MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am kind of an asshole about Christmas.  Probably not even kind of.  For most of my adult life, I have been a complete asshole about Christmas.  If it is possible to have arguments "against" Christmas, I have had them and have spent the last 20 plus years insisting on making them to anyone within range.  In my defense, my arguments are all valid and totally well thought out.  They even vary and range from environmental: the holiday season is a huge drain on already drained resources.....the lights, the paper, the fuel-related travel and package shipping....it is a ridiculously wasteful time of year; to financial: that the mass-market feeding frenzy of consumerism and stuff-buying is everything that is wrong with Western culture; to philosophical: the tiny issue of patriarchal religions basically stealing ideas from Goddess-cultures and flat-out making up holidays based on zero factual evidence. I have had my hands full with reasons not to buy in to this season. Throw in the years I spent on drugs and I have probably managed to dismiss, if not totally miss the holidays my entire adult life.  Even when I was around for Christmas, it was not without some self-righteous caveat about drowning polar bears or starving Hondurans or gifts wrapped in newspaper.

I know.  Total asshole.

But not this year.  This year I am selling out or buying in or whatever.  This year, I am Celebrating.  I am watching every movie, listening to Christmas radio, decorating the house, my office, the car, the dogs.  I am going to every cookie/holiday/work/neighborhood/tree-lighting/parade I can find.  I am having at least one of every holiday concoction Starbucks and Peets can come up with.  I am building a ginger-bread house.  I am tree-trimming and light-lighting and snow-finding.  I am wrapping presents and buying things people absolutely do not need in any way.  I am making Jenner wear antlers and taking ridiculous selfies with him and Rain and Birdy in front of our massive tree.  I am baking cookies for Santa and staying up till the wee hours of the night on 12/24 looking for Rudolph.  And most important of all, I am going to believe.  Whatever anyone is selling, this year I am going to Believe. In. It.  Elves, Oil-Buning Miracles, Virgin Births, Flying Reindeer, Angels named Clarence, Ringing Bells, Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Tiny Tim's New Legs, 34th Street, all of it.  I'm in. I am totally in.

Here's why.  Here is the why of all whys.  When given the choice of picking either joy and fluff and miracles or joyless, harsh, reality.  I say, pick Joy.  Life is going to give you enough times when you don't get a choice.  When your only option is joyless, harsh, reality.  Situations that just do not have any light; so, when there is a choice in the matter, pick the fucking light.  Even if it is light you have to make up and string up.  Even if it is light that you think should be turned off to save energy, just go with it. Go with the Joy behind door number one.  The light at the end of the tunnel.  Give yourself some time to be soft and gooey and full of too much hot chocolate.

See, the holiday season in this country is the agreed upon time for all of us to be less of an asshole. I think maybe that is why we have tried to start celebrating it earlier and earlier. We make things pretty.  We engage, kindly, with people we normally wouldn't.  We care about other people having enough, we donate time, we buy into and tell stories with one common thread and that thread is the greatest gift anyone can ever give anyone: Hope.  The Earth makes us slow down with colder weather and less light.  We admire trees and ache for snow.  Frankly, we become better versions of ourselves.....or we have the opportunity too.  And we get the chance to make memories and to use our time wisely.

And time.  Oh my goodness, the importance of time.  While, I try not to regret too many things, because it is a useless way to spend energy, every once in a while I get a cold blast of a reminder of all of the time I missed either in my addiction, or even worse, so caught up in my own world that I just assumed I would always have next year.  Here's the thing about next year.....it doesn't always happen, and even if it does, it is going to be vastly different than this year, the one happening right now.  Kids will be older, loved ones may be in different places, wars could start, people you think will always be there will die.  You may lose your job or win the lottery or get a dog, or get a tattoo, or get sick; the point is you will not be the same next year.  You are not the same as you were last year....nothing is really the same as it was last year, it can't be. And I can tell you the worst sadness in the world is to reflect upon years past and think: "I wish I'd bothered."

So.  This year, I am bothering.  From now on, I am bothering.  I am checking out of all intellectual reasoning for the next six weeks.  42 days of Jingling Bells, Cookies, Yelling out Happy Holidays to EVERYONE, and hopefully, with enough belief, a miracle or two. I hope you will do the same.  Don't miss stuff.  As brilliant as your arguments may be, they don't stand a chance against the need to create a time of Hope, so when the sleigh comes by, just get in and enjoy the ride.

And they heard her exclaim as she wrote out of sight:

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
AND TO ALL A GOOD LIFE.  xoxoxoxoxo

Shameless (Part 4 the done-part)

I keep trying to write a final part to this series on addiction.  Keep trying to come up with some solutions.  I know what I know...what I have already shared....but other than sharing it, I am not sure what else I can do to change it. Here are the highlights so far, for those of you who only like to read part four of things.  I get that.

1. We have a weird relationship with addiction and probably need to check ourselves from time to time when we are running our mouths about "addicts".  

2. I know addiction is a disease and not in a quasi-philosophical way of knowing, I know it in a sciencey way, like with proof and research and diagrams.  

3.I know that even those of us who believe addiction is a disease don't always treat people with the disease of addiction the same way we would treat someone with cancer or the flu.  No one stops by with casserole when a family member relapses.

4. I know that it will take longer than my lifetime to change the policies and perspectives that need to be changed about addiction and I know that this is not because it is a hard concept.  We accept that things are diseases and treat them with compassion all of the time.....but we don't with addiction and that is because of the other thing I know....I know about shame.

Sometimes I wonder if shame is the real problem and addiction is simply the resulting disease.  Like how no one really dies of AIDS.....they die of AIDS-related pneumonia or AIDS-related lymphoma but not actually AIDS.  I think a lot of people are addicts because they got shame somewhere along the way and the resulting disease is alcoholism....or meth-addiction....opiates, etc.  And the problem with shame and addiction is that they feed off of each other and our systems, our policies, even our language, add to this shame which then feeds the addiction.  We want addicts to pay.  We want to hold them up by their hair in front of a mirror and force them to look in it...and we want them to see something disgusting.  

I guess it is because we want people to "get it"....we get tired and frustrated.  Addiction, like any other disease, affects everyone it touches, not just the person afflicted, so we get resentful and indignant, and since we don't really have the same level of respect for addiction as we do other diseases, we don't try and hide our unhappiness....our judgement.  We are embarrassed by addiction, we keep it hidden, anonymous, it is a secret....because we are ashamed or scared which is simply one of shame's symptoms.  Shame is a lot like cancer....it just feeds and grows and eventually destroys the life it has found to live in.  

So when I think about addiction and ask: How do we change?  Where do we go from here? I think maybe the answer is: The opposite direction of where we are.  We come away from shame.  Where we feel anger, we soften.  Where we feel judgement, we open our minds.  We change our reflection from disappointment to understanding.  We start there not because people shouldn't be held accountable, not because we are OK with people doing whatever they want without consequences, but because we finally understand that people won't ask for help if they are afraid, if they are suffering from shame.....if all we can offer them is more shame. We make addiction easier to talk about and get help for.  We own our addiction like we own our cholesterol score.  We remove the sensation and remove the shame and we go about the business of helping people heal. We understand that some people will get well and some people won't.  We accept that some people have the disease and it is terminal, while others will find remission and we take the morality and the shame out of all of it.

We have an ice-bucket addiction challenge! But an imaginary one! Instead of ice, we pour compassion and it looks like this:  In your life is someone with addiction, or there will be one, either in passing or in the mirror, a family member or your weird neighbor...whatever. When you interact with this person or think about this person, re-form their addiction as if it were a different disease.  Your drunk Uncle?  Consider him as you would if he had unmanaged diabetes....your cracked out neighbor?  Terminal Cancer.  Just see.  See if anything changes. The words you use about them...the things you say to them...how willing you are to help them, etc.  My guess is that everybody's humanness will grow, rather than their shame. And they will do it again. Then again. 

And maybe, just maybe, that is how we change.

The End.

Starting the Revolution (Part 3)

What can we do to change?

*Raises hand* PICK ME PICK ME!!!

Unfortunately, what needs to change about how we deal with addiction in this culture (and maybe other cultures as well...I can't say I have any idea how addiction is dealt with in China for example, so I am sticking with America), will require nothing short of a revolution.  A complete overhaul of every system, every law, every policy, every text book, etc.  It will take years and it will take a lot of convincing.  We have had drug addict scape-goating in this culture for a long time.  It is very profitable and comforting to have a group of people to be disgusted with. Think about all of the stereotypes: "drug-addicted welfare mothers", "homeless winos", "crack-selling black gangs".....etc., etc. And yes I know sometimes the stereotypes are true.  I just also know that is not the point.

The good news is that the revolution starts very simply.  It is based on one shift in perspective; one idea, now proven by science that if we each believed, that if we each knew to be true, would be enough to start the momentum.  Cultural shifts start small.  We don't just wake up with equality, we start talking about it.  We march, we protest.  Most importantly, we inform every decision and every policy we make based on what we now know to be true.  And what I now know to be true, what I now know to be fact, and what I feel like I need to shout from rooftops is that addiction is a disease. I learned this fact in a very Matthew McConaughey, Time to Kill, closing argument way.  Do you remember that scene?  Where his final line is "now imagine she's white"?  That is how powerful it was for me.  But instead of it being about race, when dealing with addiction, it is about choice vs. disease.

It doesn't seem like much does it.  But think about it.  Imagine if we really, truly thought of addicts as people with a real disease the way we think about people who have diabetes as people who have a real disease.  And then we started to play with what it would look like if we treated people with the disease of diabetes the same as we treat people with the disease of addiction.  And we started to imagine people being sent to jail and prison because their diabetes was not managed well.  Or we started denying other health services to diabetics because they were actively eating donuts,  Or we refused to hire a diabetic because we were afraid they might relapse on sugar, get sick and not show up for work.  Or we took kids away from parents who were struggling with their diabetes to the point that they were not able to properly care for their kids.  And if you think those things cannot happen with diabetes, think again.  We don't hear about them happening because diabetes isn't sensational.  Unmanaged diabetes is ok with us.  Addiction is not.  But if they are both a disease....why not?

Before you argue with me....I m going to ask you to watch something....it will take about an hour of your time.  It is a movie called "Pleasure Unwoven".  It was called to my attention by my mentor, my colleague and my friend, to whom I am forever grateful.  It changed my life. It called me to a higher purpose and I think if you watch it you will better understand what I am babbling about.  I know when I watch it I better understand what I am babbling about.  It starts kind of slow, so please give it a chance before you say: "Seriously, Megan?  Why am I watching some guy drive around Utah (I think it is Utah?), and dress up in old west garb?"  Just give it the full hour.

And know this.  In the part where the gun is to the guy's head?  With the shot in front of him?  Want to know what I thought in my addict brain? When the craving hit?  I thought: "I wonder if I could get the alcohol in fast enough to not feel the bullet's pain". I thought it just for an instant.  Because my disease is well managed right now.  But the thought was still there.  That is how powerful this disease is.

Now imagine it unmanaged.

So you can watch most of Pleasure Unwoven for free on Youtube here (clips 1-8).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA8F89537FD4C3FD1

However, if your life as ever been touched by addiction....either personally or professionally I would suggest buying a full copy (Amazon).  That way when the revolution comes you know what the hell is going on. When we come back to our regularly scheduled blogging we can talk about what he heck this all means.  If I have figured it out by then.

Breaking Badass (Part 2)

Last year I had the opportunity to be evaluated by some folks who were trying to determine some things about me.  One went well and one really, really did not.  Since I was the same person both times and answered the questions the same way it has been a real challenge for me to figure out what the difference might be. I had the same truth, I wore similar clothing, I had not had a lobotomy nor do I have multiple-personalities. To read the two reports side by side, however, you would not recognize one Megan from the other.  Some have suggested that perhaps it was because one was paid by one side and one was paid by the other.  That is an entire blog of its own, but trust me when I tell you I am not so naive as to think that might not have something to do with it.

But I don't think that is everything.

The first evaluator had, by their own admission, little to no experience with drug addiction.  But they were fascinated by it.  Despite the fact that I have been clean from methamphetamine for a decade, long before I entered my profession which is where these evaluations stemmed from, the majority of the questions this evaluator asked me focused on that time in my life.  In fact, even my alcoholism (or addiction 2.0 as I like to call it), was far less interesting to this person than my meth addiction. And the incident related to the alcoholism, which is why I was there? Earned only about 10 minutes of three two-hour sessions.  I found that interesting....and odd.  And infuriating when I read the report.  However, now that I have had some time to think about it, I think I understand.  The evaluator was fascinated by something they did not understand and then because they did not understand it, they tried to destroy it.  And since I embody the "it".....I was the one to be destroyed.

We do this with addiction and addicts all of the time.  We are bipolar with first our deep fascination and celebration of addiction.....think Breaking Bad....and then with our flip-side condemnation of "those fucking losers who trade their food-stamps for dope".  For this evaluator, I was some sort of a meth-circus-freak.  It was interesting to ogle me in the low-lit office, but I sure as hell did not need to be seen in the real light of day.  I think this is true of our society in general.  We are all over the fucking map with how we view and treat different addictions, different drugs and different people from different walks of life who ultimately are doing the same exact thing.  Robert Downey Jr.?  Beloved Celebrity. You would love to have him over for dinner.  Would probably let him sleep over.  Borrow your car.  Take a not-known Robert D. just released from county with the same charges Iron Man has in his past? We aren't sure he is safe.  He is certainly not staying in our homes and forget hiring him--he's a felon....he has weapons charges....he sold drugs.

It makes me sad-laugh when I see Breaking Bad winning it's nine-millionth Emmy or I hear people fawn over the characters on Orange Is The New Black.  Taystee?  I love her too.  But she was a heroin-dealer...probably directly or indirectly responsible for people losing their kids....sharing dirty needles...dying.  Jesse Pinkman?  It's weird because like a lot of the Breaking Bad viewers I think he deserved another chance at a better life too, but when I am working with the Jesse Pinkmans in real life?  You'd be amazed at how quickly that compassion dries up when real-life-Jeses want to live next door or work at your neighborhood store.

When I think about addiction I am fascinated by how convenient it is to have it both ways.  You want to be impressed by my degree from UC Berkeley but you don't want to hear about how I was high the entire time I was getting it.  You want to celebrate alcohol as a national past-time and then separate yourselves from the fact that of all of the drugs of addiction it is by far the most dangerous.  The evaluator wanted to hear all about how I lied when I was using so I would not lose my job, then wondered how I could do that, then suggested that maybe I should lose my job because I was honest with her.  Which, had it happened? Would have served only to undo my life.  Same as it would have then.  Which to come full circle...is why I lied in the first place.

The thing with my addiction is that it isn't black and white.  The episodes do not neatly end after an hour....I was not able to wrap it up cleanly after a few seasons.  No one forgave me because I was their favorite character.  I had a lot to lose and I was afraid  and we don't make it easy to ask for help here.  There are no fandoms in real life.

Luckily for me the evaluator, the evaluation, didn't destroy me.  But it did some damage and probably could have done more had I not been part super-hero (or in reality had I not had such great people in my life, professionally and personally). That amount of power mixed with hypocritical confusion about addiction in itself is dangerous. It is also representative of how we think of and treat addicts in general.  Our confused state of being with addiction, and our confused relationships with substances are frankly more dangerous than the substances themselves.  The question is....what can we do to change?

Addiction 101 (Part 1)

I have spent a lot of time thinking about addiction.  My whole life really.  Other people's addictions, my addictions....I went to real-life school and learned about addiction, then I went to the kind of school where you use the Bic pens to actually write things and I learned about addiction.  I work around the field of addiction....my personal life is shaped around being in remission from addiction.  I could probably be considered an expert on the subject except that I am not really sure I know anything.

So when you don't know things, if you are me, you think about them a lot.  A LOT.  And you try and figure them out through observation and consideration, research and open-mindedness.  The last one being the hardest because when you try and be open-minded about what other people think about something....and it is a something that you have or are...it can be painful.  People don't think much of addicts sometimes.  And while I am far from the person I was when I stole things to support my habit or crashed my car because I was driving it drunk...that person is no less a part of who I am than the person who holds two degrees.  In fact, I would argue that my experiences as an addict have informed my world-view at least equally to anything else I have learned or done.  And while it has been suggested to me a time or two that I don't need to broadcast it and that perhaps I should put it behind me...I find that confusing.  

I have a degree hanging on my wall from a top-university that I barely remember getting and no one thinks I should put that behind me. I have toe-shoes from a short lived ballet career that really only existed in my mind and I still talk about that like it mattered. I climbed mountains for awhile, five years ago and yet I am still an REI member.  So what I have decided is that I cannot and will not deny any part of who I am or how I have spent most of my life.  Had I spent the last 25 years becoming an ice dancer I would talk about ice dancing....but that is not what happened. I have no idea how to dance on ice.  I have barely learned how to make ice.

When I sat down to write about addiction I quickly realized two things: 

1. I have way too much to say about it for one Blog.  At least I think.  I still haven't looked into the rules (are there rules?) or standards for Blog writing but I am pretty sure they are supposed to be written based on the attention-span of the average American.  Myself included.  So this may become a series.  If Blogs have those. This Blog does.  

2. It is hard.  Addiction is hard and fucking confusing.  How I feel about it....how you feel about it.  It is complicated and personal and it is likely much easier for a lot of people not to read about it or think about it.  It is one of those things where it is easier to just think what we want to think and then turn our heads. I get that.  So I get if you don't read or read and get bored or read and think "Fuck Megan, I never liked her anyways." Or whatever.  My intention is not to hurt anyone.  I am responding to a calling by my higher power that allows me sobriety and serenity as long as I never look away.  I have to think and write about it.  I have to spend the rest of my life trying to help figure out this massive Gobstopper of a problem.  That was the deal.  Sometimes I wonder if I have made a deal with the Devil because I wish I didn't have to think about it.  I wish I could get a nice job at a ball park holding headphones or as a recorded voice reminding you of your doctor's appointments; I wish I thought about movie sequels or what is on sale at Sephora....but that was not the deal.  The deal was clear and I took it because my life depends on it and I think life is an o.k. thing.

So.  Let's rip the band-aid off.  Pull the covers back. Addiction.  Let's talk about it.  Let's think about it.  Let's face it and face ourselves.  Are you in?

Nothing is Free

There is a quote by someone I heard or read somewhere that goes something like this:

"You pay for it all.  Every drink, every drug, every love.  Nothing is free"

I think it was a musician (or possibly an author, famous in the 60's because I remember referring to him as a "hippie-guy"), who was dying of some type of drug or alcohol or tobacco related Cancer...and I think it was on NPR....or possibly in Rolling Stone.  I searched for it once and found it and then lost it again so I apologize to whomever the guy was who said it.  You are probably long dead now....as you were really close then and I hope it was a peaceful transition.

It could be that I have the quote wrong by a word or two, but how I have written it above is how I have held onto it and it is in this form that it has become the foundation for the second half of my life.  It is what I thought about this morning when I got called to drug test for the third time in less than a week.  Well....it wasn't the first thing.  The first thought was in the form of the self-righteous, ego-ridden anger that has fueled me for so much of my life but that dissipated almost immediately and was replaced by that hippie-guy's quote and the humility that I am in fact due to be called as often as the universe sees fit.

It took me a long time to figure this out.  To figure out that my probation with the Board; the drug testing, blue cards, quarterly reports, etc. has little to do with the one DUI that I got five years ago and everything to do with all of the things that I never got caught for.  The Board probably doesn't  know that either. Nor do they likely care.  They have me on probation for their own reasons....liability, consumer protection, statistics. I don't have any illusion that they have me on probation because they give a fuck about me evolving. But my higher power does.  The Universe does. I do.

Here is the truth.  The honest stuff.  I did really bad shit for a lot of years for a long time.  I only got caught once.  And while I spent a lot of time fighting against what seemed like an unfair and never ending punishment at the hands of a Board that seemed to want to unjustly crucify me (poor little Megan), in my recovery I have come to recognize that in looking at it like this, I hadn't really learned a god damn thing.  I spent years as a meth-addict lying, stealing and breaking laws.  I never got caught.  When I got clean it was like some sort of fantasy.  My parents took me in....in their ocean front house in Oregon and took care of me like a child until I could care for myself.  I work with drug addicts now and trust me....treatment, if you can get it, is a bit more rough around the edges for most people.  Furthermore, I drank alcoholically for a long time and continued to drink even after I got the DUI.  I lied to people.  I minimized.  I did what addicts do when they are trying to live two versions of the same life and while I finally did have some consequences.....it could have been and probably should have been so much worse.

Your life choices find you.  They catch up to you in the weirdest ways sometimes.  When I look around at the shape that my life has taken it is always in awe of the influence the choices I made when I was younger have on me today.  Particularly around substances.  My body is older than it should be.....my kids are imaginary....the first person I call in the morning is an automated man who gets to determine my day. The choices that I have now, that will influence the rest of my life will be influenced by these past choices as well.  It never ends.  I am being held accountable.  But, finally I am evening my own score and grateful to have the opportunity to do it.  I am paying for it all.  Every drink.  Every drug.  Every love.  And trust me, nothing is nor should it be, Free.