12-stepping Alcoholics into the 21st century

After 73 years, program continues to help addicts and loved ones

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Editor’s note: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all of the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, according to the organization’s literature. For that reason, we have chosen to identify by first name only the AA members quoted in this story.

On May 16, 2004, Bob awoke at 2 a.m. in the driver’s seat of his car with a bottle of vodka in his lap. He was in the parking lot of a convenience store, but he had no idea where the store was.

“I had developed a tendency to get angry and drink and drive and be gone for a couple of days,” Bob says. “This was one of those crazy excursions. I could have been in Arkansas or Minnesota. I figured it would seem stupid to stagger into the store and ask where I was, so I drove around until I figured it out.”

He shakes his head. “Great logic.”

Luckily, he was in Conyers.

“When I got home, my heart was pounding, I was sweating and the room was spinning, like a thousand times before. But I’d scared myself so much that the fear of continuing to live like that overcame my fear and reluctance of turning my life and will over to God.”

Bob was willing to admit that he was powerless over alcohol and prayed to God to take the burden from him.

“It sounds stupid, but I felt the presence of something in the room,” he says. “I could feel it, and then it felt like an elephant had been sitting on my chest, and it got up and walked away. Something big and good had happened.”

Bob hasn’t had a drink since, and attributes his abstinence to the five Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings he attends every week.

“Every time I go, I’m reminded that I’m an alcoholic and I have a problem,” he says. “But it can be overcome, and I am overcoming.”

It’s been 73 years since AA began, and the 12-step concept it fathered is more popular than ever. Twelve-step programs now treat millions around the world for everything from drug addiction, gambling and overeating to clutter, sexual compulsion and workaholism.

“Twelve-step programs are very helpful for a lot of people, especially when it comes to substance abuse issues,” says Dr. Tommie Richardson, a staff member of the Ridgeview Institute. “They are the most successful modality we know of right now. The fact that they’ve been around so long and continue to thrive tells you that.”

“It’s a brilliant program,” says Tere Tyner Canzoneri, a minister and pastoral counselor at The Emmanuel Center for Pastoral Counseling in Atlanta. “There’s not a person on the planet who couldn’t benefit from working the steps.” Robby Carroll, a minister at Shallowford Presbyterian Church and a marriage and family therapist, regularly refers clients to 12-step programs because “they’re the only programs that understand the challenge of addiction.”

Addiction has resisted the best efforts of science, medicine, psychiatry, social workers and social pressure before and since the providential meeting in 1935 of Bill Wilson, a New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob Smith, an Akron, Ohio, surgeon.

Both were alcoholics, but Wilson used spiritual principles and the insight that alcoholism was a disease to get sober. After he persuaded Smith to follow suit, they began working with other alcoholics and started the first AA group that same year.

Favorable publicity and the publication in 1939 of Wilson’s book “Alcoholics Anonymous” anchored the program’s status and popularity.

Today AA is the largest of the 12-step programs (followed by Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon) with an estimated worldwide membership of 2 million. Experts, citing the difficulty of estimating anonymous fellowships, believe the numbers are much higher.

There are more than 400 groups and 1,100 AA meetings a week in the Atlanta area alone. Dr. Steven Lee, medical director of Summit Ridge Hospital and director of Addiction Services in Gwinnett County, estimates addictions affect 15 to 20 percent of the population in Gwinnett alone.

“We’re just touching the tip of the iceberg that needs treatment,” he says.

The 12 steps are a rigorous program of spirituality, self-examination and self-renewal that Smith, affectionately remembered as “Dr. Bob” by 12-steppers, summarized as “Trust God, clean house and help others.”

Trusting God doesn’t come easily, however. Many participants either don’t believe in God or blame Him for their difficulties, which is why the steps refer to “a Power greater than ourselves” and “God as we understood him.” Mention of religion during meetings is forbidden, and rigorously enforced.

Nevertheless, therapists say that some find spirituality of any stripe objectionable and don’t return. Nor do 12-step programs always work with those in the early stages of addiction.

“I see folks who have gotten into treatment after a DUI or who think it’s an aberration,” says Bob Fredrick, a clinical social worker and therapist in Atlanta. “They say ‘I just don’t connect there’ or ‘I’m not as bad as them.’ There’s a lot of denial with addiction.”

Lee says there is an organization for physicians that relies on conventional therapy and medication rather than meetings. “I disagree,” he says, “but they’re not the core of the recovery community. It’s hard for them to admit they’re powerless.”

There are other recovery groups, says Scott Maddox, an addiction counselor and executive director of Alpha Recovery in Atlanta and Brunswick, “but all the evidence shows that the 12-step approach is the most successful.”

And while individual therapy gets to core issues faster, he says, 12-step programs are superior because, “You have people who have common problems and experience with solutions to those problems. They provide a support network for ongoing recovery that therapy doesn’t provide.”

“They’re one of the few places that folks really feel understood,” AA member Frederick says. “Folks ready to deal with addictions find kindred spirits who understand that they’re dealing with a disease, and it’s not a willpower or moral issue.”

Bob says he thinks the steps are pure genius.

“When they started to take hold,” he says, “I realized it wasn’t about stopping drinking, it was really about living sober.”

The program, he says, offers a systematic formula for living life.

“It’s a toolbox,” he says, “to get me through life. Before, I had one tool, and that was a bottle opener.”

Al-Anon Helps Spouse Deal With Disease

Peggy knows how long she’s been in Al-Anon by calculating how long her husband’s been sober: 25 years.

“I’ve been in 27 years,” she says. “In the beginning I didn’t really want it, but I needed it. Then I realized I really wanted it, that it was good for me. I knew what was going on. He couldn’t con me anymore. I went to a lot of AA and Al-Anon meetings, so I was very aware of the disease.

“The alcoholic is drinking, and we’re hugging the alcoholic. We’re perfectionists, sensitive, fun and caring. It’s almost the same disease, except we’re not allergic to alcohol.”

She attends two or three Al-Anon meetings a week, and accompanies her husband to AA meetings a couple of times a month.

“It’s a miracle,” she says. “I’ve learned so much, but I don’t know it all, so I keep going. I think it’s for all people, not just those with alcohol problems. It just makes for a better life.”

‘Your Part Is The Only Thing You Have Control Over’

Karen, a single mother with a 9 1/2-year-old daughter, is a recovering alcoholic who’s been sober and attending AA meetings for 22 years. Two years ago, she began going to Al-Anon as well.

“I was dating a crack addict,” she said. “It was the most insane thing I could do. I knew I loved alcoholics; that’s the gist of it. They’re fabulous people, exciting. In Al-Anon, you learn to focus on yourself because your part is the only thing you have control over.”

Karen’s daughter attends a weekly meeting of Alateen (for children and teens affected by alcoholism in a family member) and “loves it. She’s never known me to drink, but she gets a lot of help with what she’s going through with her father.”

Karen says the meetings “taught me to apply spirituality in a way I didn’t learn in church. I have freedom to do anything I want to do, to be anything I want to be… .”

THE 12 STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol —- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Note: Other 12-step groups have adapted AA’s steps, sometimes changing the wording to accommodate the needs of their constituents. Al-Anon, for example, changed one word, replacing “alcoholics” in Step 12 with “others.”
_________________
source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When one drink just isn't enough

One drink leads to another, and another . . .

This weekend alcoholics from around the South Island will be in Ashburton for an Alcoholics Anonymous assembly. They come from all walks of life, but they share a common desire to stay sober. Reporter Michelle Nelson tells the story of two women affected by alcoholism. Rita is a recovering alcoholic, and Jane talks of the impact her alcoholic father had on her childhood.

My name is Rita, I’m an alcoholic.
Many of you know me, few of you know about my alcohol and drug addiction.

I live among you, work with you, stand alongside you in the queue outside parent-teacher interview rooms, chat with you in the corner dairy and deal with you in a professional capacity.

That’s the odd thing about alcoholics – you just can’t pick us. There are those in our ranks whose drunken behaviour ends in the mayhem and violence that attracts media attention, but the majority of us are living right alongside you. These days, with the support of AA, I am a recovering alcoholic.
For me, only another addict can understand the despair of addiction.

One of the first AA slogans I took on board was “don’t pick up the first one and you can’t get drunk.” It took a while, but therein lies the essence of my “problem.” Cliché; it’s not what we drink – it’s how we drink.

Have you ever told yourself you won’t drink tonight? This week? Until your birthday? Until someone else’s birthday?

Or that you deserve a drink because you had a bad day? Because you had a good day? Because a bird flew overhead?

I made a lot of promises to myself and to those who cared about me. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend – and I am an alcoholic, I have a disease and my addiction to alcohol is symptom of that disease.

Nobody in their right mind would choose to be an addict. But there is something wrong in my mind; when I pick up a drink I don’t stop until I’m pissed.
There are scientific theories to explain my disease ranging from a genetic predisposition to drink like a fish to my upbringing in a family of boozers – both of which open a stupid chicken or the egg debate, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.

The fact is I am an alcoholic. And these days I’m okay with that. In fact I really wonder why I was so scared of being sober.

You see, I never could live life on its own terms. I was an insecure kid and alcohol was a magic potion for confidence - and fear of being exposed kept me drinking.

And that’s one of the things that bond us alcoholics. Underneath the social trappings we all battle common demons and insecurity and fear are a common thread.

By the luck of the gods I found myself in Queen Mary rehab some years ago now.

There I heard a dear old lady speak of stabbing her husband. I ate with a man who tried to cut his girlfriend’s throat.

The stories of the multi-millionaire, who owned a helicopter, the doctor who never prescribed anything he hadn’t tried himself, the accountant, the teacher, the truck driver, the transvestite sex worker, the priest, the gang member and the nurse have much in common.

Alcoholism, or any other addiction for that matter, plays no favourites. It takes no account of race, colour or creed, whether you are rich or poor, or educated and powerful. If it’s going to get you it will. The question is – what can be done about it?

AA is the only thing that worked for me. I tried counselling and saw psychiatrists, walked out the door and got pissed. Today I am sober and that’s what matters.

An eight-year-old child and her little sister sit in a car parked outside a pub. They have been there for a long time.

They are arguing about who will go in to drag their father out of the pub. Both children are frightened of drinking men – and with good reason.
Eventually Jane goes. She is fobbed off with a packet of chips and her father’s promise not to be long.

Hours later he staggers from the bar and gets behind the wheel. The girls know better than to argue.

“He would sit me on his knee so I could steer the car, then I learned to drive and soon I was driving a drunk home, I was only eight or nine years old.”
Soon Jane’s father began taking her on ‘trips’ – which were in fact pub crawls, on which she was frequently abused.

“His hands would be up my dress and he’d say your mother’s doing the same thing to your brother.

“I was disgusted, I loved my mother and I thought what he was saying was true.”

Jane was fed many lies as her father set about isolating her by maligning her mother’s character.

“He told me my mother was having an affair with the headmaster, I thought that was true too.”

Jane doesn’t remember a childhood. Her story is more about her survival in a warzone awash with alcohol.

“I know now that my mother had to beg for money to feed us, but there were always flagons. I never felt like a little girl, I was always worried about what would happen next. I was always trying to keep mum safe, keep my sister safe, keep myself safe.”

When Jane was in her teens her parents separated and her mother learned of the sexual abuse.
“She had a nervous breakdown, it was terrible.”

Again Jane picked up the pieces, setting a pattern she would carry into adulthood.

“All my life I’ve been trying to save people.”

But while Jane was trying to save others she was bent on a path of personal self-destruction. Not surprisingly she left school with few qualifications; she began binge drinking, developed eating disorders and formed a succession of unsuccessful relationships with men.

Two years ago Jane ended a violent relationship and was diagnosed with traumatic stress disorder; she thinks it is responsible for the panic attacks she has long suffered.

“It’s always been there, all my life that I can remember I just never had a name for it.”

Emotionally and physically battered and determined to turn her life around, she made contact with an abused women’s support group then Al-anon, a support group for family members whose lives have been blighted by alcoholism.

“There was no where else to go. Being raised by an alcoholic almost destroyed my life.

“I’m learning to put my needs ahead of others, I can’t save them but I can save myself.”
__________
source: Ashburton Guardian, http://www.ashburtonguardian.co.nz/

How's Your Immune System?

Imagine if there were a magic pill - an efficacious medicine that would produce instant immunity from the insanity that begins the vicious cycle of obsession and craving - that we know today as alcoholism? How cool would that be?

There is no such thing - yet immunity is not only possible but within the experience of millions of people who have discovered the common solution to their common problem.

"Immunity" is such a beautiful word when it's attributed to drinking alcohol. Did you know that many of us alcoholics become immune to it? That’s right. It can’t get us anymore. We are placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected.

We get to this place through a spiritual awakening -- when the desire to drink is entirely removed. We stay there by continuing our spiritual growth.

Growth and immunity comes from working with others - by helping them achieve a spiritual awakening though the practice and teaching of the Twelve Steps. Not from prayer. Not from meditation. Not from reading spiritual books and agreeing with them. Not from AA meetings. These are great and wonderful things we do when we become practitioners of AAs Twelve Steps - they are essential preparatory activities but there is nothing that contributes more to spiritual growth that when we are actually engaging in the things for which we were created - to be of maximum service to God and our fellows.

I know many of us would like to think that we can pray and meditate and wish and will and read and meet and "share" our way toward spiritual perfection -- especially when we don’t actually do the things that do promise spiritual growth. Meditation for example - I would no sooner give up my all important meditation time with my Creator than I would cut off my right hand - please don’t get me wrong. But the learning time I spend in meditation with God has to be put to good use - not coveted and extolled for my own self-veneration.

Modern science has given us many types of 'immunities' these days. There is adaptive, innate, artificial, natural and a host of other types. I am sure Bill and the boys had in mind what any layman would - some simple and in common usgae. So let's look at an old 1938 definition since that was their time. Let's be on their page.

Immunity - Freedom from obligation. Exemption from natural, ordinary liabilities, evil or misfortunes. 2, special privileged 3. Condition of not being susceptible to a given disease, with naturally or by inoculating against it.

WOW - First word: FREEDOM.

Today with our accelerated knowledge and advances in science and medicine it is only natural that the first and most prominent definition of the word immunity would have to do with pathological disease.

Not so seventy years ago at the time of the founding of the Fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous. Back then immunity meant a kind of ‘freedom’ and we all know - or should know - what the AA definition of sobriety is: “Freedom from alcohol.”

Should we be free anger? Yes. Enjoy freedom from self-will? Of course. But being SOBER primarily is being free from the tyranny of King Alcohol -- immunity from his iron fisted and cruel rule which demands that we drink. Please do not mistake this as immunity to alcohol - we are NEVER immune to its effect. We ARE immune from the obsession to drink it - despite its horrific effect.

The effect of which I speak is one that only alcoholic experience. Heavy, hard drinking alcohol abusers who are not real alcoholics do not experience the alcoholic experience.

If you take exception with my experience as an alcoholic who has become immune to drinking alcohol - please notice something important. I did not say that I had become immune to alcohol. I did say that I had become immune to drinking. There is a big distinction and I have no lurking notion in my head to the contrary.

If I ingest any alcohol whatever in to my system I WILL experience the abnormal physical reaction of ‘craving’. That part of the illness I don’t believe has been repaired in me. I don't know of anyone for whom this is so. Once a pickle -- always a pickle, you know. What I know has been repaired is the mental obsession part of the malady - the insanity - the lunacy if you will, of taking that first drink - not being able to bring into my consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago - being without defense against the first drink.

What I have experienced as a practitioner of the Twelve Steps is that whereas once I was powerless over alcohol - I now have so much freakin' power over it that I cannot even contain it. This is an entirely different experince than many folks are having in recovery. My experience is much more akin to the ones we read about in "Alcoholics Anonymous' - but it is my experience never-the-less.

My only choice is to give some of that power away - to pass it on - by helping others get what I have by doing showing them what I do to stay recovered from alcoholism. The only way to do that, as prescribed by the co-authors of "Alcoholics Anonymous" is to search out still puking drunks and get them to God as fast as they can get there. It is a race and when the next first-drink wins out, people suffer. Many die.

Peace & Love,

Danny S
_________
source: http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php

Another “Stupid Problem Drinker Trick”

Early on in recovery I was advised that whenever I encountered a desire to drink that I should "Think the drink through". The idea was that I would then recall the misery, the trouble, the suffering and humiliation that taking that one drink always led me through and then I would be able to effectively scare myself 'straight'.

Imagine that. An alcoholic so scared of alcohol and the consequences that he just does not drink - no matter what. Well guess what? Alcoholics DRINK no matter what! We don't get "scared straight".

Let’s take a cue from the former Democrat governor of New York, Al Smith, whose famous trademark phrase in his era was, "Let's look at the record."

Before joining my extended family here on lovely Cape Cod ten years ago and I was still running around New York City on Wall Street playing the big shot Investment Banker - actively engaged in the drinking life - I used to "Think through the drink" all the time. Maybe even every time I drank. In my head the outcome was always pretty similar.

"Let's see now . . . I will drink this drink and get a little tipsy . . .. then I will drink more and get just a little messed up . . . . .not too much . . . . don’t want to be slurring my words or pissing my pants. . . . then I will call up my limo and head up to D’Bronx . . . . Amsterdam Avenue . . . to get me a nice size package of blow . . . . not too much or I‘ll end up staying out all night . . . . but the good stuff . . . . from the Colombians. Then I’ll come back downtown and go to 21 where some gorgeous blonde in a miniskirt and fishnet stockings will hook up with me at the bar . . . and want to wrap her legs around me while we party and drink and snort and have a ball. . . .. then I can go home to my wife - at a decent hour . . . . . . . maybe by two AM . . . like nothing happened . . .. get a few hours sleep and then go to work in the morning - refreshed enough to get through the day and as Oliver Hardy used to tell Laurel, "and no one will be the wiser, Stanly. Ummph!"

Yeah . . . . that's the ticket!

That was the type of script I always wrote in my head when thinking the drink through. Too bad that it never seemed to work exactly the way I thought it should. I just thought it might - and so I made sure that I drank - just in case it would work out. I wanted to be ready.

What usually really happened was I would end up in Chinatown somewhere with a six-pack in the back of the limo, bar hopping and blowing chunks out of the back door at every other red light, scaring the freakin' bejeebers out of my driver - ending up back home in Queens with no money and a bloody shirt - to face my wife Nancy, who by now was in tears, waiting on the living room couch. “You did it again!” she would cry. "Why?"

"I don't know." It was my only honest answer. And then we would both cry together. That is MY record.

I am reminded of this from AA's book, "The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us." (Alcoholics Anonymous" 24:1)

I guess the experience of the alcoholic co-writers of the above quote pretty much jives with mine. As with most "Stupid Heavy Drinker Tricks" like this one or even "Keep it Green" or "Call your sponsor before you drink" or whatever other lip flapping , non-AA, Pop-Fellowship sloganism you want to use - that might work well for non-alkies - but accomplish the exact opposite of their intent for the real alkie - "Thinking the drink through" always ensured that I would drink - not prevent it.

I do not really know of any real alcoholics whose "thinking through the drink" did not always produce a happy ending - albeit a fictitious one. Man, not only are we insane but truly we are strangely insane. Some folks just don't get us - do they? Some of ‘us’ don’t even ‘get us’.

Peace,

Danny S
________
source: http://www.capecodtoday.com

Recovering alcoholic calls for programs

Freda doesn't know how long she's been sober. She won't count the days - it's too overwhelming. All that she knows is that she's feeling a sense of hope for the first time since she first started drinking at the age of 17.

That was 35 years, and several lifetimes ago.

On Thursday, she graduated from an addictions treatment program.

One of the keys to the program, she said, was telling her story. It's not a pretty story, nor one she is entirely comfortable telling.

"It's very, very hard on me. I get depressed, a lot of times through my journey," she says.

Denego grew up at Deschambault Lake, and moved to Prince Albert in 1982.

She never finished school.

And, she said, in the last 35 years, alcohol took back far more than it ever gave.

"I lost my husband, my kids and my home," she says. "I never went home. My husband was a mother to the kids - and the father. He's been sober 32 years, now."

Sadness creeps into her voice as she relates that her children are now, like her, facing problems with addictions. Her alcoholism, she admits openly, influenced their lives.

"They followed my footsteps."

Repeatedly, she dwells on the same perspective.

"I didn't see my kids growing up, because of the drinking.

"I'm fighting this addiction for (many) years. There are a few times ... where, I guess it's suicidal, And I get tired of living."

She has seen considerable violence in her life, and she equates alcohol with the violence she has witnessed.

Denego tells of how she recently witnessed a violent crime, but was unable to do anything to prevent it.

"When I see young people drunk, or they do something bad..." she falters, searching for the right words. "What I've seen ... a woman get raped in front of me. I couldn't do anything to help her."

At some point, the booze and its effects on her life became too much to tolerate.

"I got tired of being sick all the time. The doctor warned me about my health. I've got a heart problem, sometimes breathing problems. I was worried about that."

She heard about the merits of an addictions treatment program from other women.

Assistance from her pastor, combined with the addictions treatment program, has been the key to realizing she can craft a new life.

Now, she's asking for the powers-that-be to offer more services to deal with addictions and alcoholism, but specifically programs to aid young people.

"They should have more programs for young people, for addictions, to help themselves as much as they can."

She can't quite explain how she gained the courage to tell her story, other than to say that it seemed to her to be the best way to warn others - specifically youngsters - not to make the same mistakes.

"I don't know. I just wanted somebody to ... I feel bad for the people, feel sorry sometimes. I see a lot of people lost through my time. I see a lot of accidents."

Perhaps it's also a way of cementing her resolve.

"It's time that I do something about my addictions. I want to talk about them," she said.

Now, at the age of 52, she counters the darkness of her past by speaking optimistically of a future.

Simple goals. Achievable goals.

"It's time to change my life around. I want to go back to school, to get a job."

And sobriety?

She won't count the days. Her battle is ongoing. Indeed, as many recovering alcoholics discover, the battle never ends.

"I'm just taking it one day at a time. If I count the days, I'll start all over again."

source: Prince Albert Daily Herald

For the Alcoholic: Preventing Relapses

There are certain red flags you have to watch out for to prevent relapse when you're in recovery from alcoholism.

Some people might have drunk dreams before they take a drink. These kinds of dreams are red flags to watch out for, too. A lot of times a recovering alcoholic will have a drunk dream if they haven't been going to enough AA meetings. A drunk dream is one in which the alcoholic dreams he took a drink or almost takes one. The dreams are very realistic and usually the alcoholic wakes up shaken.

Some main red flags to watch out for which could tell you you're heading for a relapse include cutting back on your AA meetings, isolating, obsessing on drinking, looking at alcohol in stores, romanticizing what it used to be like when you drank, harboring resentments, lashing out at others, not returning phone calls, slacking off at work, neglecting your loved ones, driving recklessly, ending friendships, making excuses, procrastinating, lying, cheating, stealing, rationalizing insane behavior, getting involved with someone who drinks socially or alcoholically, not calling your sponsor, avoiding people, overeating, acting out sexually, gambling, overspending, sabotaging yourself, triangulating people, abusing your self or others, self-medicating, abusing prescription drugs, not getting enough sleep or enough to eat, staying out of your regular routine, avoiding responsibilities, not practicing good hygiene, sleeping a lot, storming off, going into rages, getting tickets, bouncing checks on purpose, being defensive, craving drinks, going to bars, and slipping back into old behaviors, among other things.

Here are some ways to prevent relapse, according to Alcoholics Anonymous:

Attend AA meetings regularly, use a sponsor and re-work the steps, read the textbook of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the companion book to the first one, call people in the fellowship for support, work with another alcoholic on Step 12, write about what you're feeling, avoid complacency, seek counseling if needed, and talk about what you're going through with someone on the phone or in person.

Prayer is also necessary and meditation is helpful, too.

"Self examination, meditation, and prayers are the maintenance steps for our spirit," says Michael, an AA member. "They must be coupled with action which is inspired by these three things."

The 12th step can be anything from cleaning up after a meeting to working with a new alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.

This is a helpful prayer as found on page 99 of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, otherwise known as "The 12 and 12":

The St. Francis of Assisi Prayer

"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace - that where there is hatred, I may bring love - that where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness - that where there is discord, I may bring harmony - that where there is error, I may bring truth - that where there is doubt, I may bring faith - that where there is despair, I may bring hope - that where there are shadows, I may bring light - that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted - to understand than to be understood - to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life."

Page 85 of Alcoholics Anonymous, nicknamed "The Big Book" states that: "It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels" and page 89 says, "Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics....Life will take on new meaning."

According to alcoholism.about.com, there is evidence that approximately 90 percent of alcoholics will experience relapse at least once over the four-year period following treatment.

source: Associated Content

Ex-addicts happy to be clean and sober

At the height of his cocaine use, Gérald was spending up to $300 a day on his habit.

Doing two to three grams a day "at about $100 a gram, you need a lot of money, and sometimes the way to make that money was not totally legit," the 49-year-old former user said Friday.

"I abused alcohol, cocaine and pot. That will keep you stupid for many years."

Fifteen years ago, Gérald attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with his girlfriend at the time to offer his support for her drinking problem.

"I ended up finding out I had a problem, too," he said.

But thanks to Cocaine Anonymous Quebec, Gérald has been clean and sober for 14 years.

Gérald is attending CA Quebec's 21st annual convention, which began last night and ends Sunday at the Delta Hotel.

As the group's name implies, members shield their identity, so Gérald does not want his last name published.

CA Quebec has been a presence in Montreal since its first meeting, in August 1986, drew 16 people. There now are 45 meetings a week in Greater Montreal, 10 in English and the rest in French.

The convention is normally held in the fall, but CA Quebec decided to schedule its 2007 event event now, right after the holiday period. This is a time when many users have difficulty dealing with the ubiquitous parties and with the New Year's resolutions to give up drugs, which can be difficult to achieve.

The bilingual convention features workshops on the 12-step program and sessions about medications, conjugal violence, spirituality and sexuality.

It's also a party, albeit without mind-altering substances.

"This is an event to rejoice in being clean and an opportunity for everyone to meet," Gérald said.

Organizers expect between 500 and 700 people to attend the three day convention. Tonight's main event is a large banquet with music and dancing.

Attendance at the weekend workshops costs $30 for two days. The banquet costs $70 and is nearly sold out.

"Just like the meetings, our policy is: Those who can pay, do," Gérald said of the workshops.

"We really want to reach out to newcomers. Anyone can come for free."

. The Cocaine Anonymous help line is 514-527-9999. The CA Quebec convention is being held at the Delta Hotel, 475 President Kennedy Ave., through Sunday. Participants can register at the door.

source: The Montreal Gazette

One day at a time

John (not his real name) will be taking it one day at a time, every day for the rest of his life. However, the challenge of remaining abstinent from alcohol is accompanied by the rewards of achieving things he never thought possible.

Only half of the patients who walk through the front door of the Lyndon Community will complete the three month rehabilitation program, and not all of them will remain abstinent when they leave.

By its own admission, the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program on which the Lyndon Community is based has a success rate of about five per cent.

That figure goes some way to demonstrating the enormous challenge faced by people who start out on the road to recovery.

Lyndon has been operating as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for 25 years and works on a therapeutic community model.

Lyndon program director Norm Henderson said total abstinence from drugs, alcohol and gambling was the first challenge for clients.

“They don't just come and lay back in lounge chairs for three months. There is random testing, and to the best of our ability they're completely drug-free. We do end up with what I suppose you'd call worst case scenarios. We have people who have tried before. The majority of clients here have been in the criminal justice system and have other issues, like their families have broken up. We try to create an environment where people feel safe. The staff get to know them very well,” he said.

John, 40, was one of those clients who had tried before and came to Lyndon via the court system.

He started drinking in the usual way – with friends.

“I just started off socially drinking when I was young. I would always drink more than my friends. I was married young but I was still being responsible, my daughter was born and I was working hard. My marriage got rocky and I started drinking more. Things started getting me down and I drank even more. It's a spiral. You wake up depressed in the morning and the only way out is to have another drink,” he said.

While he didn't end up “derelict in a park”, John believes there are many ways to hit rock bottom.

“I spent the last 10 years prior to going there on and off drinking with a few attempts to rehabilitate, but nothing serious. I moved up from Sydney, thinking I could get away from it. It was mainly the court that put me in Lyndon. I'd lost my licence for the fourth time drink driving.

Jan Stevenson (the local Magistrate) gave me community service or 12 months in prison. I didn't turn up a couple of times, so then I had to go to rehab or go to jail, and I didn't want to go to jail,” he said.

In about 18 months since completing the Lyndon program, John has resumed his life.

He is working for his own business, renovating his house and rebuilding relationships that broke down because of alcohol.

“I left there with no money and a suitcase full of clothes. I decided to stay on in Canowindra. I couldn't see myself changing if I came back to old environments. I'm doing things now that I should have been doing when I was 20. It's taught me a much better way to live. Every day I achieve things that astound me,” he said.

Mr Henderson said about 20 people who had successfully completed the program had chosen to live in and around Canowindra, and most of them were working.

For people addicted to alcohol and drugs, recovery means staying completely abstinent forever.

That is easier said than done in a culture where socialising is often automatically associated with drinking.

“All through my life, everything I did involved alcohol. My friends were all drinkers. That's why it's been pretty hard to change my life now. I really had to cut myself off from everyone. It's only now I'm feeling comfortable going to family things where I know there's going to be grog. The obsession is gone. I have to remind myself now that I am an alcoholic, and one drink will get me back where I started,” John said.

Not all of the people John met at Lyndon have made it through the rehabilitation program, and some will never get a second chance.

“I've never been confronted with more death. That's pretty hard to take, but it also reinforces to me where I could end up if I went back to my old ways,” he said.

source: Cowra Guardian

A Sober Celebration

On New Year's Eve, AA members renew pledge during an all-night party

At the Pawcatuck Community Center, residents of southeastern Connecticut and parts of Rhode Island gathered to greet the new year by lifting a prayer, not a glass: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

So began the first of the round-the-clock Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at the center as part of the 11th Annual New Year's Eve Alkathon, a 24-hour event held to give alcoholics — along with family members and friends — a safe place to be during a time of year many said can be especially difficult.

By the time the Alkathon, which began at 6 p.m. Monday, concludes at the same time tonight, an estimated four hundred to five hundred people will have participated. The local event, which organizers said they modeled on similar ones all over the country, intersperses 15 open AA meetings with dinner and breakfast buffets, raffles and a break to watch the First Night Westerly fireworks.

Those gathered for the first meeting of the evening celebrated their sobriety, which some measured in months, others in decades. They shared stories of their struggles with alcoholism, and they offered encouraging words for new arrivals.

“When I was dropped off on the doorstep of Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol wasn't a problem, it was the solution,” one man began. He spent his first AA meetings explaining that alcohol wasn't his problem, he said, but slowly realized, as everyone else described his or her problems with alcohol, that he was hearing his own story.

A woman recounted her daily struggle, when she lived in New York, not to enter the liquor store she passed on her way home from work. Each day she'd tell herself, “I'm not going to go in today,” and each day her feet rounded the corner and carried her in, she said. She tried AA as a last resort while thinking of ways to kill herself and found sobriety.

“I heard, 'You don't have to drink.' That had never occurred to me.”

Many said they had to hit a low point before seeking out AA meetings or taking their 12-step recovery program seriously and described lost jobs, severed relationships, ill health and in one case, a drunk-driving accident that nearly killed the other driver. Their message to fellow alcoholics: there is hope.

An Alkathon volunteer announced that by his count, about 20 adults present — a number that would grow steadily as the meeting proceeded — had roughly 175 years of sobriety between them.

“We have an expression: You can go from Yale to jail and back again,” said Mark, another Alkathon volunteer willing to share his first name.

Two and a half years ago, he said, he picked up a drink after a long period of sobriety. In short order he lost his job, went through a divorce and found himself living in a homeless shelter on whose board he had previously served.

“As of tomorrow I will own the company I was fired from,” Mark said. “That's what can happen.”

The message of the Alkathon — and regular AA meetings — is that “you don't have to drink again if you can't stop,” Mark said. “There will be someone tonight who will have had a drink tonight, and tomorrow will be their first day sober.”

source: The Day

Twelve tips to keep your holiday season sober

Alcoholics Anonymous gives this advice to its members to help them stay sober during the holiday season.

Holiday parties without liquid spirits may still seem a dreary prospect to new members of Alcoholics Anonymous, but many have enjoyed the happiest holidays of their lives sober - an idea they would never have dreamed of, wanted, or believed possible when drinking. Here are some tips for having an all-round ball without a drop of alcohol.

• Line up extra AA activities for the holiday season. Arrange to take newcomers to meetings, answer the phones at a clubhouse or central office, speak, help with dishes or visit the alcoholic ward at a hospital.
• Be host to AA friends, especially newcomers. If you don't have a place where you can throw a formal party, take one person to a diner and spring for the coffee.
• Keep your AA telephone list with you all the time. If a drinking urge or panic comes, postpone everything else until you've called an AA member.
• Find out about the special holiday parties, meetings, or other celebrations given by groups in your area and go. If you're timid, take someone newer than you are.
• Skip any drinking occasion you are nervous about. Remember how clever you were at excuses when drinking? Now put the talent to good use. No office party is as important as saving your life.
• If you have to go to a drinking party and can't take an AA member with you, keep some candy handy.
• Don't think you have to stay late. Plan in advance an "important date"you have to keep.
• Worship in your own way.
• Don't sit around brooding. Catch up on those books, museums, walks and letters.
• Don't start getting worked up about all those holiday temptations. Remember, to take one day at a time.
• Enjoy the true beauty of holiday love and joy. Maybe you cannot give material gifts but this year, you can give love.
• Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Old habits die hard

"For those of us who had spent every day of the past 10 years completely wasted, even the idea of getting through a couple of days without drugs felt like some kind of miracle."

Twenty years ago, Will Keighley started on the road to recovery from addiction. Now he wonders whether he will be the last survivor of his Narcotics Anonymous group.

It was a very English funeral. Half-stifled tears in a small church in Essex; professional pall-bearers with professionally solemn faces; a slightly awkward, tentative address from an older brother; solid Victorian hymns that sang of a triumph over death that no one really felt. Apart from the two heart-breaking readings from his children, I'm not sure Adam would have recognised his own funeral. But then, funerals are for the living, and this was the way his family had chosen to say their goodbyes. And when it is such a pointlessly early death - Adam was 52 - there probably isn't a right way of saying goodbye.

I hadn't seen Adam for four or five years before he died. I had wondered, though, why he had stopped replying to my Christmas cards. Then I heard rumours that he was using again. At first, I didn't want to believe them; he had been clean for more than 15 years and had always seemed so strong. But when he ended up in intensive care with acute renal failure and was given less than 24 hours to live, I was forced out of my denial.

He had been living alone, having lost his marriage and his job, and had been taking anything and everything he could lay his hands on. In his usual perverse way, Adam survived another 18 months or so. He flirted with recovery and his family tried everything they could to help, from taking him in to kicking him out, but the self-destruct button was full on. He was found dead from an overdose, alone in a rundown basement flat, a few weeks ago.

Adam and I had been members of the Narcotics Anonymous (NA) class of '87. We hadn't known each other while we were using, but we spent a great deal of time together when we first cleaned up. We were the wrong side of 30, had been junkies for the best part of 10 years, were unemployed and, to all intents and purposes, unemployable. So we would get up late, go to a lunchtime NA meeting, hang out in coffee bars and snooker halls, maybe catch another NA meeting in the evening and go home.

Back in 1987, NA wasn't that big. It had been founded in the UK seven years previously by a few recovering addicts who had split away from Alcoholics Anonymous. There were probably only about 100 regular faces in London. It may have looked to an outsider like a large, dysfunctional family, but it kind of worked. Status was measured in clean time. The very few who had made it to seven years clean were gods; the small number with five years were living legends; even those with two or three years got big respect. And they deserved it. For those of us who had spent every day of the past 10 years completely wasted, even the idea of getting through a couple of days without drugs felt like some kind of miracle. I had come to NA through a rehab centre. The first two weeks had been spent without sleep, sweating, shaking, cramping and shitting as I went cold turkey. The next two were spent in intensive group therapy but only one session stands out: the counsellor eyeballed us - we were probably annoying her - and said: "Take a look around you. Statistically speaking, 30% of you will be dead within 10 years. That's how serious this disease is."

I've thought about that statement a lot over the years. At the time, we all laughed - albeit nervously. We thought it was the kind of shock-jock crap that counsellors were paid to threaten us with, to frighten us into staying clean. Since then, I've come to wonder whether she wasn't rather conservative.

The first few deaths didn't affect me that much. They were addicts who had flirted with recovery but always left you with the feeling they were keeping their options open. I hadn't got to know them - the NA motto "Stick with the winners" had become my mantra.

Harder to bear

Recovering addicts are generally judgmental, and drugs were a black-and-white issue. If you were clean, you were on the side of the angels; if you were using, you deserved what you got. Somebody overdosing was a modern morality tale - both a kick up the arse to remind you of the consequences of using and a pat on the back for not having done so.

As the years passed, it got harder to bear. Maybe I had developed a little compassion, maybe the deaths were closer to home, or maybe the body count was just getting frightening. Many of us had shared needles at some point, so an Aids test became a logical part of the recovery process. Many of us were lucky, but a significant number weren't.

After the initial shock of diagnosis, most HIV-positive addicts seemed to cope well. Most got jobs and talked of being grateful for being able to extend their lives by cleaning up. But back in the late 80s and early 90s there were no retrovirals, and people, including several close friends whom I had known almost from day one in NA, started to get sick and die.

There were no tearful, bedside farewells surrounded by family for Nico. He reached the stage where he couldn't hack it any more and killed himself in the bath. Then there was Paulo, who had befriended me and let me sleep on his sofa until I could find somewhere to live. He had had good jobs, but once Aids took hold of him he fell to pieces. First, he disappeared back to Italy to take as much smack as he could, and then he returned to England. I didn't recognise him the last time I saw him; all his teeth had fallen out and he was utterly emaciated. The Terrence Higgins Trust found him a flat, but he couldn't really cope. He was furious with life and furious with Aids and addiction. He committed suicide alone, having first smeared the walls of his bedroom with shit.

There were other suicides, people who couldn't stand the thought of going back to using but who couldn't handle the pain of living. Those were really hard to take. Then there were those who died prematurely from cancer and heart disease. Their postmortems probably put the cause of death down to natural causes, but I found it hard to see it that way; no one I knew who hadn't thoroughly abused their bodies with drugs, booze and fags was dropping dead from these diseases in their 30s and 40s.

The number of Aids deaths had tailed off by the late 1990s, but there followed a new disease on the NA block: hepatitis C. About 50% of those who had used needles were infected and no one quite knew what the prognosis was. They still don't, really. A few people have died from liver disease, some have been treated with combination drug therapies and appear to be clear of the virus, and a great many appear for the time being to be walking wounded. They don't seem to be getting much worse, but are permanently tired.

Then there are the people like Adam - people with years and years of clean time, who have worked hard to build meaningful lives for themselves, and then decide they can't really cope after all. It's these that get to me the most, because it really does look as though there's no escape from addiction. It doesn't matter what you have done or how long you've been in recovery, play one wrong hand and the whole deck collapses.

I'm sure there are addicts who have started smoking dope and drinking again and are doing OK. But it seems a hell of a gamble for them to take. I couldn't predict what would happen to me if I started using again - though I've a pretty good guess - so how can they? And if they do get away with it, what are they getting away with? Imagine what it must be like to live in the knowledge that things could go pear-shaped at any time.

I'm no longer bothered by the esoteric debates that go on in social policy about whether addiction is a disease or not - it feels like a minor intellectual distraction. I'm not much interested in the political battles on how best to treat addicts, as every suggestion I've heard sounds like another useless sticking plaster on a huge festering wound. There are no guarantees or easy treatments for addicts.

None unscathed

Back in 1987, Adam, Paulo, Nico and I thought we were the lucky ones. We were the survivors who had found recovery. And maybe we were lucky. I've no idea what happened to most of the people I took heroin with, but I'm sure that most must be dead if they didn't manage to stop. Doctors had given me six months to live if I didn't get my life together, and I was no better or worse than many.

Twenty years on, the mortality rate of those attending the NA meetings in 1987 is horrifying. Even the survivors haven't come out unscathed. I and several others have been in institutions for mentally ill people and have struggled with depression; many others have been in therapy for years, still trying to piece together fractured lives and relationships.

If this was cancer, the rate of attrition would be a national scandal. But it's just a bunch of junkies and alkies fucking themselves up, so no harm done. I'm increasingly beginning to wonder if I'm not in some bizarre reality freak show to find the last man standing.

· Will Keighley is a pseudonym. All names have been changed.

____

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Battle against booze all too familiar

The titillating gossip recently might be all about the latest Hollywood celebrity to fall off the wagon and get arrested for alleged drunken driving just weeks after completing a stint in rehab.

But for millions of ordinary Americans struggling to free themselves from alcohol addiction, the story of a dissolute starlet inspires not self-satisfied tut-tutting but rather a grimly familiar dread.

Despite decades of research and dozens of potential treatments, alcoholism, America's most common addiction, remains notoriously difficult to overcome.

More than 30 percent of American adults have abused alcohol or suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives, according to a new study released this month by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

Yet, only a quarter of those afflicted received any treatment. And other studies show that, at best, only a quarter of those who seek treatment manage to abstain from alcohol for a year.

"Alcohol problems are not just something that affects Hollywood stars," said Dr. Robert Swift, a psychiatrist at Brown University who specializes in alcoholism. "We're talking about a chronic, relapsing condition. And we still have a long way to go in treatment. It's like treatment of cancer - some people can be helped, but others just cannot."

There are traditional "12-step" treatments for alcoholism, such as the program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, that rely largely on peer support to encourage abstinence.

There are several behavioral and cognitive therapies employed by psychologists and psychiatrists to help patients avoid the triggers and thought patterns that impel them to drink.

A new generation of drugs is available to help curb an alcoholic's craving to drink.

And there are posh, in-patient rehabilitation centers - the fashionable retreats of choice for infamous celebrities, disgraced politicians and other well-heeled alcohol abusers - that sometimes sound more like spa resorts than rigorous treatment clinics.

But despite all that variety, experts say there is no unambiguous, foolproof treatment for alcoholism that can ensure success.

HARSH REALITY

Researchers are learning that alcoholism, like addiction to narcotics, causes permanent changes to the brain that can, at best, be ameliorated but never permanently undone.

Moreover, scientists have discovered some people are genetically more susceptible to develop alcoholism if they start drinking, just as some people are more likely to develop diabetes if they eat poorly and don't exercise.

"Once you become an alcoholic or a drug addict, you can't go back," Swift said. "It's something that becomes a chronic illness. So, the idea that you go through rehab and you're cured is really kind of a ridiculous idea. You wouldn't expect that with diabetes, so why do people expect it with alcoholism?"

The scientific findings, in turn, have begun to change the popular perception of alcoholism as a mere failure of will on the part of the drinker to stop drinking.

"The first drink may be volitional, but after one becomes addicted, it becomes a compulsion," said Ann Bradley, spokeswoman for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. "Although we're always to be held responsible for our actions and their outcome, it's pretty fair to say that the most addictive drinking is well outside the control of the drinker."

DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

For more than 70 years, since Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935, complete abstinence from alcohol has been regarded as the only antidote to the disease of alcoholism, and even then, alcoholics never regard themselves as "cured," just in a state of ongoing recovery or remission.

Just one drink, the theory went, and an alcoholic was destined to descend into a debilitating spiral of relapse.

But experts say AA is successful for only about one in five alcoholics. And relapses are so characteristic of the disease that no other combination of drugs or therapy offers much better results, if the measurement is total abstinence maintained for at least a year.

So, rather than discourage alcoholics by insisting on a goal many cannot reach, some alcohol addiction experts have begun changing the definition of success.

A 2005 study by the federal government's alcoholism institute determined nearly 36 percent of U.S. adults suffering from alcoholism could be considered to be in "full recovery" after a year, if the definition of recovery was expanded to include not only complete abstainers (18.2 percent) but also "low-risk" drinkers (17.7 percent) who had managed to cut back, but not completely curtail, their alcohol consumption.

"There's a shift in the treatment approach toward being a little more flexible and being respectful of the patient's goals," said Dr. Edward Nunes, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University in New York and an addiction expert.

"There are many patients for whom abstinence is still the best outcome and the one you should shoot for, but it's clear from clinical experience that there are some patients who can move from problem drinking back to a level of moderated drinking that's not problematic anymore."

If that sounds to skeptics like moving the goal posts to make alcoholism treatment statistics look better, Nunes says that's not the intention of clinicians in the field.

"When we're working with an individual patient, we're not worried about making the numbers look better," he said. "To me, it's a question of how best to engage a patient. If a patient doesn't want to deal with (complete abstinence) right off the bat, it may be better to go with them a certain distance in order to build a relationship."

source: Chicago Tribune

Why the scourge of alcoholism defies a cure

Headlines out of Hollywood tell tales of addiction, but for millions in the U.S., the stories hit close to home

The titillating gossip this week might be all about the latest Hollywood celebrity to fall off the wagon and get arrested for alleged drunken driving just weeks after completing a stint in rehab.

But for millions of ordinary Americans struggling to free themselves from alcohol addiction, the story of star Lindsay Lohan inspires not self-satisfied tut-tutting but rather a grimly familiar dread.

Despite decades of research and dozens of treatments, alcoholism, America's most common addiction, remains notoriously difficult to overcome.

More than 30 percent of U.S. adults have abused alcohol or suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives, according to a study released this month by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

Yet only a quarter of those afflicted received any treatment. And other studies show that, at best, only a quarter of those who seek treatment manage to abstain from alcohol for a year.

"Alcohol problems are not just something that affects Hollywood stars," said Dr. Robert Swift, a psychiatrist at Brown University who specializes in alcoholism. "We're talking about a chronic, relapsing condition. And we still have a long way to go in treatment. It's like treatment of cancer -- some people can be helped but others just cannot."

There are traditional "12-step" treatments for alcoholism, such as the program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, that rely largely on peer support to encourage abstinence. There are a variety of behavioral and cognitive therapies employed by psychologists and psychiatrists to help patients avoid the triggers and thought-patterns that impel them to drink. There is a new generation of drugs to help curb an alcoholic's craving to drink.

And there are posh, inpatient rehabilitation centers -- the retreats of choice for infamous celebrities, disgraced politicians and other well-heeled alcohol abusers -- that sometimes sound more like spa resorts than rigorous treatment clinics.

But despite all that variety, experts say there is no unambiguous, foolproof treatment for alcoholism that ensures success.

That's because researchers are learning that alcoholism, like addiction to narcotics, causes permanent changes to the brain that can at best be ameliorated but never permanently undone. Moreover, scientists have discovered that some people are genetically more susceptible to develop alcoholism if they start drinking, just as some people are more likely to develop diabetes if they eat poorly and don't exercise.

"Once you become an alcoholic or a drug addict, you can't go back," said Swift. "It's something that becomes a chronic illness. So the idea that you go through rehab and you're cured is really kind of a ridiculous idea. You wouldn't expect that with diabetes, so why do people expect it with alcoholism?"

The scientific findings have begun to change the popular perception of alcoholism as a mere failure of will on the part of the drinker to stop drinking.

"The first drink may be volitional, but after one becomes addicted, it becomes a compulsion," said Ann Bradley, spokeswoman for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. "Although we're always to be held responsible for our actions and their outcome, it's pretty fair to say that the most addictive drinking is well outside the control of the drinker."

For more than 70 years, since Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935, complete abstinence from alcohol has been regarded as the only antidote to the disease of alcoholism -- and even then, alcoholics never regard themselves as "cured," but rather in a state of ongoing recovery or remission.

Just one drink, the theory went, and an alcoholic was destined to descend into a debilitating spiral of relapse.

But experts say that AA is successful for only about 1 in 5 alcoholics. And relapses are so characteristic of the disease that no other combination of drugs or therapy offers much better results, if the measurement is total abstinence maintained for at least a year.

So rather than discourage alcoholics by insisting on a goal many cannot reach, some addiction experts have begun changing the definition of success.

A 2005 study by the federal government's alcoholism institute determined that nearly 36 percent of U.S. adults suffering from alcoholism could be considered to be in "full recovery" after a year, if the definition of recovery was expanded to include not only complete abstainers (18.2 percent) but also "low-risk" drinkers (17.7 percent) who had managed to cut back, but not completely curtail, their alcohol consumption.

"There's a shift in the treatment approach toward being a little more flexible and being respectful of the patient's goals," said Dr. Edward Nunes, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University in New York and an addiction expert. "There are many patients for whom abstinence is still the best outcome and the one you should shoot for, but it's clear from clinical experience that there are some patients who can move from problem drinking back to a level of moderated drinking that's not problematic any more."

If that sounds to skeptics like moving the goal posts to make alcoholism treatment statistics look better, Nunes says that's not the intention of clinicians.

"When we're working with an individual patient, we're not worried about making the numbers look better," he said. "To me it's a question of how best to engage a patient. If a patient doesn't want to deal with [complete abstinence] right off the bat, it may be better to go with them a certain distance in order to build a relationship."

source: The Tribune via Alcoholics Anonymous Reviews.

How chance encounter saved him

Today, Bob Tracey runs Tracey Real Estate on Avenue S in Marine Park, one of the top five real estate offices in Brooklyn. His company handles mega-millions in annual sales, and Tracey has a loving family, a fine Marine Park home, a summer house in Breezy Point and two other real estate offices, specializing in getting affordable Brooklyn homes and mortgages for cops and firefighters and other civil servants.

He also owns the Brooklyn Proud apparel label and sits on the local community board and the Marine Park Civic Association.

Tracey leads a very successful, privileged life but also gives back - heavily sponsoring the Hurricanes football team, all the local Little Leagues, the local cadets and countless local charities.

It almost didn't happen.

Back on the night of Feb. 10, 1978, Tracey was a 28-year-old raging alcoholic stumbling into the Sheepshead Bay Road subway station.

"I was 240 pounds, hugging a six-pack of Rheingold," he says. "I grew up in the Sheepshead/Nostrand Projects, where I ran the street hard. My father worked sales for the phone company. Most of the guys I went to Resurrection grammar school with were doing great. I hit bottom."

Tracey drank alone in a tiny furnished room on Avenue P and Nostrand where his father paid for a phone that worked only for incoming calls.

"I walked the streets smoking clippies from the gutter," Tracey says. "I almost died when I was beaten with a crowbar. I drank rotgut wine. I wanted to die more than I wanted to live."

Tracey says that on that winter night at the subway station, he saw the Manhattan train light blinking and planned on jumping the turnstile.

"But for some reason the token booth clerk just waved me in," Tracey says. "It was like passing through the gates to salvation. Because when I got onto the platform God sent me a messenger. He was an old guy. He had a beard. He wore a hat. He sat on a bench. His name was Irving."

Tracey sat in the vacant seat next to Irving. Frightened, the old man rose and hurried down the platform.

Tracey followed.

The train roared into the station in a gust of icy wind.

Wary, Irving climbed aboard the train.

"I looked menacing, ravaged," Tracey says. "The doors were closing; I looked Irving in the eyes. The fear went out of his face. He held the doors for me. And my life forever changed."

In the three stops to Kings Highway, where Tracey got off, Irving told Tracey that he was in Alcoholics Anonymous and that Tracey should come to a meeting.

"I gave Irving my phone number," Tracey says. "I went home to my room, littered with beer and wine bottles, stinking of urine, and I drank. But Irving started to call me. He called me for nine consecutive Monday nights asking me to come with him to an AA meeting. I used to pretend I was my brother. Then on April 25, 1978, Irving called and said, 'Tracey, I'm coming to get you.'"

Irving came and took Tracey to his first AA meeting, where an alcoholic named Ray was celebrating his 25th anniversary of sobriety, telling his own inspiring story.

"I've been sober since," Tracey says. "I always told Irving that God sent him to me. But Irving was agnostic and he said it was just a twist of fate. We agreed to disagree."

On his hard road back from the darkness of active alcoholism, Tracey took a job at Fillmore Realty.

"I did okay," he says. "But I kept asking my father, who was an usher at Resurrection Church, involved in the Cub Scouts, Marine Park Civic and well-liked in the community, to open a real estate office with me.

"He told me that if I could find a storefront on Avenue S between E. 36th and E. 37th Sts., he'd do it with me. I think it was his way of saying I wasn't ready."

But Tracey soon found a storefront for $300 a month. They built an office. All of his father's goodwill in the community paid off as locals gave Tracey Real Estate their listings.

"When we started to get successful, my father said to me, 'You know how you give back? You don't do it to get anything. You do it because someone did it for you.' He was so right.

"This community has been very good to me. I could go on all day about how grateful I am for the success I have. But nothing is as important or valuable to me as my sobriety because if I didn't have that first I wouldn't have a great family, a nice home, a successful business. So, I will never forget Irving, who died last Aug. 30. If Irving had not held the subway doors for me on Feb. 10, 1978, I wouldn't even be here."

source: New York Daily News
author: Denis Hamill
dhamill@nydailynews.com

Alcohol and Drug Treatment Programs Uncovered!

It appears that there's an increasing amount of people who suffer from alcohol and drug related addictions. I’m not sure if the problem is actually worse than it used to be or whether folks are just more honest about it these days, but it’s a major crisis nonetheless. Hi everyone, my name is Bob and I'm an Alcoholic and pharmaceutical drug addict in recovery. I never found my way to the doors of the alcohol and drug treatment programs, but I wished to god I had, and the reasons are obvious.

Those who face up to their problems and admit complete defeat have overcome the biggest hurdle of recovery, which is admitting they are powerless over their drug of choice and that their life has become somewhat unmanageable as a consequence. Heaven knows we addicts have tried long enough and hard enough to kick our habits, but will-power alone and a fierce determination to stop did little to help. Drug alcohol addiction, or any serious addiction come to that, often means those who suffer could do with a bit of a kick start onto that road of recovery, and this is where the alcohol and drug treatment programs really come into their own.

Do I Need Alcohol and Drug Treatment Programs?

Only you are able to answer that. If you're reading this introduction, then there's a chance that either you or someone you know, is having problems with drugs or alcohol. If you're not sure whether that person is an addict of not, you might want to read our short piece entitled, 'What is Drug Addiction', for which there is a link above this page (Addictions). By the way, just in case you were wondering, alcohol classes as a drug too.

For me personally, even when I’d admitted defeat to myself, it still took a while to finally put a plug in the jug and a lid on the pills. I found the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous a great help and I can't say enough good about those guys and their 12 step program of action. But for me those rooms had a revolving door and I was in and out a fair bit before I finally got the message. That message was that there was nothing in my life today that a drink of drug could possibly make better. On the contrary, the longer I stayed out there the worse it got. If I hadn't been so stubborn, and checked myself into one of the fine alcohol and drug treatment programs, I could have saved myself and those closest to me, years of countless turmoil.

But it takes what it takes, and all I'm saying here is that there are so many free alcohol rehab programs around for drug alcohol addiction, (and many more paid options for those who can afford to be selective), that it's just crazy not to check in and get a head start in recovery. It really is a tragedy to see addicts suffering unnecessarily, while at the same time destroying their lives and the lives of those around them. If this is you and you've hit your rock bottom, or you're just sick and tired of being sick and tired, then why not check out the free drug rehab centers or alcohol support centers in you're neighborhood.

This is the twenty first century, and no one, and I mean no one, need to go through the physical and emotional ringer for any longer than they choose to. There is so much help and support for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, that it's just impossible not to find some kind of drug and alcohol rehabilitation program near your home.

What if I don't Qualify for Alcohol and Drug Treatment Programs!

If you say you're an alcoholic and or drug addict, then you are. These kinds of addictions are the only form of illness where we diagnose ourselves. But if for some reason you don't feel you belong in the alcohol and drug treatment programs, or perhaps you feel them to be a little extreme in your case, then simply go along to any AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) or NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting and see if you connect.

The only requirement for membership at these anonymous meetings is a genuine desire to stop drinking or drugging. You will be welcomed with opened arms and nurtured back to health by those in the group if you want their help. There are no dues of fees for these memberships as they are self supporting through their own contributions. There's usually an endless pot of coffee and plates full of cookies too, which all add to the informal, friendly, and relaxeed atmosphere to what is otherwise a serious program.

So you see, the alcohol drug treatment centers are not a necessity for getting clean and sober, they are simply there to support those that have tried all other measures to quit but failed. Alcohol rehab programs, and the anonymous fellowships are by no means the only way people have gotten themselves cleaned up and back into a free and sober lifestyle, but they are the only ones I have any experience and authority to write about, evaluate, and respect.

If I kick drug alcohol addiction, what will become of me?

This is a real classic and a question asked by many newcomers into sobriety! So many active drunks and addicts have convinced themselves that their recurring compulsion to indulge in more of the same has at least given them some escape, or comfort in day to day living. Look folks, most of us take mind altering substances because we want to change the way we feel. We don't cope too well with sobriety so we opt for comfortably numb or just plain out of it!

We have a tendency to magnify any negative thoughts and minimize positive ones. Drugs and alcohol, for most of us, has silenced that storm from raging in our heads. We think that the moment we stop drinking of drugging, we shall become the hole in the donut, a life full of nothingness being lived by a nobody! Well, I literally know 100's of recovered aditcts and drunks and nothing could be further from the truth. Sure it's the end of your life. It's the end of your old life and the start of a new one. A life that you never dreamed possible if you just give yourself a break!

Sobriety is great and I'm grateful for it, but it only comes to those who really want it. If you're ready to get into action and take that first step in whatever drug or alcohol treatments you decide upon, this moment right here and now, could be the turning point you've yearned for, for so long.

source: http://www.treatmentsgalore.com/

How an oldtimer greets a newcomer

His name is Bill. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans, and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for the past four years of life He is brilliant. Kind of profound and very, very bright. He became a alcoholic while attending college. Things have only gone downhill since.

Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative A.A. club. They want to develop a meeting for the students but are not sure how to go about it.

One day Bill decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his
T-shirt, and wild hair.
The meeting has already started and so Bill starts looking around the room for a seat.

The room is completely packed and he can't find a seat. By now, the well dressed people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything.

Bill gets closer and closer and closer to the front of the room, and when he realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet.

By now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick.
About this time, the evening's speaker realizes that from way at the back of the meeting, an "old timer" is slowly making his way toward Bill.

Now the "old timer" is in his eighties, and has silver-gray hair, and a
three-piece suit. A spiritual man, very elegant, very dignified, very
courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he starts walking toward this boy,
everyone is saying to themselves that you can't blame him for what he's going to do.

How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor?

It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy.
The meeting is utterly silent except for the clicking of the old man's cane. All eyes are focused on him.
You can't even hear anyone breathing. The speaker can't even continue the meeting until the "old timer" does what he has to do.
And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he lowers himself and sits down next to Bill and welcomes him so he doesn't feel outcast and alone.
Everyone chokes up with emotion. When the speaker gains control, he says,

"What I'm about to say, you will never remember.
What you have just seen, you will never forget."
"Be careful how you live. You may be the only Big Book some people will ever read".

forwarded to me by my friend gwen at Twelve Beads

Predatory Bleeding Deaconry

bleeding deacon: n. a person who believes himself indispensible to a group, esp. a person who becomes so over-involved in a group’s internal management, policies, or politics as to lose sight of its larger goals; (hence) a person with a negative, moralizing character, who acts like the sole source of wisdom.

Predatory (prěd'ə-tôr'ē, -tōr'ē)
adj.
1. Living by preying on other organisms: a predatory mammal; a predatory insect.
2. Of, relating to, or characterized by plundering, pillaging, or marauding.
3. Living by or given to exploiting or destroying others for one's own gain.

A Struggle Inside AA...

I suppose the various and sundry nefarious and unconscionable behaviors and events reported about The Midtown Alcoholics Anonymous group in Washington D.C must include, for now, the convenient and safe prefix alleged.

I'm reminded of one big book thumper I crossed paths with when I was still an active member of the online debating morons... He used to love calling A.A a "secret society". This man was also fond of sponsoring females, by his own admission. And as chance would have it, I also crossed paths with one of his, um, intended targets with whom he wished to spread the message...

So, yeah, cool and all that. The rule of law, etc...
Alleged.
But it wasn't a mind bending proposition for me, and for many others I'm sure, to feel the veracity of many of the elements in this sordid story from D.C.

Get Sober With A 12 Step program

1. Look on the web for a relevant 12-step program - Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, etc. The web site should point you to lists of meetings in your area. In order to stay "clean" from one mood-altering substance, you will have to give them all up.
2. Learn that very few drug addicts do not also drink alcohol. Fortunately, "The only requirement for membership in AA is the desire to stop drinking" (from "Alcoholics Anonymous," the Big Book of AA). There will always be some AA groups that reject people with other problems in addition to drinking. Just keep looking, there will be groups that welcome you.
3. Attend a variety of meetings, and plan to stay sober (free from all mood-altering substances) between meetings. Some meetings will meet your needs better than others. Take what you need and leave the rest behind.
4. Get a sponsor--a person of your gender with significant clean time. Talk to him or her every day and follow the advice you are given. When you have the urge to drink or use drugs, call your sponsor instead.
5. Work the 12 steps with your sponsor. The steps are virtually the same in all the programs and are a recipe for happy living.In addition to attending meetings, your sponsor may ask you to read program literature, pray or meditate.
6. Identify a "home group"--a particular meeting where you feel especially comfortable, that you attend without fail. Members of this group will want to check up on you if you are unexpectedly absent.
7. Remember that addiction is a very socially debilitating ailment. You will most likely find yourself feeling very uncomfortable in social situations during early sobriety. This is quite normal and also quite temporary. An enormous part of the healing process is regaining the ability to create, maintain and enhance healthy relationships. This will be daunting at first, but becomes less so with each healthy relationship you form and foster.

source: wiki