The frustrations

I think the biggest recovery frustration is knowing that I lost a certain amount of both “self” and opportunities for career, relationship and other development in the real world, but …

Not knowing how much.

As I sit single (has some advantages), with a job paying less than $30K (Texas is a low cost-of-living state, but still), and in a career I drifted into after trying to walk in my dad’s footsteps all the way to graduate divinity school.

And, as Eliot said in Sweeney Agonisties, I do measure my life in coffee-spoons, often.

Take child sexual abuse and child PTSD seriously

Let’s stop blaming priests, or dirty old men on park benches, and instead look inside the four walls of home, or relatives’ homes, a lot more. And, let’s recognize that this causes “PTSD on the home front” (now that, due to the Iraq War, we’re sadly aware of PTSD). That, and more, is in my annual April column.

I thought secular recovery groups were more scientific

It’s all right and good for a group like Lifering Secular Recovery to bash Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous for their reliance on a higher power, confession of sins, etc.

But, for Lifering to have the founder of an acupuncture-based addiction clinic as a principal speaker at its annual convention is, at least least, a bit uninformed and at the most, a bit hypocritical.

For the real poop on acupuncture and acupressure, read the Skeptic’s Dictionary.

A reply to 'Invictus'

Am I indeed the captain of my soul?
I find it hard to believe that is so.
Translating the individual “I”
To the global core of humanity
I think that it’s well-nigh impossible.
The individual human psyche,
Convoluted and self-referential,
Means the “I” is not quite that simple.
As for that “master” subroutine inside,
The one that supposedly masters “I”?
The king always faces peasant revolts.
If not that, a master can go haywire.
And, when that happens, then who masters it?
– April 2, 2009

INVICTUS, by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

"Process" addictions....

Does giving them a name make them any easier to deal with? If I had had the same problems with drinking as I do with Internet p*n-surfing, I'd be drunk in a gutter and hoping for death right now. Being lonely, bored, fearful, anxious or whatever does NOT help.. and acting out just makes all of that worse.

Has anything changed in 11 years?

SUNSET DRIFTING

The sunset this evening
Was like the one I saw
In Jacksboro eleven years ago.
Where have all those years gone?
Treading water?
I haven’t even done that, economically.
I have done that, and more, career-wise.
I have higher levels of confidence, dedication and skills
Than in Jacksboro.
All in the name of a career
In an apparently dying industry.
A non-Jungian symbol for my life?
I’m not quite dead yet, though.
And neither is my current job,
Nor my career hopes.
The sunset is long faded into night now,
As I try to reflect on what emotions it stimulated
Besides a bit of nostalgia
And a full measure of semi-poignant reflection.
No, my past eleven years don’t feel “wasted,”
But, whatever “better” means for me,
I wish I were “better” off than I am.
Whoever I am.

— March 18, 2009

Seeking entry to Middle-Earth

My senior year in high school, I was surely battling some unrecognized depression. My dad was in graduate school; his divinity school had those “mushroom lights” around most of the sidewalks on campus.

Anyway, I had already read “Lord of the Rings” once, and was re-reading it. It prompted me to try to call out to Earendil one night while walking by the mushroom lights, as described by this extended-haiku poem.

A ELBERETH GITHONIEL

Earendil, hear;
A Elbereth Githoniel;
Elrond, set me free.

So said a young teen,
Depressed and seeking escape —
Frodo’s Middle Earth.

But nothing happened;
No transmogrification;
Mushroom lights stayed fixed.

Homeward back I trudged
Depressed and distressed yet more
With no one to hear.

Is this all Fourth Age?
Elbereth availed me not —
I still lack magic.

Want to quit drinking? Address quitting smoking, too

New studies show a synergistic effect between the two addictions. They also show that cigarette-smoking alcoholics smoke more than non-alcoholic smokers. And, while I'm not in Big Pharma's pocket, and don't normally tout particular products, it appears Chantix can help on the smoking side.

Drug court – the saner alternative

The saner alternative to locking up mild drug offenders, that is. And, drug courts work in at least some instances.

The biggest issue, it seems, is how knowledgeable a drug court judge is about addiction in general, and about the different behavioral specifics of alcoholics vs. crack cocaine users vs. powder snorters vs. meth users, etc.

Sex addiction about addiction, not beauty or sex

Married to the beautiful Tea Leoni, who seems personally, not just physically, beautiful? Check.

Married for 10 years, with two children? Check.

Self-proclaimed sex addict needing help? Check.

Actress David Duchovny announce he is a sex addict and is entering a treatment program.

Good luck, David.