Posts Tagged ‘Recovery Blog’

Books4free.com Vibe Coded Relaunch & Life Updates from 2019 to Now

Posted: April 15, 2026 in Uncategorized
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Hello world! Its been a very long time since I’ve written anything at all on here and I went through some massive changes, spiritually, geographically, and even matrimonially! I moved to Florida, became Catholic, albeit not a very good one, and married a woman I love with a 3 year old daughter who is now 7 and we are in the process of adopting!

So much to unpack there! I’ll start with Covid and dirty rotten scoundrel politics. I’d moved to Tampa Florida in October of 2019 with my fiancé at the time, but we broke up in February of 2020 after fighting like cats and dogs. It was painful to say the least. Few things though, save 9/11 have been more surreal than seeing our country turn itself inside out, over that debacle, that now seems was mainly about selling snake oil medicine. I happened to be in Las Vegas twice in late February and early March for two different shows, and the day after Trump announced Chinese tourists had been banned from visiting the US, I was in Paris, the casino, not France, and I’m not kidding when I tell you two buses filled with Chinese tourists pulled up, meandered on in to the casino and went and filled the breakfast area. The first few days of my visit, there had been a few tourists, mostly Americans, and then opposite of the news, the place filled with Chinese that last day. It would be another couple of weeks before full panic set it.

The breakup with my fiancé hadn’t yet happened. The second trip out to Vegas though was when the real Covid panic hit. We were all at the ConTech show 2020, when the global hysteria set in. I’ve always felt it had a real national security level emergency feeling to it. One of the largest tradeshows in the world, this year I know 140,000 attendees, and they just shut the whole thing down. I had to wait in the airport all day, as everyone flights were moved, and there were a lot of soldiers and drone support airmen in the airport as well, being moved from Vegas. When I arrived home early, my fiancé didn’t pick me up at the airport, and we broke up a few days later.

I had launched my book, Spiral’s End, Hepatitis C and Me, the year before and had lackluster results with it, primarily because I didn’t promote it at all, hating that name with every ounce of my being. I had hoped the name would help with the Amazon SEO, and I’d had it professionally edited and cleaned up as well, but used the same cover. Still the name is terrible, lol, the originally name Hippopotamus Sea was much better, subtle, creative. I mention it again though because I did still have a Social Media presence with it and it comes into play during this covid story.

But first the bottom fell out. Sadly as a man in Western Civilization, much of our identity comes from financial stability, and as a salesman in tech, construction software specifically, I am probably over invested in tech like Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia, so when the crash of 2020 hit the stock market, I was punched hard right in the gut. I lost a lot, a very big percentage of my nest egg disappeared relatively quickly. Around this time too, my fiancé had moved out, and a few weeks later met another man who she was head over heels for, and wouldn’t return my calls or texts, and with the move to Tampa, losing my network, my financial status taking a hit, I simply went into a tailspin. I had a bit of a spiritual experience as well, realizing that that relationship ultimately failed due to my own character defects, lust basically without expounding, and that the TRT I’d been on for a few years probably wasn’t helping I decided to kick that as well. This was probably ill advised at this exact juncture. I’ve now cycled on and off it a few times over the years, and as a man in sobriety, 19 years sober in December 2026 I can tell you this is not nothing, but can cause extreme mood swings, depression, and can last months. I didn’t know this the first time I cycled off though, I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind. I guess I was 13 years sober or so around then, and it just felt like the world was coming apart.

So I became a bit manic, as one is want to do. I began obsessively trying to fix up my house, which was awfully small compared to my Atlanta house, which I loved, and was a perfect mid-century model work of art I’d put all my love into, and this tiny house on the canal in Tampa just felt super cramped. It wasn’t helping so I began to work on it obsessively, as well as double down my efforts at work, and exercising like mad to try and kick the obsessive thinking about my ex. None of it worked, but I did fix my house up and get in great shape, waking up at 4:30 am and riding my bike 30 miles a day consistently from Town and Country, through Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, across the Courtney Campbell and back home every day before work. If you’d rolled up on my house at this time you may have found me single handedly trying to fix my boat lift, where in replacing the felt pads, all the beams fell into the water, with me on them and all my tools, racing against the tide to put it all back together, in 3 foot deep Tampa Bay tidal mud, just beating the waters, before my boat tipped over. My next door neighbor gawking at my antics the whole time ready to call the emergency crews. Or renting a scissor-lift to cut the Oak Tree branches, getting it done, manic, no planning, but executing, never mind a scissor lift doesn’t work well in sand, and I’m lucky to have lived as it settled and adjusted as I sawed off huge branches falling to the ground, narrowly missing my skull. I stayed busy.

At one point during Covid, I want to say around April, I was on Twitter, which we all recall was being heavily censored at this point, and I commented on a post by the Chinese CCP aligned Editor, Hu Xijin, something about you know my usual libertarian rantings around being on the wrong side of history, and I always just thought I was lost as a tear drop in the ocean whining to this guy, but this time I must have struck a nerve. Now my wife is not a fan of this cartoon, and its not my best work I’ll grant, but it did get a mild amount of AA fame and a few folks from conventions have given me recognition on these YouTube videos, but my series AA Boy Meets AA Girl on YouTube was public to try and help promote the book, SEO for booksfree.com and ultimately entertain, and the video at had gotten around 20k views by then. Arguably, save the post I wrote after Bin Laden was killed, my most popular publication of any kind. It was NOT linked to my Twitter account at the time. Within 10 minutes of my snarky reply to Hu Xijin, the Silicon Valley cabal of censorship had pulled my YouTube account, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I was absolutely shocked. I could not believe they were linked, and so infiltrated by Chinese Communists. Its shocking to me still. It verified for me that Covid was a powerplay, more so than a big pharma scam, though maybe it was both? I mean really who knows, the power plays were so hidden, so expansive, so malignant and secret that we just don’t know. The conspiracies now can’t be proven or unproven and mountains of evidence obscure every angle. We are truly in a doubt of real information and that is a book in itself, I intend on writing at some point. What I can say definitively is that they deactivated my accounts across all my socials instantly. I appealed and prevailed, but the power, and the coordination was not lost on me. It was real, it was powerful, and those agents probably are still in Silicon Valley in these big tech companies, thought quieter now. On this day as Chinese ships head to the Strait of Hormuz, and the Chinese embassy wraps barb wire around its DC offices, this cold war could become hot at any time. It is said there are many Chinese men of military age poised to go in the US at any point, we simply don’t know what information is real and what is not. I do know that day in 2020 they censored me, and by appealing I got all my links and socials turned back on.

Easter Sunday, Tampa police guarded the churches to prevent church goers from attending. AA meetings were closed in Tampa. Someone had the gall to tell me to quit riding my bike at 4:30 am thus breaking the curfew or whatever authoritarian overreach bullshit the Tampa local government tried to enforce via Facebook and I recall responding poorly, and threatening to post up in my house until the National Guard arrived if they wanted to stop me, and this was bad timing on my part. As fate would have it a few days later towing my boat, that had a 12.5 foot tower, I ripped the cable line serving the entire internet to all the homebound house arrested Tampa covid sufferers, basically LIVING off the internet, and old JB ripped their internet line straight out of the powerlines using my boat. The police arrived, as did an angry, almost medieval mob, and they almost arrested me! I was not making friends. The police openly discussed arresting me and I laughed at them, which they didn’t appreciate, but eventually let me go, there was some legal point about the neighborhood not having an HOA to press charges, but here I was 13 years sober, about to get arrested over a minor traffic incident. And frankly that has happened, with low hanging internet cables three times since because my boat tower is so tall but at the time, boy, with these riled up home bound Tampa residents, mad at losing internet, it was all very intense,. and I wasn’t making any friends in that neighborhood.

I kept trying to make it work though, I knew I loved living near the water, and going back to Atlanta felt like retreat so my mission was to persevere and this too shall pass. I’m emotional though, and I hadn’t had enough meetings, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of taking my boat way offshore and just not coming back. Having lost my father this way though, I’d long ago promised myself I’d never quit on life this way, and cause pain to all those I knew and loved and who loved me, but the thoughts were there. Even while fishing offshore, catching lots of fish, in the Gulf and the East Coast, I still was manic, sad, obsessive and it would be a year before my mind really settled down. I tried many things to calm my mind, and one thing finally took hold. Playing guitar. I found while learning to play I found peace. I guess you can’t be sad and try to learn something at the same time or maybe it was just music soothing my soul, I really don’t know. I’d owned guitars since my 20’s and even mention picking one up in a bender while in Little Five Points in my book, but I’d never sat down and attempted to learn. Frankly had my brother not accomplished this task I would have never had the faith to pick one up myself, but lo and behold I began to be able to put a song or two together and singing gave me peace. The first song I learned, poorly I’m sure, was El Paso, by Marty Robbins.

My Uncle Barton and I were talking not too long after, I believe I sent him a video of my playing, and he said, “That’s interesting you know your Dad was an Air Force brat, and began learning music, when your grandfather was stationed in El Paso.” I knew my dad had moved around a lot but I always think of him and my mom from being from Albany Georgia, perhaps because their home videos sound like they bother fell off the turnip truck. But also when someone dies in your life so young you don’t get their narrative, you fill it in yourself. My uncle went on to ask, “Did you say you were in Tampa? You know that is where your Dad, Barry and myself, (my two uncles) were all born, at MacDill Airforce Base. So oddly enough, a traveling salesman that has seen most of the country, just happened to move of all places, to Tampa Florida, after living in Atlanta 42 years of my life. I chose the one city my dad had been born. And something about it felt right. Though I knew I was in a tough spot, I loved being by the water and learning my dad had been born here did bring me some kind of peace.

Around this time, the black crows began showing up. Now the crows are significant, as are all birds, prominently mentioned in my book and some of my delusions, but my dad had a particular niche with Black Crows. I skipped over this in my book as you just can’t fit in every little detail, but it now becomes significant. When we’d moved to Sweet Apple Crossing in Roswell, after living in Norcross, and just before moving to Brookfield West, my father had begun to get a bit more dark. His alcoholism was taking root, I believe in retrospect, but he went and bought a boombox, for those who remember the eighties. And an audiotape of a crow’s distress calls, and man I tell you the sky would fill with black crows, thousands and thousand of ominous black crows and he would laugh like the mad hatter staring at the apocalyptic sky with circling birds, screaming at us. It was not lost on me then how odd this was, and this being the beginning of this descent into madness that would culminate in his taking his head off with a .357, I have never super appreciated a big flock of crows at any time since. Well fast forward to Spring 2020, really early summer I believe and the trash was not getting picked up at the nearby Starbucks consistently and the crows began to gather. A murder as they say. By the thousands. For weeks on end. I’m not playing any God forsaken distress calls, they are just gathering, and while they traveled to the Starbucks it did seem like they had chosen my house specifically to make their headquarters.

I tried firecrackers, I tried a BB Gun, and my neighbors weren’t fans of either or me by this point if I’m being perfectly honest with all my antics, and so I just had to suffer. I hoped against hope they would go away and they just didn’t. it went on for days, then weeks and then months. Around this time, I visited my buddy Greg Steiniger in Saint Pete Beach, and the beach felt absolutely magical. The cool breeze off the water and salty air. I just loved it. This is where I’d wanted to move in the first place, well Tierra Verde, but my fiancé at the time had thought we wouldn’t get any work done and so we settled on Town and Country with a boatlift, but this beach was amazing. He told me I could easily rent my house out, and we should find a house down here. I told him to start looking, hell interest rates were at 2.65 in June/July 2020. I felt silly moving after only living in the Tampa home 8 months or so, but then I returned to my house, and there were 4 dozen black crows on the dead tree limb poking prominently from the canal, that had been an Ospreys home when we were house shopping. My fiancé had tried to feed it a Sweet Potato, and I lost the argument trying to convince her otherwise. The osprey never did become vegan. Those crows chased it off though.

We found a house in Saint Pete Beach though, a mid-century modern. And it was small but the feel of it was clean, modern and efficient. I will never doubt the impact good design has on my mind, though rationally it seems like it shouldn’t if the utility is the same, all things being equal, but I’m telling you, design matters and that house in Tampa made me miserable, while mid-century modern brings me peace. I can’t explain it. On the way to the house on the island, I saw three green parrots. They were beautiful, exotic, gorgeous. So much nicer, more pleasant than crows, a breath of fresh air.

I thought I was crazy though being chased out of my house by crows, and I literally went to a shrink, fully expecting her to tell me I was delusional, crazy, here is some medication. But when I explained the crows, and then the three exquisite parrots at the beach house, a medical doctor told me, “Sometimes the universe just tells you what do do.”

I’d also met a woman in AA that I really liked. She was bright, beautiful, and seemed to enjoy my company, though our philosophies were different, they were also vastly similar. She was a Jungian, she was sober, and we both had a deep respect for Alcoholics Anonymous, and both had been grateful beyond measure for sobriety. She had a daughter, and she was not easily won over, but I did think a nice house at the beach couldn’t hurt. The AA meetings at Saint Pete Beach had been another strong pull, not to mention the beautiful girl at the meetings, but the fact that AA had effectively closed in Tampa and remained opened in Saint Pete Beach was impactful as well. I moved, and moving to be close to Audrey was certainly a factor.

I would later learn she lived 45 minutes from that Blind Pass clubhouse, in Largo, but due diligence and planning has never been my strong suite, I’m much more ready fire aim, execute execute execute. She’s a planner, and that’s good for me. It didn’t happen over night, but we are married now, and we are one court case away from adopting my daughter, as I write here in April 2026.

So I moved to the beach in August of 2020, I closed on the house. I feed those parrots still, and sometimes they follow me around my little island. It’s magical. There is much more to tell, the court case has been intense, the absent biological father, a chronic heroin, crack user who stole from Audrey and abused her emotionally, verbally and has paid nothing in support since our daughters birth decided to fight us tooth and nail, and we’ve been in a lengthy court battle that can be its own book. Their defense is that he’s “sober” while being on Kratom, an opiate, and a travesty of justice and good common sense that it is legal in gas stations, while most of the country has never heard of it, a responsible adult capable of fathering it does not make one. That it keeps him off the needle is not what we would consider sober, and we are praying the court sees it this way as well. \

I look back on 2020 and the crows, and not unlike my brushes with darkness in the past, it all led me back to the light. Darkness is God’s double agent, eventually we all come home.

There is a romantic notion to me, that my father pushed through the veil of death and the beyond, guiding me to music, nudging me along to Saint Pete Beach, allowing the universe to whisper in my ear, this place is not for you, but there is a place you’ll love and that has been my experience.

We say in Alcoholics Anonymous that you’ll be rocketed to a 4th dimension. That finding God’s will is the proper alignment of ones own will, and that it will become easier and easier to discern. Life is either magical, and filled with God’s miracles or it is not, God is either everything or he is nothing.

He is everything, my sobriety is everything. Love is everything, and God is love. I feel it walking my puppy, daughter and wife around this island, and I feel it speaking in meetings. And just like guitar in 2020, I’ve felt it in learning to vibe code books4free.com.

I sell AI in the Contech space, and I’ve learned much in the year, to the day, I’ve been with this silicon valley start-up. Two Stanford PhDs, some of the smartest men on the planet, hired this ex drug addict, alcoholic, in and out of juvenile and jail, to represent their masterpiece software, that uses AI to process construction POs, Invoices and Packing Slips. While there, in the process of learning their software I’ve learned to vibe code, and as a result I’ve built books4free.com for the 3rd or 4th time, but this time all myself, with the help of AI.

It’s amazing, I’m obsessed and passionate about it. I hope you’ll come along for the ride! I’ll write more later but wanted to just update the world. Thanks for reading, more to come.

JB Smith
Founder
Books4free.com

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. – Ernest Hemingway

Posted: September 14, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Well I suppose this Hemingway quote at least explains why I don’t fear dying in Afghanistan. I’ve been broke too long to fear death, haha. Nah, I still fear death, in fact years ago, and this is chronicled in my book Hippopotamus Sea, I did something like 5 hits of acid, a couple of months after doing 50 and being put under house arrest and beaten up pretty severely by Atlanta finest, ironically, about a block away from 8111. I digress… as soon as I was off house arrest, released into the wild if you will, we went to Rishi Nagranis and we all ate some LSD, and I ate about 5 hits as I recall. It is one of the only times I can remember having almost shamanic like visions. I felt like I saw the universe expanding and condensing on itself, my life after death, being a part of the molecules in the earth, and then in a tree and then eventually released free into the air, and I even thought I saw my own death. As fate would have it, it was by AK-47 in Afghanistan, and this was long before 9/11 or we were even at war with the Taliban. I’m sure it was just a collection of memories from a book or something I’d read, surely I’m not prophetic or anything at all, but damn if I can’t shake the idea of still joining up, even though I’d thought I’d decided against it.

I should just go turn in the paper work go spend the day at the medical office and see if it’s even an option. More than likely they will just say you’re too damn old, we don’t take Hep C cured or not, thanks for playing, btw we found an old fine you still haven’t paid the city of Atlanta from way back when in your drinking and drugging days. But at least then I’ll know that it’s no longer an option, that I tried, and that the romantic notion of adventure, combat, and stories galore is just a figment of my imagination and I can refocus on the work at hand, building a successful recruiting career here in Atlanta. And of course growing the Indie Publishing house books4free.com from more than just one book. I’d originally started hoping to include a bunch of recovery related books, but now I think my next project will be sci fi. Anywayz, finding out will at least galvanize my next decision.

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

– Ernest Hemingway

Another gem, so fuck it, lets go see if it’s even an option.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Headed To The Hurricane… Amelia Island, Family Vacation

Posted: August 25, 2011 in Uncategorized
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I used to not be invited on family vacations so I am grateful to be included, I just hope that Hurricane Irene stays off the coast of Georgia and we at least get a few days of sunshine.

It’s been a tough few days in my sobriety as I’ve dealt with being laid off for the 3rd time in 3 years, and it’s finally dawned on me that the reason I’d left my company, to join corporate America, was for job security. Oh the irony. I mean here I am looking at the last 3 layoffs where I’ve done relatively well, and in some cases better than most, and yet for one reason or another was let go, and lo and behold that premise of job security, no longer exists. So I’ve been brainstorming again about starting my old gig back up, corporate recruiting, or the headhunting game. Sure it’s a challenge with 9% unemployment, but hell, so is finding a job.

Had a few decent interviews this week but again, my redneck past always comes back to bite me in the ass. Bar fights and DUI’s however old, show up on background checks, even 10 years later, which incidentally is fucking bullshit, but whatever. The romantic notion of joining the Army too has lost a bit of luster, though I found I can join with my heart murmur, I can not do the job I really wanted to do which is Helicopter Pilot, so in essence, I could be a bullet stopper to I earn a security clearance to do something more exciting like Intelligence Analyst or even Medical route, eventually shooting for Doctor, but again, it’s a long hard road, and I’m not as sure about that as I was the idea of flying into hot lz’s… still the idea of carrying a gun and getting to fire it and getting paid for it, all while earning a tuition to college does appeal… I mean especially if economy takes another downward spiral. Especially, especially if that spiral quickens and the country’s problems go off a cliff, the Army is a safe place to stay employed, and i mean it’s still 20 years and a pension. It’s a lot to consider.

No matter what though, as always, I’ve found I’ve had my program to fall back on and guide me through the murky waters of indecision and the occasional thoughts of self-pity I’ve experienced while going through this transition. It’s crazy really, I never had these employment issues while drinking and drugging and I used to SMOKE ICE IN THE PARKING GARAGE WHILE WEARING A SUIT AND TIE! Haha, I mean fuck. I really thought my career would be the last of my worries in sobriety, and yet here I am. Still, I’d take this job insecurity over that monkey on my back any day of the week. And like yesterday, when I went to a meeting, listening to Paul, battling cancer, and homelessness, a man who was told he had weeks to live over 4 years ago, I don’t have that much to complain about. My self-pity is just pure selfishness. I have a perfectly healthy body, and my life has gotten better and better. Sure I don’t have the love of my life, or the career of my dreams or even a living situation that I’m comfortable with, but it sure as fuck beats what I came in the program with and all 12 committee voices in my head would have agreed.

So I’ll just keep on keeping on. Go to the beach and hope the hurricane stays offshore and pray that God guides me to the career in which I can serve him most usefully, whatever that may be. I also pray that all those I’ve met in the last 4 years or so who’ve gone back out, somehow make it back and survive the chaos and destruction of that terrible cycle. There have been so many good people over the years, and no matter what has happened, I hope they all make it back healthy and without too much more damage. Met a really cool guy who works in the movie industry in the last couple of weeks, and then as happens in our program, he just seems to have disappeared, and it really blows. So many talented people struggle with this beast, but I just have to remember, I didn’t get it my first time either.

The same God that got me sober is watching over us all, so I pray they all make it back. With God all things are possible! Wish me luck fishing during a hurricane!

-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

“You told me goodbye, How was I to know, You didn’t mean goodbye, You meant please don’t let me go.” – Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead)

Posted: June 24, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Woke up thinking about work again, it’s been an amazing few months with our software going into almost every major nightclub and dozens of great restaurants throughout Atlanta, and I’ve hired three sales folks, and I’m just amped still. We release on iphone very soon, and the anticipation to see how everything all works is palpable.

Staying busy has kept me emotionally stronger than I think I would have otherwise been with all the damn goodbyes this year. Starting with the one at the beginning of the  year that still stings most prominently no matter how much i wish it didn’t, it’s like my professional life had to make a trade with my personal life or something.

I still feel good sobriety wise though. Had an ear infection in the beginning of the week and my hearing is only about 50% of what it usually is, but it finally seems like its getting better. That’s always scary in sobriety, in our heads its never just an ear infection, I was positive I was going deaf. But 100 bucks for a drs appt and some antibiotics and it seems to be going back to normal.

Visited my sister for her birthday and got to hold the new baby, and she is gorgeous. They are so happy with their perfect little family. I remember those days, when my now 15 year old son was first born, every breath is magic, and they smell so good. My son still smells sweet to me. My cousin has two kids as well and me and the older one, who is 3, played angry birds and ant smashers on my phone until he killed the battery. There was a hyper dog running around as well. How is it the people who already have 2 kids, working on three, also have a hyper dog running around, and just don’t even seem annoyed by any of it? I guess when you’re happy those things don’t irritate you, and they are all very happy in their new families.

I guess I’m just lonely, but hey thats the brakes, nobody ever promised me anything in sobriety except for work, and a daily reprieve. I didn’t wake up with an obsession to drink and drug and somedays that is all the victory you’re going to get.

Still no word on the addicted project interview but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that in print.

Tomorrow evening, 8 pm, telling my story at the 8111 clubhouse for those in the know! Hope to see you there!

– Jared Bryan Smith

theaddictedproject.com – Just finished my interview!!

Posted: June 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Fun stuff.

Very proud to be on theaddictedproject.com and to be their featured author.

It was a long week, and I was a bit tired and discombobulated, but I think it went over pretty well, we shall see I suppose.

Great questions though.

Writing about personal relationships has definitely been the most taxing and challenging aspect of both the book and the blog and something I never thought of before launching with either. A certain sadness and melancholy arises just thinking over miscommunications, and misunderstandings, but that is what happens when you put your stream of consciousness on display for the world to see. It becomes a target of attack and it’s challenging to learn how to deal with criticism and or people with hurt feelings, especially when you never intended to hurt anyone… ever.

I hope I was able to convey that in the interview. I’m still just learning how to be me, just like all of us sick alcoholics trying to get better. All I have is today, and every day is a journey, and a challenge….

Wow…. and just like that it’s all worth while…. phone call from a friend who just cleared the virus using Interferon… just like that it’s all worth while. He’s read the book, and he’s now well on his way to being Hep C free. It’s all good.

Life is good, and miracles are abound in the program of AA. Where else could a drunk like me find friends, lol.

So sweet, I don’t know how long before the interview will be up on theaddictedproject.com but surely not too long so keep coming back and if you see it before me poke me on facebook or something… you can poke the publisher  too and he’ll notify me… 😉 thanks yall, have a great weekend.

-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

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts. -Henry Moore

Posted: May 5, 2011 in Uncategorized
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The recovered drug addict/alcoholic such as myself, is apt to find that even without drugs and alcohol, he is still quite capable of obsessing over certain things. With 4.5 years of real sobriety now, I’ve obsessed over everything from WW2 strategy games, to my book Hippopotamus Sea which took three years to write and finish. The most dangerous of all obsessions, the female human being, is another matter indeed. The latter is by far the most thrilling and exciting chase, but also as it turns out the one with the highest stakes.

Recently I’ve been receiving odd mail, not hate mail, but definitely negatively barbed emails from a variety of sources, and one of them I found particularly amusing. Supposedly from a lady in NC, she said I “lose credibility” while writing about getting  over the girl I obsessed over recently and wrote about in the blog. Credibility to who? Who am I trying to be credible too exactly? I’m a recovered junkie for fucks sake. I quite openly admit I’m an ex addict, opiate, cocaine, alcoholic survivor with qualities of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which I honestly believe MOST if  not ALL of us in recovery suffer from, so exactly how would writing about those symptoms make me less credible? Hmmm… it’s kind of like being written to in broken English and spelling errors in which the message says, “Your dum,” instead of the way it should be written: “You’re dumb.” Miss spellings and grammar issues aside, if you don’t understand why an addict would write about his obsessions, and how he intended on getting over them, go fuck yourself, or better yet, don’t read my blog.

Progress not perfection, and though yes, getting over the last was a challenge, I do believe I’ve learned many valuable lessons, and I assure you, the lessons being recorded, and timeless as the internet is, are more valuable than the so called credibility of one  naysayer who would prefer I bottle it all up, and or write it in a journal. Lol, the funny thing about that journal comment that was mentioned to me though, is that, I do also journal, every single night, in what is basically my tenth step work on a nightly basis. I began writing in this particular journal the day after me and said obsession split up the first time, so August of 2010. 2/3rds of that book is about the pain of loving someone who doesn’t love you back. Now to go from August to December beating your head against a wall is a long fucking time, but having that written history privately, and yeah, that shit is unpublishable is good, but writing about overcoming it here, is just as valuable. What I’ve written here, is humbling, humiliating, embarrassing even, but also good for me to have written, processed and published.

For one thing, in 20 some odd years of dating women, having only fallen for three or so in my life, this is the very first time I cut the cord, told the person to leave me alone, and to never contact me again no matter what and then actually stuck with it. That is progress not perfection. I did that in early January and I was right to do it. I could tell she was lying to me, and my gut instinct was right. Within a couple of months that would be proven right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Valuable lesson: always trust your gut.

Secondly, though it wasn’t all at once, the obsession did slowly begin to lift. Rob an obsession of it’s fuel, IE speaking to them, seeing them, etc. and just like with alcohol, drugs and nicotine that obsession will slowly lift, and you will slowly see through the obsession and into the truth of the matter. I wasn’t being loved, I was being used. My perception allowed me to see any relative act of kindness as love, but the reality, which all too many people in my network told  me, was that I was being played, and though I didn’t want to believe that, as I put time and space between me and the situation I slowly but surely began to see that.

Thirdly, praying and following my intuition about finding a Godly woman of the same faith as mine, opened up doors I could have never imagined. I began attending a good church and met a ton of good new people, and though it is different and not anything like my expectations, it is good, and it is where God wants me to be, just for today, which I can accept. The whole process has taught me a lot. The last woman I loved before this, Gwen Evere in the book, took my soul to a new depth of depravity and hell I thought would I never reach, and I feel like at 4.5 years sober this was another lesson, or even a test, and had I not cut the cord in January, I would have set myself up for even more pain and suffering than I had to go through anyway.

Removing the fire, or stopping seeing her, avoiding her, not talking to her, being disconnected from her in every way, really helped out. She added the final nails in the coffin in February when her ex came back on the scene, who was never far removed no matter what she had told the world, her friends or her family, and with finality she removed me from facebook. Funny that it stung, irritating to the pride and ego, I hadn’t spoken to her once, emailed, called or texted, but she felt it necessary to remove my facebook connection. That was a blessing too though. Her face had continued to pop up on that upper left hand corner, facebook prodding and laughing at me, it was good that she ended even that subtle communication. Good for me anyway. Valuable lesson: Cut ALL ties, including facebook, texting, email, EVERYTHING.

I continued praying for her, for her happiness, for her sobriety, and praying for the obsession to be removed, but it was still pretty intense.

“I do not think that obsession is funny or that not being able to stop one’s intensity is funny.” ~ Jim Dine

There were times in early to mid February that I was hurting pretty bad. God put some other things in my life that kept me sane. Church, work, and I dove into step-work to get out of myself, but I was still pretty angry.

Time takes times as we say though, and by early April, I finally felt like myself again.

Just like with sobriety, my serenity came piece meal, in waves, not all at once or all encompassing, but in bits and parts. I remember early on in sobriety I would get like one day of relief and then have a week of obsessing over drinking and drugging. Then I’d get two days and feel relieved, amazed even, but then experience a week or two even of obsession, but I would cling to that day or two of serenity, of peace, because it would be like proof, like the example of what I was striving for. And ultimately that is how getting over this woman was, it was the same process, I had to do it, no matter what, because just like active addiction, of alcohol or heroin, this emotional pain and distress was killing me, and I couldn’t go on with it, it hurt too fucking much. So I would take what little peace I had, cling to the idea that it was just a sample of the future peace and serenity I would get if I stuck to the path, and continued on my way, and sure enough, just like with drugs, alcohol and nicotine, my obsession slowly lifted.

Still, occasionally cravings would return. I hadn’t thought of her in two weeks easy and was coasting along beautifully, when she walked into my candlelight meeting to pick up her nine month candle, and fuck if that didn’t send my heart through my chest. I was mad at myself, mad at my inability to control my emotions, and mad at her, for looking at me like I was some kind of evil bastard. That glare was so powerful, I swear if looks could kill I’d have died on the spot. It was like being in early sobriety and walking into a room where everyone was smoking kind bud, drinking your favorite beer, and listening to your favorite music. All the lie was out to see, and none of the truth of your disease, that the addiction was out to kill you was hidden, just the beauty of it all, just the deception.

Time takes time though, and all I could do was be grateful that I’d had the brief reprieve I’d had, and hope that it would continue to get better and better.

It has, and finally, after five months, yesterday, I saw her best friend at a Starbucks and I could have sworn I saw her, sitting next to her, because all I could see was the top of her little blond head, and for the first time since January, my heart didn’t go through my chest. My blood pressure didn’t even change. I can honestly say I’m over the whole bullshit obsession. The funny thing too, I went to write that down in my journal last night, and it was the VERY last page of my journal, the book of pain is finally closed, completely and categorically. The emotions 100% tempered. I thought the entire time my roommate and I were in Starbucks that she was out in the parking lot with her friend and I had no desire to see her, speak to her, or even glance that direction. The funny thing is when we were leaving it turned out it wasn’t her at all but her friends kid, who is a blond, so it wasn’t even her, but regardless, the emotion was gone, cooled, controlled. Thank fucking God…finally.

Irritating that people read shit I posted months and months ago, or a poem that clearly states it was written months and months ago, and take it for my present state of mind. Or think that I give a shit what some stranger in NC thinks of my credibility, truly, I am brutally honest, I know this, I don’t seek or need or want your approval.

Getting over a woman completely and utterly in just less than five months, sure as fuck beats the 7 years or so it took for me to get over Gwen Evere. For me, it is huge progress. If I lose credibility with whomever the fuck reads the earlier postings as I was going through the obsession, oh fucking well. The idea of this blog is to be unique, original, and brutally honest. It is also supposed to help other men, not the women of AA, as I wouldn’t know the first thing about their emotions, nor do I suspect do they. My plan, though a day at a time, is to outlast my disease and die sober, and being that I’m 33 that will make for some pretty good, albeit intense, life lessons, that I will publish and make available to all those that are interested in how to face challenges and overcome them in the program. Every fucking guy I know in the program with real long term sobriety has faced woman issues, and more specifically, obsessions with them, and/or sex, so if I lose credibility by being honest, instead of acting like some fucking holier than thou guru, I really don’t give a shit. The only credibility I seek is that of being just another bozo on the bus, just another garden variety drunk, and I’m glad my writing still gets feedback and comments and all that shit, because it means people read it. In fact, we broke a record the other day with 1435 people reading the blog, so to the one jackass retard who thinks I lose creditability for being honest… blow me. Blow me enough and maybe you’ll be my new obsession, lol.

The very point of all of this is to live and learn, and if I fancy it all up and put lipstick all over the pig of my obsessions, it would have been a lie. I’m not unique in feeling obsessions over a woman in AA. Someone saying “Oh he’s obsessed” is fucking comical. If you aren’t obsessed with something in recovery at some point, you’re a sociopath, or most likely, just a fucking hypocrite. Remember, whenever you point the finger their are four coming back at you. For me, it is amazing progress for me to have first cut the cord on the obsession, and second stuck with it until it was 100% totally gone. I’ve written it in here as a record of how I did it so that someone else may learn from the experience and hopefully apply the same lessons. If you believe you are better than the VERY common symptoms of alcoholics around the globe, well good for you and God bless your little heart, I hope you stay holier than thou for as long as you can, because if you don’t have the humility to relate to what I’m writing about, you will very probably experience some of the same exact turmoil. Lets hope that you can get through them as successfully as I have, because love me or hate me, I’ve accomplished quite a bit when it comes to sobriety, including, getting over the urge to drink and drug, finishing a year of Interferon, defeating Hep C, losing 50 lbs, quitting smoking, running half marathons and more. You may not like me, but you may just find we have more in common than we do apart.

We are all sick people trying to get better, and the only reason I write this is to try and help others, just as others have helped me.

Thank you God for giving me the strength to persevere, and overcome ALL my obsessions. At 4.5 years sober, I’m still just as capable of obsessing as I was when I came in, but having gone through this last year, I now know that there is NOTHING on God’s green Earth that I can’t get over, given enough time, patience, and endurance. I truly have faith that ultimately you have a good plan worked out for me better than any that I could possibly imagine. God’s will not mine be done… And thanks for the Osama kill, we needed some good news.  ; )

-Jared Bryan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.books4free.com

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

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

and available in hardback from amazon:

-Jared Bryan Smith

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