Normie's

A HA! It's a widely used term. The normie. I saw in Scouts comment to links that she was waiting for JW to use her magic and make her a normie.

Here's another one of my 'sicknesses.' I fucking hate being a 'normie.' I have gone to my addicts meetings, for cakes and what not, and I always feel like most of the addicts are looking at me thinking, "Pft, normie... what do they know," or "Awe, look at that cute normie, isn't she sweet."

It's stupid insane, I know this, but... I want to scream that "I am not some naive, sweet, stupid girl you know! I grew up in shit too, I know about this shit. I could make you cry with my life too0- ya know! I just couldn't get addicted to drugs. BUT I TRIED!"

Ahh, normies. Tell me addicts that you don't think that, do you? I have normie issues. I'm going to make a t-shirt that says, "I'm fucked up too- so there," or " I know everything about you, BECAUSE I'm a normie."

A New Friend.

Hey guys...if you want, go say "hi" to a newcomer to the blog world...this woman posted a guest blog on my site a few months ago, and now she's got a site of her own. I told her to come check us out over here, but maybe you all can say hello, too...

It's Mother To An Addict...and she's using Wordpress...I don't know if we have some kind of Blogger-only policy....

Hah. Nerd jokes are funny.

The syringe in the sandbox

Quoted from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/08/EDS9RET9T2.DTL:

The syringe in the sandbox

SAN FRANCISCO doesn't want syringes in its sandboxes - or anywhere else in public. But that's not to say a clean-needle giveaway program should end. It just needs to be managed more sensibly.

The city hands out, no questions asked, an enormous number of needles, more than 2 million per year at last count. The reason: the city has an estimated 25,000 injection drug users. Among this crowd, shared needles can pass along hepatitis and HIV, but clean syringes will cut down on infection. It's a real-world accommodation to the drug abuse that exists.

This humane and well-intended program has run for years, but it has reached the breaking point as far as public trust. Why? Because dirty needles show up in public places where users congregate and toss them away.

They're on sidewalks, lawns, in alleys and doorways. Intended to minimize risk, the needles can do just the opposite, if a tainted one jabs a passerby accidentally. This risk is hard to measure because there are no firm numbers on accidental infections from dirty needles.

But the tossed-out syringes come with symbolic value. What kind of city allows its population to freely dump such potentially deadly waste on the civic lap? Parents, pedestrians, visitors - just about anyone - must wonder what sort of geniuses run City Hall when they step over one on the ground. Right now, the program amounts to a giveaway with no requirement or provisions for returning the needles or disposing of them safely. If users won't take responsibility, then the city needs to step in.

It's past time to clean up a program that the public has generally supported. Several steps are worth trying though not all may work.

First, users need to return the needles for safe disposal. More clinics are needed to handle this task though no neighborhood wants such activity. Metal carry kits can allow users to store used syringes until they can be returned.

Also, homeless workers and park clean-up crews should be equipped with disposal boxes. The city should strongly consider the higher cost of retractable needles that can minimize the danger of accidental jabs - though users prefer the customary design. It's a sad commentary on San Francisco's politics that we even have to say that public safety must take priority over the addicts' preferences.

It's time to tighten up this program before it leads to a loss of innocent life.

Well...He Brought It On Himself

This past Friday I had found out that someone I had been good friends with in school had past away at the age of 31.

There was a lot of mystery surrounding this death and everyone had their opinions. We had all seen our friend out at the local bars from time to time. He was about 40-50 pounds heavier than he was in school, sometimes looking for a ride, sometimes looking for money, always annihilated...and always by himself.

Right away everyone made the assumption that he drank/drugged himself to death. The comment was then made by someone..."well, he brought it on himself". See this is what gets me. Yes, if he did drink/drug himself to the point of death, it obviously was brought on by himself but can't these people understand that there was obviously some underlying factors?

Would his death become less upsetting if he caused his own death with drinking and drugging? I don't feel that way but I have a tendency to be able to empathize with about any situation that a person can be in. Obviously when he was younger he didn't dream that one day he would grow up to become a drug addict...things happen.

After attending the wake we then found out that yes, he did have a drug and alcohol problem for many years. He had recently checked into a rehab for this problem. He made it through the treatment and was out on his own. He then suffered a fatal heart attack. All of the tox screens came up negative. He was clean but his body couldn't handle the stress of that.

This is one of those situations where if you let yourself get carried away with the shoulda, woulda, coulda's... you would be in trouble.

I do wish that I had dealt with my own addiction earlier on so that when I did see him I didn't judge him as harshly as I did. I wish I was more understanding of what he was going through. But what I do feel good about is my reaction to his death when it was thought that he died as an active addict.

I didn't hold that against him saying he deserved what he got. Instead I felt awful for his mother and brothers, I thought about how glad I am to not be actively using drugs any longer so that the threat of me dying from drugs has been eliminated and my family never has to deal with that. Mostly I thought about how great it was to have gotten to know him before all of his drug problems. I knew the real person...not the addiction.

OOPS!!

OK, so how ironic is it that I was posting about boundaries when Scout commented that she assumes it's ok to link to me since she saw I had already linked to her? Was I supposed to ask permission first? If so, I apologize to each of you who post here, b/c I added a link for each of your blogs onto mine today. I'll take them off if I wasn't supposed to do that. Please let me know if it's ok or not ok with each of you. And here's my blanket ok for any Write Thought author to add me if you want to.

"I'm broke this is my dollar"

I need some advice to give "F" when he talks about how he has nothing.. He has no money, no phone and recently cant find his drivers license. He complains about this offten and about how its hard to make the phone calls he needs to make cuz he has no phone cuz he has no money and he has no money cuz he has no job. I tell him he just has to get a job even is he has to walk there and back, save every penny and soon enough he will have money to buy the things he needs to get other things he needs. but like to make doctors appts. how is he supposed to do this w/ no phone?..the only reason he has a roof over his head is cuz he is on welfare and they give him the foodstamp card tobuy food. other then that he has nothing... i dont no wut to tell him anymore.. i was helping him with these things.. but he kept lying to me and using.. so im not gunna continue to enable him.. or help him when he isnt even helping himself and he was still using.. i will help him when he is STAYING clean..

i guess im looking for .."what did you do in situations like this.. where you had nothing"

Staying Or Going.

All this talk about staying and going and choosing has made me go back to the time when I had my first big breakthrough with Nar-Anon. I came home one night from a meeting, and I was in the tub, which is the site of many if my best realizations...it came to me that no matter which path I took with my husband, what I needed to do was focus on me.

The work that I was doing in Nar-Anon...the things that I was learning...these were the things that I needed to stick it out with my husband or to be able to leave. To learn to accept that his addiction is not my problem was critical. Never since that night have I thought, "But if I leave him, what will he do?" I stayed with my first husband for far too long because of thinking these kinds of thoughts...wondering what would happen to him if I left and thinking of how sad he'd be.

He was sad. It was hard. But he's FINE.

And if I leave this man, he'll be fine, too.

And learning that his mess is not my problem was important for me to be able to stay. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting better. A few nights ago, he was making a list of goals for himself. When he is doing something like that, he usually wants me to sit next to him an feed goals to him. Generally, I'm all too eager to comply, to give him my insight and wisdom and answers (hah), and then, he wakes up the next day, and he doesn't want to do any of the stuff on the list, and I get my heart broken. So most recently, I said, "I don't think it's a good idea for me to help you. Why don't you just come up with a few small goals that you know you can accomplish and that you know will make you feel good?"

And of course, he's only done a few of the things on the list...and that's ok, because it's not my list.

It took me a while to remember that not everyone has that urge to get an A+ on every assignment. If I make a list of goals, I'll do them, all, and do them to perfection. I'm a nerd like that...but that's another post.

So I'm rambling...but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I found it really empowering when I recognized that no matter which path I choose with my husband, what I needed was to focus on myself, making myself strong and happy.

The Object Of My Attention

I think the unhealthy aspect of addiction and codependency is how it demands that people dealing with it not act in their own best interest and that they ignore their own desires. It is whether or not we are maintaining our own health and paying attention to the fulfillment of our desires that is the pertinent question as opposed to whether one stays or leaves. The answer to that becomes academic if we are taking care of ourselves. Because if one is healthy and fulfilled, they are stronger and more tolerant and more apt to make decisions that will be best for both themselves and those they love.

The other point I want to make is I truly believe that this talk of sickness is not the answer. Instead, talk of health and fulfillment... talk of the solution would be a better focus. We do need to be aware of the problem but we must remember to give the majority of our attention to the remedy, to what we want and to what is best. Otherwise we will continue to define the problem more and the solution less.

Too Ugly For N.A.

My husband is a doofus.

I was getting dressed for my meeting yesterday, which (subsequently) I somehow managed to be too late to make. My man was on the couch, and he was so handsome and silly, and I kept sitting down next to him and kissing him, and it made me late...

But all day, I was talking about how we'd go to the meeting together. See, he told me that he wants to start going to meetings, but that he's going to have to say that he's going to go and then not go and make me cry fifty or sixty more times before he actually makes it to one and starts really being ready to go. I decided to make yesterday be #1 in the times when we'd do that little dance of madness.

So I'm getting dressed, and saying, "I'm so glad you're coming with me to the meeting tonight! It's like a dream come true! You're such an angel prince baby husband pie from heaven!" And he would say, "Yes! I am! Let's buy me things! Please make lunch for me!"

We did it all day. It was awesome. You should have been there.

So finally, I'm about to walk out the door with 5 minutes to get to the meeting that is 25 minutes across town (I ended up just going to buy groceries and run some errands instead), and he says that he doesn't want to go because he looks too bad. He said he's too ugly to go to meetings...and he wasn't playing. He meant it that he thinks he's too ugly to go to meetings.

I wanted to cry, or slap him, or shake him. First, he's fucking gorgeous...a gorgeous, gorgeous, beautiful man. And second, last time I checked, you don't have to be in a fantastic place to start going to fucking Narcotics Anonymous. It's not like it's for folks at the top of their game, especially when you're just starting out. He said, "I look so bad, and I don't have a job. I want to start going when I look better and feel better and I'm working so I won't feel like such a fuck-up."

Isn't that the saddest thing?

The End.

Why I stay/ my struggle with my own addiction/ confusing mess

The questions and the answers of the last week have really stirred me. I want to own the positives of why I stay- the love, the committment. I have to own the rest of it too, here more than anywhere, and that is MY addiction, my addiction to my addict. Somehow, it's the addiction piece that keeps bubbling up first, and that's what's troubling to me.

I started my recovery in Codependents Anonymous, about a decade before I even met my addict. Each week, I heard the characteristics of a codependent. One is that we are extremely loyal, remaining in situations that are harmful for far too long. I heard Mantra share that for a moment, the pain of staying was greater than the pain of leaving. I was in that place, in a moment that startled even me, back in March. My addict was making choices about our family that I couldn't live with. She saw how it was affecting me. She back-pedalled. But the damage was done. At the time, I felt so stuck, that I had no decent options. The pain of staying was overwhelming, but so was the pain of going.

Damn, it's 6 months later, and we're in such a good place right now, but just writing about this brings me right back there. It's not healed. It's buried. And this is NOT where I was going with this post. But I guess it is. I am addicted to my addict. Like any addiction, it starts as a great ride. But what used to bring pleasure begins to bring pain. And it's my addiction that kept me here in the midst of the worst of the pain. When I'm honest with myself, it wasn't the love, it wasn't the commitment, it was the addiction that kept me here through the worst of it. I couldn't stop, even when it hurt.

You know, this stuff is so messy. Sometimes I wish I were addicted to a specific substance, and one that is not necessary for life. I am a codependent. My addiction is to relationships. And even if I chose to leave this particular relationship, even if I chose to be single forever, I can't choose NOT to be in relationship, period. I'm also a compulsive overeater. And I can't choose NOT to eat at all. So I muddle through with the tools I have found in my programs of recovery- detachment, a plan of eating, working the steps.

But here's what else I find confusing. I'm grateful for my addiction. I'm glad that I was stubborn enough, or loving enough, or commited enough or even most likely sick-addicted enough to make it through the worst part and be in this good place that we're building right now.

I don't know. I'm all over the place. I think I'm just gonna stop this post here and put it out there. Thanks for letting me ramble.