Category: Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday chapter from my life. Today’s piece of gratitude is dedicated to the alcohol and drug addiction education speaking opportunities I continue to have with Greek life at the University of Toledo (UT).

People often ask me what I find most rewarding in my recovery from alcohol and drug addiction after almost 26 years of sobriety from both. My answer is always the same. It’s the speaking opportunities I get to share about my journey from addiction to recovery, especially with those who may not have succumbed to the disease yet, like with students from colleges and universities, and more importantly, those that are in Greek organizations there, where alcohol and drugs tend to become quite rampant.

Personally, my alcohol and drug dependency took off during my university days at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), mainly after I joined the Greek life with Phi Kappa Psi where I became surrounded on a regular basis with people partying more than not on any given night. Because of that, one of the things I always wanted to do once I found recovery from alcohol and drugs was to speak about it with those active in fraternities and sororities. It was a hope that maybe I might be able to help prevent some of what I went through by simply sharing a real story of addiction.

Sadly, alcohol and drug education at colleges and universities is often limited to presentations that just share statistics about the disease. Policeman, fireman, and EMT’s are normally the ones who do these types of presentations, but it’s hard for people to really connect to this type of education for alcohol and drug addiction. While Greek life has mandatory presentations like this on many college campuses, it often isn’t enough and more is never done until a problem actually happens, rather than long before.

I spent my entire college life getting drunk and high, never hearing any personal stories of alcohol and drug addiction from anyone, and only ever learning a few simple statistics about the disease through those undergrad years. The fact is, it’s also very easy to hide out in Greek life partying all the time, because there are so many always looking for some type of a release from the stressors and pressures of college life, where alcohol and drug use become the number one sought venue to achieve that. That’s why telling my story to many in the Greek life at UT has been so critical and brought me plenty of gratitude.

What initially began with me speaking to the Kappa Delta sorority when they got in trouble on the UT campus a few years ago for a drinking relating incident, turned into further opportunities for me to work with them and others in Greek life, specifically pledges who often feel pressured to drink and drug solely to impress their brothers and sisters, just like I once did.

Presently, the Phi Kappa Psi chapter at UT is doing it right by having me come in each semester and work with each batch of new pledges before they even become brothers, providing them some much-needed personal education surrounding the horrors of alcohol and drug addiction. I have continued to see the benefits of providing this type of education to them, including seeing several brothers turn away from behaviors that were leaning towards addiction.

In the grand scheme of things, people often don’t seek help for alcohol and drug addiction until long after they have a big problem with either. But maybe many of those problems can be prevented by providing a real-life story of addiction to both before their addiction ever gets a chance to take root? This is why I’m so grateful to my present connection and speaking opportunities I continue to get at UT surrounding my recovery from alcohol and drugs, especially with Greek life there. I look forward to each of these speaking engagements, as they not only help others in the prevention of this deadly disease, they also helps me remain clean and sober from a life I hope to never go back to again.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Welcome to a new week and another Grateful Heart Monday in my blog, TheTwelfthStep, where gratitude remains the only focus in this series of my writing, which for today is for the understanding I received, about a disease I never quite understood, through a movie, “The Father”, and its main actor, Anthony Hopkins.

“The Father” revolves around Hopkins playing a man of the same first name as he, who is an 80-year-old facing the onset of dementia in his life. Shown through his perspective, the film takes the viewer down an incredibly bizarre path of presentation that was probably the most incredible portrayal I’ve ever seen of someone suffering from a disease that affects memory loss and identity. Watching parts of Anthony’s life disappear and reappear, seeing him struggle to identify even those closest to him like his daughter Anne (played by Olivia Coleman), clinging to parts of him that may or may not be real, I came to understand a type of disease that affected both my mom’s mother and her as well.

For example, my grandmother used to tell me the same stories over and over again. She’d also think my sister was her daughter at times. She’d forget my mother was divorced and would ask where her husband was. She’d think I was still in high school after I had long been in college. And she’d misplace things with ease until suddenly, in any given moment, she’d jump back into the grandmother I once knew and had grown to love. The one who shot hoops with me and made me laugh with ease, who had such a vibrancy to life. I never quite grasped back then why she couldn’t just snap out of what was happening to her. But, after watching The Father, I really understood far better some of what she was going through.

I saw early signs of this with my mother as well before her tragic passing in life. On some level, I’m actually thankful I never had to experience the pain that children go through with parents who lose their memories, including of them. Honestly, I pray to God I never have to deal with Alzheimer’s or dementia. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I don’t drink or drug, because both my mother and grandmother both drank profusely, which I think only aggravated the onset of their memory loss and disease.

Regardless, I have to give it to Anthony Hopkins for helping me understand so much better something I only witnessed a mere fraction of during my earlier years in life. Hopkins is such the dynamic actor that he makes me believe every single character he plays in all his movies, as if it’s really who he is in life. As an aside, I feel the same with every role Meryl Streep plays as well.

Nevertheless, watching Hopkins go through the motions of life as his dementia takes more and more of him away, it was heart-wrenching, but so eye-opening. Struggling to identify what was real and what wasn’t, clinging to facets of himself that he thought was still true, and eventually regressing into the young boy he once was, longing for a mother to take care of him as he wept uncontrollably, I found myself having far greater compassion and understanding of a disease I never did understand.

Truly, my heart, compassion, and understanding goes out to all those who have had to either endure watching a loved one succumb to Alzheimer’s or dementia, and to those who have directly battled and lost their lives to these diseases as well. Today’s Grateful Heart Monday is dedicated to the movie, “The Father” and its main actor, Anthony Hopkins”, who made that change of heart possible within me.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, a series in my blog dedicated to finding and focusing on the gratitude in life, which for today is for my partner Chris’s recent successful back surgery and for the one who performed it, Dr. Healey.

About a year ago, Chris began complaining about pain going down both of his legs. I thought it was just sciatica brought on by stress and tension. Over the months that would follow though, his pain grew stronger, causing him to walk with a waddle of sorts. Initially I joked about it, which I regret now, calling him a penguin. Little did I know there was a serious compression growing worse by the day upon a bundle of nerves in his low back. By late summer and well into the fall, his ability to walk any distance became seriously compromised. We often had to stop and sit on benches, which I know so very well from suffering from Fibromyalgia-related complications. When Chris finally caved in and went to see a back specialist, they attempted at first, as they always do, to see if medications might help. They didn’t of course, so they tried the second course of action for back pain, which is cortisone shots directly into the area where the pain was emanating from. Chris did that several times to no avail, which eventually led to back surgery being scheduled. Unfortunately, that surgery was delayed from January into late February due to both of us getting COVID.

When the day of his surgery finally arrived, I was holding onto a lot of irrational fears because my hypochondria often gets the best of me, even when it comes to other’s health, especially those I love deeply. Fears that included me thinking my partner would undergo the knife and never come out of it, that he might get paralyzed, or that there would be no benefit at all and he’d be put on permanently disability. Thankfully, none of those worries came to fruition.

Dr. Healey opened the area in Chris’s back with such precision and smoothed down the bone area that was pressing into his nerves so well, that Chris’s recovery was immediate from the time he opened his eyes after the surgery. The only pain Chris felt post-surgery was in the actual area where the surgery had taken place. But, all that pain that had been plaguing him going down his legs, all that numbness, and inability to walk normally was totally gone!

It’s now been well over a month since his surgery and I have seen such an incredible healing in Chris. The scar on his back is minimal now and the effects of the surgery have been only positive, which I’m so thankful to Dr. Healey and to God of course for helping my partner through something that I know initially caused him some fears as well.

I’ve known of many who’ve had back surgery over the years, and multiple ones at that, some of which regret having them because of now having permanent pain and damage from it. Thankfully, my partner isn’t one of them and is well on the road to living a great sense of normalcy again. I truly am grateful to Dr. Healey for being such an expert surgeon and grateful to God for guiding his hands so successfully and am dedicating today’s Grateful Heart Monday for them both having ultimately restored my partner’s back to a level he’s now able to function and live his life again.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson