Posts Tagged ‘12 Step Blog’

Whitney Houston said “These drinks are watered down” in her last days…

Posted: February 18, 2012 in Uncategorized
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There’s not an alcoholic in the world who has gone past that lonely invisible line, that doesn’t know what kind of living hell her life had become at that moment. The moment the drink stops working, and you can’t imagine your life with or without alcohol. For me, and I chronicle this all very vividly and in detail in my book Hippopotamus Sea, My Viral sobriety, the drinks not only stopped getting me drunk, but they began to taste of charcoal, or maybe brimstone, because I do not exaggerate when  I say its the closest thing to hell I’ve ever experienced. Following those dire moments for me I hit multiple crossroads, a few more chances, a few mere suggestions to go into AA and my sister had a heart to heart little barrage of words with me. All of it was a divine message of warning though, and I bet Whitney got about that same level of attention from the same God who saved me, I mean hell, she did grow up singing in the choir. Man, 49 years old, and really who knows how long it had been for her with the drink not working? Earth people just have no clue what that statement, what those witnesses grasped. When an addict’s drug stops working, the relief is over, hell has just descended. Somehow, through hundreds of AA meetings, and prayer and stepwork, I made it out, but Whitney died in a bathtub a couple of days later, and I’m just grateful that didn’t happen to me… hell I don’t think I had hot water when I was getting sober. Maybe being poor is a blessing.

So I have lots of other news to report as well, I am loving the new job, though it’s tough, the environment is competitive, and I enjoy the haggling, and the negotiating, and there is a lot of room for upward mobility. Also too, the headaches, the brainfog headaches, from what I considered to be Post Interferon Syndrome, seem to finally have abated a good deal since getting on Celexa prescribed by my Neurologist, that I finally decided to take after kicking and screaming against prescription meds and especially mood altering drugs for so many years. I can’t believe that my depression was causing physical pain in my head for over 3 years post TX and it’s probably too soon to say that’s what it was, but damn it all to hell if I don’t feel remarkably better, and I’m not able to make my 100 calls, do 2 hours in the gym and still commute 3 hours a day, and still feel pretty good about life in general. I mean, that is some amazing progress considering the debilitating nature of these headaches and the magnitude and quantity of their overbearing presence. I’m just humbled and grateful and must redact everything I’ve ever really written about prescription meds in this blog. I mean I’m still glad I discovered a baseline, emotionally, and physically in my sobriety, but wow, this Celexa has literally cured the worst of my brain fog headaches, and I seem to be able to think more clearly as well, which again is just a very big deal for someone who was forgetting names of friends and simple math and I mean its just a really big deal. Weeks one and two on the stuff was quirky and I  think when I’d started Interferon way back when I tried it and couldn’t get through the anxiety of the first week or two, but when I broke through week two I felt great. I’m only hesitant to declare it a total cure because i still did get hit with a migraine on Thursday, but I mean thats one headache out of seven days compared to like 6 out of 7, and the migraines and the brain fog headaches are two totally different types, one you can work thru, but the brain fog ones, felt like the day after an interferon shot and I’ve experienced them consistently every since treatment which has sucked ass, brutal, and made work next to impossible.

So once again, I learn that the more I know the less I understand, but I will take it, I will take relief and the ability to work, and work hard at a job I enjoy any day of the week and thank God for my sobriety, and all my friends and family who helped me and or tolerated me as I went through the pain of the last few years. You get to the point where you don’t talk about it much because you are tired of hearing your own self bitch. I mean I lost jobs to this thing, probably lovers and friends as well, but such is life. I am glad I found something that manages the pain, and if you’re having Post Interferon Syndrome related headaches I highly recommend trying Celexa, 20 mgs has helped me considerably and I just wish I’d tried it sooner but my old school AA nature really resisted it as being “not sober” but the Big Book does state “we are not doctors” and they have no opinion on outside issues, I probably shouldn’t have been so judgmental about medications before I just felt like they would block the sunlight of the spirit, and create the urge to drink again, but that hasn’t been the case for me at all.

Life and sobriety continue to be learn as you go I suppose, and I’m just glad I found some relief, and now feel competent to keep my job, because after losing two sales jobs back to back due to this pain, I was really concerned I simply wouldn’t be able to perform, but I’m averaging more calls than the entire class of 15 they hired, and things are going great. I still miss the little chaos creating alcoholic I dated up here in the mountains, but I’ve been good about not calling or contacting her as well. Whats the point? I can’t date an active alcoholic no matter how much I want to, haha, but I guess I’m still just a little stunted in that area, better to be single than with the wrong one though. Such is life, live and learn.

Condolences for Whitney, her family the poor daughter, and of course all our men and women who’ve passed since this war began, because in case you hadn’t noticed we’re still losing people every week. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, where we most certainly do still have about 15000 “embassy personnel” and military contractors. Looks like things are bout to heat up there as well. I think by October we’ll be driving some tanks up to the doorsteps of those reactors in Iran and sending in demo teams to destroy every bit, we’ll prolly stay out of the cities, but Iran can’t be let to have nukes, and air power alone will just slow them down, so I think Obama will try and pull a patriotic rally right before the election with a ballsy tank maneuver and you know what, it might just work, and get him reelected. We shall see, as we say, more shall be revealed!

If you haven’t already done so please check out my book, the cartoons on Youtube and post http://www.books4free.com on your facebook page to spread the word! Thanks so much and have a great weekend!

Jared Bryan Smith

My fasting experiment…

Posted: January 10, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Well I only lasted 32 hours, but I mean the results were tangible. I became hungry. haha… no I was definitely amazed by the clarity of my prayers, by the meaning and depth of reading scripture and there was a lot to be said for fasting overall. I still am skeptical of Free Chapel though to be quite perfectly honest.

I went there yesterday to pray prior to going down to do some step work with a sponsee at the 1 pm and low and behold there were, I’d say, about 20 people there already kneeling and praying at the front of the church. However I couldn’t help but notice the feeling of the whole place just being a big TV set. There was no cross, no alter, no stain glass windows, just a huge stage. Then to my left I heard some of those folks talking in tongues. I pretty much decided to end my fast and eat a cheeseburger right then and there. It was weird, and there was no church leadership, or even anything remotely christian about the praying…. I guess I’m just a little too skeptical still.

All that skepticism aside, I can’t argue that the Bible mentions praying and fasting quite a bit, more than I’d ever acknowledged before in my life and I’m glad to have brought it to my spiritual tool kit. I noticed in my meditation Sunday night after I was able to stay a lot more focused than usual… but then again I hadn’t really meditated in a long time anyway. Still, it put things into perspective.

I was able to recall just how powerful the feelings from last year were, and though similar, how far a cry this new woman was, and how both were but a taste of what is to come. Clearly I am not ready to receive the love God has in store for me at this moment but that doesn’t mean I won’t be one day in the future. Just that last year wasn’t right, and and this girl wasn’t the right one either, to be ok with that, to be patient, and that really I should have never let someone quite so sick get quite so close to begin with. One more set of lies I can no longer trust in myself I suppose, that I can date an active alcoholic because I won’t be stupid enough to develop feelings for her… nix that theory. I am just that stupid and more. No, I can’t fix people is part of the lesson. So don’t try and date or make love to projects that need fixing. I have enough fixing of my own to deal with, I need not take on any more challenges.

But after mediating, and praying yesterday, that hole in my heart was literally gone. So I guess a couple of lessons learned, calling the ball earlier reduces the pain, or the length of the pain, and also, fasting and praying is a great way to sharpen your connection to your higher power at any time. It filled the God sized hole right up in just over a 24 hour time frame. Reminding me of how human and delicate and savage I really am, and how much I really do need God.

Our program of AA is a spiritual program of action and that is one of the things I really enjoyed about fasting, is that it was an action event. Unlike so much else in the Bible, and outside of our 12 steps, it is something we can do, take action towards, and immediately begin reaping the benefits, feeling the results. if ever I begin to doubt God again I know I can use this tool, not eating, to immediately begin to feel his presence and force my hand to begin communicating. It reminds me of that saying, if you feel God is no longer in your presence, “Who do you think moved?” By fasting I get back to God, and I mean in a hurry. I must have prayed two dozen times, on my knees in that 30 hour period and my mind was crystal clear.

Regardless of my skeptical nature, I truly can not argue that Fasting has added an arrow to my quiver that I won’t soon forget.

I am grateful that pain of loss left me, grateful I start a new job next week, and grateful that joy and happiness are in my heart. I wish that girl the best, and I will remain her friend if she should call upon me, but I will not allow myself to get sucked back into an alcoholic sick situation. I will stay sober, and hopefully one day she’ll want sobriety based on my example. I wrote multiple letters I can’t send promoting AA and our way of life, but upon talking to my sponsor, which I already damn well knew, that is not how we operate. We are a program of attraction not promotion, so we’ll just have to wait by the sidelines, and move on, if it were right omnipotent God would make it so. As I’ve said before “If it’s right nothing in the world you do can prevent it from happening and if it’s wrong, nothing in the world can force it.” It is what it is, and I’m just grateful I can accept that more easily 5 years in than I could when I first got sober.

Jared Bryan Smith

Heart Warming Review of Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety

Posted: June 16, 2011 in Uncategorized
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As most alcoholics, I am often childish, oversensitive, and grandiose.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if writing this book was even a good idea, and I constantly worry about the harm I’ve done in being so brutally honest about my life, and especially in my sobriety, but ultimately I always come back to if I’m honest,  I have nothing to fear. Even with that knowledge, I am often saddened by the misunderstandings I may have inadvertently caused, or complications my gut level honesty may have arisen. A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that reads “First do no harm.” Which is the beginning of the Hippocratic Oath, which Doctors take, but I take it personally almost every time I read it. I really never intended on ever hurting anyone, especially anyone I loved. But a lot of unexpected, uncharted things happen when you write a book, or when you write in general. It is not for the faint of heart. You open up a vein and bleed into a keyboard, then wait as everyone dissects and examines the blood telling you just what’s wrong with it all, just what blood borne diseases your carrying around and how it affects them somehow, who choose to read it. It is often times more pain that I would have imagined it would be. I’m not good at criticism, constructive or otherwise.

Occasionally I get a note that makes it all worth while though. A week or so  ago I heard from a friend that had cleared Hepatitis C as an early responder, and that was definitely one of those days. He had read my book, and so that was definitely uplifting, but this review that a perfect stranger left on the blog wall yesterday, is absolutely the best one I’ve received in a long time.

“I have read three books on recovery in the last 2 months. The other 2 by well known authors.

YOUR BOOK spoke to me.. The other 2 seemed like a lot of dribble.

After all their words maybe, just maybe… in the very end did they say anything  to me.

YOUR book touched my mind and my soul   from the very first sentence..

Thank you and please keep writing !! Your amazing.

cc golem ”

Thanks so much CC! I really do appreciate it. For all I’ve lost in writing this book, knowing that a few people have been moved by the story is enough to solidify leaving the book up.

In the process of self publishing I’ve learned a lot about the mechanics of the publishing industry. I am tormented by the thought of taking it all down and just walking away from it all. I think I am probably not the first writer to have these thoughts. I wonder if it’s a good idea for me to control the entire process. I know there are parts of the process that could be handled better by others. For instance, I feel bad pimping my own pain. Having a literary agent would help with that. I feel terrible publicizing the book title on my own in different forums, and after just a few negative comments from overposting, I stopped all together. Then I get bitter at the lack of commercial success, and wonder how many women I’ve known just in the last year who’ve been pushed away by the content or their misunderstanding of what it means to be cured of Hep C, and I wonder, should I just take it all down?

And then I get a decent review, and I remember, that I didn’t write it for glory, or vanity, but to help other struggling alcoholics, or better yet, specifically people facing the daunting challenged of Hepatitis C. There are more options than 4 years ago when I went through it, the pain and duration of Interferon has been cut in half using Telaprevir or Boceprevir Telaprevir, but of course as the pharmaceutical industry is apt to do, since it’s half the time, it’s twice the cost, and most of us suffering from Hepatitis C, weren’t exactly on the tail end of financial windfalls, so the odds can still seem insurmountable, I’m sure. But at every corner in my journey of sobriety, God was there, every step of the way, I knew what the right thing to do was, and I was rewarded every time I took the next right step. Today, at 4.5 years sober the next right thing is just leaving the book and the blog up, regardless of personal pain or loneliness it may cause.

The occasional reader finds inspiration and that must be why God so compelled me to write it.

Thanks again CC, I appreciate the kind words more than you know. Please do me a huge favor and leave the reviews on Smashwords as well, which the link can be found under the picture of the book. I have a ton of good ones on Amazon but Smashwords is a bit bare for reviews. Thanks again so much!

– Jared Bryan Smith

Success is the steady realization of a worthy goal. – Earl Nightingale

Posted: June 5, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Funny both my father who died when I was 11 to suicide, but really to alcoholism and addiction, and my step father who stepped into my life right after his death, both listened to Earl Nightingale tapes almost religiously. I listen to them over and over, as well as other philosophers and sales training gurus, and they almost always make me feel amazing. I hear different things at different times in my life. When I was 18 and trying just to survive I heard, just try, and God will get your back, as I remember it seemed so daunting, such a huge prospect to provide for a family at 18, but sure enough, after only six months of really struggling we were making really good money and I bought my wife and I a house. Now, emerging from the wreckage of the tail end of 20 years of destructive drinking and drugging I’ve really been hearing a different message as I listened to this former Marine, WW2 vet with his amazingly soothing voice.

I’ve been hearing, “Not only is it good to be working towards a goal, but you, as a human being, as a man, are most happy, when working HARD And Diligently to a worthy goal.” I think back over my life, and so it is the clear uncut truth. When I was trying to buy Anne Marie that house and provide food for my son, or when I was first trying to get sober, or then once I’d started the book, and the project of Books4freee.com, immersed in those goals, that is when I am the most happy, useful and whole.

Applying Think and Grow Rich’s principles from Napoleon Hill, a man who studied all the giants for industry, from Henry Ford to Thomas Edison, and believed that having a stated goal you said aloud in the morning right when you wake ups well as at nite right before you go to bed allows the principle of autosuggestion to tap into Infinite Intelligence, or God and keeps you focused on that goal all day long. I’ve never actually employed the principle without it working… it’s almost magic… and more it makes my days go by so much faster, and ever better happier. When I was sitting around waiting for the software to be developed for my new project, I had too much time on my hands and I was not anywhere near as happy as now, that I’m out in the field selling it! I don’t think I would be very happy retiring, I am much happier working towards a goal.

I’ve often marveled at how similar Napoleon Hill’s program, with it’s principles of autosuggestion and the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous really are. He is a big believer in the Mastermind Principle, as were quite a few philosophers in recorded history, most notable, Jesus Christ who said “Wherever two or more are there in my name” there I am , and whatever is asked for shall be received, so how fitting is it that almost all sponsors tell you to pray thanks at the end of every day and please give me strength at the beginning. Not too far off from stating a Definite Mission Statement summarizing a steady realization of a goal, worthy to be had, both morning and night. What is a meeting if not a Mastermind Principle, stating that all of us are there to stay sober, just for today.

Every time I tried staying sober on my own, I lasted a week or two, tops and then I would “Change my mind about sobriety.” Not only would I not change my mind once joining AA, but the staying sober part became much much easier. As if the bond that connects us has it’s own weight, it’s own mass, it’s own properties that make 1+1 = 4 instead of 2. It does ya know. It’s magic. I love it and I love the rooms.

If you find yourself unhappy in AA, get a goal. Hell, get a job, and then a goal. Something to works towards. Your OWN dreams, not somebody else s. And DREAM BIG, that’s what makes it exciting!!!!

Check out my featured profile on :

Theaddictedproject.com

How awesome to be listed among the ranks of VIII Days Clean!!! Slowly but surely!!!

They’ve got a picture of my real face up there, but fuck it, anonymity is overrated, and how anonymous can you really be in the age of facebook with over 3k AA friends connected to your profile, lol.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Featured Author : The Addicted Project – Jared Bryan Smith

Posted: May 27, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Wow, what an honor, to be asked to do anything at all special regarding the book, but to be asked to be a featured author for a recovery based website, I mean, that’s damn near moving.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in recovery, I’ve not always been the kindest, most humble human being on Earth, but one thing I think I have done is stayed honest, and stayed true to the retelling of my unique story and the tragedy as well as triumph I’ve been through, from losing both parents, to stealing from my dying mother, to losing my mind and ultimately almost my life to Hep C. I was honest in the story, in the book Hippopotamus Sea, and though it doesn’t always paint a proud picture it paints an honest one of what that experience was like. To be asked by Joshua Robbins to be a featured author is more than an honor, it makes it all worth while.

Every review, every pat on the back, every small purchase of 99 cents from smashwords all make me feel like it was worth something. That spending three years writing it and shoveling through all that emotion, and the even more painful sharing of that emotion and allowing others to see all that vulnerability, is something that not a day goes by and I don’t at least ponder the good sense of, but ultimately, as time ticks on and I get letters and emails from other Hep C and Interferon sufferers, I am glad I was guided by my higher power to write, finish and bare my soul to the world. It was worth every drop of tears, sweat and blood, when a fellow artist reaches out to you and says “hey man, I like your work and I’d like to make you our featured author.” It means the world to me and I’m really humbled.

I’m humbled but also thrilled and excited to be a part of the project, and glad, able and willing to contribute on the project moving forward.

Show some love when you get a chance and check it out on:

http://www.theaddictedproject.com

and when you get a chance please read the book Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety from smashwords for 99 cents and please please please, leave a review as Indie publishing lives and dies by grassroots support. Thanks so much!

-Jared Bryan Smith

If I am honest, I need not fear what I’ve written…

Posted: May 13, 2011 in Uncategorized
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If I’m honest when I write, I don’t have to fear what’s been published. Especially if I’m writing passionately about moods and emotions which can change like the winds. The cool thing is that the internet is permanent, as in forever, not going anywhere, and it is conceivable that this blog will exist for my grandchildren or even further out. How cool is that? Immortality, but probably hidden into obscurity with all the other immortals. Haha, that is fine, I’m ok with that. I am special, just like everybody else. 🙂

It would be awesome to be able to read my grandfathers blog, who was a Colonel in the USAF, or even further back. Listen to their daily struggles and challenges. I would especially love to know if there were other alcoholics or OCD’s that learned how to either defeat the disease or manage their OCD, I mean that shit would have been invaluable.

We lost a kid in the rooms around north Atlanta yesterday. In and out for years, it’s pretty standard, par for the course, nobody I’ve ever met dies without first being introduced to AA, being shown the light, told the truth, and then making their own decision. It is with no amount of casualness they say, ” There are those who will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves” for this is the MOST COMMON THEME OF THOSE THAT DIE. They couldn’t fucking be honest with anyone around them. And if you can’t be honest with those around you, you most certainly can’t be honest with yourself.

This blog, went from an average of 100 hits or so a day up to 1435 or so on the day after the Osama blog, with the Mark Twain misquote, and then I introduced all the eff bombs, and as fate would have it, the blog traffic, nosedived to roughly 20 or so a day. I think the eff bombs takes it off the wordpress search results or something. So fucking what. I really don’t care. I don’t write this for traffic, or even to sell books so much, as I do to record my history, get down in written format what I’m honestly struggling with as I get through year 4 of sobriety. Having overcome some serious challenges this year, I am glad  I have a written, honest and thorough description of it, recorded for my own posterity, and if I’m lucky, my bloodlines later on down the road. God willing they don’t all get into Pro Wrestling and at least one of them decides they like to read and hell maybe even write. And if not, at least I’ll have it all for my own records in 10-20 -50 years, whatever, I’m only 33, a lot can happen between now and death. And unlike that poor kid Bryan who drank himself to death in his twenties behind the same movie theatre my best friend Shane Oleander from my book had his heart attack in and later died from, I will God willing live a long and fruitful life, not marred by delusional thinking, but clear, concise, and when I die, people will be able to say, he lived most of his life honestly. Even if it was humiliating or emberressing, he was honest, and therefore able to work on those things that were skewed in his life.

Honesty is the ace, the trump card in this program, it makes all things possible. It is the first principle of the first step. Everyone I know who is dead from this disease from my Dad to the latest victim Bryan T. , whose family was so tired of his antics they weren’t even going to have a funeral but instead were just cremating the body, cause that’s how drunks die, ALL SHARED AN INABILITY TO BE HONEST. If you want to ever get sober, or HELL JUST NOT DIE, start being honest. Or prepare for the worst. You aren’t special, nobody escapes the inevitability of this disease, you will die, quick or slow, if you continue  being dishonest, lying, cheating, stealing, getting fucked up and giving the finger to the creator who has showed you a way out, that window will close.

If you are in the dark, I pray you find light. It’s never too late to come back to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

-Jared Bryan Smith

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” – Mark Twain.

Posted: May 2, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Mark Twain once wrote about a parade of soldiers, recruits mostly joining up to go fight the Mexican border wars after the Civil War, and it goes, “I have no urge to go kill men I’ve never met” but the difference of course is he never saw with his own eyes the evil perpetuated by the enemy, I believe in the case of Bin Laden, Twain would have been moved beyond pacifism, because he, cynic though he was, also appreciated and loved civilization, and hated violence in the name of God, slavery, and all other forms of man insanity. Western civilization has many flaws, but turning the dial back ten centuries would have appalled Twain even more which is what Bin Laden’s dream world looked like.

I walked ground zero about nine days after 9/11 and I remember the smoldering rubble, still smoking, piled higher than the buildings around still standing. I remember the photographs of the missing, the drawings of faces plastered all over the walls as you approached ground zero, but mostly I remember the people, still suffering, waiting, hoping against hope nine days later that somehow, their missing relative was still alive, that it was all somehow a terrible mistake. Denial is a powerful powerful emotion. Denial hits everyone on Earth in times of great distress, and 9/11 was no exception. I will never forget holding victims families, crying on my shoulder, having to tell them their family was dead. It felt cruel, but it was honest. They were dead, and they weren’t coming back. We in recovery are very familiar with denial, drugged out kookie ass looking people telling you all about their spiritual experience, claiming to know about sobriety, screaming to the world they know best, when their lives are clearly a wreck. Denial is ugly, and the humility it takes to get past it, is rare. What it really takes is a gut level honesty, and few find it. People will live a lie, nine days later, walking around, hoping against hope that their dead loved one didn’t die. It’s really a lack of acceptance. Stubborn selfishness… but it happens to a lot of us, in recovery and outside. Denial is a human trait.

Ten years later we got that motherfucker, with his son, with his wife, and killed them all. Good riddance. Rot in hell you backwards ass egomaniac murderer. Mark Twain didn’t see the towers fall. We did. Fuck Bin Laden and fuck all his followers, and anyone who kills innocent civilians in the name of whatever the fuck. Let it be a lesson, if you fuck with the United States, we will invade your country or your neighbors and hunt you down until we find you, kill you, and your family and dump your fucking body at sea. Thanks to all those sung and most especially those UNSUNG heroes that for security reasons, clearances, and mostly vows to their nation, can never speak about what it is they’ve done in the massive ten year effort to bring this son of a bitch to justice. There has been much blood, time and energy sacrificed that WILL NEVER HIT THE NEWS, and those men and women will never be able to whine about shit in a meeting, or to a shrink, they will just have to walk alone and carry their burdens between themselves, their God, and their superior officers. A prayer of thanks to everyone whose sacrificed in whatever way their nation asked them to, to get this piece of shit and remove him from the Earth.

If you are in denial about anything else in your life, be honest with those around you that love you, your family, your network, your sponsor, and ask them how they think you’re doing, and really listen to what they have to say, don’t just wait for a chance to speak. Listen… sometimes the truth hurts like hell, just before it sets you free.

To read more about my story of recovery from alcoholism, addiction, Hep C, and Interferon, including walking ground zero a couple of weeks after the 9/11 strikes, please read my book  4 free on:

http://www.books4free.com

or for kindle, nook, or ipad for only .99 cents on Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19066

and available in hardback from amazon:

-Jared Bryan Smith

Drinking Wisdom: Proverbs 23:29

Posted: April 15, 2011 in Uncategorized
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This has been a strange week for me. I thought something hadn’t affected as deeply as it really had, and seeing a few images brought it all back to light, and made me sad. To this day I just don’t understand how women dismiss chemistry so easily, as if it’s just something that the next gust of wind will bring along. For me it is rare and it just seems so simply disregarded by women sometimes, it makes me wonder if we even feel things the same way. Regardless, some weeks in sobriety, all you can do is just stay sober and your mission is accomplished. A day above ground, a day building or at the very least not destroying is better than the life of the past where every moment is slow suicide, and fortunately, though love continues to be a barren desert wasteland for me, opening the bible I continually find wisdom and sage advice over 6000 years young  that still hits home.

This passage is striking to me because it’s one of those moments in time that mean more to you once you’ve experienced it first hand. If you’ve not detoxed from alcohol and drugs you’ve not experienced what this Proverb is discussing, but man if you’ve felt it, you know it’s the truth and the fact that its in the bible and that old is striking.

Proverbs 23:29 (NIV)

Who has woe? Who has sorrow?

    Who has strife? Who has complaints?

     Who has needless bruises? Who had bloodshot eyes?

Those who linger over wine,

     who go to sample bowls of mixed wine.

Do not gaze at wine when it is red,

     when it sparkles in the cup,

     when it goes down smoothly!

In the end it bites like a snake

     and poisons like a viper.

Your eyes will see strange sights

     and your mind imagine confusing things.

You will be like one sleeping on the high seas,

     lying on top of the rigging.

“They hit me,” you will say, “but I’m not hurt!

     They beat me, but I don’t feel it!

When will I wake up,

     so I can find another drink?”

WHEEEEWWW boy, that hits home. Man I pray you don’t relate too closely to those words, because let me tell you something, if your mind is imagining as confusing things as my mind was imagining in the end days of my drinking, you are fucked in the head, lol. And that quote about getting hit and never getting hurt, that’s like jumping off a bridge and not getting a scratch, or wrecking a car going 120 mph down 75, or any number of fights and scenarios I was in in which I just didn’t or couldn’t get hurt, though I wanted to die. In that Nicolas Cage movie “Lord of War” he refers to it as the curse of invincibility and I talk about it in my book some. It’s hell, because you’re miserable and want to die, but somehow you just keep getting lucky, punched and not feeling the pain, dreaming of a drink, while you lay sleeping. When can I wake up and find another drink? That’s not a monkey on your back, thats a fucking guerilla. That obsession had been lifted in me and that my friends is proof to me that there is a God. My dad blew his head off with a .357, clean off, because he believed the obsession to drink and drug was never going to be lifted, that there was no cure, that RECOVERY didn’t exist.

I’m 4.5 years sober and I promise you it does, you can get the monkey off your back, go to meetings, do 90 in 90, get a competent sponsor and begin building in your life instead of destroying. If you think you’re only hurting yourself you fail to realize that every day you don’t use your God given gifts is a day you didn’t live up to your purpose, we’re not here to selfishly serve ourselves, so get busy living or get busy dying. Make some meetings and share your experience strength and hope. God is good.

Check out the book at the link below and its on smashwords for kindle nook and the link via the links on the blog for .99 cents, so go check  it out and please like Hippopotamus Sea on facebook! Thanks so much!

-JB Smith

Books4free.com – Hepatitis C, Alcoholism, Addiction Memoirs, LSD, The Grateful Dead, Amsterdam and Juvenile

Posted: October 15, 2010 in Uncategorized
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So the momentum is beginning to slow down as the facebook crowd who were awaiting books, are now reading rather than ordering I suppose. At the peak the book was in the Top 100 Alcohol and Recovery books, ranking at #67, but unfortunately I don’t know how many books that is in that given hour. On the overall ranking it’s maxed out at 32,000, which isn’t bad considering there are millions of books on Amazon, but now that it’s back in the 100-200k range, I’m scared to see where it will be in a week. Moving forward reviews, word of mouth, emails, and networking will be more influential than facebook. Guess I need to start sending to reviewers.

The book chronicles being born into alcoholic family, rebelling, dosing LSD/Acid very young, and raising hell through his teenage years, stealing, running away, wrecking cars you name it, until he finally settles down however briefly to have a son, and play family for a few years, however poorly the execution. After divorce at 22 he picks up where he left off, raising cane again, and really doesn’t even begin to slow down as his mom lies dying of cancer. After she’s gone his drinking takes on new sincerity and the challenge I really took on is towards the end of the book where I do my best to explain madness and insanity, delusions, and paranoid schizophrenia to the normal, “earth” person as we recovered alcoholics refer to the unafflicted. It’s hard to explain the color red though to a blind man, and I wonder if anyone will understand the enormity of my massive, intricate, detailed derangement. All I could do was try and explain how lost I’d gotten, how lost I stayed for so long, and how far I’d come back. It’s not a short journey, but given the number of people, just in our class of 1996, that are now dead to alcoholism, addiction  or something related, it’s a story worth reading, and worth understanding, as the solution, the 12 Steps of AA, can work on really any spiritual malady, but most especially addiction.

If the AA 12 Steps could work on me, who went to the edge of the abyss, looked in and had the abyss stare back in, invade and pay rent for years, it can seriously work on anyone. I really wrote the book I wish I’d read when I went to pick up a Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I wanted some hope, I wanted a story as dark as mine, detailed and honest, and messy with guts and humiliation, and something bigger than myself. When I lived that firsthand, I felt it was worth writing, and though a little long, as I’m beginning to hear back, it’s worth the read. If you think it’s long reading, thank God you didn’t live it!

-Jared Bryan Smith


Hepatitis C, Anthony Kiedis, Johnny Delirious, Homeopathic or Pathetic … Hep C Reality

Posted: May 28, 2010 in Uncategorized
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I did it. After almost two years of writing my book about Hep C, and hell, 3.5 years of thinking about the story, I decided to google the competition out there and see who else had written stories involving Hep C, and of course, as the challenges are so parallel, sobriety. I don’t know why I was so reluctant to see what was out there, other than, I just didn’t want to be discouraged by seeing like Hemingway’s surprise Hep C autobiography I’d never known about or something, and I just wanted to knock it out before I looked. Anyway, I found some stuff out there, but nothing that blew  my socks off.

First and foremost, you have Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue, a great book I’ve heard, as he’s the front man for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and God knows we’ve all heard, Under the Bridge Downtown, and can hear the description of his pain as he shoots heroin for the first time. Surely we can expect him to have had his own Hep C struggles, and of course the sobriety struggles that go along with it. I love one of his quotes I just found because it is exactly what happened to me regarding drugs and alcohol:

“You know I love pot, and I love beer, but I am totally sober, just because it completely stopped working for me.
Anthony Kiedis”

Man, I remember hearing that in an AA meeting before it happened, and thinking, What Bullshit. But whoa, what fear descends upon the madman when it occurs. Of an addict for 15+ years, when that day comes that the drugs and alcohol quit working, you will feel fear, and loneliness that few others ever experience. Your best friend of years disappears instantly, and you can’t imagine life with or without drugs and alcohol. I say this is my book, but it remains one of my favorite quotes: “Most of God’s miracles, first felt like a punch in the gut.” Eventually I would be grateful for that day, but I digress. So Anthony Kiedis had Hep C, wrote an autobiography, and says some pretty good shit about sobriety and Hep C. However, a lot of it was rock star, elite, Pie in the Sky treatment that Joe America simply doesn’t have access too. He says he beat it with a controversial treatment called Ozone gas, which is presumably, painless, miracolous, and just as effective as 48 weeks of hellish painful Interferon Treatment. My only objection here, is that if you ask your Dr., any major Gastroentologist in the United States about Ozone, they will laugh it off, or claim the expense is too high, that it isn’t FDA Approved, or just say that the only thing that is medically recognized to cure Hep C is Interferon…which is by the way, expensive, painful, depressing, and maddening. It’s like saying well, the common man has to take Chemotherapy for Cancer, but I, being a pompous rock star, was able to take nitrus oxide, and laugh away my disease.

“And finally yes, it’s true that Anthony Kiedis has hepatitis C. He contracted it somewhere along in his escapades and it is believed that it was caused by the drugs.  He is combating the infection with ozone administered by flea’s and his personal nurse Sat Hari. Ozone is a “wonderful-smelling” gas that has been used legally in Europe to treat everything from strokes to cancer. Most of this information can be found in his biography “Scar Tissue”.”

A wonderfully smelling gas. Interesting. I wonder how true any of this is? It’s all legal in Europe huh? If this is the case, why does the US not use it. Maybe I don’t know shit, and it’s a huge conspiracy against Americans, but as an American I was given one option, by my medical Dr., to defeat Hepatitis C, and that was Interferon, and though it was painful and hellish it did seem to work. After 6 months the disease was clear from my system, and after 2 years, I’m going in today to get it checked again, and hopefully will receive the same result. Hep C free and clear. I’ll ask my Dr. about Ozone today.

The other book I was able to find out there was written by “Johnny Delirious, Hepatitis C, Cured, who claims, from what I could tell briefly that he beat the disease, which he was diagnosed with in the late stages and given 8 months to live, with only homeopathic means. Ie… vitamins and sunshine, and positive thinking. Quite honestly his site links to so many sites charging for Homeopathic cures, you can’t help but think that this guy is just marketing to a demographic already susceptible to delusions and pie in the sky instant gratification solutions. I wonder how much money he’s made selling this book, and/or linking back to all the homeopathic solutions, that have absolutely no medical validity, and my MD claims are bullshit. Milk thistle? Gimme a break. This Virus will attack and kill your liver, and some dipshit is out there selling books about refusing a liver transplant and beating the disease on his good karma and GNC pills. Gimme a break. No I haven’t read the book, and no I don’t plan on it. I don’t know about Ozone treatments or homeopathic cures to Hep C, just as much as I don’t know how to moderate drinking or drugs. I got into this mess, taking short cuts, shooting for the angles, instant gratifications, and feel better cures, and the only way out of the hole I dug for myself, was the long ardous road of Interferon that an actual MD, speciliazing in the liver, suggested I take and whom laughed off, Ozone, and or Milk Thistle, and the other bullshit he offers on his website…

Also, never take medical advice from a guy whose last name is Delirious. Just saying. Maybe it worked for him, I haven’t , and won’t read the book, but for the average, Hep C infected addict, alcoholic, your options really don’t include Ozone, and or Vitamins and Milk Thistle. Follow your Gastroentologist’s advice and take Interferon. It’s tough, but it works, and these other cure alls are just that in my opinion.

On the other hand if Ozone does actually work, and the medical community has kept it out of the states, for profitability reasons or something that sinister, then Shame on them. Interferon changes you for life. If there were medical data, and access to Ozone, like rock stars apparently have, I would recommend it be the new treatment, but I have to assume, the United States, with the best, most educated Dr’s in the world, have a better reason than profits, to keep Ozone out of the US, and Interferon as the major treatment for this debilitating disease. I don’t know, but it just seems really strange, the only two other books out there, offer these fairy tale, delusional options, that weren’t available to me, or any of the other Hep C patients I’ve met here in the States. I guess, that makes my book original then. Unless of course, you are a rock star, then call Anthony Kiedis, he seems to have access to magical gas that smells great.

Please take a moment to read about my  journey through insanity, addiction, Hep C, Interferon, and AA on http://www.books4free.com and check out the strong reviews on amazon at:

-JB Smith