Wednesday, February 1, 2012:

I am the grandson of a woman I never knew, who spent the last 25 years of her life in a mental institution. Of my four grandparents, I think most of my genes came from her.

I’ve got ten months left and I’m getting a bit antsy.

My protege is coming along just fine. I’ve got him up to twenty miles and working the steps.

Pardon the non-sequiturs.

They’re going to let us have MP3 players. Woo-hoo. I’ve never even owned a cell phone.

I’ve been reading a book about motivational interviewing. It’s about helping people overcome the ambivalence that prevents them from making changes in their lives. It’s going slowly.

My friend, M the barber, just walked in. He’s from Iowa and speaks in a whiny, Midwestern, Jimmy Stewart voice.

My new cellmate hasn’t been in prison a whole year yet. In here, we say about such inmates, He’s still got Burger King on his breath.

I’m ready to go.

Pardon the non-sequiturs.

I gotta keep reminding myself: One day at a time. Just look at today. Just do what you gotta do today. Keep one foot in front of the other. Don’t look past today.

I haven’t had a drink or drug in 2662 days.

I had headaches every day for a month. I didn’t know if it was a sinus infection, inner ear infection, or a brain tumor. I went to see the PA. She said just breathe through my nose more often. My headaches stopped immediately even though I didn’t follow her advice.

I don’t know how I’m going to feel around “normal” people again.

I’m scared.

Pardon the non-sequiturs.

Monday, January 23, 2012:

One of the lowest points in my life was in June of 2002. I was in a county jail waiting to go to federal prison to serve my fourteen and a half year sentence. I was told I had a visit which I had not been expecting.

I lined up with the rest of the inmates receiving visits, but before we got to the visitation booths, I was led to a different room. This can’t be good, I thought as I sat with my hands cuffed and my feet shackled.

After a moment or two of racing thoughts, my mom walks in. It only took one look in her red, puffy eyes for me to know that my brother, Brian, had died. It was an overdose.

That’s why I feel a connection to Sheryl Letzgus McGinnis, author of Slaying the Addiction Monster. She lost her son, Scott, to this dreadful, misunderstood disease six months after I lost my brother.

Slaying the Addiction Monster is a comprehensive look at every aspect of addiction. She’s included lots of advice from other grieving parents such as this from Celeste, mother of Brandon:

Nothing I did worked. Just love them, hold them, and fight for them with all you have. If you lose this fight, you need to know you did all you could.

She also includes this advice on interventions from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America:

The key thing is not to wait for your loved one to “bottom out,” have a car crash or develop some serious health problem [or wind up in prison] before you address your concerns. Do something now. Remember, addiction is treatable.

And finally, someone actually put the truth about methadone in print. In my opinion and experience, methadone should never be considered as a treatment option for addiction. As I’ve said before, it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire. It is a “cure” that is truly worse than the disease.

McGinnis includes an article by Steve Hayes, Director of Novus Detox Center in which he states:

A 1999 study done at the University of London found that methadone actually increases cravings,

and also,

In most cases the addict is now taking a much higher dosage of methadone than the equivalent amount of heroin that they were using.

That is exactly what I experienced while participating in a methadone program, and my brother was also in a methadone program at the time of his death.

There’s more articles and interviews by Eric Nester, MD, PhD, UT Southwestern Medical Center Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Claudia Black, PhD, and NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse).

Unfortunately, this disease continues to be misunderstood in the worst possible ways. It’s still treated as a criminal problem rather than the health problem that it is.

We’re still locking up people for showing symptoms of what the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the American Psychological Association call a disease.

As McGinnis says,

Addiction is not a conscious choice. The experimentation which usually begins in childhood is a conscious choice, but addiction is not.

Tuesday, January 17, 2011:

From 365 Tao by Deng Ming-Dao:

Heaven and hell:

Our subconscious

Meditation opens seldom glimpsed areas of our subconscious. When that happens, extraordinary thoughts and awareness come to us with seeming spontaneity. We realize truths that were opaque to us before; we perceive events that were previously too distant. But no one ever became superhuman because of meditation. They only opened their own latent potential. Everything is locked inside of us and need only be opened. That is why it is said that heaven is within us.

In the same way, the pains and struggles of the past sometimes haunt us with astounding vehemence. Problems and conflicts are difficult to exorcise. Although we may practice spirituality and move on to new endeavors and relationships, past hurts still come back in our memories and dreams. These are not demons from another world, nor are they karmic manifestations of previous lives; they are scars in our subconscious. No matter how diligently we try to make progress, there are still pains that curse us day after day. This is why it is said that hell is within us.

We ourselves are the battleground for good and evil. There is no need to look beyond our world. Everything to be understood is within us. All that must be transcended — the pain and scars of the past — is within us. All the power of transcendence is also within us. Tap into it and you tap into the divine itself.

Thursday, January 12, 2011:

Mike Doughty is the former lead singer of the nineties band, Soul Coughing, and he’s penned a brilliant and piquant memoir somewhat misleadingly called The Book of Drugs.

Back in the mid-nineties, a friend gave me a recording of Soul Coughing’s first album. This was the kind of music I listened to at the time. It was quirky and unique.

I love new and original music, no matter what genre it is.

I wear out a song like I wear out a pair of running shoes. After a hundred listens, more or less, I’m done with it, don’t want to hear it anymore. I even wear out whole genres of music, eventually moving on to something else.

So when I heard Soul Coughing, they were something fresh and new. But unfortunately, this was a time in my life when drugs were ravaging me to the core. I was on and off methadone which set my addiction in hyper-drive, the opposite of what it’s supposed to do.

My body was no longer producing the neurotransmitters needed to enjoy music, to laugh, to love and feel loved. I knew what I was hearing was great, but I couldn’t enjoy it, or anything else for that matter. (One of the first things I discovered when I came out of rehab the first time was that, contrary to what I believed before, music sounds so much better without drugs. And, incidentally, one of the songs that reminds me of that short time is The Last Goodbye by the late Jeff Buckley who was a friend of Doughty’s and who is featured in this book.)

I listened to the Soul Coughing album for about a week, or rather than listen, it was really just the soundtrack for a scene in my life where I’m out cruising for crack, driving from parking lot to parking lot smoking it, getting paranoid, not high.

But the book: I couldn’t put it down. Doughty’s the exact same age as I and he’s lived the life I always wanted to live, but without the drugs of course.

He colorfully recounts his experiences with his band, touring and traveling all over the world.

As his life begins to unravel, he finds his way to the rooms of AA. From in prison, these are the type of books I enjoy the most. They lift me away from these walls and fences and transport me around the world.

I hate it when I come to the end, and the end came too quickly with this one. So back to my stinking life.

Saturday, January 7, 2012:

I just finished reading Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre who was a leading philosopher of existentialism.

In his novels and plays, as in Nausea, he portrays his characters adrift in a meaningless world. Existentialism claims that human beings have full responsibility for creating the meaning in their lives, and that we exist in a state of total freedom.

But rather than a feeling of liberation, this freedom leads to a state of overwhelming indecision and anxiety.

In German philosopher Karl Jaspers’ view, one’s being is most clearly revealed in extreme situations or states of mind such as despair or suffering — occasions when the individual is confronted with the temporary nature of his or her own existence.

When I read these lines in Nausea: Now when I say ‘I,’ it seems hollow to me. I can’t manage to feel myself very well, I am so forgotten. The only real thing left in me is existence, I was instantly transported back to my first year of imprisonment.

I had lost everything. I thought my life was over and that I would never be free again. I was suffering agonizing physical pain from gun-shot wounds, I had tried to kill myself, and I felt the spiritual pain of believing that even God had forsaken me.

I could do nothing but breathe; breathe in, breathe out, inhale, exhale.

There was a strange comfort in that, knowing all I had to do was breathe. I know it sounds crazy, but the feeling of having nothing left to lose was oddly comforting.

That’s what reading Nausea was like for me. It took me down a different street in my mind, and it allowed me to peer around the corner and see what I could not have seen any other way.

Monday, January 2, 2012:

For the first time ever, I actually stuck to my New Year’s resolution. I completed a recovery journal entitled A New Day, A New Life by William Cope Moyers, who is the author of Broken (one of the best addiction memoirs I’ve ever read), and he’s also the Vice President of External Affairs at the Hazelden Foundation.

The journal has a page for 365 days with a topic which contains a blend of addiction science and twelve step spirituality.

The topics are usually related to one of the steps (one step per month) and each page has a section for writing thoughts and feelings about the topic. At the bottom of the page is a quote for each day.

The journal also contains a DVD featuring discussions between Mr. Moyers and a diverse group of people in recovery.

The journal is intended to be used by those in their first year of recovery, but I’m in my eighth year, and it was still a huge benefit to me, strengthening my recovery in many different ways. Reading and writing in A New Day, A New Life was a lot like having Mr. Moyers as my sponsor for a whole year.

Journaling has saved my sanity.

Of all the tools we have in recovery, this is one of the most indispensable for me. It’s helped untangle the knot in my soul that was my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

When I first started journaling several years ago, I could hardly write more than a couple of sentences each day, but it’s gotten easier and continues to be rewarding in ways I never dreamed of.

If you are in early recovery or know someone who is, A New Day, A New Life could be a valuable Life-saving tool for you.

Friday, December 30, 2011:

Well, this has been my twelfth holiday season in prison. It’s not as bad as you would think, but don’t get me wrong, it still sucks, but one can’t stay depressed and despondent twelve years in a row.

At a certain point, I can adapt to whatever situation I’m in. I just have to change my attitude and perspective about the situation.

The first Christmas was definitely the hardest because every single day, every single breath I took was hard. It wasn’t particularly worse just because it was Christmas. I wanted to die, holiday or no holiday.

It was difficult when my most recent memories were of being free. When I dreamt at night, I wasn’t in prison, but as soon as I opened my eyes, I was slapped back to reality.

After a couple of years, my most recent memories were, obviously, of prison, and when I dream at night, I’m in prison. As pathetic as that sounds, it actually makes it easier. I imagine when I get out, I’ll dream every night that I’m in prison, and wake up to happily see that I’m not.

My second Christmas was rough also. The drugs were out of my system (for the most part) so I was no longer numb to my predicament. I was feeling everything and everything felt bad. I was mad at the world, but at no one more than myself.

To make matters worse, the county jail I was in had seen fit to play Christmas carols over the loud speakers at night. It felt like pure, unadulterated torture and I didn’t believe they were doing it because they were in the Christmas spirit.

It’s much easier now. Everything’s easier. Christmas and all holidays are just another twenty-four hours in here, where a heavy blanket of monotony covers the days and nights.

That sounds sad, but I’ve learned how to deal with boredom and monotony. It’s a skill necessary for survival in prison.

And for New Year’s this time, I think I might actually stay up until midnight to greet the new year. I’ve been looking forward to 2012 for a long time.

Monday, December 26, 2011:

Ah, just as I suspected: all that think-positive-Pollyanna-drivel is poppycock.

According to Russ Harris, author of The Confidence Gap, we evolved to think negatively. A hundred thousand years ago, if you weren’t on constant vigil for dangers like lions, tigers, and bears in your environment, you didn’t live very long, certainly not long enough to pass on your Pollyanna genes.

So thinking negatively is ingrained in us, and I’m happy to hear that because I sure was getting sick and tired of those Stuart Smalley daily affirmations.

The Confidence Gap is a guide to overcoming fear and self-doubt. As a recovering drug addict it’s important, very important for me to learn how to deal with fear, because I always dealt with this problem with drugs and liquid courage.

That was my solution for overcoming low self-confidence, shyness, and insecurity.

Hellen Keller said that life is a daring adventure or nothing. If we’re stifled by fear then our life will certainly be nothing. We’ll stay stuck in our comfort zones as life passes us by. Harris lists four common reasons why we’re afraid to leave our comfort zones:

1. Obstacles — our minds point out all the obstacles.
2. Self-judgements — our minds point out all our weaknesses.
3. Comparisons — our minds compare us to others who seem to be better than us.
4. Predictions — our minds predict failure.

Before I published my book, I thought it would be the greatest thing I’d ever accomplished, but as soon as it came out, I was attacked by self-judgements. I thought what I’d written was stupid, and of inferior quality, and I almost regretted doing it.

Even worse, I had to write for this website. Every time I wrote something and posted it, I would wake up in the middle of the night berating myself, Stupid, stupid, stupid. I can’t believe I wrote that.

I wanted to give up. I discovered that I was fusing to these thoughts. That’s all they were: thoughts. They were not based on fact, and if they were, so what? Don’t I have the right to say stupid things and make mistakes?

So I continued to write and consider it all practice, because there’s no way I’ll ever get better if I don’t continue to plug away. I defused from those negative thoughts.

They still come up every time I write something, but now I can say, There’s that stupid, self-judging thought. Bye-bye stupid self-judging thought. So I was glad to read this quote from best-selling author Peter Carey in The Confidence Gap:

Writing is being prepared to be stupid and make mistakes.

There’s a lot more useful information in The Confidence Gap including Harris’ golden rule for winning the confidence game:

The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later.

There are nine more rules, so instead of listing them here, I’ll recommend you buy the book and discover them yourself.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011:

My mom and dad visited me last Sunday. They live a couple hundred miles away from Marianna, so they usually visit three or four times a year.

I’ve seen them go through a lot of changes over the last eleven years, especially my dad.

Of course no one wants to see their son in prison, and my dad’s no exception, but it really showed in the beginning. He’s never been very verbose — the strong silent type — but I could tell these visits were excruciating for him. The amenities of the visitation rooms don’t help much either.

In a federal prison, it’s not much different than sitting in a crowded, noisy doctor’s office waiting room, but better than the county jails where it’s not much different than what you see on TV: visitors and prisoner are separated by Plexiglas and communicate by phone or through vents in the window.

Anyway, my dad used to fall asleep during the visits while my mom chattered away. Now, he’s more talkative than I’ve ever seen him and our conversations don’t feel so awkward anymore.

With my mom, the conversations have went from containing words and phrases like, “blame,” “fault,” “what were you thinking,” “we didn’t know,” and “sorry,” to “can’t wait,” “home,” “love,” and “job and clothes.”

It’s good to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I’m getting more excited as each day passes. I’m cautiously optimistic about my future and confident in my ability to maintain my recovery.

It’s hard enough when the addict doesn’t understand his addiction, and it’s even worse when the family doesn’t understand it either. That’s the difference with me and my family today. They understand (as much as something this cunning, baffling, and powerful can be understood) what they can and can’t do to help, and I know the steps I have to take to arrest this disease.

Friday, December 16, 2011:

I’m getting a little burned out on doing these book reviews. They’re all starting to sound the same to me, or either it’s just that little voice in my head that’s always criticizing me (even though I’m learning to ignore him, he still gets to me sometimes). So, I’m going to change gears here a little bit and tell you what’s been going on with me.

I’ve been…locked up, incarcerated, in prison, banished from society, buried alive, or whatever you want to call it, for eleven years, one month and 10 days. I’ve got about twelve more months left, so I could possibly be home for Christmas next year.

I’m seven months into this Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) here in Marianna. I won’t say it’s intense, not by far, but it’s certainly doing what I think all good drug programs should do — it’s constantly making me look at myself, my thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, values and behavior. And that’s the last thing a drug addict wants to do. I should graduate in March.

I’m still playing music, and if I may toot my own horn, I’d say I’ve gotten pretty good. I practice my scales everyday, religiously, to the point that sometimes it feels as if my fingers have a mind of their own. And I’m still running.

The weather’s cooled off, so I’ve been able to bump my mileage up to about fifty miles a week. But now, instead of being so self-involved with it, and, solitarily, reaping the many rewards of running, I’ve found pleasure in helping someone else reach their goals.

There’s a 25 year-old guy we call Cricket who just arrived from another prison. He’s covered from head to toe with tattoos and is in one of the Mexican gangs. I usually stay sort of aloof around most of these guys, but he’s latched onto me for a couple of reasons: he loves playing music and he’s recently discovered running.

So I’m helping him train for a marathon. He’s extremely enthusiastic about it and it’s all he wants to talk about. There’s four or five of us who really love to run. We trade running magazines back and forth and books by Dean Karnazes and Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

These guys running ultra-marathons of a hundred miles or more are our heroes and we can’t wait to do it ourselves.

So, that’s where I am. I’ve got around 365 days left and rather than hope that they just fly by, I hope that I can pack as much as possible into them and make everyone of them be counted as a gain rather than a loss, an asset and not a liability, and paradoxically, I hope to give more than I receive.