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
==========
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


==========
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






==========
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




==========
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


==========
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


==========
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.

==========
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.






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

Criminal Records- arrest no conviction still leaves you branded

To find out how to get an arrest record expunged, here's what I learned from Maryland Legal Aid:

A Criminal Record will usually include arrests & citations that do NOT result in convictions.


When you get charged with a crime & go to court, there are a number of ways that charge can get resolved?

PBJ (probation before judgement)

Stet Docket

Nol Pross

Dismissal

Guilty

Not Guilty

All these will be on the record that an employer can access, regardless of what you might have been told in court!

Juvenile charges should not be on your record.

Employers Can Get Your Criminal Record through Internet Companies quickly & easily!

These companies are like 'credit' companies, and are subject to certain laws under the state (this is the State of Maryland we're talking about) and Federal Credit Reporting Acts, but they are NOT UNDER THE CONTROL of the employer.

For more in depth info see the:

Legal Aid Bureau, Inc.
Midwestern Maryland Office
22 South Market St.
Suite 11
Frederick MD 21701
301 694-7414
800 679-8813




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

End this and all addictions end

The addiction guru(s) that I follow teach that it's not possible to be an addict without first being codependent.

The Common Denominator to all Addictions:

Drug
Alcohol
Food
Sugar
whatever...

The one thing that has to be present... and without this there CAN BE NO ADDICTION IS:

Self Pity

unconscious self pity that is.

Not your garden variety, run of the mill, "surface" self pity.

But a specific type of built in self pity.

What do I mean?

The PRESUPPOSITION of self pity, it's built into your world view, more than likely your world view, the lens through which you view the world...

the fish bowl to the fish (technically this is your paradigm)

you cant not have a paradigm, you must have what Tony Robbins calls a
Global World view, all incoming data is sorted against this, it's your parameters,

(for example a computer's hard drive is at it's core, simply intervals, however for those differences, those intervals to make sense, you have to have a starting point...
a reference point)

That world view presupposes that life dealt you shitty cards and you're somehow entitled to a special deal...

World views, Global ones, the way Tony Robbins describes them are characterized by the following type of statements:

-Life is...

-People are...

-...screw them before they screw you

-...give em an inch and they'll take a mile

these presuppositions are inherited, you didn't choose them, you just heard your parents say this crap and you just took it for granted...


REMOVE The self pity and addiction just vanishes

effortlessly
instantaneously

Fire cannot exist without two things:

Fuel
Oxygen

remove the oxygen and the fire is immediately snuffed out

remove the unconscious self pity and you've no reason to want to get high

there is no longer any will power to deal with... there is simply no more interest in getting high

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

Sex Addiction, Crack and ED

For male crack smokers from the 70's generation, crack has more to do with the shame of not being able to get hard (or hard enough) to succesfully have sex...

Erectile Dysfunction, or E.D.

I wrote an article on another of my blogs: RepairManual4SelfDestructiveBehavior.blogspot.com about this...


There are two kinds of ED, you can't get hard at all OR
you can only get hard enough to piss yourself off


So what do you do when the sinking sensation... the devastating concept that all of the sex you're ever gonna have is past tense?

You wallow in self pity.

What happens when you take the very first blast?

All you can think about is getting laid... and you dare not humiliate yourself with a date with a 'functional woman', so what do you think of (the use of the word 'think' is really more like stinkin thinking)???


You think of finding yourself a crack ho.

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com/2008/05/erectile-dysfunction-and-crack-smoking.html

more coming soon on this topic, I've lots to say about it and not much free time to post...




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

Why some men smoke crack? ED

From an article I wrote on RepairManual4SelfDestructiveBehavior.blogspot.com


Many men who smoke crack, well the ones that are from the 70's generation, the ones that are 50 something, smoke crack because they're sex addicted... Roughly 66% of all men over 45 have some form of Erectile Dysfunction, they either can't get hard or they don't get hard enough... or have a short fuse.

For many men, the first sensation they get when they take the first blast from crack is that all they can think of is SEX, for me, it's an overwhelming obsession that takes over completely when I exhale the very first blast.

I'm a recovering incest survivor, I'm dissociated, which means:

I'm not the first little boy that my Grandfather was caught with AND I don't remember anything from age 5 until age 10.

My sex abuse started when my parents separated, my Dad (who was an orphan) was drinking heavily, my Mom took us and my brothers to live with her parents. My Grandmother was killed on my 10th birthday... my perpetrator (GrandDad) moved away soon afterwards and it was like I came out of a coma, I was weird... my body was chronologically 10 but emotionally I was still 5.


I don't have any recollection of sex abuse from those 5 years but it appears that I associated sex, sexuality, love, being sexually desirable with my entire self worth.

ie:

If a women desired me sexually, I was worthwile, if she cheated on my I wasn't "worth the paper I was printed on"

This is irrational, but the tremendous power associated with those emotions overpowered me.

in short, once you go years with out being able to have sex succesfully, and you get your hydraulics back... it's like you have a second chance to be a man, your virility comes back...

for years you thought ALL your sex life was PAST TENSE, and now you get another chance!

crack whores (a terribly insensitive, sexist, degrading way to look at women who are as addicted as you are... if, as a man, if you could trade sex for crack you might just do the same) crack ho's are easy.

If you party with women who smoke crack... it's probably the only chance you have of getting laid.

more on the article on my other blog:

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com/2008/05/erectile-dysfunction-and-crack-smoking.html





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

We already F*cked up...

I'm often amazed at the simple reason many people spend their whole paycheck on crack... to the point that they get evicted.

Why would we do that?

Most of the time it's because, internally... we've come to the erroneous conclusion that we've already fucked up.

The rationalization , with slight variations, goes like this:

We've committed some gigantic error, lost our drivers licence, we've got a felony on our arrest record, we've contracted some kind of STD...

we've gotten fired from a job, we live in a small town that every one knows about our messed up reputation...

The self destructive behavior comes from an internal decision.

This internal decision usually is like an iceberg:

the part that is conscious is the 10% of the iceberg that's above the water
the part that is unconscious is the 90& below the water.

Our unconscious is a LOT bigger than we are.

it includes beliefs that are 'woven into' the lens that we view the world through.
Tony Robbins calls these beliefs: Pre-Suppositions, Global Beliefs, the Paradigm we live in (or inherited from our family of origin)

They are characterized by the following (internal) statements:

"Life is..."
"People are..."
"Screw them before they screw you"
"...the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"

let's take that last one:
That statement is based on the media, and the circles you travel in.
The media is DEMANDING a recession, and they won't let up on the news stories that claim our economy is going down the tubes.

The circles you travel in?
face it, Hockey players don't hang around chess players.

Take your 6 closest friends and average their incomes...
yours will fall within that median.

WE Smoke till all our money is gone because internally we've just given up.
We already fucked up, so why bother.


Future posts coming on this whole presupposition concept, it's based on the science of N.L.P.
Neuro Linguistic Programming

in NLP, the idea is that all we can hold in consciousness is 7 plus or minus 'bits' of information, 7 'chunks'

we do not consciously think to breath or command our heart to beat, or balance while we walk...


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

Frederick County Health Department Project 103

I post to my blogs as someone who knows a bit about the subjects concerning addiction/ recovery/ codependency/ love (sex) addiction.

I know a bit about this because it takes one to know one...

I'm a:

-sex addict.
-love addict
-have had major problems w/ ED (that happily are correctable!)*
-am a dissociated sex abuse survivor
- have been struggling with crack usage for 4 years now
- have been substituting addictions for decades now, food, sugar, overtime (100 hrs a week), sex, masterbating, and so on)


I've extensive success with:

building functional boundaries (no small feat for a codependent, this took years... no a decade to get a working handle on)

Boundaries are:

The single most important task to accomplish for a lasting recovery that doesn't equal what 12 steppers call- 'Dry Drunk'

which is to say ending the substance abuse but NOT ending the underlying cause of addiction.

I'm a published author on the subject, people all over the world bought my pamphlets (downloadable ebook form), they've emailed me with thanks... even referred to me as "Doctor Dave" (I'm NOT a doctor, do NOT have any sheepskin, I'm just a shumck who had lot's of good help from my Mom (LCSW and retired administrator for one to the State of Louisiana's substance abuse centers), some really great author's, lecturers, and philosophers, and I believe God's help, the 'spirit's help when I asked for it.

Overwhelmingly the purchasers of my work were drug councilors and LCSW's (Licenced Clinical Social Workers), and even been told my work was being used as the curriculum to teach drug counselors! (that one swelled my Ego quite a bit, and spawned much irony as I was still using the whole time I was writing/ editing and publishing)

Having said all of the above... I concede this:

I still can not do this by myself.

Boundaries are NOT enough (that's probably going to be my next book/ pamphlet)

Self destructive behavior is:

-bigger than we are
-unconscious to us

because of that, it's kinda hard... in a way

the fix is easy enough

The fix entails NO struggle at all
it's instantaneous
it's even effortless

it's a gift of grace (insert link to my short article on Grace here)_

really, no shit

what's elusive about it is that it IS unconscious

The no struggle, effortless, instantaneous part is most definitely the opposite of virtually every accepted recovery concept by the way.. I DO have a sound argument to support my case, but that's gonna have to wait for a different post

in any case... I just signed up for Frederick counties out patient rehab: Project 103


I can't do this by myself... even though I know all this shit
even though I've accomplished almost what Buddha accomplished all by his self
(OK, I relied on hundreds of hours of Tony Robbins and John Bradshaw audio tapes, scratch that, it's probably thousands of hours, lets see, dozens of philosophers, and much credit given to the local Frederick County library's Great Courses books on CD about Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science


I just surrendered, will keep you posted

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

Surrender and Obeying God

For the vast majority of addicts seeking recovery the most dispointing realization of AA and 12 step methodolgies have as thier centerpoint: God, specifically, God has the power to 'fix' you and you as an individual, are powerless.

This immeadiatly turns off most people.

The issue is surrender.

I subscribe more closely to John Bradshaw's/ Unity Christ church/ Wayne Dyer/ Depak Choppra/ Course in Miracles theology.

Most main stream christian theology tends to concentrate on Obeying God, the presupposistion being that we "just ain't no dang good on our own"

I've not posted on this topic for over a year, and have a lot more to say soon, but for now I'll leave you with this:

The same agnostics (fence sitters, people who basically believe in God, but leave the issue alone because it's just unfathomable/ overwhelming/ conflicting and confusing) the same atheists and agnostics that object to Obeying God Obey the law of Gravity every second of every day (even while thier sleeping) and that doesn't seem to piss them off.


Surrender only looks like surrender when we view our lives and reality through the 'lens ' of our perspective

Time is an optical DE-lusion
Eienstien

There is no mass, only energy

more coming soon... I've got to find a public defender

(would you really listen to a drug counselor/ someone prosteltizing that never smoked crack??? it takes one to know one)
==========
These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

We need structure

As addicts we tend to revolt from authority, most of us do anyway...

Structure is something we hate.

Well, it's also something we need.

Good Fences make Good Neighbors
-Robert Frost.

Normal (not addicted people) are comfortable with structure,
our distaste for it is understandable, but misguided.

We all have boundaries, our skin is where our bodies end
and everything and everone else begins.

Our emotional boundaries are where what's appropriate for
us and what's appropriate for everyone else begins & ends.

Pia Melody speaks of Intellectual boundaries (emotional
ones are bundled together with the intellectual boundary)
and physical boundaries.

It's easier to find your physical boundary, just have
someone walk up to until you get uncomfortable.
Once that person gets close enough for you to feel
"crowded", they're in your 'space'...

You'll tend to back up a bit, at least you'll put
more of your wieght on the heels of your feet.

Boundaries are the epidermis of your sense of self.
They are the container for your sense of self.

You cannot wiegh self esteem, it has no specific
gravity, neither does a daydream or any other
thought that pops into your mind.

You can't keep self esteem without a box to keep
it in, boundaries are that box.

When you don't have *good* boundaries, you can't
even tell what the hell we're talking about...

*who is to say what a good boundary is? for our
purposes just say functional boundary)

If you guilt or are guiltable, you have a *hole*
in your boundary.

Bad or less than functional boundaries are not
always cut and dried, you can be selfish on
some areas and not in others. You can be
manipulative with some people (say co workers),
but that doesn't automatically correlate to
you being manipulative with everyone.

Structure is useful, if you're only comfortable
with less than functional boundaries cause that's
all you've ever known, cause your parents only
taught you that.... structure is gonna seem like
cod liver oil, it's gonna taste bad.


For an addict, it can be a useful strategy,
temporarily, until you can get comfortable with
boundaries and structure... to have someone else
hold your money when you get paid.

This is NOT a fix.

This is NOT being responsible.

this IS training wheels on your tricylce.

I knew a guy, a real asshole, a wife beater,
a hard core crack addict, the brother of a
friend of mine... he did this and it did
impress me:

Once you get paid, before you even get
tempted to fuck up, get a money order for
your rent or car payment or whatever,
then mail it off to your self.

Binge on what's left.
You're a addict.
You were gonna do that anyway...

but this way at least you're not gonna
smoke your rent and get kicked out on
the street again.

This way you wont have to be embarrased and
ask your children (again)to loan you enough
money to keep a roof over your head.

We're gonna have to LEARN how to treat
ourselves with respect.

This is a LEARNED behavior.

As addicts we have little or no expirience
with treating ourselves with respect.

It's gonna take practice...

How long did it take you to learn how to walk?

get my drift?

More coming, I don't have a cocaine hangover
anymore...

Oh yeah, take vitamins, the crack sucks em out
of your system.... and remember to drink lots
of water, just because you're still using
doesn't mean you can't take baby steps to
getting better.

note to self, find that post on Grace on which
ever of my other blogs has it... it's probably
on more than one of my blogs.

David Bruce Jr.
Frederick MD
http://victimbehavior.blogspot.com

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com

http://endselfdestructivebehavior.com
==========
These articles are for informational purposes only. Contact a licenced counselor if you're in crisis.

detox first... for free

When you're trying to quit... most of the time we just try to cut down.

The rationalization is, "I don't gotta QUIT, but I am doing too much".

What is the definition of addition?
For example... lets take food addiction or sex addiction...

What are you gonna do? be celibate?

NOT

stop eating?

you'd die of course.

The pure definition of an addiction is:

When you're doing stuff that has negative consequences... and you do em anyway.

OK, we're talking about Crack here.

Any is too much.
But you're not really gonna do that. are you?
For most of us, not the first time.

Cigarettes are like this too.

People seldom quit the first time.
They try to cut down.

I could preach the same shit to you as every one else does...
but that's not really gonna do you much good.

OK, lets detox first.

In AA or NA, the 12 step model says this:

Just for this 24 hours

OR 24 minutes.

break it down to something you're likely to handle.

And what can you do while you're doing this to help?

Water, Walk, Sweat, Sleep.

Water?
yep, it's the elixer of life, it cleans out your liver, flush all that toxic shit out of your system.

Drink an uncomfortable amount of water.

And if you drink coffee or soda... drink at least that much water to replace the coffee/soda, they are diuretics...

Tap water often tastes bad. I used to live in Washington DC, ten years ago, DC had a bacteria alert or warning... the aqueduct that runs under MacArthur blvd is about 100 years old. Baltimore water is hard, and tastes like chlorine. Here in Frederick, I live about 500 feet from the Monocacy Water treatment plant...

So what do I do?
Walmart has cheap water filters, you can get a Brita (brand name) OR a generic DuPont water filter for under $10

Walking and Lymph Glands.
HUH?

We all know that we have a liver and 2 kidneys and that their job is to filter out waste... did you know that your Lymph Glands are your bodies "Bilge Pump"?

They're activated ONLY by MOVEMENT, moving the largest limbs in our bodies (our legs) will pump out shit from our system... we're supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day. That's 10k paces, roughly 2.5 feet or (I think) 3 miles a day to get both aerobic benefit and pump out your "bilge pump".

Sweat.

Did you know that your skin is an organ?
On average it weighs 20 pounds... and it does more than just hold your muscles and veins and shit.

It's job is waste removal... Alcoholics smell like liquor even when they don't drink.
It's fall here in the eastern US, so it's gonna get cold, take a sauna or something...
sweat is your friend when you're detoxing.

Sleep

don't need to say much about that, get lots of rest, you need it.

I wrote this so you can get 50 or 60 days clean before you fuck up again.

you can do this a couple times before you actually get to a place where recovery work can begin.

At this point anything I said is just gonna bounce off.

Subscribe to this blogs feed, there's buttons all over the place to sub to.
Sub to the feedblitz and get blog postings in your email and I'll walk you thru the rest...

Add this blog to your Google home page or something.

Stay tuned
peace

David Bruce
Our Ego & how it gets us in trouble
http://www.blogger.com/profile/1464382

Categories: rationalization, addiction, Crack, quit, lymph+glands, Detox

Technorati Tags

Crack

Detox

rationalization

Negative+consequences


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

Withdrawal & Internal Self Talk

Every time I've quit smoking, the first couple days (if I've been smoking a lot) my muscles ache. This passes soon though.

In about 3 weeks or so, the cravings leave...
I begin to think I'm out of the woods...

Invariably, after a few months of 'being a choir boy', my thoughts of 'indulging because I've done so well' creep in to my thoughts.

The rationalization is that I've made some critical amends, fixed a lot of what I'd screwed up by being irresponsible with money/time/ you name it (when I was using)...


I begin to think that I've somehow *Earned* a guilt free indulgence.

AA would call this 'stinkin thinkin'

My crack using friends also report something similar to this 'I've been a good boy, I've earned it' syndrome.

I've found that my sobriety depends a lot on what I say to myself, internally.

Remember the movie - "Austin Powers, The Spy who Shagged Me" with Mike Myers?
There was a scene where Austin is unfrozen and says:
"I'll bet she shags like a minx!"
Then this discovery:
"I've got no inner monologue"

Well, we all have an inner monologue... This is what tells us *we've earned a guilt free indulgence*

Gotta watch your inner self talk, did you know we all have kinda split personalities inside your head?

Technorati Tags

Internal Self Talk

stinkin thinkin

rationalization

Categories: rationalization, indulgence, Stinkin-Thinkin, AA, split, personalities


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

Relapse or Slip- what you tell yourself makes a difference

Relapse or Slip?

How you define a relapse or a slip makes a huge difference.
As addicts we tend to denigrate ourselves, don't make it so easy to kick yourself, you're already too good at that.

Self Talk... Addiction Self Talk more precisely.

What you say to yourself determines what you do with yourself.

Have doubts about that?

Sit at a bus stop, you're the only one there... if no one is watching, you don't have to have your defenses up. Now let someone sit down next to you. All of a sudden, you wont scratch your ass, you wont pick your nose, you're now in 'political mode'.

What do I mean by political mode?
What kinds of things do you NOT want this stranger to see you do?

Now you're concerned with the 'politics' of what you want that person to see, what do you NOT want that person to know about you?

Now what kinds of self statements are going on in your head?


The article is called: Relapses and Slips, remembering and forgetting

Neuro Lingustic Programming is an offshoot of hypnosis, it's a revolutionary type of hypnosis... As addicts, we need to monitor our self-talk and make it positive.

See this article I wrote titled: Fasting for your mind

Technorati Tags

Relapse

Addicts

Categories: NLP, hypnosis, relapse, slips, crackcocaine, addiction


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

Crack Addiction sucks ass... it takes one to know one

It takes one to know one.
I used to snort cocaine, then I had my incest flashbacks...

Don't remember much from 1963 to 1968, they call this dissociation.
That time frame was my 5th birthday (the day Kennedy was shot) until King's assasination... It was such a fog that I wasn't even aware that I had a gap in my memory.
I truly didn't know that everybody else could remember that much of their childhood.

Didn't know who my teachers were

Don't remember what I got for Christmas

Don't remember where I went to school

My perpetrator moved away when I was ten.

I stayed sober for 6 years after I had my flashbacks... then my Dad died

that's all I got time for tonight...

for now, just visit my other blogs:

http://victimbehavior.blogspot.com

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com

http://politicsandvictimbehavior.blogspot.com

My hobby... the fair tax

http://dumpsterdiving4instantcash.blogspot.com

http://quitsellingim.blogspot.com