Posts Tagged ‘Hep C 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

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.” – Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis

Posted: November 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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This quote reminded me of something today. Reminds me that I didn’t get sober to settle. That I don’t care about money, the way my father and mother pined over it, broke their backs for it, sweated it out, and died for it. I would rather work more hours, in a physically demanding job, alone, than ever go back to that state of being where I valued status or ego, or place in society more than my own peace of mind. I’ll not settle for the lesser state of mind from which I came. Sobriety is incredible. I would rather be sober and homeless, broke, riding on the bus, than care about what kind of car I drive, or what kind of job I have, or what people think of me. I have given it all away, more than once, and I’ve gotten it all back in sobriety, and that which hasn’t returned, I did not want.

I was great at sales, when I lied and manipulated a lot. But I was not happy.

If my sales career comes back to me on my terms, than so be it, but for the time being I will be content to take a less stressful job, and simply replace that energy, effort and worry I would be devoting to my career in the practice of writing. The autobiography needs to be cut down, edited, commercialized before marketed to paperback, but the format of Books4free.com works well, and now I just need to really find a vein of content where I can sink my voice, and spend some time devoted to a story that spans centuries… or maybe just multiple complex characters. God knows I’ve known a few.

I’ll return to the editing of the Hippopotamus Sea when I have some more time and money, but for now I think I’m going to begin just by practicing writing some short stories. They may not be great. They may only be rough drafts and I may even mix up character names or use them to line my kittens litter box, but I figure I may as well write them in the this blog as I  can hide and unhide them as necessary, or even go back and edit them. I’m not sure how the copyrights work on a blog, but hopefully, I’ll just prove I have enough content that I’m worth hiring over time, haha… But the basic premise and idea is that I write a few short stories per genre and see what I enjoy writing the most.

War Stories

Sci Fi

Horror (including but not limited to Vampires and Zombies)

Romance (though cynicism may reign in this topic)

Job Interview 2011

Sales Job 2011

Modern Church Experience

Divorce w a Child

Hunting & Fishing Stories

More or less this is to practice and exercise writing in a public setting… I figure if I just start with something, some sort of goal oriented project, I’ll accomplish more than just randomly writing cartoons that are hit or miss. This way, I’ll at least be working on my overall body of work. And I can feel better about my career in sales going to the sidelines for a while, as it’s made me so terribly unhappy in my sobriety. In my drinking and drugging it was always the means to an end, but soberly, I just feel like to much of a fake always trying to smooze, manipulate, make friends with people for the purpose of selling. I’d rather do an honest days hard labor and be able to write than to sell… Maybe one day I’ll be able to do both, but for right now, just really putting my heart and soul into cultivating my writing seems like it makes sense. I guess we shall see. haha, I make plans and God laughs!

-Jared Bryan Smith

GA 58th Prepaid Convention in Gainesville, Amazing Speakers!

Posted: October 28, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Wow what an incredible line up of speakers last weekend. I’d forgotten how powerful a huge group of drunks can be while listening to incredible stories of recovery. As Charlie Y. said to me outside “These things are a real shot in the arm to your recovery, but sometimes by Tuesday its right back to the same ole meetings, haha.” He had a great story, and funny as hell. All the speakers I thought were strong and funny. And the leaves up here in the mountains have just been magnificent this year.

I even experience less headaches up here by the water.  Someone said to me “It’s less negative ions” and I don’t know if that’s true or not, but damn if it doesn’t seem to be true at least. Which takes me back to my last posting about Post Interferon Syndrome. I certainly don’t mean to be throwing a pity party. I’m very grateful to be Hep C free and I recommend everyone getting tested and getting treated as soon as humanely possible. I only stress that the value of clear thinking, and positive thinking as well, is now so acutely meaningful to me, that “Brain Fog” is a real unwelcome permanent side effect some days. I only want their to be studies to test whether there are ways of improving the side effects and bringing normalcy to people’s lives who are suffering from such things. It took me 20 years of drinking to figure out how valuable my state of mind is one Earth, and right when I did I polluted it with some of the harshest poisons on Earth, Interferon, and I just wish somebody, somewhere was studying the long term side effects, and potential fixes.

I’m not advocating permanent pity party, or a wallowing in whining, but I think it is important to state the issue clearly, consolidate folks who are feeling this way, and petition the scientific community, especially the billionaire profit makers of Merck and Roche who have gained so much, to at least study some of us, if not all.

Still it felt like I’d complained a considerable amount and then that very weekend I ran into quite a few people who’d done a year of Interferon and had not got rid of the virus. Please understand, I am grateful I cleared it, and I do recommend everyone get tested early and treat early as they say it’s more effective the younger you do it, which was the sole reason I went ahead and jumped on the grenade… well that and my liver enzymes were through the roof and liver failure was a possibility, so it’s not like I had too much choice, but still. Get it done, but also, be aware it’s no small thing. It’s more than flu like symptoms. It hurts, and it changes the way you think, feel, and even bleed.

So what do you do afterwards, double down on recovery, call your sponsor more, go to more meetings, and try not to fall into the Pity Party trap chronic pain sufferers. I’m looking into finding a support group, and it’s probably something I should have done a long time ago. People close to me have said I’m always angry, and it’s not true, I’m not angry, but there are days when I am having intense headaches and I don’t know how to fix them. When they come on, and admittedly at 3.5 years post TX they come fewer and fewer, but in year one post TX, they were several times a week, so that too gives me hope. Allen, the guy who was originally talking about Hippopotamus Sea in my meetings, (which I’d later come to find out was Hepatitis C) said it was about 5 years before he was totally better, so there is hope as well. Hope that the post TX side effects while continue to slowly get better. And of course for people just finding out they have  Hep C, they don’t even have to go the full year, Telaprevir now reduces it to six months, so surely those side effects will be better as well.

The Prepaid Convention in Georgia was amazing this year, and I think I’ll be incorporating that into my sobriety moving forward. No matter what I am saved from the obsession to drink and drug and that was killing me much more fast than any other thing on Earth, and I no longer have to suffer from that. Hep C, headaches, fatigue, I will manage, and I am grateful to God, and to AA for holding my hand as I walked this journey, and with patience, and faith, I pray every year post TX will get a little better than the last. Exercise, diet, prayer and above all else perseverance will pull me through.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address the issues, and ask big pharma what they’ve found, and if they know of any potential fixes, and if not, which I doubt, then to get fucking on it. They aren’t fictional side effects, and we’d appreciate the help or at the very least some studies be done.

Thanks for reading and if you haven’t read my story of sobriety, Hepatitis C and the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, its all available for free in my book Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety by Jared Bryan Smith on http://www.books4free.com or in hard back on Amazon at the link below! Thanks so much for all your support!

– Jared Bryan Smith

Perserverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. -Walter Elliott

Posted: October 1, 2011 in Uncategorized
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They say perseverance is the principle behind the 10th step, and those are some of my favorite promises the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
Alcoholics Anonymous pp.84-85

I’ve found those to be 100% true. And that is the real miracle of all of the entire process. I sometimes forget who bad the obsession was for me when I first came in, and how amazingly different my state of mind is now. How thankful I am.

2011 has thrown me many curve balls. I’m still learning to cope with some of them. I can still question why God would bring my emotions to such an incredible pinnacle, only to have the rug pulled out from under me, on so many different aspects of my life. Perseverance is not so much of a trait as just a dogged necessity. In the steps. In life. And for damn sure in business.

I’ve had multiple recruiting companies in the Atlanta market over the past 10 years and the last one i sold for a small amount and folded up shop about two months before the crash of 2008 as I’d anticipated some rough waters ahead and I was right. I’d just finished with Interferon and I was tired. My mental functioning suffered quite a bit after Interferon as well and that was a major concern, that I’d hoped time would fix. It has to some degree, but I’m still operating at maybe 70-80% of where I was prior to beginning Interferon treatment. Had I known that I definitely would have waited until it was necessary to treat my Hep C, because I rely heavily on my intellectual faculties, as we all do, and now I’m slowly but surely coming to the realization that they aren’t coming back. Not to where they were prior to treatment. My photographic memory, and razor sharp quick wit are simply gone. Perhaps though, that adversity will sow the seed of success, making me become more resourceful, and more dependent on technology and a better way to recruit.

And so, 3 years after folding up shop on my last company, Seek And Employ, I have restarted another recruiting company in Accounting and Finance, but also this time I shall recruit for IT Positions as well. So many of the company owners I knew through the recession had diversified, that I think that will be a good strategy to prevent the company from grinding to a halt should another recession hit the market. I could have survived 2008, but I thought I’d find job security in working for others. 3 years and 3 layoffs later, I realize, we create our job security. Once you’ve owned a company it’s hard to go back to work for someone else I’ve found. So perseverance.

I start my 4th recruiting company in the Atlanta market, lol. 4th times the charm right? God I hope so.

Books4free has been an interesting side project, and I’m glad I finally have it operational. One day I’d like to come back and spend some more time writing, but for now, with my son 3 years from college, I need to spend some time building up a war chest for him, finish out paying my child support, and not make any major foolish mistakes while I complete the mission of raising my son, staying sober, and launching my new recruiting company. Yes, there will be sacrifices, and yes recruiting isn’t as exciting as software sales, marketing or humping the hills in Afghanistan with a Colt Automatic machine-gun, but there is no shame in being an entrepreneur who in just a weeks time has several Major Fortune 500’s agreed to work with him, and though lackluster, and not as thrilling, I am grateful I have the opportunity to represent such major companies and just go get the job done, recruit for them, and hit my goals.

And so I create daily habits, check lists, for the monotony of the recruiting business day cycles. Wake up, shower, work out, coffee, linkedin, recruit, certain number of calls, repeat. Day in, day out, persevere until you hit your goals. It is very lucrative, and habit makes it easier, it’s just doing it that is challenging. Get rid of distractions, turn off facebook, yahoo, and only blog on Saturdays will be the new rule. Focus, take advantage of the time given, and capitalize on it. Be the captain of your ship, the master of your own destiny, and make it happen!

And persevere. Remember all things are temporary. This too shall pass. Do the next right thing, do it well, and have faith that you will succeed. In sobriety, in business, and maybe one day even in love. Stranger things have happened, but right now, just focus on the goals at hand. Nothing else matters, but starting the recruiting biz now.

Writing, publishing books, etc. all needs to take a back burner. No need to take it down, just need to focus on restarting my career back up. Everything else will fall back in line once that is resolved. I literally have a finite dollar amount that is reachable and scalable, that I could hit in the next 3o days and be done with my legal responsibilities for child support… forever. That is amazing. That is sobriety. Close to 10k more, and I’m done for life. I mean, 5 years ago, 8 years more of child support sounded like a long frickin time, but now, it’s right around the corner. And conceivably I could hit those numbers in the next 90 days if I really stay focused. And whats more, I know they could really use the help right now, and how amazing would it be if I could pay them a lump sum all at once. That is my goal for right now. Get this recruiting company going, help my sons family out, and reinvest the rest back into the company to then pay off the car.

None of these dreams would be even close to possible if I were still drinking or using. One of our favorite arguments while out there used to be, “Well I’m not hurting anyone else, only myself.” It’s such a fucking selfish ass lie. When you tell yourself this blatant bullshit you’re not taking into consideration all the good you may potentially be doing instead of the harm. You erase the pain you cause those you love around you, the worrying, or even hell just the lack of family time you’d be spending, and that time, it never comes back. It’s gone forever. I know cause  both my parents are dead and buried. If I could have an hour back with my mom, sober… man I would give anything. But I’m fortunate still, to have finally woken up before I’d burned out the good years of my adult life. I’m now spent almost five years sober, doing good, instead of harm. Helping instead of hurting, and now I’m on the precipice of being able to help my family out much much more, because of my sobriety. Nothing would be possible without that.

Thank you God for my sobriety, my amazing family, and all my friends in AA. Perseverance pays off dividends like you wouldn’t believe. Please give me the strength to succeed in this business as never before, learning the lessons of the last three, and give me faith to believe that with you all things are possible.

Hang in there, the tide will go out again, the seasons will change. If you are bored just wait, everything changes and nothing on God’s green Earth happens without a reason.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Laid Off… That sounds so much better than it really is.

Posted: August 19, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Getting laid, or jerking off, now that sounds at least moderately enjoyable… but being laid off, just blows. In sobriety I’ve now been laid off three times in less than 3 years. This never happened to me when I was out there drinking and drugging. Now mind you there are some details I’m leaving out. Sure, sure, I was told I am actually free to continue to work, but commission only. I don’t think my car payment or ex wife will accept such terms however, and therefore I’ve been looking for work all week long. I’m fortunate in that I do have a good solid ten years of recruiting experience under my belt and I’ve had a few nibbles.

I tell you also, the romantic notion of becoming a soldier continues to haunt my conscience. I have always romanticized the horrors of war. I have studied history, read dozens of books, and know academically how horrendous, monotonous, boring and terrifying war can be. I know the stats of double and triple amputees coming out of Afghanistan, especially those of Infantry, where I imagine myself going, and I know that this time last year we’d seen an increase of IED’s up to about 1000 and that this year that number is already at 1800 or almost double. It also seems they have something more potent taking helicopters out of the sky though nobody is about to admit that publicly. I know all these facts like the back of my hand, and yet I can’t escape the notion that I would love to serve, and to fight. I would love to fly helicopters into battle ultimately.

My record is such, bar fights and dui’s etc, that I don’t qualify for Security Clearance to be a medic or a pilot though, so the recruiter tells me I need a good year of good behavior to earn security clearance and then apply for Helicopter Pilot School. And my brain tells me no, but heart tells me yes. I pray for guidance, and I hear no voices, but when I think of the adventure while sitting in church, it’s like  thinking of the woman who slipped away, my heart pounds, adrenaline flows and chills radiate out from my spine through my bloodstream. I love the idea of it all. The journey.

Andrew Jackson once said “I was born in a storm, and a calm does not suit me.”

I know how he feels. I’m having a hard time getting motivated by mere corporate survival and sales goals as of late. Though I know the math is terrible, the odds dismal my age a huge obstacle, I can’t stop thinking I might be happier if I just followed my heart every once in a while instead of listening to my fact filled brain. I will continue to pray about I suppose.

I go back to Hemingway at war, and though I know I’m no Hemingway, you just can’t deny it would give a powerful subject to a voice I now have a lot of faith in. Also with 5k friends under my real name and about 2k friends under Jared Bryan Smith on facebook I could blog and post videos and picture from the war zone that would be mind blowing. Again, food for thought, just some of the things a grandiose alcoholic considers when his career gets sidelined yet again. We shall see.

-Jared Bryan Smith

 

Crazy weird dreams last night…

Posted: August 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Then I wake up to the second time in a week where I’ve had an email in my inbox stating “We need to chat.” So last time it turned out to be a very positive thing for the marketing company I work for but this  one was regarding the book, and damn it if I don’t get nervous as hell when someone leaves something like that. Just seems so ominous. “We need to chat” Sounds like a woman getting ready to give you bad news or something, which i why I haven’t had a woman all year, I’m tired of bad news, haha..

Man those dreams were kicking too. After a very long week, I decided not to do anything at all Friday  night but just relax at home and I ended up falling asleep around 11 or so. Had several days in a row of good workouts, I really can’t under emphasize the importance of exercise in sobriety. I’ve noticed I  even began getting depressed if I don’t work out over a few days in a row. The human body was meant to exercise, for 50k years or whatever we had to to eat, and only in the past 100 or so has man been able to provide a living and be stationary, never moving a muscle. Our brain chemistry requires those endorphins in the blood, and I only wish I’d begun adding exercise to my sobriety earlier, because damn if it doesn’t make me much more happier overall… but I digress, so yeah, I crashed hard and slept deep and came up with some very strange dreams.

In my dreams my baby sister, invited me to one of her hot 24 year old friends engagement party or something, and I showed up a little too early. I am not that great at new social situations and I found myself self conscious that my pants were too loose and that someone would see my ass crack. So I drifted away from the party into a laundry room, and in the room, there were several items of clothing scattered around the room, and one of them was a slim narrow chicks belt. That wasn’t going to work, but then I saw some shoe laces. I knelt down to get the shoelaces and in that instant, the pretty 24 year old blonde who was to be married, slid into the room. I stood up surprised and embaressed and in another split second another person came in, this was a guy though, of medium frame, with intelligent frantic looking eyes. Cool and collected he seemed, but egotistical with an aire of superiority, no amount of humility could shake from him. He began mocking the girl who was in tears, and she kept saying, you have to leave , you have to go, and he mocked and taunted her, called her stupid, said he was going that he just wanted to come by and say goodbye. So I stepped up closer, and suddenly as only happens in dreams the shoelaces had become a wire coil, like that you would expect to see exiting a washer/dryer or over, and I was stripping it down, listening to the two of theirs drama. They seemed not to notice me after all, I really did not know either of them very well, but had a loyalty to the girl since it was my sisters friend. I began to tense, if things did get ugly, I knew I could take this guy, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. God knows I didn’t need any charges 4.5 years sober. He was blackmailing her, he was threatening to make a scene if she didn’t let him stay, and instead of being forceful the poor girl was begging and pleading, she was in love, but she didn’t want her new beau to know about her damaged psycho ex past. He was smiling, threatening her, causing her pain, and she was in tears. I was unraveling the coil that I had originally picked up as shoelaces, which made me think of juvenile prison, where they took your laces to prevent suicide. I had removed several layers of wires by now and I had the core to make a belt, but now I also had a canister of air, seemingly a by product of disentangling the wires, and damn if it didn’t look just like an incideniary grenade suddenly. As their arguing reached a crescendo, I pulled the pin, and they both stopped to look at me, while we waited for the detonation. I dropped it in the middle of us, and the guy walked outside of the room we were in, a smug superior smirk on his face. He began walking up to the crowd of people near the center of the house, making exagarrated movements, trying to draw attention to himself and thus emberass the girl. I looked at the girl in tears, worry etched all over her face. I kicked the dud of a grenade to the side, and I went to go talk to the guy, ask him to leave, escort him to the door. He was now messing with a baby in a carriage, in my dream, literally stealing baby from a candy. And then I thought, wait a minute, who gave candy to that baby anyway. Baby’s can’t eat candy, and right when I put my arm on the guys arm to walk him out, I woke up. I have an overactive imagination.

Then I go to my computer and I have a message from a publisher that says “Jared, we need to chat.” It’s gonna be a long day, especially since he’s in a different time zone. Grrrr.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Gregg Allman – Hepatitis C – Latest CNN Interview

Posted: July 14, 2011 in Uncategorized
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I’m too lazy to go look but I wonder if his albums sell under the huge multimedia Time Warner banner?

He STILL denies having gotten the drug through any kind of drug use, and even adds, “It doesn’t much matter how you got it, you got it.” And this is true, but MUCH more people get Hepatitis C now a days via needles and or sharing straws, which never occured to me while I was out there drinking and drugging, than do by using dirty tattoo needles. Ironically, I just returned from Macon GA and for some reason I believe the bucket story now. That probably is exactly how he got it, and ohhh how disgusting.

It is still humble and cool of him to come out and speak about Hep C, and that he’d gotten a liver transplant of a 29 year old liver, and even more shocking I thought, was that the CNN announcer mentions that he still has Hep C, and that he is living with it. So he was not cured of the virus at all? I wonder if they will try and run him through the new Telaprevir with the higher success rates. I hope so, I hope they can clear him of the virus as they did me, but as Dr. Hutchinson from Duke told me “the young do better than the old.” I wonder what his prognosis is for Interferon with the new drugs, and if the liver transplant makes it impossible to go under Interferon or somehow prevents the full blown chemo like side affects? Still, I may have been a little harsh when I blogged about Gregg before, denying any drug use and stating that he’d gotten it from dirty tattoo needles. In the big scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter how you get it, none of us invented the disease, it matters what you do with it, and if you man up and fight it, quit drinking, and persevere through all the long odds to beat the nasty little beat me down.

Still, I’d be happier if he’d use his name to go out and promote free Interferon use with Telaprevir to all, I mean, they shortened the length of time, doubling the odds, but also doubling the cost. Most of us don’t have Rock Star retirement plans. And it’s the kind of thing that with a concentrated government effort, they could eradicate just like polio, instead of just bilking people left and right.

Let me tell you too, if I find out he’s working for Roche or Merck and this was a publicity stunt for some new medication they are charging triple for, and he still couldn’t admit he’d gotten it using needles, then I’ll be just as irritated. Or to find out his rock star royalty got him the transplant liver faster, that would be just as aggravating. On this one it is probably better I don’t do any research. For now, Gregg has my compassion and sympathy and even my thanks for doing this interview, regardless of if it’s connected to his record sales, and/or paid pharma giants, more than likely even if all that was true, his agent just tugged his heart strings and Gregg was just doing what he thought was right.

He’s still one of the baddest musicians ever to walk the planet. I pray his recovery from Hep C and his transplant stays strong and that he’s able to go through the new Interferon treatments with telaprevir and beats it.

-Jared Bryan Smith

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi

Posted: June 29, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Woke up feeling refreshed and recharged, better than I have in several days. Probably because I worked out a small feud with someone whom I really never had anything against to begin with, but whom I did repeat a nasty rumor I’d heard, thus inciting a grudge that lasted way longer than it should have, and had farther reaching ramifications than I could have ever imagined. We made amends to each other and damn if I don’t feel 10 times better for it for my part.

Reminded me of a christian value that I wish I had followed earlier, because it really did bring an instant peace and calm into my life as soon as we were done talking.

Matthew 18:15 “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.”

Pretty moving stuff… and just a few sentences later:

Matthew 18:19 “I tell you that if two of you on Earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in Heaven. for where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.”

Well that parable to me, sums up the magic of an AA meeting perfectly. For years I would try to get sober all by myself and never get more than 2 weeks, tops, and then my very first half ass try into AA, where two or more people are trying to accomplish the same goal, and lo and behold I was able to stay sober for a month… and that was without getting a sponsor or working any steps… The forgiveness thing, for me anyway, is more in the Masters / Phd realm of AA, as my anger, once up is really hard to get back down… but I don’t have to think my way into right action, I have to act my way into right thinking, and the act of forgiveness, humility and an open conversation with my brother in sobriety, brought about the forgiveness I wouldn’t have thought possible.

And even if you must discount the religious mumbo jumbo, I found science to back the claims as well, the positive affects of forgiveness transcend even religion, and stab deep into the heart of science as well.

“Dr. Robert Enright from the University of Wisconsin–Madison founded the International Forgiveness Institute and is considered the initiator of forgiveness studies. He developed a 20-Step Process Model of Forgiveness.[4] Recent work has focused on what kind of person is more likely to be forgiving. A longitudinal study showed that people who were generally more neurotic, angry and hostile in life were less likely to forgive another person even after a long time had passed. Specifically, these people were more likely to still avoid their transgressor and want to enact revenge upon them two and a half years after the transgression.[5]

Studies show that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold resentments.[6] The first study to look at how forgiveness improves physical health discovered that when people think about forgiving an offender it leads to improved functioning in their cardiovascular and nervous systems.[7] Another study at the University of Wisconsin found the more forgiving people were, the less they suffered from a wide range of illnesses. The less forgiving people reported a greater number of health problems.” 

I am glad it is behind me, once and for all, I truly wish my brother in arms, traveler on Earth with the same disease of addiction as me, the best sobriety has to offer.

Jared Bryan Smith

“Flight of the seabirds, scattered like lost words Wheel to the storm and fly Fare thee well now Let your life proceed by its own design.”

Posted: June 25, 2011 in Uncategorized
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“Nothing to tell now
Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine”

By John Perry Barlow with Bob Weir
Recorded on Ace (Warner Brothers, 1972)
Cora, Wyoming February, 1972

I go months and months without thinking about certain things, including the grateful dead, and then in a wave and a rush, I’ll remember how much I love the music and how much the words can mean to me.

When I wrote the Robert Hunter quote from the song yesterday, it brought back all the thoughts of my divorce, losing my son as a full time father, and the loss of so many loves throughout the last 15 years. Today I woke up with Cassidy running through my mind. God those words are beautiful, so fucking poetic, just humming them brings back such memories. For me, this song brings back my mama’s passing, and the eternity of all life. The hawk I saw circling our limo as we drove to her funeral. Good music can be so personal, it can mean so many things.

Being a christian I believe death is only another passing moment. We will all get there, how we lived, who we helped, who we treated well, who we forgave, is all there is. If christianity didn’t exist we should invent it as the best way of living. I have reawakened to my faith in the last year or so and it’s amazing what I find reading through the pages of the new testament.

How much of the book is there, that we simply do not do? Fasting for instance. In all my life I’ve never known a christian that fasted. It’s prominent, it’s there, it’s in the words and yet I’ve never ever heard the first sermon on it. Also forgiveness. Real forgiveness. Turning the other cheek when someone maliciously, childishly attacks you. I know so many christian values that are spoken about, but barely ever practiced. I guess because it is hard to do.

But for me, in sobriety ever year I learn a little more spiritually and learn that the things I learn are generally good for me. Obedience to God and to spiritual principles that he continually shows me almost always has it’s own inherent rewards. Usually first though, it’s hard as hell to begin a new behavior.

Taking a year off of dating, which was suggested by minister Andy Stanley for a year, long after my sponsor had suggested it for several years, is finally starting to sound like it might have some actual validity. I’ve made nothing but messes of every single relationship I’ve ever been in in my entire life. As the 12 and 12 states and I was moved by the very first time I ever read:

“The primary fact that we fail to recognize  is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. (THIS IS THE BEST PART) Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to your own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap or to hide underneath it. The is self centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.”

page 53 – The 12 Steps and 12 Traditions

Wow, what precision. How can they have mapped us out so effectively?

I guess the only fix is the 12 steps, time and layers of the onion.

-Jared Bryan Smith

 

 

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