Score One for Big Jeremy

If you look back on your life do you believe that you have accomplished everything that you were born to accomplish? I mean I realize that the last thing anyone really saw themselves doing when they got older is what they are actually doing. When the obvious had hit me, somewhere around the age of 25 that I wasn't going to be a rock star, a movie star, a master theologian, or the myriad of other things I had explained responsibility away with. The restaurant jobs I had supplemented dreaming with, had to come to an end. Responsibility was never my strong suit, and believe it or not there is a lot more responsibility that goes with a services job than people give them credit for.

Of course my childhood was never plagued with the dreams of being an extruder operator, an electro-mechanical assembler, or even a welder which made up the 20s of my life. The 30s got more interesting for a bit when I tried my hands at building Aegis systems, robots, and ovens for the Asian soldering industry, but again, this wasn't a dream or a nightmare to the little me I left behind. Neither were three divorces, well OK maybe since that’s how famous people live,  but I had always wanted the children, just living in a mansion collecting royalties. Then again, I had at least established that I was a pretty good worker when I wanted to be by that time.

Believe it or not the first job I had actually settled into and accepted as my own fate was being a janitor. I was good at it, not much was expected of me, and I had a lot of time to goof off. Pretty sad if you think about it, but I definitely didn't expect it to accidentally lead into a job as an MRO (maintenance, repairs and operations) which is corporate speak for “I buy stuff.” Nope I think back to when I was picturing myself as the lead singer of the biggest band ever, or the multi-talented screenplay writer, who coincidentally starred and directed in the movies because it was too important to leave to anyone else, to even the recluse writing great novel after great novel, and this just wasn't in there.

Well let’s get to the other things that weren't on the radar. Never thought I would be a raging alcoholic before I even made it to 21. Didn't think I would be sober since before I was 21 either. Talk about an accomplishment but that is an absolute affront to my nature. Who knew I would still do a lot of the dumb crap alcoholics who are drinking do while I was sober? Well it makes for interesting tales anyway. Who would have thought I would love my stupid job buying crap? Well the person who recruited me to do it did, so I have to give him the kudos on that one, and of course my wife who gave me the gentle nudges too.

All in all, the little Jeremy wouldn't like the big Jeremy. Aside from the fact that little Jeremy was a dummy, he also didn't know that there was anything else out there other than being a rock star, a famous athlete, a movie star or even someone who had died at the age of 27 like all the famous people in the sixties seemed to do. The good news is that the big Jeremy likes the big Jeremy, and the big Jeremy also understands now that the little Jeremy didn't know squat.

Now for a shameless plug. If you like to read whacky stuff, from a whacko like this guy, you can always find the random crap that flows through his mind at TheWhacko.Com. Thanks for making it this far!

What Happened to Aye Aye?

I took the picture myself and added the caption with my legally obtained copy of  photo-altering software. You can save it to somewhere on your computer and re-upload it to anywhere on the Interwebz. Link backs are not necessary. If however, you are a copyright troll, your presence here is totally unappreciated. So go away and go bother someone else. No love for the DMCA.

Aayisha had been in the local x.a. meetings for many years. She went back out after six years or so and then came back in for six more years. She was a gentle soul, the only one of my friends who was willing to visit my dad at our house-- some friends were willing to have me bring him to their houses though-- and the three of us enjoyed some sun-tea on the back deck one afternoon. Aye Aye treated Dad like he was my dad. Not like he was my Dad with a terminal neurological disease that was eating his brain. Not like he was my Dad who was escaping from his former life. Just like a regular guy who happened to be here. She gave him a rare gift that day.

Aye Aye earned six years of abstinence in the rooms of x.a. the second time but then she found another way to remain free from active addiction. Unfortunately, the other way was an organization which had the characteristics of a manipulative religion. [A cult, okay? The new words that are supposed to describe "cult" just don't do it for me]. I suspected that we had lost her several years before another friend did. That hurt.

Even so, a few good times remained. But then she stopped returning phone calls or answering her door. We knew she was home. She just refused to answer the doorbell. We were broken-hearted but there was little we could do about that. 

This past summer, Aye Aye signed up for hospice services from the same place that helped my dad. She died in early February peacefully in bed with her family around her.

drama queen man: "Did you hear what happened to Aye Aye?" 

me (beginning to seethe): "No. What happened to Aye Aye?"

drama queen man: "She committed suicide and police found her body in her car."

me: "Oh really. Who told you that?"

drama queen man: "Some guy told me. And he ought to know."

my housemate: "Huh?"

me (to housemate): "Information without names is bullshit."

drama queen man: "Her picture was in the paper and everything."

me: "Her picture was in the paper next to her obituary. Aye Aye was receiving hospice services. She died. At home. In bed. With her family around her."

drama queen man: "Wella--"

me: "If you spread that around, I will be very angry. And it isn't true besides. She did not kill herself."

drama queen man: "Oh you know me. I wouldn't do that."

But he was willing to make the claim to me. I guess he didn't realize that Aye Aye and I had ever been friends.

sapphoq itching for a coffee says: Before you open your fat mouth in the rooms of recovery or anywhere else about what you know, think is true, or what someone else "told" you, please consider your motives. Gossip is ugly.
Sometimes we do things to each other, in spite of our abstinence. Don't make my burden heavier because you want people to think who you are ergo you spread false information around.

An Indictment

     Recently, several of my close associates have gone back out. People with time measured in years, not months. People who were doing all the stuff that people in recovery are told that we must do in order to keep on keeping on. People who were working steps, had service commitments, went to meetings, used their sponsors, read the literature, took care of themselves, lived up to their responsibilities, had deeply held religious beliefs and practices to match.

     So far, they were all lucky enough to make it back into the rooms of recovery. So far, they are all staying in. So far, so good. 

     They all have said it is a struggle to remain clean now. More of a struggle than before. They have had various consequences for their relapses. What those consequences are is of no importance to anyone reading this blog post. None of them "got away with it."

     I had my lapsing and relapsing during the first nine months of my attendance at x.a. meetings. Then I began to understand that I had to quit all of it and not just the drugs that I perceived of as having been or helped to create the biggest problems in my life. So I did. I got honest. [Unlike my buddies, I was not honest about what drugs I was still taking during those first nine months]. I started over.  Starting over was tough. Staying away from all of the drugs was much more difficult for me than staying away from some drugs.

     There is something here I've been thinking about a lot. We-- at least here in the United States-- really do not know enough about how to treat addicts in the throes of their addiction. Most of the addiction treatment industry organizations here are heavily dominated by twelve step approaches and philosophy with bits of pop psychology and pseudo-religion thrown in.

     The stats from the rehabs that are honest about the results of treatment via long-term follow-up are dismal. I've heard various percentages ranging from ten percent on up through thirty-three percent. One in three down to one in ten will remain abstinent. The other figure I've heard tossed around is one in four will relapse some percentage of the time and therefore are declared to be "improved."

     These figures ought to be unacceptable. They certainly are unacceptable to me.

     The best that professionals in our country can offer is "Well, some of you will be dead. Some will bounce in and out. A very few of you will remain clean." 


     But meanwhile, 

...if you relapsed, then your program or the way that you worked the program sucked or wasn't good enough.

...if you relapsed, then you quit going to meetings or didn't go to enough meetings or got disconnected from meetings even if you were going to meetings.

...if you relapsed and killed yourself, then you weren't working the program and forget all the foolishness about whether or not you had a separate disorder that has suicidal ideation as a prominent feature.


     Furthermore, your relapse had nothing to do with 

...our treatment protocol, 

...our failure to give you culturally competent treatment, 

...our failure to screen you for other disorders, 

...our failure to help you determine what support systems you want to use in order to not use again after you leave us, 

...our failure to recognize that x.a. programs may not be the best way to go for everyone,

...our failure to lobby for more research into the best ways to treat people with addiction, especially if some of those ways just might include stuff other than a twelve step philosophy.


     Beside that,

...One quasi-religious group is heavily involved in the addictions treatment industry for adults as well as in prevention programs for school kids. The adults are treated with mega-doses of certain vitamins and exposure to the group's ideology. The kids pledge not to use drugs and are also given links to certain websites where they too will be exposed to the group's ideology.

...a certain troubled teen industry group whose founder and staff are predominantly of a certain religion are heavily involved in the addictions treatment industry for teens. Those teens are lumped in with all the other "troubled teens" in their residential schools hell pits of torture.

I am not a fan of the quasi-religious group nor am I a fan of those places where staff go beating on kids and throwing them into extended periods of isolation and otherwise severely mistreating them.


     We are at a crossroads and we don't even know it.


sapphoq itching for another coffee says: People are complex. The etiologies behind addictions are multi-factorial. By subscribing to total immersion into the twelve steps and x.a. culture, the majority of the organizations involved in the addictions treatment industry are failing to recognize that more ways of treating addicts seeking relief from active addiction need to be researched and developed.
     By failing to do so, other organizations which are not noted for their honesty or humane practices will step in to fill the void. These other organizations claim to have better outcomes. We don't call them on their dishonest stats for fear of litigation or because we figure they are the experts or perhaps we've learned we ought not to criticize those agencies which are religious in nature.
     Because we fail to broaden our scope and we fail to demand ethical research into other more efficient ways to treat addicts in order to yield more successful outcomes, addicts will die. Addicts who could have been saved if only we knew more about how to treat them. Period.








     

     
     

Dealing with Death in Recovery

     Dad died on Christmas Eve holding my hand. I am truly at peace with his passing. He was sick for a very long time.  Some folks in the rooms have asked me, usually before a meeting, "How's your father?"

     "He's dead," I tell them. I don't know why that answer [seems to, an any rate] creates a bit of discomfort. Whether there is an afterlife or not [and I don't think there is one], my father is out of it now. He no longer has to force himself to function when it's easier to just allow the dementia to take over. He no longer has to deny arthritic pain or hide his ever-decreasing short term memory. He no longer has to fight to stay awake and interested in his surroundings.

     I've been at twelve step meetings where the topic was coping with the death of someone. When I experienced the loss of a grandfather three months into my own recovery [and was still a believer in divinity], I brought up that topic myself. The usual platitudes were offered to me. Y'll know the ones I mean...
          He's in a better place now.
          You'll see him again.
          Using won't fix the pain.
     and others which basically boil down to the same thing: The loss of someone near and dear to you is not permanent. It's a very long temporary, that's all.

I made this myself. You can save it to someplace in your computer and upload it to anywhere on the interwebz. I don't care. Credit and link back to here are not necessary. Copyright trolls are not welcome here. If you are one, go away now please.

     There is a hegemony of Christian cultures in the United States. That gets tiring to me at times yet quite frankly, I think there are worse kinds of religious cultures that could predominate. Yeah, modern Christianity has produced the Westboro crew and the fake healers [someone please explain to me though why it is that there aren't any modern verified reports of said televangelists via their g-d giving amputees new limbs. See: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/  and
http://www.christianforums.com/t6986184/  and
http://rantsandrage.com/2011/05/01/god-hates-amputees/  and
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/why_wont_god_heal_amputees.html  and
https://twitter.com/hashtag/godhatesamputees?f=realtime  to get the gist of my question]. I understand that a large majority of modern day Christians do not stand with the Westboro folks or with those preachers who are frauds. I'm saying that for all the good that modern Christianity has done, there is also some not so good. There are degrees and percentages of good and bad in all social, political, economic, religious, and bowel movements. 

     When people wish me a Happy Christian Holiday, I warmly wish them the same. When people tell me that they are praying for me or my dad, I warmly thank them. My believer friends are not out to get me, convert me, or inflict massive butt-hurt upon me personally by wishing me a Happy Christian Holiday or by expressing their concerns by letting me know that they are remembering me in their prayers. If I sneeze, a polite "G-d bless you!" ought not be a reason for a war. I'm too fricking old to fight every battle that presents itself to me. Some of those battles are not worth fighting. I leave some of the ones that are worth fighting to the younger folks coming up behind me. Because you see, I am old. I have to conserve my strength and energy.

     I've gotten off the main point of this blog post already. Didn't take long at all. Okay then. Nuff.

     I came into the rooms believing. Through the years, I've lost my faith and had to grapple with the realization that I am ipso facto an atheist. I tried to disguise this particular turn of events for a long time by hiding under the umbrella of some sort of quasi-pantheism or quasi-animism. There are either bunches of spirits around who really aren't gods or perhaps there is divinity in everything from cancer cells to cockroaches and beyond. When those things became too intellectually discordant for me to bear, I gave up. 

     As a non-believer with quite a bit of time abstinent from active addiction, I chose not to bring up my dad's demise as a topic at any of the twelve step meetings I attend. Why?

          1. I don't want to use over it.
          2. I accept death as permanent.
          3. I lost one person. My dad lost everyone.

     Here are a couple other reasons why I didn't bring it up as a topic:

          1. I have the benefit of a huge support system: my actual friends [not the many acquaintances] both inside and outside of the rooms, professionals, a few selected relatives, and hospice.
          2. Some folks in the rooms [just like some folks who don't need to be in the rooms] tend to discount feelings or distance themselves from uncomfortability by remarking upon the supposed transient nature of loss and that's simply not where I'm at. 
          3. A few people in the rooms tend to feed on other peoples' stuff. I'm not into, "Oh you poor thing! How are you feeling? Are you alright?"  I'm way beyond that sort of thing.

I made this myself. You can save it to someplace in your computer and upload it to anywhere on the interwebz. I don't care. Credit and link back to here are not necessary. Copyright trolls are not welcome here. If you are one, go away now please.

     The facts are simple. My father is dead. Through my direct advocacy, the caring concern of various professionals and other helpers, and hospice, my dad had a good death. He was kept as comfortable and as free from pain and anxiety as possible. I was with him when he died. Dad died holding my hand and smiling. I miss my dad however there is no way that I would want him to live any longer than he did given his failing brain and progressive physical debilitation. Dad is gone, yes. He left a lot of love behind. And that is truly awesome.

I made this myself. You can save it to someplace in your computer and upload it to anywhere on the interwebz. I don't care. Credit and link back to here are not necessary. Copyright trolls are not welcome here. If you are one, go away now please.

Unity or Uniformity

     Twelve step programs-- although very much retaining the monopoly on what the majority of American treatment and rehabs offer in terms of how to maintain abstinence-- may not be the best fit for every patient or client or participant seeking to get free from addiction. This is something that we often ignore while bemoaning those who have darkened the doorways of 'our' meetings [and 'our' treatment facilities, if we happen to be staff at one of them] who went back out or continued to use. We are so fond of claiming that various addictions are now a disease of some sort. 

     What kind of people are we when we blame the patient for failing to gain or regain health after one or more bouts with a disease?

     When a cancer patient gets sicker and dies in spite of the chemo or radiation, do we blame the patient?

     When someone gripped in the natural course of a non-reversible dementia progresses and dies in spite of medical interventions, do we blame the patient?

     And yet, the addict seeking help is blamed for his or her return to active addiction. [I use addict to also include those who are addicted to alcohol]. What gives? Maybe we don't really believe in the disease concept. [Okay, I don't. I don't claim acceptance of the disease concept which seems to have swept the addiction treatment industry by storm].

     The problem does not lay in how we define addiction. Whether it is a medical condition with multiple etiologies and a disease-like progression, an actual disease, something else entirely, or a combination of these things is not something that I am taking issue with in this particular blog post. 

     While how we define addiction certainly does determine whether or not insurance companies will pay for treatment, it is not really at the crux of the problem. The problem is the low success rate ascribed to addicts seeking recovery. When making a decision related to my health, I seek out more than one option. And when the success rate for an option presented to me is described as anywhere from ten percent to just under thirty-four percent, I certainly do my research. I want the odds to be in my favor. In cases of severe and/or chronic and/or terminal diseases or conditions, there may not be better odds or very many viable options. Science offers us the opportunity to discover and describe best practices in medicine.

     In the United States, I think what we are suffering from is a lack of rigorous research into the multiple causes of addiction, treatment options, and how to determine the best fit for each client or patient. Twelve step programs have aided many of us in changing our lives thereby enabling us to become and remain abstinent. Yet, some percentage of people fail out of meetings with or without adjunct professional help. Not every human being is able to find a new way of life within the current structure of treatment and maintenance of abstinence. 

     There is no one way to recover. Yet, one way to recover utilizing the twelve steps of various Anonymous programs is what is pushed by the addictions treatment industry.

     We have today other ways to develop social support systems-- there is Celebrate Recovery [for Christians], Secular Organizations for Sobriety [or s.o.s. for non-theists, and for those who may be religious but wish to separate their religious practices from their recovery program], the Red Road [for Native Americans], Women For Sobriety [for women], Double Trouble and Dual Recovery Anonymous [both organizations are for those who also have mental health diagnoses], Rational Recovery [for rational people], Drug Courts [for non-violent offenders-- which include may include attendance at support groups and rehabs and/or a residential program] and more. Some of the programs utilize re-written forms of the twelve steps. Others do not. And some people do maintain abstinence via their religious practices and no attendance at any sort of program.

     Some of us discover that a twelve step program is the only program available to us. Even if we are able to travel some distance to attend a meeting that is not X.A., non-X.A. meetings may not be held as often as we may like.  And yet, there are a number of people for whom a twelve step program is not sufficient, adequate, or appropriate. Fortunately, within the Interwebz, we can find others who are thriving outside of the 12 step rooms.

     The sorry state of treatment programs today does not allow for options other than the twelve steps. People are not told that there are other options or ways to recover. And as far as truly personalizing treatment to the individual addict, that does not usually exist. A few addicts may be lucky enough to land in a program that recognizes that medication-assisted recovery, concurrent mental health treatment, or harm-reduction strategies may be better suited for certain patients but that is not, generally speaking, the experience of many addicts who have sought treatment. And we just don't know enough of how to figure out which addicts will do best in which options. We need more research and more development of alternate resources for those seeking recovery today.

     The thing is, none of us practice recovery in the specific ways it was described in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are scattered groups of individuals who are attempting a return to A.A.'s early times. And that's cool.

     For some of us, that sort of thing is not appropriate or useful. We don't fit. We need the stuff that we resonate with, whether it is participation in X.A. as it has evolved in these times or some other form of social supports. And some addicts do not resonate with X.A. 

     We do not have to be addicts kept in uniforms lined up against the wall waiting for lunch to begin, as if we were still in a regimented high school. The unity of a healthy twelve step meeting is truly a wonder to behold. A healthy group acknowledges that we can practice our unity in spite of our differences.

     We are not all the same. Some addicts need something else in order to recover. So let's quit blaming them for failing out of what we have to offer. Treatment providers need to learn how to fit treatment to each individual addict rather than fitting each addict to their brand of treatment.

     I envision a place where the characteristics of each individual patient is respected and where patients are offered more than one way to recover. Someday, we will know enough to stop blaming those who fail out of the system and instead invest in research that will truly illuminate best practices in addiction treatment. Until then, more of us will die. 

sapphoq badly needing a coffee says: I count myself fortunate that I have been able to make a life for myself within the recovery landscape as it exists today in my geographical location. My hope is that all of us who seek a way out will indeed be able to discover a way out. But that isn't the way it is YET.

     
For information on how an atheist can remain abstinent in a twelve-step program, buy my e-book "Another Atheist in Recovery." If you aren't an atheist, then buy my e-book "Up the Rebels" which is a hacker/slacker kind of a novel.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/SpikedUp-Frog?store=allproducts&keyword=SpikedUp+Frog
Neither e-book has DRM. They are written in ePub format which can be read on many readers and also on your computer via Calibre or other reading program [but not Adobe tm].
I support the torrents so if someone wants to make my e-books available to others for free, that would be really cool-- and supported by the Creative Commons license that I used.