Recovery from Addiction

Jails, Institutions, and Near Death

Spring of 2006 I spent 2 months in jail getting sober for the last time. I spent my time locked up reading the Bible, The Big Book, writing ‘Paradise for the Hellbound’, and praying that the judge would sentence me to Bridgehouse. Bridgehouse (B.H.) is a rehab center owned by Meridian Behavioral Healthcare. I had been on the Methadone program there and I sent letters to my doctor to get me into rehab from jail. He was all for it. He himself later landed in rehab. Come to find out the doc was dipping into his own meds .How convenient.
On June 15th 2006 I got transported to B.H. by a Levy County Sheriff to begin my 28-day stay. Twenty-eight days…… twenty-eight days …. (reminiscent sigh). In the spring of 2006 28 days seemed like a very long time. The days were long and the nights were even longer. I had been in my addiction for nearly 35 years.

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NOT ALL SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES ARE GOOD-“My Overdose”

THE VISION I HAD DURING MY COCAINE OVERDOSE

From: “Paradise for the Hellbound” by author Laura Edgar
http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/paradise-for-the-hellbound/

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“TRAPPED IN 1978″

I was deep into my Cocaine addiction. I had a few people who enabled my drug use and one was a guy name Ed. He was a drug dealer, not a street dealer mind you. He had a three hundred-thousand-dollar house in the late 70s and it was very nice. He drove a brand new BMW which was way too small in my opinion for his fat ass. Sorry I guess there is some resentment left. He was a greasy Italian not the beautiful kind like my daughter’s father. Those dark olive skin beauties with the almond shaped eyes that wear the top lid eye liner so well. My daughter is gorgeous and I am very proud of her Italian heritage. No! This man was a pale skinned sweaty, greasy, over-weight (yet judged anybody that didn’t have a models body) jet black hair, blood like ice coursing through his heartless veins, probably connected to the mafia, he sure as hell acted like it, Italian. I resent the hell out of him EVEN STILL because of what he nearly did to me and the fact that I have not let it go. I promise to work on it.
I remember one day I rode around with him back in Tampa in the BMW that smelled like cherries all the time. He stopped to drop money off to a woman at her house in Lutz. I asked him why she was receiving money from him. He talked in the “we” context about his organization of some sort. He said that basically one of his dealers (the woman’s husband apparently” went to jail while selling the organizations goods. So the woman was hand delivered compensation on a monthly basis since her husband didn’t snitch. My drug dealing friends taught me at a very young age YOU JUST DON’T SNITCH-EVER! Unlike the attitude of the people I have met in the later years of my rampant addiction who automatically snitched at the drop of a hat. I was taught that’s the lowest most worthless thing you can do to anyone.
I went to jail myself back then not long after that conversation. Recently one of my old friends from back in-the-day said the organization  almost had me killed for fear I would turn them in once I was arrested. Well, leaving town back then for a very long time may have saved my life. I refused to snitch and was on the run for thirteen years because of my principles. They didn’t know that I had refused to snitch. How would they know? I was over the deep end in their opinion. I couldn’t handle my drugs in their opinion. The drugs they supplied that is. Once I was arrested Fat Ed treated me like a bad tooth. He pulled me out and threw me away. My overdose happened prior to that. Allot went on back then but this isn’t a book about war stories. It’s a book about my recovery and how it all happened.

Our Dope Shooting Binge

We used to eat Quaalude and then break open the Cocaine bag. We snorted it, smoked it, shot it, and any other way we could find to get it into our blood stream that’s what we did. Me and “Fat Ed” as we called him were on a two-day coke shooting binge on this day. God blessed me with some very large and very strong veins. I rarely couldn’t hit myself once I learned how. However, this must have been before I learned to inject my own drugs because Fat Ed was hitting me up at this time. We were shooting up in the bathroom for some reason don’t remember why. We did shot after shot after shot but I wasn’t satisfied, it was never enough.   Long story short I kept complaining “Ed it’s not enough give me more, I want more, more, more!”. And on and on I went. I can’t say I blame Ed; he finally did what I asked him to do after many warnings. He kept saying “Lori it’s too strong, we must be careful”. But the nagging finally got to him as he fixed me up the lethal shot. He knew it would kill me, he knew what he made up would kill me. He knew it was way too much. He was sick of me hounding him. Fat Ed is still alive today from what I have heard, unlike many other of my old friends.

HE GAVE ME THE HUGE SHOT
I crashed to the bathroom floor. What they told me after I woke back up was they gave me C.P.R. and I finally woke up after a couple minutes. But it wasn’t because Ed saved my life. It was because his roommate Mike was in the house and refused to let me die. Mike was Ed’s longtime partner. He knew and didn’t approve of what we were doing in the bathroom. But it was what Mike told me about his best friend after I woke and he pulled me aside that really shocked me. Mike saved my life and then said “Lori, if you ever date Ed again after this I won’t have any respect for you.” Mike continued, “Ed told me to take you out and throw you into a dumpster. He had no desire to even try to bring you back.” He said. Those were the most words Mike had ever spoken to me. I remember his concern waking me up, “are you OK Lori, do you know where you are and what day it is?” I was so lost back then. I had no identity.   I didn’t know who I was emotionally or spiritually. I was back knocking on Ed’s door a few days later once I recuperated from my shocking overdose in spite of what Mike had told me. I didn’t know how to love myself….yet.

THE VISION

While I was out cold, apparently I fell flat on my back to the floor. I could feel myself as if I were shrunk down to nothing, my body left me. All I was, was a thought without a body. I was invisible as if I had been shrunk down into a minute fraction of my normal size so small the human eye could not have seen me. But my thoughts were still just as large as before.   My ideas were still alive. I had a consciousness about me.   I was not aware of why I was shrunk down in the center of a rock prison.   I didn’t know that I had, at one time had a body and lost it.   All I knew is I was crushed into the center of a rock and I couldn’t move.   There was no white light.  I was imprisoned and compressed inside blackness  without a body there was no time or space in that consciousness. There was no light of God’s Spirit that I could feel.  No warmth on my body from the sun, no wind on my shoulder.
Suddenly something happened to me abruptly someone was pulling me from the rock. It was horribly uncomfortable to come back out of the rock. Have you ever been awoken abruptly from a hangover sleep by a glass of cold water on the face? Magnify that by a million that is how it felt being brought back from the dead. My body screamed! My consciousness screamed! No! I wanted to be left in the rock, the rock would become my home even though I had no power at all to do anything crushed without a body or limb to move. I was ripped from the rock and my body ripped with the movement. I see the rock now it was white and black speckles. Like a rock you would see in a North Carolina river. But this rock was animated hanging me in anti-space where there is no time or space. Space is a wonderful thing I tell you. I never ever want to return to the prison I was in when I died. My overdose happened before I met my God, knew Jesus, before my third step. There was no white light my friend only a prison and a thought.   And Fat Ed would have left me there he didn’t care.   But I didn’t remember anything in my prison it was devoid of knowledge. All there was is a silent awareness. Mike was my angel that day back in 1978. Mike saved my soul from that rock prison. Mike acted in accordance with God, my God. Mike is in my prayers where-ever he may be. Please my friends seek God while it is still light. Get to know your maker lest you end up in that horrible place. Life and Love and having a vessel to call a body is the best way to be that I know of. My soul was imprisoned while I was alive, therefore when I died it was also imprisoned. I don’t know if I would have ever been freed from that prison had I not been brought back to life . In 1986 I was born again, born of the Spirit a second birth they call it¬¬. I came alive when I found that little Baptist Church in the meadow and God introduced Himself to me in a big way. (see “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit” chapter of Paradise for the Hellbound). http://www.recoveryfarmhouse.net/paradise-for-the-hellbound/#BAPTISM%20OF%20THE%20HOLY%20SPIRIT

What is the easiest way to get sober?

 

HOW DO I CHOOSE A HIGHER POWER

DO YOU KNOW WHO YOUR HIGHER POWER REALLY IS?

Third Step Prayer short version

God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.  Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and The way of life.  May I do Thy will always!
TWELVE STEP PRAYERS

A DOOR KNOB IS NOT A POWER GREATER THAN YOURSELF THEREFORE IT IS NOT A “HIGHER POWER”

We want to choose a god deserving of our faith not an inanimate object that has less power than the man who installed it into the door.  Why not seek God with our heart in prayer?  Seek and we will find.  Could it be our resentment, pain, and hurt is much too deep to even consider seeking a god whom we feel is the reason we have suffered?   Or is our desire to control all things too strong in us to risk relinquishing control?   Our pain and consequences of active addiction must be more intense than our fear of the unknown and giving up control.

In Narcotics Anonymous it has been said many times and is a popular belief that we may conjure up and name our own Higher Power.  Also members have said, if we want to use a door knob as a HP we can.   They say a door knob will work just as good as if we had one of the well-documented HP’s.  Perhaps the “Door knob” is the official-unofficial HP of N.A.  But again, a doorknob is not a power greater than any human.

Many people in N.A. have major prejudices against organized religion.  It is understandable that if we expect any group of people to be spiritually perfect or to adhere to all that their religion teaches we will automatically consider them hypocrites and not worthy of our respect when they falter, sin, or make a mistake contrary to their perspective rules of thumb.  These preconcieved type-sets that run deep in the neuron-pathways of our brain will have to be set aside or we won’t find a sponsor that we feel is fit to be our guide.  All addicts have character flaws and do all religious people.

The first mention of “God” in the 12 steps of A.A. is in Step Two.  “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”.  When I did step two I believed that my HP “could” restore me to sanity.  However I wasn’t so sure that IT would restore me (if I had ever been sane).

My own HP is The Father that Jesus spoke of in the days of old.  My other HP is Jesus Himself.  If this pisses you off be sure to put your prejudice on your step four (I did).  Your feelings of resentment are there for a valid reason no doubt.  You were probably wronged by religious people.  However the steps are about releasing the baggage that deep hurt and resentments cause in our heart and soul.

Anyway personally I also believe there are many other HP’s which could actually be used as a person’s main recovery HP.  And that any of these god’s have the power available to them to keep a person sober when they learn to rely on them.  Christian doctrine would call my beliefs sacrilegious but, oh well.    I didn’t make-up my beliefs concerning Gods.  I learned to seek God and meditated for many years.  I believe that “The Most High God” and creator gave power to many other beings we can call gods.  Gods such as The Moon Goddess, The God of The Sun, and many more to choose from.

A THOUSAND GODS TO CHOOSE FROM

HOW TO TRULY FIND AND CONNECT WITH YOUR OWN HIGHER POWER

In this article I explain how to really find YOUR higher power by seeking with your heart.  There will be no doubts when God reveals itself to you.  https://www.recoveryfarmhouse.com/vengeance-is-mine-sayeth-the-lord/