Thoughts on Liberalism: the Religion and the New Sharia Communism of the Godly Godless

After the family the tribe is the fundamental unit of society.  The tribe was a collection of men and women who congregated around a leader, traditionally male with a female partner.  This was considered patriarchy whereas a female leader resulted in a matriarchy.  Tribal organization was defined by kinship.  Fundamental blood relatedness was essential to inclusion or exclusion from a tribe.  Jared Diamond in Traditional Societies reviews this feature at length in his anthropological classic.  Beyond the tribe there was the confederation, federation or nation.  Which is why it’s an misnomer to call most of the Canadian and American tribal aboriginal societies “First Nations” because most had not evolved to this more complex relationship.  The exception was the 5 tribes of the Mohawk Nation on the East Coast of Canada. Certainly aboriginal society had achieved nationhood status in Mesoamerica with the Aztecs and Mayan before them but in the rest of north america there were looser associations.
In the tribe the Strong Man and his Woman divided rule along gender with the masculine affairs being military and policing of the physical world while the feminine affairs were more internal to the tribe, religion and health care.  Vestiges of these ideas remain in terms that describe modern hospitals as hotels of god.  There’s this inner and outer sanctuary. The masculine, commonly associated with the Sun and the external or daylight world while the feminine was associated with the Moon, internal or night time world.  There are multiple variations on this obvious reductionism but it is necessary background to understanding Liberalism as the religion it is today.
It's all further confused by the most masculine religion of Islam having a moon goddess and the most feminine religion of Christianity originating as a empire religion with the sun god worshipping Emperor Constantine.  Intellectually, the limits of which are best set forth by Paul Johnson, in his classic, the Intellectuals, there is dichotomy but reality is neither black or white but various shades of grey.  St. Paul described this best by saying that here 'we see through a glass darkly.'  The great medieval saint described the mystical experience and God as "the cloud of unknowing'. Not surprising war is described as the 'fog of war'.  Only arm chair philosophers, Monday morning quarterbacks and eurocrats best described by Kafka know better.
Karen Armstrong in her classic history, Fields of Blood extensively reviewed the association of war and religion. What she found was that at the hunting gathering tribal level there was sanctity of life and little all out war.  Tribes were small and maintained by kinship and conflicted with each other over territory and resources.  The women leading the children did the gathering which accounted for 50% at least of the food while the men in hunting groups roamed the territory of the tribe securing wary game. The methods of food collection were limited with a major focus of time and resources being spent on acquiring food.  Tribal conflicts were limited affairs because food storage was ever a problem and there was simply not time or energy to give to any but cursory combat.  To mount major war fare agriculture was necessary.  Alternatively cattle and sheep herding could provide a mobile food source.  The pemican of the buffalo hunters allowed for limited war as a portable food maintainable food.  Today with refrigeration and drying process and all the transportation and food management of great metropolis's we take this all for granted. Napoleon Bonaparte knew "an army marches on its stomach."
Today's poverty and starvation are continuations of war politics. Matheus recognized that population control operated through the causes of starvation, pestilence and war. Further pestilence and starvation were operations of war. The three were intimately linked. The idea that poverty and starvation are merely a consequence of arbitrary lack of resources overlooks their design and strategy. Gifts of food and medicine are traded for guns all over the world just as they are traded for drugs by the starving homeless in the inner cities.
Agriculture, on a major scale, first occurred in the Fertile Triangle.  Here abundance resulted in the rise of a ruling class which had not been present to any degree in the tribe.  All of the tribe were previously involved in resource management with the leader often simply being the best hunter. The religion with it’s taboos and superstitions followed observations that ‘explained’ the phenomena witnessed by the tribe.  The religion necessary supported the Strong Man or else it would be destroyed. The Strong Man of history was called such because of his/her capacity for violence, paranoia and charismatic leadership.  With the advent of agriculture, grains could be stored, for campaigns. Not only that a class division could occur with peasants or slaves doing the work of agriculture while a few ruled with violence and technology. Again the religion supported this division or else the religiously leadership were removed (killed).
Jared Diamond and Karen Armstrong have impressively demonstrated that with agriculture and portable storable food it didn’t take great intelligence to realize that increased wealth could be achieved by war and piracy.  Campaigns against neighbours gave  rise to such notable folk ultimately as the Huns, Vikings and various other groups that specialized in war.  The Golden Age of many nations was when their technology and warring capacity was superior to their neighbours resulting in an influx of wealth from conquest and theft.  Dr. Johnson summed this up with the phrase best paraphrased by Bob Dylan, “steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king."
Throughout history the problem has been motivating groups of people. The proverbial carrot and stick have proved central. The Torah and Koran, Chinese texts  and even the  Vedas all derive from this time of warring nations, collections of tribes, forming alliances and contesting in an attempt to make an ever greater cohesive body. This is the basis of empires. There are monarchies and then empires with holy wars and ultimately Caesar as God.  Then there is a move in the east and the west to the God being invisible, the early Buddhist warrior invasions of Cambodia, the Chinese and the Dao and Japanese and Shinto and Mohammed and Allah and Constantine and the Christian God Yahvew, the ‘unspeakable beingness name of the God of the Jews.”  Definitely heady times but ultimately all apart of the evolution and devolution we see at the very cellular level with increasingly complexity and organization.  King Lear says to Cornelius in the end, "We'll talk of court news, we'll talk of them too - who loses, who wins; who's in, who's out - and take upon the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies...."
Today that’s culminated in Liberalism and the Globalist Ideologies.  Liberalism demands like all religions that all share it’s basic beliefs and language. There is a superstition in religion that if everyone doesn't agree to worship the same ideas then God will be unhappy and strike the community with calamity.  Ironically Liberalism espouses verbally 'diversity' while  being the least inclusive excluding anyone that disagrees with liberalism especially conservatives.  The State must have no other Gods before it.  The Liberal must have no other Gods before it.  All of the  slogans of liberalism sound good in word while in fact they're more often than not it's opposite.  The Mein Kemp and Communist Manifesto are wonderful sounding socialist treatises far less messy and pedantic than Magna Carta and  the Declaration of Independence.
Religions and States have a central need for inclusion and exclusion.  The Roman’s achieved this through ‘citizenship’. The Ottoman empire had a similar mechanism of allowing tribal members to rise within their ranks.  The Jews would to a great extent restrict themselves to blood relationships and influence while others tried various mechanisms to essentially fulfill the task of ‘herding cats.’
Today the religion of liberalism demands that you reject God as an unseen or traditional force.  It's in place you have the State. Socialism, the first major atheist religion, demanded that the State be seen as God.  Marx posited a ‘collective consciousness’ which was a contrast to the “collective unconscious’ described Dr. Carl Jung.  Marx called ‘religion, the opiate of the masses’ all the while developing his own religion with his God as a worker state calling for an International Workers to Unite.  Neitze called Christianity the peasant religion and posited his Superman religion for the benefit of the Strongman and Strong woman of his day.  He said God was dead but he himself died instead. Survival of the fittest appeals most to the winners rather than the losers. Genetics allows the king to say to the revolutionary you must be born king.  There are various strategies for maintaining power since historically revolution and war and the principal means of acquiring power since the time of agriculture and herding. Industrialization just reduced the need for so many bodies as machines could do the jobs.
As Joan Bias, American folk singer said in the Rolling Stone magazine, the shit is still falling from above and there's still fewer of them than us. The only difference is the elite now have 'shit making machines'.  The oldest law of the world is the Chinese Law of the Fish, 'there are big fish and there are little fish and the little fish must be fast and numerous.'
A key superstition of groups demands that all participate in the ‘idea’ or the ‘project’ or the ‘war’.  Indeed having everyone on board with something is the basis of taboos as well. The idea was that if one person in the group did something then all would suffer as a consequence of that person’s deviation.  In an age where children were the material of the work force and the military unit then anything that interfered with child production and rearing was taboo.  Homosexuality was acceptable if men reproduced.  The Spartans had their wives but had homosexual relationships on the side.   Homosexual acts were not the issue but the issue was if there was a refusal to produce war and work materials. Children have always been the old age pension of the mother and the father.  So even today the fear of homosexuality is not the act but rather the absence of grandchildren.  The family was the fundamental building block of the tribe and state but Marx and Engels argued that the reproductive function should be subservient to the state. Marx was especially misyogynist. The Frankfurt Group which tried to mix Freud and Marx into a Cultural Communism or socialism persisted in believing that the fundamental bond of ‘mother and child’ was fundamentally ‘bourgeoisie’. In the socialist system the mother rejected was reduced to  the term ‘breeder’.  The historic spiritual feminine power of the mother was reduced in an attempt to give all power to the masculine State, increasingly a military unit with political agents replacing the priests of medieval age.
The simple solution of revolutions was to steal the riches and kill those who created them, a system originally developed thousands of years before Christ. Of course if one submitted fully then they could be brought into the ‘new world order’.  This phenomena was best described by the Science Fiction technological drone species of Star Trek fame called the" Borg"  Their greeting and  command is “We are the Borg, You will Assimilate. Resistance is futile”.  As reality is said to be stranger than fiction with have the Islam command of 'submit' and 'assimilate' and the communist demand that resistance is future.  Marx claimed that perpetual war between Bougeosie and Proletariat would lead to eventual world communism.
 The solution to herding cats for the Atheist Socialists of Communism was  killing 60 million dissidents in the USSR while making countless millions slave labour in the Gulags.  The Chinese communists killed a hundred million. The communist pol pot nearly halved their nation.  To date atheists appear the greatest most efficient killers of all time.  The thought experiment of Marxism has failed repeatedly but as a revolutionary strategy it’s been highly successful based on the paranoid reduction of ‘us and them’. It continues today all the rage in ‘identity politics’ . Any group with define itself by some characteristic, race, gender, height or weight or whatever and then self proclaim themselves as the ‘victim or oppressed" and the "other", whoever that is, then becomes the " victimizer or oppressor”.  Paranoid schizophrenics always view the world as 'us and them'.  The liberal language really is the language of insanity
The religious parallel has been Islam with a similar demand for assimilation called 'submission or the sword."  There is no freedom in Islam.   Second only to atheism Islam has killed more people in history than any other group.  Islam means ‘submit’ and here the superstition is that everyone must submit to Allah with the underlying unconscious belief that with collective agreement the group will have the pleasure of the deity. The idea of deviance in the tribe was that any difference and individual might attract destruction for the group.
In the early tribal history the great fear was climate changes like drought and floods which affected crops.
Today we have the fear mongering Climate Change Cult demanding ‘consensus’ or the sky will fall and earth will die. Their racket is saving Gaia the planet, a mother earth god.  It’s really surprising how little progress is made mimetically when the themes are considered.  Virgins were sacrificed en mass for the Mayans and Aztecs to ensure the Climate Change Cult of the day, mathematicians with rock computers could maintain their plush lush lifestyle.  The surface looks different but at the deep level the same play of superstition and taboo persists. The elite manipulate the fears of the masses and in return gain more power and control and of course virgins, boys or girls, depending on the flavour of the month.
Sharia communism is the interesting alliance of these two apparently different groups which have made an unholy allegiance no different from Hitler and Stalin, the two great socialisms of the day, Stalins’ International socialism’ and Hitler’s National Socialism’.  Both wanted world dominion.
Today the old communists continue to demand world dominion driven by their fears. These atheists kicked out of Russia by the return of Mother Church of Christendom.  Brussels and the UN persist in the Babylon  attempt at a Global State, atheist global rule, centrist communist authority, not surprisingly promoted by Merkel the former East German communist now nominally Lutheran.
Islam a carry over from medieval days continues with it’s monarchies and world dominion themes. The Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have all actually developed collectively to a federation of diversity in contrast to the two malignant forces of superstitious taboo and religiopolitical conformity. Islam determines the length of skirt of women whereas at one time communism dictated the colour of paint used in buildings. Political correctness is the series of taboos of the atheist religion.
After WWII the Security Council of the United Nations was made of China, Russia, USA, Britain, and France.  These are the allies that defeated the great Axis of evil, Germany, Italy and Japan.  The principle function of the Security Council was to maintain the status quo and it served as the major arms dealers in the world.  These competing military complexes persist to today.  The atheist religion of the USSR communism has been replaced by the reassertion of the mother centred Orthodox Christianity.  China remains atheist communist but Christianity and other god based religions have challenged the State atheist religion brand.  The British and French empires have similarly broken up while retaining freedom of religion.
In the war between atheist China and theistic India, India won  Now Indian, pluralistic theistic nation continues to be challenged by the Pakistani militant Islam.
In contrast to other religions, Islam has maintained it’s principle function as Jihad or War Religion of Assimilation.  In the time of the Crusades Islam's  violent invasion of the middle east and invasion of Europe through Spain and in Italy to Venice was only stopped by the combined forces of European Christendom. Mohammed is one of the greatest murderers of all time.  In India where the Hindus had been invaded and ‘put to the sword’ by the Muslims the British empire with it’s Naval Supremacy had established peace to support trade.  The Ottoman Empire was the largest land based empire of the day, the ethnic Turks with the Islam religion celebrated recurrent wars of victory against the infidel. Islam is a religion of constant jihad.  Ironically Islam claims to be a religion of peace and beheads anyone that disagrees.
Sharia Communism is the latest herding cats strategy. Both are religions of constant and perpetual war.
Liberalism demands adherence to the idea of ideological sexuality.  What "I think" defines my sex. Islam offers virgins in heaven. The socialism of the 60's separated child bearing from sex and with the birth control pill and abortion heralded the sexual revolution.  LGBT etc community has joined the liberal cause because the conservative position was celebrating the mother and family.   Feminism, itself  a sect of the daughter religion,  came as a war between the mother and daughter.  The attack of the daughter was against the mother’s choice of father and the allegiance between mother and father.  Lesbianism removed the need of father as more than 'sperm done' and the Trinity of family , central to the Trinity of Christen god was reduced to the dichotomy of Mother Daughter.  Not surprising transsexualism arises and men incapable of child bearing claim to be woman as the Daughter not the Mother is the god of this sect of Liberalism.  (Transexualism and hermaphritism and homosexuality and bisexuality have always been present throughout history but never as the dominant authority they have today. Lord of the Flies and 1984 are all prescient)
The adolescent rebellion was death based and abortion of the grand children and threat of suicide if you don’t join me against him was central to this dynamic. Women in this reductionist ideology were the ‘oppressed’ and men were the ‘oppressor’. In fact daughters or feminists were principally oppressed by their mothers who were aligned with the Strong man.  The divide and conquer of liberalism and today’s identity politics has resulted in the elite rich gaining more power than all previous history, the division between wealth and poverty accelerating with increasingly liberal Power Couples such as Hillary and Bill Clinton and Michelle and Barack Obama and Sophie and Justin Trudeau all claiming to represent the gender divided populace of modern liberalism.  All of these purported to support the individual all the while the remain 'family' groupings of profound wealth and bring to mind the Ottoman Empire's use of Eunuch's to maintain their power.  Power Couples and Power Families compete for the adults.  In Canada in an attempt to get greater votes the Liberals wish to expand the electorate to adolescence because the message of the liberal brand sells best to youth.  Western youth like the children of monarch's remain attached to the umbilical chord of the family for ever increasingly lengths of time.
Abortion has been a principle liberal tenant along with euthanasia resulting in Liberalism being defined by some as the Religion of Death. Ironically while they cry wolf with the ‘skies falling’ and the “world's going to end’ so we much tax carbon, the very air we breathe, they celebrate killing of the unborn and old. Traditionaly a culture was judged by how well it treated its children, invalids and old. The so called 'multiculturalism' of the state by definition is therefore no more than 'un cultured'. The world is collectively the Wild West.
Islam by contrast to Communism has been able to maintain ‘submission’ for hundreds of years. The Communist totalitarianism lasted a mere hundred by comparison so the joining of Sharia and Communism purports to be a much more powerful mechanism of ‘herding cats’.
The idea since agricultural times is for the elite to have as much freedom and control and for the rest to do the work and obey. Submit. Resistance is futile.
Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly are freedoms that westerners, especially Canadians, take for granted not realizing that none of these exist in Communist countries or Islam.  The beauty of both Communism and Islam and today's UN and Brussels is that they ensure the most centralized authority and wealth to the fewest people who are at the top.
I asked a person who survived communism what it was like when the Berlin Wall fell and USSR dissolved. He said, “We were poor before. We were not able to complain or we’d be put in jail.  Then we remained poor and maybe even poorer but we were able to complain.  The leaders stopped calling themselves communists and called themselves businessmen. They were the same people, just different names.  And we just became complaining poor people."  Different names. The language of the Liberals.
The Oligarchs of China are the present Committee Communist central authority dictators.  Lenin actually called it 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat."  George Carlin the comedian does the best skit on the Rulers.  "They don't care about us."   Once the emperor was Mao, today it’s Xi Jinping.  No one can imagine the personal wealth and power of this man Xi Jinping. The key is the language of politics.
Corporations represent the Medieval baroncies.  They’re a parallel power to the existing nations, transnational entities like the Secret Societies, like Free Masons of olden days. They have their own security forces or armies or police.
The Secular Age would argue that religion is no more but it’s alive and well in Atheist Communism and Islam. The question is really about Centrist or Federalist authority.  The whole of the American constitution was about State and Federal Powers, local versus distant power,  as these were deemed by the founding fathers as most important.  In Canada, the British Empire kept the Commonwealth a loose federalist association with the central authority dominating so that the Monarch could maintain power. Canadians still colonials never appreciate the extent of the propaganda of their central authority Communist Broadcasting Corporation as compared to the State Powers in the Us union or federation.  This  monarch centrist position was greatest in the Calif role of the Ottoman Empire and today exists with King Saud of Saudi Arabia who dictates not only his country and distant resources but also creates the jihad religion of sunni wahabi and the Mecca central control mechanism.   Blood related elites and dynastic rule like the Bush family and the brand Trudeau can't compete with hundreds of years of rule and a medieval peasant society kept with fewer freedom than the middle age Christians.   It really was surprising however that the Clinton brand was Trumped.
In totalitarian countries everyone is trying to escape hence the Iron Curtain communist attempt to keep everyone in and the Migrant movement out of Muslim countries to the freedom of the west.  Trump's wall and the historic immigration policies of the west have been principally to keep people out.  Sharia totalitarianism appeals only to the elite.  The Population Jihad of Islam is no different than the rise of the once defeated aboriginal class of Canada’s whose baby force has increased the percentage of native vote and power exponentially while the feminist anti mother class has celebrated the great abortionist Morgetaller and the white race has self imploded. A major problem of all States is what to do with the defeated as they tend to come back to rule in revenge and blood feuds.
Censorship, whether it is the newest version, against “hate speech’ and “islamaphobia’ is no different than that done against the LGBT community where government officials poured over salacious material deciding which to share with the adult population while claiming to defend children from smut, all the while concealing the pedophila rings which hid in the privacy of the elite and their secret societies.
The activist always claims to be fighting on behalf of others less fortunate while denying their own aggression and resentment. Lenin, the murderous lawyer, killed the Czar because the Czar had killed Lenin’s brother when the same tried to kill the Czar. There’s a basic blood feud theme that runs through the elite. Politics makes strange bedfellows and the ultimate rulers to the most of us may as well be the warring and sexing Greek Gods of yore. Todays' afternoon television reigns in the prevailing families which apparently have dominated the world since early days in Italy.
In the Bhagadva Gita Arjuna the boy looks to Krishna the God and says the war is between my relatives. Krishna says, yes, and the decision is whether to participate or not.  All is ultimately civil war and the trick is to convince your side that the other side is 'not human'.
The Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet when the Chinese atheist communist war machine,  machine gunned the peaceful isolated meditating monks en mass continues with ethnic cleansing and genocide today.  The message though is the same as Cappodocea where the Christians built underground cities with Churches or the Meteora where the Christians built monasteries' on pinnacles, until we get individual space ships there's simply no place to escape Atheist Communism and/or Islam. These are the barbarians of today and wherever they go they rape pillage and destroy history and cultures.  "We are the Borg.  You will Assimilate.  Resistance is futile."
The Liberal cause does not address the genoscide and cultural assimilation of the Tibetans but rather celebrates the militaristic Palestinians and calls the Israeli oppressors. The modern United Nations outside of the real politic of the Security Council has become a Sharia Communist western funded propaganda organ against Israel.  Christians are persecuted and killed en mass in Muslim and Atheist Communist territories but Feminist Liberal Leaders like Jutin Trudeau smoking pot and giving tens of  millions to terrorists ignores the persecution of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sik, Zorastrians, Bahi, etc . They claim taht the persecutors of Islam and Aethiesm are instead the persecuted. The Marketing Agents of Liberalism maintain that if you tell a lie enough it will be thought to be a truth. Certainly this is the finding of Dr. Peterson who has studied the increasing ignorance of college students who actually are en mass ignoring reality with the help of Liberal professors and widespread availability of drugs.
The language of the Liberal is a religious deceit.  Black is white and white is black.
Addiction, the great idolatry, is described as having sex with a blow up doll and calling it love. Liberalism and the Islam's tribal taqiyya, the doctrine of deception, are akin in that they are ideological definitions of right and wrong with no basis in actual truth or common sense or reality as most understand it.  The communists controlled their nation with their political police just as Islam controls their people with  religious police.
The ends justify the means and the ends is after perpetual rule, the last man standing. For now politics makes strange bedfellows and where once Stalin and Hitler had a Bromance , the  Atheist communists figure they can use Islam to achieve world dominance while Islam figures they can achieve world dominance.

Yea I'm still here and Squeezing the Puss out of my Brain

“Yea, I’m still here,” I told God.
The lights were on. Bird song was coming through the window. The little bundle of joy, the cockapoo Gilbert was lying on his bed.  I reached out and rubbed his back.
He licked my face.
It’s God’s way of saying Good Morning.
I wanted to shout back, “What’s good about it."
I wake up like that some days.  There was the time in my life when the twin vultures of fear and anger sat on my bed posts waiting for my eyes to open.
Now it’s mostly, “when are you going to make something of your life.”  I reminisce on the people who said I’d be a failure if I didn’t shape or change or be like them.
Now I’m old.  Older.  I’m looking out of my eyes and not realizing that I’m no longer 20 or 30 or 40 until I see a reflection of myself in the mirror. I like looking at the young people.  I worry then I may seem creepy.
I wonder how long it will be till I’m irrelevant.
There’s an ennui.
“What should I do today, “ I ask God.  I’m in my under wear and I’ve gone to the toilet. That’s a given. There’s not a lot of decision making in bodily function. I don’t like to sit in warm wetness.  I do my own house keeping .The place is a mess.  I haven’t had a cleaning lady in a year or more.  I am afraid of strangers in my house. One years back notified her gang friends of what I had in my Shaughnassey home. When I caught them and asked who the hell told them to target my place I heard that the cleaning lady was a friend.  Loose lips sink ships. They were after my new computer. I have little shit like that.  An iPhone. An Ipad. When my iPad was stolen from the clinic it was a year of hassle it seemed restoring medical apps, finding passwords.  hours of work.  I’m thankful for the Apple iCloud today. I back up but thieves are a hassle. I worry too about ammunition. Each year I hunt and when we do we carry spare shells in our pockets especially 22 shells we use for shooting grouse. Tender tasty morsels of delicious wild bird.  The trouble is getting all these shells stored safely again when I come home.  They should up in my launder smaller than a penny.  They fall out of the bags onto the floor.  I hate the thought of a cleaning lady calling SWAT because she finds a 22 shell in my bed. Then there’s the sex toys and women’s clothes. Who wants the church to know that you have a bottle of KY jelly in the bathroom.  It’s not like it’s crack or heroin or bombs but it’s that sense that there’s no safety.  The STATE is oppressive. Totalitarian. Demanding compliance with the prescribed norm.  Maybe the Bible will offend someone. I have anatomy books. I have Clausewitz.  I have chemistry. I don’t know what will offend people and hide in side a lot. Not wanting to face anyone in Canada off hours for fear talking to them about Jesus will have me arrested for hate speech.  Of course I could be Myla Cyruss and talk about killing people because of their differing ideas. I remember a woman shouting at me in a meeting that I should speak about a man pointing a gun at me because it’s so violent. She was a nut bar. So many people never actually experience anything but their own mental banking then demand the centre stage when adults are talking. I was telling a guy about the fear I had when a guy pointed a gun at me and he was sharing the same. There were no police for 15 or 20 minutes in either case and it changed our attitudes to the promises our taxes pay for and the idea that we can trust the STATE. Theres wild fires all over and people being evacuated. but when this was done in Alberta the RCMP used the occasion to go in and take every farmer’s guns.  Here in BC they caught one guy going about stealing millions of dollars.  Yet they call citizens criminals if they want to defend their property and stay home with buckets and shovels.  It upsets me but then I remember it’s just media.
The whole news thing is a grand lie.  Adolescents have all the answers to events at the global level but can’t make their bed. I”ve not cleaned my house myself for weeks. That is the solution. No cleaning lady , clean your own place.e So A week or two back I shook out the rugs and swept the place. A major improvement. I take my laundry to a laundry lady.  Why can’t I be thankful for that rather than focusing on not having a cleaning lady and complaining about too much clutter and my growing aging hoarding tendencies. I’m not really a hoarder I just have a storage locker where I have kitchen stuff I can’t find so buy a whole new set.  I also have food, cans of stuff. Always ready for armageddon.  I’m going to die and there’s going to be 2 weeks supply of canned food for charity.
“God I’m about ready for a shower,”
I’ve got a lot of automatic pilot stuff written into my schedule. My alarm goes off 5 days a week.  My keys and wallet are in one place. I have a lot of stuff organized for easy thoughtless progress. Even after the morning coffee I don’t like heavy decisions.  Shoes, jeans and shirt are all where they are supposed to be.  Looking for underwear is the most difficult thing. I wonder about colour and fabric. I like the new Calvin Klein sensual slippery stuff, almost feminine, such an improvement over my old stanfields that are going holy and bunch up when I sit.  I have the a few perfect underwear. Just comfortable and black and no need for consideration .  It’s just that there’s never a weeks supply, and I use them early and am then sorting through a whole lot of not so comfortable ones like the mis matched socks. Best part of summer is not wearing socks even when I ride the Harley I can forego socks in my boots.
The vehicles are a delight. I don’t know if I could get to work in a jalopy anymore. What get me out the door is looking forward to driving the truck, the sportscar or the motorcycle. I didn’t know this about myself but I’m really into vehicle. As a little boy all I did was zoom a sports car about or float boats. Now as an adult I’m doing what I fantasized my whole childhood about except the planes.  No one has trusted me with an F16 either.  I ‘d argue that I didn’t need lessons, just a quick review and then give me the keys.  Like I did with my Dad and his precious truck before I crashed through the neighbours fence, the old man scream, ‘brake brake ‘ and me flooring the gas pedal.

“I know God I’ve got to get ready. I’m more thankful for the day  Journalling does that to me. I call it” squeezing the puss out of my brain.’  Some mornings I have to do serious Gratitude lists just to get my attitude shifted forward.  My depressive patients can suck the soul out of the universe. They’re atheists and make the strongest case for all they’re thinking.  Things just are. So I’m just negative. Some people are just positive.  I say they pray. I point out that Catholics experience the same shit as atheists but atheists kill themselves all the time while Catholics don’t.  They say they’re delusion. I ask them to read Don Quixote.  They have no Dulcinea’s.  They see everything in the worst way and then want a special pill to ‘feel good’.  I have to watch my thinking every day like I avoided having patients infected in surgery by washing my hands all the time. Then we’d have the nose picker from the kitchen union and the administrator who’d come swaggering through the wards but not wash his hands after he touched stuff.  Idiot.  But I can reach back into my mind and remember that administrator or the guy in his boat who made things work smoothly in the ward and got things done and was always finding stuff to make it all work when we on ihefront lines felt it was hopeless at times  He was a mensch.

But my self pity mind is always looking for the shit on the left hand side of life. Like thinking about Trudeau. I don’t like the dope smoking arrogant communist idiots brand name.  So why don’t i focus on the positive, on Andrew Scheer, a good young man whose worked hard all his life has this great family and a steady woman who loves him as the two love the Canada I believe in. I love the Canada I grew up in the wilderness and the land and the people working together, not all the divide and conquer and favouritism of today. I like the bringing together of Andrew and should focus on the positive.  My aunt said if you don’t have anything good to say about a person don’t talk about them but I’m caught up in the madness of today’s politics and like everyone else seem to have a lot of shit to say about what i don’t want and those assholes  I don’t like but why am I not speaking more about that glorious woman Rempel.  Or thanking Rona for making parliament such a civilized place. While Trusdau was sitting women and looking down his nose at everyone Rona was being a real lady but one who didn’t take shit. She reminded me of the Queen.
I like Ron Reed. He’s the director and produce and actor at the Pacific Theatre.  He’s a true Mensch and his work is uplifting and thought provoking and he brings together people who see beyond the superficial.
But I work all day with people who are out of prison or on the way back to prison who steal and whore and do drugs. I’m trying my best to stay detached from the horror. I have people who die ridiculous overdose lives trying to get high by getting enslaved. Monkeys with electrctrodes in their brains.
And I ask you God, “What am I to do today.” What is it you gave me this life for. What can I do to serve you and my fellow man.

And Now I’m going to work.  Time to shower. I like the showering part of the day, like the coffee, like the night ice creams. There are oasis of positives in even the despair of ennui and the same old same old.  Squeeze the pus out of your brain I tell myself and try to focus on the positive. Pray and meditate.  Exorcise the negative. Don’t let the acid settle.  Be teflon to all the criticism and abuse and negativity that’s coming your way in your job as the Complaints Department of Life and don’t focus on the Administration. They’re still looking for their ass with both hands and all they know how to do is reward their friends and criticize all others. They’re cowards , terrified for their jobs and their perks.  Look how much money Obama and Michelle got for their bit of government.  Accept you’re envious. You’re doing okay.  There’s never enough.  That’s why the George Soros are their to remind you of the banality of evil and the power of Greed.  Just do your bit today.
Thy Will Be Done .  Thank you Jesus!

Holy Mary Mother of God, Pray for Us Sinners, now and in the hour of our death.

Saints of all religions we bow to you now. May thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion and may I awaken thy love in all hearts.

TGIF.

Think positive. Block the negative thoughts by positive affirmation.  Look for the good in people. Jesus came to his disciples as a wounded stranger.  It doesn't take a genius to know it's broken, it takes a genius to know how to fix it.

Life is for living.

Be Still and Know that I am God.

Thank you Lord. Thank you for all that is life. Thank you for creation Creator.  Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub, Yea God

Thank you. Really Thank you.

Backyard Diaries

Not the same as the motorcycle diaries.  Gilbert on a leash chewing on sticks and dog toys.  He’s got a particular desirable green sea monster with yellow carrot top.  I’m here with a Mac Pro Lap top.  I’m typing. I’m communicating mind through fingers creating digital symbolic characters onto pixillated screen. Chemical neuosynapsis translating into the external world. My amygdala seems less involved. The dorsal amygalla not at all. The occipital is at play. I expect the frontal lobe is engaged.  I’ve nothing particular to say.

I just walked Gilbert along the river.  He didn’t want to go further.  Balked.  Happy to return again. On the weekend it was Laura but tonight it’s something he smells. There’s bears and coyotes in the area.  I have a sense it’s that or Liberals. Something that smells foul.  There is the smoke in the air. That’s been from the hundreds of fires burning up north. Australian firemen are flying in.  We hear Trudeau has put loggers out of work by given attitude to America.  Playing to the cheap seats as employment goes and taxes rise and poverty strikes more.

I’m a doomsayer. Children’s voices are shouting and squealing playing ball nearby. There’s a basketball court.  There’s a swimming pool too. I could go there. But I was hungry when I came home from the clinic.  Microwaved some frozen venison stew I had and ate it with half a box of crackers watching Ghostbusters.  I just caught the tail end of Sigourney Weaver’s sexiest scene of all time.  It was funny.  I watched a little while going through my mail.  It was a slow day at the clinic.  I enjoyed the people I saw.  Seeing recovery in action is uplifting.  I knock the government too much because today they provided a way to get Revia for people without funding. Revia is a remarkable anti craving drug that empirically halves the intake of alcohol for people who take it.  Helps reduce food craving too.  Problem had been cost. Only private plans cover it.  Thank you provincial government.  I liked Christy Clark but have hope for the NDP despite their historic service only for the unions.  It’s just politics. Above my pay grade. Provincially the folk have done a good job that I’ve seen. I liked the provincial liberals, such a strong centrist party compared to the sharia communism of the federals.

Now I’m sitting at a picnic table with the sun going down in the west, little streaks of orange reaching into the sky.  

I’ve been reading alot.  Just speed reading, beach books, thrillers, sci fi, westerns, eroticism of every ilk.  Amazon sells the little short books for a $1-3 Kindle.  I’ve been studying the genre.  The heterosexual erotic has a guy taking a good girl and turing her into a whore, whereas for the women it’s virginous girl and a rich or powerful guy turning her into a whore then marrying her. for the transexuals its a ‘surprise’, or a guy being sissified, where as for the gay men it’s a straight athlete power guy turning out to be gay, and for the lesbians a lot of drama.  I read a sci fi counter point to that with ships being blasted and torpedoed and layered. Then a couple of brothers got into bar fights one after a mother.  Then in the history of scotland I’m reading I’ve learned about all the saints and mythical figures. I’m plodding through that. Alongside thatI’ve a travel book of Oxford.  Again going more slowly.  I must have read 8 or 9 beach reads over the weekend while loving Wilber Smith, Cry Wolf , the story of the Italian invasion with mustard gas of Ethiopia, the massacres’, the glorious defence, the League of Nations doing nothing, planes and tanks against horse, the Coptic Church being decimated. I have been reading about the Muslim persecution of the Copitic Christians in Egypt. The rise of thee Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey.

This weekend I read so much. Felt like the academic years where I’d always have 3 or 4 books on the go, one novel to spead my reading, as well as a classic.

Gilbert and I walking along the river.  I took pictures. I was listening to Mumford and Sons.  

I rode the Harley Electroglide 1600 cc bike to work and back .I can take the HOV lane.  Gilbert had spent the morning and after noon alone but had me for lunch time.  I loved playing Stairway to Heaven full volume barrelling down the highway.  I saw Lead Zeppelin and ended up on stage with Robert Plante having done acid at that concert. They were telling people to come to the hospital tents that the acid was laced and deadly. I didn’t go. I now know that as a nocebo and true or not it gave some people a really bad trip. I survived. But you never know after induced psychosis or involuntary psychosis is it’s all gone. There’s a strangeness and alienation to the world that you wonder is it the drugs coming out of the fat cells or are people really this stupid.  I’m working in the midst of utter insanity.  Sane in insanity.

I’m logging in.  Gilbert’s tuckered out by the walk.  We didn’t see the heron. Met a couple of dogs.  Gilbert’s a social creature.  I’m not.  I’m winding down to IDAA. Each year is like this.  I’m feeling more like invasion of the body snatchersx. The Capgrass comes on and you humour yourself with old soul young soul thoughts and think about there being no race. We’re all in this together. But the Jungian collective unconscious kicks in. I’m sleeping well. Having great dreams. Difficult getting out of bed. Difficulty getting out of he house. Coffee and showers help.  I’m tired.  Lots of conflicting messages. Constant threat.  The government has so many of us under constant soul destroying threat.  Lies and threats and abuse of power.  Nimbyism and the banality of evil.  I think of walking away but it’s really not that bad. So much perception. It’s killing me. Im dying.  There’s the stress but I’ve no real call to do else. My friend is building her mission in Somalia.  I think I did my time in that regard on the reserves.  I think of the meningitis epidermis, delivering babies, otitis media, diabetes, gun shot wounds, infections and kidneys.  It was never ending a decade of that. And still I see physical illness and try to follow the best practices, latest protocol but know I’m just doing the best I can feeling the threat and yet knowing if I don’t do something nothing will get done.

My HIV patient who was supposed to be with high priced access team hasn’t had his HIV meds in 6 months. I liked that I cared for such things but he’s fallen through the cracks again, crazy as a loon, paranoid. Maybe he’s in jain. My patients come and go. Some are in jail. Some in hospital.  Then they return or they’re dead. In my other practice the years pass and I am astonished that I first met someone a decade or so ago and they’re back.  I was reminded of a gentleman I saw 5 years ago.  Some I ‘m surprised they’re alive. It’s not healthy living grand central station. The holistic suburban preventive groups have their magic wands. They ward off the negative thoughts. Mine come with open wounds and major bruises, knife wounds.  Addiction is a harsh life.  It’s sad. But we’re all campered looking over our backs.  Sent in to face death and disease with all those who lead from the back terrified.  

I’m tired The sun is down and the sky is still light. Lovely green on grey blue.  Children’s voices more subdued. Gilbert lying with his head up sniffing the breeze.

Thank you Lord for another wonderful summer day. Thank you for the work and chance to be of service. Guide me in what it is you would have me do.  Show me the way. Thy way, not my way, be done. Thank you for everything Lord. Thank you  

 

Back Yard Musings

I had a dentist appolntment this morning.  I have a myriad of details to address. Everyday I'm worried I'm missing something. Calls comer in from everywhere.  Everyone is complaining it takes so long to see me.  Pharmacies want everything yesterday.  Beurocrats and lawyers put 'URGENT" across the top of their communications.  I'm seeing patients who don't come back the next week because they're dead. I feel I have 15 minutes to make a difference. All that training in motivation therapy, all the inspirational work, all the 12 step facilitation therapy learning, DBT and CBT and I don't know if I'm getting through.
I remember being in Jerusalem when the Palestinians were attacking the Israelites. They'd blown up something and burned down something and there was gunshots happening in that other part of the city, over there. Where I was it was business as usual.  It's estimated 3000 will be dead locally by the end of this year.  That's an epidemic.  A thousand dead already.  But there's this sense it's 'over there'.  I looked out my hotel room and saw the smoke a few dozen blocks away.   I'm sitting here now in Suburbia planning on leaving for another shift in the DTES this afternoon.
A hospital administrator said we don't need more doctors and nurses.  Canada has 20 times th administration of the German health care system.  Doctor ratios are much the same the world over. Where there's more than 1 to 500 to a 1000 costs go up where there's less deaths go up.  Administration is excessive and bloated in peace time.  Everyone and their family at the public trough.  No one able to find their ass with both hands.  Pot heads like arrogant communist Justin Trudeau giving money to enemies and foreign nations corruption is greater than Quebec Canada as hard as that is to conceive.  It's wearying .  The media no longer sells news. It's always propaganda with a spin. I remember when there were facts but not there's just money talk.  It's all above my pay grade. But I don't think they see the addiction. They're looking at cashing in on the victims like the tobacco companies that still make great deals. They're now getting into marijuana big time.
I don't like the news. I reacted to the lies of Justin Trudeau. His personal attack on freedom of speech and favouritism of religion by promoting the harrowing lie of Islamophobia.  It's like calling my patients "Rapaphobics'. I see to many Shiites and Sunnis who aren't Wahhabi.  Trudeau likes the Saudis.  I like Tarik Fatah.  There's a fatwa on his head but not on Trudeau's. Terrorists love Trudeau.
I'm half Irish but I didn't like the IRA bombing. I know that government's won't deal with moderates without the threat of the extremists.  Were it not for the Black Panther Martin Luther King would have not been someone government would deal with.  It's about positioning.
I'm tired. I don't sleep before dental appointments or breaks from routine. I stayed up late reading. I've been enjoying reading these days. I have been an avid reading all my life.  Mostly it's heavy.  Texts and science. I just reviewed a dozen journals. I'm skim reading for the new. So much is old for me now.  I like the immunological treatments of cancer.  There are paradigmatic shifts.  Even in my field the understanding of relationships.  So much of the intellectualism of the sterile Marxist ideology is passé. We're listening more to Victor Frankl than Freud in some ways.  The magic bullets remain.
I have difficulty living at times. I'm worn down by the constant criticism, the constant failure, the never good enough, the messages daily of decreased income, more taxes, less resources. Someone gets rewarded. It's not doctors.  The administrators are high on the hog or perhaps we should say say sheep because even bacon one of the great joys of life is under attack. Everything is bad for you and only the government is to be trusted but there's this pot head at the top who refuses urine testing and I just don't know when he's with us.  Who is doing the talking
Multiple Personality Disorders were studied and addiction was seen as an abbreviated condition, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The two administrators on the same computer. Who on.  It's like the Twin Spirited in the Bisexual world or the Transexuals who are au femme and au drab.  There's the stoned and unstoned.  The trouble with drugs is they are psychoactive for long periods in some cases in the human body. Pot acts on an individuals brain for weeks.  Not like alcohol whose effect was days at most.  Of course there were the daily drinkers and we knew them as 'functional alcoholics' but most of the pot smokers , the ones who smoke once a week or once a month are addicted too and best described as 'functional addicts'.  But the question Tom Waits raised was who was writing the songs.  He wrote the amazing song "The Piano has been drinking' and said he quit drinking because he thought the booze might be writing the songs.  That's the question I ask of this government.  Which drug is running Ottawa.
But it's a distraction.  There's sunshine here. The dog is rolling in dirt beside me. I've just read this exciting book about sex in men's and women's prisons and the effect of transexuals on the group dynamics there. It sounds a bit like Gr 8 and 9 with all the hormones but certainly a difficult job with few guards and more division.  I'm also reading about Oxford, remembering times in the city, punting and checking out the libraries, staying in Magdallen College.  I hope to return.  There's a conference of doctors I'd like to attend. Then there's Aberdeen where my grandfather lived and I've not been there so I've got a book on that area of Scotland.
I lunched with John Wylie the great author and finished one of his historical fictions  books recently.  I had lunch that same day with Diana Garabalden and bought her book on audio tape listening to it while I drove my truck about the back woods on Vancouver Island looking for suicidal deer.  I just finished Cry Wolf by Wilbur Smith , the story of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.  I have been following the persecution of the Coptic Church, in Egypt and Sudan and reading about the cliff churches in Ethiopia. For years I've wanted to go there. My friend is a missionary in South Sudan. I enjoyed reading of Churchill's days with sword on horseback in his autobiographical book, River War.
With travel the world has grown smaller but this summer I've been most enamoured with the back yard.  Gilbert and I have so enjoyed it here.  But time to head to work.
My mind is a muddling mess. I'm glad for work and focus.  Since Zuckerman took over Facebook to pollute it with his brand of advertising and his left wing elite propaganda I'm subjected to this political nonsense daily and find myself forwarding the Alt. News because everyone seems to be selling the kool aid and drinking it.  After glancing through Facebook, not my friends shares, but the stuff Zuckerberg algorithms generate I'm definitely begging Scotty, "for the love of god beam me up!"
But I'm thankful for coffee and yoghurt and work and dentists and especially Gilbert my little joyful one eyed partner.  Thank you Lord.

Blog Manager for Google Blogger

I remember when I had a palm pilot with a keyboard that fit in my breast pocket. I was on a motorcycle trip up by Lillouette and wrote a story on a picnic table beside my tent. That was heaven but it wasn't attached to the internet. Now I've just got the new iphone 7 and had this new iPad Pro but what I like to do is blog.  So naturally Google doesn't keep up with Apple IOS upgrades. So the Blogger Program I'd been using doesn't work with the new Ipad.  I use MarsEdit on my MacBook Pro and love it. The iPad and iPhone were the problem.
Thankfully Blogo worked but it didn't work with uploading pictures.
Now Tuyen Dinh has come out with a $3.00 app called Blog Manager for Google Blogger.  He says it's the best replacement app for the original blogger app. This is the trial run.
These are the two pictures I took with the new IPhone 7 to show the zoom on the camera.  There's two separate cameras in the iphone 7.
(IT WORKED. Thank you Tuyen Dinh)

Apple Store

I'm here again. One of my favourite play rooms. Expensive but worth it. Laura's phone, my former hand me down died so I was obliged to get a new phone for myself so I could give her my iphone 6s which is just perfect. It's a major upgrade for her. I know I should give her a new phone of her own but she's not tech savy and only uses the basic features. My phone the 6s is light years ahead of hers and she says she loves it. The only issue was that I can't see the little one so have the iphone plus size . She says the new phone is a like a 'mini computer'.

I now have the Iphone 7s plus. It's syncing with my iwatch. I'll have to get Laura to wipe out her iwatch because it was synced with the last phone which is now recycled. We should have disconnected the iwatches before swiping them. Tech helped here and wiping the phone allowed it to be ready to be synced.

I confess I have all the apple technology. I use it all too. The phone is indispensable for work. I find the watch really good for getting directions and messages while driving but because I have my phone with me I don't really appreciate it otherwise. I absolutely love my Mac Pro laptop computer and use it for work everyday, my encrypted patients backed up on it and my reports being written on it.

Now I have the ipad pro. I had an ipad before and frankly I mostly use it for reading kindle and watching educational movies. I watch netflix with my MacPro and tv. I have the apple tv too but my internet connection isn't that good at my place. Hence I use the Ipad pro rather than the Apple TV. It seems I have to re input the passwords and such each time. No doubt there's a simpler way but it was a hassle. So I use the MacPro to watch Netflix on my tv. It just takes a cable.

I think one of my nephew's got an ealier iphone hand me down and Laura got the one before that. When I got the iwatch they came out with a water proof one a couple of weeks later so a nephew got mine and I got Laura the same watch non water proof. I know I should buy her new iPhone but I got her a new IPad . I get her other stuff new too. Like boots. Laura is more pleased with new boots than new Apple gear.

I wore all my brother's hand me down stuff. I have a lot of second hand stuff in my life. I've of an age where no one is giving me hand me downs. Laura and the nephews say they don't care. I feel a bit selfish. A teeny bit of guilt. But I like the new camera on the iPhone 7.

On my own I would have waited for a later version since there's nothing wrong with the 6s. I've had it a year and love it. But since I had to get the 7s I was pleased to get it because the camera is an improvement. It has a 2x zoom and a portrait mode.The 8 is coming out in the next month or two but I don't know if it really is better for me. I'm happy with the 6 and now the 7.

I'm just typing this blog waiting for the phone to sync with the watch and for downloads to complete. I love to use the high speed Apple Store internet  here and ensure all the critical programs are working before I go.

Five Years Abstinent: No Blow Up Dolls and No Goat fucking

In my work as an addiction psychiatrist I commonly advise people of the prognosis of their disease and the successful scientific treatments that have been beneficial.
I like to point to the studies, epidemiological and  anecdotal data which showed that those who attained 5 years of abstinence from drugs and alcohol  routinely had only  a few key points in common.
Number 1.  Persons with 5 years abstinence from drugs and alcohol had a HIGHER POWER.  Higher power in this case didn’t represent a white bearded god on a cloud or a big breasted woman deep in the sea.  What higher power referred to was simply something more important than drugs and alcohol.  Something that the person gave more power over their lives to.  It’s long been recognized that addiction is a religion. The drugs and or alcohol were the addict’s God, their direct dealer the deacon and the supplier the high priest of the cult church with all it’s rituals, paraphernalia and jargon. A higher power represented anything that was more important to the person than belonging to this church and religion.  Over the years patients had told me that their higher power was their children,  their family, their job, anything really.  Others had said that life it self was their higher power.  Addiction was killing them.  Some simply described their higher power as God.
C.S. Lewis the great Christian theologian said simply, “Why look in the wall for the architect?”.  Addicts and alcoholics are the most materialist hedonists.  Addiction is idolatry. They worship their addictive substance.  They commonly say their are atheists or agnostics when its obvious that they are stalwart members of their church of addiction.  They commonly say they don't want 'any religion' simply because their addiction is their religion. Translated they are really saying they're not ready to give up their addiction. Their brain is tricked into believing they are getting ‘high’ or even that what they are doing is a ‘party’.  Spirituality refers to an invisible God or power or force that people have in their lives and experience in their world especially after they’ve known the soul empty experience of addiction.  It is the interconnectedness and relationship of life.  It's there strongest in the prayer of the indigenous for 'all of my relations.'
For people to stay clean and sober there simply must be something else, something with greater meaning that gives more purpose and power to their lives than the slavery of the addiction. Their  dependency is making their dealer high priests rich in ferarri’s and yachts.
Scientifically today we measure a person's 'motivation to change' because it's obvious that it's hard for the addict to admit that they have been suckered or duped by the ultimate con artist. The emperor has no clothes and often giving up addiction and entering recovery means admitting to oneself at least that for years and thousands of dollars one has been going backwards.
The Motivation to change assessment describes a person as 'pre contemplation', a true zealot for the church of addiction, a person in 'contemplation' recognizing that addiction was "fun", now it's "fun and trouble" and actually they might be ready to get off the slow to quicking descent before it was just plain 'trouble'.  Determination phase is when one is there.  They've made the determination that they don't want the lie and want the truth of life instead. In 'Action" phase they're 'walking the walk and not just talking the talk' , they're changing their behaviour and making themselves accountable to a plan of recovery.
Number 2.  Persons with 5 years of abstinence belonged to a group that supported their abstinence. When they look for people at 20 years abstinence or more the majority of people they find abstinent belong to AA, NA or some religious organization such as church, temple or synagogue.  Dr. Carl Jung recognized that people who developed addiction were spiritual people but that they were tricked into seeking the holy spirit in the "spirits" bottle. His famous Latin phrase for this was "Spiritus contra Spiritum".  Dr. Carl Jung said in a letter to Bill Wilson, co founder of AA ,that  the ‘craving for alcohol, was the equivalent on a low level, of the thirst for spiritual wholeness.”  He went on to say, “‘alcohol' in latin is ‘spiritus’ and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is , “spiritus contra spiritum”. Addiction leads to alienation whereas recovery leads to participation.   At 5 years abstinent people found they were part of a better group. "We are not alone.” is the message that comes with recovery.  Though AA, NA and spiritual organizations were the most common groups there were many others that served as well such as community organizations like Kiwanis, Odd Fellows, Masons, Toast Masters.  These were not work associations as addicts and alcoholics commonly maintained work to the very last as work and work associations, professionals , unions and faculties gave them the finances to advance their addictions as well as the respectability to maintain the denial of the increasing desperation and the dehumanization.  With addiction people would rather be alone with their substance or drink or with others who shared their substances or drink than in any other recreational activity.
With respect to relationships and the damage to relationshionships, the delusion of addiction was best described by one recovered addict, “fucking a blow up doll and thinking it was love.”  Another said, “it got me high but it took away the sky”.  
Finally, Number 3.  The person was noted to have had a change in attitude.  The more one does drugs or alcohol, the more one minimizes the abnormality of the behaviour and the associations.  People who once loved to be outdoors will instead sit in a dingy bar all day or find themselves living behind closed curtains all the while thinking they’re ‘not that abnormal’.  Everything related to their addiction is justified and yet in recovery they have an awakening and increasingly see what they had become and want never to go there again.
My favourite description of this phenomena was a from fellow who said, “when I got off drugs my life got better immediately. I had money again. I had friends that weren’t trying to steal from me.  I had time and energy to focus on myself and my work and my family. Being an addict takes up all your time.  I had time and I put it to good use. At five years abstinent I was living in a beautiful condo in the west end, had a job I loved, friends I cared about. Nobody used drugs. No one knew that part of my life in detail, not that I hid it but I didn’t get into the sordid details and they just didn’t know.  I mean they knew but they didn’t know. It’s one thing to know that women and men exchange sex for drugs with the lowest scum of the earth and that we’d steal or lie and cheat. It's another thing knowing it. I ripped off my family. I’m not proud of that. Not the lying, betraying, not the person who  didn't care about anything or anyone.  But I’d changed.  It was a bad time in my life and now I was on the other side of it.
That’s when this guyI knew, I’d thought he had got clean and sober, showed up at my door one night.  I buzzed him in. Immediately he’s pulling out this powder,  showing me it and saying it was the best stuff ever.  He's wanting me to do it with him.  He's saying how he could even sell me some if I liked it.
Well, right there and then I kicked him out. I would have physically thrown him out if he didn’t go. I was really furious.   I shouted at him, “get the fuck out of here. I don’t do that shit any more” . When he was leaving I almost whispered, I was so angry, and embarrassed, I was embarrassed too.  I said ;don’t ever come round here again or don't even talk to me if  you’re not clean and sober. "
He went on to say, “I don’t think people get it.  What he’d done was an every day thing in my old life. But now, it may as well been having this guy show up at your westend downtown apartment. Right there at your condo where people know you as a regular guy.  Then there's this guy standing there with a goat and he's saying,
 ‘hey man I got a new goat.  You're really going to like it.  I brought it over so we both could fuck it. If you like it like before I know where we can get more goats to fuck."
That’s how weird it was for me having this guy I’d known in the past,  show up at my place with powder. "
"I realized my attitude had changed.   I was seeing drugs and addiction the way healthy people see it. I just say now.   If some one wants to do it, just leave me out of it.   Live and let live.  I don't fuck goats. so don’t bring any goats around my place.  I don’t want even to be  seen with guys who fuck goats. "
Dr. Vaillant, former head of psychiatry at Harvard studied addiction extensively throughout his career and noted that at 5 years abstinent the risk of a person relapsing to their previous level of abuse was no greater than the risk of an unidentified user becoming an alcoholic or addict to that extent.
Higher power, a supportive group and a change of attitude were the key features noted in those who remained abstinent 5 years.