Tiny White Box–Thoughts on Life, Death, Recovery, and Other Mundane Topics

September 1

“Early Recovery Sucks (until you consider the alternative)”

September is National Recovery Month. It’s also the month for celebrating honey, bourbon, prostate health, gospel music, yoga, and guide dogs. While my squirrel mind would love to find an organizing principle among these diverse topics—recovery, bourbon and guide dogs as a trio almost writes its own jokes—I’m going to write about what I know and stick to recovery.

(Apparently, I lied in that last sentence. In a previous life more than 20 years ago, I wrote, performed and produced an album of original songs called “The Sound of One Mind Snapping: Songs from the Zen Baptist Tradition.” Most of the songs are less notable for tunes than creative names (“Out-of-Town Tuna Fish,” “From the Gutter to You Ain’t Up” and “Mean Playgrounds of Weare”). This album, virtually unlistenable by anyone with undamaged hearing, was created in a complicated skirting of the requirements for recertification as a high school principal.)

As someone who has recovered (or “is recovering” to some of my mates) from drug and alcohol use, I’m perfectly happy to have a month devoted to the process that saved my life. Over the next 30 days, I’ll write daily about recovery, my life before and during recovery, Recovery Month, granfalloons, Hope for New Hampshire Recovery and a variety of other recovery-related topics.

You’ve been warned.

Recovery is absolutely worth it. If your using is getting (or has gotten) out of hand, or if it never was in hand, please come to Hope for New Hampshire Recovery and we’ll do everything we can to help you regain your life. Really

Still, early recovery sucks. After all, stepping away from drugs or alcohol means leaving behind a best friend, even if that bestie is trying to kill you. While I’ve moved from weed to pills to acid to meth to heroin, booze, for me, was a constant. No matter what, alcohol helped make the bad times fuzzier and the good times harder to remember. I last shot up when I was a 19-year-old soldier, addicted and scared to death. Luckily, alcohol nursed me through and I didn’t have the heart to give it up for almost another 30 years. 

“Any man who finds early recovery easy probably didn’t need recovery at all.”—Unattributed 19^th-Century quotation. Unattributed because I just made it up.

When I was drinking, a lengthy period of abstinence was two or three days, an experience that began with a glorious first day. 

“I should have done this a long time ago! Feels so good to not feel bad first thing in the morning. I don’t think I’ll ever drink again!”

By around two in the afternoon, I was so sure I was done with booze that I realized I didn’t need to be fanatical about it.

“I’m not drinking, but I could still have just a couple at the end of the day. The secret to sobriety is learning how to drink responsibly.  After all, recovery is a journey, not a destination. I didn’t drink last night, so that proves I don’t have a real problem. Just need to pace myself.”

By five, I was stopping at the drug store or convenience store or supermarket—never the same place too regularly, lest someone think I have a drinking problem—and buying a 30-rack of beer or box of wine. 

“Tonight, I’ll just have three or four drinks over the course of the evening. I’ll pace myself and enjoy the buzz. Tonight will be different.”

No tonight was ever different. I never had just three or four drinks, no matter what kind of intentions I’d set off with.

Recovery is about way more than not drinking or drugging. It’s about redux—a return to health after a period of sickness. Sometimes, though, we get so used to being diseased that health feels unhealthy, Like a starving man with a meal of diseased meat, we know we must consume even as that consumption slowly kills us.

Early recovery is filled with excitement and joy.

Early recovery is numbness and sorrow.

Early recovery offers a life of freedom.

Early recovery is a diarrhea downpour with no raincoat.

Early recovery brings peace.

Early recovery is turmoil, pain and chaos.

Each of those sentences is true, for me and, I suspect, everyone who’s ever lived through early recovery. Luckily, millions of us HAVE walked that path, whether it took three weeks or four months or five years. Early recovery ends—we have the ability to turn that work into long-term sobriety or wander into relapse or reoccurrence. 

September 2

“What I Believe (with apologies to Bertrand Russell)

Ninety-eight years ago, Bertrand Russell published a little book called, What I Believe, an extended essay on humanity, meaning, morality and purpose in a godless universe. Unlike Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, Believe is not necessarily a light read. It’s not quite a slog through a swamp, but it’s at least a muddy hike with wet shoes. 

No wet shoes here, though. I produce only light, airy, even ephemeral, reads, so, Dear Reader, have no fear of being confused by the following beliefs of mine:

1. I believe the vast majority of human beings find more pleasure than pain in the use of alcohol and marijuana, that most folks use them as a social lubricant in a healthy way.

• I believe any number of human beings can use almost any substance in an occasional and recreational way. This includes cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, hallucinogens ,and most other intoxicating substances.

• I believe, based on years of evidence, I am not one of those people and I need to remain abstinent from all use of anything that will get me messed up.

• I believe recovery is possible for all with addictions, no matter how low they have may have sunk.

• I believe any user can call an end to using and, with help and support from peers, find the recovery they seek. In other words, there’s no need to wait for “rock bottom.” Recovery can begin right now. Rock bottom is never reached as long as a person is above dirt, taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide.

• I believe families can be healed of the damage caused by addiction.

• I believe people can learn to live comfortably in reality after existing uncomfortably in addiction.

• I believe every person with addiction can fulfill a great destiny.

• I believe bodies can repair themselves from the damage caused by addiction.

1. I believe people can become productive members of society despite addiction histories.

1. I believe a sense of desperate isolation and isolated despair can be lifted from those with addictions.

1. I believe seemingly insurmountable financial challenges resulting from addictions can be overcome over time and with effort.

1. I believe transformation of the human character can take place in recovery.

I don’t believe these things because I’m an optimist. I don’t believe them because of a book I read or a movie I watched. My belief doesn’t come from tapping my heels three times and making wishes.

I believe because I’ve seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears and lived within my own life each of these beliefs. Men and women I know well have experienced each and every one of these beliefs—and so have I. I’ve gone from being homeless and hopeless, dirty and diseased, alienated and aching, to the man I am today. 

That’s not optimism, it’s real life. And it can be made real in your life, too. 

And your shoes will stay dry.

September 3

“I Keep My Means of Recovery to Myself”

I keep my means of recovery to myself. Oh, I’m proud of BEING in recovery, of having returned to the land of the living after existing in the shadowland of drink and drugs for 35 years. I’m proud of the work I do and the people I work with and work for—Hope staff and Hope members are among the finest, fairest and funniest people I’ve ever known. I’m proud of the changes I’ve made in my life, and that today I am much closer to the man my parents dreamed of when they brought me home from the pound.

It’s the means I keep to myself. Some folks use SMART Recovery to get and stay clean and sober, and others use a return to the God of their childhood, and yet others may rely on crystals, astrology and witchcraft to keep them away from a drink or a drug. Recovery Dharma, a seven-part practice drawing upon Buddhist principles, has a bunch of local followers. Likewise, the Three Principles, once espoused at local treatment program the Farnum Center, has helped people accomplish their recovery goals. 

Finally, we have the 12-Step programs: Alcoholics Narcotics Overeaters Heroin Marijuana Debtors Gamblers, etc., etc. Anonymous. These Anonymouses (Anonymice?) are multimonolithic in recovery. That is, they have the dominant share in almost all the “markets” in which they compete. With their emphasis on complete abstinence, personal accountability, spiritual change and responsibility for sharing their story to others, members of 12-Step programs are encouraged to maintain their anonymity at the level of press, radio or film. Celebrate Recovery, an evangelical Christian take on recovery, uses the 12 Steps as a foundation for an explicitly faith-based approach.

Over the course of September, Recovery Month, I’ll do my best to describe each of these pathways to recovery. I’m afraid “my best” is doing most of the work in that last sentence. Regular readers will know straightforward narrative and description is an option I never had installed.

Regardless, How I maintain my recovery is nowhere near as important as that I do. You may be a person in early recovery or just thinking about cutting back on your use. The following list is pretty universally applicable to any pathway or none at all.

(Astute (or simply conscious) readers will recognize the weasel nature of “pretty universally applicable” as not dissimilar to “mainly innocent defendant.” That (and this pointless digression leading nowhere simply demonstrate my earlier point about my limitations.)

Here are some things that helped me get through early recovery. Try them. They may help. If not, they won’t hurt.

1. Go to Meetings, whether 12-Step, SMART, All-Recovery or anything else. Here you’ll find folks who are walking or who have walked the same path. Getting to know others in recovery—and making them central to your new life—is one of the best ways to avoid slips or relapses. 

• Celebrate Milestones—Whether or not you’re following a 12-Step or Celebrate Recovery program, they do have a great system for “rewarding” or recognizing various lengths of sobriety through handing out either keychains or chips. I know I thought the whole thing was hokey until I walked to the front of a group for a 30-day chip. I immediately felt accomplishment and recognition.

• Think about Attending Church or Synagogue Services. Although you may not be a believer of any kind, religious services seem helpful too. Being surrounded by people you haven’t used with makes not using now a little easier. Also, you may just hear something to lift your spirit or strengthen your resolve.

• Create (and Maintain) a Schedule. Most of us lived chaotic lives while using. Doing simple things like making a bed, cooking a breakfast or checking your mail can help bring your normal life a sense of normality.

• Write a Gratitude List (and add to it daily)—Another thing I thought was a bunch of trite hokum—until I did it. Try using a simple format. 

I’m grateful for:

1. My bed
   1. My shoes
   1. The $27 I’ve got
   1. My recovery

•   Try to get enough sleep, exercise and healthy food.

• Try to avoid major life changes. No one wants hear this part, but this includes romantic relationships. One way to think of this is—you deserve a better partner than anyone who’s attracted to you now. Harsh, but true.

• Read Positive Literature, Particularly Recovery Literature. This has a corollary—avoid literature for now that glorifies drinking and drugging. Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Denis Johnson and Ellen Hopkins will still be great writers once your recovery is solid. For now, they’re more likely to lead to relapse than revelation.

• Pick up (or Start) a Hobby You’ve Abandoned—If you’re anything like me (or almost everyone I know) drugs and/or alcohol drove out lots and lots and lots of other activities. Booze (and much earlier drugs) were not just my “hobby,” they defined my life. In early recovery, you’ll have lots of dead time on your hands. Rather than simply watching tv or checking social media, try to fill some of that time with painting, writing, mechanical stuff, cooking, flower arranging or whatever damned thing is likely to make you feel good about your life and how you’re living it.

1. Believe, Believe, BELIEVE—Recovery is possible! Spend time at Hope talking with hundreds of other people who used to drink and drug and don’t need to anymore. You, no matter how low you’ve sunk or how hard it may seem, can recover. Please believe in yourself, in the recovery community and in the future.

During the pandemic (2020 version—I just missed out on the 1918 influenza model), I wrote a letter every day to Hope Nation, closing each with a personal motto. I think I’ll reproduce now;

You matter. I matter. We matter.

If you doubt that, please, please, please come to Hope or give me a call. Really.

September 4

“An Interview with Keith Howard Conducted by His Imaginary Critics”

An Interview with Keith Howard Conducted by His Imaginary Critics

Q: You usually begin your public talks by saying something stupid or inflammatory. What nonsense would you like to spew today?

A: Nothing nonsensical but perhaps inflammatory: If alcohol and drugs were my problem, I wouldn’t need recovery.

Q:  Wait a second! I thought you were the director of Hope Recovery. What the hell do you mean if drugs and alcohol were your problem? Aren’t drugs and alcohol the whole reason for recovery?

A: Not at all. For most of human history, most people have used whatever intoxicants were available, whether herbal, liquid or animal. If drugs and alcohol were the problem, ideas like Prohibition and America’s War on Drugs would have been effective. They weren’t. Substances aren’t the problem. My relationship to them is. 

Q: What’s that supposed to mean?

A:  I’m not sure exactly, but I think drugs and alcohol have a different effect on me than they do on most people. My relationship has always been that of a seeker finding a new messiah with each new substance I tried. For example, like many folks, the first time I got drunk was at a party when I was 13. Within an hour, I was face down on a lawn in my own vomit. Because the other people at the party were all in high school, they called my dad, who had to come and pick up his dumbass son.

All that is not unusual. Many kids have that kind of experience, or so I’ve been told. I’ve also been told almost universally that first hangover led to next-morning regrets and oaths to never drink again, oaths that may have been broken but were sincere when made. I, on the other hand, woke up with a throbbing head, dry and vomit-flaked mouth, a stomach that needed to be drained again and—against all common sense—a sense I’d just discovered who I was. I couldn’t wait to do it again.

My relationship was the same with every other substance. For years I’d fall in love with each new high, certain I never wanted to not feel this way again.

Apparently, that’s not normal.

Q: Of course it’s not!

A: The magic would fade, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, but I thought, like married couples engaged in a death embrace, that I could somehow, some way find my way back to an enchanted beginning.

Q: But you never did. Why didn’t you just quit if drugs and alcohol weren’t working anymore?

Finding recovery, I know, is a strange concept. After all, if recovery is returning to health after a period of sickness, it seems like abstinence and time would be all the necessary ingredients. If I’m sick with a sunburn—overuse or abuse of the sun—I stay inside and in a couple days I’m better. If I’ve got a bellyache from too much apple pie, I avoid eating for a bit and give my digestive system a chance to clean itself. Moving from the physical to the emotional, if I’ve got a broken heart, staying away from my beloved for an extended period will get me right as rain. Why isn’t this true for drugs and alcohol?

For some people it is.  Lucky bastards. If it is for you, I wish you luck and good fortune. You may be fine folks, but you are not my people. 

Q: So how did you finally quit?

Life had no friendly direction. I was drinking stolen mouthwash to keep away the DT’s. I wanted to be dead and had a plan and means to do so.  In an act of grace from a heretofore silent universe, I was struck with the notion of going to the VA medical center in Manchester. When I got to the urgent care nurse, all I could say was, “My name’s Keith Howard. I’ve never been here before. I don’t want to be alive.”

Within 20 minutes, I was bound for White River Junction VA Hospital.

A: So they detoxed you and you stopped.

If only. If only.

Abstinence and time were never enough. Like a sponge left to dry under a sink for days, weeks, months, , something inside me always yearned to get just another taste, whether of dope or booze or meth or whatever. In fact, for people like me, abstinence without a program of recovery was worse than any drug or alcohol issues—or at least life was less livable. Between the ages of, let us say, 12 and 48, I had two periods where I was denied access to drugs or alcohol for an extended period of time. At the end of each of those times, I was actively suicidal. Really. 

Q: But if your relationship with booze and drugs was the problem, why wouldn’t cutting them out lead to some kind of recovery?

A:  Again, I don’t exactly know. The drugs and booze filled some kind of hole inside me, and the reality of that void was even scarier when I wasn’t using .If abstinence were enough, I could have stopped drinking, should have stopped drinking, would have stopped drinking at either of those points. I didn’t. If you are my type of addict or alcoholic, you wouldn’t have either. Taking away booze and drugs does absolutely nothing to solve the problem of life. Those substances were so effective making life bearable. 

Until they weren’t.

Q: This time you didn’t sound like such a crazy malcontent. 

A: Thanks, I guess. 

For the non-using addict or the non-drinking alcoholic, life demands some kind of solution.  There are a lot of them, and over the course of this month we’ll explore some of the major ones.

Q: Any final words?

A: You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 5

“Acronyms, Acronyms, Acronyms—with apologies to Hamlet”

I’m the director of Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, New Hampshire’s premier recovery community center, but that’s not what I want to talk about today.

I’m the father of three beautiful, talented and wonderful daughters, and the husband to a woman who is so far out of my league we may as well not be playing the same sport, but that’s not what I want to talk about today.

I’m a writer who became a thousandaire from sales of a book I wrote a while ago, but that’s not what I want to talk about today.

Today, I want to talk about words, two pairs of phrases in particular: 

1. Alcoholic vs. person with Alcohol Use Disorder
2. Addict vs. person with Substance Use Disorder

In each pair, you’ll notice the first word is colloquial, the term thrown around in casual conversation, and the second, with three capital letters no less, is the more formal sounding phrase. A doctor is loath to identify a patient as an alcoholic; her diagnosis is certain to be “Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD).” Likewise, the self-identified addict will have her treatment billed for services for Substance Use Disorder (SUD) (or perhaps Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), Cocaine Use Disorder (CUD) or Methamphetamine Use Disorder (MUD). (As a former habitual user of meth, I am offended by my name being associated with MUD, but that’s another battle for another day.)

Like much of the world, recovery has properly focused on the power of words and the importance of words in people’s view of others. Instead of midgets and dwarves, we have little people. Instead of the homeless, we have people temporarily without housing. Instead of prostitutes, we have sex workers. 

Overall, these changes have been good. Human beings are people first, not unusually short people, not down-on-their-luck people, not sex-selling people. I am not my job, my role or my hobbies. I am a person.

Still . . .

I want to choose my own definition, my own description, even my own pejorative. As someone with Alcohol Use Disorder, Substance Use Disorder and doubtless many other diagnoses from the DSM-V-TR (the index of mental disorders used by clinicians to classify patients), I want the freedom to call myself an addict, a junkie, a drunk or an alcoholic. Since the point of the progressive vocabulary changes is to humanize things, I’m not sure what is gained by taking away users’ ability to name themselves. It is strange indeed to be in a meeting where people are asked to name their pronouns but be informed one’s self-identification is unacceptable.

If you mentally substitute person with SUD into the following poem, I think you’ll see what I mean:

My Trinity 

I was a heroin addict.

I am a heroin addict.

I will always be a heroin addict.

My past, my present and my future

Are not defined but are informed by

Heroin

And my need for it

.

Was, am, will always be.

Until I lay down in my final darkness,

Give up the ghost,

Buy the farm,

Die,

Addiction is in my bones, my soul

Perhaps my DNA.

I steer clear

Of that opiate island

Of peace, comfort and blessed nothingness,

Fighting a current 

Drawing me toward addiction.

Always, every day,

I remember that holy threesome:

The past, the present, the future.

I was. I am. I always will be.

Lest you think I’m setting fire to a straw man here, the federal government’s National Institute of Health urges folks to eschew “alcoholic” in favor of “person with AUD.” The reasoning is sound—people first language makes sense—but what could be more “people first” than “I am an alcoholic.” The first-person singular pronoun is about as person first as can be.

The treatment and recovery worlds have a saying which makes a lot of sense:

“You are in recovery when you say you’re in recovery.”

This phrase allows the speaker to define his or her own recovery, whatever it may look like to others. It successfully gives the speaker autonomy and power. It just makes sense.

Two other sentences that make sense?

“I am an addict when I say I’m an addict.”

“I am an alcoholic when I say I’m an alcoholic.”

You matter. I, an addict and alcoholic, matter. We matter.

September 6

“Thanks, God, for Gratitude”

I don’t know the secret of successful long-term recovery. I do know one of MY secrets is to express gratitude multiple times a day. I’m not much for organized religion, nor disorganized religion or even chaotic religion. Still, growing up in this culture at this time, I find it appropriate to attach the word “God” to my messages to the infinite. Hence, probably a hundred times a day, I throw up the prayer, “Thank you, God!” This isn’t usually gratitudinizing over any particular thing more a thanks that I’m alive and can say thanks.

There are times, though, when I do express thanksgiving for items or situations. For example, 16 years ago I kept an occasional journal. The following, from my first day in sobriety is one thing for which I regularly give thanks. Although it doesn’t even mention alcohol, my disease cries out.

Here is my journal entry from that day:

May 21, 2007

When I got out of bed this morning, I had a plan.  Not a perfect plan.  Not a foolproof plan.  Hell, my plan could have snapped apart like a small tree branch trying to support a bear cub across a swollen May river.  Still, it was a plan.

I was going to take a bus to Dartmouth College, start heading south on the Appalachian Trail and not stop until Georgia.  With just dried fruit and oatmeal to sustain me, I would walk the bottom four-fifths of the AT in two pairs of sneakers and a pair of sandals.

Every plan has loose ends, space for contingencies, room left to breathe in the design.  In an excellent plan, the paragraph above would present the final problem:  How will I equip myself for this three- or four-month journey?  The perfect plan would include the application of a credit card or cash to expenses at an outdoor apparel shop.  A good plan would answer the question in a thornier manner, involving difficult budget decisions and a willingness to compromise on any given food’s flavor for calories.  

Now that we’ve covered what that second paragraph would be in a perfect and a good plan, let me now share with you what living on oatmeal and ending up walking a hundred miles barefoot is in a truly fucked-up, horrible, wretched plan–it is the heart, the clockwork, the settled part of a doomed plan.  That was my plan.

I was going to walk away from everything I’ve known, take on a fake identity, a “trail name,” and, eventually, kill myself out on the trail, thereby saving my three beautiful daughters from the shame of being related to a suicide.  Instead, they would have been related to one of the disappeared.  That was my plan.

Instead of following out one of the stupidest plans I could have come up with, I checked into a VA hospital for treatment for my depression.  I had tentatively called my trail journal, “Tomorrow is a Good Day to Die:  the last days of a suicide.”  I’ll now have to come up with a new title, something with a similar pizazz and, dare I say, optimism.

When I got to the psychiatric unit, they asked me questions about my drinking, and quickly figured out I needed support in withdrawing from alcohol.  While that was happening, I was introduced to a program of recovery that saved my life and remains central to who I am. 

My gratitude for this journal entry comes not from the lucky introduction, but from the fact I haven’t needed to write anything like it in years. 

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 7

“A Saint of Recovery”

Working at Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, I am duty bound to first mention Hope’s Recovery Festival, Saturday, September 30 from 11-2 at Arms Park in Manchester. The festival will be fun, with the opportunity to connect or reconnect with about 700 people in recovery, learn more about 50 or so local recovery-adjacent businesses. I promise I’m not going to roll out daily callouts to those businesses, but I do want to draw your attention to one of them, but first I need to talk about saints.

I’m not a Roman Catholic, nor any other kind of Catholic. Still, I’m familiar with the idea of saints, those folks who are thought to have extraordinary holiness or closeness to God. As I understand sainthood, the church doesn’t create saints or honor them—it simply recognizes their status, which must include some miracles and evidence of heroic virtue. Addiction, and by extension recovery, has its own patron saint, Saint Matthias, who pinch hit for Judas after his untimely death. Matthias is alleged to have been stoned at his death, but that doesn’t appear to be connected to his sainthood.

Matthias, of course, is a religious saint, but I want to talk about secular saints, those who bring good into the world while rejecting evil, who brighten rooms at their entrance and trail magic when they leave. The world lost one such saint a month ago with the death of my close friend, Raul, but his girlfriend, Andria LaRoche, remains.

Andria owns, operates and is the spiritual center of WorkStuff, a staffing solutions company in Manchester. WorkStuff is the Hope Recovery Festival’s platinum sponsor, with a generous $5,000 donation. You’ll have a chance to hear her at the festival, and would be wise to listen closely.

Andria, in recovery herself, recruits and hires those newly in recovery, whether they live in recovery housing or independently. With an infectious smile and bright blonde hair, Andria communicates well with everyone she meets, and always has encouragement to spare. She is, in short, feverish feces.  

She is also a saint.

Andria identifies workers’ strengths—physical, mental and emotional—instead of their perceived weaknesses—drug histories, imprisonment, homelessness—and finds work for them.  WorkStuff is a privately-owned business in a free-market economy, so I’m sure Andria is making a profit, as she should. Still, in talking with dozens of Andria’s current and former employees, I haven’t had one person complain about the money they were paid or the work they were paid to do. I’m sure there are complaints. As I recall, Judas had a few complaints about Jesus’ handling of possible donations.

Before I’m excommunicated from a church to which I never belonged, let me clarify: Andria is NOT Jesus, nor Mary, nor any other New Testament figure. 

Andria LaRoche is a modern-day secular saint, who helps people raise themselves from the death of despair. Come to the festival. Hear her speak. Chat with her afterward.

She won’t bless you, but she will smile and listen.

September 8

“Bret’s Mission”

It’s so easy to offer people advice to people, advice that is worth exactly what they’ve paid for it. For instance, it’s easy for me to tell a young person, “If you’d stop buying those expensive coffees, you could afford to buy a house.”

A quick look at the math shows at $7 a day, it would only take about 12 years to save $30,000, a minimal down payment.

Likewise, it’s easy for me to tell a person to think about moving from Manchester to someplace cheaper. 

With no car and/or no license, it’s pretty tough to live in, oh, just about any cheap place in New Hampshire.

Finally, it’s easy to suggest Manchester residents use the city bus system, something I’ve done lots of times, as have other Hope members.

Of course, none of us had ever taken the bus. Until today.

At a staff meeting earlier this week, I asked for a volunteer to complete a few errands using just the bus. Bret, a strapping young lad, raised his hand and said he was willing to do anything for Hope. Even ride the bus.

Today, Bret was given two ten-dollar bills, one to pay for bus tickets from Hope on Wilson Street to the Starbucks on South Willow and back, and the other for a cold coffee drink.  For any auditors, Hope paid for the tickets and I paid for his drink—I want him to be able to afford a house in a dozen years.

Although it wasn’t part of Bret’s mission, he submitted the following report of his activities, not necessarily intending it to be seen by anyone but Hope staff. After a little bit of arm twisting, Bret gave me permission to publish this. I think it gives a real clear look into what quality recovery can sound like.

As you all know, I was given a top-secret mission today by an anonymous Entity from the higher ups. 

I’m writing this to you all to debrief you on my experience and an experience it was. I just want to start by saying, God was with me today (as he always is), I was able to see Him everywhere though. 

I started off my journey at 293 Wilson St. at 3pm on a scorching hot afternoon. Rob and Melissa greeted me as I walked into ‘The Hope Center’. I hadn’t got a lot of sleep the night before knowing the task at hand today, so as soon as I saw Rob and Melissa they made me feel at ease when they welcomed me in. 

I then walked to Dave’s dark office toward the back of the hall and was greeted by two silhouettes. ‘Hey Bret, how are you? You know what you have to do right?’ 

“Yes!” I said with a nervous yet excited tone. A shadowy figure then handed me an envelope. 

‘Half is from me half is from K****, it’s all there, you know what you have to do good luck”! 

“Thank you,” I said, as I hesitantly walked back into the hallway. 

As I got to the front of the Hope Center I was then confronted by Melissa and Rob yet again, but by this time the sense of ease and comfort I had when I walked in was all but gone. 

‘Bret, we’re also going to need two things from you while you’re out there, an Iced blonde Vanilla Latte and a Caramel Frappuccino,’ one of them said. I still don’t know which one of them said it to me, my head was spinning at this point.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get it done just make sure you text me the order, I have a built-in forgetter.” 

As I walked out of the Hope Center into the Great Outdoors, I had a sense of gratitude wash over me. I remember when I used to walk and take the bus everywhere. I started thinking about how far I had come the past 20 months and how much more growing I have to do. I was excited to carry this mission out. 

As I walked to the bus stop in front of Price Rite I was passing Dollar Tree. Behind the Dollar Tree there sat a very nice green dumpster. Again a sense of gratitude washed over me and I was reminded of the days I spent loaded behind the dumpster, HOPELESS. 

As I walked up to the bus stop there was a sign and it said, ‘GOD LOVES YOU, YOU ARE HIS MASTERPIECE, GOD DOESNT’T MAKE MISTAKES’. I knew I was exactly where I needed to be and a warm feeling washed over me. I was at home again. I said hello to the young lady waiting for the bus and asked if I could sit next to her. We started talking and come to find out, she lives in a sober house and has 9 years clean. She started telling me her story and that she was locked up for 10 years and just got out a year ago. She was on her way to work and explained to me in detail about how the bus system worked in Manchester. I told her where I was going and she assured me I was at the right stop and even gave me the app she uses for public transportation. 

After 10 minutes of getting lost in conversation the bus pulled up. I got on and pulled out a $5 bill. ‘We don’t do change and a one-way fare is $2’ the bus driver said. 

I looked in my wallet and pulled out my last two $1 bills with a sigh of relief. I sat down and enjoyed the AC. It was only about an eight-minute ride until we arrived at my stop. I got out, stepped on the sidewalk and realized how hot it was outside. 

‘Back to reality, I hope I make it’, I told myself. I had about a 15 minute treacherous hike ahead of me. I was about halfway to my destination and realized I had no cigarettes. 

‘Damn I hope there’s a gas station near by’, I told myself. 

I was dehydrated and needed a cigarette that was all I was certain about. I had almost completely forgotten about the task at hand. Thankfully there was a Mobil station at the end of the road. I walked into the Mobil and grabbed an ice-cold Essential 9+ PH water. 

As I walked to the register I noticed a bunch of big boxes filled with a bunch of little colorful drinks. ‘Buzz Balls’ the label said. Buzz Balls? I picked one up and in the fine print it said 15% alcohol!? 

Wow, 15% that’s some good shit I told myself. All of a sudden the idea of an ice cold buzz ball on a hot summer night didn’t seem so bad… Suddenly one of the old timer’s (Booze-Fighting Mike) voices came into my head and said ‘Yea Bret go ahead and drink that, just remember before you do, take the house, take the car, take the job, take the relationships you’ve built and rebuilt, take your family, take your peace and serenity, and stuff it in that little bottle, and drink it all away, kiss it goodbye.’ 

I quickly remembered there was nothing left in that bottle for me and came back to reality. 

I ended up buying some scratch tickets and cigarettes, I needed change anyway. On the way to Starbucks I stopped in PetSmart and looked at some gerbils. I got to Starbucks and placed my order. 

Life is good I thought. 

On the way back to the bus stop there was a man that said hello. He was holding a sign that said “could you possibly offer me a blessing for some cooler weather (as all of us) PLEASE HELP ME!! GOD BLESS EVERYONE THANK YOU”. I handed the man a blessing, though it wasn’t warm weather, it was a $20 bill. 

Again I was right where I needed to be and a sense of gratitude came over me that I could do that today. I used to fly a sign and sell water off the highway, I remember how grateful I was for every person that stopped to give me money  and spread love through their positive words of encouragement. 

Wow what a day and it wasn’t even over. 

I got back on the bus and saw two fellows I knew from a meeting. Again I was right where I was supposed to be.

 I got off the bus and walked back to HOPE, I got there and the drinks were still cold. I handed over the goods to Rob and Melissa with gratitude. They were so happy they didnt have to send out the dogs looking for me. I scratched my scratch tickets and I’m writing this to you guys now. Thank you! Sometimes I struggle with gratitude but I was full of it today. They told me ‘Bret, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.’ Stay grateful! Thank you for one more day!

September 9

“Wisdom Pellets”

In early recovery, I spent a lot of time in church basements and parking lots. Like the Roman catacombs during the early church, these basements were filled with a lot of joy, a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. Unlike the catacombs, the laughter came primarily from a speaker telling a story of his drinking or using days, usually one about the foolish or heartbreakingly inappropriate ways he’d acted while messed up.

Interestingly, to me at least, these rooms were also furnaces of insight smelting pellets of wisdom. I’d like to share some of that wisdom, each of which moved me in some way.

Life is not painful, it’s my resistance to life that causes me the pain 

If you keep doing what you’re doing – you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.

Addiction is the total disintegration of the human personality 

Turn up a stereo to full volume then unplug it. In 2, 5,10 or 20 years later – if you plug it in again, the stereo will come on full volume. That’s what addiction is like. 

Alcohol plus damage = Alcoholism. 

Recovery is made up of glorious years and some shitty days. 

Alcoholics are egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. 

We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by our sins 

If you feel guilty – stop doing what’s making you feel guilty. 

An addict comes apart spiritually, mentally and then physically. You put him back together again in the reverse order. You can put him back together physically in a comparatively short time. It takes a much longer time to put him back together mentally, and a much, much longer time to get him together spiritually. 

You can act your way into the right thinking, but you can’t think your way into the right action 

In order to give up my defects of character, I must first give up the benefits of my defects of character. Twenty seconds of ecstasy isn’t worth three weeks of guilt. 

You don’t get drunk making mistakes – you get drunk defending the mistakes you’ve made. 

God is a comedian playing to an audience who’s afraid to laugh. 

Acceptance: What is …IS; what isn’t…ISN’T. 

Rule 62…don’t take yourself so God damned seriously. 

Although we are not responsible for our disease, we are responsible for our recovery. (

I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you:
   The good news is that you’re not in charge;
   The bad news is that you’re not in charge. 

When you enter recovery, you can write down all the gifts you get…when you pick back up you can reverse the pencil and erase each gift one by one. 

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. 

The problem with isolating is that you get such bad advice. 

If nothing changes…nothing changes. 

Pain is necessary, suffering is optional!

Feelings aren’t facts!!!

In recovery, first we remove the anesthesia, then we operate.

Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.

Take an action, then let go of the results.

Relapse begins long before you pick up the drink/drug.

If you hang around a barbershop long enough, eventually you’ll get a haircut.

Expectations are preconceived resentments.

I thought I wanted to commit suicide, but all I needed was a hamburger.

What other people think of you is none of your business.

I’ve found that you cannot save your ass and your face at the same time.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

If you want what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.

Winners do what they have to do and losers do what they want to do.

Insanity is not doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results; insanity is doing the same thing over and over again knowing full well what the results will be.”

Nothing is so bad, a drink won’t make it worse.

We are only as sick as our secrets.

Some of us our sicker than others.

We’re all here because we’re not all there.

Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer.

Decisions aren’t forever.

If any of this is helpful, I’m glad. If none of it is, you might want to reread this.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 10

“From a formerly homeless drunk to the future medical professionals”

On Thursday, I was part of a panel speaking to an amphitheater of a hundred or so medical professionals in training at Franklin Pierce College as part of a day-long symposium thing on addiction, treatment and recovery. 

After each of the panelists told our stories, the audience had a chance to ask questions, each of which was probing and insightful.

After two hours, the faculty hosts asked us if there was anything we wanted the students to take with them. Since I’m not aware of any taping being done, I hereby state the following is an accurate recollection of what I said. If a recording does exist, I will either claim it’s been edited or that this is what I wish I’d said. Regardless:

“Thanks for having us and putting up with my chuckleheadedness. In my life as a person in recovery and in my work at Hope, I see a lot of death. If you’re working in the medical field, unless you’re going to focus on fungal diseases of the toenails, you’re likely to live with death as well.

“Just this week, I was part of a memorial celebration of life for a friend. Each time I speak at one of these things, I’m overcome with sadness, the emptiness of life and the magnitude of death. Young people with lots of triumphs and failures still to unfold are lying in a box or they’ve been turned into smoke and just their ashes remain.  They won’t see the things they could have, accomplish the things they would have or live the lives they should have.  Whether death is actually the end, I don’t know, but dying sure changes your landscape.

“In your work, you will face death and at times you will be overwhelmed by feelings. Please don’t train yourself not to feel. I understand that’s possible, and it might even seem like a great survival skill. Survival shouldn’t be enough for any human—we must LIVE, not merely continue functioning. Even when feelings are annoying, troublesome and seem like excess baggage, they are what keeps your humanity intact.

“I’ve known a few people, mainly combat veterans, who claim to be impervious to death. ‘I’ve seen so much death that one more body doesn’t affect me.’ These folks may be telling their truth, but I sure hope not. I pray my immunity to feelings around death doesn’t come until I face my own. 

“Kurt Vonnegut tells of a Unitarian minister who would go to pieces and lose his faith at the death of any parishioner. He would then rely on his congregation to pull together and support him until he could return to being their shepherd. I love that story and have made it central to my life and my work. I want to give people a chance to hold me up in my weakness, not to view me as a rock. Since I got into recovery, I’ve always had a small group of men with whom I can be emotionally naked, cursing and weeping when I need to. 

“As medical professionals, you’ll have many times when you must maintain ‘clinical distance.’ That’s understandable, although I am incapable of that myself. Please, please, please find people with whom you can take off the mythic mask of objectivity. 

‘Feel!

“My final thought for you to take is this:

“In my experience, the quality of the magazines in your future waiting room is directly proportional to the level of humanity of the staff members. Please include New Yorker and Atlantic, not just months-old copies of People magazine.”

You matter. I matter. We matter

September 11

Between Tide and Traffic:  The Choice of the Addicted

My problem has never been drugs or alcohol. In fact, I’d venture the same is true for everyone now in recovery or active addiction. For the rest of this piece, I’ll be focused on alcohol, but I haven’t see any difference between liquid alcohol (booze), powdered alcohol (dope, coke, meth, etc.), plant-based alcohol (peyote, mescaline, etc.) and alcohol in pill form. It’s all solved and created the same problems for me. Let me explain.

If a alcohol had been my problem, I wouldn’t have needed to recover.  I would have just quit using and my problem would have been put on the shelf.  There it could stay forever—never again would it need to trouble me, as long as I didn’t drink again. 

My problem was not alcohol.  My problem was that my only solution to life was alcohol.  It may have been a solution that carried lots of future complications, but alcohol was the one surefire way I knew to feel significantly better about life.  

I know algebra drives some people crazy, but let me try to illustrate this:

If

ALCOHOL = My Problem

when I remove the left side of the equation (ALCOHOL), then the right is balanced by removing My Problem.

If, though

ALCOHOL = My Only Solution to Life

when I remove the left side of the equation (ALCOHOL), then removing alcohol simply leaves me alone, adrift and answerless.

Without going into great detail—not out of a sense of privacy but because I’ve written about this at length elsewhere—I’ve attempted suicide twice. Each attempt came at the end of the longest time I’d ever gone without drugs or alcohol.

When I stop drinking—without a program of recovery!—I want to kill myself.

Again, if my problem had been alcohol, I wouldn’t have needed recovery.  I would simply stop drinking, my problems would dry up and I’d go about my business.  My challenge was that drinking worked in an immediate way—with alcohol, my life might be unmanageable, but without it, my life was in danger.  My experience taught me avoiding alcohol led to suicide.  Like a man living on credit cards, I might know in one part of my brain that this couldn’t continue, while the rest of my being cried out not to stop.  I got very good at ignoring that first part of my brain and continued drinking until I was 48, sometimes more booze, sometimes less, but with a steady upward climb.  By the end of my drinking, I was a man on the Golden Gate bridge, trying to decide whether to jump left into the bay or right into the oncoming traffic.  

I’m not a God guy today—whether there is a Big Joker in the Sky or the universe is an unsigned masterpiece makes little difference to me—but I know something happened to me at the jumping-off point, so that I sought help instead of destruction.  Instead of drowning or jumping into traffic, I got off the bridge.  

And so can you.

This very moment, you may be reading this with the shock of recognition, of identification with my predicament.  It may be you have grown used to headaches in the morning, an ever-increasing sense of dread deep in the gut, the knowledge you shouldn’t go on but you CAN’T STOP NOW.  It may be you’re contemplating suicide, homicide, uxoricide (a real word—look it up), bossicide (a made-up word—sound it out) or any of a number of –cides out there.  It just may be that alcohol and drugs have drained the color from your world, and these shades of gray offer no excitement at all.  Whether you think you might have a bit of a drinking problem, or you know you’re an alcoholic, you can get help—not just from professionals with letters after their name (although they are not to be scoffed at) but from other men and women who have been where you are, where I was, and where you don’t need to stay.

Call 211, New Hampshire’s resource navigator for addiction treatment. Go to or call the Doorway (in Manchester 603-263-644) and demand treatment. Come to Hope (293 Wilson Street) and attend a meeting or speak with one of our recovery coaches. If each of those ideas seem impossible, call ME at 603-361-6266. I’m just a chucklehead, but I’m a chucklehead who’s stopped using and drinking. I’ll help you find what you need. Really.

Or you can stay on the bridge, choosing between tide and traffic. 

September 12

“Three Principles”

Recovery is a journey and not a destination. The path each of us chooses to experience that journey can involve a lot of pieces from a bunch of different sources. Until a few years ago, Farnum Center, the local treatment center, incorporated Three Principles Recovery, drawn from the work and thoughts of Sydney Banks. I’m going to try to give a brief overview of this pathway, but bear in mind I’m no expert. Because of my ignorance, I’ve asked my friend and Hope staff member, Rob Dalrymple, to review this before publication. Any mistakes should be attributed to me, while any wisdom has likely been inserted by Rob.

First, since this is called Three Principles, a reasonable place to start is to name them:

1. Mind—Our thoughts shape and define our experiences, emotions and behaviors. Knowing our perceptions are filtered through thoughts allows us to understand better our mental processes.
2. Consciousness—We know we exist, that we are self-aware. Likewise, we know time passes and our thoughts and emotions are in a constant state of flux. Recognizing this can help us gain emotional equilibrium and peace.
3. Thought—Our thoughts are a river that flow through our minds. They are not fixed or static. We can observe our thoughts without any judgment, possessiveness or fear.

A quick way to remember this: 

Mind: We are alive, 

Consciousness: We are aware, 

Thought: We think. They are universal constants.

Three Principles Recovery teaches that addiction comes with a misunderstanding of the principles. Folks with addictions have become confused and dependent on external substances, while true well-being resides in each of us. Once we understand that thoughts are the true source of experiences, we see how our perceptions and beliefs contribute to our addiction.  We are not broken, and therefore don’t need to be fixed.

Insight comes as a moment of clarity or understanding when we recognize the ever-changing nature of our thoughts and the source of all emotional experiences. This allows us to see beyond our negative and self-destructive patterns and learn to draw upon our innate well-being.  

With insight comes the virtue of non-judgment and self-compassion, the need to take it easier on oneself. The past is the past. Shame and remorse serve no useful function and should be avoided. We are all doing the best we can by the light we have been given; we can increase that light and do even better going forward.

Insight also teaches us to let go of our need for control. Nothing needs to be fixed or put together because what is IS! We can relax and ease into recovery, having released the ongoing battle against our addictive tendencies. We have innate wisdom into which we can tap.

Three Principles eschews labels like “addict” or “alcoholic,” because they are limiting and lead to hopelessness and stigma. People are encouraged to view themselves as human beings learning the Three Principles rather than people with addictions.

Recovery, in this pathway, is an ongoing journey, without rigid rules or lifelong abstinence. We continue gaining insight and understanding of the Three Principles. Reoccurrences or relapses don’t define our recovery, they are opportunities for further insight and growth.

Keith Notes:  I wish I were smart enough or spiritually adept enough for me to understand what one doesin Three Principles Recovery. I can describe but I cannot grok much of this, nor likely will I ever be. Still, Three Principles have changed people’s lives, including my friend Rob, one of the coolest people I know/

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 13

“The Life You Save Could be My Own”

Today, I’m writing solely as Keith, a man in long term recovery, a man who’s tried a lot of escape plans over the years—escape from myself, escape from my feelings, escape from my life.  Drugs and alcohol were, for my life between 13 and 48, my primary escape vehicle. Today, I’ve learned to escape my need for escape.

I write these words to the recovery community, to those who support recovery and those who are just good and decent folks. I write these words to you.

I used to use meth to stay up for three or four or more days. By the end of a run I was wrung out, paranoid and desperately needed sleep—so I could do it all over.

And I could again.

I used to shoot heroin often enough and with such constancy that I was an addict.

And I could again.

I used to drink alcohol to the point where I was hopeless and homeless and even toothless.  

And I could again.

I’ve plotted out my suicide with great specificity and care, have razor scars to show how close I got to killing myself before I was locked up. I used to want to off myself on a moment-by-moment basis.

And I could again.

If I knew how to keep addicts from shooting up, how to prevent alcoholics from drinking their lives away, how to stop the suicidal from moving into their action plan, I’d surely share it with you. 

I don’t.

Today, I’m not using heroin. Today, I’m not drinking alcohol. Today, I’m not plotting to kill myself.

Part of the reason for that is community—the community of recovery, the community of peers, the community of hope. The community of Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, where a thousand people a week come to live in community and hold each other up when recovery’s path is difficult or overgrown or seems hopeless. Each of us in recovery has had those moments where the siren call of escape sounds louder than recovery’s still, small voice within. It’s then we lean closer to our neighbor, so she can shout into our ears words that keep us going.

In this town right now, there are addicts waiting to get high, alcoholics needing a drink and potential suicides who’ve gotten through the day by dreaming of hitting life’s off switch. We as a community—you and you and you and me—CAN help. We can invite the stranger into our circle, reach out the hand of fellowship to the lonely, offer a cup of coffee.

As we go through our days, let’s keep looking around the crowds for the distant, the disenfranchised and the distracted. Then reach out a hand, lend an ear, even throw a smile.  You may salve a soul and save a life. 

That person you support used to be me.

And could be again.

September 14

“Why Keep up this Recovery Stuff?”

I haven’t had a drink or used any mind-altering substances since May 21, 2007, which seems a long time to many of you, long enough to raise the question of why I continue to go to various meetings and focus daily on my recovery. 

“After 16 years,” I can hear some of you ask, “why hasn’t Keith gotten it yet? That disease must be in remission by now After all this time, doesn’t he have other things to do than go to meetings?”

Of course, there are plenty of ways to spend a life than going to meetings. I could be writing or playing chess badly or cooking or chatting with friends. The problem is all of them would dissolve into nothing if I stopped focusing on my recovery every single day. Let me explain why.

I am a serious drinker who needs recovery.

The chart at the end of this letter tells the story in number, but now I’ll explain it in words. At some point in my drinking—the point where I was able to drink the way I wanted to without having inherited the natural consequences of such drinking—I was a boxed wine drinker. I know boxed wine is looked down upon by wine connoisseurs (or anyone, really, who likes wine), but it was a number of steps better than the mouthwash I drank at the end. I’d buy a five-liter box of wine on Monday, which would still have some heft at the end of the evening, but not enough to guarantee I’d have enough for Tuesday. With minor fluctuations, I’d buy about two boxes of wine every three days.

I am a serious drinker who needs recovery.

Only an alcoholic would come up with a category like “boxes of wine not drunk.” I’ve not drunk 3,973 boxes of wine in the 5,960 days I’ve been sober. The chart shows the math, but that’s enough not-drunk wine to fill a cylinder three feet across and 150 feet tall. That, my friend, is a lot of booze.

“Fine, fine, fine,” I hear those same voices saying. “You’ve asked us to imagine a large tube filled with imaginary wine. What can that possibly have to do with why you go to meetings and all that other stuff?”

The answer is quite simple. 

I am a serious drinker who needs recovery.

Imagine now all that wine returned to me en masse (en messy masse?), so I have 1087 cubic feet of non-vintage wine. If I were to throw in the towel on recovery and start drinking, I might be able to drink, let us say, six liters the first night. When I came to the next morning, the shame and remorse of relapse throbbing in counterpoint to the hangover I’d experience, I’d look at the container with the remaining more than 1000 cubic feet of wine and wonder, “Should I pick up a little more, just in case?”

And I would buy more. Just in case..

Maybe others are different. Maybe you’re different. As for me, I continue to go to meetings, ask for help and offer it when it’s requested. After all, I am an alcoholic.

The Story in Numbers
Days sober	5960
Wine box consumption	2 boxes every three days
Boxes of Wine not Drunk	3973
Volume of a five-liter box	473 inches3
Volume of wine not drunk	1,879,229 inches3
Convert cubic inches to cubic feet	1087 feet3
Possible Dimension of 1087 feet3	3 feet diameter cylinder 150 feet tall

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 15

“No Matter Who and No Matter How Bad, Recovery is Possible”

You (or at least a few of youse) have recognized your drinking or using is maybe just maybe starting to get a little out of hand. Sometimes. But not too bad, especially compared with your friends, who really have problems.

.

You (as above) know you’ve got a problem. You’re using every day, maybe drinking to black out every night. Maybe dope has stopped being a once-in-an-ever-increasing while thing and has become a habit—which is what you suspect you’ve got. You feel like you might be powerless over the substance, but you’re pretty sure you can quit on your own.

You (ditto) are living in the twilight land of addiction. The choice isn’t whether to get high or drunk, it’s whether to get what you need or get as sick as a human can be, feeling like you’re going to die but knowing that prayer just won’t get answered.

You (or at least many of you) don’t have any kind of problem. You’re just reading this out of an interest in addiction and recovery or because this writer has amused you a few times before or because you’re required to read a local news story for school and this one sounded less boring than the others.

No matter who you are or where you are in your using (even if that’s nowhere at all), I have good news. 

Recovery is possible. For every single person on the planet. As long as you’re above ground, taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide, you can recover.

When you do, let me list five things that are likely to happen. These things are nearly certain:

1. You will feel better physically. This won’t happen at first, most likely, because your body has gotten used to regular intake of whatever magical substance you’ve given it. Whether we want to call it detoxification or withdrawal, it sucks. If you’re giving up alcohol or benzodiazepines, it’s medically dangerous and you should absolutely quit with medical support.

You’ll discover fewer bruises, fewer cuts, fewer aches and less pain. When you’re messed up, walking into stuff just seems to happen. Likewise, your digestive system will start to work normally again. Users don’t usually focus on food, except greasy, salty stuff eaten out of desperate hunger. Of course, those of us who have had a taste for opiates or opioids know how hard it is to get any of that garbage food out of us.  

• You’ll feel emotionally healthier. As above, time takes time, but you will almost surely regain much of your emotional equilibrium. (Keith trivia:  I’d never noticed “equilibrium” ends with the name of a classic benzo.) Life won’t necessarily become easier, but it’s likely to feel that way. Chemically-induced anxiety, depression and other symptoms are often significantly reduced.

• You’ll probably become more honest. There is a saying in recovery circles that if you sober up a horse thief, all you’ll have is a sober horse thief. This is true, a program of recovery or spirituality is likely required for real moral change. Still, when you’re drinking or drugging it’s easy for lying and stealing to become a way of life. Now that you’re not, those things may not be a necessity.

• You’ll have more money in your pocket. Duh.

• You’ll have more friends and better friendships, particularly if your recovery includes coming to Hope Recovery and/or a recovery group.  Hope is a very cool place with unique, amusing and generally sensitive people. Recovery groups of any kind draw people who want to support you in your journey—and need you to support theirs. As you know, it’s tough to maintain emotionally naked relationships when you’re using.

If you don’t believe me, or need proof recovery is available to all, please come by Hope Recovery (293 Wilson Street). I’d love to introduce you to a dozen or two dozen people who’d burned every bridge, played what felt like their last card and for whom life offered no friendly direction. They’re now in recovery and life is better. Not perfect, but better.

The they mentioned above includes me and every other Hope staff person. 

And it can include you too.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 16

“Seven Habits of Highly Addicted People”

While I have new thoughts bubbling up all the time, I’m not above stealing borrowing employing the fair-use doctrine to create derivative works for the purpose of satire. Typically, and in this case, I take smart and decent people’s ideas and render them either unintelligible or at least vastly different from their intended purpose, much as a six-year-old child will spray its mother’s expensive perfume in a room where matches have been played with. (The previous sentence should not be seen as a confession. Besides, the statute of limitations has long since rendered any misdeeds on my part moot and void.) Invoking the fair-use doctrine will likely not protect me legally, but what follows uses only the title of a book in a satirical, if not effective, way.

Thirty-one years ago, a guy named Stevie Covey wrote a little book that has since sold nearly a gajillion copies (Editor’s Note: the use of a diminutive nickname for the author and that of a made-up number signify further the lighthearted nature of this letter. They imply no mockery of either Mr. Covey or the number system.) That book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, to the best of my elderly memory, contained such off-color suggestions as:

1. Sleep when you’re tired, drink when you’re dry, eat when you’re empty, pee when you’re full
2. Don’t have an alligator mouth and a hummingbird ass
3. Carry out your own dead

And four other equally useful habits. Covey’s book was treated reverentially and, when combined with David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, led to the economic renaissance on which we now look back. It was called, I believe, The Great Recession of 2008.

As a primer for those of you who may not have had the pleasure of sharing your life with someone in active addiction, I present my new version of Stephen Covey’s masterwork. (Note: From personal experience, I’ll tell you that living in active addiction is in no freaking way like living with someone in active addiction, any more than being a rabid raccoon is similar to living with a rabid raccoon.)

The Seven Habits of Highly Addicted People

1. Your needs matter more than those of any other human being on the planet, living or dead. Once you’ve gotten adequate supplies on hand and in body you can worry about others. (Don’t fret—the word “adequate” guarantees you’ll stay focused on yourself.)
2. No matter the price/cost/effort, protect access to your substance of choice/need. Do not let anything come between you and the substance that makes life livable.
3. You can quit any time you want to—as long as you don’t want to quit now.
4. The only people you can trust are other users. Lames are out to get you.
5. You can’t trust other users. After all, would you trust yourself?
6. The world is out to get you, particularly that part of the world that claims to care about you and wants to see you stop destroying your life.
7. Your addiction is not that bad. Lots of people are way, way worse.

While these seven habits may seem outlandish, they, like all satire, contain not just a grain but an entire wheatfield of truth. Please remember: none of us needs to live this way. Please remember: recovery is possible and at hand. Please remember:

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 17

“Lift a Finger, Change the Universe”

Recovery circles have a saying, or should have if they don’t, “Lift a finger, change the universe.” Without using words like “gestalt” or “holistic” or “antimacassar,” this imagined saying means change one thing and you change the relationships among all things.  For instance, I’ve changed my life focus from chemistry to humanity. Let me explain.

Recovery has taught me a lot of things, beginning with how to live life without chemical assistance. When I was using and drinking, chemicals—whether powdered, pilled, herbal or liquid—solved all kinds of otherwise overwhelming problems. These solutions, of course, came with their own problems, but those challenges could be handled with more and different substances. I was the rootin’ tootin’ embodiment of Dupont’s old slogan: “Better Things for Better Living . . . Through Chemistry.” If recovery had done nothing more than free me from chemistry—opening me up to the joys of biology, poetry, history and a thousand other interests—recovery would have been a great move. But there was more . . . much more.

For the active user, or at least for THIS active user, using drugs and alcohol to solve problems meant I never learned or used other tools. Any problem I refused to face could be solved with the use of chemicals. From the time I took my first drink at 13 and ended up face down in my own vomit on the lawn outside my first high school party, I had arrived, had found the tool to meet any need. When I experienced my first heartbreak, I had alcohol and pills to ease the pain. When my grades began to slip from their never-very-high peaks, I had acid and weed to convince me I was somehow better than other students who wasted their time on homework. When I was fired from my first five jobs—the last for taking acid at Orange Julius and simply laughing at any customers who came to the counter—I had whatever chemicals were around to support my notion that these jobs were beneath me. And on and on and on. For better or worse, I always had a bottle, a pill, a straw or a needle to change my perspective and help me feel better—and better than.

Giving up that solution showed me I had a lot of work to do, a lot of growing up and growing better. Some notions I’d thought were silly or presumptuous really mattered.

1. Keeping my word matters.
2. Showing up on time—or letting folks know I was going to be late—matters
3. Not stealing matters.
4. Trying (often vainly) to curb my tongue matters.
5. Listening to other people matters

I’ll never be more than pretty good at these, but the prize is in the attempt.

One thing I have managed to internalize—mainly and for the most part—is that I don’t know what pain and trauma others are carrying as they walk this planet. When I was using, my needs, my pain, my sorrow were all I cared about. Honestly, they were all I believed in. Those around me were just whining and seeking attention to keep from focusing on the real problems–MINE. Once others’ lips stopped moving, it was the signal they wanted to hear about me.

Today, when others are short or snappish with me or seem distracted all the time, most often my first thought is, “I wonder what’s going on with them?” I know this sounds like, “What’s their problem?” a phrase that used to mean, “Why aren’t they listening to me.” When conjured up today, though, it’s a sign for me to remember the other person may have lost a loved one, been teased 10 minutes ago, have pants they think make them look fat, have a toothache or simply not have gotten any sleep last night. When I remember that others have endured pain, sorrow and loss I can’t ever know, I’m a little closer to becoming the man I want to be.

All because humanity has replaced chemistry.

September 18

“How Many Points Does It Take to Define a Pattern?”

Longtime readers know I’ve been hammering out an autobiography for some time now. I’ve enjoyed the process of filling pages and moving through the years, but I’m not going to publish any of it until I receive the first Nobel Prize for Jackassery. To date, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has not responded to any of my entreaties.  If you are Norwegian, or are a major purchaser of dynamite, please put in a good word for me. Thanks.

Today’s piece is drawn from a draft of that autobiography.

One thing I know about addiction, or at least my addiction, is that it’s nearly impossible for the addicted to learn from the past. Or the present. Or even the almost-certain future. For example, the following four data points demonstrate that drug and alcohol use have a negative impact on my ability to hold a job. Before I left home at 17 to go to basic training, I’d been fired a number of times, including each of the following data points. 

I was blind to the pattern they defined and would maintain that blindness until I was 48 years old.

Data Point Number One

I got my first job under a false name. Well, the name wasn’t false—there really was a David Katz—but it wasn’t mine. When I was 14, New Hampshire law required you to be 15 before working for non-farm wages. Growing up in a small college town, there was little agricultural employment. Oh, Durham, Lee and Madbury had farms, but they were small affairs, and didn’t offer after-school employment for a 14-year-old with a taste for the better things in life—drugs and music. Especially drugs. 

David, a year older than I, worked part-time as a dishwasher at a Ramada Inn, about four miles from my house. Once, getting stoned in his bedroom on the good weed he could afford as a working man, we hatched the idea of David going full-time evenings, even days a week. I’d work three days a week and he four—shifts ran from 5-10 on weekdays and 5-midnight on weekends. I would simply clock in on his timecard and we’d split the money proportionally. None of the adults cooking or serving even looked at the dishwasher, so we could easily carry it out.

It worked!

Except for one thing. 

While I loved weed, in its place I was happy to drink booze, and not too picky about where it came from. By my second or third night on the job, I’d developed the habit of drinking whatever was left in the glasses brought back from the dining room or bar. On weekdays, this didn’t present a problem, but the first Friday I worked I was hammered by 10 o’clock. My theory was couples came out on Fridays, with the man having three or four drinks with dinner while their wives would have one or two, often leaving drinks half-drunk, a crime against insobriety. Regardless of how it got there, I was not going to let perfectly good, if backwashed in a lipsticked cup, booze go to waste. Luckily, at 14 I’d learned how to avoid being caught messed up. I focused on my dishes and tried to keep my mouth shut. Unfortunately, I still had a couple hours work left, along with a vow not to ever throw alcohol away. I kept drinking. And drinking. And drinking. 

Then a change.

I started puking. Luckily, in addition to drinking drinks, I’d also been eating steak and lobster left on plates, so I had something to throw up. (Reading over the first word in that last sentence, I realize at how low an estate a 14-year-old must have reached if the word “luckily” is followed by vomiting.) No one seemed to notice. 

That job was a great one, and might still be my employment but for the bartender who gave me a bottle of sloe gin at the end of a shift. When his gift was discovered, he claimed I’d stolen it. Since I’d drunk half the bottle already, my defense consisted of trying to focus on the manager while standing up straight. 

I was fired.

Data Point Number Two

As a boy, I went to summer camp for a few years.  I loved camp.  Really. While in Durham I was one of, say, 100 boys within a two-year cohort, at Camp Mi-Te-Na I was one of 50 boys in my “village.” For gifted athletes, these odds wouldn’t change their lives much. After all, the cream always rises to the top. For me, barely whole milk and more often 2%, being at camp meant I was considered a catch for any sport—after all, at least some of those 50 other athletes were anti-athletic, injured or simply incapable of hand-eye coordination. 

Mi-Te-Na also introduced me to sailing and canoeing, archery and riflery, and the pleasures of gathering around a campfire to hear ghost stories and sing the camp song, with its oath to be true to the camp even after death, a ghoulish proposition given the terrifying tales we’d just heard. 

Much as I loved being seen as a for-real hotshot athlete, it was the camp dances with our sister camp, Camp Foss, that most transformed my image of myself. Girls in my upper elementary and junior high school knew me for what I was—a pompous clown who disrupted class and talked weird. I think it’s fair to say no girl in my home town, from 1969-1973, looked at me as a potential boyfriend, and I don’t blame them. 

I was the first boy in Camp Mi-Te-Na history to be named Most Improved Camper and be fired from the camp as a counselor a few years later. The Most Improved award came about because I went from being shy and nervous my first year at camp to loud and obnoxious my second. The firing was the result of bad breaks against me and misunderstandings of my behavior. There is an innocent explanation for why, on my first night off as a counselor, I led three other counselors to hitchhike into Alton Bay (the town, not the water), get big kids to buy us a case of beer, drink it and end up jumping off a ladder-less pier into Lake Winnipesaukee. The coup de firing was being picked up in a police boat and driven back to camp by the cops. 

Although I don’t remember any of the rest of that evening, I do know the next morning I looked up into the ever-disappointed face of my father. Apparently, being the leader of the drunken shenanigans had led to a common result.

I was fired.

Data Point Number Three

I grew up in Durham, New Hampshire, a small town with little to distinguish it but the siting of the University of New Hampshire in the early part of last century. Because of its UNH DNA, Durham has quite an elevated view of itself, and those of us from the town share that feeling. College towns are by nature filled with transients—a quarter or more of the student population turns over every year, and no campus is complete without  academic gypsies and hangers-on, adjuncts and instructors of various kinds. Still, Durham did have a core population of tenured professors, college administrators, farmers and descendants of the families that gave names to its streets. 

My mother moved to Durham in 1939, when she was 10. My grandfather, Phil Barton, after running schools in Colebrook and Weare for 10 years, was invited to UNH to teach and start the Thompson School of Applied Science, an affiliated two-year degree program. Without wanting to besmirch his memory—something I’ve done enough of in other areas—I must point out UNH honored him in 1970 by building the ugliest building on campus and naming it after him. You could look it up. 

My mother went to work when I was in fifth grade. Before that, she’d cooked a bit, cleaned a bit and mainly read novels. Oh, she was a fine mom—her patience in putting up with me earns her a spot in the Maternal Hall of Fame—but she was never meant to be a housewife. 

Since my mother had grown up in Durham, at least from the age of 10, my roots in town were well-established. When she went to work for the Durham Trust Company (which became Durham Bank, which became part of Portsmouth Bank which became so watered-down I lost track), she significantly cut down her cooking and housework, maintaining her devotion to consuming literature. 

Her job, I believe, was to be a familiar face to old Durham families who banked there. I mean, if Bev Barton Howard worked there, the bank must still be a reliable local institution. She was a bellwether of safety and stability, despite having me as a son. (As an aside, when she retired from the bank in the 1980s, she was an officer, yet still made less than the youngest and newest male bank employee.) 

When I was 15 or so, the company that cleaned the Durham Trust Company needed part-time help. As always, I needed cash to satisfy my healthy appetite for drugs of various kinds, so I applied for the job, earning $1.65 per hour. My hours were to be 6 pm to 11 pm five nights a week.

My first night on the job, I was paired with a 20-year-old college student who’d had his job for more than a year. As we got to know each other, it was clear Jonathan had figured out how to be successful and was glad to share his secret: Black Beauties, which I’d previously only connected to Pam Grier and BernNadette Stanis. For those of you under the age of 50, Black Beauties  (trade name Biphetamine 20) were a 20 mg. combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, sort of an Adderall precursor. In short, they were pharmaceutical speed. Jonathan gave me a fistful, which I immediately swallowed, an apparent mistake based on Jonathan’s shocked look.

“That’s way too much, man! You’ll be up for days,” he said.

“Cool,” I replied.

Within a couple hours, my heart was pounding like an unbalanced washing machine filled with sneakers. By 10 o’clock, I went to the overall supervisor and said I was afraid I was having a heart attack and needed to leave. He looked at my clenched jaw, bug-eyed stare and clenched fists, and shook his head. 

“Freaking hophead,” he said, using a slang term for junkies. “I won’t say anything to your mother—she’s a sweet lady—but I can’t keep you on the job.”

I was fired.

And, over the next three days developed a love/hate relationship with speed.

Point Number Four

To spare you all the details of the previous points, I’ll outline this way in a series of steps.

1. At 17, I got the job of night manager at an Orange Julius
2. I took a hit of acid 30 minutes before my shift began
3. Once I started to get off, I told the other employee to go home. She left.
4. I took my apron off, stood behind the counter and simply laughed at anyone who came in the store.
5. Word spread of the crazy kid at the Julius stand
6. Mall security was notified. My manager was notified.

I was fired.

At 17, I’d been fired from four jobs while using drugs or alcohol. I believe that’s plenty of evidence, for the rational, that I had a problem that must be addressed. Any person with the sense God gave geese would know things had to change.  I would have to change.

And I did!

It just took 47 more years to do so.

.

September 19

“Hope Offers Help. Really and for True”

Two days ago, I lost a friend to overdose. 

That’s a sentence I could have written dozens times over my time at Hope Recovery. I could also write of the thousand or so people I’ve met here who are still in recovery. They go to meetings, work a program of some kind and stay away from drugs and alcohol. Still, the losses mount and my heart gets broken.

There is one proven solution for quitting drug and alcohol use. It is 100% effective, with no relapse or reoccurrence worries at all. This solution guarantees the drinker or drugger will never, ever use again. Not only that, it is easily available to all who use, and for many is the ultimate goal of addiction—even if the drug or alcohol user isn’t ever consciously aiming toward it. This solution has no side effects for the user and requires nothing—no change in attitude nor behavior—it is completely effective.

The solution? The method? The unconscious goal?

Death.

Please, please, please, don’t follow that prescription and die. Please!

Instead. . . . let’s look at alternatives.

In meetings of various kinds over the years, I’ve referred to myself and those around me as “lucky retired Russian roulette players,” and I think that’s accurate. When I used, whether swallowing pills, snorting powders of any kind, shooting meth or dope or drinking, I knew I was courting death, playing tag with eternity. 

I choose life today, but I couldn’t have made that transformation without a program of recovery, the support of recovering others—both in and out of my particular pathway—and a faith that life can be better, that the world can be better, that I can be better. Somehow, little by slowly, I came to believe and embody these goals. 

In the 16 years since I last took a drink or used any mind- or emotion-altering substances, I’ve been to a lot of different meetings. Some were in church basements. Some were in tiny cabins. Some were in classrooms or jails or around campfires or in homeless shelters. Some were Recovery Dharma meetings. Some were 12-Step meetings. Some were SMART Recovery or All Recovery or Three Principles meetings. They all had, unspoken, the same message to me: we’ve found recovery from addiction and want to tread the path of life—you come too. 

I’ve been at Hope for New Hampshire Recovery five years now, but I’d never been involved with large-scale recovery before that. A sojourner, I’d experienced a lot over my previous years in recovery, but never a single space offering so many different ways to explore and experience recovery. In the time I’ve been at Hope, I’ve come, I like to think, to a deeper appreciation of these different pathways. Appreciation is not equal to understanding, of course, so my brief explanations below may be riddled with mistakes, large or small. If so, I’d ask folks with deeper understanding for patience and for a gentle explanation of where I’m wrong. Promise I’ll correct my mistakes in updates. 

Looking at the pathways offered at Hope, I’ll put them in alphabetical order to avoid any implication that some are better or more effective than others. I think practitioners of any of them would agree that no single program has a monopoly on the truth. As above, only death provides a guaranteed effective cure for addiction; here, we focus on ways to live, not on Russian roulette. In alphabetical order, and with advance apologies for any misunderstandings on my part, here are the pathways offered at Hope.

Recovery Dharma—As the name implies, Recovery Dharma uses Buddhist practices and principles to overcome addiction. Using traditional Buddhist teaching (dharma), meditation, the Four Noble Truths (suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering) and living in community, Recovery Dharma provides a middle path to recovery.

SMART (Self-Management and Recovery Training) Recovery—A completely secular program, SMART draws upon cognitive behavioral therapy and its emphasis on maintaining a locus of control, rational thinking and an understanding of stages of change. SMART views addiction as a dysfunctional habit rather than a disease, and helps members change their behavior by recognizing their power rather than their powerlessness.

Twelve Step Programs—Whether Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Heroin Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous or Al-Anon, all the Twelve Step groups draw upon the work of Bill Wilson in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Viewing alcoholism—and by extension other addictive or obsessive behaviors—as a disease that is physical, mental and spiritual, each with its own challenges and solutions. Twelve Step groups rely upon self-examination, self-exposure and a reliance upon a Higher Power of one’s understanding. An emphasis is placed on the importance of gathering with others in similar circumstances, prayer/meditation and development of a relationship with a trusted mentor or sponsor.

Hope also offers regular All Recovery meetings, a sort of ecumenical gathering of folks whose primary recovery pathway is elsewhere. These meetings don’t espouse any particular way to find recovery but offer encouragement and support to all.

Wherever you stand in your life journey, please, please, please know: if your drinking or drugging is causing problems, or if you’re afraid it might, help is available, help is free, help offers hope.

And Hope offers help. Come see us.

September 20

Eyeball to Eyeball Recovery

I am not opposed to education. That’s hardly a controversial stand, hardly likely to raise a single eyebrow hair. Education is fine with me. 

I am not opposed to certifications. I’d like to know my plumber has demonstrated she knows what she’s doing before opening up the sewage line leading to my septic tank. Certifications are fine by me.  

The rest of this column may convince you the above two paragraphs are lies, that I am anti-education, anti-training, anti-certification and, for all I know, antivivisection. Still, I stand by those paragraphs.

Except when it comes to recovery.

As a veteran, I’m very familiar with hierarchies, and not opposed to them in principle. To use my simple, peacetime, example, as an enlisted soldier with a rank of E-5, I was near the bottom of a weighty chain of command:  my company commander, my division commander etc., etc. to the secretary of defense and finally the president. (For persnickety vets, I was in a division headquarters company, hence the lack of battalion or brigade commanders.) Additionally, anyone who outranked me was, in most senses, above me in the pecking order. The military is an example of where hierarchies make sense. If an army is going into combat it’s imperative to know whose orders to follow and to obey them as soon as possible.

Another hierarchical system is the clinical model of recovery.  The doctoral level clinical psychologist outranks the MLADC who outranks the LADC who outranks the CRSW. (Please forgive the alphabet soup of the previous sentence—their translation isn’t necessary for understanding the hierarchy.) In clinical settings, different levels of certification mean varying amounts of power and authority. This may make sense, but it never did for me. Let me explain.

Before I came into recovery, I’d seen a dozen or so therapists of various kinds, always about my drinking, which tended to be a problem for those around me.  I lied to all of them to a greater or lesser degree, all based on a simple formula consisting of two parts:

1. I’ll be completely honest about anything that doesn’t involve my drinking or drugging and my access to those practices.
2. Everything in the whole darned universe is connected to my drinking or drugging and my access to those practices.

Given that second part, I never told the truth, the whole truth or anything approaching the truth to those therapists. And they never called me on it. Maybe they knew I was full of crap. Maybe they just didn’t care about me. Maybe I was such a skilled yarn spinner they couldn’t see the wide gaps between the buttons of verifiable facts.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

When I finally found recovery, it was not through the clinical route. There was no diagnosis. There was no treatment. There was no prognosis. Instead, I was introduced to a bunch of folks who had been where I was, had felt what I felt and knew what I knew about my drinking. They were unbullshitable.  Recovery was made up of a bunch of clowns like me who had figured out a way to stop drinking and drugging. If the clinical model was a hierarchical pyramid, recovery was that pyramid after a dinosaur had stomped it, then ground it to dust. The hierarchy was not just flattened; , it didn’t exist.

I needed peers, not professionals. I needed to be surrounded by folks who knew and understood me almost instantly—and who still seemed to like me. I did not need a DSM diagnosis of Alcohol Use Disorder. I did not need to explain myself to someone who’d never been within a thousand psychic miles of me. I needed recovery, and recovery was all around me.

Hope is a peer-based recovery center, but many (most?) folks don’t understand what that means, thinking those of us who work here are “counselors” or “therapists” or “clinicians.” Absolutely not! A peer is someone who’s of equal standing to another. Hence, a jury of one’s peers or peer-reviewed journals. Employees of Hope are no better or of higher status than anyone who comes to us for support. We are comrades and allies and friends and companions with no special gifts or skills. 

Every person at Hope is in recovery from drug or alcohol abuse.  Our experiences during active use and in recovery are what make us effective. Like trail guides, we may be able to help folks see where the path to recovery may get rocky, suggest alternative routes and cheer folks along in their progress. As an example, look at the picture at the top of the page—the only piece of paper I keep on the wall in my office—which provides the necessary evidence for me to hold my job. 

Do I have an advanced degree? Yes. Am I a Certified Recovery Support Worker? Yes. I went through a 40-hour class, followed by a few follow-up days of training and passing a multiple choice test. Do those two achievements have anything whatsoever to do with my ability to establish rapport with the person new in recovery? Absolutely not, no more than playing the piano well increases your ability to train a dog. College degrees and certifications are fine, in their way, although that way can be filled with hot air, empty pride and meaningless accomplishment. 

I can’t say what will work for you or you or you. I know what worked for me and people like me. That work took place in the loving palm of a group of fellow recoverees, joined by common experience, common solution and common purpose: to help everyone there taste life before it dries up or slips away. Come to Hope for New Hampshire Recovery and see what I mean.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 21

“A Few Thoughts about a Few of the Things Hope Recovery Does”

Hope Recovery in Manchester is where I’ve worked for the last five-and-a-half years. It is a crucible of magic and a damn fine place to visit and be.

Since I’m the director here, you might expect I’d puff the place. Let me assure you, I am more than capable of shooting my mouth off about places I’ve worked. Being fired for being critical is old hat to me.

If Hope was a sham or a waste, I’d tell you. Then quit before I could be fired.

I do believe much of life is blind coincidences with no explanation. What follows shows “much” is doing all the work in that last sentence.

As I was writing the above, sitting at a table at the front of Hope, the place where members congregate for cards or chess or conversation, a woman I’ll call Carol sat down next to me. I greeted her with some sort of jackassery, and Carol looked into my face, hers slowly melting. On the verge of tears, she told me she hurt. Clearly, this wasn’t a headache or an ingrown toenail. I asked her if she wanted to walk down to my office so we could talk in private. She nodded.

As soon as Carol took a seat, tears dripped out and she talked of a son she hadn’t heard from in years, a daughter who was in the wind and would turn 40 next week. As I let her go on, her tone changed. Instead of a puddle of goo, she sat up straighter and said she felt bad she wasn’t doing more to help people. I asked her what she meant.

“I go to meetings, and I do all I can. Still, people keep on dying.”

“People do die,” I said, “and that sucks. Each of us does the best we can for those we meet—and leave the outcome to the universe or some higher power.”

“I know. But I want to stop the dying, stop the overdoses. Each time I hear an ambulance, I think it might be my son.”

I’m a man with few ready-made anecdotes or teaching stories—crabs in a bucket, the invisible boat, monkey traps—and usually let the situation determine what I should say. Here, though, I made an exception.

“I’m sure you know the starfish story,” I said, expecting to see a nod of acknowledgement. Nothing.

“The starfish?” Carol asked. “What starfish?”

Surprised, I recounted the old chestnut. Boy walking the beach after a storm, picking up starfish and throwing them back into the sea. Old man comes up and says the beach is covered with starfish, so the boy is wasting his time. Throwing individual starfish into the ocean won’t make any difference. Boy picks up starfish, looks at it and tosses it seaward. “It made a difference to that one.”

Somehow, Carol had made it into her 60’s never having heard that story. Her face, which had been tense and stressed, relaxed into a smile.

“Thank you for that,” she said. “That makes a difference.”

She paused.

“This place is my safe spot. When I walk into Hope, I know I’m going to be treated well, and no one’s going to look down on me. No one’s going to act like they’re better than me. The staff treats me like a woman, not a client of some kind.”

“That makes me very happy,” I said, and it did.

And it does.

I’d intended this column to be a laundry list of all the cool stuff Hope offers—painting, music, meditation, cards, chess, karaoke, talent shows, etc., etc. etc.

Instead, I got handed a column about what Hope IS: a safe spot for Carol and hundreds of others.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 22

“Leaving Denial Aisle”

The world is filled with folks who are very smart, but who accomplish little, people who are very strong, yet move little, and humans who are very charismatic, but change little.  I honestly believe, and believe it with every fiber of my being, that attitude accomplishes more than ability.

Especially in recovery.

I don’t know horses. I mean, I can recognize a horse, distinguish it from a cow or a llama. I have a good picture of “horseness,” those descriptors that identify horses from nonequine creatures. Still, I don’t know horses the way someone who knows horses knows horses. (What a funny sentence that last one was.) At the racetrack, I’m definitely over my head.

I do know people in recovery. Early on, we’ve got a lot of commonalities. We often look like warmed-over garbage. We often sit in the backs of rooms. We tend not to make eye contact. We tend to be filled with shame and remorse, not just over the things we did while high or drunk and not just for the things we did to be able to get high or drunk. Most often, we are ashamed of who we are. If you’re in early recovery, I probably know you. Still . . .

If I had to place money on either a horse race or on picking winners from early recovery, I’d be a better bettor at Pimlico or Churchill Downs than at a church basement recovery meeting. At the track, at least I’d have luck on my side—along with a little bit of information about the horses’ previous record. In early recovery, where a few folks look great, but most look like they’ve fallen way below down on their luck, appearances are deceiving.

When I entered recovery, I had just been discharged from a VA psych ward, where I’d been put on antidepressants and introduced to my particular pathway. Going to my first meetings out of the bin, I’m sure I didn’t look like a potential winner, someone who’d still be sticking around 15 years later. If video existed, it would show a scrawny guy with eyes that wouldn’t alight on anything for long, looking jampacked with terror and tears. 

I can remember being seven or nine days sober and looking at the other newcomers around me. Through my insecure and doubt-filled eyes they all looked better than I did. That lady over in the corner was wearing a dress and the guy beside her had a tan. He looked like a golf-pants model, crisp clothes, white smile and a shirt that cost more than my entire wardrobe put together.  My pants were held up by an over-cinched belt and a shirt that was clean but clearly worn past needing replacement. I just kept coming.

After a month or so, the healthy-looking folks had disappeared. The woman in business attire and the handsome guy were nowhere to be seen. At the time, I assumed they’d only needed a half-cup of recovery and were back to successful lives. Some of the other losers I’d come in with were starting to clean up and look better. I still felt like my sobriety was only as strong as my fingernails and could snap any minute. I just kept coming.

At six months, a funny/sad/expectable thing happened. I was at the front of a room, being given a plastic token with a 6 on it, and I looked toward the back. The handsome, elegant, tanned guy was sitting at the back of the room, in what we called Denial Aisle. He was still nicely dressed, still had a tan, but he also had a hangdog expression and a black eye with regret dripping out of it. Back when we started recovery together, I’d assumed he was good to go while I was nearly gone. I know I’ll never anybody’s handsome guy. I’ll never be the best dressed guy. I’ll never be the elegant guy. But I can be the sober guy. I just keep coming.

If you’re in early recovery and your life feels like a dog chewed on your past and peed on your future, keep coming. If you feel like no one’s ever felt as empty and obsessed as you, keep coming. If you keep on trying to get clean and sober but can’t find the way, keep coming. 

Things can get better. Things can get better than better. Things can get better enough that you won’t even remember what it felt like to have those things troubling you.

Just keep coming.

And maintain a positive attitude. 

And know . . .

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 23

One of My Favoritest Days of the Year

I have a bunch of favorite days of the year. June 21^st, the longest day of the year (although like Daisy Buchanan, I anticipate and anticipate, then forget it until June 23), each of my daughter’s birthdays, Red Sox opening day, Good Friday (mainly because I have a tasteless joke that I, alone among almost all of humanity, find hilarious), my wedding anniversary (or anniversaries—Carol Robidoux has written on this site about how Elena and I were first married in early 2022, but didn’t get the proper paperwork until a couple months ago). Lots of favorites.

Oh, yes. Christmas, too.

One of my favoritest of favorite days, though, comes next Saturday. Hope for New Hampshire Recovery’s annual Recovery Festival is at Arms Park September 30 from 11 am to 1 pm. Arms Park is a new and much, much larger space than Veterans Park, the festival’s previous site. Taking up space about two-thirds the size of a football field, the festival has grown from a trade show for businesses in the treatment-recovery industrial complex to become a genuine gathering of the recovery tribe. 

For the first time, the festival will include a whole bunch of raffle items ranging from New England Patriots tickets to a big-screen television to a painting by local artist DR Cote to lots and lots of large gift certificates. Thanks to the hard work of two Manchester recovery houses in particular, Into Action and Home Sober Living, this raffle offers prizes worth more than $4000. 

Many local recovery houses will put on activities like a dunk tank, henna tattoos, a bubble space, gratitude rocks and others, including a chess tournament, which deserves a paragraph or two of its own.

I am a chessophile. Loving something, however, doesn’t imply ability. While adoring the game as a player, my love doesn’t depend on winning. Jonathan Gerson, though, the owner and operator of Into Action Sober Living appears to love chess and be a pretty great master. At last year’s festival, Jonathan challenged all comers to matches, offering a prize to anyone who could beat him. Jonathan claims he lost to a visitor, but the person never came back for his winnings. I suspect that, Like a good hustler, Jonathan fabricated the story of the disappearing fish—all the better to get a high-stakes opponent into Jonathan’s grasp.

I don’t believe I’ve ever played Jonathan, and if I ever do I expect to lose within 10 moves. He is reportedly that good. He is a master. I am a patzer. He is grand. I am a fish. Jonathan could easily beat me with half his brain tied behind his back and the other half trying to do seven-digit multiplication in his head. In short, any such match would be a bloodbath for me.

Perhaps you’re a better player than I. Strike that—if you know how the pieces move, you have a good chance of being better than me. Come to the Hope Recovery Festival and challenge the Deep Mind of Detoxing, the Ratings King of Recovery, the one, the only Jonathan Gerson.

Maybe you can be the disappearing man of this year’s festival.

Or maybe I will be.

September 24

“All the Recovery News that’s Fit to Print”

Unbelievable as it may seem to regular readers, 47 years ago, I started off as a newspaper reporter. I don’t mean it’s unlikely I’ve been working that long, for I suspect some of you see me as a great-grandfatherly figure, a doddering old fool who’s lucky not to have oatmeal on his chin and his address pinned to his windbreaker in case he wanders away. No, it’s the newspaper reporter business you may find unlikely. Still, I went into the Army when I was 17, “trained” for 14 weeks in the craft of writing press releases and news stories, always worshipping the mystical inverted pyramid.

I’ll offer further critique in a bit, but first want to offer an example of the kind of writing I started off producing:

Manchester’s Hope Recovery Presents Its Annual Recovery Festival September 30

Manchester, NH— Saturday, September 30, from 11 am to 2 pm, Hope for New Hampshire Recovery’s annual Festival will be at Arms Park in Manchester, a change from previous festival’s Veterans Park site.  Hope’s festival, the largest north of Boston, draws up to a thousand visitors eager to celebrate their recovery, connect or reconnect with friends and have a great time with fun activities, music ,and brief speeches. Admission is free and on-site parking is available.

Over time, the festival, Hope’s only fundraising event, has become a true celebration of recovery. This transition continues this year, with Manchester recovery residences taking the lead in hosting entertaining and fun sideshow-type activities, including a dunk tank, a chess tournament, henna tattoos, a bubble station and more. A complete list of activities and recovery residences putting them on is available at Hope’s website, recoverynh.org. 

Additionally, two recovery residences in particular, Into Action and Home Sober Living, have led an incredibly successful donation drive for raffle items like New England Patriots tickets, a big-screen television, an oil painting by local artist DR Cote, a handmade wooden table and lots and lots of gift cards. 

At Hope Recovery, community is the message, purpose, and secret ingredient. People at Hope are in recovery, looking for recovery, or just enjoying the positive vibe of a healthy community center. In Johann Hari’s famous words, “The opposite of addiction is connection.” Hope connects people, strengthens relationships and offers hope to the hopeless.

“Recovery doesn’t take place in a vacuum,” said Keith Howard, Hope’s executive director. “A vacuum isn’t just devoid of matter–it lacks life, communication or purpose. Recovery comes when I look into your eyes and recognize you, the best version of you and help you make that recognition reality. Vacuums suck, but community is vital to recovery. At the Recovery Rally, Hope Nation gathers as a tribe for celebration, for encouragement and fun.”

Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, 293 Wilson Street in Manchester, is a peer-driven and peer-led community center. Hope hosts more than 35 recovery meetings a week, ranging from various anonymous (12-Step) fellowships to SMART Recovery, Recovery Dharma and others.  Hope’s real strength is in providing a safe and supportive space for people in recovery to support each other. Musical talent shows and more than 700 member-made paintings hang on the walls to help demonstrate that recovery is more than just going to meetings–it’s a brand new and better life. 

Who: Hope for New Hampshire Recovery 

What: Hope’s Recovery Festival

Where: Arms Park, Manchester, NH

When: September 30, 2023. 11 am to 2 pm

Why: To celebrate recovery from alcohol and other drug addictions

That press release, I believe, is standard-issue, boilerplate, run-of-the-mill newswriting. Nothing flashy.  Nothing personal. Nothing interesting. “Just the facts, ma’am,” as Sgt. Joe Friday never actually said on “Dragnet.” The release contains little “Keithness,” unlike almost every other blessed thing I’ve written since getting out of the news biz as a radio new director years ago.

Features and columns are what I’ve always loved. Lulling people into a state of comfort with nonchalance, nonsense, and non-sequiturs, then snapping their heads with an outlandish or provocative statement. Sometimes you can even get people to explore and digest information they likely would have otherwise skipped. For example: including a description, discussion and meditation surrounding the square root of Negative One in a piece on Higher Powers in recovery.

Or getting someone to read a press release on Hope’s Recovery Festival, September 30 from 11-2 at Arms Park in Manchester. It’ll be a great time and I look forward to seeing you and you and, most importantly, YOU there.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 25

“Catacomb Wisdom You May Hear at the Hope Recovery Festival Next Saturday (Details at the end of this)”

Church sanctuaries held wisdom for me as a boy. It may have been wisdom I didn’t understand, and certainly couldn’t apply to my life, but when I went into the sanctuary of the Durham Community Church, I assumed the Most Reverend Novotny had a pathway to God and therefore some genuine wisdom.

As I grew older, became a Baptist lay person and then a Baptist minister, I found the sanctuary to be more of a stage and less of a font of knowledge. In the words of the non-King Martin Luther, “Sola scriptura” was my watchword—it’s all in the Book, Buddy. The Bible held the wisdom.

Later, I left the church, and while I still like the Gospels and the Minor Prophets, the wisdom I find in the Bible is in Ecclesiastes. Short, pithy thoughts that help me understand the human predicament. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, as Hobbes would have it, and that brief essay by Solomon as an old man sums it up pretty well. It does a great job of diagnosing our condition; not so much for treating it. 

Today, I spend more time in churches than I did as a boy or as a minister, although now I’m in church basements more than sanctuaries. Finally, in those small basement rooms I’ve found the wisdom I’d suspected the building held. No, I don’t hang out with discarded crucifixes, portraits of Protestant bigwigs from long ago or aged Torah scrolls. Instead, like the Christians in the catacombs, I gather with other fallen people who are trying to recover their lives. Luckily, these fellow sufferers are carriers of wisdom, always pithy and sometimes funny. Over the years, I’ve collected some of that wisdom, and would like to offer it now. I don’t remember who said what when or why, but below is some true wisdom, at least as this drunk sees it:

The means aren’t justified by the ends. The means are the ends.

The idea is always to narrow the gap between what we believe and the way we live.

If you want to change who you are, change what you do.

If you want to quit using, you are going to have to quit drinking.

Quitting was easy. Staying quit was impossible.

I thought you were normal until I got to know you.

I’m not responsible for my disease, but I am responsible for my behavior.

I run from those who want me and I pursue the rejecters.

What other people think of me is none of my business.

Most of my life was a reaction to a reaction.

When things go wrong, I don’t have to go with them.

I’m just another Bozo on the bus.

I kept on “starting over” but I never changed a thing.

I violated my standards faster than I could lower them.

Relish that wisdom. Bathe in it. Meditate upon it.

And think about the insights available to you at next Saturday’s Hope Recovery Festival:

Who: Hope for New Hampshire Recovery 

What: Hope’s Recovery Festival

Where: Arms Park, Manchester, NH

When: September 30, 2023. 11 am to 2 pm

Why: To celebrate recovery from alcohol and other drug addictions

September 26

“Airplane Glue is No Madeleine”

Today at Hope, we’re having new flooring put down, which is a great thing, of course. The older new flooring hadn’t held up well and the flooring company is replacing it, a very good thing. As in much of life, this good thing travels with evil companions. In this case, my lizard brain took me back 50 years or more. Let me explain.

Subliminal Message:  Hope’s Recovery Festival is this Saturday, from 11-2 at Arms Park. You really should be there.

Near the beginning of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, he introduces the catalyst for the book: the madeleine, a small sponge cake, the taste of which transforms him: “No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs . . . The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it.” Today, I had a Proustian moment, although not as carefree.  

The adhesive used to stick that flooring to the subfloor emitted fumes, fumes that overwhelmed my emotions and time-traveled me to the early-mid 1970s. At the time, I enjoyed getting high on polystyrene cement aka Toluene aka airplane glue. Yes, boys and girls, I am old enough to have gotten messed up on chemicals other kids my age were using to build model rockets and Batmobiles.  From 13-16, when I couldn’t find weed or pills or acid or even booze, I’d get together with friends, a paper bag with tin foil on the bottom, and squeeze out a generous dollop of glue. In turn, we’d hold the bag in a tight seal up to our faces and inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, feel like we were drunk, experience severed connection to our central nervous system, then, typically, fall down with King Hell headaches. Because we were young, and dumb and full of self-destructiveness, as soon as we felt safe to stand up, we’d take another turn. This would continue until our heads throbbed with pain, confusion and sadness.

It was not a good high, but it did get us out of ourselves.

Subliminal Message:  Hope’s Recovery Festival is this Saturday, from 11-2 at Arms Park. All the cool kids are going.

It may be glue-sniffing that made me go into the Army instead of off to college. Maybe, but I doubt it. I’d taken the PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test—pre-college boards) in my sophomore year. Despite having a D- average, I scored high enough to be named a National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalist. It was all very exciting for my guidance counselor and my parents. Everyone else in my universe simply saw further evidence of a smartass without portfolio, of potential ever to be left unfulfilled. Still, gaining the highest PSAT score in my class—a class full of future lawyers, doctors, and a billionaire—suggested I’d do equally well in taking the SAT, the REAL test colleges consider.

I didn’t.

Subliminal Message:  Hope’s Recovery Festival is this Saturday, from 11-2 at Arms Park. Think what you’d miss if you’re not there..

You see, the college boards were typically given one summer morning after one’s junior year. I stayed up until three in the morning huffing glue, which may explain my good but hardly great scores. I was exhausted and sounded like a dying seagull when I breathed—chemical buildup in my lungs, I suspect. At graduation, I received a piece of paper celebrating my early high scores, and placed 3^rd from the bottom in my class.  Three weeks later, I left for Army basic training. In the military, I discovered access to real drugs—meth and heroin—and put away the childish paper bags, tin foil and glue.

Subliminal Message:  Hope’s Recovery Festival is this Saturday, from 11-2 at Arms Park. Don’t miss it!.

Today, that old chemical magic came rolling down the hall. I didn’t romanticize it, didn’t try to get a “freelapse,” didn’t think back to the wonderful brain damage I’d done to myself. Instead, I went outside to clear my head, and thought:

You matter. I matter. We matter.

Oh, yes, and I also thought about this Saturday’s Recovery Festival from 11-2 at Arms Park.  See you there!

September 27

“The Magic of Peer Recovery”

Hope offers peer-based recovery, but what the hell does “peer-based” mean?

I’ve tried to define it and describe it, but nothing really captures peer recovery. Every official definition sounds so highfalutin that you need a doctorate to even understand what is a pretty simple proposition:

I’m a drunk or an addict (or, more correctly but not as descriptively, “a person with Alcohol Use Disorder or Substance Use Disorder”). You are a drunk or an addict (ditto to the above). I’ve found a way to keep from using, but you haven’t. I ask you to tell me your story, then I share my experience during and following active use. When things work well, an almost immediate and strong connection develops between us and I offer to walk with you through the beginning parts of recovery. 

That’s not hard to understand, but many folks seem to believe there’s something more, something more scientific, something more magical, even.  To some folks, what follows is the “practice of peer-based recovery in a hospital setting,” but I thought it was just talking one drunk to another. Let me tell you a bit more.

____________________________________________________________________

Yesterday I picked up the Hope phone:

“Hope Recovery. This is Keith.”

“Hi. My name’s Donald. I’m in the hospital for the fourth time, detoxing off alcohol. A lady gave me your number. Each time I get out I tell myself I’m gonna stay quit but . . .,” the voice trailed off.

“But then that hunger builds,” I said, “and you convince yourself you can just have a few. Then you’re shit-faced again.”

“Yeah,” said Donald. “How’d you know?”

“I’m an old drunk named Keith,” I said. 

I chatted with Donald a bit more, then arranged to see him today at 11 in his hospital room. 

When I walked in, I saw myself, or at least a lot of myself. The important, eternal part. The sad, broken part that’s become a lot happier and patched together over the last 16 years.

Donald explained he’d been drinking heavily since he moved out of his house at 15, 24 years ago. The daily amount he drank may have gone down a bit (very rarely) or up a tad (regularly), but overall he drank between 20 and 30 beers a day. For the past four or five years, since he had a brain injury, the drinking has gotten more and more out of control. Now, he was in an out of the hospital, DT’s growing worse and worse.

“I make it on the outside about a week,” he said, “then I think I’ll just have a few and . . .”

I cut him off, “And then a few turn into the same old thing.”

“Exactly!” Donald said.

“For me,” I said, “it was as if I had a belt around my chest. Each day without a drink would tighten that belt a little more. Not literally, but in the way that really matters. Finally, I’d tell myself I’d have a few drinks, just to loosen things. Once I’d found that peace and comfort that comes between feeling the effect and actually being drunk, I promised I’d pace myself, just drink enough to maintain the buzz. And then . . .”

“You’d be shit-faced again!” Donald said with glee, the joy of finding someone who knew how he felt,knew how he REALLY felt.

A very nice social worker I’ll call Julia came in and watched us bantering back and forth. She listened to my nonsense and Donald’s openness, and, thankfully, didn’t use words like “bonding” or “establishing social connection” or “isolation.” She just listened to an old drunk talk with a younger drunk. Then, the tone changed.

“I was 48 when I finally got sober,” I said. “You’re just a kid—39 is way young to me. You can change. Life can change. Things can get better. Really.”

“I know,” he said doubtfully.

“Or you can go on doing what you’re doing. Check into a detox. Get released to go home and drink until you need to detox again. Finally, not make it to detox and die alone in your apartment.

“The choice is yours,” I concluded, “and I’m willing to walk the path of change with you if you’d like.”

We talked a bit more. I asked the social worker when Donald would be discharged. She thought Thursday or Friday.

“You still have physical strength, yes?” I asked.

“I work out between beers,” Donald said. “Doctors can’t believe what good shape I’m in.”

“Good,” I said. “And do you have a full dance card this Saturday, a lot of social engagements?”

Donald laughed sadly.

“I got nothing.”

“Good,” I said, and told him about Hope’s Recovery Festival this Saturday at Arms Park “If I send an Uber to pick you up and bring you to the festival, can you help us set up and tear down. I’ll introduce you to some other folks who’ve laid in this same kind of bed and are now living life. Sound okay?”

“Yes!” Donald said, a grin of helpfulness brightening his face.

That, my friends, is what the first steps of peer recovery look like, a person in recovery getting to know a person who needs recovery and offering a helping hand. That, though, is only a first step. These excerpts from the texts I received from Donald after I left are the true first fruits of peer recovery:

1. Thank you very, very much for stopping by, that meant a lot to me. I look forward to helping you Saturday. Have a great day man.
2. Last time I’ll bother you, Keith. Just wanted to say thank you for being real with me, I don’t run into that a lot at all. 

I                 Keith’s Response:  If I had the ability to be phony, I might be. I don’t. Just who I am.

         So am I. That’s why we hit it off. It’s nice to actually have plans with someone too. That girl Julia said it was like we knew each other for years. 

         I felt the same. 

• Thank you Keith. 👍  That was the last text I promise. I’ll leave you alone. Just excited to have a friend.

And so am I, Donald. So am I.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have no transcript of the above conversation, so I’ve recreated it from memory, the often-faulty memory of even the recovered alcoholic.

Also, Donald is obviously not Donald’s real name. If you look for me at Saturday’s festival, though, and you’re very good, I may introduce you to him.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 28

“The Unofficial Insider Idiot’s Guide for Dummies to the Hope Recovery Festival”

Before taking my daughters to Disneyworld 20 years ago, I purchased an “insider’s guide” for all the secret tips. I learned the fictional characters we were likely to meet (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White, etc.) and those we wouldn’t meet (Bugs Bunny, Milburn Pennybags, The Scarlet Pimpernel, etc.) We also got advice on how to dress—apparently Florida is warm, so fur parkas and insulated pants are discouraged. The guide advised us if we wished to ride the most popular rides we should get in line early. It was a most useful $12.95 book.

Today, at no charge, I’m giving you the Unofficial Insider Idiot’s Guide for Dummies to this Saturday’s Hope Recovery Festival. You might think because this information is free it’s not worth much. You would be wrong. I guarantee you will learn more useful inside dope here than I ever did. If you don’t I’ll give you triple your money back!

First, basic details: 

               What: The largest Recovery Celebration north of Boston

               When: Saturday, September 30 (three days from now for those you without calendar)

                                    11 am to 2 pm

               Where: Arms Park, down by the river

               Price: $0, nada, nothing, zilch. It’s free

Insider’s Tip #1: Hope staff members and some concierges will be wearing bright red bucket hats with Hope bumper stickers on them. Picture Gilligan in a slasher movie. These folks can direct you wherever you need to go.

Insider’s Tip #2: The dunk tank is being operated by the Freeman House. Saturday is going to be warm, but far from hot. Selling old but dry towels to the dunkees may raise enough money to buy a lot of raffle tickets.

Insider’s Tip #3: The chess activity operated by Into Action is really an exhibition by its owner and operator, Jonathan Gerson. He is a consummate chess hustler, so if you have any legitimate grandmasters in your life, please set them loose on him.

Insiders Tip #4:  If you like food, you should bring some. Without wanting to start a theological debate, you might also consider bringing a loaf of bread under your shirt and a fish in your pocket. Recovery, after all, is a miracle, so who knows what might happen.

Now onto the serious grown-up stuff.

Recovery houses from throughout Manchester are putting on activities of various kinds. Here’s the list as of publication:

Recovery House	Activity
Saint Christopher’s	Dart game
Adira Sober Living	Kindness Rocks
Starting Point	5 Pillars of Recovery
Home	Chalk Boards
Tabula Rasa	Guessing Game – winner gets a gift card
Into Action	Chess Exhibition- winner gets gift card
GRC	Sand Art
Live Free	Bubble Station
RJM	Take a Gratitude, Leave a Gratitude
Freeman House	Dunk Tank
Isaiah 61 House and 603 Recovery	Henna Tattoos
Bonfire	Scavenger Hunt

Raffles

This year’s raffle has a ton of prizes in two tiers:

Top Tier

Two Patriots Tickets

Big Screen TV

Oil painting by local artist DR Cote

Handmade and hand-crafted table by local artisan

Lower Tier

Coffee, health club memberships, Hope Swag Bag, DRM Hoodie and lots and lots and lots and lots of gift cards

The festival will be a good, nay a great, time. I hope to see you there.

You matter. I matter. We matter.

September 29

“Donald is Craig and Craig has Hope”

The other day, I told you about my new friend, Donald. Now, the truth can be told: Donald is actually Craig, and has given permission to use his name.

Craig is detoxing off alcohol for the fourth or fifth time. I met him in his hospital room, and we struck it off, just two guys with problems with alcohol and, in my case, drugs. The only difference between us? Craig has gotten physically sober—or at least gotten all the alcohol out of his system—but keeps going back to drinking with a violent passion, a vengeance. I, on the other hand, through no great ability of my own, managed to quit and have stayed quit for 16 years. People get into recovery for a bunch of reasons—lost jobs, departed spouses, suicidal thoughts, physical decay—but we stay in recovery because of community, because of friendships and because we’ve found our tribe.

Craig wants this to be his last detox, wants to put down the drink for good, wants to leave the twilight of the perpetually drunk. I know, because that’s what I wanted for the last years of my drinking. I’d lay off booze for a day or so, then feel physically and emotionally sick, recognize the beginnings of DT’s and drink for my health. I needed the poison that made me want to poison myself. And so has Craig. 

Craig wants to stop and stay stopped. And he can. With your help. Let me explain.

Craig will be discharged from the hospital Saturday morning. He’ll take an Uber to the Hope Recovery Festival, calling me to let me know he’s coming. Of course, I’ll give him a hug, welcome him, and introduce him to everyone who’s around me. Still, solid recovery can’t be built on one jackass man and whoever he’s chatting with. It takes a community to welcome, support, laugh and cry with Craig. If you’re in recovery, you’re part of that community, the only thing that can help Craig save himself.

I asked four different people to write brief welcomes to Craig. Here they are. You come up with your own, and help ensure Craig knows he never needs to feel this way again.

Craig,

I’m excited to meet you. What I read brought tears to my eyes. I hope you choose to come to the festival Saturday. Hope, and Keith, have become a huge part of my life and Hope and this community have saved my life. I hope that you too get the chance to experience the love and connection that will swell around  you if you give it a chance.

–Melissa

Hey Craig!

I’m really looking forward to meeting you at the festival!! The recovery community here is amazing, and truly changed everything in a positive way for my sobriety. You never have to do this alone again!

With love,

–Christy

Hey Craig,

You must be excited to get out of the hospital and start your new journey! That’s the last time you ever have to be there! I look forward to seeing you at the festival, getting to know you and hopefully being part of your journey!

–Bret

Hey Craig,

I’ve heard so much about you and can relate to everything you’ve been through. You’re going to fit with all of us, because we’ve all been through it one way or another. Just know that asking for help is powerful and opposite of addiction is connection. So, stay connected, stay protected! Looking forward to meeting you brother.

–Rob D.

At the festival, please look for me. If you don’t know me by sight, ask any of the people in bright red Gilligan hats. They’ll point me out. Please, please, please come over to me and ask to be introduced to Craig. He’s a good guy, but he’s likely to feel raw. Internally, I mean; he doesn’t have any open sores or anything. When you meet him, please tell him your story. Ask him his. Welcome into the community. You’ll be doing him good, and you’ll increase your own support network by one more man.

After all,

You matter. I matter. We matter.

And Craig matters.

September 30

“Every Clown Needs a Circus: or My Eternal Gratitude to the People Who Keep Hope Afloat”

Today is the day. The Hope Recovery Festival begins at 11 today and runs until 2. I look forward to seeing each of you. I am huggable, if not particularly lovable. 

September is Recovery Month, and I’ve been writing these daily things now for 30 days (except for September 8, when you were treated to Bret’s Mission). You may well have grown tired of reading my let’s-see-where-this-rabbit-hole-goes style of writing, and I don’t blame you. Today’s final installment is going to be straightforward-ish and linear-ish. Probably.

A while ago, when I was still living in the Great North Woods in the Tiny White Box, I wrote about leadership, describing myself as a mystical clown. Every clown needs a circus, and every circus needs a bunch of gifted and dedicated people to keep the whole thing from crashing down.  These are those people, the ones who make Hope Recovery work, saving lives and strengthening recovery:

Hope has a great leadership team. Missy Kimball handles our finances, operations stuff and providing a sensible counterbalance to my nonsense, while Dave Cote does all the other real work—data, social media, etc. They are both WAAAAYYYY more talented than I when it comes to getting things done. (On the other hand, I’m better at generating often unrealistic and potentially dangerous ideas.) Dave and Missy deserve all the credit for bills being paid on time, the state being happy with us and sorting my nonsense into workable plans. Please, today, look them up at the festival and thank them. They are the backbone of Hope.

Now, though, I want to call out the hands, the arms, the heart and the soul of Hope—the front-end staff. Rob, Melissa, Bret, Julia and Sharna make people’s lives better every single day. They are the ones who welcome you, listen to you, talk and cry with you. They transmit recovery, support and hope all the time. Please find them today and give them hugs.

Without wanting this to sound like a high school yearbook, here are brief glimpses of each staff person:

Rob Dalrymple—Rob’s been an important part of the Hope community for the last three or four years. One of the deepest thinkers I know, Rob examines thoughts from as many angles as possible before drawing a conclusion. Rob runs a SMART Recovery meeting at Hope and has found a lot of inspiration in the Three Principles. He is a wise man and snappy dresser. Unfortunately, a serious and solemn family engagement will keep Rob from the festival. Please stop by next week at Hope to thank him.

Melissa Grieg—Melissa, at 24, is the youngest member of the Hope staff, but she is also one of the most mature—WAY more mature than I. She’s been an integral part of the Hope community for what seems like ever, but is actually a couple years. Melissa’s maturity is balanced by her ability to be as silly as a schoolgirl at times, and her way of melting in the presence of her husband, Josh. As a couple, they give me hope for the future of our species, which they’re ensuring by having a baby.

Bret Bicknell—Bret is a truly gifted writer with a sense of humor so dry it’s not always clear whether he’s joking or completely out of touch with reality. Although one of the newer staff members, Bret has quickly become a go-to guy for many members. Like me, Bret is a mediocre chess player who loves the game, making him a favorite of the serious players who smell fish whenever they see Bret or me.

Julia Lopez—Julia is amazing, able to transform herself from a silly social-media creator to an intuitive influencer of recovery. Although she is only with us a couple days a week, Julia’s presence is a highlight for many members.  Bilingual in Spanish and English, Julia almost always has a smile, along with an ability to make people feel not just listened to but heard.

Sharna Steinhard—Imperturbable is a word that springs to mind when I think of Sharna. Other words would be insightful, funny, sensitive, kind . . . but let’s not turn this into a thesaurus. Sharna uses a lot of mystical practice in her life, not to be a clown, but to help Hope members get centered and stop running around inside their heads.

These folks, the leadership team and the front-end staff, are the real Hope, and they make my role as mystical clown the easiest and best job in the world.  

They matter.

and

You matter. I matter. We matter.