What…Me Sober?

Why there are more slaves than at any time in history and what can be done about it…People for Sale

The Spiritual River is an excellent resource for those just becoming acquainted with the recovery process IMNSHO. Here’s a recent entry…

The Creative Theory of Recovery from Addiction

The creative theory of recovery is the idea that we need to actively and purposefully create a new life in recovery from addiction.

It’s the idea that we need to replace our passion for drugs and booze with a passion for something else.

The creative theory of recovery works well with 12 step programs such as AA or NA. However, those programs only constitute one possible path to the creative life….there are certainly other ways.

Here is a list of what the creative life in recovery entails. This is just a taste of things to come, I will expand on these much more later on:

Boy Grows Up shares the following on his blog. An interesting take on religion, well-stated:

Tonight at dinner my partner and I had a fascinating discussion about God. Now, he has never been a believer in God, and has admitted to condescending attitudes toward those who do. His attitude has been that belief in God “is what some people need to feel OK about themselves.”

I, on the other hand, spent most of my life as a fundamentalist Christian who until 10 years ago believed that “every word of the Bible is literally true and written by men directed by God.”

And I spent years holding condemnatory attitudes about people who did NOT believe in the exact flavor of God that I believed in. So on the surface, we could never have been a couple.

Except for the fact that by the time he and I met, I long ago had abandoned any faith in a Higher Power, so our essential “spiritual” viewpoint was the same. Which is to say, none. Until…

The Associated Press: R.I. police say man had 0.491 blood alcohol level

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — State police say they arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level was 0.491 percent — the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn’t dead.

Around the 12-step rooms we are frequently told that we should not “take another person’s inventory,” often used in the sense that we ought not criticize another person’s program. The rationale behind such statements seems to be the fear that since (presumably) that person is doing the best they can, it might be bad for their recovery to tell them to their face what we believe they are doing wrong.

While this is no doubt true (addicts and alcoholics of every stripe being less than fond of criticism), it is certainly within the purview of their sponsors — although it should be handled diplomatically and with consideration for the individual’s issues, length of sobriety and other factors. The rest of us would probably serve them best by keeping our less-informed opinions to ourselves, since speaking from ignorance can lead to grievous error. That is why we share OUR experience, strength and hope, with no cross-talk.

We need also to avoid gossip, one of the favorite pastimes of people with poor recovery skills.

However, this does not imply that we should not take inventories at all. Keep reading →

The trouble with these sorts of relationships is that often those who escape them end up back in another just like it. We seek the familiar, not realizing that we are conditioned to do so.

Superb article!

Aunt Sally: I am 30 and in a relationship that fills me with pain, anxiety and restlessness - Times Online

I am 30 and in a relationship that fills me with pain, anxiety and restlessness. When we met, it was glorious — I couldn’t believe how intelligent, funny and loving he was. Then we got to know each other. He became angry, distant and domineering, but I was so insanely in love,

BBC NEWS | Health | Scan ‘detects obsessive disorder’

Scientists say they have pinpointed differences in the way the brains of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) work. …

State of Drinking: Alcohol overwhelms resilient organ | wausaudailyherald.com | Wausau Daily Herald

The liver is an amazingly resilient organ, one of the few in the body that can regenerate itself, like a salamander that can regrow a severed tail. …

…But when exposed to a chronic onslaught of alcohol, the liver can’t keep up with the job of breaking down and metabolizing the poison. Fat begins to accumulate inside the liver cells, and the organ becomes enlarged, causing abdominal pain. ……

They say addicts are all the same. But that doesn’t mean they’re all equal. Rose Garnett, who managed a Notting Hill theatre while she was hooked on hard drugs, explores the difference that wealth and connections make – even on the way to self-destruction…

Heroin, crack and Prada shoes

Researchers have already shown that listening to fast music can speed up the rate of drinking. But now they say loud music has the same effect. Both fast and loud music can heighten arousal, causing people to drink faster and order more drinks, say the authors of the study, published online today in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. And there’s another reason why people drink more when the band is blasting: They can’t converse. …

Alcohol + loud music = more alcohol | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times

Bloomberg.com: Europe

“When it’s hot, people swim in unsupervised places,” said Natalya Zoltseva, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, by telephone in Moscow today. “They have alcoholic drinks and then they dive in.”

The ministry collects daily figures on “events in swimming pools” and posts them on its Web site. Six hundred have died since July 1, 291 of them in the last five days alone. Today’s posting, covering the 24 hours until 6 a.m. this morning, reads “information received about 76 events. 84 people suffered. 19 saved. 65 dead.”…

We’ll see…

Former ‘Law & Order’ star gets tough as ‘Cleaner’ - CNN.com

“In my first meeting with the co-creators, Jonathan Prince and Robert Munic, I asked them, ‘How do you think audiences are gonna take to the idea? It seems a little outside the realm of possibility.’

“And they said, ‘It happens to be based on a real guy’ — Warren Boyd, who happens to be a co-producer of the show.”

As William Banks (the character Boyd inspired), Bratt leads an ill-assorted trio of other former users, a sort of A-Team (as in “addicts”) who’ll do almost anything, even at their own risk, to save their addict-in-need. …

About Sleep

It’s very common to have sleep problems in early recovery, and it is also very common for people with addiction to have had sleep problems all their lives. This has less to do with the past drug use than it does with brain functioning, so I’d like to explain a bit about that and how your doctor can help.

In general, there are two kinds of sleep troubles: …

“Kids are experiencing symptoms of dependence with really low exposures to cigarettes, and beginning to experience this difficulty of quitting very, very early on,” said Jennifer O’Loughlin, lead author of the study published online Wednesday in the American Journal of Public Health. “For kids, there’s no window of opportunity that you can kind of experiment with cigarettes and get away with it.”

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ijuv6DpLJ3Sr5CYlBSgbHiO3uuHQ

This website focuses on resources that can help illuminate the Buddhist path to freedom from alcoholism and addiction.
Buddhist Recovery