Have I told you about the sponsor that I am fortunate to have at this time? Well, I will now since I am still deeply touched by our conversation last night.
I was blessed with a wonderful sponsor, George, for years, but then he died four years ago. I grieved him mightily and, after about four months, I realized I was limping along in my recovery without a sponsor. I was finding it easier to skip my home group, easier to breeze through my tenth step at night. I began to pray for the grace to both want a sponsor and to know who that might be. In the quiet of my prayer what I heard was “Bob.”

We alcoholics tend to look down on New Year's Eve as “amateur night.” We often stay off the highways, believing them to be filled with dangerous, untrained, drinkers who have no tolerance for alcohol. We like to believe that when we drank and drove, we did it well. There is a little bit of truth in this, because we did develop a tolerance for alcohol, but mostly it is what the Big Book calls “gutter bravado.” Our tolerance just allowed us to drink more, and we were just as foolish as anyone else.

This year, 2015, is the first year that I haven’t felt some generalized distress at Christmas time. It began when I was a child in a violent, alcoholic home. I almost always got hurt on the days leading up to Christmas. It would begin with the tree.

Claudia Black, Ph.D. and national expert on the Family Disease of Addiction, contends that most children in chemically dependent homes are often overlooked and underserved by school counselors and family service agencies, and even the juvenile justice system. Why?

Tony DeMello, a great spiritual teacher, used to say that in the spiritual life only three things are necessary:  “Awareness, awareness, awareness.”

He might as well have said that all we have to do to live spiritually is, “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

For the American public, addiction is a taboo but extremely common topic. Children take drug education classes beginning in middle school, learning that drugs will 'fry their brain' and cause them to become a ‘burnout’ or a failure. People frequently joke that something is ‘like crack’ or that they are ‘shopaholics.’ Some of the most heated political debates center on issues like drug testing for welfare recipients or the legalization of marijuana.

Even though over 23 million Americans are in recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs, it seems that many who aren’t still do not know how to address addiction when they encounter it in their everyday lives. 

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, I attended open AA meetings for 13 years without figuring out that I was an alcoholic. This was odd, because I seemed to have a natural affinity for alcoholics and other addicts. As a pastor, I had conducted more interventions than anyone else in my town. Many evenings, I brought people to detox, and then sat up late at night learning about this disease. I taught college and graduate school courses on addiction without figuring out that I was an alcoholic and addict. I went to twelve step meetings because I really wanted to be with the people. My home group tolerated me well, because it was an open meeting. Occasionally  I’d  overhear someone whispering “He almost admitted it,” but I never did.

The expectation of the holiday season can be stressful for everyone. For reasons that might be obvious, that stress seems to be even greater in families dealing with recovery from a drug or alcohol addiction. 

There is a simple practice that can reduce that stress and offer us the opportunity for a meaningful holiday experience; that is a mindfulness practice. It allows us to stop our racing thoughts, which are usually produced by some form of fear. It allows us to make choices that support our well-being. It allows us to be present.

The state of West Virginia has recently been noticed for a considerable increase in the amount of heroin overdoses. The state is facing a five fold increase since 2010. President Barak Obama  is spearheading a solution to this problem to promote change and drug addiction prevention because the state is lacking in resources to publicly address this concern of rising rates. Although, the cause of these overdose rates are ambiguous, the signs point to the states poverty levels, unemployment rates, as well as individuals who families used drugs.