Session Notes

IO9

There are a limited amount of places where one can do drugs. Of those places, drug users select a certain few places where they prefer to do drugs and then do drugs most often at a select number of places that are convenient. Essentially, a regular drug user will often have a regular place to take their drugs. After they’ve done drugs regularly in the same place, the connection is made. A bathroom, a bedroom, a certain club, will always be associated with drug use. People trying to quit drugs often talk about how they have to avoid their old haunts because they feel a rush of anticipation.

Society tells those struggling with addiction too, “Just quit it.”

It sounds so logical and so simple to those uttering the words — and every addict agrees with the plan and even pulls it off for short periods of time.

Then religion comes alongside and delivers what we believe is a more compassionate message: “With the help of Christ (And a little guilt — er, accountability — from your Promise Keepers group) just quit it.”

Salon

By spring, Dominic had dropped out of college. His parents turned to the family doctor for advice. She told him to double down on AA-to attend ninety meetings in ninety days, which is a common AA prescription.

It worked. Although many of the faces at the meetings kept changing and Dominic constantly felt the urge to drink, he found a few “oldtimers” who believed wholly in the program and who encouraged him to dismiss the great majority of people who fell through the cracks.

Psychology Today –

For Some in A.A. and Other Addiction Recovery Groups, the Death of Philip Seymour Hoffman Hits Home.

In the first hours and days that followed Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death from an apparent overdose of heroin, there was an outpouring of grief on Facebook, on Twitter and in columns by recovering addicts and alcoholics like the journalist Seth Mnookin and the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin about their own struggles with sobriety and the rarely distant fear of relapsing back into the throes of active addiction.