Worthy of reposting - I am Your Disease

I posted this originally on this blog: http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-am-your-disease.html and it's worthy of reposting here!

While you're at it see this post:
Why so many can't deal with the 12 steps

I am your disease
Hello...

Just in case you forgot me...I am your disease.
I hate meetings, I hate higher powers. I hate anyone
who has and works a program. To all who come in
contact with me:

I wish you suffering and I wish you death.

Allow me to tell you about myself.

I am the disease of addiction.
I am cunning, baffling, and powerful...
I have killed millions; I have ruined the lives of
millions more...and I am pleased.

I love to catch you by surprise. I love pretending
that I am your friend and lover. I have given you
comfort, haven't I? Wasn't I there when you were lonely?
When you wanted to die, didn't you call on me, and
didn't I answer?

I was there. I love to make you hurt; I love to make
you cry. Better yet, I love to make you so numb that
you can neither hurt nor cry. I love to help you give
up and feel hopeless. When you can't feel anything at all,
that is my true gratification.

And all that I ask from you is long term suffering and
lonely despair.

I've been there for you always. When things were going
right in your life, you invited me in. You said you didn't
deserve these good things, and I was the only one who agreed
with you. Together, we were able to destroy everything
good in your life.

When things went wrong, I was there to agree with you
about how unfair life is and how blameless you are for
anything that happens to you.

I was the only one who would crawl down into the slimy
paralysis of self-pity and wallow around with you there.

People don't take me seriously, and while this wounds
my pride, I don't really mind because it so strongly
serves my purpose.

People take strokes serously;heart attacks...diabetes
...AIDS, these they take serously. Fools. Without my help,
those illnesses would not even be possible, for many
people.

I am such a hated disease, and yet I do not come uninvited.

You choose whether or not to have me active in
your life. Doesn't that prove how powerful and
cunning I am? So many choose me, over reality and
hope--even while they say they hate me.

But more than
you hate me, I hate all of you who have embraced
recovery. Your refusal to invite me in...your
program...your meetings...your higher power. All of these things
weaken and disgust me, and I can't function in the
manner I am accustomed to. Now, I must lie here quietly,
waiting.

Oh, you don't see me much anymore, but I am
here...and I have all the time in the world to wait for you.
When you only exist, I may live. When you live, I may
only exist. But I am here... And until we meet again
-if we meet again- I wish you misery and death, just
as I always have done and always will
do...

Most Sincerely,
Your disease

http://victimbehavior.blogspot.com/2007/11/mind-over-matter-religion-vs.html
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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

Teach yourself to accept respect

Self Respect.

As an addict, you're going to have to get your 'insides' used to the idea of ACCEPTING self respect. This is a "Paradigm Change". What is a paradigm? it's the fish bowl to the fish - it's a "mind set"...

as an active addict, the mind set, the prism you view the world through, has built in to it a Pre-Supposition which you quite often are unaware of.

That presupposition includes (or more correctly does NOT include) self respect.

All this is a fancy way of saying - Part of you is looking at the rest of you with CONTEMPT (internally that is)

In otherwords, inside of you, you hate yourself... and it's so pervasive, so built in, that you don't even see it.

Stop beating yourself up.

As addicts we're already world champions at 'beating ourselves up', it's counterproductive for you to be 'Punitive' in your view of the world.

The world around you, the people you interact with, view you as having a "lack of will power"... what could you do with that concept?

It's counterproductive for you to view yourself through that prism, that presupposition... "What's productive is to view your self though the world view


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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis. If you live in Western Maryland, Call 211

You're not stopping yet - Still using

The purpose of this blog is for people who are still using.

period.

Conventional wisdom says this:

You've got to stop before we can help you...

OK fine, sounds good...

Most of us HAVE tried to stop. Remember the stop smoking commercials about cigarette smokers that say they cant tell you how many times they've tried to quit?

Remember the 'Just say no' campaign of the 1980's?

While that probably helped some of the kids NOT get started, it didn't do much for those suffering already. (I'm not knocking 'just say no', CocaCola kicked Pepsi's ass for decades until Pepsi started advertising to the younger generation, the "Pepsi Generation"... I AM an advertising consultant in my *other life*)

While you are still using, there's LOTS of stuff for you to do to make "this time you quit" last longer, you're probably not going to quit once and for all, it's probably going to come in stages and that's not necessarily a bad thing.


Self Respect.

The world (the non addicted world) is going to say "you just don't have any will power'

Even if that's kinda sorta true, it's a counterproductive way to look at it.

Will Power is a function of (and a measurement of) you're left brain.

Your Right Brain is the source of all addiction.

'Triggers' are a (12 step) way of attacking addiction from a left brain only perspective.

Ending the source of addiction is a Right brain thing.

Self Respect is something you can work at in small steps.

see this post from another blog I have:

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com/2008/08/respect-doesnt-come-naturally-for.html

Baby steps, just like the comedy with Bill Murray and Richard Dryfuss...

small steps will acculmulate, they'll compound just like a bank account compounds interest.

Your crack dealer treats himself with respect, right?

He doesn't spend all his money down to zip/zero?

He saves enough for bus fare, cigarettes and shit, right?

He can actually sit on his coke, NOT smoke it, keep it until he/she can sell it...

Learn how to treat yourself with respect.

See this post:
http://victimbehavior.blogspot.com/2008/08/train-yourself-to-accept-self-respect.html
You'll have to practice this, get used to the idea...

I bought myself socks.

that actually worked... the next week I saved out $3 for laundry (didn't have to wash my socks in the bathtub, by hand)

When you get your check, when you CASH your check, do it at Walmart...
spend most of it there, you were just going to smoke it anyway...

this time spend most of it on stuff that's good for you!!!

more coming






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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

Experience, Strength and Hope starts where you live- Frederick MD

The purpose of this blog is to offer options and hope for active addicts.

IT takes one to know one.

The purpose of 12 step groups is to offer:

Experience

Strength

Hope

Where I learned what I learned about Addiction and specifically Crack Addiction was when I lived outside Baltimore.
Now I live in Frederick Maryland.

If I'm to offer experience, strength and hope it comes from where I live.

...on that note:

When I lived in Montgomery County Maryland I went to the Montgomery County Crisis Center.

Now that I'm in Frederick, I found this resource for Western Maryland:

Call 211

From Crack Cocaine...

oh, and I cant spell worth a damn, and I type too fast... sometimes I forget to do the spell check, hopefully my readers will forgive me.

I used to own http://victimbehavior.com

I lost the domain name, some stuff I wrote was being used as curriculum for teaching L.C.S.W in another country... my head swelled up like the Goodyear blimp.

Then I remembered that EGO is one of my worst enemies...
so I posted lots of posts about Ego.
for example:

http://victimbehavior.blogspot.com/2006/08/rational-mind-limitations.html




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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licensed counselor if you're in crisis.

Crack availability in Frederick Maryland

The Availability of Crack in Frederick Maryland has been on the decline.

All the active addicts I know are complaining about buying 'baking soda' instead of crack.

This reinforces a previous post I recently made offering kudos to Frederick county and Frederick city law enforcement.

http://crackaddictionrecovery.blogspot.com/2008/08/frederick-maryland-interdiction-efforts.html

This is a good thing.

and it reminds me to write some more posts about how a crack addict feels when he/she has spent all their money and didn't even leave themselves money for cigarettes.

And a previous post on Erectile Dysfunction and Crack Addiction is ranking a bit higher in Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=erectile+dysfunction+and+crack+addiction&start=10&sa=N



Right now I'm working on raising funds for Frederick's Mission of Mercy with a blog:

http://frederickmissionofmercy.blogspot.com

Go to Google, type in:
crack smoking in Frederick Maryland

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=crack+smoking+in+Frederick+Maryland


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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

Relapse and Slips: Remembering and Forgetting

Relapse and Slips: Remembering and Forgetting

Relapse is typically defined as giving up on sobriety and returning to addictive use of alcohol, other drugs, food, sex or work. Or it is not taking care of ourselves in a way that leads to depression, anxiety and dependent relationships. The definition of a relapse varies with different addictions, but harmful consequences are sure to follow. At its deepest level, it is a sense of inner collapse, a loss of spirit, hope and faith.

Slips are when a person, in spite of a commitment to healing, uses or reverts to addictive behavior on a one time basis or for a short period of time.

Slips are not caused by external events

- they are caused by the permission-giving statements we make, but we put ourselves at high risk for a slip when we let ourselves get overwhelmed.
Slips can be related to getting overwhelmed due to death, loss, rejection, or other stressful events. Slips are also more likely when people fail to nurture themselves on a daily basis, isolate, or fail to ask for help with a crisis.

Sometimes the desire to use happens when a person begins to face childhood abuse issues and becomes overwhelmed by painful feelings. A slip can be used as a wake-up call, alerting you to pay closer attention to your process of healing and your feelings.

In therapy I tend to spend less time talking about the actual slip than talking about the preceding cues that suggested the person was shutting down emotionally, not taking care of daily tasks, not dealing with feelings, not being honest, or not avoiding overly stressful situations and relationships.

I also have the person examine the ways they started giving themselves permission to use: Just once won't hurt.

It is important to stress that a slip is not the same as a relapse, nor does it necessarily lead to relapse.

Many people grow and heal in spite of having slips along the way. On the other hand, some people who have never made a firm commitment to sobriety use slips as an excuse for continued use, saying, "It's just a slip."

A slip does not erase the days of sobriety that preceded it. You can never take away a sober day. Some people think they have to start counting the days and months of sobriety all over if they relapse or have a slip. I think it is important to say the whole truth: "I stayed sober for two years, then I had a slip, and I've been sober for four years since then." It all counts.

In my experience it is important to take sobriety very seriously. Once you have erected the wall between you and your addictive substance or behavior, your survival brain starts learning other coping mechanisms to create pleasure and cope with stress. When you have a slip, your brain once again gets the message that drugs, sex, violence, etc. are ways to alleviate pain. Once the barrier is down, it takes time to erect it again. It's like building trust in yourself again. One woman said that in her treatment program, which stressed sobriety very strongly, few people had slips and nearly everyone maintained sobriety. In another program which was loose about slips, more people had slips and relapsed back into their addiction.

It's a fine line because you can get so obsessed with sobriety you get frozen in your life, on the other hand if you continually allow yourself slips, you are also frozen in your life. Essentially, it's good to do all you can to avoid slips and relapse. And if you do slip, it's important to have a positive attitude, get back on track and keep going.

In defining sobriety it is important not to get caught up extensively with clock time and calendar time. It is important to look at quality as well as quantity of sober time, although all sobriety is good. If a person stays sober for eight years but is still being violent and abusive, what does that mean in terms of human life? If a person is growing and healing and has a slip, what has that small slip erased? If a person abstains from drugs but is eating compulsively and is depressed, what does sobriety mean for that person? The point is for the whole person to be growing, stretching and healing ... as well as maintaining sobriety.

Dr. Charlotte Kasl
Reposted to this blog from an older blog


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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

Criminal Records What can be done- continued

A criminal record will usually have arrests that did NOT result in a conviction.

Continued from a previous post on this blog:
http://crackaddictionrecovery.blogspot.com/2008/07/criminal-records-arrest-no-conviction.html

It's a commonly held belief that ONLY convictions show up on a background check.

This is NOT always true!

An employer CANNOT ASK you whether you have been arrested- ONLY whether you've been convicted...

even so, they can still SEE on a background check that you have been arrested.

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Civil Rights laws limits employers and landlords to questions about convictions ONLY They can not ask about arrests...

BUT here's the catch:

sometimes when they get your criminal record from a "Credit Reporting" company or a court, the record will show the arrests that did NOT result in conviction!

An Employer can't deny your application for a job or housing by saying "We don't take anyone with a criminal record"

Nevertheless, you'll still find yourself excluded...

What to do about it?

EXPUNGMENT

Expungment is a process in Maryland that allows you to get some non-convictions OFF your RECORD!

Expungment is a court process that involves:

-Stet Dockets
-Probation before judgements
-Dismissals
-Not Guilty findings/

YOU NEED TO FILE A PETITION in the court where the charge occured and ASK for expungment.

BUT:

A PBJ or Stet has to be at least 3 years old and YOU HAVE TO HAVE BEEN CRIME FREE since then.

You can ALWAYS EXPUNGE A:

Dismissal
Nol Pross
Not Guilty

finding any time via a waiver

If you've been convicted a Pardon is the only way to get that expunged.

Free legal advice and assitance may be available from:

Legal Aid Bureau Inc.
Mid Western Maryland Office
22 South Market St
Suite 11
Frederick Maryland 21701

301 694-7414
toll free
800 679-8813

Intake hours: Tuesday- Friday 9am to 12 noon.






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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

Frederick Maryland interdiction efforts

I'm not going to tell you how I know, but Frederick Maryland's interdiction efforts have apparently paid dividends.

There is a scarcity of crack availiable within Frederick city.
I'm not sure if that scarcity is the result of:

Frederick County Sheriffs department
Frederick City Police
Maryland State Police
or Federal DEA or whatever...

all I can tell you is that I'm hearing reports to the effect that it's harder to find cocaine.

That's a good thing...

How would I know?

It takes one to know one... we shall leave it to that statement (for now)
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These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.