By David Palmer Shortly before noon on a sunlit day in May, men and women began gathering at the “Recovery in the Daylight” Narcotics Anonymous (NA) 12-Step meeting at Recovery Central, a new Little Rock facility mainly for NA meetings. More about the “Recovery in the Daylight” meeting in a minute. First, some background on […]
Vietnam war vet overcomes opiate addiction, Pioneers local Cocaine Anonymous meetings
By David Palmer Cocaine addicts are a special breed. That’s what Norith Ellison says. And he should know. Ellison, 60, is a recovering cocaine addict who has been clean and sober for 21 years and started the state’s first Cocaine Anonymous (CA) meeting in Little Rock in 1989. Widely known and respected in the community […]
Lois Wilson Story: When Love is Not Enough
The Biography of the cofounder of Al-Anon By William G. Borchert Picture if you will, eight women parked in front of the Clinton Street Brooklyn home of Bill and Lois Wilson. Their motors are running and they are steamed. On this night in 1938, their husbands, most of them newly sober, are attending a meeting […]
Managing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: 12-Step programs and Vet Centers will help
“On March 4, 2007, combat veteran Chris Dana, put a .22 against his head, muffled it with a comforter and ended his life as quietly as a book drops. He had PTSD and didn’t get the help he needed.” These deeply affecting words were written by Eric Newhouse, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, in his […]
Texas Tech’s Recovery Program
An escape from Animal House, Texas Tech’s innovative recovery program tackles collegiate alcohol and drug abuse. There are 50,000 college-eligible kids in America today who are too strung out on alcohol or other drugs to get in let alone make the grade. Unfortunately, the way things are now, it may be just as well. If […]
Moments of Clarity
By Christopher Kennedy Lawford William Morrow $25.99 “The morning of February 17, 1986, I woke up, as usual, with that weight in the pit of my stomach, knowing that all I had in front of me was another day of dancing with the 800-pound gorilla of addiction.” And so begins Chris Lawford’s “moment of clarity” […]
Sought Through Prayer and Meditation
Wisdom from the Sunday 11th Step Meetings At the Wolfe Street Center in Little Rock Geno W., with William G. Borchert Hazelden Foundation The Eleventh Step: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to […]
Beautiful Boy
A father’s journey through his son’s addiction By David Sheff Houghton Mifflin Company $24 I’ve got a grandson who, at age 22, is drawing social security benefits in the aftermath of two catastrophic drug related accidents that badly damaged him physically and emotionally. And he still smokes pot. I’ve got another grandson, 26, who […]
Sports Lover’s Guide to Recovery
Andrew L. Dieden Hazelden $14.95 Sports and recovery are similar, says Joanna M. Ceppi, a psychologist at Promises Treatment Center in California in the forward of Andrew Dieden’s book, “in that both require a person to exercise discipline, courage, and some form of surrender.” Andrew Dieden, lawyer, sports fan and a recovering drug addict develops […]