Abstinence

Non alcoholics literally never think they have a problem with alcohol. They don't have to control their alcohol or drug use because it's never out of control. Certainly no one is concerned about their drinking or drugging. That's what the first two questions of the CAGE screening test refer to. If a person is concerned about their drinking or others suggest they cut down, 8 out of 10 of these people will definitely have a problem with alcohol.
The World Health Organization recommended a year of abstinence if there was a problem. Further, if a person couldn't go a year abstinent then they definitely had a problem with alcohol and abstinence was the best recommendation.
Alcoholics Anonymous recommends Abstinence for life. Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous and Marijuania Anonymous all make the same recommendation.
There is this idea of "Controlled drinking" and it's most commonly the first step to finding the motivation to quit drinking completely. Most alcoholics have in some way tried to control their drinking by limitting the number of drinks or switching from spirits to beer or some such thing. This may slow down the roller coaster but it rarely works and never really stops an alcoholic from drinking in excess. Eventually the alcoholic will return to abusive drinking. But as one AA said, you don't have to ride the garbage truck all the way to the dump, you can get off anywhere along the route.
It's the first drink or drug that sets one up physically and mentally to have the craving for more drinks even if it's not that first drink that one time. But in contrast to what the alcoholic thinks it's the first drink not that last that does the damage.
More than 70% of people after 3 years of abstinence if they try to return to controlled drinking will return to alcoholic and abusive drinking. At 5 year of abstinence 50% appear to be able to return to controlled drinking without returning to abusive drinking for a matter of a year or more. The other 50% however return to abusive drinking but it's rare that they with thier experience of abstinence return to their previous level of drinking. Vaillant's and other's research showed that after 5 years of abstinence it was more likely that a person never identified as having an alcohol problem would have serious social problems secondary to alcohol use than that person who had been abstinent. There are further studies that show that at 7 years of abstinence if individuals return to controlled drinking only 30% will go on to abuse alcohol. This suggest that abstinence itself is a healing process. However 15 year follow up studies show that those who remain abstinent are healthier and more successful than those who return to controlled drinking. Not only that but they may indeed surpass the projected trajectory of success in work, relationships, and well being of their original cohort. Abstinence appears not only to be curative but also to induce superior functioning. AA members with more than 5 years of abstinence and membership were shown early to be twice as successful across the board as their original cohort.
Abstinence works. It's the gold standard. The whole recovery movement with it's various alternatives is riding on the coat tails of the successful abstinent pioneers of AA. Indeed it's the AA members with continued sobriety whose lives are the model of recovery that have caused society to give alcoholics and addicts the second and sometimes more chances. The millions of recovered members of AA have shown by their example that the disease of alcoholism and addiction is treatable. Once considered a fatal illness without any hope of treatment millions of members in AA and other 12 step abstinent recovery programs have proven that this is not the case. The original Big Book of AA was called a Way Out and it certainly is that for those people who can be honest with themselves, admit their problem and follow the 'simple' program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Abstinence works. "Controlled drinking" is usually a 'glum affair' in marked contrast to the 'happy, joyous and free' experience of abstinence that is so much a part of the fellowship of AA.

25th Annual White Rock AA Round Up

Robbie from New Jersey was the speaker at White Rock. "We're an organization that recruits members from prisons and mental hospitals," he said. "I'm thankful that men like the man here who has 56 years of sobriety and the man with 51 and the woman with 50 years are here. When I came into AA it was old timers who were there to take me in. Without them I'd probably continued to live on the street doing crime to feed my addiction. Thanks to them I've been sober since 1983.....my family who never wanted to see me again accepted me back when I was 6 years sober welcoming me with open arms....today I've a job and family and laugh more than I ever believed."

Tina the chairperson for the organization committee was a thorough delight poking fun at her husband. She interoduced one of the founders and we all heard with laughter how the early committee members, often with little sobriety and some relapses, had funny difficulities getting together a major event with thousands of participants. They had the fire department and RCMP there. The RCMP came to ask them if they had a liquor license because when they asked one of the members outside who they were he said, "We can't tell you."

After the speaker the band began to play and everyone was dancing.

Road Rage

I drove my truck to White Rock. Normally I can't pay attention to the traffic because I'm on a motorcycle. Driving a motorcycle in Vancouver is a life attending event. Every second is an acid trip as your life flashes before your eyes as driver after driver attempts to kill you. In a truck I can see what normally my reflexes are alone responding to.
Most people aren't actually driving but consider their car a moving cell phone booth. At least one fellow who was weaving was very drunk. I don't know about the other weavers. Weaving in their case looked more like some kind of evasive driving routine. The starters and stoppers seemed just to be epileptic. Alternatively they may have not gone back for the follow up pacemaker visits. Another was actually reading the newspaper while driving. And some women was talking at length to to their children in the back seats. The principle disruption though was the slow driver. They created waves of chaos around them with a dozen spaces ahead of them.
Somehow I missed the sign to White Rock and ended up heading out Granville to the air port. Possibly the shocking policeman standing in the road tauting and daring us to drive him down while he presumably checked to see if we were wearing a seat belt caused another level of chaos on the road . There's no need for policemen to be in the middle of the road no matter how macho it may seem to them. If it nearly caused me a heart attack, imagine the elderly spinster worried he'd draw a tazer on her.
Unnerved I got into Richmond where there are absolutely no signs for the millions of us each year who make this mistake and want to find the American border but can't because there isn't any signnage. Who would want to go anywhere but Richmond?
Driving the truck was illuminating. I thought all the drivers were smoking dope around me when I'm dodging them on the motorcycle. They may have been snorting coke but I didn't see any reefer being passed around from the vantage of my truck. Maybe these days worried about the smell they just take a hit for the road.
It's crazier by the day out there. Seeing all the drivers completely unaware of the flow of traffic or that driving slow is equally a hazard to driving fast I'm not surprised people go postal on the road. I prefer the motorcycle even if it's a throw of the dice whether I'll get anywhere alive. Driving in the truck I actually saw how little attention people were paying to the road. That alone could explain the road rage. Some people instead are actually driving vehicles and wanting to get to their destinations alive.
Instead of police standing in the middle of the road doing silly things maybe we could allow them to drive about and pull over drivers that are just plain dumb. Then make them repeat their driver's test talking on the cell phone and reading newspapers while impaired. They only get a license if they can drive under their own preferred driving conditions.
Alternatively they could issue Walther PPK's to us motorcyclists and give us a Darwin Award'sLicense to Kill.

Humility

I imagine myself a child

And a loving God as a parent

And all the creatures of the world sacred and animate.

I imagine the tomato I'm eating as alive and happy being eaten

Saying, "Thanks Bill, being eatten is just fine".

I imagine all the creation a great and wonderful theater

In which nothing is real and the walls are parents and the trees parents

And the insects way much smarter than me, discussing dimensional space

And doing buzz poetry stand up for each other.

All the animals are enlightened masters and mistresses

Returned to watch over and guide the development of the children\

Humans like me and George Bush and Obama and Harper.

None of it is any more real than a video game

But we're supposed to not hurt each other, make a mess or waste

Or interfere with each other.

The idea is to learn to get along and play well in the sandbox

With the sand saying "Good for you George, you're sharing today".

"That's right Bill, Obama is God's creature too, just like a turtle."

"There's Harper and he's okay and the boys are just playing with cruise missiles

And they shouldn't be but "boys will be boys". You should be making a space ship

Rather than writing poetry or helping that old lady cross the free way.

Now the molecules of the window are talking to me when I throw the stone

And break them apart, "We don't need to be free but it's all okay."

Everyone knows we're children but us. We're being watched by stars

And galaxies and unseen aliens who don't want to have happen to them

What we do to any thing that we don't understand (Kill).

The sand is a collection of nano genius who are just one of the many audiences

That collect daily to be amused at our opinions and childish attempts

To justify all the wrong things, all the things our mothers told us not to do

When we were like nations learning toilet training still

We're the smallest most unenlightened beings on the planet

And that's really humility.

Norman Bethune

Watching Che I couldn't help but think of the great Canadian doctor/revolutionary, Dr. Norman Bethune. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Bethune

Henry Norman Bethune (March 3, 1890 – November 12, 1939; Chinese name: 白求恩; pinyin: Bái Qiúēn) was a Canadian physician and medical innovator. Bethune is best known for his service in war time medical units during the Spanish Civil War and with the Chinese Communists during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He developed the first mobile blood-transfusion service in Spain in 1936.^[1]

Bethune became increasingly disillusioned with surgical treatment and concerned with the socioeconomic aspects of disease. As a concerned doctor in Montreal during the economic depression years of the thirties, Bethune frequently sought out the poor and gave them free medical care. He challenged his professional colleagues and agitated, without success, for the government to make radical reforms of medical care and health services in Canada.

Bethune was an early proponent of socialized medicine and formed the Montreal Group for the Security of People's Health. In 1935 Bethune travelled to the Soviet Union to observe first hand their system of health care. During this year he became a committed communist and joined the Communist Party of Canada.

The next year, 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Bethune accepted an invitation from the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy to head the Canadian Medical Unit in Madrid. He joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion which was composed of Canadian communists and other leftists and set off for Madrid on November 3, 1936.

n 1938 Bethune travelled to Yan'an in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China. There he joined the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong in their struggle against the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Lebanese-American doctor George Hatem who had come to Yan'an earlier was instrumental in helping Bethune get started at his task of organizing medical services for the front and the region.^[7]

In China, Bethune performed emergency battlefield surgical operations on war casualties and established training for doctors, nurses and orderlies.^[8] He did not distinguish between casualties, treating wounded Japanese prisoners as well as Chinese.^[9][10]

As a Canadian and a physician I can only hope that Canadian film makers and perhaps the Chinese and Spanish will honor this extraordinary man with a great film starring Donald and Keifer Sutherland as old and young Bethune.

CHE: Guerilla

Part II of Che is as good as Part I. It picks up after Cuba and after the Congo. Che has gone to Bolivia. We heard of the plight of the miners in the tale of his Motorcycle Diaries. That was when Che as a 4th year medical student took a trip with his biochemist friend through unpaved South America on a 500 cc Norton. 50% of miners died before age 30. When they went on strike they were shot down. Che attempted a revolution, the original Bolivian revolution and land reforms having been taken over by a military coup. The Americans assisted the Bolivian Army. The peasants didn't like any foreigners. Che, the doctor provided medical care to them and to his revolutionaries. In the end he bandaged his own wound. And then the wounds that were made remained open to this day.

I Am My Parents

I think of them most when as a youth I last lived at home. They were middle aged showing the signs of aging and gravity, wrinkles, loss of hair, sagging skin beneath the eyes. They were conservative and frowned at my hair brained ideas of freedom and risk. Their words were often cautious. Too often they didn't understand. Now I see myself in them. Aches and pains and a face, only part of which I recognise. Who is that other creeping in whenever I look closely. More lines and more experience. I listen to a young man and ask him about jobs and self support and who will pay the bills. I encourage another to complete university. I never think there's benefit in all night parties and discourage anyone from becoming legless or losing their minds with drugs or alcohol. And why would you want to jump off a cliff into the sea and risk a broken leg? Does she really love you? I ask a love sick puppy. Where are you going to live? A day doesn't go by that I don't hear my self asking the inane questions my parents once asked. And sitting in church I remember them praying. And I sit in church and pray with them.