Posts Tagged ‘NA Blog’

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. – Lao Tzu

Posted: May 24, 2011 in Uncategorized
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What a long, long weekend.

Sobriety is filled with firsts. Whenever I’ve begun to feel comfortable and well rounded in this program, seems like I always find a new challenge to face, a new layer of the onion to peel and learn somehow to yet again grow a bit. I’m a VP of Sales for a technology company that sells to amongst other clients, restaurants. The National Restaurant Association has a huge event in Chicago every year and my boss signed me up to go this year and I didn’t think twice about going, in fact I was quite excited, as I’ve always done inside sales, and never in my career ever traveled to do any kind of sales at all.

How’s the saying go, wear your sobriety like a loose shirt, but don’t forget to put the shirt on every morning. Well, for some reason, I forgot to put the shirt on. Or I was just careless or didn’t think it through, I’m really not sure. I asked a friend of mine who I’ve known in Chicago for over 20 years, who grew up with me in Atlanta and whom I began my drinking and drugging career with back in middle school. Why the thought didn’t occur to me that this might be careless, hell, even dangerous is beyond me. I really just didn’t think it through.

I woke up early to get to Chicago and after landing, walking the convention all day I get back to his place, where he’d left a key, and try to go to sleep. After about an hour, he comes in there, into the room I’m sleeping, and drunk as hell, shakes me until I wake up, all with the best intentions, but just 100% oblivious as to what waking up to an obnoxious drunk idiot might be like to a recovered alcoholic. I was already irritated he failed to mention his huge white lab, as I’m allergic to dogs, but good lord, to wake me up in the middle of the night drunk off your ass, to reminisce, I mean seriously? It went downhill from there.

I didn’t get back to sleep till 4 am, I walked the convention the whole next day, when I returned he was drinking red wine. I love the guy, but I don’t hang out with drunk people for a reason. I’m just a different person than I used to be.

What’s more was the insight into my personality changes he noted. He told me, “As soon as I saw you, I could tell your confidence was shaken.” I am still not sure how to take this. The thing is for 20 years I had a false bravado, an alcoholic fueled, megalomania that was delusional, dangerous, and was leading me to death. Perhaps humility is what he saw and just misinterpreted it. I don’t really know. I don’t really care. As the quote above says, deep in the center of my being I know who I am and what I want, and I have the answer, and it is to be a good humble human being, not a self assured, ego driven nut-job that I used to be. I’m much more confident now in my heart of hearts than I ever was before, whether that shows on my face or not.

I know what he means. He’s referring to the kind of confidence, a con man uses to pull his cons. Or a womanizer uses to seduce. He’s referring to a certain arrogance that actually does work in this world most of the time, but one that I don’t and prefer not to emit anymore. I can still sell good ideas I believe in, and I can still convey good ideas, I need not beam a ray of greater than thou bullshit to accomplish the missions I choose to embark on now. I might lose a few girls, or a few accounts, or be thought of as humble or weak from time to time by not emitting that King of the World egotistical confidence game I used to carry around with me so effectively, but in my heart of hearts I knew that person was a fraud. I was never that confident, it was always a lie. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex we call it. How true, and how sad. I didn’t fight because I was a bad ass, I fought because I was scared. Mark Twain said “Never fight a little man, he will kill you.” I carried around an aire of superiority while I was drinking and drugging that some recognized and even loved, but that ultimately drove me to drinking alone, friendless, hopeless, dying in a rat infested shack all by myself. I may not be that same confident man, but I am a better man for it, no doubt.

And it’s no great loss that someone still suffering in the throes of addiction, and ultimately denial, would recognize my lost ego, and point that out as a blatant negative change, and then lecture me on how it’s all about a relationship with God and a higher power, drunk and high, at 3 am, walking in an alleyway in Chicago, while all I wanted to do was rest. In fact, I should have expected it, and I should have prepared better for it. Fortunately I have a program of recovery. I have a sponsor, who has a sponsor, and even after the meeting at the Mustard Seed AA Clubhouse in Chicago turned out to be another fiasco of the trip, I had a network of men I could call in Atlanta and talk to and thankfully, relate to. I didn’t need a drunks approval, or assessment of my “confidence”. I have a network of men in Atlanta that know how much I’ve been through, how much I’ve changed, and know that there’s no going back to that old ego driven JB but that the way to self esteem is doing esteem-able things, and if at 4.5 years sober that’s still not as high as it was when artificially amped up by drugs and alcohol, well then you just need to keep on working on it. So I don’t have the woman of my dreams yet, or all the tea in China, or the BMW M3, I still have good friends and family that love and care for me, that know I’m way better off here and now than when I was back there killing my self slow.

Still it was good to land back in Atlanta and get to a meeting. I went straight to 8111 and caught the 10 pm meeting, and I felt like I’d touched home base. Confidence shaken, lol, yeah, well, I learned a few things this weekend. 1) Don’t stay with friends who still drink like fish 2) Know where the good meetings are  3) don’t park next to the anthills at hartsfield and 4) get your own rental car in strange cities. I am an alcoholic, and I can’t be dependent on other people to get to meetings when I’m elsewhere, period the end.

Oh I did think of an awesome APP we should develop though, “CLOSEST AA MEETING” using your smart phones GPS ,geo locate you and timestamp to find closest applicable AA meeting. I can’t believe it’s not already on the market?!! Who wants to partner on this, I kind of have my hands full. It’s good to be home, great to be sober, and good to know just who I am, and who knows me. My name is JB Smith and I’m an alcoholic, and also… not fond of smelly people on airplanes.

-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

Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” – All Women Are Like That

Posted: April 16, 2011 in Uncategorized
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It was fitting that after a long day worrying over a woman, over yet another situation I have absolutely zero control of, a friend of mine called and offered me tickets to an Opera performance of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” which translated means, “All women are like that”, I’m told but upon researching a little deeper that even that translation is off a bit, and actually it translates “Thus do they all”. One of the more memorable lines “by 15 a girl should know where the Devil hides his tail.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cos%C3%AC_fan_tutte

Mozart was 33 years old when it was released, and he died at 34 it seems. With over 600 works. I’m 33 and I have roughly 3. lol… but also cable television, and average lifespans are prolly 50+ year now, but I digress. It’s also fascinating to me that this seemingly innocent, portrayal of life, was banned in Vienna, played briefly in London in 1812 and then didn’t resurface until after World War 2. I guess calling women loose was risque even back then, lol. I love reading about human beings shunning their most genius, ridiculing their best, not understanding, being threatened by things that are new, and most usually attacking all that is really truly honest.

The truth cuts deep, and the quote “I write fiction so I can tell the truth” rings a bell when thinking this through. But basically Mozart shows how two fiances of two men are turned from love within 24 hours, to new lovers, and that even so, those two lovers should remain true and marry them anyway, because basically they are but human beings, which we all are, and that “All Women Are Like That.” They are easily swayed, but love and marry them anyway, because you know you love them no matter what, otherwise you wouldn’t be so hurt. I loved watching the dialog and the wisdom of these words written by a man my age, in 1790, and how true the ring to this day for me.

Mozart must have been cheated on, he must have lost a woman to another man in his life to have written such a piece of work. I bet that man ridiculed his body of work too, all 600 works of it, lol. Fuck em. Everybody’s a critic. I was recently, in anonymous hate mail a couple of months back, called a “whiney psychopath” and it cut to the bone. Again, like most obsessive alcoholics, I’m childish oversensitive and grandiose, so I took it… not well. It made me think of this blog, and the book, losing my parents, and sharing about all this pain, and whether or not it does all come off as whiney or psychopathic, and shit, it may, as a friend of mine says everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I guess for me, I’m trying to do something new here with my writing. I’m trying to be brutally honest, about my thoughts, about my obsessions, about my modern life in general, because I want it as an accurate history. All of us will be dead in 100 years, but with the Internet, its conceivable that this writing will still be here, and people may want to know what it was like to live as a recovered alcoholic, in 2011, or whenever, it’s worth being honest I believe.

I know that it bleeds of vulnerability, that it drips of weakness in places, or drowns you in the minutia of an obsessive, recovered alcoholic but FUCK, its my thoughts, its me, and were I to write it more strongly, or more proud, it would be a lie, it would be false, it would be the opposite of true. I may have come off as a whiney psycho path, but I don’t believe I could have written things any other way. The point is to chronicle the pain, to grow from these learning experiences. This journey of sobriety is a marathon not a sprint, and if I don’t learn from these experiences I’m bound to repeat them. Unfortunately I don’t live in a bubble or a vacuum, and most of my pain comes from interacting with other human beings, who may not appreciate being written about, or who may misunderstand what I’m saying. Mozart’s Opera was obviously misunderstood for hundreds of years, and I am no genius, just a recovering alcoholic trying to learn from his mistakes, of which their are many. I know in my heart though that I didn’t mean anyone any pain and that I’ve been truthful in all my dealings, and that is a huge step up from the old JB who would have manipulated, lied and angled to get his way. So though I’m still a work in progress, far from perfection, I know my heart is good, I mean well, and though the blog may be personal, even though written in anonymity, these events will pass quickly, as the personal complications are all temporary, whereas the lessons learned and derived when looked back over can be permanent and hopefully shared and become wisdom for more than just my selfish ass, or whomever else they affect right this second, they can last longer than the situation, hell eternal really, you never can tell. Mozart’s best stuff is only now being played on a regular basis, hundreds of years later, and nobody has a fucking clue who the original woman who motivated him or cursed him as it were ever really was. And also, hell, he was using his real name, lol, this freaking blog is anonymous!

So yeah, somehow these thoughts dominated my mind as I was watching the Opera last night, that I never intended on upsetting anyone with my writing, ever, but that no matter what, I must remain true, continue to write, and be honest, and just know in my heart that I mean well, that I am ultimately a good man, and that if it’s misinterpreted, or critiqued by people whom don’t like me for whatever reasons, all I can do is keep on keeping on, staying sober no matter what.

Mozart was a mason too, I found out, who knew? I bet he wishes he had the word “fuck” to throw around, that would have changed an Act or two I assure you. lol…

Sooo in closing; here’s another poem pulled from the wreckage of my now distant past:

Careless Self

Quit ripping my heart out,

     Stop feasting on my flesh.

Ignorant of the pain I doubt,

     Every twinge, or twitch or breath.

Strikes horror through my soul,

     Nervous system is nervous again,

Loving you takes a toll.

     The dank of folly, the essence of sin.

Lust, camouflaged duality,

     We’re not even kind to ourselves.

Separate motives, same reality.

     Truth unopened books on shelves.

– 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

“Ego Rape” – Original Jared Bryan Smith Poetry, April 8th, 2011

Posted: April 8, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Ego Rape

Land soft again into my arms,

Deny the duplicity, deception of charms.

Awaken the truth, the light and the way,

Set aside the pettiness, and seize the dying day.

Time slides by in endless waves,

Yesterdays tombs, flooded crypts and caves.

Regrets forever sealed, mistakes piled on tragedies,

Against the grain we raged, self inflicted maladies.

Surrender all your silliness, seek your heart for truth,

Beg your God for clarity, await your thoughts to soothe.

Crash delicate upon loves shore,

Humility beckoned you here.

Love is its own just sacred war,

Where victory grips you like fear.

Faithfully seek your soul for honesty,

The rarest form of being.

Cry foul the common brutality,

For EGO rapes us of seeing.

-Jared Bryan Smith

For more original poetry please read my book via books4free.com, smashwords or of course the hard cover hard back via the amazon link below:

Thanks for the support and if you like the book please leave a review on amazon AND smashwords as Indie publishing lives and dies by grassroots support and we appreciate all the word of mouth we get!!

“Temporary Empty” – Original JB Smith Poetry

Posted: April 8, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Temporary Empty

Should that teardrop reverberate in the emptiness?

Would that spark ignite the void?

For that which felt like loneliness,

Was preparation for this noise.

Explosions need space to expand,

Love was never lost, just reorganizing.

Exponential tidal wave, emotional reprimand:

Be it real and true,

Then patience will allow it growth,

No jealousy or anger can fool,

No defect can defunct.

Be Cool. As water flows downhill,

Love returns, of its own free will.

-Jared Bryan Smith

PS: More original JB Smith poetry for free in the book Hippopotamus Sea on http://www.books4rfree.com, smashwords via the link on the left, and of course in hard copy via the amazon  link, thanks for your support:

Hippopotamus Sea’s 1st Professional Review – Five Stars!!

Posted: April 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
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In celebration of the 1st Professional review we’ve allowed the book to be downloaded on smashwords 100% free for a limited time. Smashwords converts the book for  Kindle, Nook, Sony’s reader, the IPAD and more, and Mark Coker is a genius as I’ve blogged about before. I allow Mark’s Smashwords.com site to handle all the digital distribution of the book because it’s simply the cleanest  most effective distributor of ebooks on Earth. Check out the book for free there, I’ll probably keep it free for a few weeks, down from $3.95.

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

It’s funny, when I was out there drinking, I was never insecure, shy or passive in any way shape or form, I was quite the opposite, loud, boastful and assertive in almost all aspects of my life. And running the show ended me up absolutely psychotic, so today things are different, I try and follow God’s will.

From a publishing standpoint though, if you’re not blowing your own horn, nobody else is gonna, especially as an Indie writer, but despite being slow, and shy, having sent out the book to only one professional book reviewer, instead of what is suggested by all the blogs and other vanity publishers, sending them to dozens, I couldn’t have handled bad reviews from that many folks. So I just sent to one, Bobbie Crawford McCoy in Canada, Founder of Nurture Your Books. You can find her review on my Amazon page, Smashwords on the front page of my blog, or directly:

http://nurtureyourbooks.com/website/index.php/blog/book-review24/

I was so relieved to finally read it. It’s a good review. That’s all I could ask for, and more importantly to me, she noted the fact that it was honest, and that the motive really is to help other people who may be going through the same struggle.

So now that I’ve gotten a good professional review, I feel much more comfortable sending out the book to multiple book reviewers as was suggested, I just really didn’t have the confidence to spend the time money and energy on that adventure without at least knowing I had one good professional review under my belt.

Thanks Bobbie Crawford McCoy, I can move confidently in the direction of my dreams for a while.

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde

-Jared Bryan Smith

 

Comprehensive List of Celebrities with Hepatitis C : My personal fav, Linda Lovelace, awww yeah, haha…

Posted: March 19, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Country music icon Naomi Judd opens up about being diagnosed with hepatitis C.

For more information, visit http://www.thedoctorstv.com/

Several public figures suffer from hepatitis C and some have died. Celebrities with hepatitis C, according to news reports:

• Gregg Allman Rock musician and founding member of The Allman Brothers Band

• Pamela Anderson: She is perhaps the best-known hepatitis C patient, if only because the former Baywatch star has such a flair for publicity. Her revelation last year that she had the disease prompted innumerable news stories.

• Keith Richards–Guitarist/singer/songwriter/producer and founding member of the Rolling Stones. He claims that due to the strength of his immune system he beat hepatitis C by leaving his body to deal with it

• Ray Benson–Front man of the Austin Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel. Benson chose to treat his hepatitis C with Eastern medicine.

• Steven Tyler–Musician and songwriter in the rock band Aerosmith. In September 2006, he announced that he had been diagnosed three years previous and had just completed eleven months of treatment with interferon.

• Natalie Cole–Singer and daughter of Nat King Cole. She was diagnosed in mid-2008 during a routine examination.

• Willy DeVille One of the founders of the band Mink DeVille and a pioneer in punk rock. He was diagnosed with hepatitis C in February 2009 and was found to have pancreatic cancer during the course of his treatment

• Anthony Kiedis–American vocalist/lyricist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. He contracted Hepatitis C from regular intravenous drug use in the early 1990s and claims he was cured of the Hep C virus by Ozone therapy

• Naomi Judd: The former nurse and country singer has been one of the best-known hep C celebrities. She retired from the Judds, the duo with daughter Wynonna, in 1991. But she has since undergone treatment and become more active.

• Dusty Hill: The band ZZ Top stopped touring in 2000 because the bassist had hepatitis C. The band began touring again in 2002.

• Evel Knievel: The motorcycle daredevil had a liver transplant more than two years ago and later said doctors could find no trace of the virus in his blood.

• Chuck Negron: He’s the former lead singer on such Three Dog Night classics as “Joy to the World.”

• Larry Hagman: The television actor required a liver transplant in 1995.

• Phil Lesh: One of the founding members of the Grateful Dead, the bass player received a liver transplant several years ago.

• “Superstar” Billy Graham: The former WWF wrestling champion got a liver transplant last year. He thought he contracted the virus by being bled on during wrestling matches years ago.

• David Crosby: The rock star with a fabled history of drug abuse is touring again after receiving a liver transplant in 1995.

• Freddy Fender: The singer of such ’70s hits as “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” suffers from several health problems, including hepatitis C.

• Jack Kevorkian: The retired pathologist, now serving a prison term for killing a man who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, has hepatitis C, his lawyer says.

• Laurie Bembenek: The former Playboy bunny, whose conviction in a Milwaukee murder and later escape are chronicled in the book Run, Bambi, Run, is free now but suffers from hepatitis C.

• Rolf Benirschke: The former star kicker for the San Diego Chargers got the virus from a transfusion two decades ago. He has used his sports status to raise awareness about the disease.

• Linda Lovelace: The star of the 1972 porn film “Deep Throat” contracted the virus from a transfusion and had a liver transplant in 1987. She died in 2002 at age 53 after a car crash.

• Willie Dixon: The legendary bluesman was diagnosed with hepatitis C shortly before his death in 1992. He contracted the virus from transfusions in 1987.

• Alejandro Escovedo–Musician specializing in roots rock/alternative country, diagnosed in April 2003.

• Mickey Mantle: The baseball great is thought to have contracted hepatitis C during a transfusion for a knee operation. He died of liver cancer in 1995.

• Stormie Jones: The 13-year-old died in 1990 six years after becoming the first person in the world to receive heart and liver transplants in a single operation. Hepatitis C damaged that liver, though, and before she died she received a second liver and treatment for the virus.

• Ken Kesey: The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who died of liver cancer in 2001, suffered from hepatitis C.

• James Earl Ray: The confessed assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1998 of liver disease after being infected with hepatitis C, probably in a 1981 blood transfusion he received after a prison stabbing.

• Allen Ginsberg: The poet laureate of the Beat Generation died in 1997 after battling hepatitis C for many years. He had terminal liver cancer.

• Lance Loud: The free-spirited son on public television’s “An American Family” in 1971, he died in 2001 of liver failure caused by hepatitis C and HIV.

• Frank Reynolds: Experts speculated at the time that the newsman’s death in 1983 was hastened by the virus later known as hepatitis C, which he may have contracted through a transfusion.

• Benito Mussolini: Did Il Duce, the World War II Italian dictator, have the disease? A new biography speculates that his chronic health problems — stomach pain, fatigue and depression — stemmed from an ulcer and a mild case of hepatitis C.

• Chet Helms Music producer who helped create the vibrant San Francisco rock music scene in the 1960s. He was undergoing interferon treatment for hepatitis C when he suffered a stroke

• Phil Lesh Founding member and bass guitarist of the rock band Grateful Dead. He was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1992 and received a liver transplant in 1998.

• David Marks Early member of The Beach Boys, who believes that he contracted the disease through drug use. He campaigns to raise awareness, supporting the UK National Health Service’s “FaCe It” campaign.

• Tawn Mastrey Disc jockey who was the voice of 1980s heavy-metal scene in Los Angeles. She contracted hepatitis C when she was a child.

• Kenny Neal New Orleans blues and swamp blues guitar player. He took a year off from performing while receiving treatment and returned to the Monterey Blues Festival in 2007.

• Chuck Negron Vocalist and founding member of Three Dog Night. He contracted hepatitis C due to “the long-lasting effects of drug use and alcoholism”.

• Gary S. Paxton Bakersfield country and gospel music artist. He contracted hepatitis C through several blood transfusions and almost died from the disease in 1990.

• Curtis Salgado Blues, R&B, and soul singer-songwriter-musician. Developed cirrhosis and liver cancer because of hepatitis C. Six benefit concerts were held in 2006 to raise money for his medical bills

• Tony Scalzo Rock musician and songwriter, best known as a founding member of the band Fastball.

• Uncle John Turner Blues musician and one of the founders of the blues-rock style of drumming

• Randy Turner Lead singer for the seminal hardcore punk band Big Boys.

• Christopher Lawford Nephew of John F. Kennedy, best known for his role as Charlie Brent on the soap opera All My Children in the early 1990s. He was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2001

• Natasha Lyonne Best known for her roles in the first two American Pie films

•Anita Pallenberg –Italian-born model, actress and fashion designer. Also known as the great influence on the development and presentation of the Rolling Stones from the late 1960s and through the 1970s

• Ken Watanabe Japanese actor best known for his role in The Last Samurai. He contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion when he was receiving treatment for acute myeloid leukemia

• Stanley Fafara Child actor who played “Whitey” on Leave it to Beaver. He contracted hepatitis C from intravenous drug use

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_hepatitis_C

Pharmaceuticals, Doctors, AA, and Sobriety, The Over Medication of America – Modern Bloodletting

Posted: February 25, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Pharmaceuticals, Doctors, AA and Sobriety

It is clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Alcoholics Anonymous, has no stance on outside issues, and this includes the use of pharmaceuticals, prescribed by Doctors to help the newcomer get off alcohol and more illicit drugs. I used Librium to fight detox on two occasions, and I’m glad it existed, as the time I detoxed with nothing, was a freaking nightmare, so I get the good that they are capable of, though I never used them for more than a few days to get past the worst of the shakes and dt’s.

What does concern me though, is when a newcomer comes into the rooms, has several different Doctors, is cross diagnosed as manic depressive, borderline personality disorder, let us not forget the ever popular Bipolar diagnosis, and of course each and every one of us qualifies for ADHD, and is on several different kinds of heavy legally prescribed drugs, and then can’t figure out, why at 90 days they aren’t feeling any better.

It was refreshing therefore to see a speaker yesterday who’d been diagnosed schizophrenic, and a few other diagnoses and had all the accompanying symptoms, have a Doctor tell him, “I don’t think you are any of these things, just a plain old fashioned garden variety alcoholic, and I believe if you just practice the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, you will feel 100% relief from all these supposed conditions.” The Doctor then told him, “We will keep a close eye on you, expect some moderate to severe discomfort the first week or two as you cycle all these meds out of your system, but as you come into week three, four and five, I’ll be willing to bet you begin feeling considerably better, especially if you stay on top of your program and continue going to lots of meetings and working the steps.”

The speaker from last night told us he immediately began to feel better. His mind began to clear almost instantly, that it was uncomfortable the first few days, but after a week, he began to feel the light like he’d never felt it before and he was something in the neighborhood of six months sober. Those meds had been blocking the sunlight of the spirit however, and for the first time, he really began to feel relief. He said he believed those meds had been keeping his mind fuzzy for months on end and as soon as he stopped the fog began to lift. Most Doctors do not understand this miracle that is recovery. Since 1939 people with as bad and worse cross addictions, and emotional disorders have been getting sober through AA without medications, and yet, now, in 2010, it seems, every woman and man that comes in to the program comes clutching on to two or three pill bottles, for two or three different diagnoses. Though AA doesn’t have a stance on medications, I feel like we should at least tell people, “Listen, should you do it your way with all these meds and find the results still wanting, remember there is another way.” The Founders, and for decades millions, of AA’ers got sober, without any meds at all. Having anxiety is a normal part of getting sober, which is the God sized hole we must fill with the program of action.

 

I by no means speak for AA and I by no means advocate not listening to your doctor, but AA does have a pamphlet you can share with you Doctor at the link below, and it was just good to hear a speaker talk about how it had worked for him, specifically dropping his medications, and giving 100% chemical freedom a chance.

I know for me, when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, and began taking Interferon, which I wouldn’t wish on Osama Bin Laden (well maybe him), they told me to take Wellbutrin, because the awful side effects were so strong they were surely going to make me depressed. But after just a few days of that medication, after being completely sober a year, 100% chemical free, I felt completely disconnected from God. I quit taking them that day and instantly felt better. I did my entire year without anti depressants, anti anxiety or pain medications because I didn’t want to feel disconnected from God as I went through that year of low level chemotherapy to clear my body of Hepatitis C. I’d felt the connection with God, and I didn’t want anything to sever that, more so that the Interferon itself would have to. I can’t imagine what it must be like getting sober, with those kinds of chemicals keeping you separated from the very beginning. It may make the first few days easier, like Librium, but I bet when you’re rounding the 90 day and 6 month timeframes of sobriety, you just aren’t as connected as someone who has been getting sober without all the psychological meds.

Again, I’m no official, or Doctor, but my experience strength and hope is that, just as I couldn’t get sober on the Marijuana Maintenance program, I doubt real sobriety comes while on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals. If you are on a cocktail and you don’t feel like you’re getting the results, just remember that you haven’t tried all the ways of sobriety just yet. Please just be aware that there is another way, the way of 100% chemical freedom, no medications other than Tylenol, Advil and the like. Show the following AA pamphlet to your doctor, and honestly ask them, “Could this approach work for me? Could we at least try it for 90 days, and if it’s not yielding results you can always go back to all the meds, but don’t give up, don’t stop persevering or relapse back into the old drinking and drugging ways, without at least giving every single avenue, every single creek that leads to the river and ocean of life, a chance. Many more people have gotten sober without all the medications in the last 10 to 20 years, than have with them, and if it feels like it’s not working, just remember, there is one more way.

If you are on a bunch of meds and it’s your first time in AA, don’t beat yourself up, who can blame anyone for doing as their Doctors suggests? We are all just proud of you for being here in the first place and we will love you until you learn to love yourself, it just makes sense to be aware that there is another way of doing things, and the purists, over the past 70 years, cumulatively have a lot of sobriety. So if it’s not working your way, remember, there is another path that may hurt more on the front end, but that many believe, pays huge dividends as you work the 12 Steps clean and sober, without any medications. If nothing else seems to be working, isn’t it worth a try?

http://www.aa.org/catalog.cfm?origpage=189&product=33

-Jared Bryan Smith

 

Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety – Rand Hopkins Dedication

Posted: February 23, 2011 in Uncategorized
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So recently I’ve been asked a few times about the dedication in the beginning of my book, given to Rand Hopkins who was a mentor to me in my writing from early on. He, my Uncle and my father were good friends dating years back in the Atlanta theater scene as they worked on such productions as “The Boy King”, a play about Martin Luther King’s childhood and several other plays in Atlanta during the eighties. My Dad had a sound recording studio in the basement, prior to his death, and this was where they recorded the scores for all of those plays.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0394259/

Rand Hopkins was a writer, an actor, and even a talented painter, and my Aunt still has several of his paintings. He was also a very jovial, loving man, who was one of the few people on Earth who could tell me good stories about my Dad after he died in 1989 of alcoholism, or suicide rather, but still when someone dies like that most of the stories take dark turns. Only a handful of people were able to tell me good things about my Dad, and he was one of them. A particular funny story involved my dad going outside to take a piss and coming back in screaming and yelling about a dog almost biting his dick off, and as Rand would tell the story he’d be in tears with the theatrics, and his laughter was a contagious sort, so I’d be in tears laughing about my dad’s antics. That was a kind thing of him to do, and I was grateful, then and now.

Shortly after my father passed, my mom allowed me to go to NYC with a group of kids that Rand would host, and we would visit all the Broadway Plays in New York City. What an adventure for a 12 year old. We would have a blast. My mom gave me a few hundred bucks spending cash, and I remember hitting Time Square and finding every arcade I could possibly find, and just spending hours and hours in them. Rand didn’t mind just so long as I made it back to the hotel before midnight or so. While we were in NYC we saw a ton of plays, from Phantom of the Opera, to Miss Saigon, Les Miserable, and even a few off broadway productions as well, including one in which we sat second or third row and Ralph Macchio from the Karate Kid was the lead actor. I remember watching it and marveling at the differences between plays and movies with the Karate Kid a few feet from me, remembering his lines flawlessly, but still so much more human than on the big screen.

As the years passed we lost touch, especially as my drug and drinking use accelerated. But at a few critical moments I would reach out to him and share with him my writings, and he would encourage me, and tell me I was talented and I should continue writing. He sent me a copy of the Writer’s Market around 1998, and then again in 2004, when we reconnected after I was cast, quite accidentally, in “Miracle on 32nd Street” due to Gwen’s insistence. That’s another story you can find in the book. It was just a few weeks after my mama had died of cancer, and Gwen had left me for San Diego. I was withdrawing from all opiates and doing my damnedest not to kill myself drinking, or at this point, the way my father had gone. We talked briefly one night about a month after my mom, and he said something to the effect of “Live out your dreams JB, because life is short and you just never know when you might get run over by a bus. Write a book about everything you’ve gone through, because you’ve gone through a lot, and it will help you heal.” Literally a month later Rand Hopkins died suddenly in his sleep. I dropped out of that play, unable to contain my drinking binges, and completely incapable of showing up to anything on time or with any kind of consistency, but because of that play, and the people at the play house I heard about Rand’s death, and otherwise, I doubt I would have ever even heard. Funny how life works out like that.

I wasn’t invited to the funeral. Or maybe I was, and they just couldn’t get a hold of me. That’s the predicament of being a black out drunk, it’s hard to blame folks for lost invites, but the significance of that man, his words and his sentiment was never lost on me. He believed in me as a writer, and because he was an award winning writer himself I believed in him. If anybody else had said it I wouldn’t have believed them.

He had awesome connections and friends, and I sometimes wonder if I could reach any of them, but I know he knew Michael Jay Fox and also helped out Kenan Thompson who was also from my hometown of Atlanta, GA, early on in his career, though I’m not real sure the extent or depth of either friendships.

Still, I wish he’d been here to see my book launched, and could have helped me a little to promote it, and more than that, to tell me what he really thought. The good die young it seems. I suppose I should rejoice that I had him in my life as long as I did, and be proud that I did complete the project.

I dedicated the book to him because more than anyone else, his encouragement and faith in my writing meant the absolute most to me over the years. He was a good friend and I miss him much.

-Jared Bryan Smith

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