Month: August 2013

Cory Monteif And Heroin, Alcohol, And Other Drug Overdoses

In the Boston area where I currently reside, heroin has rapidly become the next Grim Reaper. Even worse, Death is having a field day claiming souls around the country for those who have picked this drug up and succumbed to its awful addictive properties. The latest well known tragedy that heroin has taken down was with Cory Monteif, who was one of the stars of the hit television show Glee.

Cory was only 31 years old and had such a potentially successful acting career ahead of him with having also just completed two movies that were soon to be released. Sadly, he now becomes one of the many deaths that heroin has caused over the past few years. In the Boston area, it seems as if lately at least one person I know in my recovery circles is dying each week. Most of them are as young if not younger than Cory was at the time of his death.

For those that may not understand why someone might get addicted to something like heroin, it’s quite simple to get actually. Like so many other drugs, it’s essentially a painkiller and a mind number. While I never actively tried heroin during my drinking and drug days, I did enough of the other illegal substances to understand why someone might fall prey to any of them.

The bottom line for most people who take illegal drugs or ingest high quantities of alcohol is that the problem is not the actual substances being consumed, it’s what’s going on underneath. I can’t speak for Cory because I wasn’t him nor is there any information really out there on the Internet to say what his inner demons were all about. But in the world that I grew up in, I chose alcohol and drugs to numb the pain that came from my dysfunctional childhood. With both my parents having had mental imbalances and addiction issues, and also having been molested at a very young age, alcohol and drugs proved to be a great way to suppress all my emotions surrounding those issues. It’s really a blessing from God that I didn’t die during all those moments that I was pumping so many toxic substances into my body simply to hide from that pain.

The sad reality is that one’s inner demons can only be suppressed for a certain length of time by any numbing agent like heroin or alcohol. Eventually, one needs to consume more and more of whatever it is just to create the same numbing effect. The lucky alcoholics and addicts are those who hit a rock bottom with their disease that’s strong enough to show them it’s better to face the pain rather than hide from it. The unlucky ones never get there and usually end up dying from an overdose like Cory did.

Too many people who don’t understand addiction and never really suffered from it often blame these deaths on the drugs or the drinks. They don’t realize that most alcoholics and addicts are great concealers of what’s really going on inside of them. I wish Cory had done more to face his demons. He was becoming a superstar slowly and surely and while I never watched Glee religiously like so many others did, a few times I did tune in and saw just how talented the guy really was. I have great sadness over his loss and for all the other souls who have also parted from this planet in the same tragic way that he did.

I admit that it’s not that easy when one chooses to face their inner demons. Even after 18 years of being clean and sober, there are times that the pain I’m still dealing with tries to drive me to wanting to take something, anything, to calm the nerves. But I don’t, because I believe that God is healing me every day that I choose to walk through my healing process without numbing myself.

While none of us will ever know where Cory’s career could have headed if he had successfully found his own healing and recovery from addiction, he will still be remembered as a gifted person. Cory joins other famous people now that went down similar paths like he did including Kurt Cobain, Jim Belushi, and River Phoenix to name just a few. Each of them had promising lives ahead of them but they too never found the healing and recovery that could have saved their lives. The same holds true even for all of those people in this world, like for some of my friends and acquaintances, who weren’t famous but died nonetheless from alcohol and heroin, or any other overdose for that matter.

I’m grateful to God that I haven’t followed in any of those tragic footsteps as well as for the fact that I’m still working on facing my pain head on without trying to use anything to numb myself. It’s not easy but I live with the hope that one day, my healing and experiences will somehow be able to help prevent deaths like Cory’s or any of the other people who needlessly died from alcohol or drugs. I pray that Cory and all those who have ever died from overdoses are in God’s hands now and at peace. And for those who still have life breathed into them and are choosing alcohol or drugs to deal with life, I pray you face your inner demons and find the healing from them before Death or the Grim Reaper comes for you.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Have Patience With Technical Support

We’ve all had to do it at some point in our lives and we often dread doing it. And it usually happens when it’s most inconvenient to us. Something readily relied upon suddenly isn’t working quite right or maybe it’s downright broken and we’re forced to contact a technical support desk for help. But what happens all too often during that phone call is an expenditure of our anger and impatience at a person that is only trying to do their job.

A very long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was one of those technical support staff at a small firm that handled check processing for convenience stores. This company that I was employed at had various computer equipment that was placed in each of those stores. Part of my job description at that time was to troubleshoot issues that occurred in the field with that equipment. Sometimes the people that called for help had no technical background and asked me things such as where to find “the anykey” when the computer prompted them to “press any key”. And other times I had to help people even understand what a mouse was. But there was one time I remember a frantic guy calling me as he was trying to get his system working. He kept screaming at me that his screen was blank and he didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. When I finally did, I discovered his computer wasn’t even turned on and that was how simple that call got resolved. Most of the problems I ever had in resolving any customer issue was due to them being unable to remain patient and talk in a clear manner while I tried to dissect what was going on. The name calling, swearing, and rude behaviors that often arose with impatient consumers never helped. In fact, it worked the opposite by blocking my ability to fix their problem quickly and efficiently.

Most people today have such little patience with anything, especially when it comes to something they readily rely upon that suddenly isn’t working the way they need it to be working. So sadly, before even that person dials some technical support desk, they are already very tense and ready to do battle over their issue. And with much of the technical support for things today being in other countries such as India, accents can create a communication barrier and further complicate the issue with more stress and tension. But what most people forget when they call any place for technical support, is that there is a human being with a heart and soul on the other end who is just trying to do their job by offering their help.

Ironically, this morning I had a technical issue with a new e-mail address that I set up in iCloud. The whole phone call from beginning to end took more than an hour. But throughout it all, I remained very patient and understanding and had an extremely pleasant phone call the entire time. I finally did get everything working with only a minor glitch that a support ticket had to be opened on. The best part about it though was that at no time before, during, or after did I lose my cool, nor did I ever falsely blame or accuse the people helping me for any of the minor inconveniences I had.

I’m glad I’m not part of any technical support desk these days though because the stress levels can be extremely high in those types of jobs. I do my best today to respect when I’m talking to one of them because I was once in their shoes too. I also try to remember that those people have a heart and soul and their own life conditions to deal with. As devastating as it may sound, the person I’m talking to could have just tragically lost a loved one or had some other terrible thing happen in their life. Yet they are still trying to do their job by helping me and that thought usually makes any of my issue seem a lot more trivial which often will give me a lot more patience too.

If you have to make a technical support phone call today, try to take a moment today and take a deep breath before you do so. Realize that your kindness and patience will lead you to getting your issue resolved much easier. But most importantly, don’t forget you are also dealing with one of God’s children who has a heart and soul just like you.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“Can’t You Have Just One???!!!”

I meet new people all the time, some of which are those that drink alcohol. Having been clean and sober now for over 18 years, many of those people find out soon enough when they spend some time with me, that I don’t drink any type of alcohol at all and that I will never be able to just have one.

It often can be frustrating for me to go to any event where alcohol is present. And that’s not for the fact that drinking is taking place because that doesn’t really bother me. Whether it be a wedding, a fundraiser, or some other social event where the consumption of alcoholic beverages is taking place, what bothers me there is when someone always ends up approaching me to ask why I don’t have a drink in my hand and then tries to offer me one. The unavoidable usually happens to where I end up getting in a lengthy conversation with them about my sobriety and how I haven’t had any alcohol in a very long time. The irony in all of it is that most of those people who engage me like this always then proceed to talk to me about how their own consumption of alcohol is healthy and normal. I’m not sure if I’m a tractor beam for those with guilty consciences about their drinking habits but for some reason, it does happen to me a lot. Regardless, it’s rather comical because after those conversations, I’m usually avoided by those people for the rest of the evening.

For those that haven’t suffered from the throngs of alcoholism and never had any serious problems with drinking, there is relatively no understanding that they are ever going to have on why someone like me can’t just have one drink. In the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) world, they call this condition “the phenomenon of craving” where if I had even a single drink, no matter what type of drink it is, I could never stop with just the one. Instead it became two, and then three and finally I was “off to the races” to getting massively drunk.

Early on in recovery, I never went to bars or other places where heavy drinking, or any drinking for that matter, would be present because of being too susceptible to that phenomenon of craving. I found that I was just too sensitive to the temptation of having a single alcohol based beverage, especially during my first year of recovery. It was even hard to go into some restaurants that had bars within them back then. But eventually being around alcohol became inevitable as it does so for most people. Whether it be that friends and loved ones would drink when I went out with them or that I was invited to some type of party such as a birthday where alcohol was present, I had to start getting used to the fact that I couldn’t avoid being around it forever.

It wasn’t easy at first but my adaptation came by usually bringing a sober companion along with me until I got used to being around alcohol. I guess one might compare that to something like learning how to ride a bike. As in something like that, I needed that support for awhile until I felt comfortable on my own. In time that did come.

Today, I’m able to go to any function where alcohol is present, as being around it doesn’t bother me anymore. I let go of needing that support in those types of situations long ago. But I have to admit that I still chuckle under my breath when I am approached at any of those alcohol-laden functions by a person who either tries to get me to have one drink or give me a long discourse on their history of drinking habits. The sad reality is that no matter how many ways I try to get them to understand my disease with alcohol, most don’t ever quite get it. Ultimately though that doesn’t really matter because I accepted a long time ago this one simple fact; that I can never have just one ever again…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson