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[moonshine2sunshine]

Odd/Accurate, a Child (me) Observes Meditation & Prayer This post's title, "Odd/Accurate, a Child (me) Observes Meditation & Prayer," fairly well encapsulates the wondering, questioning and wanting to understand that I felt as a child discovering the world around me. I could have called it "The Rosy Rosary" or something else equally twisted and too adult, so I let it stand as originally written.... ***** "My Grandmother sits counting her rosary beads. I am ten years old. She whispers a prayer in Latin as each bead slowly moves on. She appears calm in my memory. The light appears to pour out of her as easily as it falls upon her. Her breath is quiet. Her voice is low and calm. There is a unison of sensations going on. Sight is sound is smell is touch. The pause between her inhaling and exhaling lies in some state of eternal evaporation. Watching her calms me. She could not translate into English a single sound of Latin that she had memorized. The sounds took her out of herself."*****Alcohol took me out of myself. Alcohol did that. Each sip an unknown, yet self-defeating prayer of sorts. Wanting answers, searching for calm, peace. Alcohol destroyed that. The world is my snifter now. Observations mulled in the mind's eye. Sitting here on the ocean's edge, the sun's sheen creates a light that is both water and sun in totality. One may want for moments no need beyond this simple meditation, a prayer of sorts for what just is. Recovery does that. Alcohol could not do that. Reality intoxicates. Alcohol, impotent, a broken tool cast into some far corner out of sight, out of mind.*****Odd, accurate, this rosy rosary called memory strung in pearls of light at ocean's edge. Recovery is my child, being raised gently, as a grandparent might. I observe myself growing up now, in recovery, strong, tender, resilient, obedient to light lapping at the shore. The suffering of addiction brought me here. The peace, found in recovery here, keeps me here, keeps me.... (keeps me) *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." ***** Passage in quotes excerpted from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4 170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Surrender to Win? Before I first got sober, I'd never had I heard the expression "Surrender to win." Over the years many different people had made subtle suggestions to me. "Slow down. Slow your roll," etc., but no one outright ever said I should stop drinking altogether. They knew I wouldn't and couldn't. Alcohol had increasingly become a symbol of my freedom. It was my stated choice long after I ceased being free to choose. "It's a free country..." all that, lots of that. Even as I increasingly became a walking hot mess, I'd learned it best to attempt to diminish the appearance of what others correctly perceived as my perpetual state of drunkenness. ***** To surrender would signal defeat. Like most addicts, I was defiant in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary. "Daily surrender to my alcoholism always meant another drink." I'll only have one... maybe two. Today would be different. Then I'd have a third and another. Then more. I won't go into blackout mode today, yet I would continue drinking until I did. I would and I did. "Daily chipped away by my disease. And what was left when the chipping away stopped? ... My brain fragments on this sculptor's floor. The dust of my disease. The oxygen masks, the intravenous drips, the sedatives. How, having barely survived all of this for years on end, can I have come out on this other end today, feeling whole, joyful, alive?... "*****How would I survive? I would surrender to sobriety instead of to the next drink. I would surrender or I would die. The subtle (and not so subtle) accumulation of experience of decades of drinking led to what seemed like the inevitable epiphany that active addiction would not allow: I could, would and must surrender to win. This is how I would die: Death by Alcohol, an avalanche of alcohol would seem to comfort as it killed. But it did stop. The hammering away of the addiction machine sputtered to a stop and finally when there was no juice left, neither a drop of strength, nor an ounce of courage, I surrendered. I surrendered to win. They were not crazy.*****That jackhammer called addiction had been stilled and silenced.At the end of that long, dark and finally silent tunnel, the beginnings of a sober gratitude took shape. There would be no peace without surrender. Alcohol had proven that I could not beat it by joining it. I could only beat alcohol by surrender to sobriety. My un-joining alcohol and rejoining life.No social drinker ever thinks such thoughts. I lift my Sparkling Cider glass in a toast to all the alcoholics out there who have not yet found sobriety, to all of us in recovery who have and to all the social drinkers out there undaunted by either cider or champagne! Cheers!Surrender to win. *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." ***** Passage in quotes excerpted from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4 170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

A Full Cup Hidden Inside an Empty One... Now Joy! There are no simple enigmas. Part of their glory is their elusiveness. Nailing Jello to a tree is far from pointless, especially when your only tool is a hammer, LoL! On that odd note, a favorite old quote, followed by an expansion of its meaningfulness to me with the passage of time: ***** "Two-thirds cup of doubt in an empty cup. That was my kind of luck. No leap of faith would fill my drunken cup or keep me sober. My trust in my own recovery is not yet complete, has never been, and may never be. I have to be here fully, or close to fully, belly up to my own Recovery Bar. I am my own Trojan horse- a full cup hidden inside an empty one." ***** Doubt, that truth sheltered in shadows, indistinct murmurs, wave after wave of more, More, MORE. My doubt sat on the verge of an incomplete and hollow panic. To call it a panic attack subverts its emptiness and jarring stillness. Doubt, a mask of hope, another of addiction's lies that a drink might soothe, promises to replace pain by the absence of feelings it will produce. Only absent alcohol would my doubt be dispelled that alcohol, dear alcohol, was all I needed. Alcohol, my all, my nothing. Now, my Recovery Bar bars alcohol so life may pour in. The only things poured at this Recovery Bar are hopes realized, doubt waiting in the wings for years to come. Sobriety is a beat from a different drum. The empty cup now has been recovery-filled. And alcohol, the shade it casts, is not believed. Be gone. Recovery is my song. Trojan horse? Neigh, neigh! Not that kind of horse, not that kind of hay. *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." *****Passages in quotes from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Gratitude, Loosened & Unloosened ALL of what follows here is an Experiment in Expression. THIS could not have been written by me drunk. CHALK it all up as an Expression in Gratitude.... ***** FIRST, in its entirety, THEN, let me break it down... "I have been motivated, inspired, filled with gratitude. This is affirmation arisen from despair. Recovery seems to be broadcloth made from these interwoven threads of motivation and inspiration, a fine tapestry. I want to wear it like a loose-fitting garment. Most of the time meditation and prayer only seem possible in stillness and in silence, but sometimes they seem to linger with me as I move and speak. This is part of the reason why it can be said that gratitude is an action word. It is not only something you reflect upon, but something you carry with you, a fire from within that is to be shared." ***** HERE, let me break it down... "I have been motivated, inspired, filled with gratitude...." (Gratitude, after loss, gathers no moss.) "... This is affirmation arisen from despair...." (Emotionally crippled to emotionally tripled.) "...Recovery seems to be broadcloth made from these interwoven threads of motivation and inspiration, a fine tapestry...." (Tattered and torn by addiction, I did not care that I did not care.) "... I want to wear it like a loose-fitting garment...." (Early sobriety was a straight jacket. My hand, disembodied, wanted only to clutch a drink.) "...Most of the time meditation and prayer only seem possible in stillness and in silence, but sometimes they seem to linger with me as I move and speak...." (When I get caught up in the moment and lose this central calm, then, perhaps, I am not in the moment at all.) "... This is part of the reason why it can be said that gratitude is an action word.... "(Action, some kind of movement forward, inward and outward.) "... It is not only something you reflect upon, but something you carry with you, a fire from within that is to be shared.... " (Share, like I am sharing with you here, ice turns to water, isolation to alive and connected.) ***** HERE, let me separate it out: Gratitude, after loss, gathers no moss. Emotionally crippled to emotionally tripled. Tattered and torn by addiction, I did not care that I did not care. Early sobriety was a straight jacket. My hand, disembodied, wanted only to clutch a drink. When I get caught up in the moment and lose this central calm, then, perhaps, I am not in the moment at all. Action, some kind of movement forward, inward and outward. Share, like I am sharing with you here, ice turns to water, isolation to alive and connected. ***** HERE, it fans out, casting a wide net: "Gratitude, after loss, gathers no moss.... " (Life expands before me kaleidoscopically.) "... Emotionally crippled to emotionally tripled.... " (All of my life, well-seasoned experience, is complete in this moment.) "... Tattered and torn by addiction, I did not care that I did not care.... " (The past is not merely the past, binding its substance to a new life sober.) "... Early sobriety was a straight jacket. My hand, disembodied, wanted only to clutch a drink.... " (Look at my hand now, the wings of birds tip each of my fingers.) "... When I get caught up in the moment and lose this central calm, then, perhaps, I am not in the moment at all.... " (The presence of thought is distracting, so it is let go.) "... Action, some kind of movement forward, inward and outward.... " (Electron around neutron, planet around sun, galaxy upon galaxy revolving.) "... Share, like I am sharing with you here, ice turns to water, isolation to alive and connected.... " (Consciousness dances in all living forms, an intriguing spectacle.) ***** Let these thoughts stand on their own HERE: Life expands before me kaleidoscopically. All of my life, well-seasoned experience, is complete in this moment. The past is not merely the past, binding its substance to a new life sober. Look at my hand now, the wings of birds tip each of my fingers. The presence of thought is distracting, so it is let go. Electron around neutron, planet around sun, galaxy upon galaxy revolving. Consciousness dances in all living forms, an intriguing spectacle. ***** Forever expanding outward, all of this could continue, but let this end HERE where it started: "I have been motivated, inspired, filled with gratitude. This is affirmation arisen from despair. Recovery seems to be broadcloth made from these interwoven threads of motivation and inspiration, a fine tapestry. I want to wear it like a loose-fitting garment. Most of the time meditation and prayer only seem possible in stillness and in silence, but sometimes they seem to linger with me as I move and speak. This is part of the reason why it can be said that gratitude is an action word. It is not only something you reflect upon, but something you carry with you, a fire from within that is to be shared." ***** Explore All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4 170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

My Perception of Chemical Betrayal Swallowed All Trust in Others "The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe*****Alcohol and other drugs had proven their potency and reliability as a tool to negotiate many social and personal difficulties for a dozen or so years before the negative consequences began to outweigh the positive ones. I was sold on alcohol. It was fun, useful and effective for a long, long time. Every drug has side effects, unintended or perhaps unexplored consequences. Besides, maybe it wasn't alcohol, but other things that were responsible for the hot water I increasingly found myself in.  Duck soup. a no brainer, a cakewalk. So what if I occasionally went overboard? Alcohol was slowly reaching a tipping point from being a supplement, like a daily vitamin, to being a side dish, then the main course and finally, the only course, my life in totality. Dependence, failed dependence. Excuses morphed into denial. Walls constructed, doors locked, windows shut, bridges eroded by the torrents of alcohol, foundation lost. And me drowning, overpowered by a sea of alcohol. Then came the day, decades later, when I would have to stop or die. Stop or die. Stop or die. Eventually, when hope dried up the only thing I wanted was another drink, all human trust evaporated. Nothing left. Hope, trust, everything... gone. My sense of humanity in early sobriety was fairly a vacuum, dubious at best. My perception of having been betrayed by my servant, alcohol, swallowed my trust in all else. Something would have to change were I to remain sober, to live. And that would be me. I would have to change. But how? The changes were slow and many and took much time. Some kind of trust in the human race formed slowly. Addiction is a sickness, truly and the subtle irony of another form of sickness helping me get well is not lost on me.... ***** "The doctor diagnosed my condition as a sinus infection and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. Knowing I would be well in ten days made me feel subjectively better instantly. Nothing changed but my faith in the knowledge that things would change for the better very soon. If I could learn to apply this kind of trust to everything in my life, then I will feel better now and feeling better now will guide me into feeling better in my future. Of course, this is a hard concept to hold onto and an easy one to let slip out of my hands, but I just have to keep repeating it until it becomes my heartbeat, my heartbeat, my heart."*****Slowly, patiently, my trust in humanity resumed. Yes, trust must be earned, but I had to open my eyes to much of what was already there, barricaded behind walls of denial and defense that years of addiction to alcohol had persuaded me to erect.I got better and life got better and strength and hope and trust began to fill my life after decades of parting with the chemicals of betrayal which had swallowed almost all.There is some form of poetic justice intended here by ending with the quote that began this post, another's words, another's trust and my trust earned:"The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." *****Passages in quotes from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

From Addiction Unsustainable to Recovery Attainable Recovery does not rely solely on the recollection of the life lived prior to addiction's onset, because unicorns and rainbows and naive selected memories alone cannot sustain recovery. Not for me, at least. Too many untested waters. Figurative storms will manifest and unrealistic dreams will be forced to change course. Patience and hope help sustain even the most scientific seekers of sustained recovery. ***** "I can remember standing on the front porch of our house with my father when I was maybe ten years old. We lived in a small valley and a few miles away to the west was the rim of the valley. This was called South Mountain. We could watch storms approaching from the other side of the mountain. My father taught me how to predict when the storm would reach us by counting the seconds between when we saw the lightning and when we would hear the thunder. The closer the storm, the less time it takes between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder. It takes a long time, too, when you first get clean and sober to get a clear picture of reality. Relapse now and you may never hear the thunder and feel the rain wash clean the debris of your disease. My father and I stood on the porch. We saw the storm get nearer, saw the lightning, heard the thunder, the dog and cat beneath the couch because they were frightened and did not understand. And then the rain would come down in buckets, the street still hot, giant puddles of water, the steam rising and sometimes, just sometimes, after the storm, we would see a rainbow...." ***** My memories prior to addiction were the memories of a child because I had never spent a single day in adulthood sober. In early recovery I slowly absorbed the fact that my addiction was unsustainable and that recovery became more and more attainable. Today, I could not be friends with the person I eventually became in that wasteland of thirty years. There was no growing to maturity in my addiction. Decay. Addiction is decay. The progression of addiction is one way, leading always to more destruction. The person I had become near the final end of my long road could not be part of my sober life today. He could not be my friend. There was no future in drinking for me. Thirty years of future had been eaten away and were now behind me. He, that lost shell of a man, crosses paths with me in memory only. I'm making friends with my future sober self today. Truly, I saw not much future in sobriety in the early years. Recovery eventually became the only investment that huckster Alcohol could not un-sell. The lessons of relentless relapses finally kicked in. The positive outcomes of sustained recovery have gathered strength. I'm reminded here of perhaps the shortest verse I have written to date: "The Flow of Alcohol is Beaten by The Flow of Life (The River of Time is Slow and Deep)." Now, years in my recovery, I adjust my sails to meet and greet my future self! Sail on! Sail on! Fully convinced, my life has come to hold a future where the unicorns and rainbows are but symbols of what may be attainable in sustained sobriety, not illusions contrived on a barstool, dissolved in a glass of alcohol and the haze of blackouts strung out endlessly. I'll drink to sober possibilities, to my future sober self! Sparkling cider or a hot and soothing tea, if you please. Tomorrow's me will be more down to earth, but for today, my future self forgives. I am becoming more sober, by degrees maturing into some wizened teenaged adult. Practical possibilities, not the impossible ones conjured up under the influence of addiction's delusions. Here, I toast my future self... and my future self toasts back! ***** Recovery is possible, doable, sustainable. The only future left for me is this bright and sober one. All else now gone. My life will now always be what Recovery can and will attain. Addiction cannot and never did sustain. Never and Always finally meet in this land called Now. Sober. Sustain. I abstain, joyously. Recovery proven. *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." *****Passages in quotes from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Recovery, Now, is Serenity in Moments Immeasurable Within the framework of my first 1,000 days of recovery, I sat alone in the back of the room, still green in my newfound sobriety, completely drained, the sounds of the 12-step group fading into silence. Nothing was left and in that stillness, three words entered my head, almost as if spoken aloud, after which I, without forethought, flashed to a childhood memory on a  cool summer morning....Those three words were "Addiction Steals Power." I found myself transported, standing outside my childhood home, awestruck, watching an aluminum disc circling around inside its glass protective globe, clicking off the electric use for the meter reader's next visit. It was like a watch, but instead of measuring time, it was measuring power. Well, whatever power is, that's what addiction steals.More brashly, I could say that addiction sucks the life right out of you, but that would be incorrect. It is silent and subtle and seemingly harmless, like the lightweight aluminum disc described above.Addiction steals time, too, in concert and by differing degrees and metrics. Like hydrogen and oxygen, they cascade over an obscure tipping point at which point "I am an alcoholic and I am powerless."*****Recovery, for me, has been all about recovering what can be recovered, what has not been completely destroyed, and accepting the responsibility of reconstructing a life so deconstructed.A new life, a sober life, unknown to me, awaited. It took twice a thousand days to feel myself moving forward, unfettered by the different drumbeats of addiction, sometimes clamoring, sometimes whispering, that a drink would somehow solve any and every thing. *****Inside that larger globe called living sober that blossomed and continues to bloom, the sky's protective arc stretches beyond all horizons and the disc, within, circling, is gratitude. The power, now, is serenity in moments immeasurable."Addiction Steals Power" is no longer true. Addiction Stole Power, past tense, is this day's truth. Today, I glide toward endless horizons of continuing Recovery. Today, "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." Today, even my memory of a child on a cool summer morning watching in awe as a small aluminum disc spun 'round is a fulfilling memory only in sobriety.For me, one drink would destroy all memories, past and yet to come.... Recovery, now, is serenity in moments immeasurable. Alcohol stole power many yesterdays ago. Recovery is the way I go today, cool, calm, sober, serene. Recovery, now, is serenity in moments immeasurable. *****Explore All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

From "The Outer Limits" of Addiction to the Inner Peace of Recovery Alcohol's Rollercoaster effect is well-known to me. The first few drinks act as a stimulant and after continued use, the opposite effects occur and the depressant effects of alcohol take hold leading to a blackout and eventually passing out (at least in my case). Every day the stimulant effects, followed after a few drinks by the depressant results. Like a Rollercoaster, up, then down (multiply that by the 10,000+ days of my 30 years of consumption), the amusement ride called addiction morphs into a nightmare. On and on until in short order, as my drinking career progressed, my ability to control how much I drank was aided and abetted by other drugs. No surprise there, in retrospect. "I learned to medicate my alcohol with speed and valium to extend or cut short the inherent highs and lows which alcohol naturally produce. Other drugs were like the fine tuner knobs on my alcoholic TV set. Other drugs actually enabled me to imagine that I was in control, that alcohol would not control me." Like the "The Outer Limits" television show (1963 - 1965) which preceded each episode with these words relating to the fine tuner knobs on their viewer's TV set ("There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity, ... "), I similarly expressed my limits to others: "There is nothing wrong with me. Do not attempt to change my behavior. I am in control of all the drugs I ingest, smoke or otherwise consume...," etc. In other words... F*** Off! [To listen to the complete :45 second intro, listen here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtjhWhw2I8 ] My thousand channels were all delusional. My crystal clarity was neither crystal nor clear. My vision of reality was blurred, my creativity contorted. For 30 years, I was the TV show no one wanted to watch... except in horror. An addict's denial of loss of control over their substance(s) will continue until progressively catastrophic consequences bring them to the brink of their destruction... or death. "It will be different this time" never happened for me. After each and every relapse things got progressively worse than the time before. Fortunately, I survived and found long-term recovery.Today, a realistic humility allows me to proclaim: "I am an alcoholic in long-term recovery. From 'The Outer Limits' of Addiction to the Inner Peace of Recovery. Drinking game over." *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."*****Passages in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Alcohol... Ba-Bye! (The short Saturday Night Live video-link of a Total Bastard Airlines skit at the bottom of this post, fairly well captures my post mortem kick in the pants to alcohol.  The actors capture the attitude engendered by alcohol's hopeful final departure from my life. Read this post then view the video and I think you'll get my drift. Thanks!): "I survived the alcohol and now I must survive myself." - (p. 113, All Drinking Aside)*****My alcohol consumption seemed to have reached a tipping point some short time following my fairly fun first decade. Alcoholism is a slow and torturous addiction, unlike the fast and furious descent of many other addictions. My whole life became nearly a textbook testament to alcohol's destructive forces. Some time after my first decade of drinking, I somehow lost all control of my consumption and my grip on reality loosened... and unloosened. Alcohol went from being a series of periodic binges to a daily necessity. Life hardly seemed worth living without it and barely seemed worth living with it. My love of alcohol turned into a love-hate relationship buffered by thick layers of denial. I craved alcohol above all else and could not stop, even if and when I occasionally considered it."Do you mean to say that if someone put a gun to your head and promised to blow your brains out if you had one more sip, you wouldn't have been able to stop?"No, Dumb Ass!My addiction, in hindsight, seems to have hijacked the survival part of my brain. Survival would include alcohol above all else. My instinct to survive was perverted, twisted and totally distorted under the influence of alcohol. I came to believe that survival would be unthinkable without it. Consequences be damned. I needed a drink and I needed it now, now, now, now and now.So, Yes! I would have stopped, with a gun put to my head. But trust me, trust me, trust me, under the influence, I would have resumed drinking as soon as possible. This is substantiated by the fact that on more than one occasion, I stopped to have ONE DRINK on the way home from Detox. What a complete and utter disaster that always turned out to be. The illusion of control. What a joke.My obsession, unobstructed, would have led to my death.Of this I'm certain.Me, Myself & I?We're doing fine!But what about Me, My Alcohol & I?Continued sobriety revived my instinct to survive to its natural state, unencumbered by addiction's restrictions. A joyous sobriety in a very real here and now replaced those bars, real and symbolic. The new reality became release from the insane prison that addiction most assuredly is.So, Farewell Alcohol, Au Revoir, Ciao, Sayonara, Adieu, So long. So very, very, very long!In one single and most solitary word, today, for me, that word... Absurd.Take the Word from Me, Myself & I!Alcohol... Ba-Bye! *****Here's the link to that Saturday Night Live skit mentioned at the beginning: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/total-bastard-airlines/3506436?snl=1 *****#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery*****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."*****Check out my Autobiographical Fiction, All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

The Corpses Began Stacking Up Around Me...* In plain English, the corpses began stacking up around me. *****After several relapses, followed by almost a dozen years of continuous sobriety, I decided to take an early retirement, still working part-time, however. The year previous, a good half-dozen recovery group members, or a friend or relative (son, daughter, aunt, uncle, etc.) of a member, died as a direct result of alcoholism and/or addiction.The stigma of addiction would leave their deaths unattributed to substance abuse in their obituaries. But stigma or no, these premature deaths were the impetus of my decision to enjoy to the fullest whatever life I have left. These deaths, progressively mounting, were the deciding factor. I questioned when my time would come and would I, truly, wish to still be wanting to grind away 40 hours a week at a menial job. The answer, for me, was a resounding no.This whole scenario is one of the consequences of living in recovery. Suffering through the deaths directly or indirectly caused by substance abuse is inevitable. But the deaths piled up too hard and fast for me to do anything but retire as best I could, continuing to work part-time. "You can't take it with you" became poignant and pressing.Money meant nothing to me in my addiction. A job was for money and money was for substance acquisition and use.Money means nothing to me in my recovery, as well. In a far different way. I want another day sober to be enjoyed as fully as possible in my semi-retirement. Money can't buy that.*****When I first got sober at the age of 46, I spent my first sober year as a bartender. Bigger men than I may be able to sustain their sobriety beyond one year pouring drinks for a living, so, kudos to them. But in retrospect, I probably learned more in that one year sober behind the bar than I did in the 30 years I spent drunk glued to a bar stool on the other side of the bar. I clearly saw sober in the drunken behavior of others what I failed to see clouded by alcohol in my drinking life. I wouldn't recommend a job as a bartender to anyone fresh out of a detox or rehab, but it was my way of crawling before I could walk... sober. *****I remember one or two funerals I attended prior to that first sober period. During my drunken days, I can remember post-burial luncheons attended by bar buddies. Always someone would suggest we celebrate the death that day in drink and all the regulars' misty-eyed memorials ("He would have wanted us to drink to celebrate his life," etc.) would inevitably find me as drunk or a little bit drunker than any other string of days.My one-year sober bartending experience gave me a different perspective on the dead and dying from addiction than I had experienced occasionally in all those years prior. Morris may be the best example. If I'd been drinking, I'm sure I'd have experienced his degradation by disease most differently.Here's how I later described it:*****"One regular, Morris, had a distended stomach from alcohol-induced liver disease. His liver bled into his body, or so it seemed from his bloated belly. I don’t know. I just know that his liver was destroying him and his abdomen was filled with blood. Internal bleeding. Dying. A sick liver sending ammonia through the blood and to the brain as a byproduct of its dysfunction, causing him personality disorders. I'm not a doctor. I don't know the exact details. I just know what I saw in Morris’s case. An Internet search later confirmed this basic assumption of the ammonia/alcoholic/liver disease connection. What a strange and terrible sight was the result of his liver disease, his alcoholism and his extreme cocaine use. Alcoholic insanity. Ammonia insanity. I breathe in now, thinking about Morris and I sigh and look down, bewildered, just as he did time and again before he disappeared from the wilderness slash unreality of the bar. I can only picture him crawling away into some alternate reality to die, an aging Eskimo in ice, dying. Insane, then simply dead."*****Social drinkers may have a hard time understanding how, after all that (I and any and many and most addicts and alcoholics have witnessed death or near-death in the extreme during our addictions), how could we relapse? Ever. How?I was a die-hard drinker and bad habits die hard.That's funny and sad. But true. 30 years of daily drinking, in my case, would not result in instant sobriety with blue birds flying over picket fences carrying banners in blue and gold.That would be a cheap chirp.Sobriety and a recovery life-style would take time, love, patience and connection, renewed connection with a world I'd left in my teens.As the social disgrace surrounding stigma continues to dissipate, greater and greater numbers of social drinkers will begin to understand and change their thoughts and behaviors regarding substance abusers. The laws are changing and will continue to change.*****Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, said that "To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in suffering." To paraphrase from my book, there was art produced in concentration camps, but their creation was not attributable to the horrendous circumstances found there, rather, despite them. On the most subtle and rudimentary level, my having survived years of addiction has provided me fuller meaning in recovery than my life absent of those conditions could have provided me. The balance of my life will, hopefully, be lived in balance, centered, not in the extreme highs and lows that addiction almost by definition dispensed. Suffering has its rewards.Ouch!That hurts! Morris. Ammonia. Dead.That's where this writing today started for me. It is not negative. Please do not take it so. Life is so good sober and I am grateful today.Stigma is dying.Its obituary is being written for all the world to see.Soon... ******This post originally appeared in edited form as "Morris. Ammonia. Dead. (But the Stigma is Not Dead)" in Addicted Minds, linked here:http://www.addictedminds.com/morris-ammonia-dead-stigma-not-dead/(Here is the link to the Addicted Minds homepage. Please check out this important Recovery Resource):http://www.addictedminds.com*****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."*****Passages in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Scratch the Surface until the Truth Runs Clear.

Walk with me...

*****"Here you are drunk and walking the hallways of the Taj Mahal Casino, picking cigarette butts out of ashtrays. You break off the filters and re-roll the butt ends with new cigarette papers. This is a way to survive, to think that you're surviving. This is when the only food is the juice in this vodka and cranberry. This is when it takes you two solid hours to get out of bed and put on a pair of shoes. This is when there is no next drink, there is just this one long drink that goes on forever. This is where there is no up or down and you can only move sideways. This is where waking up is like falling through a stage prop wall. This is where you carry your addictions in a cardboard box as if you were moving to another location. This is finding no location and the box is empty. This is standing and not being able to move. This is drunk and crashing, falling, falling through a bottom, tumbling. This is where a hospital wakes you up and you do not know who you are or where you are..."

Scratch the surface until the truth runs clear.

*****Yes, how beautiful that may sound, the truth.*****This post was written in the second person (you) because it helps capture the disassociated self I had become. I put you there because I was so barely there. My imagined audience might then feel this separation from reality. People were scared by what had become of me.Alcohol is that powerful.Addiction is this extreme poverty of self.*****

Scratch the surface until the truth runs clear.

*****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."*****Passages in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside:

http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO

Recovery Tweets:

http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

170+ Recovery Posts:

https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

"Completely Captivated": Oct. '16 Review by Keys to Recovery Newspaper Keys to Recovery Newspaper (http://www.keystorecoverynewspaper.com) has reviewed All Drinking Aside on page 14 of their October 2016 edition. Here's the text, but PLEASE, check out this entire Recovery Resource!ALL DRINKING ASIDE: THE DESTRUCTION, DECONSTRUCTION, AND RECONSTRUCTION OF AN ALCOHOLIC ANIMAL. An Autobiographical Fiction. Written by Jim Anders. Printed by Create Space.Loved it! Thank you Jim Anders for being so candid with your own personal battle with alcoholism and drug addiction. This book is so cleverly written that it kept me completely captivated, and I finished it within days. I love how he starts each chapter with a morning meditation. Ex. Pg.82 “The door to the prison of addiction opened and I was afraid to leave. Fear of leaving was fear of living, because I had not lived beyond that door for decades.” Wow... I can totally relate. Then he ends each chapter with an evening meditation and question of the day. “How is [it] that tomorrow never comes, but the next drink always did.” In between he writes about his descent into alcoholism, and his rise into recovery. Intense! Brilliantly written Jim Anders. A must read! Available at www.Amazon.com *****The above is the National Newspaper Review of All Drinking Aside. To read my National Magazine Article, titled "This Sober Day" follow this link to their June 2015 issue, page 20 (past issue archive): http://thesoberworld.com/ *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more.*****All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyORecovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4170+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Keen Senses Restored in Recovery / Sharp Focus Returns "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." - Samuel Johnson *****This Samuel Johnson quote describes my naive beginnings and near deadly endings with both alcohol and tobacco.By the time I had a reason to quit drinking, reason no longer had anything to do with it. Ditto, tobacco and a host of other substances.Somehow, quitting smoking more clearly showed me the veiled, yet glorious benefits of ending my relationship with both.How it dawned on me and then found expression for it reinforces by recovery.Here, hear how it came to me then, quiet and pure, almost an echo:*****"I turn over my fears as I’m walking down the street one cloudy day. The autumn leaves turn over themselves on the sidewalk before me.  And then I hear something. Far away I hear a literal bird singing. And then it hits me. This is what turning over my fears and my addictions has finally given me. My hearing. My unfocused hearing. After three years sober I turned over another addiction, my addiction to cigarettes, and here’s what I noticed: Not that I would live longer, but that I could live more fully in the present. Yes, I could taste better and smell better without the tobacco and liquor in my mouth and on my breath. But the real reward is not delayed for some unforeseen future, but lived in the present, because I was not focused on the next drink of my addiction and the next smoke of my addiction.I could live more fully in the now.I turn over my fears as I’m walking down the street. The autumn leaves turn over themselves on the sidewalk before me.I live more fully in the now."*****Tobacco? Sayonara! Ditto Alcohol. Ditto Any & All Chemical Addictions & Behavioral Obsessions.I smoked 2-1/2 packs a day - more during ever-increasing binge-drinking episodes. Over 50,000 drinks consumed over the course of my drinking career.Fight over the definition of addiction all day and night. I don't care. Nature / Nurture? Disease or no? This and / or not that? Whatever. The greater part of me is indifferent to a definition as difficult as nailing jelly to a tree. But its absence? Ahh... Here's how I define its absence: Freedom.Freedom from. Freedom to. Fill in the blank (And it is a blank. A blank that steals.).Feel. Real. Free.Addiction Up in Smoke (Hearing Restored).... *****"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more.*****Passage in quotes from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyOFind 1,000's of Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4Uncover 170+ Recovery Posts here: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

Fellowship with Others in Recovery: SHARED COURAGE "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin*****"Shared courage is where I find the strength in my recovery. My alcoholic mind left alone is headed for relapse because it's crowded up here in what remains of my brain. There are a thousand forms of denial in recovery but the one denial that has always doomed me to failure and to relapse is trying to stay sober unaided and alone, not admitting my need for fellowship with others in recovery. I don't think I will ever be smart enough to go it alone because addiction has formed a partnership with my brain. It has been compromised. It seems that way because it is that way. Maybe not for others and for all, but for me that is the way it is. It is."*****STRONG HABITS REINFORCE RECOVERY: A Möbius Strip (pictured) in a certain way illustrates an infinite journey. Start anywhere and continue to eventually travel both sides of the entire strip without ever having crossed an edge. A Mobius Strip is the Human Trip. Shared Courage is a Spiritual Experience. The Continuous Undulations of Humankind Spiral Forward. ***** "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." *****Passage in quotes from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyOFind 1,000's of Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4Uncover 170+ Recovery Posts here: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

(photo: J. R. R. Tolkien's Gollum on Pinterest)

30-Year Chemical Assault: Identity, Knowledge, Deception My youthful seeking of self-identity and self-knowledge was obscured, blurred and most certainly delayed by the 30-year chemical assault of alcohol and other drugs on my spirit, my body and my brain. Where I picked myself up after that 30-year onslaught on my senses ended was not where I left off as a teen. When I got off the bus after my first rehab hospital, I felt like I had entered a personal, futureless wasteland. Lost, directionless. Somehow, I began. My recovery has been a long, continuing journey of who... how... when. *****(Like Vatchi, the fictitious middle character from my Autobiographical Fiction, I have always been intrigued by what I can only call a thought experiment. If such a garden did exist and I were to go there, I assume I would become lost in double-checking its accuracy rather than absorbed in the self-reflection I presume is its intent):*****(Vatchi): Sotto, you just reminded me here of something I thought long forgotten. It's called "The Fifteenth Stone" and I can't recall if it's a true story or an allegory, or what. But let me explain of stones and elephants.Somewhere, Japan or China, who knows? San Francisco? A garden exists somewhere, a rock garden: let's say the size of a tennis court. You can walk completely around it, but you are not allowed to cross its borders. This rock garden contains fifteen large stones of varying sizes, say, knee to chest high. And this rock garden is so constructed that no matter where you stand on the garden's perimeter, only fourteen of the stones are ever visible. One stone, forever changing, is always hidden from view. Fifteen stones in the garden, and no matter where you stand, only fourteen are visible.Which stone is Jim, Sotto?Which stone are you, Surimi?*****The possibilities of sober tomorrows are the unknown treasures at my feet. Torn apart, destroyed, by substance or by self, by fear or doubt or a thousand endless emotions known and unknowable, I am here to stay, for now, for this one day.Seek, strive on, celebrate!The chemical assault is over, has been over, will continue to be... Over!My Fifteenth Stone... Unstoned at Last!*****(photo: J. R. R. Tolkien's Gollum on Pinterest) "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." ***** Explore All Drinking Aside here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyOFind 1,000's of Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4Uncover 170+ Recovery Posts here: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

STIGMA Feeds Denial / CHANGE is Coming The stigma of alcoholism and addiction and the hatred and ignorance behind it have forced many of us to hide our addictions behind walls of denial. We hid them, sometimes quite cleverly (a chef I once worked with hid his bottle at work in the toilet tank)."Why doesn't he just stop?"And when we finally got clean and sober, we met behind closed doors because some of us had to protect our dirty, little secrets."You'll never be anything but a drunk."*****BUT... the scabs that are the stigmas of addiction (and recovery) will not heal by retaliation. A well-placed "Drop Dead!" simply won't do. The stigma of addiction is slowly being undone, unravelled by the evidence of science and acts of kindness. A few kind words go a long way in bridging the gap between hatred and understanding.AND... there is a certain backlash presently occurring in the political sector from which I recoil. I don't want to see any progress made in the recovery movement lost to a changing political climate. Whether it be progress ON addiction or the progress OF addiction, I realize that progress is never straight forward (or straight downward).SO... as a member of the recovering community, I feel I have to dig deeper trenches, strengthen my foundation in recovery and continue to speak out against stigma and in favor of greater progress and social acceptance for the recovering communities.*****WE and THEY, US and THEM, will one day be ALL of US. The Common Good will eventually triumph. I've seen so much positive change in my own lifetime, so I feel the future holds great promise. We need to air our thoughts and feelings, not to stuff them. For me, personally, anonymity is an old, old shoe which no longer fits the person I have become after over a dozen years of sobriety. "Yard by yard, it's hard. Inch by inch, it's a cinch" is perhaps an overstatement, but I, for one, truly believe that the butterfly effect will be realized as millions and millions more emerge from their cocoons of recovery from addiction.Millions more will become the fulcrum that will move the world. History is on the side of progress. From where I sit, things are looking up. Patience has gone a long way in helping this patient (humor is a tool of progress, too).*****"These people don't deserve... ""These people can't... ""These people won't..."*****13 years sober and I continue to heal.*****Good News. Shared Courage will pull me through whenever I feel the STIGMA Blues. Stigma: Progress Ebbs & Flows. Denial Ebbs as Information Flows. Strive on! Strive on! "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." History is on the side of the Common Good.In closing, here's one of the indisputably shortest poems in the English Language, written by Muhammed Ali: "Me. We."It helps me through whenever I may sing the Stigma Blues. HOPE: Our Most Renewable Natural Resource *****#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery*****Explore All Drinking Aside here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO Find 1,000's of Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4 Uncover 170+ Recovery Posts here: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

[moonshine2sunshine]

"Every Wrong Attempt Discarded is Another Step Forward." Thomas Edison said that "Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."*****Edison's prescription for moving forward, whether for inventing the lightbulb or lighting the way for yourself and others, was unknown and unregarded by me.Addiction jettisons logic in its unending desire for more, despite any and all negative consequences. Hope may lift all boats, but I would not stay afloat under the penetrating, continuous grind of the powerful forces of alcohol upon me. No anchor, no rudder, adrift in a sea of alcohol. There were no discarded wrong attempts because alcohol would always be right. Wouldn't it?*****"My recipe for disaster was whatever I was doing whenever I was drinking, which was always. Short term disasters, long term disasters. Before, during and after any disaster there was always the drink. In an odd way, it's no wonder that I didn't blame it on the alcohol. Certainly, I sometimes mouthed the blame on alcohol when it served some purpose. Jim - alcohol's latest victim."*****Because alcohol was part and parcel of every action and inaction, so all-consuming, I couldn't parse out alcohol as the guilty party for many years. In subtle and not so subtle ways, addiction constricted my lifestyle, an overwhelmingly destructive force I would eventually be coerced by pain to acknowledge.*****Decide to live sober, vital and aware. Every day, conscious choices will create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The peace found, in hindsight, is of a day lived unobstructed by addiction's assault on the senses. "Insanity is doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results." This quote, attributed to Einstein, defines addiction to me. How many times could I say "Tonight will be different" or "That will never happen again"? Addiction to alcohol was my ultimate failure because, under the influence, wrong attempts were not discarded. Darwin's belief that survival of a species depends not on the smartest or strongest, but on the ability to adapt to change was borne out in my recovery from alcoholism. In my addiction, smart choices were passed over in favor of not so smart choices which always had to include alcohol. In my active addiction, alcohol weakened me in a multitude of ways. I would not change, not for fear of change, per se, but because more of the same same same same same is all that addiction desires. Survival of this individual species (lol, me!) was essentially doomed from the get-go.From victim of alcohol to living responsibly in recovery. Now, that's a recipe worth following. *****There will be wrong attempts to discard in recovery, too. make no mistake about that. But recovery is not doomed to failure. Responsibility will set you free. Being a victim of addiction will never be a step forward, until "every wrong attempt" is discarded. Today, "I am responsible." *****#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery*****Passage in quotes from All Drinking Aside: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyOFind 1,000's of Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4 Uncover 170+ Recovery Posts here: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b