Addiction Treatment Blog by Addiction Experts » Spirituality
How to Survive the Holiday Season with Your Sanity and Sobriety
Oh no! Here it comes again: THE HOLIDAY SEASON. Do you have fond memories of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, creamy eggnog, and yuletide cheer? Or do you dread the unrealistic expectations, increased anxiety and annoying relatives? If you have the urge to act like a groundhog, crawl into the nearest cozy hole, and not emerge until this crazy season is over sometime in the spring….well, you’re not alone! Many of us feel that way. But the holidays are rapid approaching like a speeding Amtrac train. So how do you survive the holiday season with your sanity and sobriety? Here are a few tips: PACE YOURSELF: Remember you do not have to shop ‘til you drop. You do not have to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Addiction, Drugs, holidays, Life, Love and Relationships, Recovery, Spirituality
Keith Richards’ Memoir
Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist and songwriter, recently came out with his new memoir, Life, one of the most interesting revelations about recovery that involves the role of music, his work and passion, in the rocker’s decision to give up heroin and cocaine. For much of his life, he used these drugs to fuel his work– many of the Stones’ greatest songs were written during the peak of Richards’s drug use. He still drinks copiously and smokes marijuana and cigarettes. Drugs had caused a number of problems in his life– he’d suffered the death of a child and the drug-related deaths of several friends and band makes, but when heroin threatened his ability to make music, he was finally willing to quit. Media accounts of drug problems rarely mention the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Addiction, Celebrity, Drugs, Latest News, Life, Recovery, Spirituality, Treatment
Sober Companion or Treatment Centers
Adolescent treatment centers are mostly used today as scared straight programs rather than rehabilitation centers. Some will call themselves therapeutic boarding schools or residential treatment centers but there are loopholes to these places for adolescents. The counselors know that the kids cannot leave on their own volition so the counselors and directors get to feeling entitled and end up having too much power and money in their hands.I speak from experience as I have visited many of these places myself and have had friends who have lived in an residential treatment center, wilderness or therapeutic boarding schools for years on end. Some will keep perfectly normal teenagers for three to four years minimum or until the client reaches age 18. Even still, the programs convince the parents of how sick … Read entire article »
Filed under: Love and Relationships, Recovery, Spirituality, Treatment
Relapse Prevention
One main reason for 12 step relapse prevention techniques proving to be helpful is because they embody a wide-ranged plan that incorporates all aspects of a person from spiritual to physical to emotional. They work especially well when the addict takes massive action toward studying, practicing and understanding elements of a 12 step program. The 12 steps may seem daunting at first glance, but in all reality they are one sentence each, and most sponsors encourage their sponsee’s to go through the 12 steps at their own pace. No time is too long or too short, within reason. No one expects a person to work the 12 steps completely in solitude. This is why addicts and alcoholics go to as many meetings as we can, to surround themselves with friends … Read entire article »
Filed under: Addiction, Conditions and Disorders, Drugs, Life, Recovery, Spirituality, Treatment
Do You Believe in Magic? What About God?
Me and my band mate Ashleigh find ourselves at McDonalds. We always find ourselves at McDonalds though. She just found me a kitten. Flashback Three days prior. I wake up at noon like the majority of the week when I don’t wake up at 7am and I text her “I want a kitten, and I want to name her Noelle.” I ask her if she will go to the pound with me she says yes. And then she calls me back three minutes later from a rehab we both went to, where we still visit often. “They found a kitten during Torah Study in the women’s lounge.” The irony at this point hurts me. I decide to see her and take her in, resulting in belly aching anxiety, although I have … Read entire article »
Filed under: Spirituality
Ego
One often wonders “who am I going to be now, that I am not the messed up drug addict that ruins family dinners, and cops dope downtown? I won’t be a badass anymore, I’ll become boring”, or “I can’t live like this anymore, but it’s all I know. What sort of person am I going to become, what identity can I latch onto?” My personal experience with this is an interesting one. I dubbed myself as the artist. I wore ‘artistic’ clothes. I was spiritual. No one understood me. I was a poet. I created a persona of what I thought encompassed a ‘true artist’. I chained smoked cigarettes and read books with big words. I made sure I was too cool for school and everyone knew it, yet … Read entire article »
Filed under: Life, Spirituality
Things to be Grateful For
The obvious things we should all be grateful for is shelter, food, the opportunity to change our lives, our loved ones and the fact that things can always be worse. I know at my worst moments, excluding life threatening situations, I always laugh thinking to myself, things cannot get any worse, and things do get worse. The night that most comes to mind when I think about this is in college when it took me from 2am from 7am to get home from New York City to Long Island. I was so incoherently high and drunk that I had no concept of how to get home and toward the end of the trip after getting lost and spending all my money on lost train fare I eventually had to beg cab … Read entire article »
Filed under: Recovery, Spirituality
Giving It Away
Hello everyone, The recent events in Haiti show that there still is a lot of hope in human compassion. When there is a large crisis in the world, it is wonderful to see everyone comes forth. But why wait? In the program of recovery we are given the gift of understanding how much you get filled up when you give. Tradition one of A.A. states “Our common welfare should come first, personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity”. Isn’t it the same for our individual communities? How much do you find yourself giving, even if it’s just giving that extra smile to the person checking you through the grocery store. Here is a meditation that will help bring this concept into your conscious awareness. Close your eyes and just focus on your … Read entire article »
Filed under: Addiction, Life, Love and Relationships, Recovery, Spirituality
WORDS FROM BILL WILSON
Good Morning Readers, Happy Full Moon to you. I found this quote on the Bill Wilson facebook page (yes…he has one) . I guess he’s still giving it away. Anyway for this week, I thought I would share his quote on meditation. Bill Wilson We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. I hope you found that useful. Warmly, Laura … Read entire article »
Filed under: Addiction, Recovery, Spirituality
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Original AA Manuscript to Be Released to the Public
October 11th, 2010 | 1 Comment
For nearly 70 years the original manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) by co-founder Bill Wilson has been hidden away. However, next week the original manuscript is set to become public for the first time, complete with edits by Wilson-picked commentators. Since AA was originally founded in 1939, there has been much debate over whether or not AA is a religious-based group. The release of the original manuscript will release some interesting edits that … Read entire article »
Filed under: Addiction, Conditions and Disorders, Drugs, Latest News, Life, Recovery, Spirituality, Treatment