"It becomes clear that just as it is wrong to enable or support any alcoholic to become readdicted to any drug, it's equally wrong to deprive any alcoholic of medication which can alleviate or control other disabling physical and/or emotional problems."

I try to keep a copy of this pamphlet with me when I go to meetings in my Big Book. Sometimes to show others and sometimes just to reread myself to remind me that it is okay to be actively treating my illnesses besides acoholism. I tend to stay with meetings that I feel safe enough to share about both of my problems, and drop the ones that make me feel as if I have to keep my use of medication a secret.

For the most part, I have found that even if a member does not agree with the use of medications as a part of their programs, they will also recognize that it may be that medications are a part of your recovery. At least, that is what I have found in the fellowship.

I still have my down days, as it is not yet time to have my illness removed, but they are not as bad as they were or I would not be here. I don't claim to know what God Wills for me but I see that He is woking in my life. I trust in Him that He is showing me as much as He wants right now.

I have many people to thank for help along the way, I won't list them here as many prefer to be anonymous. I actually feel that I owe it to them to stay alive. That is what I think about when the feelings to commit suicide get too loud in my head. I owe many thanks. Some are not even aware of how much they have helped me but I do my best to let them know now how much it means to me.

One Year Later

It has been some time since I started this website and I have gone through much. I have had relapses and have spent more time in the hospital. Things are looking up for me. After being out of work for about five years, I have become healthy enough to go back to my work in the studios. While I have chosen to do this, I have not yet found any work as I have come back durring a hard time. There is not much work at all. I am not expecting much. I still have Social Security to fall back on. Together we have enough to handle all of the bills that come in and still manage to have a little fun now and then. We play tennis and do some hiking.

When I went to the hospital this last time, I was in bad shape. I wished that I was dead but was too much of a baby to do myself in. I had used cocaine and I told my wife. She said that she wanted me out of the house. I went to the hospital with no place to go and nothing to live for.

My doctor decided that something new must be tried, that medication alone was not working for my depression. He suggested ECT. ECT is Electro Convulsive Therapy. Shock treatments. I agreed as I did not care about what they did to me. And he started me on three treatments a week. One of the side effects is that I have no memory of the month that I was in the hospital. Friends came to visit me and I am told that we played tennis and frisbie and we sat and talked. I received a phone call from a friend that I care about greatly and I don't remember what was said. I lost the whole month.

But what I gained was a desire to live. I don't know how ECT works but it sure did for me. I am on some medication but not as much as I was before the treatments. I want to live and my life seems to get better and better each day. I don't want anyone to think that I am not still dealing with my depression and addictions. I am still an addict. I'm just clean and sober. I still deal with urges to use but I work through those thoughts with the tools that I have gotten from the program. I still get depressed but it is much more managable.

Now I go in for ECT every 30 days and that helps me to clear my head of the thoughts of suicide. As I said, I am ready to go back to work and I feel that I can handle the responcabilities that come with work.

I wish that there was something that I could do for my relationship with my wife. I don't know where I stand with her and I know that we are not giving each other what we need. I think that she doesn't want to get rid of me because she feels sorry for me in my present condition. I think that she will finally come clean with me when I am working full time and can support myself. She shows me no love, we are not intamate, we rarely talk about our feelings. When I do talk about the way that I feel, it only seems to make her angry at me. I ask her how she feels but I don't get answers. Just "okay" or "tired". I need to feel that I am loved and that someone wants my love and that is missing from our relationship. I love her with all my heart but I am not sure how she feels about me. I don't even know if my love is wanted. This is no way for someone with the problems that I have to live. But I am using the advice of someone in the program and not going to make any major changes in my first year. I think that I can hold out. I do have my friends that I feel as if I can talk about anything and they care about me. I feel that I would be letting them down if I was to have another slip. It really means a lot to me to have friends like this.

You know, I have left a few things out of the short bio that I wrote and I want to add those things now. First off, I have been to prison. I served 22 months. I am not proud and carry a lot of shame but I felt that I needed to write this out. I was heavily into coke and of course my pot and drinking. It clouded my thinking and I did things that don't make sense to me now. It was all a part of my illness and I wish I could cut it out of my past but there is nothing that I can do but deal with it. I did not only bring shame to myself but to my family. Some members still to this day can not forgive me. I don't blame them, I just wish that there was some way that I could make it up to them. I can only say that I am sorry. I seem to live in regret. I missed out on a lot of my family's growth and I don't know how they can forgive me for what I've done. It was so terrible and I hurt certain members of my family and there is just no way to make up for it. I am on friendly terms with most of the members of my family and I am glad for that. I really love my family and want to be a part of it. But part of my illness is that I think that I don't fit in and that is a big problem but one that I share with others in the program. I feel that I fit in only at my DRA meeting. There I am with my friends and I feel like I am an important part of the meeting.

I got out of prison and I was clean for one year as I was being tested for drugs. Durring that time I was living at my folks home for the first year and I was able to buy a lot of stuff that made me feel good about myself. Funny how what you have equals who you are. I fell right into that. I was working and I felt good about myself being out of prison and having a place to live. I contacted my friends from before and I was doing fine not being a part of the "circle" because I was clean for a while. My friendships were superficial, nothing like the ones I have now. I was happy at work and doing a good job for my employers. For some reason I felt okay with everything.

After one year I moved out of my folk's home and got a place with one of my friends. I was working full time and then coming home to beer (my true friend). I was told by my parole officer that I was not being tested for pot so I started smoking again. I started smoking as much as I was when I went to prison. It is true what I have heard in the program that you go back to where you left off. If anything, I was smoking more.

I moved into an appartment on my own in Burbank close to where I was working at the time. I was smoking a lot and drinking but I was able to get up and go to work where I would smoke with friends that I worked with. I was not well liked except by my bosses. I did whatever job they gave me and I did them well. The other employees thought that I was getting special treatment but the fact was that I did the jobs that no one wanted. I worked there at Warner Bros for five years in total. Most of that time I was a hazardous waste handler and nobody wanted that job until I started getting perks like my own electric cart, the freedom to go anywhere on the lot-even closed sets, and lots of free time. Plus there was a special pay rate for the job that got better as time went by. I was smoking quite a lot at work and drinking a twelve pack of beer at night. I was spending a lot on pot and was barely getting the rent paid.

Pretty soon I could not afford the appartment either and I was able to move in to a house that was being rented by my pot dealer. The house was in Reseda. I stayed there til the earthquake hit. I lost my job for not showing up to work and that had me down. If I had known that all I had to do was admit to having a drug problem to keep my job and my senority I would have done that. But I had no idea and I was not well represented so I lost everything.

I moved in with my girlfriend who lived in Santa Monica and I've been here ever since. The girlfriend has turned into a wife and I have what I thought that I would never have. I wish I could say that everything is going great but that's just not how it is.

Three Years Later

I am now 39 years old and have just begun the job of updating this website. First off, I am still married but no longer living with my wife. I don't know that I will ever be with her again, this is not for me to know right now. I'm living in a sober living home in the San Fernando Valley within a mile of the house that I grew up in. I am sober. I am still under the care of a doctor for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and social phobia (and a few things that I have not yet told him about).

I talked about getting ECT alittle and when I was writting that I did not know much about how it was going to effect me, I only saw that it was helping me in a temporary way the way that medication seemed to be doing. I touched on the memory loss. Yes. I did those treatments for around a year and a half, sometimes three times a week. When I stopped I found that I had lost alot of memory. The trauma pieces remained (funny that) but I lost everyday things and alot of my past. I remembered my wife, I knew her name. My only memory of her was her looking sternly at me shaking her head at me. I knew that I was a disapointment to her. I did not remember much about working, I had been working in the same union for about 15 years. I did not know who I worked for, with, or on what jobs. I knew that I worked for Warner Bros, maybe because I had worked there for so long. Even this website, I knew it was here though I did not know the address, how I made it, or the passwords to access it. I went back to work not knowing if I would know how to do my job. But after a year the memories started comming back-not all of them but some. And as I went to work, I found that I would look at a tool and know how it worked and how to maintain it and change parts. Now at over two years from ECT, I have to say that I have about 90% of my practical memory back. The things that seem to have stayed away at this point are names of people I worked with or knew, some of the jobs I've been on, and endless "little stuff" that drives me nuts sometimes when it comes up. I visited my sister once and went sledding, I don't remember the whole trip except that I did go there. It really hurts me that I don't remember these things and it is, at a lesser extent, embaressing. I'm often asked, "Do you remember?" and I don't. Sometimes I play it off, like at work. But with my loved ones I tell them the truth. It hurts. And sometimes I think that it hurts them too, but I want them to know that it is not because it was not worth remembering, it is due to the treatments. I tell them because they need to know.

While I was out there, doing drugs and throwing away anything of worth I had, people were trying to help me. My dad was always trying to help me but he was aslo in Al-Anon. He knew that his "help" could harm me. So he did what he could without enabling me in my use. Never really detatching with love but not giving me money or letting me move into his home. At one point I called him from a hospital and told his answering machine that I had no money and no place to go. Shortly after, my brother called me saying that dad would not even talk to me, that I was going to have to just deal with this myself.

I went through the shelters. I did not see what I could do about the way that I was. I did another hospital, this one for about two weeks. They had a taxi take me to a shelter in the area that I told them I lived in. I was at the shelter for about 2 minutes. I went back to the place I knew the best. I am not very good at living in the streets. I did my best to get more drugs, and maybe some food once in a while. I felt that I was comming to a head with my problem. It was getting to a death or something else thing.

One day I was in an alley in Venice, ca., and I had what I call a Spiritual Awakening. I saw my dad's face and it hit home with me that I was hurting people that cared about me. I may have said what I was supposed to say but deep down I felt that it was my life, my body, and I could do whatever made me feel better (or nothing) for at least a little while. I walked out of that alley and went into a drug rehab. The rehab was not a good place and I soon found that it was not doing the things that I had been told it was going to do like have groups, meetings, you know, treatment. I stayed there for 45 days and went to a sober living. It was in El Monte and it was a good place mainly because one of the men who had been a drug counselor at the hospital I spent alot of time at over the years was the manager of this sober home. In time he follower his heart and moved to be with his family out of state. The sober living home became a so-so place as the new manager had no ability at doing the job of overseeing a home. He did not care for my sense of honesty and one day he gave me my two weeks notice.

I moved back in with my wife at about 1 year sober. I was hoping it would be good for both of us, that we would be able to heal up the wounds that I had caused and the ones that I felt she had caused me. This lasted six months. Durring that time I was very unhappy living in HER appartment, sitting on HER couch, breathing HER air. I felt that I must stay with her that I owed it to her to repair the damage I had done to her because of my illnesses.

Then, in March of 2003, my dad died a couple of days after my birthday. He was the most important person in my recovery and my life. He was the first and foremost person that made me feel good about how I was doing. Nowhere else did I get a "pat on the back" for getting sober, going back to work, and making good on past debts. I got the call at 12:30am from my sister Patty, she left a message saying that I needed to call her. I sat there in HER bed and could not move. I knew. It took me about two hours to call her after asking permission from my wife to make the long-distance call on HER phone. I had just talked to dad on my birthday, he was laughing and sounded so happy. He had again told me of how proud he was of me.

My wife is a good person-I want to make that clear. But there are things that we are just not in sinc with. I am what you would call in touch with my feelings. I cry when I feel sad, happy, or even just that it is time to cry. I cannot hold it in, it will destroy me. It will come out in other ways that will hurt me..or others. I want to talk about what is going on in my life and the lives of those around me. I know how important it is to talk. When faced with a lack of people to talk to, I write. IT HAS TO COME OUT. My wife does not live by this code. I felt that she belittled me when I showed emotion. I went as far as to try to hide it, knowing the damage it would do to me. But the death of my father? How could I hide the way this was affecting me? I knew the answer to that and that answer was not acceptable. I guess she let me go for a while, then she started saying things like, "Are you crying again?". I knew from the way she dealt with my depression that next was going to come was, "Get over it." I was in pain-and I could not show how much pain there was. "You can't trust somebody when they think you're crazy." Miranda said that in "Gothika". I know this feeling.

I was on my way to work one day and I could not see the road from the tears. I wanted to die. The thoughts that I deal with everyday were so loud and I seemed to have no way of protecting myself. I pulled over on the freeway and thought about how to end this pain. I don't know, well that's not true-I know that it was God that gave me a push to get myself into a hospital. I can go over my journal and see for two weeks before this that I was asking for some help, at one point saying, "It's all crumbling, I'm crying for help but no one cares." I got myself to the hospital and with the help of my doctor found the treatment I needed at that time.

I was in for ten days, the best I could get out of my insurrance. While there I was in groups that dealt with depression, grief and loss, trauma. I ate up those groups like a starving man. I would go to every one, never missing any. I knew that I only had a little time to get the tools that I needed to deal with what I was going through. I did not socialize with the others there, I was in this to get help and that came from these groups. While there I decided that I would not go back to my wife's appartment. I would leave it open for us to get back together but I was not going to live in HER appartment. I had bad dreams again, something that I thought I had gotten past, and I evn started having some halucinations. These did not worry my doctor so I did not worry about them either. He fiddled about with my meds, with me always working with him so that I did not end up being too medicated that I could not work. And I was discharged.

God is my saving grace. I am a vile offender and because of His love and sacrafice for me, I am a new creature. The world will never cut me this slack, but when I see Him, I have Some One that will speak on my behalf. My sister was talking about getting a new name when I was with her visiting. I can only come up with these when I think about it: "Wonderfully Counselled", "Redeemed", "Lost Sheep Found". It feels so good to think about these names, it makes me feel so important. I start to think that I have value. And I am starting to think that I have a value here on earth as well (alittle, slowly). I know that I mean something to people, just a few, because they tell me over and over again. I wasn't raised to feel that I was, or was going to be anyone. I was only trying to survive. And then when I did not need to survive anymore, I had to hide from the things in my head. They were ghosts of the way that it had been, telling me that it was still that way...or would be again soon. I live now knowing that it is going to be good, no matter what befalls me here. Because this life here is not all that there is. I still have those ghosts, but I have a calmer voice that tells me that all is as it should be and all will be well in the end. I know that I'm doing alot of talking here about God, and as you can see there is a link to a page devoted to just the God of my understanding but He is The Important Part of my recovery and life so He is going to turn up here and everywhere. After all, I could not get sober, I know, I tried.

I lost my father this year and I lost a friend from my DRA fellowship. I watched her as she seemed to get worse as I was getting better and I did nothing to help her. We went in two different directions. As I became clearer in my recovery, she was falling apart in hers. I could see that she was going in many different directions and getting nowhere. She was going to meetings, she had a sponsor, but she was missing an important part of recovery: she was not healing the broken person inside. I know that there was something that I could have done that would have helped her, I just don't know what that was. She would talk about taking on sponsees and going to school and getting a job and trying to find a conection with her "higher power" but she was not able to any of these things well. She was not able to do the other things that needed to be done either like pay the bills with her money instead of buying clothes, maintain a place to live, or keep her committments. She stopped comming to the DRA meeting, just stopped showing up though she had a commitment there, and was in the process of being evicted from her appartment. Her friends were all saying how well she was doing but I could not see it. All I could see was someone right on the edge of disaster. And yet I did nothing. I watched as she took a cake for three years and thought how? When I heard the message from a friend that there had been a tragety, I knew that it was this girl and that she was dead. She was found in her appartment dead of an over-dose of heroin. I don't want to just stand there and watch another person die. I want to be put into action so I can be of service to those that I may help. You see, I have another friend headed in that direction. She does not even know it. But I see it and so do her friends that have known her for years. And we have not yet done or said anything. She is taking way too many pills, whenever she likes, and is so doped up that I rarely see her lucid. I care a great deal for her...and watch as she self-destructs.

What do these women have in common? For one thing they were best friends. Yet one did not see the other's cries for help. I know that with the girl that died, she had this hate thing going with God. I've heard her say some hateful things about Jesus, I don't know if it was to offend me (to keep me away) or if it was just how angry she was at God. This other woman that I see headed for a break, is strangely interested in so many aspects of the different religions of the world. But she seems to have failed to make a choice on where she will trust her spirit. If you go into her bedroom, she has an altar full of idols from various religions. She told me not to read the bible when I told her that I was searching for God and I was going to read the bible from beginning to end. She has many books about God but she does not seem to feel He is the Way. The programs tell us that we must choose our own "higher power", that it can be a rock or the group, or even a door knob. But I know in my heart that there is but one God. And I fear for her as she tries to make her way without Him. And she does not want to hear it from me. You see, she is very smart. And for someone like me to tell her something, it insults her.

I have another friend that is using outright. It places her in constant trouble. She is in and out of jails and has even gone as far as to jump out of a second story window because she thought she heard people out in the hall comming for her. I would like to help her. She does not seem to want anyone's help right now. I know that if I just said the right thing, she would listen and maybe try...but I fail. People that I care about all around me are up against this illness and they are not winning. All I can do right now is pray for them. But at some point they are going to have to want recovery bad enough that they will work to get it. If that means throwing themselves into the programs, good thing that. It opens doors into spirituality and recovery from the inside out. Must we wait for them to hit bottom, when they seemed to be there already? Can we do something to help? I think it's time for me to begin hitting Al-Anon meetings. I just don't want to watch another friend die.

I am not writing all of this just for myself, there is the off chance that someone else my come accross this and it may be of some use to them. I write this as a personal story. I know that some place their children first, but how was that working while they were using drugs? I did not ever see my biological mother do any drugs, but I know she was an addict. I recognize the behavour as I remember it and as I am told about how she was by those that were there-and older. It does not matter if she is clean/sober today or not, I want to know her. I need to know her. We will always love our addicts, but will we know what is the best thing to do? I feel abandoned by my wife, she surely feels the same about me. I read in a book that the devil does this, I don't know if that is true in this case. We have hurt each other, and neither really knows the other's pain. I know that we both care. I do, and I know that I would not have married a person that did not care.

There are some really important people in my life that are very interested in how I am doing. They let me feel and are not affraid of my thoughts and fears. I am in almost constant contact with these people because I am addicted to being able to be myself-and loved for it. I have email, letters, and the dreaded phone (to be avoided at all costs). I can talk about God without them becomming uncomfortable, and they know what I'm talking about when I talk about my past. When I talk to my sister, she was there as some of these things occurred and knows how it affects a person. She now works with kids in the foster care system, many of whom have suffered great abuse at the hands of those they trusted. She teaches me so much about myself, she has seen so much from the inside and out. I spent some time with her not too long ago and we went on a camping trip with one of her very close friends who also works with kids from abuse backgrounds. We sat around the fire and talked and I could not stop the tears. He talked about his abuse too.

I love the meetings that I go to. I look forward to these meetings and I go because I want to be there. I was living at a place that had meetings on the grounds and we were forced to attend these meetings as a condition of living there. The meetings were not the anonymous group that I feel I relate to and I hated being there. I had to look HARD to find the similarities in the stories of the speakers and the others there. I also found that my sharing was not appreciated and usually came with a disclaimer, someone would speak imeadiatly after me saying that my way was not the accepted way of the program. I did not belong, very few would even speak to me about recovery knowing my program. But now I am free to attend the meetings that fit me and my illnesses. I always hear from others going through what I have or am going through. And I am often told by someone in the meeting that they got something from my share or at least enjoyed hearing from me. Instead of being apart from the group, I am a part of the group. Please vist my RECOVERY INFO PAGE and find the group for you.

If you are looking for the car, bike, house, ect., it's going to be easy to pick a sponsor. If you are looking for lengthy sobriety, it's still fairly easy to find someone. But if you are looking to change, what do you want to be? I know of men who are sober and are not good people. They may even have the "stuff", but is this someone you are going to tell your most personal thoughts, emotions, and actions to? Did someone tell you that you have to have a sponsor so you grabbed just anyone? How long will you stay sober without the kind of trust and faith needed to open up you entire heart to another human being? Think hard about this. No really, think about it. If you don't work an honest program what are your chances of staying sober when you consider the three most important things to your recovery are (1)Honesty (2)Openmindedness (3)Willingness? If you cannot be honest, you are heading off in the wrong direction from the start, it's the first thing you need. And if this is just some guy, are you going to be open to the ideas and ideals he may offer based on his experience? And how willing are you going to be to take suggestions or (as in my case) directions from some guy you got just 'cause you needed somebody? Hey, it could work out that you find a great guy that will help you in you recovery and become your best asset against this illness. But wouldn't you like to hedge you bets?

I suggest that you listen to them as they speak. Check out the similarities in their story as compared to yours. What kind of person are they? Do they have what you want? And know that there is no punishment for firing a sponsor. Just make sure you know why you are doing it, is it for the right reasons?

Relapse is part of recovery for many who are working the 12 step programs. That is not to say that it has to be, it just often is. A child learns to walk by standing up and talking steps, that child will fall down. But that child will also get back up and try again. If you relapse, don't spend all your time beating yourself up about your fall. There will be plenty of people willing to do that for you-at least that has been my experience. Dust yourself off and continue forward, you have not lost all that you have gained in recovery, only your sobriety date has changed.

I know that with me the years that I was out there "relapsing" really weren't relapses, I had not yet made the choice to be sober. I was on a 30 day cycle, sometimes holding out for as long as 90 days. There will always be temptations but you know what will happen if you have even one anything, for me it leads back to that alley. They call it "playing the tape to the end". The programs will always welcome you back, your friends in the programs should also. But if you notice that they are distancing themselves alittle, it may not be because they are condemning you for relapsing. They may just be protecting themselves, and you really cannot fault them for it. When you are on this side, watching someone you care about destroying their lives and the lives of those around them, it hurts. Alanon says, "Detatch with love." It is a suggestion to those that may be enabling someone who has not yet made the choice or the effort to recover. They may also be worried about their own recovery.

This is a work in progress.