Posts Tagged ‘NA’

Post Interferon – Post Celexa – Take 2 with Lamictal (Lamotrigine)

Posted: July 8, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Man oh man how nice it was when Celexa worked for so long in keeping the Post Interferon headaches at bay. And how disheartening when it simply stopped working about 5 months into treatment. So with my Doctors counsel I tried to first double the Celexa from 20 mg to 40 mg only to have my headaches increase in intensity almost immediately. But, since the Celexa had taken two weeks to feel somewhat positive to begin with I held on for two weeks suffering through an intense basically constant headache through the first two weeks of June, and then finally gave up on that increased dosage strategy, and went back to the 20 mg for a week, then down to 10 mg and then off for about a week, before beginning the next step in this process, to try lamictal. I had used it once a few years back and had some good luck with it however I’d stopped when laid off from my recruiting job, and losing my health insurance. The experiment of course was to try several different meds until I found one that worked, while I have the good health insurance, and before I take any major entrepreneurial risks. I just want to be fully operational, or even just find something that makes me fully functional and for a while Celexa worked, until it just didn’t. When I stopped taking the Celexa though, I was reminded of the original headaches I’d been taking it for to treat in the firstplace. I was hoping that conditions and variables had changed, or rather that my quitting drinking coffee was going to make the headaches disappear entirely and therefore make the headaches disappear, however this wasn’t the case. It was weird though, getting off Celexa, about as weird as getting on it was. I was out of sort, dizzy sometimes, and just not myself.

So Lamictal, originally suggested by my Neurologist a few years back takes about 2-3 weeks to get up to its full dosage and I’m only about 4 days into it but so far so good. First of all I didn’t have, or haven’t had any of the skin rashes they warn you about which is apparently the main reason you have to ease into it, but also I woke up with one of my headaches this morning and it was the kind that usually stays with me all freaking day, however after taking a few tylenol and going to the gym it was gone, and I’ve felt pretty good all day.

I am hopefully for Lamictal , but if it doesn’t work I’ll just try for six months like I did Celexa, then try something else. In the long run, I’ve now quit smoking cigarettes, and a full month off caffeine trying to get rid of headaches and there must be light at the end of the tunnel. The Celexa was good for a while, but it ended up just causing another kind of headache and also some seriously weird stomach issues that I was very very tired of. So maybe Lamictal will be better.

If not, theres still Lexapro and Wellbutrin to try out and if I get real desperate I guess I could even try Prozac…. I had really hoped quitting drinking coffee would do it… but hell, at least my teeth are whiter! 🙂

In other news, work is going great, even though I had to work through a massive headache in June, I have still managed to be over 120% of quota every month and therefore making some great money. I head to Cabo in a few weeks so that should be a blast and I’ll be sure to hit up some AA meetings while I’m down there. It will sort of be dangerous, I’ll be hanging with old friends who all drink and party still but I figure I’ll just go from the airport to the clubhouse that supposedly speaks English and then head to the hotel so I have an escape route at anytime. I’ll also have my cell phone at all times so shouldn’t be too tough , and the place looks like a dream come true, Barcelo. I deserve it, I’ve worked hard the last few months and taken care of a lot of debts.

Maybe I’ll come up with some new book ideas, the beach always does that to me!

Jared Bryan Smith

Post Interferon Syndrome vs Celexa 20 mg – 90 days in… thereabouts…

Posted: April 14, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Lets see, that has to be about right, maybe 60 days because I guess I started taking the Celexa at the end of January and now we are rounding mid april so probably 70 days or so. The great news is that I rarely have the major stop me from functioning headaches anymore, taking the pain level from an easy 8 or 9 to a most days nothing at all and when the headaches do return it is a mild 2 or 3, not the all encompassing pain I experience full well half my days for so many years Post TX. Is it the medicine, or perhaps just the amount of time now finally getting on close to 4 years post TX, I really can’t say but I’m too scared to try and stop taking the medicine. I’m much less manic, much more focused and consistent and I’ve been outperforming at work and doing well. Save a couple of emails from disgruntled cheap shot customers, lol, in one I called my VP of Sales the price Nazi and since he was out I could offer an incredible price and the stupid customer sent it to my boss, the little pain in my ass, I was called in and reprimanded. Since when is Nazi a bad word… Oh well, who cares, life goes on.

The major downside of Celexa I’ve noticed though is that I’m not as driven and or motivated if you will. I’ve written almost nothing, nothing in the blog, books, barely anything in my own personal journal. I do my job well enough, even put in the extra hours for fear of being laid off yet again in this fickle economy, but as far as extra curricular, the gym, the blog, the meetings, I have been barely getting by.. And the meetings. the thing that has literally held me together the last five years, well I will be honest, on Celexa, while I still go, I don’t really feel like I get as much out of the meetings as I used to, don’t feel as compelled to share, and don’t leave with the sense of accomplishment and well being that I used to… now it’s just a blah feeling… but no headaches. Hard to weigh the pros and cons. I mean I’m not going to stop taking Celexa, I simply can’t. But there is a lot to be said about losing the drive to write, work out, or go to meetings and be passionate….

Also peeing. Urinating and orgasms, now take effing forever. Sometimes I’ll have to pee really bad walk in the bathroom and sit there for five minutes just waiting and waiting… weird side effect. In addition my super regularity is gone, as you could have timed the stock market on my morning movement prior to Celexa, and now, who knows, sometimes its a few days, sometimes its daily, which is strange for me.

Are those symptoms things worth the headaches being gone? Hard to say. I guess I’ll keep on keeping on, grateful that I’m cured of Hep C and alcoholism, or daily reprieve or what have you, and just be glad that something, anything was able to treat the headaches at all… for if this thing treats them one way, perhaps Lexapro, or Wellbutrin will treat them another, and I owe it to myself to explore those ways as well. Hope is better than despair I suppose, and headaches for years was starting to get a bit desperate for sure.

I’m grateful I’ve found something, but am definitely open to the possibility that something else may treat them better, and this time at least it will be nice to know I can fall back on the Celexa, should the headaches return. Also I may as well use whats working for a while at least, or hell for economic reasons at least wait until Lexapro has a generic.

– 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

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

“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

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

“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

 

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