Monthly Archives: August 2013

Befriend The Darkness

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     Feelings don’t have to stop us…

     We addicts need to learn to sit down beside our dark feelings and befriend them. We cannot let our feelings control, overwhelm, or have power over us. We must stay in the middle lane, do what we would normally do, and let our feelings fluctuate around us. Our feelings will always change, up and down, but they do not have to stop us and they do not have to have power over us. Whether good or bad, painful or joyful, the trick is to walk right through our feelings and push forward.
     Winston Churchill said astutely, “If you’re going through hell, keep going… Never, never, never give up.” Precisely. What are we going to do, stop in the middle of hell or turn back only to start all over again? I’m all set with that. If you fight your thoughts and feelings, they will only persist, and perhaps grow stronger. But if you let them just be, they will gradually dissipate and move on. And by letting them be as they are, by accepting them and gracefully moving through them or moving next to them, we grow stronger. We gain character.
     We don’t become strong men and women by wimping out, turning back, refusing do things that make us uncomfortable, popping a bunch of pills, pouring booze down our throats or shooting a spoonful of heroin. Nope. We grow strong and become free inside by walking right into our fear, our darkness, and our despair. Addicts must confront themselves to unlock the chains they are bound in.
God, teach me to accept and embrace ALL of my thoughts and feelings. Teach me to take the middle road, not too high or too low… 

Families & Codependency

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     Families don’t need to suffer…

     First, I should mention that a similar post hurt the feelings of an anonymous parent who had falsely interpreted the message as faulting parents for our addiction. Every single word I’ve ever written about addiction firmly asserts the precise opposite of that, that nothing outside of ourselves is to blame for our addiction and our selfish, destructive behaviors. That post was, To Parents, Spouses & Codependents. So just because the title of this older post below is Families & Codependency, that doesn’t mean that all family members and spouses of addicts are codependent, and as such, may not apply to them.

     Listen, my job is to tell you the truth, not to lie to you, or try to sound smart, or ramble on about shit I know nothing about, like your average therapist, addictions counselor, psychiatrist, academic, intellectual, meeting goer, news anchor, politician, government agency, methadone clinic, etc. etc. etc. Nope, sorry. If I don’t tell you the truth and help vaporize the pile of bullshit you’ve been fed, swallowed and stored up in the attic, then I’m doing everybody a great disservice.

                                                        *

     Families and spouses can become gravely sickened and pretty much go insane, just as the addict. Let’s face it, if you live with a crazy person, chances are you’ll find yourself going some degree of crazy yourself. An addict’s negative energy permeates all who surround him. If and when the addict gets better, spouses and family members are suddenly slammed with the pile of crap inside of them that had built up and was perhaps ignored by necessity. They begin to suffer greatly and wonder why. 
     Why do I feel more awful now that he or she has gotten well? I should feel better now… but I feel worse!
     Our addiction is their bridge to insanity. The addiction of another can become a necessary preoccupation from their own worsening mental sickness, anxiety or depression. In a strange, almost pain-dependant way, families remain in a comfort zone of their own by trying to control, fix, manipulate, instigate, antagonize… all things a healthy person would recoil from. But for co-dependants, addiction provides them with a strange relief by enabling them to constantly deflect their own pain, self-responsibility, character flaws, or dependency issues. This is why most couples break up after the addict gets better. If one person gets better and the other does not, there isn’t much of a happy future ahead. Also, the sober addict is often nothing like the way he or she used to be. His or her spouse might wake up and realize,

     Wait a minute, I’m not sure I even like this person! Sure they were an asshole when actively drinking, but it was that old personality I fell in love with, not this new one.  
     Regardless of what happens, once an addict achieves health and sanity, many family members and loved ones cannot help but realize how much pain they are in. Therefore, parents and spouses usually need the same thing addicts do – for the hole inside them to be filled. It does not seem fair, and the truth is, it’s not. But it’s reality. Codependents have always had us addicts to distract them and to blame. If we suddenly get better, there is no more distraction and nothing more to blame. Everything inside that the codependent has neatly tucked away now stares them right in the face. Time to take some action.
     I strongly suggest that any spouses, parents, close relatives or friends who are suffering, even long after the addict has recovered, go out and embark on a rigorous Twelve Step process. It may save them as well. To note, they can follow the exact same Big Book Twelve Step directions that we do. All they need is to find a recovered sponsor or an al-anon sponsor who has taken these Steps and recovered.
    Ultimately, the only thing you can really do to change anything is to let go of the addict and go heal yourself.
God, please give our families and spouses the willingness and power to heal and grow…

Good Things Come…

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     …To those who serve God.

     I used to wonder why I didn’t have this and why I didn’t have that. Why aren’t I a famous writer and why aren’t I a rock star? Why can’t I get ahead financially and why aren’t I a billionaire already?

     Answer: Change the focus. Serve God and good things will come to us.

     If we anxiously push and force and exert our will to obtain worldly things (including people), they will naturally elude us. Only by letting go of our selfish desires will they begin to manifest. Abundance is all ours once we forget about self, once we let go of needing anything, once we let go of outcome.

     And even if we don’t get smothered with abundance and prosperity, serve God anyway because it is the right thing to do, the strong and courageous thing to do, the honorable thing to do, the spiritual thing to do. Serve God, because if we don’t, we become empty and meaningless.

     And if you’re an addict and you begin the Steps and take a 3rd Step and then turn your back on God, watch out. Bad things will happen. The Steps didn’t fail you. God didn’t fail you. You failed yourself. Good job.

     After many years of being recovered, I’ve found that life is not about self. Sure it is about growing spiritually and living life with strength, love and honesty. And it most certainly about hard work, creativity, contribution, growth and success. But it is without question about others, about family, about our children… and their future.

God, please give me the strength and willingness to do Your will and Your work, and do it well…

Culture Of Mental Illness

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     America’s perverse focus on mental illness has certainly crowned us the worldwide hub of pharmaceutical intervention. In fact, we celebrate that fact and glorify not only the discovery of a new disorder but also the magic pill to treat it. If you watch TV for a couple of hours on any given night, you will see reports and advertisements about a myriad of different disorders and some ‘amazing’ new drug to treat the symptoms. Of course, it’s only the symptoms we want to treat, though, because actually solving our problems would render an entire industry useless and impotent. Furthermore, people might start to think and act for themselves, and we certainly can’t have that.

     America’s explosion of mental illness and pharmaceutical interventions have achieved the precise opposite of what they advertise: Exacerbate mental illness. In fact, the more names and the more disorders and the more drugs we peddle to the masses, we achieve escape velocity, if you will. It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We now cause mental illness just by focusing on it so much. Incessant scrutiny of the Self not only causes but fuels spiritual malady.

     This is the tragic irony about psychology and psychiatry. Ever more disorders and ever more drugs have done one thing and one thing only: led to an absolute explosion in the incidence of mental illness. It’s amazing to me that Harvard brass sends off countless PhDs every year without so much as a clue. These guys are academic geniuses yet couldn’t help someone if their lives depended on it. So either these guys really aren’t so bright, or, and this is my feeling, Harvard is shoving a bunch of nonsense down their throats.

     The pharmaceutical elite are no dummies. They know that the more disorders that the APA creates out of thin air will only necessitate more and more laboratory cocktails, i.e. enormous profits.

     It doesn’t matter if every man, woman and child are being diagnosed with some abstract disorder that they don’t really have, just so long as they swallow a couple of psychotropics everyday. It doesn’t matter if their brains are re-wired, leading to a psychotic break and suicide… or perhaps a demonic trip to the local elementary school.

     It doesn’t matter if the gullible, uneducated, uninformed masses of American parents are told by some clown that their 3-year old has Bipolar and ADHD and must take an anti-depressant, a mood stabilizer, an anti-psychotic, a benzodiazepine and a stimulant in order to have a good life.

     It doesn’t matter that our children are then over-medicated by said parents and, hey, what do you know, the kid doesn’t wake up for school Monday morning. We just killed another 3-year old.

     Now, I know his or her future may be somewhat bleak anyway considering they will inherit a bankrupt government with somewhere between 20 to100 trillion dollars in national debt, well over 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, and about a quadrillion dollars in highly leveraged, about-to-explode OTC derivatives, but hey, what does everybody say we leave the kids out of it.

     Cool?

God, please show the Establishment puppets the error of their ways…

Maker or Taker?

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     What defines a successful life? Did we try our best? Were we honest? Did we serve? Did we continue growing? Or did we settle, conform, cower, take the easy road? None of us can judge one another, and we don’t need to. We can well judge ourselves. We know better than anybody what we are made of. We are the most qualified to know whether our lives are a success or not.

     Misguided and historically illiterate Keynesian economists like Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and fed chair Ben Bernanke make the classic mistake of cooking up short-term fixes while ignoring long-term consequences. And this time their solution is so beyond reckless that even the likes of Bernie Madoff would be humbled. Now, given that they both appear to be a bit touched, let’s go easy on them.

     They believe that the way to solve a massive, unprecedented debt crisis and structural growth problem is to take on more debt – lots more. And when the bill comes due for the old debt, the solution is to borrow from new investors to pay the older ones. Sound familiar? Again, just ask Mr. Madoff what that is. And when the treasury can’t find anyone left to borrow from, the newest solution is to just print money out of thin air and lend it… to oneself. We have a name for that also: counterfeiting. And all the while let’s manipulate interest rates to 0% just to make sure we annihilate all savers, senior citizens, and the entire middle class, and provide free money 24/7 to the most corrupt banks on earth. Good job voters. You’ve been had. And you deserve what you get.

     By the way, in case you haven’t figured it out, bankers are takers, not makers. The only thing they make is making off with not only your take-home dollars, but your tax dollars as well. You pay taxes to the treasury who pays interest on the money that the fed and its member banks created out of nothing and lent to the treasury to use for all sorts of immoral, hegemonic nonsense. So you pay taxes for the privilege of using federal reserve debt notes that, by design, lose value the longer you hold them.

     As absurd as all that sounds on its face, you will also be able to find a slew of puppets on mainstream news outlets who manage to cleverly convince you that if you don’t believe in and happily accept this lunacy, this fraud and scam that the treasury, the fed, and the banks have going, then you are most certainly an idiot. Collectivist puppets love to call people idiots. If you don’t cover your ears to the gigantic sucking sound the government vacuum makes as it sucks all the productive capacity it possibly can out of the real economy, then you are a moron. Great argument, huh? The argument goes something like this,

     “What a moron!” Or “OMG, you are such an idiot!” 

     At any rate, addicts are Keynesians too. The believe that if they can just have more of something that doesn’t work, they’ll be able to solve their problem. If I can just get tons of OC 80s, then I’ll be able to quit, or at least function properly. We all know what happens then – I wind up flat broke, begging for more, or in a coffin.

     Addicts also think they should be taken care of and given money, jobs, privileges and blessings without having to lift a finger. Just observe the behavior of any addict to see how dangerous this frame of mind is. And as we all know from studying codependency and enabling, addicts who depend on others become crippled – more crippled than they already are. Eventually they can do nothing on their own and soon they become zombies, without a single authentic thought or idea. Those who give to you without you earning it are your slave masters. To quote Hayek, this is the “road to serfdom” my friends. We think free stuff saves people. In fact, it enslaves them.

     There are takers and there are makers. If you’re an addict or an alcoholic, you are a taker. So ask yourself if that’s what you truly want to be. Because if you truly want to be a taker, than do us all a favor and skip the emergency room next time you have a gran mal seizure from speedballing.

     “Never in history has too much deficit spending, debt, and currency debasement been solved by more deficit spending, debt, and currency debasement.” – M. Maloney

     Over a trillion dollars of student debt and not a single institution offers financial IQ.

     “The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

     The welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.

     In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.” – A. Greenspan, 1966

God, help us…