Posts Tagged ‘recovery’

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 fiancĂ© 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 fiancĂ© 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 fiancĂ© 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 fiancĂ© 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 fiancĂ© 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 fiancĂ© 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

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

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde

Posted: April 28, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Few people really do their own thinking. As Mark Twain said, the only original thought written down was either Adam or Eve. That being said, too much deferring of your thoughts, or living by other people’s opinions can be hugely detrimental to your life, and most especially if you’re in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It’s perplexing though, because in our program we get a sponsor. Or a teacher. They walk us through the big book. But all too often that isn’t who gives you most of your opinions. Generally it’s the person with whom you spend the most time, whether that is a lover, a friend or a sponsor, in early sobriety, you have got to remember, it is easier to be pulled down, than it is to pull someone up. Hell, I had to change sponsors my first week because I didn’t like being yelled at. Also, for me, the other warning signs were that he wouldn’t tell me who his higher power was. Call me superstitious but if you’re higher power is Lucifer, I don’t want to pray with you, and if you’re too ashamed to say it’s either God, Jesus or at the very least the Holy Spirit, then I clearly wasn’t working with the right person. But I stuck it out, stayed sober that week, and waited around till I got a hold of my current sponsor. He kept me relatively sober for the first few months of my sobriety and then I switched from him to a Buddhist, very laid back guy by the name of Pete, who had 18 years sober, but had drank on the way out of Katrina due to their being zero fresh water. Not sure if that story is true, he’s since died, but it sure sounded romantic.

My point is, we alcoholics are VERY VERY susceptible to the moods, serenity, and/or confusion and chaos of those around us. As the Bible says, “Iron sharpens Iron” and the opposite is true as well. “A fool returns to his folly like a dog to his vomit.” – Proverbs.  If you’re in sobriety and those around you are CLEARLY LYING, STEALING or any other OBVIOUS character defect is coming out, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THEM, they are poisonous and if at first it repels you, but then you find it ok, or justified, you are already on the slippery slope back out the door. Living a spiritual life is not an experiment, it’s not a luxury, it’s a mandatory way of life, and if someone you know is holding your hand, whispering sweet things in your ear, but quite obviously leading you down a shady road, get the fuck away from them. Living dishonestly is the path to ruin, it’s the soft subtle sell to a drink, and for us to drink is to die.

Pick your friends wisely, your lovers more wisely, your sponsor with care, and if people do consistently lie, cheat and steal, even just to other people, and not you, it doesn’t fucking matter, get the fuck away from them before their shit becomes your shit, and you end up right fucking back where you came from. Shaking, in pain, miserable, confused, with the obsession to drink and drug on you like it never left, and more so, if the obsession to drink and drug hasn’t left, after 6 months or so, look at your spiritual life. Generally it’s as obvious as the first principle of the first step. Are you being honest with everyone, including yourself and God?

If that question makes you feel uncomfortable, than get to work, getting rid of the bad in your life, and ask those that love you for help in doing so. You’ve never burned a bridge in AA, everybody is here to help you, but it’s for those who want the help not for those who need it. You merely need to ask. Ask those with ten plus years of solid sobriety, who work good and decent jobs, and always have a smile on their faces, “What am I doing wrong?” “How do I get to where you are?” “How do I become happy in AA?” It can be done, and it starts with being HONEST.

It is both good and bad that we morph into those we spend most of our time with. Look around you and ask yourself, are they positive bright people? If I had children would I want them to be around these people? Are they kind, passive, peace loving, God fearing? Would they turn the other cheek, could I leave a pile of money in the room and walk away without fear they would take it and run? Would they lie to me? Do they lie to me regularly? Do they lie to others regularly? These things sound basic, but all too often people become accustom to the worst of behavior patterns, and having suffered through them so long, begin to see them as normal.

Find good people to spend your time with, even if uncomfortable at first. Search your soul for truth and ask yourself and God the hard questions? Are the people I spend most of my time with good at heart, or are they bad for my soul, God please help me to see the truth in all things. If your aim is to seek truth, you will always be doing the will of God, and if you truly seek God’s will, I’ve always found he makes it easy for you to see the obvious.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Vacuum – JB Smith – April 19, 2011

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Vacuum of loss,

A faithful sidearm.

But failure lingers,

Cries out in alarms.

Death beckons of finality,

Lost words irrelevant.

Like smoke, memories, reality,

Opportunity lost heaven-sent?

Regret but wasted thought,

Time flows relentless.

For every second, won and fought,

Your harshness purely groundless.

Amends for amends,

A downward spiral spins.

Eye for an eye makes the world blind,

So sever all that binds… and run.

Stop raging against the current,

Change things for different results.

Brush shoulders with all this torment.

– Jared Bryan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Careless Self

Quit ripping my heart out,

     Stop feasting on my flesh.

Ignorant of the pain I doubt,

     Every twinge, or twitch or breath.

Strikes horror through my soul,

     Nervous system is nervous again,

Loving you takes a toll.

     The dank of folly, the essence of sin.

Lust, camouflaged duality,

     We’re not even kind to ourselves.

Separate motives, same reality.

     Truth unopened books on shelves.

– Jared Bryan Smith

“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

 

Living Sober – Exercise, Insomnia, AA, Dr. Amen and Chemical Imbalances (SPECT Scans)

Posted: March 14, 2011 in Uncategorized
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In 2008 I had just finished over a year of grueling, miserable Interferon Treatment which cured my Hep C, but which was hell. Even after quitting the Interferon I continued to suffer extreme headaches and it felt like some days I was better off while on Interferon. All you can do at that point though is just power through and hope for the best. For me that meant praying the treatment would be successful and it hadn’t all been in vain. For me, it was worth it, I was cured of Hep C, but for far too many, or roughly 50% of the people who do the year-long Interferon treatment, they don’t get cured and still must suffer all the long-term horrific side effects that the scientific, or maybe just the pharmaceutical community downplay so effectively here in the states. I’m lucky because at least my constant headaches, aches and pains mean I am at least cured of Hepatitis C. But in that first month when I wasn’t quite sure yet, since they must let you be off the Interferon for six months before they will pronounce you “cured”, I just had to wait, suffer and wonder. During that time I saw a PBS show that covered the science of the brain.

Dr. Daniel Amen as it turns out was using a new technique to study the brain, and I found it absolutely fascinating, primarily because I was facing so many changes in my own mind, having suffered from the disease of addiction and alcoholism, literally losing my mind, and then in 2008 at roughly 1.5 years sober, recovering from a year-long assault on my mind in the form of Interferon, in the name of curing Hep C. Some of the things his scans showed, called SPECT Scans, were freaking amazing. Mainly that the alcoholic brain in the SPECT scans looked empty and riddled with holes for roughly 12 months after the alcoholic quit drinking! That it took over a year for the alcoholic mind to get back to normal blew my mind, but it made perfect sense. Also he had data showing clearly worse recovery rates of the brain of people who used harder drugs like methamphetamine’s, Cocaine and LSD (lucky me). To me, this looked like conclusive evidence, and the only data I’d ever really seen portrayed as efficiently. Having gotten sober myself, and thinking, hell after 30 days, or 90 days I should be just fine, be right back to normal, and that obviously not happening, I was very glad to see hard data showing that it took longer than I had expected to return to a state of normalcy, and furthermore he had done even more research into the mind, and even delved into looking at the Pharmaceutical Industry’s cure alls, anti depressants, ADHD medication, and even anti anxiety medication. This guy had really done his research with thousands of patients, and the data he shared on the PBS special I was watching was mind-blowing. For one thing I fully expected him to endorse all the meds out there thrown to the American populus but in fact his data refuted it.

I don’t have the charts or the graphs he used in front of me, but let me just give you the gist, and if you’re in a similar situation as I was back then, at least do yourself the favor of researching Dr. Amen’s data yourself, as I include a link at the bottom of this blog.

As I was recovering from a year long fight with Interferon, depression, and roughly 20 years of addiction and suffering from terrible bouts of sadness and more acutely headaches, getting on antidepressants or medications was a serious consideration. The only thing holding me back from it was the experience I’d had with it just before I began Inteferon which was that when I began taking Wellbutrin my cravings to drink and drug went through the roof. As my sponsor told me it was disconnecting me from the spirit, just like a drink or a drug would do. But still I was suffering so I was still considering trying the softer easier way of medications again, especially now that I had over a year sober. I wasn’t making the decision lightly though, and watching this special ultimately made me try exercise instead. As I remember the presentation, what he basically said was that, yes, you could get temporary results against depression and ADHD from medicines but the chart basically showed that like with any drug, to continue experiencing the favored results you would need to continue increasing your dosage, and also you would experience side effects that came along with the drugs, and as you increased your dosage, you would increase you side effects. One of the major side effects being sexual. Well, sorry folks, but fuck that. I like my sexual prowess to remain unaffected, haha. That basically sealed the deal for me but he continued, showing the same chart of moods, but instead of countering them with medicines and pharmaceuticals, countering them with an exercise regimen, that also increased along as your body became more and more capable of handling the work out. The data was spellbinding to me. Basically, the mood stabilizations were equal if not greater than that of the same patients using medicines, except that sexual side effects weren’t experienced, in fact quite the opposite, sex became more enjoyable in my case once I got in shape, and also exercise is free, as well as you didn’t have the other side effects of dry mouth, nausea, etc. and more importantly, you weren’t becoming dependent on chemicals. The effects of exercise long-term, were more effective at creating the natural chemicals in your mind that ultimately make you feel better.

And to back it all up he shared brain scans of different patients using the two different methods, of exercise vs chemical dependency, because that’s what anti depressants become, even if they are prescribed by Doctors, and low and behold the patients with just exercise mind’s were much better in those scans a year later than those who were relying on pharmaceuticals. And yet people still choose the softer easier way and come into the rooms of AA overloaded with prescriptions and anti anxiety medicines, and ultimately, if they make it and that’s a big if, they’ve just switched dependencies.

I’m not a Dr. and AA doesn’t have an opinion on medications, but the data Dr. Amen showed was clear and I’m glad I saw it. Please check out the scans at the link below and I’ll also add his blog to my blogroll as it is fascinating information. And yes I am fully aware of his critics and those that discredit those SPECT scans, but the arguments seem to me much like telling Columbus the world was flat. People on the forefront of technology are constantly getting attacked, and also, for someone so blatantly talking about the ineffectiveness of the pharmaceutical industries cure alls that are over prescribed wish lists of symptom treaters, I would expect nothing less than a full on counter attack. Fuck em the data makes sense to me because I lived it.

Based on his data and the show’s I’ve since incorporated exercise into my program of recovery, and it makes a HUGE difference. If I don’t work out even just for a couple of days, I become prone to depression, and thoughts, although they pass quickly, of the chronic “Fuck It’s” we in recover are prone to. Nothing like the obsession of early recovery mind you, as I am free of that obsession, thank God, but still, if I don’t work out, I definitely can feel a difference. And again, my experience with meds was that they made me feel less connected, where as working out, I experience endorphin rushes, runners high, and after wards often feel as good as having just had sex… well maybe not that good, but closer than I ever have with the meds I’ve flirted with in recovery. Bottom line, though our literature only mentions exercise in one book, “Living Sober” it sure as hell has made a huge difference in my recovery, and I wish we had more studies regarding it’s long term positive effects, versus that of prescribed medications because though Dr. Amen’s data was conclusive to me, there is still a lot of debate out there, and I’d love to see the issue settled, with hard conclusive facts.

I would really also love for Dr. Amen to do a specific study of the brain effects, before and afterwards of both Chemo and interferon patients, and maybe he has and I just haven’t seen it. Because the scientific community claims it doesn’t affect the brain but I’m here to tell you there are long term ramifications to interferon, I can no longer do math in my head, remember names as well, and more and though they may not be able to prove it through blood work, I wonder if Dr. Amen’s scans show a difference.

Oh the other thing I definitely wanted to mention, and if you’ve ever spent ANY amount of time in the rooms of AA or NA this is something you constantly hear, “but I’m an insomniac, or I have trouble sleeping.” Exercise is the BEST way on Earth to counter insomnia. Nobody, and I mean nobody on Earth goes through boot camp, and can’t fall asleep at night! Yesterday I ran 13 miles in two hours, and guess what, I slept like a baby. If you have trouble sleeping, before you go get nyquil, or good forbid prescription meds to go to sleep, incorporate exercise. Those chemicals are mood changers and I’ve taken them and know for a fact they change the way you feel that night, but also for the day or two following, and we are too sensitive to be flirting with that kind of disaster. If you have bad knees and can’t run, join a gym and swim. The human body spent hundreds of thousands of years wallking, running and exercising on a daily basis and evolution hasn’t caught up to the fact that we no longer use our bodies for survival and therefore all of us generally have pent up energy at the end of our days. Add to that scientific fact, the fact that we made ourselves pass out to go to sleep for years on end, and OF COURSE YOU HAVE TROUBLE GOING TO SLEEP, we all did early on, and I’m here to tell you, simply add exercise daily to your life, and you will find you no longer have a problem sleeping. Even if you just start out by walking a mile or two a day, start some where, this is scientific fact… and if you’re around me, and don’t work out, don’t whine about not being able to sleep. It’s simple cause and effect. And it’s really simple, as Nike says: Just do it!

http://www.amenclinics.com/brain-science/spect-image-gallery/

– Jared Bryan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

-Jared Bryan Smith

 

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