Another Check In

Another check in? Okay, I can do this. Well, this blog is going to be much more positive than the last. My original plan was to stay at Haven House for three months after my one month stay at rehab. My three months, which ends in a week, would bring me to a total of four months sober. During the past few months, I truly wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, but things have changed. Things have changed for the better. I have decided to stay for another few months. Things are going really well for me in life right now and I don't want to fuck it up by leaving and using. I am back in college after a two year hiatus and I am doing extremely well. My music career is moving in the right direction, and I am working out on a daily basis. I still do not enjoy going to meetings or working the steps. I have actually kind of given up when it comes to the program. That doesn't necessarily mean that I have given up on recovery. I have not. I just don't think that Alcoholics Anonymous is the only answer to my problems. I have heard over and over that it is the only answer, but I disagree. I can do this on my own. I have thus far. When I tell other people in the program about my plans for recovery, they tell me that they are scared that I will fall back into the patterns of an addict. I am an addict. I can't escape that. I can alter my thinking though, and I am in the process of doing so.

Haven House requires that you go to at least one meeting a day and I am still doing that. I do not think that I will continue to go once I am out of here in a few months. Maybe I will. I am still trying to figure that out. I definitely won't go seven times a week. Going to theses meetings triggers my using more than anything so far in recovery. I have even been around weed and had no problems, but I do not feel that meetings are a healthy choice for me. Sometimes the speakers have a great pitch or a great message, but regardless of what they say I always feel the same after I leave a meeting. I feel worse than when I walked in. I had a sponsor but we haven't spoken in a really long time. I do fine just talking to my roommates. I am very grateful for having such a good group of guys around me in this house. When it comes to my character defects, I have been doing better. I have tried to talk kindly to some of the guys that I dislike in the house. I have been getting up early in the mornings for school, and I have been taking care of all my duties in the house…for the most part. I am looking forward to the future. And yes, I am thinking about the future. One day at a time? How will I know what I am doing tomorrow if I don't plan it today. I am taking care of myself in the best possible way for me. Everybody is different even if we are all addicts.

By 'J.F.' on Monday, February 21st 2009.

21 Months

After living in this house for 21 months, my life seems to be coming together. Although there have been numerous setbacks (too many to count) in my recovery, those setbacks have only made me become stronger. I am going back to school with a more solid educational foundation. I now have a solid sponsor whose sobriety I aspire to have. I feel that this house has played a good role in my current state as well. Even though I have been here for 21 months, I am still getting a lot out of this house. I feel that I am now working on personal accountability amongst other things. So I am now able to walk into class tomorrow with my head held high because I now have a solid foundation mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

By 'D.' on Monday, February 16th 2009.

Alchemy

I often times don’t want anything to do with sobriety, or with Haven House. I think of where I came from and the events that led up to this and I think of the precise moment I gave up, just for a second, and became entangled in this.

They say in meetings ‘a belly full of booze and a head full of AA don’t mix’. It’s one of those stupid clichés that fly around. It’s true and it’s an idiotic bubbly way to put it. Three years ago I was sitting in a hospital talking to my mother. We both were making small, desperate conversation in an attempt to ignore where we were, and, honestly who I was. There came a momentary lull. I was hoping it was the moment my mother would say, ‘Alright, sweetie. I’m going home, I’ll see you tonight [or] tomorrow [or] in a little bit [but never] take care, call me when you get out.’L

I was twenty-one years old with a four day old full beard when this was going on. Instead, she said, ‘Will you go to rehab?’ I was in the hospital for a near successful suicide attempt. I had made known my cocaine habit to my family in an attempt to have some check in order to get clean. My parents are both and were both at least seventy hour a week doctors with time either for sleep or ‘see you tonight’’s.

And here it is: the moment I lapsed. Mounting guilt, a horrible sense of shame, and being caught all sat on me.

Mind, at this point, I was a straight A student at a very good school on the East-Coast, preparing to apply to medical school, I had a very full life with enough friends who themselves were on their way to great things, and a horrendous drinking problem, coupled with a massive need for cocaine (while I’m typing this, the scars from a bleeding ulcer I had when I was nineteen are flaring up).

But that’s it, I needed it. I still do. I’m horribly manic-depressive, erring on the side of depressive with bouts of suidicidal ideation (and occasionally, accompanied by valiant efforts), I’ve got the anxiety of a Black Friday broker with nine kids, I talk in slurred, three word burst like a lazy machine gun, and my hands (and occasionally ma tete) shake due to some nerve disorder made worse by drinking without eating and anxiety. Don’t worry; I learn to complain even more pitifully and pathetically! Turns out I’m an alcoholic drug addict, who might be hopeless, as well as anorexic (I’m a guy) with body image issues (everyone thinks I’m gay…not that there’s anything wrong with that…). That sounds really pathetic and massively childish, and I am. But I want to set that up to make this point: when I’m drunk, when I’m high, when I’m strung out (especially when I’m strung out); that all goes away. It’s a necessary cure all.

But in the hospital I was sober, I wasn’t thinking right. I said, ‘Okay’. That’s the moment. I didn’t mean it. It was a guilty concession. At exactly the right moment, my mother set that snare. It’s an immediate, forced bottom. In that moment I lost all the things I had going for me. I’m not a college graduate, I’m typing this three years later and have just barely finished my first semester back at school (not the same school). I’m estranged from my friends on the East Coast who are on to much better things. And, more pathetically, my parents still foot the bill.

And now, here I am; trying to make do with life ensnared.

Life, now, is like alchemy. I have all these non-functional things, things that want me dead, all emanating from me, and I’m trying to make them functional.

Right now, I’d like to go back.

By 'R.G.' on Tuesday, January 27nd 2009.

Check in

Trying to look at myself from the outside in is difficult for me. Check in? Well, if checking in will get me one step closer to checking out, than I'm in. Today I have 90 days of continuous sobriety. These last three months have been no picnic. In fact, if these last three months were a picnic….I got food poisoning. Don't get me wrong, I am one-hundred percent sober. Yet, I am unhappy with where my life is at this moment. I live in a house with 20 other fucked up people and it's not easy but is at many times quite fun.

I have made many friends in this house. My roommate is amazing and is my best friend at this point in time. We went to rehab together and decided to come here together. He is working a much stronger program than me. I have a sponsor but choose not to call or meet with him often. I go to meetings everyday, which is required here at Haven House, but that doesn't mean I enjoy them. We all have chores and are expected to have them done at a certain time. When a chore isn't done you get a certain amount of words to write on a recovery essay topic. You can either write the words or work the words off by doing other chores. Having acquired so many words over the last few months and always working them off, I feel like I am ready to start my own maid service. I am "the clean machine."

This is the longest I have been sober since I started using drugs and alcohol seven years ago. I definitely feel much healthier than I ever did while using. Even though I feel healthy physically, mentally I feel like I always have. I still want to use. I want to smoke weed and I want to drink. I want to try to moderate my using when I get out of here but I am not sure whether I can. Only time will tell.

This house is definitely a safe environment for me, though. I get drug tested regularly and know that if I use I will be kicked out and lose the great relationships I have with both of my parents and the rest of my family. Being sober is not easy, but it definitely helps to be surrounded by only those who travel the same path.

By 'J.F.' on Thursday, January 22nd 2009.

Revelations

“knock knock, wake up its time for morning meditation.” say Greg Holden, one of four great managers here at Haven House. As I get out of bed, sometimes reluctantly, a memory flashes through my head about how I ended up here at Haven House. I think about it for a minute, calm myself, then head off to the kitchen where my day begins. That memory that flashes through my head is long and terrifying, but a sweet and sour look back at what a mess I was before I got sober and came to Haven. I could go on forever about my history and bore you with my whole array of drugs and experiences I have had, but I will spare you. I can definitely tell you that my life before sobriety was nasty and dirty. I couldn't furnish my own room, nor could I get myself to do the simplest things like laundry and cleaning the dishes. I came here to Haven House because I felt like it was one of the only sober livings that really cared for my well being and they weren't just trying to take my money. I also came here because of the values and principals, that Jeremy Stanton the owner, has applied to the house. Just the basic aspects of life such as cleaning your room, being held accountable for chores, and making sure that I apply the morals of the House and the 12 step program to my everyday life has really set a great foundation for me to eventually come back into the real world without being intoxicated all of the time. I am only 19, and still very young in sobriety, so for me to come to treatment and then sober living was a challenge due to my young nature and the phase that my body is currently going through. But none the less, im here and I am happy here.

I felt at home right away and everybody was very gracious and accepting to my issues, things that I have not always experienced in my short life. The home-like atmosphere at Haven House made come out of my shell very quickly. The house members offered to take me to AA meetings and out for coffee and other activities that I would normally do when I was high. The number one reason why I have had a successful time at Haven House is because the managers have helped make the transition easy and thorough. They explained to me exactly what they want, when they want, and how I should present myself at all times. I currently have 69 days sobers, and if I had not come to Haven House, im not sure I would have accumulated the much sober time. I plan to stay here for another few months until I finish my 12 step program and make a secure lifestyle that I can easily fit into when I leave. I am currently enrolled at Santa Monica college, and plan to finish up to get my AA degree and transfer to a university. I had an immense amount of trouble at first, when I decided to go back to school, but I was comforted by my house mates and the managers, who have all gone through similar experiences. One of the greatest aspects of Haven House is that all four managers who work here have gone through this house and know whats it like to live life sober outside of haven house. Without their support and knowledge I have no idea where I would be right now, and I am so grateful that I have this house to support me through my first time trying to get sober.

By 'L.B.' on Thursday, January 22nd 2009.

Our first entry

We got a new water-heater. That might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Three days last week I woke up early to go to work and stepped into a cold shower. I doubt I’m alone in thinking that that’s absolutely unacceptable. Jeremy has to be used to replacing medium-large-ticket household appliances. Actually, I think it was only, maybe, a week and a half ago that they replaced some 20-odd feet of pvc or ceramic or whatever kind of pipe that connects our plumbing to the sewer line. They had to dig up the front yard and everything. There’s 20 guys (+/-) here using appliances all day. The dishwasher gets run 4 times every day without exception. If it’s not, the dishes get backed up and it ruins everybody’s life. There’re two washing machines and two driers and they’re always running.

This house is a fucking living organism. Remember that scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton’s character wakes up with amnesia and wanders through a house full of people bustling around all militantly? It’s the part when the fight club turns into project mayhem. Well it gets like that around here, is my point. Nobody’s making plastic explosives or anything – I’m not saying that. But you’ll walk through the house and there are like three vacuum cleaners running and it smells like pledge and glass-cleaner and pinesol. It’s just bizarre sometimes to see order imposed on the most chaotic of minds.

If any mind is chaotic, it’s mine. And partly because of that, I’m really glad that I live here. I honestly don’t know if I’d be able to stay sober on my own. And I have some time under my belt, too. I’ll have 10 months on the 20th. That’s the day Obama gets inaugurated. When I came here I decided to stay for a year. I’ve been here before and I relapsed after I left. This place is really safe for me. The way things have worked out for me here is that when I first got to the house I had a lot of time to hang around and watch TV with guys at the house. My days were pretty mellow and I was around sobriety all the time, so I didn’t face a lot of triggers. As things got moving in my life – and they are moving now – I was able to handle the stresses that came up along the way. I am anxious about moving out. It’s getting to be about that time. It gets too comfortable here, I think.

By 'M.W.' on Sunday, January 19th 2009.