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The Last Chance Texaco
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I'm a recovering alcoholic and crystal meth addict. I have recovered by taking the steps suggested in Alcoholics Anonymous. By taking a few simple steps I have found a new and better life and a relationship with my Creator and I write about that he
Recent Posts Tagged With 'honesty'
Winter Night
My sobriety anniversary is very important to me and it’s coming up here soon, but it doesn’t quite move me the same way December 13th does. December 13th, today, happens also to be my birthday, but my God, I’m 44 years old. My &...
Oh, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays
Last night I realized that the three most recent pictures I have of my mother . . . are mug shots. The first was taken about 22 months ago when she was arrested in her driveway for “obstructing justice.” The police were at the house to ...
Trouble, oh trouble, haven’t slept a day in years.
When I chose my current sponsor one of the things that attracted me was that even with 36-odd years sober, he was still able to share the truth at meeting level, particularly when things are difficult for him. You’ll hear him at a meeting sha...
Trouble, oh trouble, haven’t slept a day in years.
When I chose my current sponsor one of the things that attracted me was that even with 36-odd years sober, he was still able to share the truth at meeting level, particularly when things are difficult for him. You’ll hear him at a meeting sha...
Fair Trade Economics – or Greed and Will Power and Luxury Sheets
There are natural limits on what I can compute on greed and will power alone, as I have said before, but greed and will power are my constant companions in the marketplace. I may be able to set them aside to some degree with respect to my disease a...
The Scarlet Letter
A. Atheist. Two and a half years sober and I find myself so fucked off about the conception of god that I got sober with that I can’t live joyfully. In all likelihood I just haven’t given myself enough time to heal or something but at th...
Ride It Out
I’ve written a ton of inventory on the current situation at home and had a nice long visit with my sponsor and gotten some clarity about the situation in my house, identified the causes and conditions within me that create my unhappiness, and g...
Day One
It’s the first day of recovery, again, for my first sponsee, Joe, who had the courage this morning, to admit that he relapsed. Perhaps it wasn’t courage really so much as the absense of an adequate denial. And perhaps it’s not t...
Ignore it. It’ll go away.
Facebook. Yep. Facebook. I now count Facebook among my addictions. When I’m at work, I’m at work, and when I’m at school, I’m at school, but the moments in between I’m checking Facebook every 15 minutes. It mak...
Running Up That Hill - 2 Years Sober
After taking a coin for my 2nd year sober (today) in a meeting tonight I was surprised to hear descriptions of me as I was during the first part of my recovery. My first sponsor’s wife said that she had been scared of me. “Don’t...
Autopilot
Maybe the whole holiday ordeal was harder on me than I thought. It looks like I’ve been on autopilot for awhile and it has kind of kicked my ass. Now I’m doing the whole Oprah “I’m mad at myself” Winfrey thing, and while I’m w...
Conversion - Honesty, Open-Mindedness, and Willingness and the Nativity
I am a product of Western Civilization. I occasionally joke that I am in recovery from Western Civilization. I am still occasionally sarcastic. But I am a product of my dominant culture and as much as I pretend to resist it that means that I am...
A little “thank you” prayer that it all turned out this way
It was in the early hours of the morning of the day after my birthday two years ago that I was given my first step. It didn’t feel much like a gift at the time, but that’s exactly what it was; a gift of grace. Out of money and out of dr...
Do I now, or am I even willing to?
I’m trying a little expirement in extreme practice of the principles in a specific area of my life that I requires specific behavior that very, very few people, addict or no, ever do. Am I above the law? The practice of humility requires that...
You have to play to win.
More and more I’m beginning to think that if one gets sober and stays sober it is entirely by happenstance; that no amount of effort, no profound experience, no treatment program, no great desire, no necessity, has the power to get and keep any...
Say it ain’t so, Joe.
My friend Robert’s sponsor told him early on that he can say anything he wants to in a meeting, anything at all, so long as it’s honest. I guess my pride is intact on some level or something because I don’t do that, at least not at ...
Stark Raving Sober
“I relieve and release your hurt that you may be set free.” -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland First of all, thank God for the steps! I wouldn’t be able to tell this story without them. I wouldn’t because I would be trapped in the ...
Love Is Not All
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. Edna St. Vincent Millay I’m moving. A...
CANNOT OR WILL NOT COMPLETELY GIVE THEMSELVES
embrace c.1300, from O.Fr. embracer “clasp in the arms, enclose,” from en- “in” + brace “the arms,” from L. bracchium (neut. pl. brachia). Replaced O.E. clyppan, also fæðm. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 D...
John 8:44
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he i...
Juvie
Zach is intelligent, charming, good looking, cool - and he knows it. Young people from the end of the fabric he’s cut from have these shiny Tyvek exteriors reinforced by all the self confidence and self esteem that money can buy. I’m no...
Changed My Style
“I’ve changed my style somewhat, as you know. I’m less—I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I’m more interacting with people.” George W. Bush It has ocurred to me, more than once a...
Score Cards Read Zero
Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves “problem drinkers,” but cannot endure the suggestion that they...
Your Image of Me Is What I Hope to Be
“[H]e had been using crystal meth constantly for several weeks, and was suffering from severe paranoia as a result, when he visited MyOutSpirit.com and saw the photo contest slogan, “Remember who you want to be.” He says that was th...
What if I Was Truly Full?
“I wonder what it would be like if I really lived like I knew everything was going to be all right. Or if I really lived like I knew at all times I was loved and am love. Or if I really lived like I knew that I had access [...]...
The Tao of Texaco
Yield and overcome; bend and be straight; empty and be full; wear out and be new; have little and gain; have much and be confused. Therefore wise men embrace the one and set an example to all. Not putting on a display, they shine forth. Not justifyin...
The Shadow of Meaning
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. - Oliver Wendell Holmes This is first pass writing; the whole blog, not just this post. I rarely take any time to edit. These words fall here as fast as I am ab...
Hooray!
I don’t care what the book says. If it’s not on the first 164 it’s hearsay. Acceptance is absolutely not the key to all my problems today. Honesty, open-mindedness and willingness play a much bigger role. So do humility, courage...
Sideways
“There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.” - Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 58 That pretty much describes me at any given point in my histo...
Get Up, Suit Up, Show Up
We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of...
