA as written down in the Big Book was the culmination of centuries of trial and error. There have always been cures and solutions--and what the right answer is depends on who you ask, and when.

oAncient Greeks crafted wine glasses from amethysts believing that the gemstone would keep them from getting drunk. #AncientGreekFail

oInebriate asylums combined forced abstinence with opium, morphine, cocaine, ether, and chloroform to treat alcoholics and addicts in the 1860s. #BetterLivingThruChemistry #Fail

oThe option of pre-frontal lobotomies as a cure began in 1935. Think: Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. #RandallMcMurphyFail

oThe mid-1900s gave birth to Hazelden, the Minnesota Model, and the introduction of barbiturates, amphetamines, and hallucinogenics to treat alcoholism, as well as aversion therapy with Antabuse. The Hazelden model has worked for a lot of people, but better living through the wonders of LSD? #TimothyLearyFail

Designed to take you one step at a time, like babies learning to walk for the first time, each step builds on the one before, to a life worth living. Only the very first of those steps even mentions alcohol. That's where we admit we're screwed, we've fucked it all up, possibly beyond repair and redemption. We know we can't fix it, can't fix ourselves, and quickly, or slowly, we take a second step and begin to believe that someone or something outside of us can fix our crazy.

And then, that giant third step, saying okay to that someone or something. Allowing ourselves a little bit of trust for maybe the first time in years and meaning it, even if hesitantly, we let go of having to engineer every little goddamned thing in the world, in our lives. We stop fighting--we know we've lost the war. Like Chinese handcuffs, the harder we fought, the harder it was to escape, but once we start to loosen our grip, everything around us relaxed. We surrender and we begin to be free.

That freedom is found not in conquering our alcoholism, but in discovering a way to be right-sized in the world, the willingness to be a worker among workers, being neither above nor below anyone--being humble rather than humiliated. Getting comfortable in our own skin is a result of helping others and being of service in the world. Practicing being honest with ourselves and others to the best of our ability. We are reminded constantly--in meetings, by our sponsors, by the literature, and our community--to live in the now, neither obsessing about past mistakes nor living in some imagined future glory or destruction. Being right here, where we are. Look down. See those feet? That's where you are. We reach out to hold someone's hand, and we let them hold ours. Share a laugh, a story, our trepidation, or confusion, over a cup of coffee with someone we just met and feel like we've known forever.

We come together to learn how to be together.

Putting down the drink? Hell, we'd put down that drink every time we passed out. Don't Drink. Go to Meetings. Help Another Alcoholic. Drugs like naltrexone can probably help with the first part of that standard AA chant, but it's also where the help ends. Unless "combined with counseling or interventions like Alcoholics Anonymous," medical treatments only offer short-term crisis intervention for the alcoholic.

With nothing else in his arsenal, the alcoholic will do one of three options: Go right back to drinking; pick up something else; or lose his mind.

Jodi Sh. Doff has written for Bust, Cosmopolitan, xoJane and Penthouse among many other publications. Her last pieces for The Fix were about non-celebrity overdoses, the Hangover Club and powdered booze.

As You Step out Into The Night....Take a Lesson From the Trees...watch How They Learn to Bend With Each Breeze......Little Victories

I sure wish I had known I was going to live this long....Because I would have sure taken much better care of myself.

Main thing now is to stay of the pity pot. I learned years ago as a kid, when I lost my leg that If I could get your pitty.....I could get just about anything you had...within reason of course.  Oh look at me..I'm the poor little one legged boy and I have been dealt this awful hand and I am expected to play it for the rest of my life.

Well as I slowly matured...oops wrong word there for sure!,,,,  lets just say... as I slowly Grew and my addiction  was becoming more apparent, I took care of it very well. I practiced it constantly and honed to perfection. It was now a full grown manipulation and I was a master. Little did I know that in the years of perfecting it, that it was to become my very identity.

I used it to basically get my way in my teenage years. All the teachers would let me do or not do what ever I pleased. I was extremely lucky to have enough "since" about me then to realize, That I did need good or decent grades to get anywhere. and I had done just enough to get by for the first 9 years of school. I was very aware I only had 3, left then I would join the workforce or continue my education. I have inherited a strong work ethic that runs very deep on both sides of my family. If it was not made in me I sure as hell would not have wanted to ever work again! "Oh I'm the poor one legged man that lost his leg as a child" remember? I'm suppose to get a check and I bet if they will let me talk to whom ever is in charge of the check writing, I could get two or three checks. That's how I know work ethic was a God given trait.

When I turned 18, 2 months after I graduated high school, I was awarded a very hefty insurance settlement. Now that's what I'm talkin bout!!!  YeS!! I had more money than I had ever even heard of ! I will never have to work a day for the rest of my life!!! Party Time....Lets go ladies! the line forms here sweetheart!
And thats what I did. I bought the most expensive everything! Special ordered a brand new chevy 4x4 pick-up, built a house,  more new vehicles, ATV's best of the best sporting goods known to man!...Hell everything was the most expensive (but not always the best) Item that was known to man!

I lived like that for just 3 short months when "She" first looked me in the eye and I knew right then I was to far from home. It didn't take her anytime at all to shrink the crowd of followers I had. And I was to be only with her. It was absolutely the best and the absolute worse thing that ever happened to me.

But the parting and spending just increased. Then one day..remember that God given trait i have?... It crawled out and brushed itself off and went to work on my head. I wanted to go to work. Not for the money ...but because I had a jones for work like it was drug/. And it showed my main Lady that I was a Real Man!!lol

I worked on a farm since I was about 7 yrs old. I knew what hard work was and I new how to work. I had the idea in my mind that had been there for many years. I wanted to Operate Bulldozers and other heavy equipment. I had no Idea what to do or how to go about. My girl new how bad I wanted to do this. She was a manger for McDonalds at the time. One  day she said she seen a man come in with all kind of caterpillar emblems and heavy equipment patches on his jacket. She ask him where he got them and did he work in the construction industry. I will be damned ......he was a mechanic for a company in Memphis. She told him about me and he gave her a telephone number for me to call. It was to a heavy Equipment operator school. In Penn.  That was it. I called made the arrangements to gget started. There was no way they would hire a 18 yr kid and put him on a piece of equipment!!! You had to have experience,,,,,,,,Or  An amputated Leg.

I found out it was $10,000 bucks for the school In Scranton Pa,  and NO Guarantee You will Find Employment.

I finished the school in Feb of 1983. Within 24 hrs I was hired by one of the largest companies in the Country at that time.   The owner was impressed with the desire to work I had. I was Now The Poor Little Man That Lost his Leg as a Kid and now he has to play the hand he was dealt. He operates a bulldozer and is very good at what he does, Made more money that I could spend plus had more. Its hard to believe when I get to thinking like this,,,just how powerful the disease of addiction is. This was just 1 of countless chances I had.....But chose to give to my disease..........


clean jft

traveling down the road trying to loosen my load , got a world of trouble on my mind

Well this little 28 day month is almost over. What a month!  Not much has changed ...been pretty much sick this entire month. My meeting attendence has fallen to 0. I do go to online meetings dayly. They do help, but not like a face to face. I am greatful for them just the same.

I am waiting on my latest test results and getting very anxious and depressed all at the same time. I had to go for MRI for further labs due to my latest results had indicated tumor markers and other changes that suggested liver cancer. I should know any time and I am ready!!! all this waiting is driving me crazy!!
They do take their time so I cant even rest in the thoughts that "no news is good news" lol  but they are very through and the results will be spot on. Have never heard a maybe or a might from them yet.

So far I haven't found it necessary to use,..that is a miracle in itself. I do alot of reading and praying, basically the same things I did in the beginning of my recovery.      A lot of acceptance, surrender and even humbling myself and putting recovery first just for today, is what is working for me. Thank God something stuck!!!

clean jft   

All we have to fear is fear itself....FEAR???.... Fear This!!

Hav'nt been writting. Havn't been doing much of anything recovery related, with the exception of alot of praying....

I've been wrestling with this fear thing. You know,.. Face Everything And Recover,.. Fuck Everything And Run....and my favorite,.. Fighting Egotistically Against Reality. I ain't been winning either. Not even close!

Fear is what kept me out there for so many years.. I thought I had pushed it so far down that I would not have to worry about it EVER... Nor would I have to confront it or deal with that irrational thinking it possess once I started recovery.   I was confident that once I started doing what I should have been doing,. It would magically leave or just not be a problem.. Wrong. I was driven by thousands of forms of fear. And although many and I do mean many have dissipated to some degree, I have so many more to deal with. ...I am not exhuming things that are better left alone...Can't bury them deep enough anyway it seems.

 I could write for days about this..and maybe I should?? This is not phobia's,,..then again, Fear of Fear itself is just that.. a phobia. I can get real discombobulated real fast....lol.

I would like to get a discussion started right here, on this blog about fear and what it is, was, doing to you, done to you etc. etc. I need Help with this...Its very apparent to me. Have talked with others in recovery, have brought it up in meetings...The suggestions I hear tell me I have to deal with it..or I will use it as an excuse to do other things..that come way to easy to me.

Your comments are so welcome!!

Clean  jft