Alcoholism Relapse, Part 2

           Becoming involved with high-risk situations while in recovery from alcoholism is the number one cause of relapse (see “Alcoholism Relapse Part 1: High-Risk Situations”). While the task of avoiding them seems daunting at times, a recovering person can use a number of painless ways to manage high-risk situations.

1.     Like the real estate agent who knows that “location, location, location” are the three top requirements for a successful house sale, recovering people understand that “planning, planning, planning” are the top three ways to avoid the entrapment of a high-risk situation that can threaten recovery. Planning the schedule for the day ahead of time – who to see, where to go, how to get there, when to arrive and leave – is essential for managing day-to-day activities that can either support or threaten recovery. Many people find a written plan is the best because when the task is written down it has a sense of permanence and importance that must be honored.

2.     Writing down a list of high-risk situations and carrying it with you every day can go a long way toward helping to avoid them. Like planning, the written expression of a high-risk situation has to effect of subduing its importance and enhancing awareness of it. Sometimes a recovering person will share this list with a trusted friend who can help them monitor their involvement with the high-risk situation.

3.     Falling into a high-risk situation is sometimes unavoidable. When a person finds themselves in one of these situations, it is important to remove themselves from the situation as quickly as possible. Riding in a car with people who are drinking or using other drugs, being at a party when someone brings out the alcohol or drugs, or bumping into a person who was an old drug connection in a supermarket are all people and places that represent a high-risk for using. Every attempt must be made to quickly leave the situation and seek a safe haven. As awkward as this procedure may be, it will work only if a person does not try to convince themselves they are helpless or make excuses for being there.

4.     Not going to bars, parties, clubs, concerts or other venue where there is a likelihood alcohol will be served is a sure-fire solution to avoid being trapped in a high-risk situation. Painful at it may seem at the time to not go to these places one used to enjoy, the pain is much less than what using alcohol or other drugs will cause. Often, recovering people will go to these places with other people who are also in recovery to get support for remaining clean and sober during the event.

5.     Categorically refusing to be with people who are using alcohol or other drugs in your presence is also a way to avoid relapse. This is difficult for many people because they do not want to lose contact with old friends, but if those friends are using alcohol or other drugs it is usually just a matter of time before a recovering person just falls into line with them. Regrettably, choices usually have to be made among those people a person associates with and one cannot be with recovering people and using people at the same time.

6.     Talking openly and honestly about high-risk situations before they occur takes their alluring power away. The more talk there is about known situations that can threaten recovery the greater the likelihood is that the situation can be disarmed before it occurs. A person can learn how to cope by talking with others about these situations that are very common. Counseling and 12 Step programs are specifically designed to encourage that kind of sharing.

7.     Having a strong support network of recovering people can help thwart the power of impending high-risk situations. Knowing, in advance, that there is the chance this situation will occur usually allows for time to contact others in a support network who can give advice and even join with a person to re-direct their attention away from the negative situation.

8.     There is also a way to use support people in a practical sense. Commonly, situations arise that are threats, but those threats can be minimized if one or more support people actually go through the situation with a recovering person. Having someone to accompany the recovering person to help them face an unavoidable situation – holiday celebrations, anniversaries, weddings, etc. – can go a long way toward protecting them from getting engrossed so far into the situation that they use alcohol or other drugs to cope.

9.     Some people print out the high situations that threaten their recovery and place them on bathroom mirrors, refrigerators, or other private places to help remind them of the need to plan for the situations that may arise. This knowledge of which situations can injure a recovering person goes a long way toward avoiding them. Adding to the list occasionally as new situations arise also helps.

10.  Always have alternative activities available in the event that plans fall through or there is a need to immediately escape from an unexpected high-risk situation. These activities can be based on fundamentally positive things that provide a reward for avoiding the situation that is a challenge.

Despite all of these plans and options, the single most important thing to do is remain positive. Many people have a personal saying that affirms their recovery and if they are able to repeat that to themselves when confronted with a high-risk situation, the power of the affirmation can usually carry the day. “This too shall pass,” is an old 12-Step affirmation that frequently helps people pass through the moment of the situations that arise. Knowing that a person can get through the situation without using and that they will feel much better about themselves because they avoided the danger successfully also helps a person in recovery stay in recovery.

Alcoholism Relapse, Part 1

          Many times people who are addicted to alcohol are confused about the reasons that they drink to excess or wonder about the causes for continual relapse. People who are close to them sometimes wonder as well why it is that an alcoholic will continue to drink despite any threat or consequence. However, more than 50 years ago a researcher discovered that the leading cause of relapse among alcoholics was that there was some high risk situation they encountered while sober that caused them to go back to drinking.

          Two other relapse causes that were also identified – failure to improve unhealthy interpersonal relationships and negative moods that overwhelm a person – but failure to successfully negotiate a risky situation was the number one reason people chose to go back to drinking after making an attempt at sobriety. These high-risk situations come in many forms, but the following ten could be considered deadly for recovery unless they are successfully managed.

1.     The most prevalent high-risk situation to overcome is being around people, places, things, and situations that were previously associated with drinking or the use of other drugs. Being able to avoid these situations depends somewhat on a person’s age. Younger people have a harder time avoiding old drinking friends than older people who seem better able to dissociate themselves from negative people. But, the old 12-Step adage seems to apply here: If you hang around a barbershop long enough, sooner or later you’ll get a haircut. Hanging around old people or places can eventually erode confidence to stay clean and sober to the point where picking up again seems the natural thing to do.

2.     The notion that a person can use another drug other than alcohol and get away without relapsing later on alcohol is also prevalent among relapsers. Often this is called the “marijuana maintenance” program where a person avoids drinking but uses marijuana to enhance pleasure or dispel pain in life. Having sleeping pills, tranquilizers, or prescription medicines in their possession also falls into this category of high-risk situations.

3.     Feeling “Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired” – the famous HALT acronym of Alcoholic Anonymous – is a set of situations that can cause relapse. Sometimes a person can get into these states by being in situations that create them. Being bored is frequently listed as a cause of relapse for young people, but the boredom is often a masquerade for depression that is caused by risky situations.

4.     Ironically, having positive feelings can sometimes lead to relapse. Some situations – birthday parties, anniversaries, job promotions, etc. – can cause a person to feel like celebrating because they are associated with drinking alcohol. Sometimes people erroneously reason that if the situation causes them to have pleasure, then perhaps adding alcohol to the situation will cause even greater pleasure, and the allure of that is hard to resist.

5.     Stress is all about change, and it can cause a person to be involved in situations that can lead to using alcohol or other drugs to manage it. People often resist change because of the unpredictability of the outcome that can cause worry and concern. Avoiding the buildup of stress can go a long way to reducing the temptation to use alcohol or other drugs to soften the strain that stress causes on the physical body and the mind.

6.     One part of the HALT slogan mentioned above is “tired” and the role that fatigue plays in relapse is largely misunderstood. When a person gets physically or mental fatigued there is a tendency to not think clearly and to want to take shortcuts. Sometimes the thinking is that fatigue is good because then a person can sleep off the cravings and urges to use that might arise in difficult situations. But, the fact is a person is rarely at their best when tired and they are more vulnerable to distorted thinking.

7.     Eventually, every recovering alcoholic asks themselves the question as to whether they are a “real” alcoholic. The greater the distance they have from their last drink the more likely they will forget that it is only through their daily abstinence that they are able to maintain their attitude of sobriety. There is a natural tendency is to think that, since they have successfully managed risky situations in the past that might have caused relapse, the chances are they are not truly addicted to alcohol and can use it in moderation. Controlled drinking creates even more high-risk situations because an alcoholic who is drinking commonly finds themselves surrounded by people who are using or in places where alcohol is a dominant stimulus. Little do most people know, but it is the situation of successful management that causes this overconfidence, and it is hard for many people to realize that the farther away from their last drink that they are, the closer they may be to their next one.

8.     There is also a tendency to romanticize the past when one is at a distance from their last episode of drinking. The “war stories” that some people tell create a situation whereby their brain, upon hearing the story being repeated over and over again, begins to interpret the story as a normal life occurrence that is acceptable. People then usually conjure up all the old euphoric memories of when things were just fine and their drinking did not cause them untold pain. And, the sense of bravado that is felt by telling the story can unfairly signal to the person that they have control over alcohol.

9.     Cross addictions create hazardous situations for many people as well. Compulsive gambling, sexual activity, eating, spending or working can all lead to unhealthy situations that can lead a person back to compulsive drinking. “Everything in moderation” proclaimed the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, and this message is very important for recovering alcoholics to hear.

10.  The high risk situation that is perhaps most obvious is having a lot of cash on hand that makes it deceptively easy to use alcohol or other drugs. Frequently, because cash is not being spent on drugs or alcohol while in recovery, there is a tendency to have a lot of cash in a pocket or purse and this can lead to the temptation to use it to purchase alcohol or other drugs. Alcoholics are conditioned to believe alcohol can enhance pleasure or reduce pain and when money is no barrier to using it, they will often drink.

                High-risk situations continue to be the single most important threat to recovery from alcoholism. They are easily rationalized as being safe and acceptable behaviors, yet they can cause untold hardship when a person engages in them.

The Revolution in Alcoholism Treatment

Many years ago, two alcoholic men – Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith – met and changed the world.

         Until that point, alcoholism was considered largely an untreatable disease with only three known outcomes…jails, institutions or death. But after these two men met and talked with each other about their common illness, the processes by which people came to understand alcoholism and address it changed radically. No longer would alcoholics be seen as merely weak-willed men and women. No longer would alcoholics be relegated to the insane asylums or jails simply because they could not be treated. And, no longer would people with the disease of alcoholism or other addictions be without hope to arrest the disease. When Bill W. and Dr. Bob sat and talked about their experiences, strengths, and hopes for the future, they gave hope to now millions of people.

          What made the difference in the lives of these men, and the millions who followed them, was that they had restored principles and values to their lives through the practice of a simple daily program of recovery. They reasoned that when they drank they ended up giving away not only money to get the alcohol that would ruin their lives, but they also gave up their morals, values, and principles that governed their lives. The bartender or liquor store owner ended up owning them and their lives as these men indentured themselves to the alcohol: They became slaves to the alcohol and would do whatever the people who had alcohol told them to do. But, in recovery, this servitude ended. They were able to not drink when they were abstinent and they maintained their abstinence by practicing a few simple principles in their daily lives.

         As Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) came to say later, people in recovery from addiction need to “practice these principles in all their affairs.” What were these principles that the men had given up when drinking and were restored to them when they were sober? The first 100 men and women who stopped drinking through AA in those early years set down in writing the steps that they took to get and stay sober. They became known as the famous “12 Steps” of recovery. They reasoned that if they became enslaved to alcohol by gradually giving away all their values, morals, and principles, then they would need to recover those same values, morals, and principles in their lives in order to remain sober. So they listed out the principles they knew they needed to live by. They arrayed them in terms of the step-by-step process they went through to get them back into their lives, and wrote the language for the steps it took in a clear and direct way.

         Here are the principles that they built back into their lives, one-by-one over time, and the steps they took to get them:

Honesty - 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives were unmanageable.

Hope – 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Faith – 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Courage – 4. Made a searching and fearless more inventory of ourselves.

Integrity – 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Willingness – 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Humility – 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Love – 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed ands became willing to make amends to them all.

Justice – 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Discipline – 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Spirituality – 11. 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 carry that out.

Service – 12. Having has a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

         Armed with 12 spiritual principles they had once lost but regained through the 12 Steps, the original founders of the AA program resumed their lives as recovering alcoholics. They passed down a rich tradition to other alcoholics, drug addicts, and others addicted to behaviors that works as an effective way to arrest the effects of addiction and relapse to this day.

Catching up...

It's been quite a while since my last entry in The Happy Hour blog, but the Summer raced along so fast it was almost hard to catch up.

In July I celebrated my graduation from Capella University with my Ph.D. degree in psychology with a gala event. My whole family came to town for the occasion and we had a wonderful party with family and friends to celebrate the last step in my academic career. What a great time it was. I felt as if it had been years since my family and I were in the same room together. It filled my heart with joy and gratitude, and I think you'll agree that perhaps the greatest family portrait in the history of photography was taken at the time!

I taught an Introduction to Psychology course at a small local career college during the Summer. It was an excellent way to gain classroom experience and watch young people learn and grow.

Twyla and I took a trip to Kansas City MO to visit her sister and brother-in-law. They are fantastic people and treated us royally while we were there. This visit came only a few weeks after traveling to Rock Valley IA for a visit with her brother and sister-in-law - also super folks - who also treated us to the places where Twyla grew up as a young woman. We got a chance to see the family farm where she was raised and enjoyed some good ole' fashioned mid-Western hospitality. It was fun and I really appreciated the warm feelings I got from Arlene and Bill in Missouri and John and Millie in Iowa.

Twyla also took part in a women's Triathlon here in the Twin Cities this summer. For the life of me I have no idea where she gets the energy to do all the physical activity she does. She ran a good race with several hundred yards swimming, bicycling for several miles, and running for a few miles more. But, she's in great shape and there may be some kind of lesson in that for me to get out and exercise more.

I went to Ely MN around Labor Day to visit with my good friends George and Mary Kay who love their cabin there and are very generous to let me stay a while and soak up "the good life." I'm amazed at how easy it is for my compulsive workaholism to be shoved into the back seat when I'm in Ely and it continues to be a wonderful place to go for me to re-charge the batteries.

This past weekend, my good friend Kelli (George and Mary Kay's daughter) had a spectacularly beautiful wedding and it provided a fitting celebration for the end of Summer. It was a gorgeous day and a magnificent event that was literally produced by dozens of people. I had a chance to reprise an old career role as a photographer for the event and I had a great time taking more than 600 candid photos of everything from the "Big Dip" finish of the bride and groom's first waltz to the kids gulping down handfuls of cake. They're a great family and an important part of my life.

To cap off this wonderful Summer experience, I was hired on as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Hazelden Graduate School for Addiction Studies where I teach the Group Therapy course. This is a dream come true. I now work with the next generation of alcohol and drug counselors...teaching them not only what I have learned about psychology through my own academic work, but also what I know from my 23 years experience working in the field. The Grad School also renewed my contract for next semester, so I'll be teaching through May there and love every minute of it.

The frosting on the cake came when a small and very prestigious liberal arts college in Minneapolis, Augsburg College, hired me as an Adjunct Assistant Professor to teach the Principles of Psychology course there next semester. Oh, what a joy that was to get the call asking me to come on board the psychology department there!

At last, with the Grad School and Augsburg I have two teaching opportunities that will carry me through the first half of 2013.

Of course, I am forever grateful to be clean and sober through all this wonderful activity. And, there's a lesson in this: I know I would never have any of these things in my life if I were not in recovery. So, my involvement with Narcotics Anonymous and my personal program of recovery is an important ingredient of my daily routine.

All the best,

Roger W.

Something new...

It's been a while since I've written, but I certainly haven't been idle. After graduating in April, I took some time off from blogging and concentrated on work and teaching. Most of you know the other parts of life that have been unfolding and things are pretty much going the way they should.

One thing that is brand new is my website... Online-Substance-Abuse-Counseling. I've been busy designing the site, doing market research on the domain name and getting ready to publish it live. 

Now...I sure could use your help. If you wouldn't mind, go to the web site http://www.online-substance-abuse-counseling.com and give it a quick look. I'd be real interested in your critical feedback.

Thanks for the help.

All the best,

Roger W.

Death and dying...

I found out yesterday that one of my patients died on Easter Sunday by a drug overdose. It's never easy when someone you know dies, but it seems so much worse when that person was in your care and you could have virtually predicted his death.

This 30 year old man came for his third treatment episode last month. He was well-known within the institution where I work because he had been treated a few times there and had always come back following another of his frequent relapses. When I first saw him I felt strongly that this was going to be a tough case. He was a gentle and kind man without bitterness toward anyone, who always seemed to have something good to say about his relationship with you. Yet, deep down, there were signs of trouble and my antennae were vibrating the first day I saw him.

He had little trouble grasping the intellectual parts of a program of recovery. He knew he was biologically addicted to heroin and benzodiazepines, and he knew he was going to go through a range of physical withdrawal symptoms in the early part of his recovery. He also believed in the 12 Step program, but there was a tragic flaw in this belief system: He felt strongly that the 12 Step program works to help some people stay clean and sober, but somehow it would never work for him. And, he had a sadness about him due to this despair. On the last day we met for a private session on March 30 we worked hard for more than an hour to identify the sources of this negative belief system where he told himself he could never get well. We labored over his thoughts and beliefs about the events that happened in his life. We challenged those false beliefs with the truth. We identified that he felt sad and hopeless when he would cling to ideas about how he might never get clean and sober, and, while he wanted to remove these negative feelings from his life, he could not feel a change in his emotions for the better when he thought about changing these negative beliefs. In other words, he had a belief that no matter what he said or did, nothing would get better.

He also proved to himself that he was an excitement junkie...he loved the thrill of the chase to get his drugs and he loved the pleasure his heroin gave him. He even admitted to me that he loved the idea that this might someday kill him...there was an exhilaration that he felt every time he thought about using. No matter how hard we tried that day, he could not remove this from his mind or see a way to neutralize the tremendously damaging effects of such thinking.

At that moment, I knew he was in deep trouble. I asked him to review his anti-depression medications with his psychiatrist and he said he would. I asked him to surround himself with positive recovering people who had been where he was and turned themselves around. He said he would. And, I asked him to talk about this to anyone he knew who might help him shed the weight of this negative, self-destructive thought. He said he would.

He didn't do any of those things after leaving me that day. Instead, a few days later, he started to use again and he overdosed on Easter Sunday morning at his home.

I resist the temptation to think of what more I could have done to help him. I understand that there is only so much another person can do when you are confronted with the disease as strongly as he presented. But...I know what I felt that day when he left my office and, as unreasonable as it sounds, I wanted to hold him there that day, arrange for him to go back into primary treatment, and protect him from himself by wrapping my arms around him and assuring him it was going to be OK. I wanted to jump up and down and tell him that this negative thinking was only going to end one, bad way. And, because a man's life was at stake and I did not do any of that, I am left with regret, remorse, and anger.

Of course, over the span of 24 years as a counselor, it is not the first time one of my patients has died while in my care. I know this will all pass as I focus on the future and the people still in my care who may be at just as much risk for dying of the disease of addiction. But, it doesn't get any easier each time it happens. I immediately think of Chris, Wendell, Becky, Rose, Bob, and, most of all, Kristine whenever this happens.

I have also become a lot more rigid in my thinking about how to treat this illness. I vow to react more aggressively toward the obvious signs of relapse, and to not allow a person to lull me into believing that extreme sadness and hopelessness will somehow work itself out. And, I plan to do more meditating and praying for guidance in how to deal with this kind of case.

So long as I follow that way, I have nothing to fear.

Roger W.

Search for meaning...

I saw  a video clip recently of Viktor Frankl, the famous survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who wrote "Man's Search for Meaning". The video is of one of his very old lectures about searching for meaning in life, and, while it's tough to make out some of the images, it's worth listening to it.

I thought it would be relevant for The Happy Hour because we here are concerned with finding the meaning in life and have discussions about this all the time through these postings.

He has a simple message, that we must aim higher than our ordinary lives in order to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. He makes the point that there are forces blowing against us everyday that can throw us off course and we might end up in a different place than we intend to go. As Yogi Berra once said, "If you don't know where you are going, you might end up there!" Here Frankl makes the same point in an interesting way.



All the best, Roger W.

Buddhism...

I accomplished another of my first-of-the-year goals today: I went to my first Buddhism temple ceremony this morning.

For many years, after discovering Buddhism as a tender undergraduate at Stonehill, I have dabbled with the idea of "becoming a Buddhist". Now, I was never certain what that meant, but it sounded very avant garde and hip at the time, so I read a few books on it and even tried meditating a few times. But, for the most part, I drifted away from that just as I had drifted away from much of my spirituality over the years. For years I've just been a Buddhist wannabe.

But a week ago, that all changed. I had set about making a list of goals for myself for the new year and found that I needed to have a spiritual goal. So I thought long and hard - you might even say I meditated on it! - and decided that now was the time in my life when I should truly explore Buddhism or forever leave it behind. As the first step, I enrolled in Clouds in Water Zen Center in downtown Saint Paul and made a commitment to myself I would go to this week's ceremony.

The first thing they teach you at the center is how to sit for meditation and I went through a 30 minute instruction with several other people (mostly students from a local seminary who were just "checking Buddhism out"). Last year I went to a three-day seminar on Mindfulness Meditation, so I was well-prepared for the process of meditating. After the instruction, we all joined the congregation of about 50-60 people assembled in a beautifully peaceful large room that used to be a storage room in an old warehouse. White walls supported by gigantic wooden beams, all painted white, enclosed a soft space where pillows where set about and people were either kneeling or sitting on them. I cannot sit on the floor well so I grabbed a small support pillow and joined a number of others sitting in chairs.

Two women priests were sitting at the front, quietly waiting for people to settle, and signaled a third to ring a Tibetan Bell, that, when struck with a wooden hammer sent out the most clear and soothing sound that lingered in my mind long after the vibrations stopped.

There we sat, for 30 minutes, in meditative silence. Now, I realize the formal meditation like this is not for everyone, but certainly everyone does meditate. All meditation is living in the present moment of your experience. When a sound intrudes, you acknowledge that sound to yourself and turn your inner attention to your breathing - in/out, in/out, in/out. When a thought intrudes your moment, you acknowledge that thought as something happening in the very moment of your experience, and then turn your thoughts back to your breathing - in/out, in/out, in/out. And when your muscles get sore, you get an itch, you ass falls asleep, your head nods, or whatever else occurs while meditating, you acknowledge this and set it aside by concentrating on the breathing - in/out, in/out, in/out.

All of us sat in silent meditation until that beautiful bell sounded again that signaled we are to come into the full expression of our moment by acknowledging our surroundings and relating to one another again.

One of the priests then spoke on a topic. Today it was about "Engaged Buddhism", which is a current within the flowing river of Buddhism that advocates active engagement with the outside world of politics, social issues, relationships and, in other words, how a person can "carry the message" of Buddhism to the community at large. It's controversial because many believe Buddhist practice is for the solitary pursuit of serenity, peace, and living in the moment of one's own existence. But, clearly, with so many spiritual issues embedded in political debate these days, Buddhism has much to say and a lot to offer the world outside the temple.

When the talk was over, there was a ceremony that was strangely similar to the Catholic faith I was raised in. There was praying and chanting, and the priests seemed to offer incense, a candle, and some (I guess it was) wine to the statute of a  Buddha in the center of the altar. This was very simple and direct and without any pomp to it all all...I saw it as just a quiet way of offering some symbol of gratitude to a spiritual leader.

Well, if you've read this far, you might be either bored with the details of a religious ceremony or intrigued (as I was) with the power that was in that room for two hours. Clearly there was something happening that was bigger than the sum of it's parts, and the power that the silence created, and the calm words of wisdom the priest delivered that were coupled with a simple offering, gave me a sense of peace and consolation I have not had in many years.

I will return to Clouds in Water again. It fuels my spirit. I think it will make me a better person to be a part of this community. And, maybe I have something to offer as well. It's all part of the recovering journey where I have now stepped onto a higher road that will lead me to peace of mind.

All the best, Roger

Hurray!

Just got word from the Chairman of my PhD committee that he has given approval to my Chapter Four of the dissertation. This is no small deal. Chapter Four deals with the results of the study and it has been a tricky chapter to write from the beginning. I've been at it for about 2 months...finally done!

This means I can submit Chapter Five as soon as it is done, and, of course being the obsessive-compulsive person I am, this is already about 90% finished. All I need to do is add a few sources and expand one or two points and this is also complete. He would have to approve of it, of course, but that ought not be a problem as it is a summary of the dissertation and repeats a lot of what has already been said.

Can't believe it...almost at the finish line. It's taken nearly 5 years to get here. But, I still have a lot of work to do. Just to give you an idea, I have to get the Chairman to approve the whole dissertation at once, then I go to a format editor (someone I do not know) and they critique it from a format point of view including punctuation, grammar, etc., then it goes to the two other professors who make up the committee for their review and input. When they are finished reading it and let me know what they think (in terms of corrections or questions) I then answer that stuff and re-write the whole piece a bit. Right after that I "defend" it which means that I get together on the phone with the three professors of my committee and chat about the project, answering their questions and observations. They need to unanimously approve of the project. THEN...I'm done. It goes to the Dean for his pro forma approval and then it is published.

I'm guessing the whole thing can be completed in May. I'm about a month ahead of schedule right now, but I don't want to rush things to the point that the committee gets pressured.

All of this means that I am right on schedule for the time when Hazelden's Graduate School will be making decisions about faculty and issuing contracts for the 2012-13 academic year. I'm in line for a full-time Assistant Professorship there and I need to have the PhD to be seriously considered. All looks positive, but who knows?!

So...good news right now. I'm always giving thanks for being in a position to be able to achieve at this level. If I was using, and I was still alive, I would never be this close to accomplishing a major life's goal and serious piece of business. In fact, I'd probably be at some bar somewhere talking up a storm about the big plans I have one day to get a PhD...something that would be, under those conditions, so ridiculous that it would be pathetic.

If you are in my life I need to thank you for all the support you've given me through this. If you're not, then thanks for reading and welcome aboard!

All the best, Roger W.

It's all about the little things...

As human beings we tend to take a lot for granted. It's not a failing, it's just a reality, that in order to cope with life's pressures we often just zoom around and not take the time to reflect on all that we have. That idea was really made clear to me in this video that I found on a friend's FaceBook page. Watch it from beginning to end and you'll see what I mean. If you're like me, you'll be watching it twice to get the full flavor.

All the best, Roger