Posts Tagged ‘12 Steps of AA’

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

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

“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.” – Mark Twain

Posted: April 3, 2011 in Uncategorized
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What an amazing day here in sunny Atlanta, after 6 straight days of cloudy gloomy cover, it was great to tell my story at the 11:30 and hang out with a newcomer friend of mine in the rooms, and talk to him about sobriety about life and about the amazing gift of sobriety.

The first principle of the very first step is honesty. We must at least begin to be honest or we will drink again. If I’m not honest about my 1st Step then there is no hope at all for me what so ever. Fortunately for me, in writing out my first step, or all the negative consequences of drinking and drugging, written out was roughly ten plus pages. It was a glaring admission of powerlessness, and when I was really honest, it showed I was also capable of being a thief, a liar, and adulterer, and worse. All things I’d sworn I’d never be. But the disease of addiction twists and warps our thinking, and one lie turns into ten and ten into a thousand. An honest man is often times called a liar by other men, and only the honest man can say, I really am a liar. Because we all are. But in your heart, one always knows the truth.

And God, God knows the heart of every man woman and child on Earth, before your thoughts are your own God knows them, and he knows your every move before you make them. But more importantly God knows your heart. Are you good? Do you wish good of others, are you hopeful for good for others, or are you mean spirited, vengeful, spiteful, angry and petty? Is yours a heart of love or a heart of hate?

When I came into the rooms of alcoholics anonymous it felt like a switch had been turned in my head. That every thought I had was sick, dark or evil in some way shape or form. It felt like hell. I knew I had to change my thinking some way, some how. My sponsor said “You can’t think your way into right acting, but you can act your way into right thinking.” Or in other words, act as if. Even though all I wanted to do was drink and drug, DONT FUCKING DO IT NO MATTER WHAT, act as if the thoughts had already left me, and eventually they had. But they wouldn’t have if I’d acted on them. Eventually those thoughts did go from bad to good, and I don’t spend my days obsessing over dark things, or my mind go to the worst possible scenario at all times, for no reason. I really have had a spiritual awakening, and I’m grateful as I can be about it.

But I had to work for it. I had to be HONEST in all my dealings, in all my communication, with my sponsor, my peers, my friends, my family, everyone. The truth will always come out, one way or another it always has a way of making itself truly known.

Nobody on Earth is above the human condition, but if you can not grasp the first principle of the very first step, honesty, you are not going to make it very far in the program, no matter how much bullshit you spin. Honesty is crucial, there is no work around, and it applies to every move in the program from your stepwork to your relationships, to your communication with a higher power. Ultimately it comes back to buying and selling your own bullshit. If your mind is still manufacturing bullshit on one side, while the other side is buying it, then you aren’t going to be able to win that battle when the urges and cravings come to call and the voices in your head start getting louder and louder.

I have truly fucked up a lot of stuff in the program, but as my book will attest to, I am brutally honest. To a fault for fucks sake, hell I make fun of my own dick size in juvenile pirson I’m so fucking honest, and for a man, that is a big deal, hahahaha…

I digress… for the record that was from age 13-16, and I was a late bloomer… in fact, I’m still blooming… I’m getting older so I’m counting the sag, lol…

Life is good now, I’m 4.3 years sober or there abouts, I’m Hep C free, I’m saved, I’m in the best shape of my life, and I am honest with my sponsor, my family, and everyone I know, my entire life is quite honestly an open book. It’s the only way I know for an alcoholic, addict like myself to be free.

I honestly probably do spend a little too much time on facebook, and I could quit eating so many damn speckled eggs, but for the most part, my character defects are in check most days. That doesn’t mean I can’t be insensitive though, I am only a human being after all.

Thanks for everyone who came to the 11:30 this morning, it was one of my favorite times sharing my story ever. I didn’t expect to choke up crying when thinking about my father, but I guess we should remember the fallen to this disease from time to time, they weren’t always as bad as they were in those last few years, and I miss him very much.

Thanks again for the support, and hope everyone has an amazing weekend, I am eternally grateful for my AA family, and I hope the hand of AA is always what I give the impression of giving to the world, I never do mean any harm, but sometimes bridges get burned even with good intentions. I’m thick headed sometimes so if I said anything to offend anyone at that meeting, or talk too much about drugs, or drop too many eff bombs I do apologize, it’s just how I talk.

-JB Smith