Sobriety and Art

Sobriety and Art

When I first got sober, I was afraid that I would loose my ability to create music and art. Even though I was interested in giving sobriety a real try, I though about using again just because I thought my creativity would suffer. When I have thoughts like this one, I learned it is better to share them with someone else to get some insight. My sponsor told me to give it some time and to have faith in the process.
What I learned over time is when you aren’t using drugs and alcohol, there is no filter or block on your creativity. Kind of like “art is all you have.” Also, there are no distractions from your art of choice. You get more creative with you’re time and your work gets more intense because you have no blinders on. Also, when you are creating music, it’s a little easier to keep a band together when people aren’t drunkenly fighting or showing up late to practice. In the beginning of sobriety, the absence of drugs and alcohol makes you feel naked. Especially when making all kinds of art, but you can take that vulnerable feeling, all of your fear, anger and passion and channel it to your art rather than just snuffing out these emotions with substances to just end up being ides that never get off the ground.
By Cheryl Lindsey


http://www.tsktsk.org
http://www.myspace.com/tsktsk

Shakespeare = Sober (kinda, sorta… not really.)

Shakespeare = Sober (kinda, sorta… not really.)


I was a freshman in high school when I was given an assignment to read and analyze a lengthy poem by William Shakespeare. The poem, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ is almost 1900 lines long and, in Shakespearian form, very hard to follow for a fourteen year old brain under the influence of anything I could get my hands on. I never read the poem. I failed the class and many others that followed. It was only after I got sober almost a decade later that I discovered a passage in that same poem that has helped me maintain perspective in my own continuous recovery from the disease of more.
I was crawling through my first year of sobriety and knee deep in my guilt reading phase. I decided to read all of the books that I was supposed to read as a way to make some amends to myself. It is an endeavor that I continue still, and through which I have gained a great deal. When I rediscovered ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ I struggled through it, but was able to take with me the following:

What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy?
Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?
Or what fond begger, but to touch the crown,
Would with the scepter straight be stricken down?

I get a lot out of those seven lines. There are more times than I like to admit that drinking and using drugs sounds like a great idea. There are those times when I don’t want to go to meetings, or call my sponsor, or be of service. Those are also the times when I can open my wallet and read that part of the poem, take a deep breath, and keep walking. “What win I if I gain the thing I seek?” What will getting loaded avail me? At the very least it is a hangover. At most it would cost me my life. “A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy?” Mere moments of the ease and comfort that comes with that first drink, and the spiral that surly will follow. “Who buys a minutes mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? Who in their right mind would give up four and a half years of recovery and immeasurable progress for just ‘one more time’? Today I have the opportunity to make the right choice. One day at a time, I hope to continue making the right choice.

Brian C.-
Visions Teen Drug treatment Center

Factors That Play a Role in Relapse

In my five years of sobriety, I have noticed many factors that play a role in relapse. Two of things contributing to relapse are a cease in service work and a shift in personal priorities. Service work and working with others is one the most important contributors to staying sober. In the movie My Name is Bill W, Which is a movie about Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Silkworth the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill Wilson's wife has a conversation with Dr. Silkworth. Lois Wilson was complaining about BIll spending all his time, working with other Alcoholics that were not managing to stay sober. Dr Silkworth asked her if "he was staying sober?" Lois said "yes", it was then, she realized that working with others was helping bill stay sober.
For alcoholics, Staying sober for 24 hours is a miracle, so to accomplish this, sobriety must be the top priority in their life. I have personally seen dozens of alcoholics who forget their primary purpose. They once again make work, school,relationships, etc. their top priority and end up drinking again. So alcoholics must never forget their primary purpose in life, to stay sober.

Showing Up

Hello, just wanted to get going on my mini blog about work, recovery and talk about how i am truly blessed to be alive and sober today. I have a little more than a year and a half of sobriety, my sobriety date is June, 4 2006. 6/4/6....I thought that was kind of cool but I didn't plan it to come out that way. Basically my life is about showing up these days even if I don't want to, especially to the things that I don't want to show up to. Like meetings sometime, meeting people for coffee or any other thing that would be just "too hard" for me to do. Working in recovery I really get the chance to see myself in so many of the people here and it really is comforting to know that we are not alone in this world. There are a lot of people around that have been through what your going through and have experience in a lot of different areas of life or could help you to find someone who has. I myself have gotten sober through Alcoholics Anonymous and it's really an amazing thing. Nobody would of thought that I would get to be 21 years old and instead of sitting on a couch drinking and smoking my life away, I'm working, paying debt that I created and trying to skateboard as much as possible for it is the thing that truly makes me centered and happy. I hope everybody can find that one positive thing in there life that can do that for them as well because I believe is very important for you to have. Ive never really blogged anything before and I'm not really sure what the format is or if there even is one but all I know is I can just put tidbits of info on here as I trudge along this path and hopefully someone can relate.

Pat

Living the dream

Living the Dream

As a teenager I never in my wildest dreams would I think I would able to have fun in sobriety and enjoy life. My definition of enjoying life was a two bottomless glasses of beer, just in case one ran out. Alcohol let me escape to being comfortable with who I was. My dream of growing up and being successful was exactly that, just a dream. There came a point were I could not enjoy my drinking if had set a limit on it. Also I could only enjoy my alcohol when I there was no control. The funny thing is when I have no control I often found myself in situations that, through my actions, set me up for complete disaster. So when I got sober, my perception of what felt good was contorted. I really had no clue about enjoying anything except through my selfish motives.

The beginning of enjoying life sober was my experience bowling. I was newly sober and my new friends invited me to go bowling. As a teen in recovery I had already made up my mind it was not going to be fun do to the fact that I would not be drunk. My head told me “Obviously everyone drinks when they bowl, why do you think they invented beer frames?” Yet little do I know that hanging out with 10 sober people bowling, talking trash, and hearty laughs was the beginning of the change of my perception of enjoying life. Soon I was able to find fun to going to movies, amusement parks, weddings, and even playing video games sober. I began to realize that I had more opportunities to express myself sober than being a slave to my addiction to alcohol. There is something stress free about not having to keep up with my lies, who was out there to get me, and who I had hurt. All because I was sober. Alcohol with no control gave me only as much fun until there was no more left. Sobriety has shown me that there is no glass ceiling to the opportunities that life offers. The freedom today, because I am sober, has given me the opportunity to be “living the dream”

Alberto P.

Nancy Reagan

Nancy Reagan. My involvement with Visions and my work with teens in their efforts in recovery can all be traced, I believe, to Nancy Reagan.

I was only two years old when the first lady of our nation began championing the “Just Say No” generation into action. There were endless public service announcements and nationwide elementary school campaigns in effort to stop the next wave of drug users from making the same mistakes our parents did. sThere we were, smack dab in the middle of the decade of self-indulgence, signing sobriety pacts years before we would start wearing deodorant.


The first lady’s anti-drug movement was about as effective as all the other trickle-down syndrome policies of the Reagan administration. Fast-forward ten years and those same children were doing the same drugs we were warned about. The ‘Just Say No’ moniker, as much a part of Saturday morning as cartoons and
fruit loops, gave the impression that the disease of alcoholism and addiction was a question of will. We were made to believe that fighting this progressive and fatal affliction was so simple. “Would you like onions on your burger?” No thanks. “Would you like to trade self worth and the innocence of childhood for jails, institutions, or death?” No thanks. As we now know, there is a lot
more to it than that.


For most people, these questions are that simple, but for people like me and the brilliant young people I have the gift to work with; it takes a complete psychic change as brought forth from working the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is why I do what I do. It is my wish to dispel the myth of willpower as a solution to our disease, and usher a new era of tolerance and understanding in
the fight that Nancy lost.

Fun in Sobriety

Why is fun an important part of sobriety? Because it reminds us of an important truth, that Alcoholics/Addicts do not have to depend and rely on substances to feel good about themselves, their fellows and life. To enforce this truth, Visions puts aside days of sober fun. The fun begins in just gathering together in anticipation of the night out built up to be greatly relieved. Through out the time everyone has his/her own highlights and favorite moments but what consistently brightenes everyone's spirits is the feeling of happiness and the comfort of a fellowship of friends sharing an experience together.