--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00006 Date: 12/19/95 From: PAT WINSTANLEY Time: 09:33am \/To: MARGE CLARK (Read 1 times) Subj: Hello again Hi Marge, Friday December 15 1995 14:10, Marge Clark wrote to Pat Winstanley: PW>> Harriet (looking forward to locking horns with you PW>> again) MC> not NEARLY as argumentative as she used to be ;-) Yep... so I gathered - and I have a message from her to answer in this batch. PW>> Marge (wake up at the back there, dear ;-)) MC> yawn, stretch... but I don't waaaaaant to wake up ;-( You sound like my kids at 6.30am! :-) MC> welcome back, gal!!!! Thanks - and let's hope it lasts this time and that I can contribute usefully to the group. Pat --- * Origin: Pierless, Wigan, UK. [01942-749012 (cable)] (2:250/107.99) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00007 Date: 12/19/95 From: PAT WINSTANLEY Time: 09:37am \/To: TIM DILL (Read 1 times) Subj: Hello again Well Hello there Tim, TD> Yeah, I know the feeling.. welcome back Pat long time no TD> type... And how... is there a Fidoholic echo? I could have used one over the past couple of years! ;-)) TD> She allowed me to point off her system until the echo feed TD> get's back in NET 102... Sounds like there's an almighty snarl up over there, but at least you (and others) seem to have found ways round it rather than wailing helplessly. :-) TD> Oh I remember ya, even did a small thread with ya... TD> don't remeber tho... Nor do I now, but there's the future to go for too... TD> (now acting mod of this echo until the feed clears up then TD> I can go back to assisting) Well just shout at me (gently) if I get out of line. It's been a looong time since I was here. TD> ... what'cha gonna do? Right now? Have breakfast! ;-) Pat --- * Origin: Pierless, Wigan, UK. [01942-749012 (cable)] (2:250/107.99) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00008 Date: 12/19/95 From: PAT WINSTANLEY Time: 09:42am \/To: BRUCE WILLIAMS (Read 1 times) Subj: Hello again Hi Bruce, Friday December 15 1995 17:39, Bruce Williams wrote to Pat Winstanley: BW> Just saw the message quoted above (15 Dec 1995). Not only BW> did you make it to the USA but and from my prejudiced point BW> of view more importantly you reached CANADA. Ah... the snowy part of the world? Pardon me for seeming insensitive, but I tend to lump the whole of the northen continent over there as one. Probably the same way a lot of you over there seem to lump the whole of Europe as one, rather than individual (and very distinct) countries. I mean, we don't even share a language with our fellow Europeans! ;-) BW> I remember seeing your posts in the pasts. Welcome back! BW> So, to get back on topic hows your RECOVERY going? Pretty good. The overwhelming problem (the booze) is nowhere near cracked yet, but an awful lot of other rubbish has been cleared out and filled with better things. I'm a third of the way through the second year of college, and hoping to go on to University next year to do software engineering. This is something I could never have imagined myself doing a couple of years ago when in the depths of depression, agraphobic, feeling hopeless/helpless, and generally scared to do *anything*. I'm still extremely uncomfortable (shy & self-conscious) in face-to-face situations, even with people I know, but learning to cope with the feelings sufficiently to get on with it anyway. I still worry that the sky will fall on my head if I go out, but am beginning (from experience) to trust that it's pretty unlikely! :-) Crossing the threshold is the hardest part. Once that's done it's not too bad. But I still feel the tension and stress not just lifting but positively flying away when I get home again. What else? Well my ex died last year (I think I talked a little about that going to happen before I lost my phone). In the end it was quick and a little sudden, but a great relief. He was suffering a lot. The good thing about it ws that we managed to get it together at least as far as non-confrontational chatter in the months before he died. I often think about him, and wonder what it could have been like had we stayed together. OTOH I know that splitting up was neccessary at the time, and that I have no blame attached for his death. (Doesn't stop me agonising over it sometimes). As to *how* I have recovered this far, I think it's a mixture of things. Perhaps the biggest was going onto tricyclics for a few months. These settled the panic attacks down a lot, and allowed friends to break through my shell/barrier/wall/boundaries. Having done so they were able to niggle me just enough to get me moving for myself so that they'd get out of my hair! :-) I started getting out into the world by doing a couple of half days a week at the Citizens Advice Bureau - a charity sort of thing that dispenses advice rather than soup or blankets. Then I was bullied into applying for college, and was convinced I wouldn't be able to do the course either emotionally or academically. It turned out to be *too* easy... boringly so at times. Throughout all this I have learnt to be more tolerant, more reliable, less aggressive (outwardly - I still seeth inwardly) and generally, I suppose, a nicer person to be around. With this has come the situation where people actively seek me out for a chat/gripe now, rather than ignoring and avoiding me. I haven't been active or even passive in any organised group. Don't have a higher power, but have to a large extent used the 12-steps in a general sort of way to isolate and deal with problems. They pretty much sum up the way I was brought up to behave anyway. It has been rather a humbling experience to realise how far I had strayed from practising those principles. So there we go... that's about what's been happening to me. I now feel at least semi-human rather than inhuman, and I seem to be growing all the time. I even alsmost, nearly, maybe feel ready to start being on the lookout for a possible long-term relationship, but as yet have nobody particular in my sights >;-)) Pat --- * Origin: Pierless, Wigan, UK. [01942-749012 (cable)] (2:250/107.99) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00009 Date: 12/19/95 From: PAT WINSTANLEY Time: 10:18am \/To: HARRIET LEVY (Read 1 times) Subj: Hello again Hi Harriet, Saturday December 16 1995 03:30, HARRIET LEVY wrote to PAT WINSTANLEY: HL> I think you'll find I'm less likely to lock horns these HL> days...a long story, but a lot of that stuffing got kicked HL> out of me last year (not literally, thanks the Gods) Likewise... I have calmed down a *lot*... don't so much feel that the world owes me an easy path any more, and that if I want things to get better I have to *do* something about it! :-) In another message here today I've outlined some of my story over the past couple of years... effectively my terminal uniqueness balloon was given a slow puncture, and when I stepped out of the deflated balloon, I found one that looks to be far more resilient, healthy and sociable... but still (a bit) unique... because I am unique... I'm me and nobody else is me... but then everyone else is just as unique in their own way :-) I'd love to hear some of your story, because I haven't been here to see it develop. Reading messages from you over the past week or two it's clear something has changed. What? Pat --- * Origin: Pierless, Wigan, UK. [01942-749012 (cable)] (2:250/107.99) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00010 Date: 12/21/95 From: JAMES WATHEN Time: 12:31pm \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: Merry holidays Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all. I should like to encourage you to keep it a sober time. The way I do it is to stay away from slippery places. I am blessed with a GREAT Al-anon. She has been with me for 35 years now. We will be at the Living Faith AA Group Christmas Eve (after church.) We will have Christmas dinner with our family, i.e. we will be at Living Faith. Our group has a long tradition of "eating meetings" and we will take advantage of them. New Year's eve we will be back at LF for some of the meetings. I say "some of the meetings" because the meetings start at noon on the 31st and end at one pm on the first! New meeting each hour. Members take two hour turns keeping the coffee made and welcoming people in. Bye the bye, ALL meetings will be open. We do not care to cut out anyone who is "just looking" and is not sure they are one of us. We make the holidays just what they are supposed to be, a time of joyous celebrating. While some of our people will go into a funk, we do our best to bring them out of it. When I was drinking, the holidays were a time to stay close to home with my drinking as the amateurs were out and the cops were watching closer. I did not celebrate, I just got drunk. I did not spend time with my family, I spent time with my bottle. Now, however, thanks to my Higher Power, I do celebrate both with my wife and children and also with my AA family. SO... Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year. 4358 Days and counting. Jim W. I know it is a good day because God gave it to me! --- WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12 * Origin: The Veterans Voice, Austin, TX (512) 473-4142 (1:382/811.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00011 Date: 12/21/95 From: JUDITH LABONTE Time: 07:01pm \/To: TIM DILL (Read 1 times) Subj: FOR YOUR INFO... I have used Matrika for an alias since the mid eighties. And about see ing (oops) Sip_AA for a barbie joke along those lines, I don't DO Sip_AA anymore or several other conferences because, in my opinion, the moderators are too rigid about what may or may not be discussed there. In my opinion, I agree with what I heard from a real old-timer down in the Maryland, Washington D C, Northern VA. area of AA. He said that if he had a pimple on his butt and that pimple made him want to drink, do drugs or whatever, than it was appropriate to talk about it at an AA or NA meeting. I can't agree more. And one major problem I have with electronic recovery is how it avoids the traditions totally - there is NO anonymity. I can't help but think the prohibition against breaking anonymity in the press, on radio, on t.v., etc. might also seem to extend to this electronic medium since it is public in the extreme - anyone can read these echoes, not just you or I. The other problem I have with it is that there is no group conscience and, in my opinion, I believe that some of the moderators on some of the fido echoes come on like the "elder statesmen" (AND WOMEN) that the traditions half of the (AA) Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book warns us about. When someone comes across like that to me, I choose not to be in that echo any longer. That's why I stick to THIS echo nowadays where it's generic recovery and people are not as likely to pitch a fit when I say what I believe is pertinent to my TOTAL recovery and not just one segment of it. (Usually what they don't want to hear is the survivor stuff - although that is a major reason why I drank and drug, to avoid the feelings I didn't want to feel as a direct result of some of the more brutal abuse I went through as a kid. I don't blame them for not wanting to hear it. Society is in denial and it took a lot to break through that denial FOR ME - and most of my friends who are recovering survivors. The perpetrators don't want survivors to speak out. When I hear that same message from other people IN RECOVERY who don't want to see the connection between my abuse and the consequences of it in my life - including these addictions - well, I don't need to be around that kind of a person. As far as I am concerned, it is a form of revictimization. That is why I stay in THIS echo, the ACA echo and the Sip_Survivor and Sip_Incest echo. It is also why I have made this my main focal point in my current recovery work. If this sounds like I am coming on strong, well I am. I am really tired of dealing with this attitude that says one can only talk about what others want to hear either in these other echoes I have left or in meetings of AA, NA and other similar programs. When I share in a meeting, I do it FOR MYSELF and not to get other people's approval or to entertain them or to help anybody but me. I refuse to be a people-pleaser because that is the essence of who I was before I got clean and sober, stopped enabling, and started dealing with these other issues. Unfortunately the only other way I have been able to cope is withdrawing and isolating. I don't participate in these other echoes any more. I don't go to many AA or NA meetings these days. When I am told I can not share about the things I need to share about, all I want to do is just go away and not be there anymore - and from there it is a smaall step to wanting to just not be anymore. HOWEVER, I must add that I have NEVER experienced that here and I am grateful to you and the other moderators here for that - because I still feel like I have a place to go. I am NOT - repeat, NOT (absolutely NOT) - angry with you. I am angry, but I am angry at all the mind games I see being played by some allegedly recovering people who use certain positions to manipulate and control - or so it seems to me. For example, the AA group I am in - only occasionally nowadays - is being "run" by two men who have BANNED one young man from speaking because he wouldn't say what they wanted to hear, and without a group conscience. They have, on their own, called a half way house in the area and told them the women with children can not come to this group any more, again without a group conscience. When a friend of mine tried to speak to them about it - another man with twenty something years who agrees with me - he was told that if he did not like the way Ray ran HIS (Ray's) group that he could leave and when he tried to talk to these two again he was told this again, with an added accusation from them that he - my friend- is "a troublemaker". And, to be honest with you, if I had to behave like some of these people after I had some twenty-odd years or more of "sobriety", well, I'd pick up a drink for certain. I once heard somebody say that if you sober up a jackass, all you have is a sober jackass - nothing else has changed. So I hope you won't personalize this. As you can see I still participate in and post on this echo. However I don't bother with most of the rest of the so-called recovery echoes anymore, with a few exceptions. I am very VERY discouraged with the whole system and ready to write off the 12 step fellowships as a whole pretty much - it wouldn't take much more at this point, believe me. But then it wouldn't take much to have me write of ME at this point, either. --- TriToss (tm) Professional 10.0 - #66 * Origin: Keystone BBS * Shrewsbury, MA * 508-753-3767 (1:322/743.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00012 Date: 12/21/95 From: MATRIKA Time: 07:11pm \/To: TIM DILL (Read 1 times) Subj: PAGAN 12-STEP Thanks for the info about Pag_Rec - I'll pass it on. Again, let me emphasize, I didn't mean to take YOUR head off in that other message - you are not the problem. Actually, these other people aren't the problem either - it is how I am reacting to them, which you can see by my last message isn't good either. I loved the Neo-Pagan Barbie, Wand, Athame and Pentacle sold seperately. However, I do want to add something, you may have noticed that I don't really share or say anything beyond the superficial even here. A sad side effect of this whole business is that now I don't really trust anyone on the recovery echoes. I want to, but I don't because I feel like whatever I share some self-appointed fellowship authority is going to take my inventory and decide what is or is not pertinent to my recovery in a given area. I don't know about anyone else, but I am a WHOLE person and I can't just divide myself up the way they want me too. I was fragmented enough as an abuse survivor, I don't need further fragmentation. I don't have one compartment for my Alcoholism recovery that is seperate from my whole life and another for my drug addiction and another for my incest survivor issues and another for codependency problems, etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I believe the 12th step really MEANS what is says when it tells us that the first 100 people to use the steps recovered as a result of "Practis(ing) these principles in ALL their affairs". I'm really getting on a roll on this subject and I'm sorry, but I've been very hurt by it for several months now and the only answer I've found is withdrawal and isolation - to be safe. I doubt that some of these people even have any idea how much they hurt me - especially one that I thought was my friend. Basically, I've just given up on AA and NA - with or without the SIP in front of it. --- TriToss (tm) Professional 10.0 - #66 * Origin: Keystone BBS * Shrewsbury, MA * 508-753-3767 (1:322/743.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00013 Date: 12/21/95 From: MATRIKA Time: 07:25pm \/To: SHARON STEVENS (Read 1 times) Subj: Coda re - with all the programs that are available out there and the subject of balance - I think one reason a lot of people don't find recovery despite all the programs available out there is because some of these programs force us to further fragment ourselves. We have to go one place to recover from codependency, another place to recover from alcoholism, another place to recover from drug addiction, etc. etc. etc. Personally I don't have enough days in the week to go to even just ONE meeting per week of all the programs that I could use if I actually got honest with myself. Maybe I am the only one, but I know that I am a mess. I need a lot more help than I can get in such fragmentation and more and more I see myself pulling away from that approach. TO ME the 12th step talks about practising these principles - the principles of the 12 steps - in ALL our affairs and there has got to be a way of doing this so that we become more WHOLE and not more fragmented. I joke around saying that I am going to start Ev.A. - Everything Anonymous - so I can only go to a few meetings a week and have time for a life WITH my recovery. Bill W. talked about living life on life's terms, so I have a feeling he didn't mean that the 12 steps should be used the way they are now, so that there is a different "program" or FELLOWSHIP for each thing. I have a feeling this is also the reason why steps 6 and 7 are worded as they are - so that we can have an oppurtunity to deal with problems other than alcohl within the 12 steps of AA. I wonder what BIll W. and Dr. Bob would say about AA members so busy going to other recovery fellowships that we can only make one AA meeting every other week or so. That's what I mean by balance - there has got to be a balance and a way to LIVE through all this once I am sober, or I would hope so. But I am not seeing that in myself or anyone else I know and it is quite disturbing to me. I don't have anyone to show me how they got there from here because I don't see folks who have done it. All I know is right now I am really discouraged with the whole thing and I don't know where to turn. I almost wonder if I don't need a vacation from all this INTENSITY and all this "working on myself" and issues and so on. I am beginning to just want to focus on the hear and now, so I can deal with the process of living. And if we never get to that in recovery, then what's the point? I don't see any right now, but I also know that the only way to find out is to stay sober and see. But, to be honest with you, right now I don't want to. That's okay too. I've been here before and I am thankful that an old-timer, Eddie B here in Worcester MA, once told me that I don't have to drink even if I want to and he also taught me that since it's the very first drink that triggers the physical compulsion, if I don't drink - even when I want to - I still won't get drunk, even though I wanted to. So my life will go on in a decent manner in spite of me. And something else this man impressed on me is that even if I can 't do that for myself, I can do it so that I won't put the people I love through h*ll the way I used to. Yes I know I am being negative tonight, but that is HONESTLY where I am at - disgusted and discouraged. --- TriToss (tm) Professional 10.0 - #66 * Origin: Keystone BBS * Shrewsbury, MA * 508-753-3767 (1:322/743.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00014 Date: 12/21/95 From: MATRIKA Time: 07:36pm \/To: RAIN (Read 1 times) Subj: Coda working with violent mental patients does not sound like fun. It's funny you talk about your using the Craft being a positive experience for you along these lines. (not humorous, but it seems unusual TO ME) One of the reasons I dropped out of being a public Pagan priestess is I realized I wore a pentacle and stones and other items which Identified me as wiccan as a way to keep people away from me and to shock them - much the way kids today where mohawks and kids in my generations wore bell bottoms, long LONG hair, peasant dresses, peace signs and other outward marks of a "hippie". It was sort of my way of rebelling from the main culture - and I still don't know if this was "Good" or "Bad" for me. I haven't yet decided my opinion about how making it in the world just as myself is going. I'm still not sure that just plain ol' me is good enough for myself, never mind anybody else. I know what you're saying though about the wards and so on - I still use certain techniques of meditation I learned in Wicca, including psychic protection stuff, and appropriate symbols to go with them. I find for me when it's done completely internally it seems to be a better thing for me as I have no ulterior motive for doing it. I am not trying to shock, impress or test people. I have sometimes been able to make those kinds of things - psychic and psychological protection - work for me, but not always. (Although the law of Karma seems to do a pretty good job on it's own) Setting boundaries usually is not my strong suit. The only thing that works at all is total withdrawal and isolation - and then I am usually the one that ends up getting hurt. This is sort of where I am at now. --- TriToss (tm) Professional 10.0 - #66 * Origin: Keystone BBS * Shrewsbury, MA * 508-753-3767 (1:322/743.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 231 RECOVERY Ref: CGR00015 Date: 12/17/95 From: LYNDA NUSSER Time: 06:16pm \/To: MARGE CLARK (Read 1 times) Subj: 10 years ago... Hi Marge! In a message (12-08-95) to Don Pratt you wrote: MC>got tired of seeing the "Sh*t happens" bumper stickers that are still MC>common around middle tennessee, and found myself a "MIRACLES MC>HAPPEN" one to balance 'em. I like that. I can't remember if I shared it here or not, but I heard the 'sh*t happens' has an addendum: 'so, clean it up!' I hope I'm not the first to tell you today