READ: Key to Recovery

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12 STEP CHAT: Terms of Addiction

are not terms of endearment!
I learned today that certain terms are not allowed in 12 step group meetings, it's a non acceptable medical term not allowed in 12 step talk. I was sorta sideswiped!

when I mentioned co-dependency, I was immediately hushed. cause for a pause. from that point on I was mostly ignored. Oh well! So I asked what term is acceptable. Twice asked to be exact. finally a woman said alanonies... WOW, don't suppose I would ever apply that term to myself.

this woman stated she has worked the program for 52 years. So she still has the need to be in these rooms? if the steps work, then at what point one is free from the need to be involved in support groups? Is this a misguided question?

I notice several things about support groups. They all seem to thrive on each other’s sorrow, stories and issues. Most likely no one gets "better" with this thought process. Some of them actually disassociate with "normal" populations and even consider non-addict's outsiders as in "THEM". "They just don't understand us" was the comment of a man who explained the Celebrate Recovery group at a church. I walked away from that group, astonished at the total control over what can be discussed and what cannot. No interaction, just empty space between the stories. Some stories were decades old with no resolve on many of the attendee’s part.

Listening is the big thing in 12 step groups, but in the chat room all I saw was everyone writing at the same time and not really connecting or hearing deeply. Realize it was open chat and not the formal online meetings, which indeed are quite structured.

These are facts from my point of view on groups. It’s understood that AA, AL-ANON, NA, Celebrate Recovery have help millions of people put their life back together. It makes me wonder what people do to get well on the other side of 12 steps...

Guess it's time to discover all the terminology in this area of study. Oh, others complained about being labeled. I agree with that, but sometimes you need to know what you are dealing with disease or sickness wise before you can find the cure.

CELEBRITY: Sixx: A.M. - Life is Beautiful

no words needed!

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CELEBRITY: Sobriety is cool...

Nikki Sixx of Motley Crew is a joy to see recovery in the world of rock and roll.

Nowadays, he's high on everything but drugs: his kids, his music, his clothing line, his book, and most importantly, his efforts to aid drug addicts. With a workaholic's zeal, he jumps from one project to the next.

"My take is never to be a preacher," said Sixx of his and others' addictions. "I hate that people think it's a moral problem. It's a disease. George Bush thinks that it's a moral problem, and so I'm working with people in Washington, D.C., to help him understand that it's a disease.

THOUGHT: Bail-Outs, Addicts & Codependents

Bail outs, addicts & codependents all victims of the system. Or are they? They are like a spinning wheel with no end.


Co-dependents are often sited for bailing out of relationships with addicts. more often they don't bail due to the overly responsible nature built into them from their own experiences growing up in an addictive/dysfunctional family. it's not that they don't think about bailing on a bad relationships, but they stay regardless of the never-ending cycles of an addicts roller coaster ride. all the empty promises, the repentant pleas not to break the bond.

Feels just like the government having to bail out these banks, most likely CEO's who are addicts themselves-addicts to power and greed. the government gets blamed for enabling bad business practice while the CEO's and businesses walk scott free and tons of money on top of it all. so now the government gets the mess of cleaning out bad accounts, heavy losses while trying to make sense of it all. it's the root of all evil you know. not money but the love of it. i would suppose that the love of anything other than the Creator, ones self and each other is likened to a long head fall into unhealthy addiction.

just like co-dependents. living the days with the ravishes of irresponsible addicts, covering all their mistakes, making ends meet with nary any support or appreciation - only scorn from the addict who thinks the codependent is just trying to make them look bad. again the addict gets all the attention, while the one who fixes things gets dumped on for simply doing all it takes to make things work.

i hear so many stories about the maneuvers of addicts. they get bailed out of jail on their own tearful pleas and begging and tears that they have changed. the people around them help with new places, money and jobs. only to have the addict turn right around and buy drugs, and begin the lying schemes all again.

Just like the corruption in Washington by crooked politicians and bankers...

THOUGHT: The Climb Out

Knowing yourself is the first rung on the ladder towards wholeness.
to climb out of the pit of addiction, any addiction is layered with self-knowledge, determination and the knowledge of others who made it to the other side. think about yourself. What do you know about your limitations? your character? your purpose? what about your weakness? your life patterns? your family history? Do you know your hurts and painful memories? Do you struggle with depression? have you found the root?

Be Determined. That is the second rung.
When you know yourself and from where you came, finding determination to move forward is easier. No one else can free you. Only you can choose to get well. Then stick to it. Allow nothing or anyone (addict friends) to stop you from your choice to become whole. Though none go with you - you must keep on going.

Books are the words of life and this is the 3rd Rung.
You can learn anything in this life through reading books. Books give insight to the journeys, thoughts, knowledge and skills to guide you. Books give encouragement and map out your recover so you can overcome any addiction. Books are there in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping. Go to Amazon.com and search for these key words: addiction recovery,dysfunctional family,adult children of alcoholics
or whatever your particular addiction is. Through knowledge is freedom for the Adult Children of Alcoholic Syndrome as well as enablers also called co-dependents.

The Fourth Rung: Journal - Write your way to wholeness
Buy a notebook and write. write whatever comes into your head. write day and night. spill out all your poison into the notebook. write down all your dreams and aspirations. write your dark thoughts. draw, scribble, paste pictures into your notebook | journal | sketchbook. As you write make sure to note the date. Tell about the events going on. Then when you read back through your writings, not only do you discover yourself (SELF KNOWLEDGE) you also chronicle your recover from addict to wholeness. You also have written your own BOOK. Here's a Blog on Journaling

These rungs to climb are not always easy. Yet what you discover is that the air is clear up here and many others are on the same path!

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The Truth About Humpty Dumpty

You've felt it. Your up in life, all is well. Everyone loves you, you feel good about the image you worked so hard to polish and perfect. After all isn't personality everything? The place you sit in work, play and relationships makes other people spin about... Then in a blink of the eye without a notice or warning, YOU FALL. So goes the story of this famous egg:

Humpty Dumpty, who sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put Humpty together again..

This little rhyme began as a riddle, with the answer being egg. The original 18th century meaning of Humpty Dumpty is a short and clumsy person. As you dig farther into history Humpty Dumpty refers to a drink of brandy boiled with ale. Humpty Dumpty is also notable debater with Alice in Lewis Carrolls "Through the Looking Glass"

By now you are asking why Humpty Dumpty in a post on addictions?

In the wee hours of the night, while in thought about the book "7 Habits of Effective People" I thought about the egg story. How often we polish and decorate our outward appearance in hopes that it's enough to get through life. To avoid difficulty we sit high on a wall in hopes we don't fall. Lacking character and value, we are fragile, but protected only by a thin shell. This is the life of an addict, or adult child who grows up with addicts. It's not until the fall do most ever truly recover. So unlike Humpty Dumpty, those who fall in their addiction/co-dependency often begin to finally see life. With the help of other broken eggs they piece themselves together and find being high on the wall was the mistake from the beginning!

It doesn't take the kings horses and men to put the egg together again. It takes you. You making sobriety happen. You can do this.

THOUGHTS: Out from the garden

Photo taken in Madrid, Spain by Rasama

i read the papers, hear the news, observe how people get through their days. I see arguments between the democrats, republicans, liberals and conservatives. the reality is we are all in the same boat. it's not the label, it's human nature. we are all fallen from the garden. only some of us have managed to keep some of the gardens beauty.

each at varied levels of thinking, knowledge and desire. apparently some of us never get beyond the ME-ME-ME stage and live life totally dependent on everyone meeting their needs, blaming others for all their ills and never truly becoming an independent person. those who are independent often fall into the blame and clutches of those dependents.

i began reading the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Actually it's the second time to be read. This time I get it. He states that the most difficult thing people do in life is become independent. Free to be proactive not reactive, to think about the good of everyone in terms of teamwork, cooperation. The most supreme thing people can do is become INTERDEPENDENT. Hmmmm. smacks exactly opposite of addictions.

Addictions cause people to satisfy their need above all else. Selfishly they deny that need, yet manipulate everything on earth to obtain it. Be it power, greed, sex, alcohol, drugs, work, it's insatiable narcissism that never ends. Herein lies the true root of evil.

Until everyone grows up independently we will not see much of the garden at all!

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Diddy: on Crackheads in Alaska

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

Look up his own self-incriminating video on YouTube. I decided not to give it a link, it so as not to give credit to stupidity. Crackheads and Blacks? According to P. DIDDY who has the intelligence of a gnat, this is his criteria for government experience

ORIGINAL QUOTE DIDDY: Alaska? Alaska? Alaska, Alaska, come on, man. I don't even know if there's any black people in Alaska. If you really think that we're going to let you win this election with these, like, crazy decisions that you're making, November 4th, we have to protect our future because John McCain is bugging the [BLEEP] out, okay? What is the reality in Alaska? There's not even no crack heads in Alaska, no black people. There's not even no, like me.

Glenn Beck tells it straight:

"Oh, by the way, Obama's giving a speech on women and the economy today. But McCain is the one freaking out, seriously. By the way, P. Diddy, I just want to because I know you can't understand, you know, because there are no black people in Alaska. So Sarah Palin clearly can't relate to black people because there are no black people. How many black people in Alaska? Done the homework for you. 4.72% of the population. It is below average. It is below average. 4.72% of the population. That's the population of Alaska. So you were right. There are black people, but it's just below the national average."

GLENN: Alpine, New Jersey. Okay. Oh, my gosh, I just happen to have the stats. What's the percentage of people that live in Alpine, New Jersey? The place where P. Diddy chose to live, but he had enough money to live anywhere on planet Earth. Percentage of black people living in Alpine New Jersey? 1.51%. So that's about 33 total black residents, 32 if you don't count P. Diddy. So apparently Sarah Palin can understand black people a little more than three times better than P. Diddy. Of course, I don't know how many crack heads they have in Alpine, New Jersey. Let's just go out on a limb and say maybe at least one.

OMG! Obama supporters like DIDDY show the crowds he draws. Truly this is race between good and evil!

MORE PEOPLE WHO PULLED HIS VIDEO: check this link out: Diddy - Obama Blog

Peter Pan and the Lost Boys

Perhaps PETER PAN reads more to life meaning than what we think! Are you feeling lost? Searching for your shadow, Tinkerbell or Wendy? Those things that make you feel wanted or alive? Some find it in addiction. The list goes on of what mankind will fill their lives with to find their purpose. Drugs, liquor, video games, work, pornography, sex, whatever vice they find. Many Lost Boys (Girls too!) belong to the  27 Club those succumbing to death through their vice.


Addiction to destructive things makes you lost. Positive "addiction" like music, art, literature, serving others,  not to their own personal gift and art make you found.

I am haunted by the names of people on the 27 Club list. Just look at all the Celebrity Names in the papers/tv/sport stars/movie starts who got lost, consumed then overcome by death with the addiction they worshiped.

Each one given over into addiction... depression  and more. me thinks the answer is to be involved with the gift written into each soul. the key is the discovery of those gifts... what's your thoughts? what is your addiction? What is your cure?

SIN: to miss the mark....

What is Sin?
Don't misunderstand what western christians have done to a word that is "offensive" and misdirected when in reality is not the modern day dictionary term. i am using the term in the sense written below.  Words directly from the Bible unaltered or sprinkled with modern man’s viewpoint. Consider these things yourself. Especially if you are searching for your purpose, or feeling like you just don’t fit anywhere. God's tender mercies are over all who turn to him.

TO MISS THE MARK. We often do miss things and God only punishes those who shake their fist at truth and destroy, kill steal and make misery. To find the mark is be a co-creator of all things good, holy and loving. Jesus came to give life and life abundant. There is an enemy too, who deceives steals, kills and destroys.

I refer to the bolded definition, see more about the original Greek definition of SIN:

    •    amartia - to miss the Mark
    •    agnohma - an act done in ignorance of God's will
    •    SEE: Hebrews 9:7 (Sin committed in ignorance)
    •    SEE: 1 Timothy 1:13 (Sin committed in ignorance)
    •    uperbainw - going beyond the will of God
    •    SEE: 1 Thessalonians 4:6 (overstepping or trespass) in Josephus and Philo lit. "going beyond the head of the risen Lord."

In order to study the definition of Sin, here is a list of Greek words translated as sin:

    •    skandalon - a cause of sinning or causing someone else to fail
    •    enoico - guilty or liable
    •    ponhro - guilty or evil, as a noun one who has done an evil deed.
    •    ptaiw - stumbling or failing to live up to God's will
    •    proskomma - taking the opportunity to sin or cause someone to sin
    •    paratoma - a transgression of the will of God

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StepChat.com

today i joined my first Al-Anon/Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting online at the link above. I visited Celebrate Recovery and other support groups only to walk away with temporary relief, but never went back. Other online chats are usually out of control and allow bozo's in soliciting their own junk. This one is different! It was organized, had greeters and Chairperson, everyone spoke in order and with respect. I am most impressed with the formality and guidelines. The pasting of the 12 steps and the information about the step program. The serenity prayer and moment of silence. In all these points I felt the life of the room - others hurting and wanting answers, those who have worked the steps guiding people back to daily principles and working the steps. this is a positive experience for me and want to keep attending, to learn more about applying these principles and about myself as codependent. As one member said "It works when we work it."

To find out more about 12 Steps for any condition click HERE.

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CELEBRITY ADDICTION: Reznor Sober | Nine Inch nails

i like nine inch nails. in fact i felt as if Trent Reznor was like a musical Picasso in his work. more and more musicians are seeing the light of being clean. again it points to the cycle of pain, masked by drugs, covered in shame, loss of ability, mask it with more drugs, inward failure when outwardly it appears to be ok. nothing but pure, clean living without drugs,alcohol or substance can give clarity. 

"I can see now with pretty much crystal clear clarity that that aspect had governed my life. I had made writing out to be a terrifying prospect filled with pain and failure and some things that I dreaded doing because I’ve always lacked self-confidence and every other thing," he said, while on tour in Europe. "By the end of my run with drugs I’d also realized that my brain wasn’t functioning right and I’d lost the power to really concentrate – it really made my art suffer, which made me feel worse, which made me want to get high and you know, that cycle starts up."

Source: TuneLab Music

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Source: TuneLab Music

CELEBRITY ADDICTION: Metallica - Sobriety now..

wake the world up with your message james. 

begin with all the garage bands right to the top. we are losing our children, the new talents of the world to the disEASE of drugs... 

Nothing Else Matters!

Hetfield began his speech asking for a moment of silence "for the people who didn't make it, that aren't with us, who could be and I think should be." He recounted the old saw that "dying is easy, living is hard," and offered his own recovery as proof that addiction is survivable. Tom Waits congratulated Hetfield, saying "getting sober's not for sissies."

Five years ago, things were different, he recalled, expressing gratitude to the award-winning documentary "Some Kind of Monster," which depicted Metallica's virtual dissolution as Hetfield began a lengthy rehabilitation to treat drug and alcohol abuse.

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Original Posted By Dean Goodman on Red Orbit, LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Saturday, 13 May 2006

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Five years ago, things were different, he recalled, expressing gratitude to the award-winning documentary "Some Kind of Monster," which depicted Metallica's virtual dissolution as Hetfield began a lengthy rehabilitation to treat drug and alcohol abuse.

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Original Posted By Dean Goodman on Red Orbit, LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Saturday, 13 May 2006