Sacred Sunday - The Jagged Edge

Radical Recovery. That's the term Lillian and Murdoch MacDonald use in their book, Phoenix in a Bottle, for their recovery from alcoholism. Why is it radical? It's radical because despite all the commonly accepted beliefs that society has been fed about alcoholism, these two people found a way up and out of it and they feel no need to abstain from the occasional libation. Among the beliefs they have discarded are the following:'

Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.

Alcoholism is an incurable, progressive and fatal disease.

The only way to recover from alcoholism is through abstinence.

All alcoholics are egocentric, ruthless and care only for themselves.

If you're lucky and you confess all your character defects and all the rotten things you've done in your life, you may have a spiritual awakening which will grant you a daily reprieve from alcoholism. However, it is always there, waiting in the wings to once again take control of your life and lay it to waste.

I've been dancing around this issue for awhile now for several reasons; not the least of which was the vitriol directed at me when I admitted to a drinking episode several weeks ago. But the time has come for me to take a stand and I'm finally ready to do it.

In the past few weeks, I, too, have discarded all the beliefs listed above. It's been a painful, sometimes excruciating, but ultimately liberating process. I've ridden the jagged edge of every belief I ever swallowed - hook, line and sinker - without ever asking msyelf if it was true for me.

I've raged and cried and yes, I've even gotten good and drunk a couple of times, but I've continued to ruthlessly examine every single concept I once held as true. As I've done so, I've released myself from guilt that never belonged to me; I've found honor and respect for the hard journey I've been on and I've stepped into the full essence of what it means to be me, Angela, here on this planet at this time. In the process, I've experienced drinking as an enjoyable accompaniment to life - as something I can choose to do without fear of slipping into full blown alcoholism. I finally get what they mean when they say that the power we need lies within. It's always been there, but it had to be excavated - slowly, painstakingly and with great tenderness.

And yes, it's an ongoing process, but I feel I'm through the bulk of it and am ready to begin sharing it - without fear of retribution - without regret. Because it just might be possible that someone else out there could use a fresh message around this problem. And if one person could be saved years of needless suffering, well, that would be good enough for me.

My goal is no longer abstinence from alcohol. I am joining Lillian and Murdoch in being satisfied with nothing less than Radical Recovery.

Accidentally Green

When I moved to Montana it wasn't with the intention of creating a more "green" life. But that's exactly what's happened and I couldn't be happier about it. I figured my carbon footprint here: carbonfootprint.com and mine came in at 12.245 tons of CO2 per year, well below the average of 20 tons. I figure it's even a little lower because some of the questions, like: "Do you eat red meat?" I answered yes to, but the red meat I'm eating is a deer that my friends killed and we all processed over the weekend.

Why is my footprint lower? Here are some reasons:

I drive a Toyota Corolla and I only drive about 1500 miles a year.

I eat probably 90% local organic produce.

I buy a lot of my clothes and household appliances second-hand.

I wash in cold water.

I don't have a dishwasher (now, that one was really an accident, but I've turned washing dishes into a meditation opportunity!)

Most people aren't aware that one of the biggest energy sucks in our society is the food industry and how we as individuals choose to shop, cook and eat. In "The Balanced Plate", by Renee Loux, she talks about this:

In the last 50 years, however, the food industry has radically changed. This change not only pervades the growing of food but also the processing, distribution, politics and consumption of food. Farm productivity has increased 80 percent since 1960, butu the population living and working on farms has dropped from 40 percent to 2 percent. Family-run farms are on the verge of extinction, and in today's global economy, the dependence on seasonal, regional food no longer exists. Moreover, modern farming has truncated tried-and-true systems with a chemical revolution. We are growing more food on less land with higher profit margins, lower prices, and the loss of a majority of the once prolific varieties of any given food for two, three or maybe four standard varieties, which dominate the market without contest.

And if like me, you're interested in why we should be concerned about that, I'll offer another quote from "Diet for a New World" by John Robbins:

Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the U.S. is used to grow food for people. The majority of it is used instead to grow livestock feed. . . . It takes sixteen pounds of grain to produce a feedlot of beef. It takes only one pound of grain to produce a pound of bread. It is hard to grasp how immensely wasteful the feed conversion ratio for beef is. By cycling our grain thorugh livestock and into beef, we end up with only 6 percent as much food available to feed human beings as we would have if we ate the grain directly. If Americans reduced their red meat consumption by 10 percent, enough grain would be saved to feed sixty million people!

I highly recommend both of these books for anyone interested in becoming more aware of how our individual choices can make a big difference in healing our planet as well as ourselves. The agricultural methods prevalant today lay waste to the land and produce food with little to no nutritional value.

Oh, and if you're wondering about heart attack, cancer, osteoporosis, ADHD and ADD, you can find the reasons for it by researching the food industry, the beef and dairy lobbies and taking a good look at what's on your dinner plate.

I did really well with my first deer processing experience. That is until they brought that carcass out that you see in the picture - at which point I had to take a serious break. Peggy & Tom were real understanding about it though and took over until I could get back in there with them. I have enough meat to last me until next year. All it cost me was the gas to drive to Peggy & Tom's and the small amount of beef and pork to add to the burger and sausage to provide some fat. And not only that, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the sustenance my little buck is going to provide me over the next year and I feel very connected to this food. We tested the breakfast and italian sausage yesterday morning and it was so good! I've got roasts, tenderloin, fajita strips, stew meat, burger and sausage. It's healthy meat and there was no extreme energy suck to the planet to produce it.

This week I've decided to go one step further in the "greening" of Angela. I'm going to start composting. Look forward to more appetizing photos in the future!

I invite you to visit Renee's fabulous website to begin your own personal exploration in going green, eating well and helping save the planet.

Please tell me about your "greening" experiences and any resources you know of for further education. Thanks, ya'll!

Phoenix in a Bottle

"Phoenix in a Bottle" is a book I read recently co-authored by Lilian and Murdoch MacDonald, a couple now residing in Scotland who went through their own personal hell with alcohol. Lilian and Murdoch met in the early '90's at an AA meeting. They had both been attending AA for years with limited success. They married within a year against all the advice of their AA peers. At first it looked as if those peers had been right, for Lilian and Murdoch went on an extended bender, even ending up on the streets of Cambridge, England for a couple of weeks, "sleeping rough" as they called it. Their account of this experience is at once harrowing and heartening. It left no doubt in my mind that they know what they're talking about when it comes to having a problem with alcohol. They write:

By this time we were close to depair. We were freezing, the alcoholic shakes were starting to seriously manifest themselves, and an awful dread was setting in as we realised that we could think of no possible way out of the mess we were in, at least until Monday morning, when we might be able to wring a last few pounds out of the bank. Before then, a whole weekend without anything to drink, nothing to eat, sleeping rough and perishing cold - we couldn't face the thought of walking back to Christ's Pieces for the duvet, even if we had been able to find it again.

They tried AA one last time before deciding that if they were to solve their alcohol problem, they would have to do it together and find a solution that was specific to them.

Thus began a journey of exploring their childhoods and the belief systems that followed them into adulthood. They spent a few months working on this exploration while rebuilding their personal and professional lives. Now, more than ten years later, they are valued and active members of their families, workplaces and society. They drink occasionally with no consequence and are attempting to spread the word that there are many alternatives to the problem of alcoholism without committing to a lifetime of abstinence or a program that may not fit your core values.

Their discussion involves much of what they perceive as myths and superstitions about alcoholism that have been perpetrated on society through the proliferation of the 12-step communities through profit-based treatment programs. They also contend that AA is a quasi-religious cult based upon the contemporary medical orthodoxy of the time and the involvement of both founders with the evangelical doctrine of the Oxford Groups of the early 1930's, from which Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA, took much material for the 12 steps. Another quote from their book:

Frankly, the whole thing is total nonsense. What it all boils down to in essence is that they are saying that alcoholism is a progressive, incurable and fatal illness or disease of mind and body. That's the bad news, right? But the good news is that you can get continuing remission on a daily basis, by turning your will and your life over to the care of God (as you understand him), confessing your sins, making amends for them, and living the rest of your life in accordance with His will (not yours) and carrying the message to others.

These ideas, although a strange mixture of contemporary medical ignorance and evangelical Christianity, at least reflected the current thinking of the time in these two fields. However, instead of changing, developing and progressing over the years, this philosophy became fixed, to the extent that barely a dot or comma was allowed to be changed in the AA bible, the so-called Big Book, at it moved from one edition to the next.

I've been in touch with Lilian and Murdoch personally and I can assure you these are two sincere, honest and brave people. They are not out for personal gain, but only wish to help others who find themselves in a similar boat.

As for me, I hope this post will be met in the same spirit in which it is written - as an open and frank discussion into the many avenues recovery can take, and the many definitions of recovery an individual can claim for themselves.

I have added a link to their website, "Alcoholics Can Drink Safely Again" to the websites on the left hand side of the blog. I will link directly to their book as soon as I can figure out how to do that through Amazon UK.