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Issue 35 | January 26, 2012 |
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Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.
--George Carlin
A new year holds promise and provides a "second chance." A new year also can be a time when you see all that you have yet to accomplish and question your ability to face those challenges. You may think it was hard enough to admit you needed to stop your addictive behaviors and even harder to stay focused on recovery. To know that a new year heralds the continued need to stay on the same path can seem daunting.
Make this year different. Resolve to look within you, at what you can and need to do for yourself, and to look outside you, at what you can do for others. While self-awareness is key to your recovery, remember that recovery is both a hand reaching out and a hand being grasped.
Recovery does not happen in isolation. One of the strengths of the program is interdependence and fellowship. Attending to your needs as well as to the needs of others can provide you with renewed energy to recover from your past, commitment to stay focused on the present, and the ability to foresee a future that holds hope and promise.
I will awaken each day to a new beginning--not just for myself, but also for others.
--from Morning Light: A Book of Meditations to Begin Your Day by Amy E. Dean, author of Night Light |
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| In the News |
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Hazelden's new recovery support app, the Mobile MORE® Field Guide to Life, is now available and offers recovery tools and support wherever you are. In this interview, Jodie Carter, Hazelden's electronic products manager, talks about the app and her favorite features.
The new Mobile MORE® Field Guide to Life app from Hazelden supports those in recovery no matter where they are. Born from MORE, or My Ongoing Recovery Experience, a web-based program of personalized continuing care provided by Hazelden to our clients, the Field Guide to Life app offers the best of this program to the entire sober community. Offering a year of recovery support with inspirational messages, weekly challenges, tools for tracking progress, a community support system, and relapse prevention tools, this app will teach you essential skills connected to core recovery principles. Learn about the development of this app from Jodie Carter, Hazelden's electronic products manager, as she talks you through her favorite aspects of the app.
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| Ask the Expert |
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Today it is a widely accepted truth that alcoholism is a progressive disease like any other, with symptoms, treatments, and recovery. In this short excerpt from Alcohol: It's History, Pharmacology, and Treatment, authors Mark Rose, M.A., and Cheryl Cherpitel, Dr.P.H., provide a brief history of the disease concept of alcoholism.
Three key issues helped usher in the birth of a disease concept of alcoholism in America. The first was the emergence of alcohol problems resulting in a breakdown of community norms that had long contained drunkenness in colonial America; the second was the changing patterns of consumption from fermented beverages to distilled spirits; and the third was the nearly threefold increase in alcohol consumption between 1790 and 1830.
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| Story of Hope |
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 The daily work required in recovery can lead one to ask, "Why try?" In Gifts of Sobriety by Barbara S. Cole, the promises of the Big Book are illustrated with real world examples to answer this question. In this excerpt, Cole explains how those promises extend beyond health, family, and friends, to living your best life possible.
Why should anyone undertake the painful journey to be free of alcohol or drug addiction? It is so easy to turn a deaf ear to the impending reality of the consequences that addiction brings, so very easy to put off the inevitable fear and discomfort of withdrawal.
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| Spirituality |
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 Reflecting on one's life story or telling it to others is intertwined with each of the Twelve Steps. Putting that story in your own words, to share with others or for your own personal growth, is often a helpful exercise. In this excerpt from My Story to Yours, author Karen Casey explains what she gained from writing her story, and how doing the same could help others.
My name is Karen, and I'm an alcoholic. But I am more than that label and that's what I will explore in the pages of this book. Labels limit us, even though they also help define us. Was I always an alcoholic? Was that first drink at thirteen, poured before the unseeing eyes of my parents, the event that determined the rest of my journey?
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| Sober24 News |
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Throughout the month of February, join Craig Nakken, author of Finding Your Moral Compass, with blogs and a live chat about 41 principles that guide behavior. These principles will ultimately help you take responsibility for being a force of good through empathy, being of service to others, and not being an agent of harm.
Go to sober24.com to learn more about the Book Club.
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| To purchase these and other products designed to enhance your recovery and personal growth, visit hazelden.org/bookstore or call 800-328-9000. |
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Jodie Carter, electronic products manager at Hazelden, discusses a new recovery support app, the Mobile MORE® Field Guide to Life
The new Mobile MORE Field Guide to Life app from Hazelden supports those in recovery no matter where they are. Born from MORE, or My Ongoing Recovery Experience, a web-based program of personalized continuing care provided by Hazelden to our clients, the Field Guide to Life app offers the best of this program to the entire sober community. Offering a year of recovery support with inspirational messages, weekly challenges, tools for tracking progress, a community support system, and relapse prevention tools, this app will teach you essential skills connected to core recovery principles. Learn about the development of this app from Jodie Carter, Hazelden's electronic products manager, as she talks you through her favorite aspects of the app.
Q. What inspired you to create the Mobile MORE Field Guide to Life app?
A. Increasingly, people are using mobile apps for health and fitness. There are very popular apps that help people do things like quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, train for a marathon, or deal with early parenthood. So why shouldn't there be a mobile "training plan" to help people in early recovery?
When we searched the app store we found quite a few apps for people in recovery, but we found that the content was often "one size fits all." These apps often include daily meditations that are interesting and affirming once you have already built a solid foundation, but they don't offer guidance specifically for those who are still working every day on the essential groundwork in that first year of sobriety.
Q. How did you decide what features to include?
A. First of all, we wanted to create features that would "over-deliver" for the user. Many of us have experienced reading a press release about a new app with features that sound absolutely great, but when you try to use the app, it's not intuitive and it just leaves you with a bad experience. We wanted every feature of our app to be intuitive, usable, and engaging. We wanted our customers to feel like the app over-delivers with a more refined, more helpful experience than they have seen yet in the recovery space.
To answer your question about specific features, we know that a person training for a half-marathon doesn't go from couch potato to running ten miles in one day. This progress happens over time in stages. It's the same in recovery, and people need guidance as they work through those stages. We thought about what people need most in each stage and found that invariably people need and want clear instruction on what to do "today." This also lined up with a user survey we did that revealed that the essential feature people wanted on their mobile device was access to a daily message. Customer feedback on our other apps made us aware that people want to record and save notes on favorite topics so they can revisit these easily. They also would benefit from an intelligent search tool to find immediate answers on any topic they are having trouble with. And from our research in popular fitness applications, we see that people appreciate tracking tools that can help them easily see what they did (or didn't do) today so they can monitor their progress. Just as the runner needs to track whether they got in that two-mile base run today, a person in early recovery needs to track whether they went to an AA meeting or talked with their sponsor today. And what else happened? Was I stressed out or confident? Did I feel resentful or balanced? We know that people like fitness apps that make it easy to share their training progress with their social team or coach, so we made sure that the user can share the Track My Day chart with a friend or sponsor for support.
Q. What's your favorite feature on the app?
A. This is a really hard question. I love the daily messages, and the Track My Day feature is super-cool and offers a lot of utility and insight. But for me, I really like the Sober Counter because it helps me remember what's important to me. It shows my days, minutes, and even seconds in recovery as they keep ticking upward. In the background is a photo of my family on my favorite vacation in Kauai. Sometimes at work I play music on my iPhone in the background, then open my Field Guide to Life app and set it to show my Sober Counter while the music plays. I like working and listening to my favorite music and seeing that photo while my seconds keep ticking forward in recovery. It's very grounding and motivating. It's everything I'm proud of.
Q. Why do you feel a mobile app is so important for those in recovery?
A. Most people are moving toward mobile as a primary means of accessing and sharing information. It's a mobile, social world. Facebook has more than 800 million active users, and more than a third of those access Facebook through their mobile devices, creating more than a million mobile status updates per day. Of course, lots of people still use their desktop computer to access the full features available on Facebook or health sites like Web MD or LiveStrong. Many people like these tools so much that they want them "everywhere." Being in recovery is something you have to keep in your awareness all day, especially in the beginning. It just makes sense that a person in recovery needs and wants access to utility, support, and guidance that is available anywhere, anytime.
The social aspect of any app is also important. The first version of the Field Guide to Life allows a user to share (by email) a daily message, or share the user's Track My Day results. We hope to add more social sharing features in the future. We know that people worldwide are sharing millions of pieces of content each day and that people benefit from sharing. According to a recent study, 73 percent of people say that reading others' shared comments on content helps them understand and process information more deeply. Allowing people in recovery to share their favorite content through a mobile app gives them an easy way to "pay it forward" by sending positive messages to others who may benefit.
Q. What's so valuable about the Mobile MORE Field Guide to Life compared to some of the others out there?
A. Again, our app offers new guidance each day to help people take the specific actions needed to grow in their particular stage of recovery. In essence, it suggests a daily path to follow to do the "next right thing" and the next right thing after that, until those things become a positive habit. Users will find our app is very usable, with navigation and gestures that seem familiar and intuitive. These strategies are based on Hazelden's model of recovery and the Twelve Steps, along with what we know about relapse prevention, adult learning, and approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy to address any negative, inaccurate beliefs that are holding a person back.
A lot of the mobile apps for recovery rely on an internet or mobile broadband connection to work. We designed the Field Guide to Life so that almost all the features work without an internet or broadband connection. If you are traveling in a plane or taking a road trip, you can still access all the daily strategies and video challenges, you can refer to your relapse prevention plan, and you can still "Track Your Day." Bottom line, if your phone has power, you can use this app. The few features that won't work include sharing a message by email, using GPS to find a meeting, and sending texts or email messages out for support.
Another thing that's different is that the Field Guide to Life app has personality. It includes lots of rich media, with images that represent the theme of each of the Twelve Steps and video of real people in recovery. It looks and feels very modern and positive and even a little edgy, which, to me, makes it more fun to use.
We know that people really like to customize things like their iPhone screen. For example, the Pimp Your Screen app was one of the best-selling apps on iTunes in 2011. Our app is unique in that it lets people customize their Sober Counter screen as another expression of their personality and what's important to them. I don't yet see other mobile apps in the recovery space that let people customize or express the positive culture of recovery. Being in recovery isn't boring or dull at all. It's pretty cool, and we feel that the Field Guide to Life app expresses and reinforces that culture while at the same time letting people create their own expression.
Q. What types of challenges are presented to users within this app?
A. We challenge people to complete some of the core activities needed to grow in recovery--like going to meetings, learning how to avoid a relapse, dealing with triggers, developing supportive friendships, avoiding overconfidence, and others. There are sixteen challenges that pop up over time as something new to check off your list or revisit later. We hope this keeps people engaged in the priority activities they need to practice.
Q. How will this app help me renew my recovery experience if I've been in recovery for more than a year?
A. We think anyone who enjoys daily messages that reinforce the Twelve Steps, or anyone who wants to stay tuned in to the small actions that keep us on the right track in recovery (like improving relationships, paying it forward, or dealing with stress, blame, and resentments) will enjoy this mobile application. Features like being able to Track My Day, reach out for support, and celebrate days in recovery with the Sober Counter offer value to anyone in recovery.
Price: $6.99
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Today it is a widely accepted truth that alcoholism is a progressive disease like any other, with symptoms, treatments, and recovery. In this short excerpt from Alcohol: It's History, Pharmacology, and Treatment, authors Mark Rose, M.A., and Cheryl Cherpitel, Dr.P.H., provide a brief history of the disease concept of alcoholism.
There Origin and History of the Disease Concept of Alcoholism
Three key issues helped usher in the birth of a disease concept of alcoholism in America. The first was the emergence of alcohol problems resulting in a breakdown of community norms that had long contained drunkenness in colonial America; the second was the changing patterns of consumption from fermented beverages to distilled spirits; and the third was the nearly threefold increase in alcohol consumption between 1790 and 1830. Dr. Benjamin Rush was the first to articulate a disease concept of chronic drunkenness and call for the creation of special institutions for the care of the inebriate. In 1784, Rush described the progressive nature and medical consequences of chronic drunkenness. He suggested the condition was a medical instead of a moral problem and argued that physicians had the responsibility of caring for persons with this disorder. The changing perception of chronic drunkenness was also strongly influenced by the Reverend Lyman Beecher, who in 1825 characterized intemperance as an accelerating disease. He described in detail the early stages of alcoholism and argued that complete long-term abstinence was the only viable approach to prevention and cure.
These two highly influential figures, Rush and Beecher, along with other prominent physicians and social reformers, helped to redefine drunkenness as a medical problem during the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. These leaders encouraged physicians to treat inebriety within specialized institutions for the alcoholic. At this time, the core elements of an addiction disease concept were identified and described as
- a hereditary predisposition;
- drug toxicity;
- morbid appetite (craving);
- pharmacological tolerance and progression;
- loss of control of substance intake; and
- the pathophysiology of chronic alcohol, opiate, or cocaine consumption.
Although the term alcoholism was coined in 1849 by Swedish physician Magnus Huss, the preferred term of this era was inebriety, whose meaning was analogous to the term addiction. Medical textbooks included chapters on alcohol inebriety, opium inebriety, cocaine inebriety, and inebriety from coffee and tea. The widespread use of the term alcoholism did not actually occur until the early twentieth century.
During the 1870s and 1880s, the disease concept of inebriety or alcoholism formed the foundation of the movement to treat the disease medically and scientifically. The movement advocated for specialized institutions where inebriates could be treated.
However, support for a disease concept of alcoholism among professionals caring for the inebriate was not unanimous. In 1874, Dr. Robert Harris mounted perhaps the most fully articulated opposition to the disease concept, stating that drunkenness should be viewed as a habit, sin, or crime that cannot be cured in a hospital but can be reformed. The chronic drunk was also viewed as a victim of the promotion or marketing of alcoholic beverages.
In summary, nonmedical concepts of alcohol and other drug addiction competed for prominence with the disease concept. They espoused that
- addiction originated in the person and was a reflection of vice and sin;
- addiction resided in the product (alcohol, opium, or cocaine); and
- addiction was caused by aggressive alcohol and other drug promotion by distilleries and breweries, saloons, and physicians and pharmacists.
Each of these views produced radically different solutions to address the source of the addiction problem. The disease concept as a purely medical concept soon fell out of favor at the end of the nineteenth century along with the collapse of the treatment infrastructure.
The Collapse of Specialized Treatment for Alcohol Problems in the Early Twentieth Century
The collapse of America's first addiction treatment infrastructure was due to multiple factors, including
- the exposure of ethical abuses related to business and clinical practices,
- ideological differences within the field,
- the lack of scientific validation of treatment effectiveness,
- the departure through aging and death of leaders in the field,
- conomic downturns that impacted philanthropic and government support, and
- ultural pessimism over whether permanent recovery from alcohol and drug problems could ever be achieved (White 2004).
As a result, the nineteenth-century mutual-aid societies had collapsed in tandem with the inebriate homes and asylums (White 2004). Eventually, the care of alcoholics and addicts shifted to penal institutions and large public hospitals, and to psychiatry. The prevailing belief in psychiatry during this time was that excessive alcohol or other drug use was not a primary disease but the superficial symptom of a deeper psychological problem. It could be treated if the hidden subconscious forces that drove excessive alcohol or other drug use were confronted during psychotherapy. The reluctant assumption of responsibility by psychiatry for the care of alcoholics and drug addicts led to a new push to find more humane and effective treatments. These included the founding of the Emmanuel Clinic model. Its early efforts included using recovered alcoholics as lay therapists, treating affluent alcoholics and addicts in private hospitals and clinics, and starting a model for outpatient treatment in Connecticut and Georgia. There was also a dark side to the involvement of psychiatry in the treatment of addiction. It stemmed from alcoholics and addicts being subjected to the same treatments and policies currently in vogue with mentally ill patients. These included forced sterilization and legal commitment in the early twentieth century, prefrontal lobotomies, and chemical and electroconvulsive therapies. When admitted or sentenced to the aging state mental hospitals or the rural inebriate penal colonies, alcoholics and addicts were also subjected to the worst abuses of these institutions. The obvious disregard for the well-being of alcoholics and addicts was evidenced by some of the medical procedures they were subjected to, such as serum therapy (a procedure involving blistering the skin, withdrawing the serum from the blisters, and then re-injecting it as an alleged aid in withdrawal) and the use of bromide therapy to aid detoxification, which had a high mortality rate.
Much of the modern antimedication bias that lingers among some members in the addiction treatment field and older members of AA today stems from the past abusive and barbaric practices during this period under the guise of medicine.
Among the very few enlightened resources available to alcoholics and addicts during the early twentieth century was the beginning of a new generation of private hospitals that started with the Charles B. Towns Hospital in New York City and an outpatient clinic in Boston that arose from the Emmanuel Church. This clinic employed a unique program of lay therapy that was the precursor to modern addiction counseling. The Emmanuel Clinic also organized its own self-help program, the Jacoby Club, for patients who had completed its program.
The Jacoby Club was founded in 1910 as a club for alcoholic men, and sought to combine religion, psychology, and medicine in the treatment of alcoholism. This absence of mutual-aid resources changed in 1935 when the meeting of two alcoholics, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, reaching out for mutual support, marked the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
Excerpted from Alcohol: Its History, Pharmacology, and Treatment by Mark Edmund Rose, M.A., and Cheryl J. Cherpitel, Dr.P.H. Rose is a licensed psychologist and addiction researcher. He co-authored Prescription Painkillers: History, Pharmacology, and Treatment with Marvin Seppala, M.D., in 2010. Cherpitel is an internationally recognized alcohol researcher, the associate director of the National Alcohol Research Center, and a senior scientist at Alcohol Research Group.
Alcohol: It's History, Pharmacology, and Treatment
Softcover, 256 pages
The definitive guide about the effects of alcohol on people, families, communities, and society.
Throughout history, and across cultures, alcohol has affected the fabric of society through abuse and addiction, contributed to violence and accidents, and caused injuries and health issues. In Alcohol: Its History, Pharmacology, and Treatment, Mark Rose and Cheryl Cherpitel examine the nature and extent of alcohol use in the United States, current treatment models and demographics, and the biology of alcohol, addiction, and treatment.
In separating fact from fiction, Rose and Cherpitel give context for understanding the alcohol problem by tracing its history and different uses over time, then offer an in-depth look at
- the latest scientific findings on alcohol's effects on individuals
- the myths and realities of alcohol's impact on the mind
- the societal impacts of alcohol abuse as a factor in violence and accidents
- the pharmacology of pharmaceutical treatments for alcoholism
- the history of treatment and current therapeutic treatment models
Thoroughly researched and highly readable, Alcohol offers a comprehensive understanding of medical, social, and political issues concerning this legal, yet potentially dangerous, drug.
List Price: $14.95
Online Price: $13.45
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The daily work required in recovery can lead one to ask, "Why try?" In Gifts of Sobriety by Barbara S. Cole, the promises of the Big Book are illustrated with real world examples to answer this question. In this excerpt, Cole explains how those promises extend beyond health, family, and friends, to living your best life possible.
The Promises of Sobriety
Most Why should anyone undertake the painful journey to be free of alcohol or drug addiction? It is so easy to turn a deaf ear to the impending reality of the consequences that addiction brings, so very easy to put off the inevitable fear and discomfort of withdrawal. It is easy to continue to believe that if only we can find just one more way to prolong drinking and drug use, the mystical, magical something will appear and relieve us of our devastating shame and embarrassment that continued use brings. Loss after loss, tragedy after senseless, avoidable tragedy, we or our loved ones afflicted with addictive disease find it easier to forge ahead, trying everything we know to minimize the maddening, debilitating consequences.
Hitting a wall of truth may appear, at the outset, to be something one should avoid at all costs, for it would seem to cause insurmountable pain for us and for others whom we are connected to on a deep, heartfelt level. However, there are good reasons to intervene in the cycle of addiction. Sadly, it doesn't often appear to make great sense to intervene until the consequences of the addiction have mounted to an intolerable point. The primary good reasons to intervene may be those of threats to employment, loss of ability to support our families, loss of an important network of acquaintances. Then there are the secondary reasons, the reasons we attach to what could be called our ego needs. Fear of embarrassment, of letting others down, of admitting that we have behaved less than honorably toward those who have held us in high esteem. Fear of recognizing just how deeply we feel any kind of pain from any source. Guilt from participating in helping the addicted person's problem grow worse (we drank or used with this person and now he or she is hurting from it). The fear of the fall from the pedestal that we have worked so hard to develop and protect is so tremendous that it is nearly untouchable, no matter how much we despise the pedestal and how it isolates us from others whom we care about.
We are, after all, kind and loving on the inside and don't wish to cause anyone, including ourselves, disappointment or harm. So we run from the truth of the growing emergency, whether it is about ourselves or someone we care deeply about. We think that the truth will hurt. We think that it will chase the person away.
The Other Side of the Struggle
Despite this great, symbolic wall of fear and concern, we know that in the fringes of our world, here and there, exist a few who have been able to stop drinking and using drugs. They have managed to make sanity out of insanity somehow, and occasionally have put their new sober lives together in a way that looks attractive to us. And we know in our hearts that we can be like them, if only we could muster the courage or the commitment, if only we could get all of the perfect circumstances lined up "just right"... if only... In other words, somehow, we know a few people in recovery who have shown us that for all the pain of their journey, they have found a new freedom and a new happiness. It intrigues us that this type of freedom and happiness was not available to them before they dealt with this wall. The faint intrigue that we may feel as we peer into their lives is really the seed, or beginning point, of health. That intrigue is all that the disease of alcoholism and addiction did not yet destroy. Let us begin with little more than our mild curiosity about those who have gone before us to break through the madness and waste that addiction brings. Why do those who break free of this mad way of life choose to go through what seems as if it will be an insurmountable wild ride? One recovering woman said, "For as much pain as I've gone through, am I ever going to feel as much pleasure? Is there some cosmic balance in all of this?" Good question! Just what is on the other side of the struggle? The answer to this question is precisely what this book is about. Sometimes the only way to know what is possible to achieve is to see it being enjoyed by others. Often overtaken by this disease ourselves, we are weakened in our faith, health, and ability to even imagine what life will be like if we only persevere in getting and staying sober. Fortunately, the stories in this book celebrate the indisputable fact that people can and do stay sober and, as a result, have marvelous things happen to them. In these pages, you will read the stories of people who have managed to surrender to the disease of alcoholism and addiction in order to free up their energy for pursuits that are life-giving instead of life-taking. They surrender the war to win it. They will share with you how they now regard their full, free, rewarding lives.
Excerpted from Gifts of Sobriety by Barbara S. Cole. Cole was a drug and alcohol professional with the Betty Ford Center for many years, and now works as a psychotherapist in private practice. She lives in Studio City, California.
Gifts of Sobriety: When the Promises of Recovery Come True
Softcover, 168 pages
"Why try?" we sometimes ask ourselves when faced with the uncertainties and hard work of recovery. But the answers are all around us, in the rich and spirited lives of those who have made the journey before us, each one a member of the joyful possibilities that await. These possibilities come alive in Gifts of Sobriety, a book that gives immediate meaning to the Big Book's promise: "We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness." In this book Gifts of Sobriety, those who have freed themselves of alcohol or drug addiction share the gifts that sobriety has given them. Their stories are, in turn, a gift-for those who have made the journey and for those who, just embarking, seek gladdening news of the good life to come.
List Price: $14.95
Online Price: $13.45
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Reflecting on one's life story or telling it to others is intertwined with each of the Twelve Steps. Putting that story in your own words, to share with others or for your own personal growth, is often a helpful exercise. In this excerpt from My Story to Yours, author Karen Casey explains what she gained from writing her story, and how doing the same could help others.
My name is Karen, and I'm an alcoholic. But I am more than that label and that's what I will explore in the pages of this book. Labels limit us, even though they also help define us. Was I always an alcoholic? Was that first drink at thirteen, poured before the unseeing eyes of my parents, the event that determined the rest of my journey? Or have the many other experiences through many decades of living contributed equally to the woman who sits here now scouring the past to share what it was like, what happened, and the glory of what it's like now?
When I began considering a memoir as my next book, I knew I wanted to do something different from myriad other memoirs in the bookstores. It's not that the lives of others aren't interesting. On the contrary, reading the behind-the-scenes moments of the semiprivate lives of famous and not-so-famous folks is seductive. But I wanted you to want to read this book because it was different from the many others that may have called to you in the past.
Let me be clear: my story is not spectacular. Many women have stories far more explosive or glamorous than mine. My story is quite ordinary, in fact. But I wanted to do more than ask you to read my story; I wanted to interest you in exploring your own story, along with me, within the context of specific suggestions, as well as within the ever-so-common format of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. I base the writing prompts, the questions for you to explore and write about, on memories that stood out for me, memories that seemed to cover the many ways I had changed in the thirty-seven years (as of this writing) since I walked into my first recovery meeting. I'm hoping the questions will resonate with you too. And if they don't, perhaps they will at least prompt a memory that will excite you as you explore, with the help of this guide, your own journey from then until now.
We are changed by our experiences, each one of them. Every person we have contact with makes his indelible mark too. And every event leaves traces of our having "been there" in our minds and in the minds of those with whom we shared those moments. The details may live in the shadows for years, but live they do. It's into those shadows that I go in the pages that follow. What I discovered are parts of myself that I had skirted in the many years that have passed since I lived the experiences.
There is no single correct way to write your own memoir. And doing it in longhand will appeal to some who think the computer makes them once-removed from the life they are sharing. Personally, I think using the computer improves my flow in sharing what I want to say. I can type faster and with less physical pain than writing in longhand. Personal preference is the key, however.
When you choose to write will depend on personal preference too. If you are moved to share instantly because of the fear that a particular thought will be lost if you do not write it down immediately, then by all means, write it down. Many of you will choose to read the entire book, as an inspiration of sorts, before delving into your own story. Again, let me reiterate, there is no one way or right way to do this.
The process of doing it is what's important.
The excitement I feel for my discoveries is appreciable. Sharing my discoveries with you doubles the pleasure. It's my hope, and the underlying intention of this book, that you will grow in awareness of the details of your own journey--of your countless successes, as well as your opportunities for continued growth. I hope you will feel at the end of this shared experience that you have moved into being more of the person your Higher Power has always known you'd be.
Because the details of my life will emerge as we move forward together, I prefer to limit my personal remarks for now. But, rest assured, I was careening out of control before someone suggested those fateful words to me in 1974: "I think you should go to Al-Anon." I was a fear-filled third child in a rage-filled family of four children for more than three decades before finally hearing those words. And I didn't rest securely in the information I heard at the meetings I was regularly attending until the repetition penetrated my stubborn resistance. When the student is ready, the teacher does appear.
It's my hope to serve, in some capacity, as the teacher on your path at this very moment. My guess is that's the reason you chose this book at this very moment. Looking together at who we have been, who we are now, and how we got here is a gift we deserve to open and cherish. If not now, when? Let's take the journey together, shall we?
Excerpted from My Story to Yours by Karen Casey, Ph.D. Casey is the author of many books devoted to the enhancement of one's personal and spiritual journey, including Cultivating Hope and A Woman's Spirit. Her book Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women has sold more than three million copies.
My Story to Yours: A Guided Memoir for Writing Your Recovery Journey
Softcover, 194 pages
Reflecting on and telling our stories is a time-honored tradition in recovery circles--whether in silent meditation, speaking out at meetings, or between sponsors and their sponsees. Recounting our experience of moving from a life of addiction to one of sobriety helps us realize how far we've come and how grateful we are to the people and events that led us there.
In this beautifully written guided memoir, best-selling author Karen Casey invites us to write down our stories while engaging in hers. We follow Casey from her childhood to a life of addiction. We struggle with her through the depths of destruction and despair, then experience her rebirth as she pulled herself out of the darkness and into the light of recovery. At key turning points in her narrative, Casey pauses her story to encourage us to face difficult memories, verbalize our feelings, or express our own stories through practical exercises, thought-provoking questions, and inspiring ideas.
List Price: $14.95
Online Price: $13.45
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©2012 Hazelden Foundation
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