My name is Rod and I am including a little personal information about myself in hopes it may help someone that may be sick and suffering from the disease of addiction and realize there is hope. I was born in California and grew up in a single parent household. My Mother being the sole proprietor of my early life. I have one sister who is two years younger than I. I have some younger brothers but they grew up with my Dad and we had no contact at all.

We moved to Reno, Nevada from California when I was around 7. My early memories of California are fairly jumbled but the flashes show I started dabbling with cigarettes around the age of 6 and was starting fires as well. These flashes also show the quality of the people in my mothers life at that time were not of a very high caliber. At that time my mother used drugs and alcohol. She wasn't blatant about it in front of us, except when she was drunk. My mother was a black out binge drinker. Extremely volatile, violent and sadistic in her lashing out with pent up hostility, anger and spite. The alcohol dislodged her sanity for awhile and us kids were the closest things to vent upon. If you are an adult child of an alcoholic parent this may sound familiar. I lived through it and place no blame for my drug use or road of addiction on my mothers behavior. I do however see how certain behaviors are grafted onto a child's brain and reoccur during parenthood. I place this part of the story here to clarify some hostility towards her in some of my poetry.

I was withdrawn from the family unit as a child, as I remember it, and really had no desire to associate with my mother. I was mean to my sister most of the time and settled things with her getting hurt. This did nothing for my mothers perception of me and I was blamed for most things that happened in the household. I was glad because I would rather take the beating than listen to my sister screaming while being beaten down the hall. Though she was mothers baby she got her fair share during the periodic blackouts that were sure to come bi-monthly or sooner. We couldn't really keep anything that we cherished as the blackout monster would rip it to shreds if we cast an endearing look towards it. Whether it be a favorite toy or the whole room, it became cannon fodder for mothers marauding revenge.

Living in Reno, Nevada did not help her disease. In Reno you can dream about doubling your paycheck at the 21 table and receive "free" drinks while you are playing? Well there are other states and places and they have their horror stories and statistics. This is what occurred with my mother. The gambling addiction had her and the "free" drinks made her lose her senses while playing. She goes from winning to penniless. Somewhere along the way the blackout effect takes hold and it is on. DUI, wrecked cars, calling from jail, etc. Then it is on to home and where are those kids and is that a speck on the floor, fucking ungrateful kids, etc. The thing that is confusing to us as kids is that in the morning she wakes up and asks what has happened to the house and us physically. We have to tell her she did it to us again, live with her in er self disgust, her sorrow, her disease and then walk on eggshells knowing it will come again.

Don't get me wrong. I was no angel after 9 years old but before that there was no call for this type of treatment and it is damaging. At age 8 my mother had a friend and her daughter over for spaghetti. They let us kids have some red wine and we drank probably half of the gallon together and got drunk. I remember laughing, being goofy, feeling euphoric, playing cards and then puking all down the hall. The adults thought it was comical to see us stagger.This was the one and only time my mother approved of me using. We had baby-sitters of course because Mom worked nights doing cocktails in the casinos (Oh yeah she worked in a casino) Because in her day she was a looker. The baby-sitters were neighborhood kids in high school and into drugs. They used in our house and fashioned the trusty old toilet paper rolls and tin foil pipes to get high with, drank alcohol (also a drug) and engaged in sexual activities at the house. They were not stingy with their drugs always offering us kids at 8 & 6 years old a hit or a drink. I always refused, until that one day. This is what they call peer pressure.

It was age 9 that I succumbed to the peer pressure and curiosity. When asked by the neighborhood kids if my Mom had one of those "little white cigarettes" I remembered that she had one in an old box that had been there for some time and went and retrieved it for them. As they smoked it they asked if I wanted a hit and I said that I did. I smoked it and felt goofy and euphoric again kind of like being drunk but I didn't get sick. I soon found out that all the older kids in our neighborhood were "heads". I used every anything offered to me at every chance I could after that. We still had a baby-sitter who was sixteen and not a "head" but was not the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood. She was becoming sexually curious and took me, at age nine, and played "house" which included intercourse and oral sex. For me it was an opportunity to learn and I had fun messing around. It was sneaky and I was a sneak at that age. Her older brother was a thief and turned me on to car burglaries at nine. We pulled one and got away with a wallet with $300.00. He got caught and snitched us off and I got in big trouble for it. These incidents at nine were the beginning of a long path of self destruction.

To cut it a little short; I had the desire to use drugs all the time. I believed with all my soul that I enjoyed getting high. Our house became party central as my Mom worked at night and we stayed home alone after a few more baby-sitting incidents. I was supplied with drugs just for having the place to go and party. On more that one occasion my mother came home early and witnessed the gaggle of teenagers become a fleeting tracer as they escaped through the back door. My mother was feared by the kids in the neighborhood while I was not. I was an average sized kid, no one very special and I didn't feel that special unless we were having a party. That was when I felt either sheer joy or sheer terror depending on the size of the other kids and the level of intoxication and potential for damage to the house.

My mother began to file complaints on me for incorrigible behavior with the Reno Police and I began to be arrested and taken to juvenile detention for the smallest infractions. I became accustomed to being woke up in the middle of the night and checked for red eye and accused of being high. I became accustomed to be handcuffed and taken away in the patrol car to Whittenberg Hall in the middle of the night. The guards at Juvenile Hall began to know my name and welcomed me "home" when I would show up in the middle of the night, being booked again for Incorrigible behavior. Getting High was my crime. I was powerless once the impulse hit me to get high, the impulse led to a strong obsession and a followed with a compulsion to use stronger than was the willingness to stay out of juvenile hall. It was simpler than that. I just did not think or play the tape through to the end. So I began to stay high. At 13 I was introduced to a 12 step program and an in-house recovery center in Fallon, Nevada. I think I spent 28 days there but cannot remember.

I wasn't like these people in this recovery house. They were burned out and desperate. I was 13, invincible and knew it all. It was hard not to hear a message subliminally in the meetings. Even if I didn't listen and participate in the meetings, my mind was absorbing the seed of recovery. I was released from that treatment program with the intentions of not partying again at my Mom's house and not using but the porch light came on after my mom went to work again and like a beacon the "heads" came to the light and it was on again. Countless more trips to juvenile detention landed me in "special" programs in juvenile hall and the to the state youth training center in Elko, Nevada. I was told that I had a hard time facing reality and was lacking in social interactivity. I was a loner and wore it proud. I was extremely well built due to working out and fighting fires while incarcerated and cocky when released from the junior klink. I was benching around 350 and I had my choice of all the girls in the neighborhood. What a ride. Released at 16 years old after a one and a half year sentence (break for my mother) I was determined to keep that porch light off.

Who the hell was I fooling! My addiction was screaming for vengeance and parched from the abstinence. I did try though but was overcome by the obsession and compulsion to use and to be part of this head culture. I was sent to a foster living situation and broke the rules. Same results, same consequences but different outcome. I left home and the probation department behind. Having been introduced to a couple of guys that were "cool" by a neighborhood thug I called them and they said come on over and they will help.

Can anyone guess what happened next? We got loaded on cocaine and shrooms. One of them accosted me and gave me the options of letting him suck my d**k or getting out and facing reality again. I chose to stay in a stuporous state and be molested for drugs and a place to stay for the 7 months or so. Staying as numb as I could possibly get, feeling confused and alone I hung out on the streets of Reno with the other street kids. I burglarized homes and continued injecting meth amphetamines. I had first injected meth at age 15. I found that I was in love..............with the feeling of madness that the meth creates.... Anything that could change my reality was good for me....and if I could scare myself to death while I was high......it was even better for the rush.... This was my sickness.

The shame and degradation from allowing myself to be molested became too much for me. My behavior became unacceptable so the molester who used me shipped me off to California to Bodega Bay. I lived in the mountains with a hippie family where I became burdensome for them after a while. I was then shipped to Tacoma, Washington and given some money and a write off from the Reno pedophile. He had found no way control me, had no way to fulfill my insatiable lust for more dugs and had no way to manage my constant insane actions due to my addiction. I now know that my insanity and un manageability was a blessing for me since then I have learned that this pedophile died from AIDS related symptoms some time back. There for the grace of God go I.

So I ended up in Tacoma, Washington at 17 in 1984 and milled about with the insane street people so conveniently placed on the streets by a cut in mental health funding by the US Government in those years. I was running and gunning with the lowest of the low. Same shit again burglaries, strong arm robberies and dealing dope to make ends meet. I had a relationship with some of the Crips and Bloods up there and unbelievably I was able to go into the worst neighborhoods and actually keep a level of respect with gang members and not be killed in the process. That is some divine intervention I would say.

I met a needy 16 year old girl spoiled brat and we got married 2 years later and had a little girl. All that time we were dealing and using drugs. We were a mess and neither knew what we were doing in life or together. I slept with her sister, big mistake, and my ex-wife tried to drive me insane by being a raving bitch. I decided my reality sucked and began ingesting large amounts of LSD and Meth daily as a way of creating a new reality. I created a new reality all right. One that would fetch me a stay for 3 months in Western State Mental Hospital. No sleep and no eat make Rod a psychotic schizophrenic maniac. I had created a chemical imbalance in my brain which lead to a state of complete paranoia, depression, anxiety attacks, fear, aggression, thoughts of suicide and homicide, messages from car license plates, hearing voices, feeling like I was under surveillance, thinking people were robots and everyone was out to get me. How self centered to think I was worth all that effort, money and resources to track my every move. I was insane. My ex-wife drove me to California to visit my family thinking it would help and all the way I wanted to jump out the car door in front of a tractor trailer and kill myself. Visiting my family did nothing for me. I thought they were all robots trying to get information on me. It was horrible, I was uncomfortable everywhere I went, just a wreck of a human being. The paranoia became so overwhelming that they took me to the County Mental Health facility where they gave me some Ativan to mellow me out. I left worse off emotionally than when we came. Somewhat calmer but still far from okay.

I was definitely certifiable and after getting home to Washington. I woke up the next day, gave the baby a bottle, took the whole bottle of Ativan and went back to bed. When my wife couldn't wake me she called the ambulance and I ended up in the County Hospital and immediately upon waking left the hospital against doctors orders. Failure to end my life pushed me into a deep depression and my schizophrenic symptoms were still there as well. So I had a stay in the state mental hospital for 3 months and took psychotropic's to balance the chemicals in my brain which I had worked so hard to alter. Psychotic, schizophrenic, delusional and volatile from the chemical madness I walked the halls in a self created world of paranoia and guilt for past infractions against myself and humanity. The piper had called and I was pretending I was not home. My denial of my disease of addiction had me repeating mistakes expecting different consequences and my downward spiral continued. That place was insane. The people tripped me out and it was one experience that is actually, now, comical to look back on. Loonies. My Ex-wife moved on in 3 months to another relationship before I had even got out of the hospital. It was irreconcilable.

I was released from the hospital in September of 1989 and went from the hospital grounds to a Greyhound terminal and on a bus to Tracy, California. Who was there? My Mom took me in. Beaten down by my own hand and feeling very alone and damaged I began once again to write poems to heal some of these wounds. My ex-wife had kept all of my previous poetry "lyrics" that were of the blackest caliber and even could have been labeled incriminating evidence in their ferociousness. I took medication, Stelazene, to tranquilize me and Benadryl to help me breathe at night and sleep well. I don't remember to breathe sometimes.

I started attending some 12 step meetings as my Mom had been going to meetings for awhile. (I gave her a 23 Year Chip on 04-07-07) I went to AA meetings. I cannot say I ever felt as if I got "it" there. I had sat in a chair for a year at those meetings and slept with a couple of the women. I had found a sponsor but the problem was I had not even worked a step with him. Actually I didn't mention working a step and neither did he. We went to ball games and hung out. I became bored with my life and had no program. I stopped taking the tranquilizers prescribed for me when they started to make me lethargic. I felt better for not being so doped.

I started a new job, where I worked alone a lot and did very well while remaining abstinent. Eventually coworkers were added to the crew and asked if I wanted to come over for a beer, then if I wanted a hit off a pipe, a line, etc. Within a week after just that beer, that hit and that line I was using intraveneiously again. I started hanging out in the bars and pool halls and selling meth. Oh yeah, and I used. I used with a vengeance. I had found my friend the needle and was busy playing connect the dots. I have learned that I cannot just do a little. I have to do a lot and wait a few minutes and do some more. There was a primal feeling when I injected meth and it coursed through my veins. I felt as if I could rip someone's heart out and eat it. I thought I had the solution in intravenous use. It didn't seem to drive me as insane as snorting the dope. This thinking was pure insanity!

I got the same results. I slowly went insane after repeated, obsessive, compulsive and daily using. I was doing so well with a good job and had a great girlfriend. But the dope was more important than any of it. The dope brought me to my knees again. The same path of madness. The same imbalance was achieved. I wasn't an in-patient at a psychiatric ward but had to take medication again from the visual and auditory hallucinations. I abstained for about 11 months because I was half insane for that whole time.

I became bored with the daily existence without dope. I was unemployed after rehabilitation from a bad car wreck (Another little fun ride that lead to nowhere but pain). I left my girlfriend and I moved back to where I grew up, Nevada. I missed my old friend/enemy (Dope). Once again my complacency got the best of me and I was again on a mission of self destruction. Hell bent to degrade myself one more time and act "as if" I knew what I was doing. I used everyone around me to get what I wanted and felt remorse only when there wasn't enough dope to push back the feelings and guilt. Normally I was caught or cornered with the truth before I would feel anything. I tried to feel nothing but that primal injection. I sought and found my shackles of addiction again and willingly put them on until I began to hate myself again. I could buy needles over the counter in Nevada. What a bonus!

At this point I had been using everyone that I could to help me survive. If it wasn't nailed down I stole it. I knew what I was and I felt like that is all I would ever be. An addict, a thief, a liar, a lowlife, junkie, dealer, cheater, hype and pathetic excuse for a human being. My compulsion to use lead me ever farther into self degradation and self hatred as my will to stop using faded to a inaudible background noise. The constant cycle of "Man this is the last one" began and vanished as I awoke to run the gauntlet again; searching for ways and means to get more dope to get well again. You see one day turned into 4 or five. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were one day. I had a four day week. Four to get high and a couple to sleep and another to "acquire" the money to do it all again.

Of course I had a Toyota Celica with a missing passenger window, a chain to hold the trunk closed, spray painted flat black (by me in my sisters garage on a runnnnnneeeeerrrr) with a touch of red underbelly, a trunk of stolen power tools, no registration, no insurance, a suspended drivers license and high as a kite from a night on LSD and tracks on my arms. That morning I was kicked out of my place to live and I met up with the Sheriffs department while driving away with all my stuff and went to jail . I began to realize that their must be a higher power somewhere watching over me because I witnessed major miracles in the next few months. They are hard to explain but I started to see glimpses of small divine intervention.

But I still used after that too. Homeless, jobless and penniless I was released from jail. I lived in the nasty part of town with a crazy chick (no sex just lived there as a watcher for her place) that took me in for awhile. Found a 4 hr a night job and kept using. Some other shit happened but I will move on. Needless to say I didn't like myself, I didn't like the people I was associating with and was as needy as I had ever been.

Then one day the drugs stopped working for me. I would inject them into my body and the regular results began to dwindle. I wasn't a speed demon anymore. More like catatonic. I sat and stared at the wall and could barely snap myself out of it. I Felt numb and dead inside of myself. The hole inside my soul would not fill up. I was sad and looked around at where I was and found that I had no desire to stay in the mire of self hate any longer. But as before I did not have the power to stop using. Though I only occasionally felt high, I continued to acquire the money and buy and use large amounts of drugs. Compulsion!

It will suffice to say that for 10 years using was "fun" and for 10 more using was a living Hell. I had come to accept that I was an addict probably 5 years or more before and I used the label as an excuse for my deviant behavior. Pain was my daily companion when I was using narcotics. Fear, anger, self loathing and loneliness were my only friends. I slept with anger and woke up to look at myself in the mirror and wonder why I chose to continue living. Hundreds of promises broken and a continual search for more and more Anesthesia to numb the anguish from my lack of integrity. No one knew who I was and what I had seen and done. The downward spiral of my addiction left me without hope, without self-trust, without a family, without faith in myself or humanity, without a home and without an ounce of dignity. WITHOUT. Spiritually dead and exhausted I began to believe that I had no way out.

It was at this point, unknowingly to me, that I became willing to surrender. A girl I had just met (read was having sex with) and was using with, who was court ordered to 12 step meetings and asked me to accompany her to a 12 step meeting. I told her, "I would love to go, but I am not going to hold your hand as your crutch, I want to help myself." I was afraid, ashamed and just needed something other than waht I had, had for years. (Unfortunately the last time I saw her she was dirty, exhausted, crying and incoherently talking about the cartoons getting her. Having a couple of years clean in a 12 step program I knew there was nothing I could do for her besides listen and tell her that she doesn't have to live that way any more. I suggested she go to meetings and left it at that.)

I went to a 12 step meeting that focused on recovery from the disease of addiction and felt at home. I met a few people who seemed to genuinely care if I came back and I kept going back to meetings and met more recovering addicts. I didn't stop using right away. I didn't just let go of my old friend (dope in all it's forms) right away. I did stop after 2 weeks.

November 14, 1995 was the day I committed to something, other than daily anguish and self torture, for the first time in my life. From this first commitment all present commitments in my life have developed and grown.

Instead of buying more dope I bought 12 step literature based on recovery from the disease of addiction.

I began to read 12 step recovery literature out load to myself slowly while riding the city bus or sitting in the park. Sometimes I read so fast that I don't comprehend a word. I began to understand that I had arrived at a place that was safe and I only had to have the desire to stop using and this desire with a little action would change my entire life. I also began to understand that no one else would be able to help me until I honestly wanted to help myself and that I had no one to blame for the way I had chose to live the past 20 years.

I attended 12 step recovery meetings daily and looked around for someone that I thought I could trust. Mind you this is not the same as someone I could relate to or someone just like me. But someone that I felt was spiritually healthy and had a certain nature that I wanted to emulate. I asked this person to be my sponsor and I began to work the steps with him. I began to have positive feelings about the world around me and myself, I wept while I read the 12 step literature and as I worked my steps. I called other members of the 12 step program to help me through this time. I grieved the loss of my constant friend and enemy; drugs in all their various forms. I was emotionally involved with drugs for so long it seemed I had lost a great part of myself in letting them go. I worked through it and talked about it in meetings.

I wholeheartedly shared my experience, strength and hope with fellow members in meetings and after meetings where members got together for coffee or lunch. I Bared my soul for all to see in my confessions at meetings. I didn't care who heard my tale of insanity, I only knew that I would die if I didn't get help for my disease and that my feelings of shame, guilt and self loathing were part of my disease and I had to let them out for fear of being consumed by them. Some members looked at me as if I was beyond contempt when I shared but most said "I did that too" and gave me a hug. You would be surprised to know how many addicts have been molested or prostituted themselves and have tremendous amounts of guilt stored away from these traumatic experiences.

I sat on my hands in meetings so I could listen more intently. I hugged people before and after the meetings, whether they knew me or not. I got involved with making coffee (Which is the most valued and fondly remembered of my service positions), being trusted with the meeting facility key!, being a secretary, treasurer, GSR, regional webmaster, going to conventions and functions. From these actions I have learned responsibility to myself and others, how to show up, be on time, be accountable and also to have fun and enjoy the miracle of recovery in many peoples lives.

I bought other literature from this 12 step recovery program and read that to myself. I started to feel like I could do this recovery thing. In my first two weeks clean someone in the fellowship died and I cried my ass off in a meeting. I didn't know that person, hadn't even met her but I wept for myself, for what I had become, where I had been going and the chance I was giving myself by getting clean. Because that person that died showed me the reality of this disease. I was told and I believe that some die so some may live and I was going to live if I could help it and by being an example I would help others. I wanted to be one of those people at the annual gratitude dinner that stood up and helped to break the newcomers heart when they thought about obtaining a few years clean. It seemed achievable to me to be a tool for inspiriting hope and determination in the fight for lives.

I got into a relationship with another addict after 6 months. I played it cool and thought I was okay. I was insecure and so very sick. I disgraced myself in my own eyes, felt a lot of shame and was the subject of some gossip. I got out of that relationship and kept coming back to meetings even through the jeers and sideways glances. I spoke about my feelings in meetings about the gossip and about the situation. I stood up and fuck you'd everyone in meetings and had the resolve to let everyone know that regardless of opinions or my own shame I was there to stay.

Soon after I got into another relationship with a woman who is not an addict. It worked out very well and I committed myself to this wonderful woman on May 25, 1997 in matrimony and we just celebrated our 10th Anniversary! We have 2 daughters who are beautiful, intelligent and smarter than us both it seems at times. Through all of it I keep coming back to my 12 step recovery meetings, am in service to fellow addicts and continue to learn about the disease of addiction and its continual affect on my life. I try to remain teachable and approachable by others. I have found a talent for computer technology and currently am building a few custom computers each month and have built all PC's where I work and have taken on an IT profession.

Life is not easy, but it is a lot better than it was before I got clean. I try and remember to be just and honorable each day. Without the support and love of the fellow members within the 12 step fellowship I am involved with and some honest action on my part I could not have stayed clean. I also have to thank my Higher Power for answering my prayers of desperation, continually being there when I ask for help and showing me glimpses of a divine prescence in my life.

If you are reading this and think you have a substance abuse problem please give yourself a break and look for a 12 step Anonymous program near you in the phonebook, call and ask for help, attend a few meetings (MORE THAN ONE, preferably 90 meetings in 90 days) and see if recovery is something you may have a desire to achieve. The alternative for many addicts are Jails, Institutions and Death. I pray you that no addicts seeking recovery may die from the horrors of addiction without finding and applying a 12 step program to their life.

My experience is: using drugs in all forms and repeatedly abusing myself sucks and makes me hate myself and everyone around me.

My strength is: I found a 12 step program that deals with recovery from addiction, was beaten enough to surrender to the concept that I was an addict and could not use drugs successfully and was honestly willing to change my life with a little positive action.

My hope is: That if you think you are an addict that you will find a 12 step program that suits you and be willing to change and keep coming back for many years to come. The only requirement for membership in a 12 step program is a desire to stop using.

(The above My's was how I chaired a meeting one might when I overheard someone say before the meeting "Not Rod again I have heard his story too many times.")

My formula for living is; Choices + Decisions + Actions = Consequences (positive or negative)

 I am still a strange person, just a tad bit saner these days. I quit smoking January 8, 2000 which not only improves my life but those of my wife and daughters too. Like I said I have a family and go to work 5 days a week. I work in the Environmental Field and enjoy it. I have designed the web site for our company. I have been on the computer since about 1997 or so and have learned all of the things I know on my own. I love my wife and daughters very much and enjoy their company each day. My wife and I have a very amiable relationship and enjoy each others company. I married my wife because of her nature, she is also gorgeous which doesn't hurt.

I am proud to have the chance to uproot the family tree and try and cut out the ugliness that the disease of addiction and inherent abuse have caused. As far back as I look it has been there and it is time that it stops. Why not with me? Hence the name of this site - The Broken Link. I am glad that I am not a single parent. I praise those women and men who are single and get clean and raise their kids alone. Much respect to the single Mom's (and Dad's). My experience with taking my kids to 12 step meetings was a personal Hell. I couldn't hear the message while worrying about or trying to control my kid so I didn't go to meetings regularly for a few years. They are now a little bigger and my wife and I don't work opposite shifts so I am freed up to get to more meetings. I would not recommend this interruption in 12 step meetings to anyone. I felt very disconnected in a lot of respects at that time and was fairly miserable inside. I had a service commitment that did not require I make meetings to keep, it only required I have a working knowledge of the 12 traditions of the 12 step program and adhere to them in my actions.

I have a very diverse interest in music. I still am a delinquent and listen to Metal Music and go to the occasional concert. My all time favorite metal band is Iron Maiden even though the newer stuff they have put out is not as good as the old school stuff. I am fond of a lot of different types of music: Rock, Classic Rock, Classical, New Age, Acoustic, Irish Rock, Rap, etc. I took up playing the guitar again after a 8 or 9 year hiatus while raising my kids from infant to now young ladies. I have been getting back into it and the tools available not are very cool. I seem to be learning much more now than I ever could when I was using or when I first got clean. It is also like a meditation to sit alone and just feel the music flow. I have been focusing on a lot of Blues music and some of the tracks I have been working on are found on my web design site here.

I like Ice Hockey and watching it on the tube when I can find time.

Life is pretty "normal" these days. There isn't any of the drama of the past. Time is the only limiting factor which seems to be in short demand daily. My desire to be a good husband, father, employee, friend and also be of service to the 12 step fellowship of my choice takes my time. I am not idly sitting around waiting for life to hand something to me anymore, I am also not taking from everyone around me what I want, I am living a full life with it's ups and downs and learning how to repair my fractured spirit gradually through trial and error. The difference today is a failure is not a fatal error or a reason to sink into myself. Today failure and success are just experiences that build character and shape my being. This is a progression of spiritual growth for me.

I still write poetry or what I call poetry. It used to be that I wrote lyrics but my newest poetry is more unstructured and free flowing than the typical rhyming poems I wrote before. I used to write a lot of poetry when I was using and when I first got clean. I think writing saved my life. I can look back any time that I like, through my poetry, and see the way it felt when I used and then look at how it feels now that I am clean. I can see the confusion and pain I created for myself and others for all those years. It doesn't take a lot of brains to realize the difference between then and now.

I taught myself to build computers from many various sources on the internet and have successfully built, refurbished and sold many machines since 2001. There is so much to learn and trying to keep up with technology is almost impossible. I got into PC gaming for awhile but found it very addictive and have since moved away from it. I have started up a side project designing web sites and doing computer repair locally. My web site for this is Exhead.com

So, I am, today, clean. I learned that Just For Today not only means I don't use one day at a time, but also means being honorable to others and myself each day. I don't go to meetings everyday as I used to when I first started attending. But I am a member of a 12 step fellowship that focuses on recovery from the disease of addiction. I attend meetings when I can, because I want to attend, I go when I feel good and when I feel bad, and know where to go when my head begins to demonize.

I have a life now that takes a lot of my time. Supporting my family and trying to be a good husband/father. The feeling I get from being dependable and honorable in my current affairs with God, family, society and myself is liberating. I no longer have to remember what I said to whom, or what I did to whom in the past. I have learned a lot from my mistakes, but it did take around 15 years from that first treatment center where I attended my first 12 step meeting for the seed to sprout and grow.

Politics, Religion, etc.

A person should tell you where he sits before he tells you where he stands. I think that is a good policy. Politically, I hold with Thomas Jefferson that "the government that governs least governs best". I am a centrist, absolutist on the First Amendment and pretty much pro choice across the board. If I had to summarize my philosophy in a snappy bumper stick, it would read "God save me from people who want to save me".

Spiritually, I believe in a God of love, not of vengeance. I believe Jesus was a man who learned certain laws of living, but more importantly implemented them in his life. Do I think that means he was not divine. Not necessarily. I believe he was divine in that he, more than anyone before or since, manifested the Laws of God in his being and in his life. That could perhaps also be said of the Buddha and Mohammed, as well. I don't believe in Heaven and Hell in the traditional sense. I believe that God is more than the little conceptual box most of us try to squeeze Him/Her/It into.

You will find that I am hard to stereotype or pigeon hole. I like it that way. We all play a not-so-unconscious role in life. I guess mine would be the role of "maverick". I believe my right to extend my arm ends just short of where you nose begins. Beyond that ... I really don't care what people do if it makes them happy and harms no one else.

Mostly you will come to know who and what I am in my words, in the areas I share with you. It would be nice if you agreed with the things I share with you, but it really doesn't matter if you don't. The world is a big place and there is plenty of room for the rich diversity of lifestyles, ideas and opinions that make up this little flickering excursion we call "life".

Acceptance of me

If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view. Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly. Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you. I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right -- for me.

To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.

Some things I have learned from others in the program.

Recovery is a choice.
You can welcome an addict to recovery, but you can't work it for him/her.
Recovery is for those who want it, not those who need it.
Some of us must die, so some of us may live.
If I don't take a drug, I cannot get loaded.
The first drug will get me loaded.
I have the right to self-destruct.
My misery will be refunded at my request.
Your opinion of me is none of my business.
I do not have to take a drug today.
I cannot stay clean alone for very long.
There is a big difference between not using and being clean.
I am an addict.
We do recover.
I am responsible for my recovery.
I know the difference between right and wrong.
I have another runner left in me.
I do not know if I have another recovery left in me.
I cannot change the past.
Recovery is a journey, not a sudden stop.
I am powerless over many things besides narcotics.
Life is good.
Our children are a reflection of our spiritual well-being.

Worth

When my life has reached its very end,
And I take that final breath;
I want to know I've left behind,
Some "good" before my death.
I hope that in my final hour,
In all honesty I can say:
That somewhere in my lifetime,
I have brightened someone's day.
That maybe I have brought a smile
To someone else's face,
And made one moment a little sweeter
While they dwelled here in this place.
Lord, please be my reminder
And whisper softly in my ear ...
To be a "giver," not a "taker,"
In the years I have left here.
Give to me the strength I need,
Open up my mind and my soul ...
That I might show sincere compassion,
And love to others before I go.
For if not a heart be touched by me,
And not a smile was left behind ...
Then the life that I am blessed with,
Will have been a waste of time.
With all my heart, I truly hope
To leave something here on earth ...
That touched another, made them smile
And gave to my life ... worth.
~ Author Unknown ~

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