One of the parts of Step Four in Al-Anon is to assess self worth. I’ve had moments when I felt confident and carefree and then I’ve had moments in which I felt totally worthless. In the fourth step workbook, there is a statement that really hits home:

“We hid our feeling of self-worth deep within, and our perspective became distorted. Many of us even tried to conceal that we felt worthless on the inside to the point that we couldn’t show any real warmth and concern for anyone, including ourselves”.

I know that there are families where the self-esteem of the child…

From today@dailyom.com

August 19, 2008

Rethinking Complaining

We all know someone who has elevated the process of complaining to a high art. Sometimes funny, sometimes exhausting, these people have the ability to find a problem just about anywhere. In its more evolved form, complaining is simply the ability to see what’s not working, in one’s own life or in the external world, and it can be quite useful if followed to its natural conclusion—finding a solution and applying it. However, many of us don’t get that far, and we find that complaining has become an end in itself. In small doses, this is…

For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. Because this is the time of the year when I make a point of looking back at how things were, I offer the following story.

Twenty-odd years ago, when my life was remarkably different from the way it is today, I was handed an assignment by my boss, the Chief of Police. The job was to wade through a bunch of sworn affidavits that had been provided by the local hospital as fruits of a civil case, interview some folks, and find out if there…

This is a message from a website, www.today@dailyom.com that I receive every day. I’d like to share this with you.

Till Next Time -

Your Humble Road Warrior

Looking At What We Don’t Want To See

It is one of life’s great paradoxes that the things we don’t want to look at in ourselves are the very things we need to look at in order to know ourselves better and to become more fully who we are. The feelings that make us want to run away are buried treasure full of energy and inspiration if we are willing to look. These feelings come in many…

I have been sober now for over ten years and my life is a wonderful gift that I cherish dearly. I am still in so many ways, new to this world—this sober world that is. Intimate relationships are the one area where I am still on an extreme learning curve. No matter how much therapy I’ve done, how much I mediate, how many self-help books I read etc. I can’t seem to get this whole relationship thing down. I know in recovery we strive for spiritual progress not spiritual perfection. I do feel as though I have made significant strides…

We’ve all read the “promises” in the Big Book of AA. I’ve always thought that those promises are beautiful. But not too long ago, I heard an Al-Anon speaker talk about the Al-Anon “promises”. Here they are: “If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline of The Twelve Steps and work the program, our lives will be transformed. Members work the program by being willing to attend meetings on a regular basis, reading Al-Anon/Alateen literature, getting a sponsor, working toward applying the 12 Steps of recovery to their lives and by becoming involved in Al-Anon Service work as they…

The topic at my homegroup meeting last night was “how to tell your story”. Telling your story is one of those opportunities to serve that is part of the Al-Anon legacy: “Recovery through the steps; Unity through the traditions; and Service through the Concepts.” It is also an honor to tell your story.

We talked about some of the components in telling about your self. It’s important to talk about what your life was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. This is basically what the “old” you was like, how you wanted to change, what changed you and what…

Listening is one of the things that now comes easy to me. I’d rather listen to someone else talk than to be the center of attention myself. One of the things that I disliked about scientific meetings was to have to do “shop” talk when I really just wanted to be quiet and have some solitude.

by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D.

There are times on our Journey through life that we feel lost, unloved, helpless, and defeated. Until we find the huge amount of power and love that lives within us, these times happen much too frequently. What do we do when we find ourselves in such an unhappy space?

Some of us escape into the land of danger and defeat. We “get out of ourselves” by drinking too much, or taking drugs, or feeling sorry for ourselves, or complaining, or doing whatever stops us from doing what is truly necessary…and that is…taking responsibility for our experience of life.…

Accepting “life on life’s terms” is something that hasn’t been easy for me. Life is filled with unexpected things that come up. Some of these are good things but others can be ones that cause a great deal of frustration, sorrow, or anxiety. I’ve always been able to deal with changes fairly easily and like to think of myself as being flexible. But these are changes over which I have some control. It’s the changes that are beyond my control that seem to bother me the most. Some of those changes relate to a sense of loss that I had…

This weekend I had an opportunity to be around someone who I consider to be a trusted friend. Unfortunately, I also witnessed rage in this person that was blown entirely out of proportion to the situation that occurred.

I have suspected for some time that this fellow has adult ADD. He is a long-time recovering alcoholic. I’ve witnessed several other episodes of rage by him in the past.

I know that the rage triggers something in me that makes me want to get away from the person as soon as it happens. My inventory tells me that 1) I am frightened of…

Whatever pretty word I tried to obscure it with, innocence, naiveté, I was really fooling myself, and no one else. The truth was plain to everyone. When I got it, though, I got it completely. Twenty five years of fooling myself led me to the sudden, and profound realization of the truth. I can never use methamphetamine again without developing the phenomena of craving which sends me down a path of self-destruction. Just like any other complex system, though, when one part of a life is radically altered, every other part is forced to change. When one old idea is…

I am honored to be contributing to The Second Road. In the future I will be addressing issues relevant to recovery and relationships. My hope is to both inform you and challenge your beliefs. I want you to step back and take an honest look at yourself and what you are doing in your recovery and in your relationships. New information creates change. In fact, I believe much of our suffering comes from ignorance and misinformation. Later I discuss several ways of looking at recovery, but before I do I want to share some of my story.

I have been…

“I am hoping all of you will listen and hear me tonight. I am truly at a low point. The alcoholic in my life told me tonight that I am an embarassment. When I expressed my need for time and attention, I was recvd with a cold shoulder and told to leave. I actually drank too much tonight. I haven’t done that in a year at least. The alcoholic in my life does it regularly and i never know if they are alive or not, but tonight i did it and I am an embarassment to them because of it.…

This was sent to me by a friend who lost her youngest brother to alcohol and drugs almost five years ago. Mikey was the youngest of 6 children, had the ability to turn the the most mundane objects into works of art, was handsome, witty, was an excellent cook, an animal lover, a “neat freak”, was very well read and had an undying devotion to his family. He was also lonely, tended to take everything to the extreme, tried relentlessly to stay clean, and often did so for months at a time… only to go back into the dark, a…

Now that I’ve been off the drugs for almost nine months and I’m feeling more stable in my recovery from drug addiction, I’m starting to pay more attention to the myriad other ways that I’m dysfunctional. The main one that I am very tentatively starting to work on is my relationship with food (and eating, and body image.) Which is appropriate, I think, because my food/eating issues are very much connected to my drug-abuse issues.

Ah, food. This is the one area where abstinence just isn’t going to work. Too bad.

Now, food and I have had an effed up relationship, off…

Al-Anon has lots of slogans that help you to focus on working the program. One of my favorites is, “How important is it?”. When I think about the years that I spent worrying, being anxious and busting a gasket over insignificant crap, I know now that none of it was really important. In the grand scheme of life, there aren’t a lot of things that are really worth personal turmoil. The amount of energy that I wasted on criticism both of self and others, resentment, and a lot of other baggage never enhanced my life or anyone else’s. Instead, I…

The American writer Edgar Allan Poe produced a short story titled The Purloined Letter that is considered to be one of the progenitors of the detective story as we know it today. It involves a valuable manuscript that cannot be found by the police despite a careful search. Poe’s protagonist, M. Dupin, finds the letter hidden in plain sight, disguised as a different manuscript by writing on the reverse side, and then rolling it up to conceal the “true” writings. Sometimes we complicate the search for spiritual support in much the same way, ignoring the obvious while searching high and…

by Beth E.

It was a month after the summer solstice

And each morning the red mercury rose with the

speed of a flame against a dry, dead tree.

As I struggled to get out of bed

I looked at my closet full of clothes

Meant for times of flurries and chill

I quickly became overwhelmed

And burrowed like a mole

Crawling through the dark, dirt of my feelings

With only the broken soil of my tangled sheets

Disclosing my attempts to hide and run underground

When I could no longer deny the sun

I rose and grabbed one of my four summer outfits

From a wrinkled mass on the other side of my…

The further I get into consideration of mind, body and spirit, the more I realize how completely the three aspects dovetail. It is practically impossible to be spiritually and mentally healthy while in poor physical condition, and the aches, pains and discomfort associated with such things — even with simple poor nutrition and/or lack of exercise — will interfere with our spiritual life as well. As I once heard someone say in a meeting, “When you feel like s**t, it’s hard to rise above it.” The old adage of “a sound mind in a sound body” is oh-so-true!

Low blood sugar…

Learning to love and care for yourself is a topic that often comes up in Al-Anon. I’ve heard people share about how they never had any time to love themselves or take care of themselves because they were always taking care of others. Some people have mentioned having no money with which to take care of themselves, because they are in financial trouble due to the alcoholic’s spending. At one meeting, a lady shared that she didn’t know what it meant to love herself, and if someone would just give her a set of instructions, she could follow that and…

The following article appeared in the Baltimore Sun - it’s worth sharing. Enjoy.

By Rob Hiaasen|Sun reporter

June 29, 2008

“The only concept of god that I believed in at all, when I got here, was the God of Unintended Consequences,” Robert said, sitting across the table from me eating burritos at a taco stand at one o’clock in the morning. “Every time I drank bad stuff happened. I wasn’t trying to wreck my car, or sleep with my friend’s girlfriend, or get arrested. I wasn’t trying to lose my job or get beaten up. It just happened.”

The nature of consciousness is to sort, order, categorize, label, associate, attribute, and differentiate sensory and cognitive information. Our very brains are structurally…

The serenity prayer is, without doubt, one of the most useful — tools, ideas, comforts, guides, whatever you want to call it — that I’ve gotten from my recovery. Like most profound truths, it could hardly be more simple, and yet there is a lifetime of guidance in those few lines.

However, it isn’t guidance that I was able to accept while I was still active in my addictions. Addicts, alcholics and codependents don’t really have the capacity to deal with inaction (which is what, in most cases, the Serenity Prayer mandates). We want to be doing something, making things go…

I was on the phone with a friend one day and she commented on the fact that I was obviously not present in the call. First of all I had no idea what kind of language is “present in the call.” Second, if you were trying to figure out what you could smoke without out harming your unborn child (and I’m not talking Pall Malls) or whether you should deal with that strange wailing coming from your basement you wouldn’t be present either. Third, shut up. She told me she would be right over. Gross.
pllleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaase go away!

I would so much…

I’ve read that it’s possible to have unconditional love of self in which you love yourself regardless of external conditions. This means being true to your feelings regardless of those around you. Based on what I know from Al-Anon, the HP loves each of us unconditionally. And if I look outside myself for love, I will not find unconditional love from another human. This has been a tough one to understand in my past but now I know that my demands for love often far exceed what the other person can give. And then my expectations of the other become…

“Caliente!”

Absolutely an understatement I thought as I nodded my head in the direction of my latin co-worker. Even hotter for me, four days out of the crack pipe. The hard work feels good, gives purpose to my day and helps me live in the moment. Trying not to fall off the scaffold, read a measurement accurately, cut, drill, etc., at an acceptable rate and quality of work keeps my head out of my empty pocket.

The structure. The relationships. The patterns. The accountability. All these elements coagulate somehow at long last to grant me opportunity to get clean and, most importantly,…

So I found this place - this place called recovery. It sucked. And it saved. The meetings, the coffee, the cookies, that smell of church basements that forced me to remember my Catholic up bringing, any form of sugar I could consume, the ego trips, the eye rolling, the clock watching,  the endless stories - it all somehow made me feel that maybe I could make it.

Maybe I was crazy but so what? I mean if this chick next to me who lost the ability to
add, subtract, and speak because of a binge could show up tonight then I better…