Methadone Pretty

Regrets, I've Had A Few

2012-01-08T07:56:00.000-05:00

You know, when I went to bed the other night, I had every intention of going when I got up the next day, but in the end, I just couldn't go through with it. I really, really thought this was something I'd be able to do without too much thought, but I was so wrong. Now, I am also kind of mad at myself for allowing my fear and anxiety to get the better of me but at the time, I felt I had no other choice.

Last Wednesday, one of the three guys that attacked us almost four years ago had a court appearance because he had been charged with aggravated assault from an incident in August 2011. He allegedly assaulted a complete stranger who was attempting to enjoy an evening downtown with his girlfriend. The attack put the victim in the hospital, leaving him with a fractured cheekbone, a split upper lip and a black eye. A trial for January 4, 2012 had been scheduled for him. His co-accused, a female companion, had her day in court the first week of December of last year.

The couple that had been attacked had been trying to get support from the community at large by asking for people to come out on these scheduled court dates in an attempt to try to fill the courtrooms for both of their trials. They were hoping to send a message to the judge that people do care and do really want to see these people off the street. I couldn't agree more, plus I thought this was a brilliant idea, never mind the myriad of questions I have regarding why this animal is still allowed out to continue to commit these violent offenses repeatedly with no sort of deterrent.

At the last minute though, I got scared. I hadn't been in a court room since two of our attackers received their respective sentences from the judge for what they had done to us. Before we heard this though, I had to read my Victim Impact Statement aloud to the court and then had to listen to each of their attorneys give their final statements about their clients to the judge in a last chance grab for some leniency I guess. This particular day was a bit of a blur because I was so overwhelmed with everything that was happening, and suddenly, after impatiently waiting almost two years for this day in court, now everything just seemed to be moving so bloody fast! Even though I was paying very close attention to everything that was being said by anyone that had a chance to speak, it ended up just being too much information all at once - too much new info and new info I didn't realize at the time was quite significant.

For years, because of our addiction, both Jim and I existed on the fringes of the law. Even though we knew we were breaking the law every time we fed this addiction and had to purchase drugs, we still somehow managed to remain under its radar for all intent and purpose the entire time we were using. Other than purchasing this illegal substance on a very regular basis, we conducted ourselves appropriately the rest of the time. We both went to work every day, we maintained our family home where we raised two daughters - one ours, the other our foster daughter. We paid our bills and did our groceries and volunteered at the girls' school and participated in life pretty much like everyone else for the most part. Yes, there were times when our finances were definitely on the shaky side, as was our behavior I've no doubt, but we didn't have to support our habit by participating in any additional illegal activity.

So, even after years of being on the peripheral, we really knew next to nothing about our criminal court system until our attack. I know that had we been better informed nearly two years ago, the Sentencing Hearing of two of our attackers would have been very different for me. It is really only now that there are things that were brought up that day that are now impacting me, and had I not seen that small news article about our third attacker there are things I would never even ended up considering.

First and foremost, I don't understand why these obviously violent individuals repeatedly keep getting second and third and fourth chances. It is only now that the significance of these three individual's prior record is significant. On the day of the sentencing of the first two who attacked us, it was introduced that between both of them they had a total of 28 assault convictions as adult offenders - one had 15 while the other had 13. Now they were 25 and 24 years old on the day of their sentencing and had been in custody since the day of the attack almost two years earlier meaning they were then approx 23 and 22 which further means they had managed to accumulate this total in less than five years. WTF? I don't even understand why either one of them was still walking around as free men on the day of our attack. These assault convictions aren't the end of their adult record either. The sum total of all their convictions since turning 18 was actually 86 - one had accumulated 42 adult convictions while the other 44. Again I have to say WTF? Two years ago, this significance alluded me but now it doesn't.

In fact, ever since seeing that story in our local newspaper a month ago about our third attacker, I can't stop thinking about the whole subject of rampant violence in our society and what we need to do about correcting this problem. Right now my thoughts are all over the place as I haven't had a chance to assimilate all of the new info my mind has seemingly had to process since then and am even now having trouble putting coherent thought down here.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Happy Holidays

2011-12-28T05:46:00.000-05:00

Well, managed to get through another Christmas reasonably unscathed! Went to Jim’s folks on Christmas Day and then to my Mom’s on Boxing Day. Both of us come from such small families that this season tends to be a fairly subdued one. Jim only has one sister while I just have one brother and a daughter of course. Jim’s sister just got married for the first time in the summer so her husband also joins us for the holidays. Jim and I and Sara and her boyfriend, Andre, spend all of Boxing Day with Mom especially as she has now been on her own since my Dad passed away in 2003. My brother and his wife now live in Halifax which is about 1424 km or 885 miles from me, and as they are expecting baby number five, they certainly can not afford to come home for the holidays. He has now been gone over a year and a half but it wasn’t until now that it has really hit me just how much I miss him. Hopefully, Jim and I will be flying out to Halifax in June of next year after the birth of the baby – due date is the first of May so this will give them a bit of time to get settled.

Lean On Me

2011-12-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

So I managed to get through Thanksgiving 2007 unscathed, and in fact, actually quite enjoyed myself. From here, my Mom and I started to meet every few weeks for coffee and a bit of a chat - always on neutral ground in a restaurant and in public. Initially it was a little bit awkward as it was just the two of us alone together without the benefit of others to insulate us. For me, the combination of this time apart plus close to two years successfully on MMT had mellowed me considerably so many of the things that seemed to irritate me so easily in the past no longer held the same importance or reaction for me.

Surprisingly, my Mother had become a very different person in the interim. Just prior to our reconciling, I had decided that being estranged from my Mother was not how I wanted to remember our relationship should anything end up happening to either one of us - heaven forbid. I didn't want to have regrets over something that could realistically be easily avoided not to mention repaired with not too much effort. I decided that there would be no point continuing to get annoyed with some of my Mother's traits never mind the fact that there was little hope of her changing her spots this late in her life. In my mind though there were a couple of things that I would not compromise on when it came to her treatment of me but I also was prepared to be honest with her and let her know exactly what I meant - no more passive aggressive behaviour on my part!

It seems that my Mom had missed me while we were estranged and must have made a decision herself to try to change her own behaviour. Just the fact that she would even attempt to do this for me was enough for me to now do everything in my power to ensure that our relationship would never derail again. Except for the rarest of rare bumps in the road, we have been rock steady ever since. I was also so glad that we ended up reconciling prior to the attack on Jim and I in May 2008 rather than after it. If we had been estranged at the time of our attack I suspect we both would have always wondered if this had been our only reason for reconciliation even if it wasn't at all. Now, though, we'll never be plagued with this question. Never mind the fact that since our attack my Mom has been a tremendous source of comfort, support and strength and everything else that goes with this whole ordeal.

Couldn't or wouldn't ask for anything more now cause I don't need to. I've got it all.

peace, love and happiness...

Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

2011-12-20T01:10:00.000-05:00

I guess I am long overdue to finish the story of my falling out with my Mom. Initially during the summer of 2005, when I severed all communication with my Mom, I was still very much in the middle of a very active opiate addiction, so I barely even noticed what was really going on. All that I knew was that I had one less complication to deal with in the pursuit of opiate bliss. It barely even registered, at least not at first anyway. It is truly amazing just how very fluid an opiate addict's moral compass is capable of becoming depending on the given situation. While there were a couple of lines I was never quite able to cross - I never, ever stole from anyone I knew or loved, or in fact, anyone at all, nor did I steal from businesses or stores, everything else was pretty much fair game. I was the master of rationalization as well, able to convince myself of almost anything as long as it aided me in my pursuit. I was my own worse enemy, nor had I any shame remaining.

Six months after my Mom and I stopped talking, I had started tentative steps towards MMT - Methadone Maintenance Treatment - but these were still early days in deed. For most of 2006, I concentrated on getting better. Even though I had no communication whatsoever with my Mom during this time, I did nothing at all to interfere with the extremely close relationship my daughter Sara had always had with her Granny. They talked regularly on the phone and got together for coffees and lunches. Their relationship continued on without interuption. I did my best to keep my distance so Sara could continue to enjoy this relationship without any feelings of guilt or betrayal. She responded in kind by mentioning any time she was meeting up with her Granny, but this was done under the spirit of our household rules - that is the girls always had to run anything by us before they were allowed to proceed - rather than making a big production waving it in my face!

Christmas 2006 was a bit strange even though it was really no different than the prior one except that I had been on MMT for eleven months and my head was no longer as cloudy as it had once been. Still, it was kind of nice to enjoy a quiet one with just the four of us. By this time, our bank balance was also considerably healthier after eleven months of saving money that used to be spent on our addiction so I had a Christmas to end all Christmases! Everyone was terribly spoilt for the first time in a very long time, plus I put up all new - matching - decorations all over which was something I had only really half heartedly done the prior five or six years.

It wasn't long before 2006 turned into 2007, and before I had a chance to even blink, it seemed like we were midway through 2007 already. Around the summer of that year, Sara started dropping hints that Granny wouldn't mind getting together with me although initially I pretended not to hear or understand. That fall my brother started doing the same although not quite as subtley. He was much more direct with me when he asked me to make an effort and perhaps come over to have Thanksgiving Day with the family. Sara followed her Uncle's lead and started mentioning this more and more frequently. By now, any of my malice or bitterness or anger had pretty much subsided especially as I had been doing exceptionally well with my recovery. I hadn't used in eighteen months and it was apparent. We were both working full time - Jim and I - and had managed to get ourselves completely out of debt, plus had even managed to put some away into a savings account. We were the pictures of health and everything else that goes with that so I agreed we would come for dinner. I initially agreed for the sake of my daughter as I realized how very important it was to her and how much this had started to upset her. The longer the separation between my Mom and I continued the harder it was for Sara. I started to realize just how unfair I was being to her.

So, in the late fall of 2007 the healing started to begin.

TO BE CONTINUED...

It''s Like Christmas Early! - ALMOST

2011-12-17T07:20:00.000-05:00

Finally after three years and almost eight months, we've received notification that we've got a hearing with our province's Victim's Compensation Tribunal, tentatively scheduled for February 9, 2012. Hopefully, this is nothing more than a formality although to be fair, I don't really know how the whole system works, and, in fact, their web site is not terribly forthcoming or informative. I certainly feel that we deserve some form of compensation considering everything that we went through and what we continue to go through. While we both now suffer from PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Jim also has to deal with numerous physical injuries as well as brain trauma due to their repeatedly kicking him in the head with their heavy boots. Fingers crossed that all goes smoothly.

Seems like you can't get some good news without having to receive the opposite. One day last week while riding the bus, I picked up a copy of one of our local newspapers that had been left behind and as I browsed through it, I happened upon a story about a couple that had been attacked one night last summer while they were ordering some food from a street vendor. I remembered the original story from last August as I've become interested in others who are also innocent victims of violent crimes which this couple were. Completely unprovoked, a male and a female, both complete strangers to the victims, attacked them badly enough that the male suffered a broken jaw as well as other facial injuries and required hospitalization. The female was before the court last week where she plead guilty, while the male accused of this attack goes before the judge on January 4, 2012. Imagine my shock when I read his name. He was one of the three who had attacked us! The other two are still serving their sentences in a federal jail somewhere in Ontario. The third had sat twenty five months in our local jail and as he had been arrested prior to new legislation that removed the two for one credit that prisoners used to be able to claim, he ended up being released in May 2010 having "served" a sentence equal to 50 months. He had been under fairly strict probation conditions, plus he was to be under these conditions until May 2012, but I guess this is all relative. I plan on following up with his probation officer to see if I can get more detailed info about all of this. Right now, I am hoping to attend his trial next year but this will all depend how strong I feel emotionally. Will just have to wait and see. You can read about their attack and what they are trying to do to regain some form of peace via the link below.

Finding A Way To Fight Back

It's No Good

2011-10-31T04:24:00.000-04:00

So now we're well into the fall. My Employment Insurance has been approved with no waiting period - so to speak - as I am on a Temporary Lay-Off which means that I've only lost my job for the time being and will be called back once the company can afford me. Pretty straightforward EI claim as they've got none of the normal verifying of the reason why an individual is applying. In Ontario, this means that if you are implicated and found even partially responsible for your job loss, EI can deny your application. This also prevents people from quitting their job just 'cause and then apply for EI. Both of these situations automatically disqualifies the individual. At that time, 2005, I was entitled to 60% of my salary but as next to no taxes or deductions were subtracted, it was almost the same amount as my normal salary with all of the required taxes etc were calculated. In my near addled junky mind, all I could think was "Sweet!" Business as usual.

And it was for the first couple of months...sweet, that is, but like anything else, this didn't last. One of my friends ended up becoming our dealer after we ended up having a falling out with our original one. My friend was, and as far as I know, still prescribed massive amounts of narcotic analgesics. On the first Wednesday of each month he receives/ed 720 8mg brand name dilaudids prescribed by his family doctor. I had filled this prescription many times in the past for him, and as he was/is not on any sort of drug plan, it cost him about $320CAD every month.

He received these due to some injuries he had sustained during a work accident. As far as I know, him and two other workers somehow ended up being literally buried alive for a large part of one of their work days. When they rescued them all, he had broken both of his legs, some ribs, his right hand and one of the fingers on his left hand. I know that he also sustained some nerve damage in one of his hands. As far as I remember, he ended up being in hospital close to six months. Anyway, initially he never actually used any of his pain meds as he quickly learned that they were much more valuable to him if he sold them outright. Before greed overshadowed everything, he sold his pills at 10 for $100, though this didn't last very long, or 2 for $25 or $15 each. Do the math. He made a shocking amount of money from this endeavor and as he didn't even use the pills at that time himself, it was all gravy.

Kind of ironic, but as long as there were pills easily and readily available, life continued on, and with it, the feeling one didn't have so much as a care in the world. Not surprisingly, this illusion could disappear in an instant and with no warning. The first time you woke up only to discover that the well had gone dry wasn't so bad. You hadn't yet trained your junky mind and body to go into automatic and painful withdrawal at this mere suggestion. Not yet, but very soon. By the end of this first day without the ready availability of pills, you actually managed to finally hookup. The moment you fixed, you felt returned to normal. Two weeks later when the same situation presents itself, your mind and body are less forgiving and understanding. Start to feel anxious and nervous the longer the day stretches with no sight of relief. Well into the evening, you impatiently wait but you're really incapable of doing anything much else as the waiting taxes every fiber in your body, and now it had started to become more and more frequent and difficult to find opiates on a daily basis.

After a short time, our bodies started to go into withdrawal when no opiates could be located, and this wasn't pleasant. This had started to bother me as obviously having to endure ever increasing periods of withdrawal was by no stretch enjoyable and I started thinking more and more frequently that there had to be something more than this. Also, our main connect had started to lose track of the picture, and had begun treating us with disrespect, and had begun to take us for granted. For the most part, Jim and I tried to buy these pills in bulk. There rarely were no more than maybe a half a dozen smaller purchases throughout the month. Now, one would thing that if one of his customers was buying 260 units monthly that perhaps he would be able to cut them a bit of a break, but sadly no. He charged us groups of ten - sometimes on the very rare occasion groups of twelve - which translated into 26 groups of ten units each, charged at $100 per group, which adds up to $2600 each and every month!

When I say that we were regulars, I truly mean that we were indeed that. I am in no way attempting to inflate our use, and in fact, am extremely ashamed and embarrassed even sharing this info, as it paints a pretty distasteful picture of what we allowed our addiction to become before we were finally able to put the breaks on it. Now for just over 24 months dealing with him, we never deviated far from this number. We almost always paid in advance, and always paid cash - no bartering or asking for them up front, etc. If we did have to request a front, it was rarely for more than a few days. Now, I get why he didn't want to cut us too sweet a deal as he had begun to rely on our money each and every month. Who wouldn't want to receive this amount, especially considering there was no work needed at all whatsoever in getting it? No hustling, no nickel and dime sales, less traffic coming and going to his house because he didn't need a dozen or so more customers minimum to replace the two of us.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Barrel of a Gun

2011-10-29T09:41:00.003-04:00

The summer that my Mom and I ended up having our falling out certainly turned out to be a quite a bit more than a mere convenience for me as it turned out. While there had never been any question that we both had been heading down this path ever since my Dad passed away, I most definitely made the most of the opportunity when it presented itself to me and did nothing much to prevent its derailment. Even though we'd been at odds in the past over issues more serious than the one that I finally used as my excuse to sever our current relationship, by this point it didn't matter. Definitely the proverbial straw for me, as there were a number of very legitimate reasons why we could not, nor should not, continue on with our current relationship as it stood.

At the same time, I knew that I was also motivated by the fact that there would now be one less potential distraction interfering with my current usage. By this time, I was having a difficult time balancing my active addiction with my work and social responsibilities, my family obligations, as well as dealing with the general day to day mundane stuff one tends to encounter as we drift through our lives . So with that stress gone for the time being, I was able to refocus more of my energies on what was becoming increasingly more and more important, and I don't mean work.

Ironically, about a month or so after my blowup with my Mom, I ended up receiving a temporary layoff notice from my employer stating that I would be required, immediately, to take a leave from work of between 12 and up to a maximum of 16 weeks. At that time, I had been working for my employer, a software company, for a number of years. By the time I received this notice, our office had been reduced to a staff of just over twenty from a high of near a hundred and fifty employees less than a year prior. Even though I knew I was still a valued employee, I also recognized the financial duress the company was currently experiencing.

Plus, talk about timing. Bloody pathetic on my part, but reality none the less. One less distraction yet again. The writing was so on my wall and yet...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Altered States

2011-10-24T00:48:00.000-04:00

I've gone through and reviewed all of my links as I had noticed that some were no longer active, as well as discovering a number of new ones. As well as the links that appear regularly as part of my site, I've included this separate post as a means of highlighting the category Altered States | Parents of Addicts as I feel that it is not only an extremely important category, but one that seems to be constantly growing which should be a grave concern for all. If there are other blogs out there that I'm not yet aware of, I would love to be notified so that I can add them to the list.

peace, love and happiness...

I WAS WRONG

2011-10-15T05:16:00.001-04:00

It would be a full two and a bit years after my Dad's death before my Mom and I would actually have our falling out. Our relationship just seemed to get progressively worse over time. My Mother had always been a bit harsh although often I barely noticed as I had gotten used to her treatment over the years. Usually, it was only after someone else took the time to comment to me about it that I would give any serious thought to what I should do, at least that had been the pattern in the past. Once my Dad passed, I seemed to have become more sensitive to any of her criticisms, and increasingly found it near impossible to stand.

My Mother always seemed to have something to say about my looks, my hair, my clothes, my job, my hobbies, you name it and she could find fault. I never really knew why either, nor could I understand why she always seemed so dissatisfied with me. Growing up I had been a straight A student and had received numerous scholarship offers to university upon graduation from high school. I was never in trouble and even maintained a part time job all through high school so that I could support myself financially. In fact, I was able to buy my first car in cash just after my seventeenth birthday and paid for my entire trip to the British Isles the summer I turned 21.

For the near six months that I drove my Dad to the hospital five days a week, she reminded me each and every day at least three times not to be late, and not in an absent minded sort of way. She was very insistent and quite mean about it too, even though I did not once show up late to pick them up for the hospital. And so on...

Now I can't put all of the blame on my Mom's shoulders for our falling out as I was dealing with some serious issues of my own the summer of 2005. I was easily at the height of my addiction, and I was finding it increasingly difficult trying to conceal it from everyone. No one at home nor work or anywhere knew what I was hiding and this secret was starting to weigh me down. With each passing day, I found it harder and harder to keep all my balls in the air.

By this time, we were spending on average well over $2000/month attempting to support our habit, and by then, this was barely covering its maintenance. Obviously our personal finances were starting to suffer because of the amount we were spending. No amount of additional hours at work seemed to prevent our bills from starting to pile up. My nerves were wearing thin and I was starting to become careless at work. I knew a meltdown was imminent and felt at a loss at being able to prevent it.

I needed to share my burden with someone and I thought at the time, that my Mother might be the one, but once I had, I quickly realized how desperately wrong I was. Initially, she seemed so very empathetic but this lasted barely 48 hours and then all hell broke loose. It had taken so much to confide everything and she had promised that this would remain between the two of us, but it didn't. Almost instantly she was on the phone to her sister telling her what an awful daughter she had and who knows what else. She actually told me all this the next time we talked. I was shattered. When I asked her why she did exactly what I had asked and she had promised she wouldn't do, she really had no defense.

I remember mumbling something to her during that call that I couldn't do this anymore with her, that I needed to get well and the longer she was around to poison everything, the longer it would end up taking me to get healthy again. I quietly hung up the phone and from that moment on had no communication with her for eighteen months. I didn't look back and in many ways, these eighteen months ended up being some of the happiest and relaxing ones of recent memory. Even though this fracture looked as if it was irreconcilable, in the end, it turned out to be the complete opposite, but another year and a half was to pass before I was able to find out.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Mommy Dearest

2011-10-11T02:09:00.000-04:00

Over the years, my Mother and I have had, at best, a somewhat strained relationship, although for the past few years, we somehow were both able to put this to rest and have enjoyed what has very much felt like a normal and healthy one. To say this has been like a breath of fresh air does not even begin to do it any sort of justice. As this was something I had dreamt my entire adult life of having, I was careful to ensure I did nothing to jeopardize it, although I wouldn't have just accepted it without question had I felt that there might be possible negative consequences. In fact, in order to reach the previously unattainable, I had had to completely severe absolutely all ties with my Mom for near two years. Drastic action begets dramatic results it would seem.

Growing up, there was just Dad, Mom, my slightly younger brother and myself. When I was five, my parents decided it was time to leave the land of our birth, Ireland, to try our luck in another country halfway around the world, Canada. While I have some very vivid memories of this time, I certainly was far too young to fully comprehend the drastic, not to mention dramatic, changes occurring within our little family. Immigrating to a new country is daunting enough when one is young, single with their whole life ahead of them, I can't even begin to imagine the stress involved for a couple just a few years away from forty with two small children in tow! Not only this, but they had to do it completely on their own as no one else from either one of their families had done this, nor would anyone ever do it.

What this meant was that neither my brother or myself had the luxury of being part of an extended family while we grew up. Although we had a total of nineteen cousins, we rarely ever saw any of them as an ocean separated us and still does. While we were fortunate enough to spend many a summer vacation visiting and getting to know them all, it was never quite the same as if we had been able to share our daily life on a regular basis with them. On occasion, I sometimes found myself filled with envy if one of my friends had the opportunity of being able to get particularly close to one of their cousins simply because they could - location...location...location.

Yet, in reality, as I grew up, this was really nothing more than a minor handicap because all in all, I was darn fortunate enough to have a pretty idyllic childhood. My folks were amazing enough and neither myself nor my brother were ever victims of any sort of abusive treatment. We were treated more than fairly, and certainly didn't lack for much of anything growing up. I seemed to naturally gravitate towards my Dad, while my brother seemed to be my Mom's favorite. I most definitely was my Daddy's Little Girl, and I surely managed to stay this way until he passed away in 2003. We shared similar interests and I always found it much easier to confide in him than I had ever found in my Mother.

While she doted on my brother who could do no wrong in her eyes, I struggled to simply get along with her at times. She could be overly harsh and critical of me if allowed, but as long as my Father was alive, it rarely happened. From time to time over the years, I'd find myself worrying what would end up happening to our relationship once my Father was no longer around to temper our behavior and treatment of the other.

Then in 2002, my father was diagnosed with cancer. After his first month of radiation and chemo, he found himself getting weaker and felt that he could no longer drive himself safely back and forth to the hospital. As my Mother had never learned to drive, he asked me if I would drive him back and forth to his hospital appointments. Of course I agreed without hesitation but this also meant that I would be responsible with having to take him five days a week, every week for approx five to six months.

Although this obviously greatly impacted my life as well as my own immediate family’s, I didn't mind doing it in the least and would gladly have done it again without hesitation. As some days I was required at the hospital for near eight hours, plus had to be there Monday through Friday, I quickly found it was impossible for me to continue to work full time while I did this. Luckily, I had an amazingly empathetic boss and was able to take a six month leave of absence without pay remarkably easily. Tragically, she found herself in a near identical situation with her own father a mere two months after me so...

I began driving my Father on a regular basis about the second week of July and continued to do this every day until just before Christmas of the same year. My father managed to finish all of his radiation and chemo treatments a scant six days before Christmas Eve. Christmas that year was nice, although we already knew that my father had ended up not responding well to either one of his treatments and wasn't going to be really getting any better.

This was confirmed before the third week of January had even started. In the interim from Christmas til this time, I had returned to work and was trying my best to settle back into some sort of routine. I was barely back at work, when my father was admitted to the hospital for what ultimately turned out to be the rest of his life. From the moment he went in, I made sure that I visited each and every day though it became increasingly harder to see him suffering so much as it got closer and closer to the end.

For the first time since I had been told that he had cancer back the previous June, I started to really feel stressed and overwhelmed. I often found it quite challenging trying to juggle a successful return to work while meeting my own immediate family’s needs - Sara was only twelve when all of this started and had yet to lose anyone close to her from death so...

At the same time, I found I was at the beck and call of my mother without the benefit of any safety net. As I knew that this was incredibly hard on her, I tried not to take some of her many and frequent outbursts personally . I got it. She felt powerless to help her life partner, a man that had looked after her now since 1956 and visa versa. All faults aside, they really were a truly magnificent couple who loved each other deeply until the very end.

OK, this entry now seems to have taken on a life of its own, so in the interest of looking towards a bit of a conclusion on the way to wrapping this all up, I'm not going to bore you with all of the specifics of what ultimately caused my Mother and I to have this serious falling out. Instead, the following anecdote should illustrate quite nicely what I was more of less up against.

By the time my father finally passed away the second week of March, I was pretty much overwhelmed with so many different emotions, never mind feeling so very, very tired. Through the last week of his life, I had spent every night at the hospital sleeping beside my father in a bed that his nurses had put together for me. The following day the only thing that I wanted to be excused from was having to take my mother to the funeral home to finalize our earlier arrangements. I was so very shattered that I just didn't have it in me to do this. As Jim and I had taken Mom there prior to Dad's passing, I figured now that it could be my brother's turn, especially as he had only visited him twice the whole time he was in hospital.

At the time, I really didn't give this request much thought at all, but it soon became quite apparent that perhaps I should have. My Mom was a little bit demanding of my time the first few months after Dad died. After working hard all week, I rarely had a chance to slow down once the weekend arrived as I was required to chauffeur my Mom around so she could get whatever errands she needed to get done. It seemed as if every place that I happened to take my mother, whenever she was offered condolences, she just had to stop so she could also share a particular story with everyone.

All puffed up and proud, she told everyone who would listen what an absolute rock my brother had been to her, and how she wouldn't have known what to do had he not been there to look after everything the day after my Father’s passing. Canonization for sainthood must surely be around the next corner. Not one mention of what I had done for five months, nor even the last three months that he spent in the hospital. Nothing at all, nary a word, and, to make matters worse, she did all of this right in front of me, and not just on one occasion, but multiple times. I started cracking up in short order let me tell you.

This was barely the tip of the iceberg and now that my Father was no longer around to temper my Mother's actions and treatment of me, I found our situation intolerable not to mention untenable. The longer it continued, the more I felt poisoned and shattered, and increasingly more and more depressed. Ultimately, for my own self preservation, I ended up having to sever all ties with my Mother. It turned out to be easier than I had ever imagined, and in the end I managed to avoid my mother and her abuse for nearly eighteen months.

P.S. TO BE CONTINUED

The JW Marriott Rosseau Resort & Spa

2011-08-15T19:19:00.006-04:00

I can easily say that this is some of the most beautiful scenery to be found anywhere in Ontario. Took my breath away that's for sure. We were fortunate enough to recently spend what was a truly luxurious and decadent four days here at this resort and spa which is located on Lake Rousseau in the Muskokas - a few hour drive north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada for any that don't recognize any of these names! Jim's sister had her recent wedding here - July 30, 2011 - and it was simply magnificent. Words can not even begin to do it justice. I will post very, very soon with all of the wedding details as this was one massively extravagant affair! Shudder to think what the final tab was - their Dad picked up the entire weekend! I mean, the entire wedding, a nice, cozy, intimate affair with 82 of her closest and dearest. Yikes. Gulp.

If you're interested in seeing more of what they have to offer, check out their web site.

Three Years

2011-05-12T19:47:00.000-04:00

It has now been exactly three years since we were attacked and Jim stabbed by three completely unknown and random strangers. In that time, our life has changed so very much. Most of the changes have turned out to be for the good, but not all. The changes that we didn't want or expect are the ones that we continue to struggle with, and do our best to overcome at the very least. Even though this amount of time has passed, there are still so many reminders of what happened that day.

After the first officer arrived on the scene, the paramedics and other support personnel were quick to follow. Everyone was wonderful to both Jim and myself. I would think that all of twenty-five minutes passed in total from the time that we knocked on the tenant's door to the time that the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot. Once things started happening, they started moving rather quickly. I know that it was just before 6pm when the ambulance left with Jim. I had wanted to be on it with him so very badly, but the police managed to convince me that I would be better served remaining behind for the time being as it was important that I give my statement while everything was fresh in my mind. In the end. they were probably correct. Jim was taken into surgery immediately, and even if I had gone directly to the hospital, I still wouldn't have been able to see him until he was out of surgery which turned out to be close to 1:30am Tuesday morning, or almost seven and a half hours after he left the apartment building in the ambulance. At least while I was giving my statement to the police, I didn't have time to dwell on anything else!

It took almost two hours for the officer to take my statement, but then, I was able to remember quite clearly almost everything that had just happened. I've always had a pretty great memory and it certainly didn't disappoint me this time. I don't know how great my recollection would have been had they waited to take my statement, and now, in hindsight, I am glad that I didn't have to test it. The officer was utterly fantastic, which was quite surprising considering how old, or young as it would be, he was. He couldn't have been much more than twenty six, and by the initial look on his face when he had first arrived on the scene, hadn't been exposed to too many gruesome sights as yet. I am a smoker, and he allowed me to smoke while I gave my statement - I had to sit in the back of his police car so I imagine that allowing anyone to smoke in there was fairly rare. He was patient as he took down all of the details. Midway through, I could hear quite a bit of excited chatter coming through his police radio. Suddenly, he stopped to pick up his radio and rapidly jumped out of the car, calling back to me that it looked like they had managed to get one of the three attackers. Even though he had rolled the window down for me earlier, there was no way for me to leave the car on my own as the back doors automatically lock. I could do nothing but wait for him to return.

About fifteen minutes after he had bounded away from the car, he returned all excited. Apparently, they had managed to capture one of the three not too far from our building. He had been hiding across the street behind another apartment building's large green generator. The officer said that while he had somehow managed to change his clothing, he had forgotten to change his socks which were completely covered with Jim's blood. I guess he resisted somewhat as the officer said that in the end he had to be hogtied! Imagine that. Once back, we picked up where we had left off. I managed to finish my statement just prior to 8pm. Even though the police had offered me a ride to the hospital, by then one of my friends had managed to show up so her boyfriend was able to give me a lift. In the meantime, Sara and Katie had gotten to the hospital and were waiting for me to get there. When I arrived, they told me that Jim was in surgery, his second one since he got there!

Initially, they had taken him into repair the two and a half inch gash on the right side of his throat as that had been the most obvious injury. It wasn't until he was out of that surgery and upstairs getting an MRI - I believe this is what was done next - that they noticed he had an immense amount of internal bleeding. It was discovered that both his liver and spleen had been lacerated badly, plus one of his lungs had been punctured and since collapsed. It was this second surgery that ended up lasting the longest, and from reading his medical report which we had to request for our lawyer, I finally discovered just how very serious and how very touch and go, this had all been.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Party Animals Review | BBC2 2007

2011-05-04T21:15:00.002-04:00

I thought I'd try something a bit different for a change. If nothing, it keeps things from getting all boring...my first ever review of one of my favourite series...

This eight part BBC2 series originally aired overseas in 2007, although I didn't have a chance to watch it until last year when TVO, here in Ontario, first presented it. While I enjoyed it immensely, I didn’t fully appreciate how truly wonderful it actually was until very recently. I happened to get another chance to watch it again and, got to watch it all at once giving it my undivided attention. I was not disappointed.

Diverse, classy and clever, Party Animals is an incredibly gripping drama series which follows several young political researchers and advisers in Westminster as they struggle to balance their burgeoning careers with their ever increasing turbulent personal lives.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that it also just happens to star two of my absolutely favourite actors, Andrew Buchan (Scott Foster) and Matt Smith (Danny Foster), both of whom are starring in one of their first feature roles! They are utterly mesmerizing as is the main female lead, Shelly Conn(Ashika Chandiramani). Through each of them, we are given an intimate view of the political landscape through very different lenses. Danny is the determined researcher for Home Office Junior Minister Jo Porter and is about to make an enormous mistake which could possibly undermine his integrity not to mention his beloved job.

His brother is the complete opposite. Scott is a confident, in fact near arrogant, lobbyist who finds his world literally is turned upside down when he meets the beautiful Ashika Chandiramani. She turns out to be like no female he has ever met. For the first time, he finds himself in uncharted territory becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his own person and embarrassed by the reputation he had acquired. Ashika is the chief adviser to Shadow Minister James Northcote with who she is having an affair.

When she meets Scott, she has just started to question this relationship with a married man and finds the attention from Scott flattering and somewhat bemusing at the same time. She too finds herself in unknown waters yet is intrigued by the excitement she feels whenever she encounters Scott.

As the series progresses, the lives of these characters intertwine in monumental ways with some truly devastating and heartbreaking results. It is easy to see how their personal lives end up being so bloody messy when combined with their character’s naked ambition, desire for power, mixture of sex and friendship and love never-mind the daily stress of having a career in politics! It’s enough to leave the viewer dizzy and breathless and not a little frustrated.

If you are anything like me you will soon discover that the more Party Animals you watch, the more you'll want to watch. As it is also a challenge to find, anyone having difficulties locating a copy is more than welcome to contact me as I’d be happy to help you out!

Andrew Buchan and Matt Smith as brothers Scott and Danny Foster.

From HEROIN To HEAVEN

2011-05-04T08:00:00.003-04:00

...And just like that, I've found another blog of a recovering addict...when it rains it pours...

This blogger says that she is a 26 year old over-comer of many addictions and mental illness and this is one of her outlets to dealing with an addicted mind that still fights. Very strong religious emphasis.

From HEROIN To HEAVEN

peace, love and happiness...

sickgirl

Life of a Recovering Drug Addict

2011-05-04T05:45:00.004-04:00

I just found a wonderful blog written by a former addict who looks as if they're well on their way to a successful recovery and wanted to post the link for anyone that might be interested in checking it out. There seems to be a scarcity of journals/blogs etc written from the perspective of the recovering addict as of late, while it seems that on a daily basis a new journal is started by yet another parent of an addicted child which is just so utterly tragic. Each one I come across seems to make my heart feel just a little bit heavier. It is so very sad. I know I'll be thrilled the day that I find no more new additions to my ever growing list of links.

Life of a Recovering Addict

peace, love and happiness...

sickgirl

Condemnation Part Two

2011-05-03T06:32:00.001-04:00

The day of our attack and Jim's stabbing was pretty uneventful. It had been a quiet, lazy day as most middle of the month days can be in apartments. Nobody moving out, nobody moving in. The weather was nice so there was little physical work to do outside. Most of Jim's current work orders had been completed and any administrative tasks had been dealt with by me earlier in the day. Just before five that afternoon, I stopped into say goodnight to the girls that worked in our Regional Office. While I was in there chatting, the Office Manager asked me to check on one of the units on the sixth floor as they had just received a noise complaint from one of their neighbours. I left the office immediately and jumped on the elevator which took me up to the sixth floor in no time. Even before I got off the elevator, I could clearly hear audible sound coming from down the hall. There seemed to be what appeared like loud crashing noises being made as heavy furniture or items came crashed to the ground after having being thrown into the air.

I knocked fairly loudly on the unit's door while announcing myself clearly at the same time. After a brief hesitation, the door opened to reveal a young, black male in his early twenties. When I asked to speak to the tenant, he advised me that she wasn't home at the moment. I asked him if he knew why I might be here, and he answered that he did. He also told me that they were all getting ready to leave as they had just called to request a taxi to collect them. I thanked him for his time, and reminded him that it was the actions of himself and his friends that would reflect positively or negatively on the tenant as she was responsible for any of her guest's behaviour, whether she was there herself or not. He apologized to me, promising that this would be the end of it. While I was talking to him, I took the time to survey as best I could the state of the unit. I noticed that a book shelf had been overturned, as well as the sofa and coffee table. This would explain the loud thumps I had previously heard to be sure. While I was only able to see two others while I was standing at their front door, I could not help but notice that both were most definitely under the influence of something. Regardless, there wasn't much more that I could do so I thanked the young man that had answered the door and returned to my own apartment which was located on the main floor at the time of the attack.

By the time I got back to our apartment, it was close to twenty past five which meant for all intents and purposes we were finished work for the day. Jim and I were getting our jackets on when our phone rang. It was John from the sixth floor and all he said as way of introduction was "They're at it again." I asked him if he would call the police as they could only receive a complaint of this nature i.e. a noise complaint from another tenant and not the property's owner or representative. He responded that he "couldn't be bothered" but he still expected Jim or myself to do something about the situation, and to do this immediately! If it had been any other tenant, I most likely would have ignored the complaint but because it was from this particular tenant, I knew that if neither one of us responded that he would most definitely submit a complaint to our Regional Office regarding us. I also knew that he would be peeking through his own door waiting for one of us to return to the unit in question. With all of this in mind, I grabbed Jim to come upstairs with me figuring that as soon as we'd dealt with the complaint, we could be on our merry way to do some shopping at the mall!

If only we had managed to get that far. We both could hear a bit of noise as we stepped off of the elevator but nothing like I had heard earlier. This time Jim placed himself directly in front of the tenant's door while I stood slightly off to his left. He knocked a few times with authority, but didn't have a chance to announce who it was. We both heard the deadbolt and lock just prior to the door opening up. Literally the second that the door opened and without any sort of warning, a fairly large fellow jumped across the door's threshold and pushed Jim extremely hard across the hall and against the door to the opposite unit. Our building has proper fire doors which are by nature extremely sturdy. When the back of his head hit that door, I could literally hear his skull cracking. It not only seemed like such a loud sound but the only sound. Jim was immediately knocked out and didn't end up regaining consciuousness until the beating was near its end. In short order, two other pretty big fellows came running out of the apartment.

At one point, one of the three assailants took a moment to push me off to the side, otherwise all three of them were intent on savagely attacking Jim. It was utterly incomprehensible in so many ways. They all seemed to be following the lead of the first fellow to attack, and were mimicing everything that he was doing. If he was pummeling Jim with his fists then so were the others. If he was jumping in the air and kicking Jim with his heavy boots, then so were the other two. It was deeply upsetting as I felt complete helpless and useless. I didn't know what to do after my intial attempt at jumping on one of the attacker's backsides, in the vain hope of distracting him, had been quickly and effortlessly stopped! From a great distance, I could hear my own voice screaming at them to stop, that they were killing my husband and that I didn't understand why they were even doing this to us. My brain couldn't seem to remember how to dial for emergency services although my fingers somehow managed to dial 911 all on their own. It wasn't until I managed to barely hear a distant voice offering assistance that I even realized what I had done. The kept repeating that I needed to tell them where I was in order for them to send any assistance. Eventually I managed to get my cell phone to my mouth, and was coherent enough to obviously offer our address to them.

Probably the entire attack lasted all of two minutes, perhaps a bit longer though I honestly can't say. Near the end of the attack a fourth fellow came out of the unit and actually attempted to help me and Jim. He tried to pull the others off of my husband in an attempt to get them to stop. When the attack first started, I was absolutely convinced that they were not going to stop until Jim was dead. That's what it looked like to me. I had never witnessed anything so utterly savage and out of control as these three lads appeared to be to me. Then as suddenly as it all started, it seemed to end. I don't know at what point the four of them made the decision to stop or even why they made this decision. All of a sudden they seemed to have taken flight, and just as quickly, were gone from my sight. I couldn't even begin to tell you which direction they took or how they even managed to get off of the sixth floor. The moment that they were gone, the only thing that I could see was Jim, and the state that they had left him in. I couldn't get over how much blood there was. It seemed to be everywhere. It was soaking through the carpet rapidly and there was so much of it, you could actually see where everyone had stood as footprints had been left behind. There seemed to be an equal amount of blood all over the door and wall behind Jim as well as all over both of us. We were covered.

At that point neither one of us was aware that a weapon had been used. I never say the knife and Jim said that he never felt it. It wasn't until the first police officer had arrived on the scene that a weapon was even mentioned. He noticed something peculiar about Jim's jacket and t-shirt - if you can believe it, Jim was actually wearing a red jacket and similarly colored t-shirt at the time of his attack !!! By this time Jim had regained consciousness but was having an extremely difficult time talking and breathing. We would later learn that this was a result of one of his lungs being punctured and subsequently collapsing at the scene of the attack. After closer examination, it looked like he had approx seven decent stab wounds on his left upper arm, five on his upper back, four throughout his head, six on various parts of his chest and one dangerous looking wound near his throat on his right side. They had managed to literally split his forhead in half. There was a constant stream of blood flowing from this wound. All in all, he did not look in very good shape.

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Condemnation

2011-05-01T08:04:00.000-04:00

It's been almost three years since Jim and I were attacked, and Jim stabbed multiple times, while at work. Even after this amount of time passing, I still find it rather difficult to talk at length about this event. Just thinking about what happened that day still feels so surreal to me, almost as if I am watching it happen to somebody else and not myself. I have pretty much avoided even mentioning that day if at all possible in any of my entries. The few times that I did bother to reference the attack, I pretty much made sure that this is done in passing and as casually as possible. Immediately following the attack, I was still so much in shock that it was relatively easy avoiding this topic. Even today, I find it difficult to wrap my head around what ended up happening to us that Monday afternoon, and how, almost three years later, we are still suffering from the events of May 12, 2008. Now, though, I feel I am ready to share all of the details and specifics of this attack and stabbing that has been so absolutely life altering to me and my family - kind of mind boggling what can end up happening in what was probably no more than two minutes in length!

At the time of the attack, Jim and I were Building Managers for one of the larger high rises in the city. The building we were responsible for looking after had always been a pretty quiet and peaceful one. In the half year that we had been there, there had been no unusual or significant events that stood out as particularly unusual. Pretty much a gravy job all in all. Jim and I shared a single position so to speak, and we divided our duties accordingly. For the most part, I did all of the administrative work related to this position such as rent collection, maintaining building's rental ledger and ensuring all vacant units were in "rentable condition" et al , while Jim looked after all of the physical aspects i.e. cleaning and maintaining all common areas of the building, garbage and snow removal and any unit repairs as required.

Obviously, being a Building Manager of a reasonably large apartment building - 96 units over eight stories - you can absolutely be assured that there will certainly be some very special moments, not to mention a stereotypically odd assortment of characters residing within these eight floors. Some days were definitely easier than others, as were some tenants, but all in all, we knew we had it pretty easy. The majority of the tenants were easy to get along with and undemanding at best. Everyone seemed to respect each other's space so intervening in tenant disputes of any kind were practically non-existent. For the most part, I rarely found any of our tenants irritating or annoying, but like everything else in life, there will always be an exception to the rule!

The exception of our building just happened to be one of our sixth floor tenants who had lived in the building with his wife and two young sons about five years at the time of our attack. Where all of the other tenants were a joy to interact with, he was the complete opposite and then some. You could count on hearing from him on a daily basis, even on weekends and after hours which were normally supposed to be free of any work related issues, not to mention your time off and away from work! John, as he will be referred to from now on, would literally be waiting on the main floor for one of us to unlock our office bright and early every morning without fail. There was always some important nugget of information that he felt compelled to share with us without delay. It took every bit of self control not to over react and lose it on him. I don't think I've counted to ten as often as I had during those six months. Jim and I eventually learned how to effectively deal with him so that we were able to minimize any interaction with him while leaving the impression that we were taking everything he said seriously and then acting appropriately. It took a bit of time and finesse but in the end we became extremely adept at handling this particularly loathsome tenant!

Now, to compound issues somewhat, the Regional Office of the company that we worked for just happened to be located in one of the empty units on the first floor of the building that Jim and I both lived in and were responsible for maintaining. As well as annoying us on a daily basis, he also paid a visit to the girls working in the Regional Office every day. You have no idea what an utter treat this one tenant could be, never mind how much crap we were expected to suffer because of him, but suffer we did. At the end of the day, he was nothing more than a bit player in the bigger, more important picture - or so I thought. Work is work is work, and most of the time, it didn't come home with me - so to speak. Obviously, when you work where you live and live where you work, it tends to be a little bit more difficult to keep the two separate, but this is certainly not impossible. I always ensured that there were very specific boundaries created with the tenants, and then, made sure that they were all very much aware of what these boundaries were. John would prove a bit challenging to these boundaries, and ultimately, because of him, Jim and I would find ourselves in a most untenable work situation!

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

She's Now Legal Anywhere!!!

2011-04-25T03:56:00.002-04:00

Last Sunday was my daughter Sara's twenty-first birthday. We had a very quiet and intimate dinner at my Mom's. Now that my brother, his wife and their four children live in Nova Scotia, there are just me, Jim, Sara and her boyfriend, Andre, Katie and my Mom. Only the five of us which was nice and relaxing, and completely different then our usual family dinners. As much as I adore my brother, the moment they all arrive, chaos ensues. His kids range in age from one to 13 now, and when we all get together they tend to get overly excited and start bouncing off of walls especially as the day goes on and they eat more and more sweet treats! So compared to other years, our celebration was positively subdued. It was an especially nice change of pace for Mom as she normally gets herself all stressed out over serving the dinner. To this day, I do not know why as she is a brilliant cook. She cooked a turkey to boot! We were also kind of cheating cause we were celebrating Easter as well as Sara's birthday. This way Mom wouldn't have to do it all the following weekend, plus now our time would be freed up to go to Jim's parents at their convenience.

There is a bit more that I wanted to say, but I just noticed the time and I have to dash. Shall be back later on today!

peace, love and happiness...

And The Band Played On

2011-03-23T00:26:00.000-04:00

One of my all time favourite movies was produced and shown by HBO in 1993 and starred Matthew Modine, Alan Alda and Saul Rubinek to name just a few. It was based on the book of the same name, And The Band Played On, which had been written and published by Randy Shilts in 1987. Unfortunately, he was found to be HIV positive in March 1987 and died from AIDS in early 1994. This book is an extremely carefully detailed account of the first five years of the AIDS epidemic and all of its major, and minor, players and their struggle to be heard and taken seriously by the government, press and public at large. At the book's initial publication, its author was widely regarded as America's most expert journalist on the AIDS epidemic primarily due to the fact that he had been the only reporter in the world to have worked full-time covering AIDS as the story developed having joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1982. Thanks to the enlightenment of his employer, he was able to devote himself almost exclusively to reporting on AIDS and it is this reporting that ended up providing the core of his book. The book itself is utterly riveting and is so much more than simply a history of the early years of AIDS. It is beyond majestic. It's about politics, people, and institutions and their responses of fear, denial and indifference, courage and determination. It is also easily my favourite book of all time. It is also a book that I have just recently finished after having finally located a copy after years and years and some more years of searching for it! Not only did I actually manage to find a used copy in mint condition, the entire cost of the book, plus its shipping and handling from the UK to Canada, cost me less than $8.00 Canadian after calculating the currency exchange. Is that not utterly insane? The second I had located this book, I transferred the required funds from my PayPal account along with all my particulars. Within a week's time, the book had arrived in my mailbox all safe and sound!

Five Years and the Spiders From Mars

2011-02-02T03:59:00.001-05:00

I can't believe that I almost let January go without so much as a backward glance, a good sign that I am finding it easier to look forward rather than backward. Progress. Two days ago was the fifth anniversary of starting Methadone Maintenance Treatment - MMT from this point. I am now also at a lower dose than the initial dose they started me on - 18mg instead of 20mg. I've been finding it frighteningly easy adjusting to each dosage decrease which has been a huge change from earlier efforts. The moment I managed to break through the 30mg barrier seemed to be when everything started to change for the better. I had begun to feel pretty beaten and battered and discouraged before this time as I struggled for months bouncing back and forth between 30 and 40mg fearful that I might have ended up stuck there indefinitely! I remember mentally preparing myself for the long haul just in case... Of the last 12 months, a good nine of them were spent stuck at the higher dose, while in less than three I have managed to decrease my dose successfully from 30 to18mg!

Five years - half a decade - is a pretty significant amount of time so I suppose I should really take a moment. I remember that first day so very vividly especially seeing how it just happened to coincide with my first day in my new position at work! Not only was I returning, literally, to the land of the living after having spent near three years in semi seclusion working in the office from 7pm until 2am, but I was going to have to leave less than an hour after having arrived to make it to my first doctor's appointment. At least I had more than enough time to prepare my superiors of this as I had been put on a wait list for MMT, and this wait was going to be just over five weeks!

Actually, was a damn near miracle that I even ended up showing considering the lengthy wait to start treatment. Its a wonder any addicts manage to start treatment at all sometimes. The way that this particular aspect of addiction treatment is handled has always been one of my complaints with the system. I find that as it has been my experience that once an addict decides to seek any form of treatment, having to turn them away to start at a later date generally ensures nothing but failure. Normally by their start date, something else has usually distracted the addict and they are nowhere to be found.

Ironically, when I had gone to my initial appointment, I wasn't really planning on starting any sort of treatment. A friend wanted me to accompany her to her appointment and while I was there with her, the attending nurse convinced me to have my blood work and physical done just in case. Obviously in hindsight, I am glad that I did go through the motions. Starting MMT was exactly what I desperately needed in the end and through a series of related plus unrelated events over this five week wait, I did manage to show up that Monday morning at the clinic bright and early, hoping and praying for change.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Sweet Sara

2011-01-11T21:03:00.011-05:00

One of my daughter's friends is a bit of a budding photographer and she often will use Sara as her subject. These are some of the most recent photos that were taken. Isn't she lovely? Of course, I am one very proud Mom!

"I'm pretty sure my cat's reading my diary"

2010-12-01T19:38:00.003-05:00

"I thought [adultery] meant being stupid. Like being a dolt."

“If we lose, we should throw possums.”

''I was pretty sure Dr. Pepper was a dentist.''

“So, Hairography. It works best when you pretend like you're getting tasered. It's like cool epilepsy. “

“Did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?”

“People think I went on vacation, but actually I spent all summer lost in the sewers.”

“Mr. Schue taught me the second half of the alphabet. I stopped after M and N. I thought they sounded too similar and got frustrated.”

“Finn can fly?”

“I did a book report on heart attacks if you want to give it to the doctor. I got knocked down an entire letter grade because it was written in crayon.”

“Is God an evil dwarf?”

AND MY ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE BRITTANY QUOTE SO FAR:

“Just like I know that the cricket that reads to me at night is totally stealing my jewelery.”

If you are also a GLEE or BRITTANY fan, you can check out more Brittany quotes right HERE.

No Longer A Pain I’m Used To…

2010-11-28T04:31:00.002-05:00

Finally, there is an end in sight to what I hope to be one of our final legal matters relating to our attack of a couple of years ago. The wheels of justice do indeed turn slowly at times. If anyone needs a refresher on circumstances and events relating to this, you can read my initial entry from August 2008 and then this one from October 2010.

Although, I am somewhat reluctant to call ourselves victors, we did receive word about two weeks ago that our employer had decided to settle this matter now rather than take the next step which would have been a proper hearing initially scheduled for June 2011. Thank goodness we didn’t have to wait another eight months to have our day and say in court, although we were fully prepared to go the distance if that’s what it ended up taking. Whew.

We had been hoping that they’d end up settling after what had happened during our initial meeting with the Judge from Small Claims, although we half expected them to dig in their heels even though they were so in the wrong in this case. Have to admit, though, that our initial mediation hearing almost ended up disastrously for us. Their Statement of Defense was riddled throughout with outright lies although they didn’t remotely seem to care – in the end the burden of proof would have ultimately been up to us and until this mediation they had been very cavalier about the whole thing arrogantly thinking we had nothing – they were so wrong.

We ended up being very lucky with the Judge we happened to draw for that initial mediation as the courts only allocated a half an hour of time to hear both of the sides. Our employer initially took the lead as the first words out of the Judge’s mouth to us were how frivolous our claim appeared to be with no apparent merit. Jim and I looked at each other in near panic and despair. WTF?

Thank heavens we had legal representation not to mention that Jim managed to quickly pick up on the fact that their lawyer had been presenting this matter as some sort of landlord tenant issue when in fact it was nothing of the sort. When it dawned on Jim what they were doing he instinctively blurted out his disgust and after we all recovered from our initial shock, you could actually see the Judge’s whole demeanour completely change. By the end of those thirty minutes, he had been completely won over to our side – mostly because we had a very legitimate and valid complaint against our employer. Whew!

Even after their legal representative was duly chastised by the Judge for his and the company’s appalling behaviour in light of the seriousness of our injuries while performing our normal job duties, he was incapable of making a counter offer to us that day. We had been prepared to settle for half of our original claim if we could wrap it up then and there. The Judge gave 30 days for their response to our offer and strongly suggested that the matter should really be settled then and there as if we proceeded to court, he felt they didn’t have a hope of winning even if we failed to come up with an ounce of proof of our claim. He said we’d win on the sympathy vote alone! Of course, they managed to wait the full thirty days before they responded to our offer.

We still haven’t received payment yet although we signed the paperwork 12 days ago – I guess they have 14 days to issue the cheque from that date. We never imagined we were going to get it any earlier than this anyway – certainly not based on their previous treatment! Still, it will be nice to have that bit of extra money as we enter the Christmas season that’s for sure, so regardless of when it arrives, I’ll certainly be happy!

peace, love and happiness…

P.S. I am now down to a daily dose of 22mg methadone. How cool is that? No ill effects either!

Holiday

2010-11-27T05:36:00.000-05:00

I know that it has been such a long time since I’ve been able to do any proper updates and as a result, I really should try to let everyone know what has been going on in my life since I was last active here. Unfortunately, this will simply have to wait for another day as I’d much rather write about what I’ve spent most of my night doing, which has been trying to locate a nice hotel in downtown Toronto for Jim and I to stay at for a couple of nights in January.

Seems like an eternity since we went on any sort of vacation, and it most likely has been that long! So many things conspiring against us in years past, but now, it would seem, we’ve got none! Feels bloody fantastic also. We're actually only going on a few days getaway, but right now, even that sounds like a slice of paradise.

Jim really wanted to go to the local boat show last year and the year before that, and for whatever reason, we missed both of them and never ended up getting to go. Not this year. In fact, we’ve decided that we’d rather go to the upcoming Toronto International Boat Show which is being held from January 8 to 16, 2011 at the Direct Energy Center. Its been over a decade since we last went so we’re pretty excited. When we were first talking about going to it, we’d thought we’d go up one of the Saturdays or Sundays and come home the same day.

While I was looking up the event information, I noticed that they had a two day pass available which would only cost an additional $8 more than the normal admission price of $17. I then remembered how crazy crowded these weekends tended to be for this event – crushed in like sardines and then some! I wasn’t all that keen on these crowds way back then when I was a whole lot younger, so I imagine I wouldn’t be any fonder of them now! Plus, after all that has happened to us these past couple of years, there was a great potential that this overcrowding could turn into an issue for either one of us, or even both. Conundrum!!

I thought that the best thing for us would be to avoid the weekends entirely, and consider attending the event midweek. Certainly the crowds would still be there, but if we spread the event out over a couple of days, we’d be able to leisurely stroll through the site rather than try to cram it all into a much smaller amount of time. Plus, during the week, the event closed 2hrs later than it did on Sundays and one hour later than Saturdays. Brilliant.

Now, that was the easy part. We’ve decided to go to Toronto from Tuesday, January 11 to Thursday, January 13, and will be taking the train there and back. I think I’ve also managed to finally settle on where we’ll be staying.This was by far, the hardest part as there are so many hotels in the downtown area of Toronto alone, never mind within a 15km radius of the event’s location! After spending hours and hours at hotels.ca and expedia.ca and Travelocity, I know where we’ll be staying.

It’s kind of funny but the hotel I ended up going with is one that I used to stay at years ago whenever I was in Toronto for business – the company I worked for had a corporate account with them so that is where they sent their employees whenever one was in TO. Even after I left this company, I used to be able to get their corporate rate whenever I stayed there when I was in Toronto, but this perk has long since disappeared now – the hotel is no longer owned by their original owners either. No worries.

The Toronto hotel is now owned by Metropolitan Hotels which is a collection of independent luxury Canadian hotels. I can’t wait cause I decided to go all out so we are getting one of their one bedroom suites which has a King size bed in the bedroom area, and a double sofa bed in the separate sitting area. There are two full bathrooms as well as in room coffee/tea and high speed internet and wireless access. The suite measures 460 square feet with the total cost for the two nights only $445.00 (taxes et al included).

New Computer–finally

2010-11-23T05:41:00.000-05:00

Finally, an update. I was truly wondering when I was going to get back online again! Seems like I have been away for an eternity. Even if it hasn’t been quite that long, a lot has happened. My computer finally kicked the bucket last month - a sad day indeed. It had been acting up for about a week or so before it finally gave up. It had either been freezing for no reason, or spontaneously rebooting for even less of a reason. Initially, I thought that one or all of its fans might be acting up causing it to overheat but a quick check of the unit’s temperature and whether or not the fans were operating correctly, put an end to that idea. Then, I thought that maybe one of the memory sticks had gone bad but nope, not that. After a thorough check, Jim determined that my board was fried and there was little he could do for it at this time. Luckily he managed to scab together another system quite rapidly for me, so now I am back. He also installed Windows 7 on my new computer which I think I shall really end up enjoying once I’ve managed to figure it all out. That’s all the time I have for the moment, but shall be back shortly with some updates.

Spare Tire to Spare

2010-10-11T21:41:00.002-04:00

One of the few complaints I've got regarding MMT – Methadone Maintenance Therapy – is the disgraceful amount of weight one almost always seems to gain while on it. Sure, there are a few lucky ones that seem to escape this horrible fate, but from where I'm sitting they are most definitely few and far between! I've gone from a fairly svelte size eight/ten to a seemingly, no, actually, lumpy size fourteen on a good day! Most days I am barely bothered, but on those rare days when I am carefully dressing for a particular event where I know that I shall most definitely encounter particular individuals, this fact never seems quite so galling, never mind appalling. The proverbial albatross around one's neck to be sure. Might as well weigh three hundred pounds it seems by the time you've somehow managed to settle on an outfit. No amount of black can be that slimming, nor can any amount of strategic dressing be that flattering. Don't believe everything that you read!

For better or worse though, it seems that once on MMT as a female the sooner you accept the inevitable, the better! Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all suggesting that you use this side effect as a license to eat either, as I know many do. If you gain close to 100 pounds while on MMT, then you were severely underweight when you started or there are whole boatloads of other issues you need to deal with as well. Most seem to be decidedly underweight by the time they start treatment, so it makes sense that this weight should be welcomed. It's all of that extra stuff that tags along for the ride I end up resenting. Keep in mind that I am not at all suggesting that methadone per se is the cause of the weight gain, as I don't believe that weight gain is a recognized side effect of methadone as constipation would be.

I believe this weight gain occurs while on MMT because of the overall, generally positive lifestyle changes that an addict undergoes while on MMT. Just as no two addicts are alike, no two stable doses of methadone will be alike, but once that dose has been found, all sorts of possibilities start opening up for the opiate addict. Until this magical amount has been reached, the addict is still susceptible to old behaviour or habits. On a stable dose, all of those brutal and unpleasant withdrawal side effects will have completely disappeared. Also, the opiate receptors of the mind are so flooded that any attempt to use any other sort of opiate will be a waste of both money and time. The addict will feel absolutely nothing. Now up until a stable dose has been reached addicts will try anything and everything in their power to try to find a way around the methadone in their system. Generally, they've also got to discover this on their own regardless of how many have gone before them. Doesn't matter. Until it happens to them, it's not true.

Until this stage, even though the addict is on MMT and may be on it for months at this stage, old addict behaviours and lifestyles will still figure fairly prominently in their lives. If you're still trying to use while on MMT then nothing has really changed at this point. Things really don't start to change noticeably until the addict is at a stable dose. Once all of the side effects from withdrawal have disappeared, their overall body will start to feel better. With each passing day, the muscles and bones start to ache and throb less and less until one day when you wake up and get out of bed; it no longer feels like a chore. It becomes second nature. When in active addiction, our stomachs tend to be in turmoil because of dope sickness or cause we're too messed up. Either state tends not to be conducive to eating three square meals on a daily basis! Addicts graze at best.

Whatever your drug of choice, whether pills, smack et al, generally there tends not to be some bottomless well providing our vice to us no questions asked. No, that would be far too easy. One of the crosses you have to bear as an addict is the huge amount of time and energy one must invest in the search for their big, ultimate payoff. I am now, depends on my mood though, either the most saintly patient person ever, or I've got the attention span of a newborn kitten. Varies by the day and circumstance, though, I figure for every hour I've invested in travelling to score, scoring, making it back home again and then actually using, there are probably nine more hours where nothing whatsoever happened except for the waiting, and then some more waiting and some more. On the infrequent day where there is a line at my clinic, I can't help but chuckle to myself each and every time someone in line complains about how long of a wait they've got or how they've never, ever been here when there has been such a long line. On days when I can't take it, I chide them and ask if they've never had to wait for a delivery that never seems to arrive! I mean seriously, the absolute longest amount of time I've had to wait in line at the clinic in nearly five years has been twenty minutes. I would never have started MMT in the first place If only the dope fairy had bothered to show up in such a timely manner previously.

OK, now that this weight gain is here and there is nothing I can do to fight it in the short run, I do the best I can with what I've got for the time being. One of the things that I did learn to do the first time I was in MMT over a decade ago was to learn to sew. Now initially, I was crap but I persevered for a couple of reasons. Specifically, the whole idle hands theory was a huge factor, but mostly because I discovered a love, as well as appreciation, of fabric. I couldn't stay away from fabric stores and after each visit, I'd arrive home with more and more fabric, all of which I made sure I purchased at ridiculously low prices. So of course, I just kept sewing and sewing until one day I noticed I was actually getting pretty good at it. Well, actually, it was more my daughters could no longer tell if what I wore was store bought or homemade. Once these lines blurred, I knew I had made it. Confirmation on this followed my daughter's first request for my services.

So over the course of this summer, I've been playing with a top design for myself. It's my very own design and after each attempt a dramatic improvement has occurred. I've been tweaking and ripping and tearing and sewing and testing for the past couple of months until finally, now, I've created a top that flatters and camouflages all of my current imperfections, and for the time being offers me a certain amount of self-confidence that I've been lacking. If I could find my digital camera, and if I knew how to use it, I'd definitely upload some photos. I definitely will get some online very shortly.

peace, love and happiness…

A Pain That I’m Used To Is Almost Done

2010-10-04T22:21:00.003-04:00

Just over two years ago I posted A Pain That I'm Used To concerning an uncomfortable situation that had developed with my employer a couple of months after our attack and Jim's stabbing. After all of this time though, we are still dealing with its aftermath although I am hopeful that this will all come to an end fairly shortly. Now, unfortunately, having to go to Small Claims Court to reach some sort of settlement has to occur. This part of the whole ordeal is something I'd like nothing more to avoid, but no such luck. A number of months ago we finally retained a lawyer to help us out, she's been briefed with all details of our situation, all necessary papers have been filed with the court and all necessary statements of defense from our employer have also been filed. Nothing else left to do but show up for court bright and early Friday morning. GULP.

For the short version, we are basically suing our employer for approximately $7500 because they disposed into a large dumpster in front of our apartment building, about twenty or so of our personal possessions and furniture without notifying us in advance. When we attempted to confront them about this matter, we continually received their cold shoulder. They refused to offer us any sort of explanation or apology for their actions against us. We didn't pursue it at the time for a number of reasons. It was so soon after the attack that fear was the overriding emotion driving pretty much every aspect of our lives. We didn't realize that we could actually do something about it. We couldn't afford legal representation for this matter two years ago. And so on…Two years on, our situation has changed on all fronts so once we discovered that we could, indeed, pursue them to attempt to recover our costs for this debacle, we decided we'd be fools for not moving forward. Although we did have to give our lawyer a $2000 retainer, if we are successful then all costs will have to be paid for by our employer.

For the long version, the following is the text of the original entry from August 2008:

Some things stay the same; some things never see to change. As the months pass by since Jim's attack and its savagery seems to fade from some people's minds, the more difficult it seems to become for us regarding our work situation. Immediately after it happened, everyone from the office staff here in London right up through to the VP of Operations in Toronto couldn't get to us fast enough with promises for our physical, emotional and financial security. Now that three months have passed since this incident almost all of their promises seemed to have fallen by the wayside. The only thing that I am not really worried about – yet – is our physical safety. We still have a beautiful roof over our head which we do not have to pay for as well as having all of our utilities looked after. Right now that is all that we seem to have. This fact is disturbing to say the least.

All of our forms were to have been filed and completed, etc. for a Workman's Compensation claim for what happened to Jim and any forms that we were responsible for have been submitted. When I last spoke to the head of Human Resources of the company about a week ago, she mentioned that the company would no longer be paying us but that WSIB would be taking over from now on. Now when I spoke to WSIB earlier today, they advised us that our claim had been rejected because our employer had not submitted a series of forms. Fit to be tied at the moment mostly because I wasn't able to actually speak to someone at WSIB but had to leave messages on two separate answering machines there. GRRRR. Of course when I called through to Toronto, I could only reach voice mail in the HR department. Oh how very, very typical.

I wouldn't be quite so insane about all of this if something awful hadn't happened here in London with my Regional Manager almost three weeks ago. Shortly after Jim's attack, we moved into our current apartment because no one in my family was feeling terribly secure living on the ground floor of the apt building. Now since Jim was still recovering from near life threatening injuries, he obviously was unable to move any of our furniture or stuff up here. Naturally, one of my daughters managed to break her arm barely a week after Jim's attack so she was also unable to offer much help or assistance. That left just me and Sara who barely weighs a 100 pounds on a good day! Naturally, it was tough carrying some of the heavier stuff for us so a few items were left behind in our old unit. I advised the office of this and apparently it wasn't much of an issue until the time came when they needed our old unit.

The weekend after I was notified that they were going to need our old unit, I moved everything except for one couch out of it. This left behind couch was a monster to move so I had to leave it. When I talked to my boss she said that was no problem that she would get some of the maintenance guys to help. I waited for a number of days and no one came to help. One day Sara's boyfriend was over and we managed to get it upstairs and into the hall of the fourth floor. Could not get it into our unit no matter what I tried. Finally the head of maintenance showed up to help me but no matter what he couldn't get it in either. This couch just also happened to be near brand new. We had had it only a month. Looked like we were going to have to trash it which was a darn shame. Because I had been waiting to get this couch inside before I moved a few more of our other articles in, I stashed some of our stuff in an empty unit which just happened to be located directly beside our current one. This is also standard practice if you happen to be a Building Manager of an apt building – you tend to take advantage of empty units and store stuff in them on a regular basis. This is done by near everyone and is not remotely unusual.

I had mentioned to the office about this furniture being there in the empty unit also but for some reason my Regional Manager decided to take it upon herself to have the contents of this unit emptied into the dumpster out front of our building. There was a lot of stuff of value there also. Why she didn't mention that she was going to do this so we had a chance to move it into our unit or get rid of it ourselves, is a mystery to us. Even after talking to her about it, she had nothing to say regarding her reasoning. I am so sick of everyone telling me that whenever I need help while Jim is recovering to just let them know and then when the actual time arrives, nothing at all. It is beyond insulting. What is really terrible about the whole thing is that when we went to check the dumpster not all of our stuff made it there. Any of our electronic equipment seemed to be missing. When we asked about this, we initially got a whole bunch of different answers until someone obviously started to feel a little bit guilty cause somehow some of this stuff was located – sitting in the paralegals office getting ready for her to take home!

Excuse me? How awful is this? You're stealing from someone not only that you work with, but also from someone who has already had a series of horrific stuff happen to them, someone who's interests that you in your position should be guarding. Insane. I wasn't going to get the police involved but on our last visit to the specialists we mentioned what had happened and one of the doctor's took it upon herself to call the police. I guess that she is a fairly good friend of the detective handling the attack. The police feel we have a fairly strong case for theft, etc. So far I have given a statement but I haven't had them approach anyone in the office yet regarding this although after today, I plan on giving the go ahead. I've also given everyone enough time to return all of our electronics and even though I've received assurance that we'll get them back, we still have not.

Following is a list of the items that we ended up losing – that I can remember so far because I know that there is more but probably won't know something is missing until I go to get it.

antique sewing table w/antique Singer sewing machine
walnut dresser w/five dresser drawers
all components to construct our bed frame i.e. slats/foot board
Sklar Pepplar arm chair
creme coloured leather love seat
creme coloured leather arm chair
20″ tv set
17″ flat screen computer monitor
17″ computer monitor
dvd player
large collection of various types of cables for use with computers
digital camera w/case
laptop computer w/leather case
collection of electric helicopters plus their accessories
all of our winter coats – four individuals for a total of eight coats
six fabric laundry sacks of clothing primarily Jim's winter clothes
all of Sara's bed linens including comforter, three double sized blankets, set of curtains, sheets, pillows
two extra-large Rubbermaid storage containers w/hinged lids w/contents removed
misc. hand held tools
two basic desk chairs

private benjamin???

2010-09-23T14:58:00.001-04:00

I very rarely mention my two daughters on this public journal anymore, at least not since they technically became "adults". I feel that its really not my place to determine what portion of their lives should be made available for public consumption. The moment that they decided they were ready to take on the big bad world they became independent from us. Now as long as they were minors living under our roof, following our rules, their proverbial arses were ours and were fair game. Now that they are both in their twenties, I do try to respect their privacy - for the most part! Like everything else in life though, there are exceptions to every rule. This would be one of those times.

Plus, anytime a parent is bursting with pride, they get to tell everyone and anyone who will listen the reasons. After completing high school, Sara decided that she didn't want to go directly to any post-secondary institution. She felt that a break away from studying would be the best course of action for her. Obviously, both Jim and I had very mixed reactions to this announcement, but what could we really do to change her very set and stubborn mind? By far, I was the most supportive of her decision. In fact, I think it would be pretty safe to say that Jim and I were in fact, diametrically opposed to it.

Personally, I could empathize with her desire for a break and a change in routine. I went directly from high school to an unbreakable and continuous period of 7 years university and college combined. During this time, I did manage to complete my Honours Bachelors of Art in History at University as well as my Business Management Diploma with a Marketing Certificate at College. By the time I was through all of this, I was exhausted. I did make one futile attempt to take a break for one semester, but that never did work out.

Between my second and third year at Uni, my best friend and I decided to spend that summer exploring the British Isles. We had an amazing time and as the summer started to fade making ready for the fall, I decided that I wasn't ready to return to Canada so I made arrangements to stay an additional few months. My intention was to leave at the very earliest just before the Christmas holidays. I'd found a bar job in London, and one of my cousins got me a bed-sit. All of my Mom's family lived in London, while all of my Dad's lived in Dublin, Ireland so even though I was a few thousand miles from home, family was never too far if I needed anything.

Just before the fall semester was to start in Canada, I got word that my Dad had a massive coronary and was in very poor health. He was due for open surgery by the end of that September. With this bit of news, all my plans instantly disappeared, but then, they no longer seemed quite as important. I figured the British Isles would end up being around a long time after my Dad had gone, so I decided to return to Canada with the intention of going back overseas once he had left us. Even though he'd been given less than five years to live, they hadn't factored in what a stubborn Mic he could be at times. didn't he go on to live an additional eighteen years once he'd had the open heart surgery?

Anyway, I seem to have gotten off topic...Now Jim dropped out of high school before his sixteenth birthday, and while he didn't immediately regret this decision, by the time he was in his early to mid-twenties, he knew that it certainly hadn't been one of the better decisions he'd made in the past. While he did eventually go back to complete his high school education, he had to do this while working full time and a family at home. This didn't seem to matter to Sara as nothing he said could make her change her mind. So, off she went to join the workforce.

Luckily she had been forced to attend a bilingual public and secondary school so she was fluent in both English and French which gave her a bit of an edge over others. she managed to get a nice enough office job with a starting wage of almost$14 an hour. Unfortunately at the end of May of this year, she fell victim to company layoffs and found herself suddenly without a job. To make matters even worse, her former employer was beyond negligent in issuing her Separation Papers, an absolute crucial document required to receive any amount of Employment Insurance - used to be called plain old Unemployment Insurance. Whatever. She ended up having to wait nearly three full months before she managed to get this paperwork released. While one will not receive any monies until this document arrives and is entered into the recipients file, the lack of the document doesn't prevent someone from at least getting their claim started.

Now in the interim, she still needed money to get by so who do you suppose got this honour? Yup, me and Jim. By the time these three months finally came to their end, her father and I had forked over a grand total of just over $4000 - three months rent at $525/month, her personal hydro payments, telephone bill, groceries, some summer clothing as well as a few slightly more formal articles of clothing appropriate for future job interviews, an air conditioner for her frightfully boiling hot apt, and a boatload of cash for misc crap.

By the end of all this, this education vacation, I mean break, was not looking quite as attractive as it previously had. Of course, the moment we started handing over a substantial amount of money to her on a regular basis, Jim felt that this now gave him the right to start pressuring her to return to school - these kind of favours never seem to be given without some sort of strings being attached. Like Jim said to me "what goes around, comes around..." obviously referring to all of the crap we'd been forced to endure every time we got money from his parents. Ironic, isn't it?

Again though, Sara would not waver. She felt confident that she'd be able to get another decent job and had no intention of returning to school just yet. While I admired her tenacity, and was so very grateful and happy with the decorous way she handled herself through all of this, I've never really been able to understand her aversion to being a student. If I could have gotten paid, I'd still be a student. I truly loved school, loved to learn, loved being intellectually stimulated, couldn't ever get enough. I also know that I was fairly unique and pretty much alone when it came to this, but that never seemed to matter. Discovering computers and the internet just over a decade ago turned into being a near religious experience for me personally. I still think the internet is one big encyclopedia dying to be read. Some of my bookmarks are downright embarrassing and definitely nerdy.

And once again, it would seem that my daughter had made the right decision regarding her future after all. She obviously knows what she likes and doesn't like, and isn't prepared to settle or compromise in achieving these. Good on her. Recently, one of her friends mentioned that there were going to be five civilian internships with the army available. She researched the specifics, and once satisfied that this could be something she'd, enjoy submitted cover letters and her resume. She'd been advised to apply for all five of these positions even though each one was different.

First she had to attend an orientation session to become familiar with what this position would entail and to determine whether or not the applicant wanted to continue with their application. She came home excited beyond belief eager to continue. Her initial interviews went so well, that even before she got home from the first one, there was a call made to her praising her interview. She was advised by the Interviewer that, while she could not officially offer her one of the positions at this time, she could say with absolute confidence that Sara would definitely be receiving an offer of employment for one of the five. she said that of all the people she had interviewed, Sara stood head and shoulders above the rest. She said she couldn't remember an interview with an applicant ever going as well as theirs did.

After I got over the shock that it was indeed my daughter they were talking about, I was over the moon. What Mother wouldn't be proud to hear all of this about their child? She starts her new position on October 22, 2010. She still does not know exactly which of the five will be hers, but she has been told it will be one of two. She will either be an Admin Assistant to one of the senior officers stationed at Wolsey Barracks here in London, Ontario or she will be working in one of the Army's labs as a Technician. She says she is glad that the final choice is not hers as she wouldn't be able to choose between the two as she'd like either one of them equally. Starting pay is just over $30 000/annually and after her three month probation ends, she will receive benefits as well as be eligible for funding should she decide to pursue a post secondary education while employed with them. How's that for a wee bit of irony?

Obviously, I'm now more than pretty confident that she'll be able to navigate and manage her way through life on her own fairly successfully. Looks like her head is screwed on right - certainly better than mine has been during specific periods of my adult life... hangs head in shame for a moment...Can't imagine anyone who has recently graduated from Uni with just a general 3yr or honours 4yr degree getting much more than what she shall receive for a starting salary either - unless graduating from one of the Uni's professional schools but that's an entirely different universe.

So, a toast to my beloved daughter. I hope you know how truly proud and supportive I am of you. I've got faith that you can accomplish anything that you set your mind and heart towards with great ease. Good luck...

peace, love and happiness..

clean

2010-09-20T18:11:00.002-04:00

Where has the time gone? Seriously!!! Nothing like the mundane of everyday life getting in one's way, successfully obscuring what is actually going on right in front of them, never mind all around them, that's for bloody sure. Combine this with "if it ain't broke..." it is fairly easy to see how we are able to become pretty complacent, soldiering on without giving too much thought to our actions.or ultimate destination. It's certainly pretty, darn easy, of course, when one is on auto pilot. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't help notice that this was exactly what I have been guilty of doing these past months regarding my recovery et al.

In less than a flash of an eye, I find myself rapidly approaching the five year mark since I started MMT - Methadone Maintenance Treatment. When I initially started I had no idea nor intention of being on it anywhere near as long as I find myself today. My original goal had been to get to an adequate enough dose so that I felt comfortably stabilized. For any laymen out there reading this, this is the magical dose/amount of methadone that an addict requires so that all of those unpleasant feelings of withdrawal disappear, as well as any and all cravings to use opiates manage to vanish. This dose will be different for every single addict. This is not where one size fits all will even begin to succeed. Obviously, there are all sorts of factors that ultimately end up determining what final dose a recovering opiate addict will end up needing in order to be successful.

How many years of active addiction? How much? How often? How old? How healthy? How tall? How heavy? How many other drugs involved? How much drink? I could continue...but the combination and permutations are literally endless. For me personally, I required a dose of 90mg of methadone daily before I really and truly felt stabilized. There were lower doses that took away my cravings. There were even lower doses that eliminated those unpleasant side effects of withdrawal. Lower doses even still that flooded those pesky opiate receptors in my mind so that even attempting to continue to use opiates had no noticeable effect whatsoever. There was adequate methadone in my system that I was no longer capable of even getting a bit of a high from using that to try to continue was utterly and completely pointless, not to mention, a complete waste of money.

All fine and well indeed, but at any dose lower than the 90mg, there were more days than not where I couldn't escape the feeling that something just wasn't quite right. Was I restless? Was I ill? Was I manic? Was I apathetic? What? I never really could pinpoint exactly what wasn't quite right with me, until it was no longer there. Even then, it took me a couple of days before I seemed to notice that something was different, something had changed. The methadone was working. Unless I was consciously thinking about my addiction and recovery, I had seemingly started to forgot about heroin and dilaudid and morphine. No longer did they rudely force their way into my every waking thought.It was near nirvana.

A number of factors kept me at this fairly high dose of methadone longer than I would have liked. Fear of failure was the big one obviously. Security blanket of methadone still a way better option than the alternative that's for sure!!! Getting hit by a moped a year and a half into treatment and breaking my arm severely certainly didn't help either. Even after two major reconstructive arm surgeries and four attempts at resetting my arm's bones, I only used my methadone dose to manage my pain. For a brief time, my dose did increase to 105mg daily but the doctor allowed me to divide this dose in two so that it was more effective in relieving my pain so the higher dose was very much required. The whole time I didn't take anything stronger than two 200mg ibprophens when it hurt - not even a Tylenol 3, thank you very much. You know what? I managed to somehow survive this ordeal opiate free. Who knew?

Just when I thought it was safe to...Jim and I get attacked and he gets stabbed more times than I care to count, and again, our timing sucks a bit! With all of this added stress, it just didn't seem like a good time to try to start tapering down our methadone dose - yet, anyway. But, this was now over two years ago, and both of us are well on our way to recovering from this violent and savage attack on our lives and sensibilities. Still getting treated for PTSD, and probably will continue for some time yet.

Now, about six months ago though, I started to notice or feel kind of out of sorts. That restless of old seemed to be rearing its ugly head once again. This time it was different. It wasn't a restlessness born out of any desire to use again. No, not at all. I felt like I was starting to experience diminishing returns from my MMT, or at the very least, my current dose. So, I decided I would try reducing my dose by 5mg to a dose of 85mg daily. After a few weeks, I reduced this dose again by another 5mg. And so on and so on and...today I am at a current dose of 30mg, and in all honesty, I feel no better nor worse for wear than I did when I was at 90mg. In fact, I feel pretty darn good.

No overwhelming cravings or uncomfortable feelings of withdrawal currently, nor have I experienced either one through this entire tapering down process. Now, that I am starting to feel truly confident I can succeed once my security blanket disappears once and for all, I am actively working towards reducing my dose to zero so that I will no longer be receiving MMT. That's not to suggest that I'm now going to blindly reduce my dose recklessly with no thoughts of potential consequences. Perish the thought. I do, however, now have a goal and a date by which I'd like to reach this goal.

No later than early spring of 2011 is now my ZERO methadone goal! I think that I will be able to comfortably reach this goal, and who knows, I may even be able to beat it!!! It's now time. In the next year and a half, Jim and I have family obligations that will not be remotely conducive to MMT. For one, we've got to go to the Philippines - his Mother's birthplace - for at least six to eight weeks with both his folks and sister and her soon to be husband. No choice either as his folks will be picking up this entire bill so that we'll all be able to celebrate in style and together their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Won't hear any complaints from me either, as this will no doubt be a trip of my lifetime!

peace, love and happiness...

Waiting for Mr Brownstone

2010-09-15T23:16:00.000-04:00

To receive methadone, I have to attend two doctor's appointments each and every week. My appointments fall on Tuesday and Friday, and the "clinic" that they are a part of is held between the hours of 7am and 8:30am on both of these days. There are twenty-three other patients that also attend this clinic. This particular one is designed primarily for those on methadone that also work full time. During my clinic's available hours, you are looked at on a first come first serve basis, but as all of us have to follow a schedule of some sort, we almost always arrive at the same time which means we're all pretty much seen at the same time, as well as never really having much of a waiting period before we are seen.

This clinic is pretty much the only one like this that is offered at the Clinic - with a capital C - that I go to, even though there are now almost 1200 patients attending, and perhaps even more than this amount now as our numbers are still literally growing in leaps and bounds. As well, almost all of the patients from my clinic are exceptionally well behaved and well mannered, which can differ greatly with the average patient of the Clinic. As much as I am loathe to generalize I can't help it when I say that the average methadone patient ends up giving junkies a bad name!

I remember one of the doctors who was doing my assessment prior to starting methadone asking me how serious I was about getting clean. When I told him that I was very serious he asked if he could offer me some advice. He warned me that this was not the place to try to make new friends, not if I really was serious about my recovery. He told me to bring a book or magazine with me each time I came so that I would have something to occupy myself while waiting my turn. He said if I looked busy then it was less likely that anyone would bother me. He cautioned me from giving anyone there absolutely anything at all - not change for the pay phone or money for the bus, nothing at all.

For the most part, I've done my best to keep to myself and its worked out fairly well. I mean, I was trying to remove myself from the ongoing drama of an addict's life, so why would I want to add any more? To this day, I continue to bring something to read to each doctor's appointment even though I no longer really need its protection - again because of the type of addict that happens to attend the same clinic I do.

It is easy to marvel at the difference between our lives and the majority of the others. The others tend to be loud and demanding and impatient and intolerant for the most part. Every visit, there are always a few patients from the other clinics that attempt to be seen by the doctor that runs my clinic, and each and every time, the nurses sitting at the counter have to explain that this clinic will only see the patients that have been registered and approved for it, and if they happened to have missed their normally scheduled clinic that they would have to attend another one. Generally their response is never remotely polite. They usually carry on about some injustice done to them, but eventually have to leave with their tail between their legs as the nurses never, ever budge or make exceptions. I mean what were you doing that was so bloody important anyway that you had to miss your original appointment? It wasn't as if their job was keeping them from attending that's for sure!!!

This is one more thing that I constantly find myself marveling about - the number of addicts in the program that are incapable of working at the same time. Most of them that I've talked to or listened to while sitting quietly seem to express similar reasons for not holding down a job while receiving treatment. Most of their excuses seem pretty lame to me also, but then, even at my absolute worst, I always held down a full time job. The more I did, the more hours I generally ended up working so that I could pay for this ridiculous sickness. I've discovered that most of them never even had a job before they started treatment, so I guess this is a strange and unknown area for them regardless of whether they're using or not. Sad. Wish treatment offered some sort of guidance for them so that ultimately they would become contibuting members of society but there is nothing at all available. Again, sad.

Can You Accept the Truth? AND Living Life With an Addict

2010-09-03T22:40:00.005-04:00

Just found two more blogs by parents suffering through the trials and tribulations of their child's battle with addiction, and everything that accompanies this horrific disease. These numbers continue to grow at a rapid pace.

My newsest discoveries can be read at Can You Accept the Truth? and Living Life With an Addict.

peace, love and happiness

Here, I am survived thirty years plus on methadone AND Addiction/Recovery through an addict's eyes

2010-09-03T00:03:00.004-04:00

Found a couple more addiction survivors. Both have just recently started blogging but you can check out their future entries at Here, I am survived thirty years plus on methadone as well as Addiction/Recovery through an addict's eyes.

peace, love and happiness...

LIQUID LUNCHES

2010-08-25T14:47:00.000-04:00

I've managed now to maintain a journal of one sort or another online now coming up on eight years. Initially I was so self conscious about exposing anything about myself, but after a short time, I forgot that I was actually writing on a public forum, and wrote just for the sake of writing - for an audience of one so to speak, moi! With my first journal I did nothing to hide my identity in anyway, but, I also ensured that I made no mention whatsoever of my alternate lifestyle, so to speak. While it was true that everything I wrote about was 100% honest, the mere fact I completely avoided addressing a substantial part of my life was nothing more than me lying through omission which by definition is equally as bad as if I were lying. I wasn't really being truthful or at all. Conundrum!

At the same time, I certainly was by no means ready to expose a very private side of myself or my husband, or at the very least, risk the chance that someone reading my journal would be able to put two and two together and figure out what we had fought and worked so hard to remain secret and separate. Ah-ha! A secret identity was in order. Why not? I thought. It works for super heroes now doesn't it? So with the anniversary of my alter ego in mind, I guess you could say that I've been maintaining a journal online, with my entire life 100% exposed, for near seven and a half years now. While I still chose to keep my real name and my families private and hidden from anyone doing a general search of me, anyone that knows me intimately is familiar with any of my online writings now, my daughters included. More than anything else now, my innate shyness and general self consciousness are the main things that stop me from going any further.

One thing I've not been able to help but notice is how much change has occurred in those writing about addiction. There seems to be far more relatives of addicts writing now than the actual addicts. When I first started out, I can't remember anyone other than addicts or addicts in recovery writing or keeping a personal journal. A point of view that I can't help but consider now, was never a consideration in the past. Nary a glimmer. Keeping current with the ever growing number of this niche keeps me honest, and never forgets to remind me that my recovery no longer affects only me, but any number of people close to me who care about me and my welfare - obviously, there are many other things working away in the background, but each and every time I read one of the relatives journals, I can't help but feel humbled. I also can't begin to say enough about any one of them and the suffering they must endure each and every day. Their writings should be mandatory reading for any drug education course in the school system, the penal system and any other type of system out there!

For anyone new to my writing, I first off, would like to welcome one and all. Secondly, I wish that all of my online writing was accessible to everyone. Currently I have approx 200 plus entries from a former site that I have yet been able to upload to this site. It had been maintained by another and for some reason, about three and a half years ago, it disappeared without warning. Miraculously, he did eventually return everything to me in the form of a .sql file which is a file I've no clue what to do with. I can open it one of the more sophisticated alternatives to notepad but that's pretty much it. Buried deep within all of the stuff that stares out from my computer monitor, I can make out my original entries. On days when I feel particularly ambitious, I've copied and pasted individual entries into this journal with the entry's original date stamp. With over 200 though, I've never quite felt that ambitious! Maybe one day soon - or maybe an idiot proof method of getting this file incorporated with this site will appear miraculously for me! Never, ever say never!

In the meantime, allow me to share one of the few original stories I managed to write while knee deep in addiction. May be a little graphic for some, but it never fails to make me suitably uneasy every time I force myself to read it, reminding me of how important my recovery and sobriety is to me and mine. This story is way too autobiographical for my liking as I seemed to spend many similar days to the one I wrote about than I cared to admit.

LIQUID LUNCHES - a short story

I like to call myself a functioning addict or a responsible junky - an oxymoron if I have ever heard one. You ask what makes me so different or special from other junkies or addicts? Well, nothing really except the amount of work involved. It is much harder to be a functioning addict. You are forced to live two very separate and distinct lives. Your public face is the only face that anyone is allowed to see. no one can be allowed entry into your private world. This you keep very well hidden from view.

No one can know that your half hour lunch is not sitting down at the nearest coffee shop consuming today’s special washed down with a couple of cups of coffee. No, instead you have quickly headed over to the local public library and have locked yourself in one of their bathroom stalls. Once you are safely behind its closed door, you carefully remove a brown eyeglasses case from your purse only you don’t have a spare pair of glasses in it. You place a strip of toilet paper across the back of the toilet bowel and gently place a spoon on it.

You grab one white pill out of your baggy and place it in the centre of the spoon. With the end of your lighter, you carefully crush it until it is a fine white powder. Next you rip the packaging off of a new syringe and open your small bottle of sterile water, placing the tip of the syringe in it to draw up 50 units. Carefully you fill the spoon with water.

Lifting the spoon up into the air, you flick your lighter and aim the flame so that it is centered beneath the spoon. The water starts to bubble and the fine powder dissolves. Breaking some cotton off the end of one of the many q-tips you have, you drop it dead centre into the warm liquid. Quickly you suck the liquid out of the spoon into the syringe. Sit back for a second to breathe a sigh of relief. No clumsy accidents. So far, so good. Taking some more toilet paper, you wipe your spoon clean before returning it to its case. You make sure that your small bottle is properly capped and your baggy zipped up tightly. You crumple the syringe’s wrapper up tightly and place it in the case also. You will have to dispose of it later.

Enough time should have passed so that the liquid had cooled. You perch your rear at the edge of the toilet seat making sure your feet are square to the ground. Taking a look at both arms you decide which one to go for this time. The left looks as if it will yield the best results. You tap your forearm a few times and flex your hands. Carefully you remove the cap from your syringe. Taking a deep breath you stick the needle into your skin gently pulling the plunger back a fraction. A rich red floods the barrel. Bulls eye. With as steady a hand possible and a silent plea for them to remain that way, you depress the plunger at a uniform rate until all of the liquid has disappeared.

Bliss. Now not too quickly, you remove the point from your skin, firmly pressing some tissue over the bloody hole. Once the bleeding has stopped, you qrab the point of the needle with your bloodied tissue and twist it until it snaps off. Throwing both into the toilet, you flush them down the drain. You recap your now empty syringe and return it to its place in the eyeglass case. Wrap two elastics around the case and return it to your purse. You certainly can not be too careful. You want no rude surprises should you ever drop purse with contents spilling everywhere. Too big a risk to take for the functioning addict.

You gather your stuff and exit the stall, stopping to wash and dry your hands. Look for your comb to run through your hair. As everything went smoothly, you still have time to freshen your makeup. Touch of lipstick and a brush of powder and you are good to go. With one final glance back at the mirror, you open the bathroom door refreshed and satisfied by your half hour lunch break.

The Grass Is Never Greener

2010-08-11T01:10:00.000-04:00

I love my brother to death and am so excited that he’s able to come home for a quick visit thanks very much to the generosity of our Mom. He arrives home tomorrow evening and will be spending a week in Ontario before he has to return to work down east in Nova Scotia. This time though his family will be following him a week later as they all finally are able to make this permanent move. He found a nice four bedroom semi-detached house to rent which he says is pretty reasonable etc. This is a tremendous relief to him as he has spent the past year stressed out to the max drowning in an every increasing debt load with no apparent relief in sight. I guess after spending the past ten months or so trying in vain to convince his wife that they were in an incredible mess financially, she has finally accepted this most unpleasant fact. Of course, only since her father sat her down to talk to her a week ago does she believe any of this. WTF? After listening to some of the things that my brother has recently told me, plus some of the things that she has been saying, I now strongly feel that their living well beyond their means is something much more serious than an inability to stick to a budget. She seems to have an addiction of sorts, an illness it would seem.

Besides the $200 000 mortgage that they have, she has managed to accumulate close to $150 000 in personal debt alone. How is this even possible? They’ve got three lines of credit alone that total almost $103 000, plus about a dozen or so credit cards all maxed right out to their limit. They may own more for all I know as these were the numbers that my bro quickly rattled off to me the other night while we were on the phone. I kind of have the feeling that this is but just the tip of the iceberg. This almost seems worse than a drug addiction. She obviously is incapable of practicing any sort of self control either. He says that all she ever worries about is what her friends or neighbours would think if they didn’t have this or that or whatever…

I knew that she was the type of individual that always seemed envious of what others had. She rarely seemed satisfied with her lot in life nor was she shy in letting others around her know how she felt. I also knew how very important it was to keep up with those proverbial JONES, apparently at any cost. I knew that she was concerned with appearances but I had no clue the depth of this behaviour. I know my bro has spent the past 15 years providing for his family like few other men would be able to, and yet, she continues to find criticism in what he does.

She was the one that made him take this job out of province. She applied for this job on his behalf, sent out his resume to the company that he now works for as well as arranging his interviews, etc. Like the obedient husband he is, off he went to a strange province with no benefit of any sort of family or real support, and for the past four months has worked and lived like a dog with nary a word of complaint. Literally every penny he makes is sent back home, and how is he rewarded? Every night, he has to listen to her sob and cry and carry on about how hard it has been since he left, how she has to do all of the housework and gets no break at all from the kids. I guess she berates him and goodness knows what else – this according to my Mom who has been told all of this directly from the horse’s mouth herself! Apparently, she says a whole lot worse stuff but I’ve not got the stomach right now for all of that garbage.

Nor do I think any of this mess has really registered with her properly as just the other day she was telling my Mom that there was no way that she would live in a rental less than $3000/month, nor would she live in anything but an immaculately maintained home – this from someone who hasn’t a clue how to even do housework! She said that she wouldn’t take anywhere that already had carpet as she didn’t want anyone else’s dirt near her. Only hard wood or laminate would do. No townhouse or apt either. Goodness gracious. Wonder how she’s going to react when she sees the $1200 beauty her husband has rented for her? And, who is she kidding? The only reason she is accepting anything right now is she has run out of time. She is literally getting out of Dodge the day before the bank seizes her home, vehicle and then shuts down all of the utilities - this will happen when you fail to pay any of these bills for months at a time!

Karma. It’s a bitch. Not saying that she deserves it this bad but she did make this mess pretty much all on her own. Again, its my bro and nieces and nephew that don’t deserve any of this and yet, they’re the ones that end up suffering over and over. It is really so very, very sad.

JUNKY MOMS

2010-08-07T00:19:00.000-04:00

This entry is sort of a continuation of my response to Hashish Dreams and Heroin Nightmares entry Number One. She had been discussing mothers with young children who were still in the midst of active use and addiction. Even though she, herself, had once been a very heavy drug abuser, finding out she was going to have a child and then his subsequent birth had really been the impetus needed to straighten out her life. She found herself questioning how other women in similar situations were able to continue to use and abuse drugs. This particular issue is one I have very strong feelings about and the following is my response to what she had written:

I am also a recovering addict with just over four and a half years clean time under my belt so far..this time anyway...I am also a mother to two beautiful girls - no, women now - both of whom are in their twenties. Pretty simple math to see that I was indeed an active user at some point of their lives as they were growing up these past couple of decades. I make no apologies now, although I have and did many times over to reach my current space.

Personally, I managed to abstain from everything except alcohol for the first ten years as a mother. Shortly after Sara's ninth birthday I ended up opening my own business which just happened to be a small live entertainment venue - a bar where the local punk bands had a place to get their first start et al...OK? Now, for the next two years a lot of my time was spent building my business and everything that this entails. Obviously I had to socialize more than I had previously and from this, everything else seemed to follow. I know I don't need to paint a picture. This lead to my first go-round with methadone.

Spent five years completely opiate free until towards the end of 2003 when, after nine months of living my Dad's battle with cancer and radiation and chemo and then his death finally, I made the arrogant mistake of believing I would be the exception to the rule of just being able to do it one more time...

To say this was an error in judgment would have to be the understatement of last century. And from there I am now here. Those couple of years of use during their early teen years I now regret very much. At the time, I was able to rationalize with the best of them cause I never, ever disappeared, I was always there when they went to school and again upon their return. I never ever missed an opportunity to volunteer at their schools and attended every single one of their school trips/outings even when they had started high school.

But, honestly, I was probably just there in body and not really in spirit, but this topic still causes me a lot of discomfort so...I understand though, your feelings on this subject from the perspective of a new Mom cause this was one realm I simply was unable to understand - while pregnant and especially during your baby's formative years, you really can't be both an addict and a mother. Make a choice. Choose one. Stick with it. Don't be so bloody selfish that by your actions you end up creating one more victim of this disease that the world does not need, nor does this innocent deserve.

Please, understand me, I was not at all suggesting that you would happen to fall into this category either. I get we both are very much on the same page regarding this issue. If interested, I ranted about this very topic over a year and a half ago but in much greater detail.

NO LONGER WANT - OR NEED - THE CHAOS

NO LONGER WANT - OR NEED - THE CHAOS PART TWO

NO LONGER WANT - OR NEED - THE CHAOS PART THREE

Please, excuse my very long post. I apologize for carrying on as long as I did and I thank you in advance for allowing me to do this.

peace, love and happiness...

This particular issue has driven me to distraction for an eternity...I remember a couple of years ago while having a conversation with a friend she happened to ask me if I had ever hit in front of the girls. Boy, I have to admit that this question really took me aback as I’d been having a hard time even accepting the fact that they know that I was/am a user. As long as they were unaware, it was much easier for me to remain actively addicted with far less guilt and greater denial. Even though when Sara was much younger though I wouldn’t even use in the privacy of the bathroom if she was in the house. I’d sooner say that I was going out to get coffee and doughnuts and do it at the nearest Tim Horton’s than sully her safe place. Always felt that to use when she was anywhere around would ultimately be bad karma for her and me regardless of how well I happened to keep my use hidden.

I mean I was so protective of this form of lifestyle never intentionally crossing her path at any age that except for one brief bit of time which didn’t end up working out anyway, no dealer has even ever set foot in my house nor any other obvious user. We always took our business far away from our home and as she got older and more aware, unless I could hook up with someone prior to her getting home from school then I would also never leave the house once she was home for the day to hook us up. My regular dealers got used to my peculiar rules after awhile and did attempt to be as accommodating as possible once they realized that this would be to their benefit considering the amount of money that Jim and I would be spending and spending consistently and on a regular basis.

The only time that I would break my rule of not using while she was in the house would be late into the night while she was fast asleep and then of course, I would lock myself safely in the bathroom but I still always felt a certain amount of discomfort. I know that the question to me wasn’t meant to hurt or insult as I myself have encountered my share of junky moms who drag their kids to their dealers house with no regard to their mental health or even physical safety. Discreet these ladies are not. And yes I know that many of them will also use in front of them while they are infants and even preschoolers. This makes me cringe like nothing else either.

To be honest, most of my past dealers weren’t even aware that I had a child and the majority of the users that I would encounter at my dealers certainly were in the dark about this part of my life. If this subject did happen to come up, generally the first question that someone would end up asking me was whether or not I got to see my kid on a regular basis. WTF? Well of course I do as she has never been away from me for so much as an evening. The majority were always stunned that after all these years I still had custody as most of them had long since lost custody of theirs due to their negligent behaviour. Colour me shocked.

This part of my addicted past has always caused me the most trouble emotionally and mentally. The one thing that I learned early into my opiate addiction was the relative ease at which a junky is able to rationalize away any type of their behaviour. This is one stereotypical characteristic that I was not immune to although prior to my addiction nothing could have caused me to act in manner that would be considered morally or ethically grey. Opiate addiction seems to strip this away from the most upstanding citizen rather quickly. I was no exception. It is shocking how easily I was able to slide into a previously unfamiliar area with no thought to any possible consequences.

In my entire life, I had never once opened my mother’s purse unless she had expressly asked me to but the moment that my use moved away from recreational, searching to see if she had any spare money gave me no qualms of guilt whatsoever. I remember walking by an unlocked truck one day which just happened to have a purse sitting in view of me and without missing so much as a beat, I had that door opened and the purse in my hand and me down that street out of view in record time. Where this even came from to this day I don’t even know but I can vividly remember how excited I was when I discovered that there was close to $400 in it. I am sure that I was at my dealer’s front door less than fifteen minutes later.

It is only now that I am back on methadone that I am moving out of this ethically challenged underworld.

When Sara was blissfully unaware of what we did for our recreation pleasure, I was able to use with absolute abandon. I suffered no or very little guilty feelings due to my use because I was able to rationalize it away with the fact that she was looked after first and foremost before any dope was even purchased. My child would never, ever suffer because of our addictions or weaknesses. In this regard, I may have actually done more harm than good but only time will really tell. To compensate for my weakness, Sara was never without anything that her heart desired. If all of the kids had the hottest pair of bluejeans then I made sure that Sara had half a dozen of them.

My intent was to ensure that she would in no way suffer because of us. I remember when she was in Grade 8 talking to some of the part timers here at work, some of whom were still in high school themselves, and asking them if I was being fair with her giving her an allowance of only $50 a week. Each and everyone of them was stunned silent and once they had found their collective voices they wanted me to adopt them. They thought that I was insane giving a thirteen year old that kind of pocket money considering that she didn’t have to even buy any of her own things out of it either. Plus they also knew that if “extra” events popped up that I would pony up money above and beyond what she already got. Talk about overcompensation. I know that I am still very much guilty of this habit to this day but this one is actually a real tough one to break.

I made sure that I never behaved in the same manner than some of the other junky moms. None of my kid’s toys would ever find themselves in some pawn shop – in fact, none of our household items – nor would she have to be content with thrift store clothing or never having money for even the cheapest school outing or having to wear some cheap hand me down graduation dress. No, nothing like this would or does occur.

I'll stop this entry here as its quite long, and I'd honestly be rather shocked if anyone has even managed to get this far!!! Cheers.

INCEPTION

2010-08-05T06:25:00.005-04:00

OK…Need to count to ten before I continue. Should know better and yet…Just lost the entry I’d been working on for the past half an hour cause one of my husband’s computers is retarded. Actually its not so much the computer, as it is the bloody, stupid mouse he uses. GRRRR…He can’t use a normal mouse like the rest of the planet, no, he has to use one of those stupid and challenging ones with a scroll ball attached. And, yes, of course, its the mouse’s problem and not the operator! Duh.

OK. What I had been attempting to write about prior to my being rudely interrupted and sabotaged had been the announcement of us having actually gone to the cinema today to see a movie, something we’ve not done for a number of years now. My Mom, Jim and I decided to take a couple hours break from trying to shop in yesterday’s oppressive humidity by taking a bit of an air conditioned cinema break. We decided on seeing INCEPTION. It did not fail to entertain. It was everything that the critics have been going on about these past couple of weeks – almost. Just a small, a minor one really, complaint regarding the unneccesary length of the two main action sequences of the film. That’s all I’m going to say about that cause anyone intend on seeing the film while its in the theaters really should try to go as spoiler free as possible, and to say much more now would just be cruel and unfair.

One thing I can mention about the film, or more specifically the particular copy that the cinema got, is that about two thirds of the way through it…KABOOM…screen goes completely black while dialog continues on for an additional three or four minutes until nothing. Apparently there were some technical difficulties involved. We actually didn’t mind this little bit of an interruption as we took this opportunity to slip out for a quick smoke and bathroom break. Plus, for our troubles, we all received coupons to see our next movie free of charge. Sweet.

All in all, I ended up having a most surprising and pleasant day. Absolutely love these unexpected moments, and have now learned to truly treasure and enjoy each and every one that comes along.

peace, love and happiness…

Don't Drag Me Down

2010-08-03T22:18:00.000-04:00

Talked to my brother for the first time in over three months. It was so sweet to finally get to talk to him. He’s finally got a phone so he’s now able to keep in touch with his family in Ontario while he slaves away all by his lonesome in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He had to move out there at the end of March for work as he had been unable to successfully find anything suitable here. Last August, after having worked at the same company for over 21 years, he found himself without employment when his employer went bankrupt. No owed vacation pay, no severance pay and now, apparently, none of the monies he’d been contributing for his retirement for the past two decades! For this last one, his former employer is now under investigation for having used his employees benefits illegally for other stuff that he shouldn’t have. Imagine that!!!

My brother has been finding it pretty rough all by himself, and I certainly don’t blame him. He had to leave a wife and four kids behind. They’ll be here until his house manages to sell as they can’t afford to join him until and unless it does, and unfortunately, right now it doesn’t look good at all for them. First off, they paid way too much for it when they bought it five years ago, and even though he has made more than $100 000/year for close to a decade now – plus his wife also works – they don’t have so much as a bean saved up between the two of them. Never mind the fact that neither one of them bothered to put some money away for a rainy day, they’ve also managed to max out four or five credit cards, have a line of credit with the bank which is outstanding, as well as a car payment that all had been a challenge to meet financially while gainfully employed. So now, things are looking bleak indeed for them.

I really feel badly for my brother and the little ones cause they’re all more or less victims in this situation. They have all been at the mercy of my sister-in-laws neverending nor never satisfied quest of keeping up with the Jones. She is incapable of being thankful for what she has right in front of her and has spent the last fifteen years constantly criticizing one thing or another. Its so tempting to remind her how absolutely and utterly terrible she treated me back in 1999 when I found myself in a bit of financial trouble. The names she called would make your toes curl, and at times, I’d love to throw all of this back in her face, but to what end? I know I wouldn’t end up feeling any better, in fact, I’m guessing I’d feel worse. Won’t accomplish anything either. Just knowing I could do this is powerful enough for me – plus, she has finally shown her true colours to my mother after years of subterfuge that I even have someone to talk to about her ridiculous behaviour and treatment of others!!!

If you’re interested at all you can get some background if you start HERE, then read THIS next and finally take a look at this ONE. This should give you a better understanidng of what I am ranting about at the moment, plus saves me a boatload of typing especially cuz I suck at typing!

Live Fast, Die Pretty

2010-08-03T04:01:00.002-04:00

Another young sole lost forever, gone too soon due to a drug overdose. The newest victim in the city where I live was a teenage male barely sixteen years young. Although, the official autopsy report has not yet been completed, the local media is reporting that his death was caused by snorting powdered methadone. So say many of the deceased’s family and friends, including his mother and her boyfriend and many who attended the same party as the teen. Obviously, I feel for his loved ones loss. A tragedy of epic poportions that should never, ever have even happened, but it did…nothing can change this fact.

My daughter and I ended up getting into a bit of a fight over the whole ordeal too. She was too emotional that she wasn't quite prepared to actually listen to what I was trying to say. I told her that while I empathized - one of her best friends was close to the family and had to attend the funeral - I also said that good kids do not do some of the things that he had done, and good kids don't end up overdosing. When she heard this, she lost all sense of reason and nothing after that could even begin to help my position. Whatever...Unfortunately, no matter how hard it may be to hear this, it is true, very true.

Good kids do not get suspended three times while in Grade Eight nor do they get expelled from their first year of high school, expecially if they're attending the most liberal and lenient school in the district - believe me, same school my girls attended and the school and I butted heads numerous times over their laissez faire attitude towards their students and their behaviour. Good kids do not go to parties prepared to snort up whatever pile happens to be put in front of them. Good kids...I could go on but I'd like to think that my point has been made and understood.

I think as parents we want to believe that our children are good kids and because of this, end up excusing behaviour we probably shouldn't. It's a terrible way to learn a lesson, but maybe we can all take something away from this tragedy and turn it around. Maybe we need to police our teenagers much more strictly than we do currently. Maybe they'll hate us for this but maybe they'll thank us for saving their lives.

Teenager's Death Sounds Alarms

In most ways, he was just a normal teenager.

He got into a bit of trouble, but he was smart and loved, say the friends and family of **** ********, 16.

He called himself "Lightning," after the Disney Cars character Lightning McQueen, and his sense of humour never failed to light up the room.

Now ********'s light is extinguished, and his friend lucky to be alive, apparently after an experiment with a drug that has appeared suddenly on London streets, a drug far more lethal than many think.

Friends and family say ******** snorted a lethal line of methadone, and drug outreach workers have confirmed a supply of the dangerous powder has hit the streets.

"It is exceedingly lethal if you don't know what you are doing," said Henry Eastabrook, an outreach worker with the London InterCommunity Health Centre. "Word is, powdered methadone is on the street right now."

Perhaps because it is used by heroin and OxyContin addicts to kick their habits, methadone is seen as less dangerous than other drugs.

"I wouldn't think the average teenager is aware of how dangerous it is," said Dr. John Craven of Clinic 528, which uses methadone to help opioid addicts.

"Methadone is extremely dangerous, especially if you have never taken it before. It is far more dangerous than OxyContin."

******** died at a party he attended July 12.

According to several of his friends, one boy brought the lethal drug in a powdered form to the party. ******** and another boy snorted more than the others. All the kids started to feel sick and fell asleep - some of the symptoms of methadone overdose. When the other boys woke up, ******** was dead. The other boy who had snorted more than the rest was unconscious.

That boy ended up in hospital, on life support, but has since been discharged.

It's not clear if the boys knew exactly what they were snorting, and that kind of experimental approach by London's youth is alarming police and addiction workers.

"It used to be pot, magic mushrooms and acid," said Const. Carl Noel, a secondary school resource officer. "Now, there seems to be a popularity of illegal prescription medication, like OxyContin or Percocets. I don't think they understand the severity of taking those drugs. I think the stuff is available, someone says it's awesome and they try it."

Methadone had no business being in the hands of a 16-year-old boy in the first place, said ********'s grieving mother, ******** ********.

"How did kids get powdered methadone? Something needs to be done to stop this stuff from getting into the hands of kids," she said, tears streaming down her face as she spoke in her south London home this week.

"Kids experiment. But this methadone is very lethal, and 16-year-old kids don't know that."

Asked about an investigation into ********'s death, London police said the matter is in the hands of the coroner's office. Regional coroner Dr. Rick Mann would not comment.

Family members said Mann told them the cause of death won't be known for sure until toxicology tests are complete in several weeks.

But the family is convinced ******** snorted methadone and believe a crime has been committed.

"Someone got their hands on someone else's prescription and it leaked out and now my son is dead," ******** said.

Powdered methadone is so tightly controlled, pharmacists wondered aloud how it could have reached the streets.

"It comes hand-delivered to us," said one pharmacist.

Every bit must be accounted for, she said, adding there have been no thefts from her pharmacy.

"It is a very controlled drug," said London pharmacist Suresh Kommineni, adding there have been no thefts from his pharmacy.

Methadone is prescribed for pain relief or to help people get off other drugs.

It is dispensed in two forms - tablets provided by drug companies, which can be taken home, and the powder, which pharmacists mix into a liquid.

Methadone clinics provide the liquid form. Most people drink on site, but some are allowed to take the liquid home.

Some people sell the liquid for other drugs. But the liquid can't be boiled into powder and the tablets aren't much good ground down either, said pharmacists and addiction workers.

"If someone has methadone powder, it is either stolen or diverted from a doctor's office or pharmacy," Craven said.

Any form is dangerous, he hastened to add.

********'s boyfriend **** ******** said methadone users must be aware that the drug that helps them can kill another.

"To leave this around, you might as well have a loaded handgun on the table," said ********.

Many of ********'s family and friends used Facebook to discuss the need to educate others about the dangers of methadone.

"This is also for the kids that never got the privilege to know ****, to look up the dangers of methadone, and what it can do to you," said Londoner Steph Lefave in an e-mail interview.

"Spread the word. Everyone has their own **** ********. We lost ours. Hold onto yours. Protect yours."

Intelligent, Funny Teen Will Be Missed

The next time you see a bolt of lightning, remember **** *******.

That's what many across the city - and particularly in Old South - will do as they cling to memories of the 16-year-old boy who sometimes jokingly called himself Lightning ******** and who died suddenly last week after a night of partying.

The teen's parents wait for police or a coroner to confirm what they know - that their son died after snorting a powdered, prescription drug, methadone.

In the days after his drug overdose, nearly 1,000 people joined a Facebook page set up in ****'s memory, filling it with memories and general warnings against snorting methadone.

He didn't know it was methadone, said several friends. Someone brought it to the party. He thought it was crystal meth, say some. He thought it was Percocet, say others.

It doesn't matter, they insist. All that matters is **** is gone.

On the page, one friend recalled ****'s devastation on seeing a dog hit by a passing car, and recalled him sitting with the dog until its owner came looking for it.

Others wondered if he was responsible for the bolts of lightning seen over London since his death.

"He loved lightning," said his mom, Colleen Morton. "Called himself Lightning ********. He loved purple, he loved camping, smores. He was a clean freak."

Clinging to whatever she can remember, Morton said she still has an old Mother's Day card he gave her as a boy. It was filled with promises, and all of them involved cleaning.

"I don't remember him crying, ever," she said. "Does that make me a bad mom? I don't know, I guess it does."

She hasn't stopped crying during a two hour interview.

**** was smart. In and out of trouble since he was young, he won the Grade 8 math award at Princess Elizabeth public school, despite three suspensions that year.

He went to South secondary school for Grade 9, but ended up suspended and at the school board's U-Turn alternative education program before starting fresh at H.B. Beal last year. Within a few weeks, despite absences, he was excelling in academic math, she said.

"He could have been anything. A doctor, a lawyer, an astronaut. ... He could have invented things. I don't know, maybe this was his purpose in life," said Morton.

**** was closest with his dad, **** ********. The elder ******** told The Free Press he wanted to talk about his son, but wasn't ready yet.

"His dad's not doing so well whatsoever," said his on-and-off girlfriend of four years, **** ****.

**** still had ****'s skateboard this week. He rode it over to her house the last time they hung out.

"He was good at skateboarding. He was really gifted at a lot of things," she said. "Literally, he was the strongest, most positive person I knew and he did get suspended and stuff, but really he was polite and very respectful and he was just an amazing guy.

"Everybody loved him," she said, laughing for an instant as she recalled their first meeting. They were with a group of friends, going to watch Shrek 2 at the theatre.

"Right away, he started telling jokes. That's who he was," she said. "He'd tell you a joke, or do anything to make you smile in some way, and then you would just love him."

There is a lot of pain and guilt among those who love ****. Many contacted through Facebook wouldn't comment, afraid whoever brought the methadone to the party is racked with guilt.

Nobody wants to blame anybody for ****'s death. Boys said to be his closest friends didn't want to talk, but others did.

"Man that kid could make me laugh," said Steph Lefave, 22, in a Facebook conversation. "Although I did not have the privilege of knowing **** as long as I would have liked, I will tell you ... he did not judge. He did not boast, he didn't hold grudges."

His mom is gutted by regret.

"I regret letting him go to his friends so much on the weekends, thinking I had the rest of his life.

"I never pushed those issues. I wanted to let him be a teenager. Maybe if I had put a tighter chain on him."

She clings to the memory of their final conversation.

"He always said 'I love you' and I know my last words to him were 'I love you,' and his were 'I love you, mom.' "

The family is planning a public memorial party for **** next Wednesday night at Rouge nightclub.

Location, locaton, location.

2010-07-22T00:07:00.001-04:00

One of the first things that you learn in recovery is the need to separate yourself physically from your past. Ideally, this would be leaving town and any potential triggers far behind. Obviously, this is not always possible, so, moving one's self to another part of town is generally strongly recommended. This is what we ended up having to do to ensure our success in our recovery. Not only did we physically move, but we made sure that we told no one where we were even moving to, giving no one our new address.

This really did prove to be one of the smartest things that we could have done. The part of the city where we choose to live is not an area where users tended to reside nor even tended to visit. We didn't have to worry about inadvertently coming across someone from our prior life, thus removing any sort of temptation as well. Even though we do have to attend the only methadone clinic in our city, we choose to attend the earliest possible clinic of the day so we see our doctor anywhere from 7am until 8:20am on Tuesdays and Fridays, times when the clinic is exceptionally quiet. Our clinic has a maximum number of patients of 24 and does not see anyone who is IMP - a patient that has missed his normal doctor day - so there tends not to be anyone except the clinic's patients hanging around the clinic at these times. Again, we've managed to eleminate as best as possible the chance of us encountering anyone from our past life.

As we're now going on four and a half years away from this lifestyle, this has also helped with the separation. Doesn't take long for this lot to forget you that's for sure - and thank heavens indeed for this aspect!!! The infrequent times when we have encountered someone from our past, we've done our best to keep any interaction as brief and polite as possible. I'm pretty sure that I am more than strong enough at this stage to resist any sort of temptation, but why bother testing this theory if you don't have to? If it ain't broke...

Sony eReader

2010-06-25T19:57:00.005-04:00

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read. I'll literally read almost anything you put in front of me, and for years I was never without a book within arm's reach. Of course, reading for pleasure was one of the first casualties once my drug dependence became of paramount importance. Not only did I no longer seem to have the time to read, but the cost of books and magazines suddenly seemed prohibitive to me when there were other, better things to invest in.

Although its taken me a bit longer into my recovery than I had anticipated, I have finally returned to reading with the same zest and obsession of days gone by! One of the things that has really helped me has been the eReader which is is a line of e-book readers manufactured by Sony. It uses an electronic paper display. The reader uses an iTunes store-like interface to purchase books from Sony Connect eBook store. It also can display Adobe PDFs, ePub format, personal documents, blogs, RSS newsfeeds, JPEGs and can play MP3 files. It is so portable and light and it now goes with me everywhere.

Currently, I have about 63 different book titles loaded onto it, although it is able to handle loads and loads more than this amount. Now I can easily juggle reading three separate books at a time, and not have to worry about dragging them all around with me weighing down my purse! I've got a variety of subjects loaded on my eReader currently so I'm never bored. There is always one that will pique my interest. The downside, though, has been my recent lack of sleep as I've been staying up to all hours reading!

If anyone else happens to have one and if you're sufficiently interested in the following titles, you are more than welcome to download one or all of the following. The files are all in zip format and once the file has been uncompressed the book is in PDF form. Even if you don't have an ebook, you can still download any of the files as they can be read directly from your computer. Enjoy...

On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine Nicolas Rasmussen

*a fascinating history of the use and abuse of amphetamines

Bringing the War Home. The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies Jeremy Varon

*about the history of the rise and fall of Germanys Red Army Faction and the Baader Meinhof Gang

The Addict - One Patient, One Doctor, One Year Micheal Stein

*read the New York Times book review

Isn't it pretty?

The Oxycontin Express

2010-06-09T21:06:00.002-04:00

I wish I could remember how I originally found this link, but unfortunately, I can not. If I got it through a fellow blogger's own entry, then please notify me so that I can update this post with all the proper and correct info et al.

The Oxycontin Express

Last night Jim and I watched an absolutely riveting documentary from Current TV's original documentary series Vanguard entitled The Oxycontin Express. From the web site:

"In this Peabody Award-winning edition of Vanguard, correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to South Florida--the "Colombia of prescription drugs"--to expose a bustling pill pipeline that stretches from the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale to the rolling hills of Appalachia. "The OxyContin Express" features intimate access with pill addicts, prisoners and law enforcement as each struggles with a lethal national epidemic."

If you've got an hour to spare, it is well worth investing this time watching this documentary. Frightening stuff indeed!

Vanguard airs every Wednesday at 10pm on Current TV.

sickgirl

2010-06-06T04:56:00.011-04:00

Most recent pic of myself that I could find. Here I am in all my glory at the ripe young age of 46!! Finally starting to feel comfortable in my own skin once again.

Barely 31, this photo was taken over 15 years ago at my brother's wedding. Hadn't quite gone off the rails yet! Barely seems that long ago. Had confidence to spare way back when...

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DECADE AND A HALF AND SOME ADDICTION ISSUES MAKE!!! INDEED...

10 Things You Should Know About Methadone

2010-05-28T19:18:00.000-04:00

Found a great series of articles over at Recovery Helpdesk. It is a truly fantastic bit of reading with loads of realistic and relevant information. If you have time...

The first article of the series is entitled 10 Things You Should Know About Methadone (Number 1)

My Ship Has Arrived!

2010-05-21T16:41:00.002-04:00

Well, thank you very much indeed! And what a way to start a long weekend. Have just returned from the regional office as I had been called earlier with the request I come by there at 3pm. Our Regional Manager was in town for a few hours today - he lives in Ottawa and I am in London - and wanted to meet with me. GULP!!!

No bad news, only good. He wanted to personally give me a cheque in the amount of $6600 to cover the cost of our prescriptions over a 22 month period that we had originally come out of pocket. Methadone here costs both of us $300/month so multiplied by 22 equals a whole freaking lot! When we went on WSIB originally the company cancelled our benefit coverage which they so were not supposed to do. By law, an employer must cover their employee for one full year from the date of the accident. Ooops. They didn't. My company went even further and covered the entire period that I was off as a gesture of good faith. Good faith indeed!

Right now we couldn't be happier.

peace, love and happiness...

sickgirl

Some Great Reward

2010-05-17T22:19:00.000-04:00

One of the things that has been hardest for me while on methadone has been the weight gain that often accompanies it. For the past four years, this has been my biggest battle. Some days, I find it nothing more than a slight nuisance, while on others, I find it utterly soul crushing. I know many women on methadone suffer from this identical problem, and I know many that also stop treatment for this fact alone. As hard an adjustment as its been, this would never influence me to return to past bad behaviours or habits.

This weight gain many a time has ended up messing with my selfconfidence, especially as I had never, ever had a weight issue until I started MMT. It has been a pretty big adjustment just on its own, and there are so many days that I've allowed this to influence my overall mood. When feeling particularly frumpy or unattractive, it was so much easier to sit around all day in my baggy black tshirt and drawstring pants with unwashed hair and an unmade face. After awhile, it became easier and easier for me to use this as an excuse not to do much more of anything else.

About two weeks ago, I decided that I had had enough. No more. Just one more thing I was doing to remain a victim in one way or another that I needed to put an end to. It was now or never. As much as I wanted to return to my pre-treatment weight, I know that this was not something that was going to happen overnight so I decided to take a different approach than anything I had attempted prior. A large part of how I was feeling was a direct result of not really having anything appropriate to wear to flatter my current shape so pretty much the only way to fix this was to start over from scratch - I needed an entirely new wardrobe! So far, I had been resisting buying much of anything convinced that one day I would be able to fit back into the clothes that were hanging in my closet. In the meantime, I had been trying to stuff my size twelve body into my size eight outfits with disasterous results.

Shocking indeed, that I never seemed pleased with any of my outfit choices or would be forced to put on yet, again, the same tshirt and pair of pants. Although it actually took me three full days to finish, I went out shopping and bought all brand new things - I literally replaced everything, everything except my socks! I got all brand new underwear. I bought myself a new raincoat and two new hoodies, as well as a new pair of sandles and runners for the summer. I got five new pairs of cargo pants and four new pairs of shorts. I got eight semi-dressy tops/blouses plus four dressier types of tshirts.

I've put all of the new clothes in the closet in the spare room and left all of my other clothes in my closet in the bedroom - we each have our own closet in the bedroom. Now, when I go to put something on, it is much less of an ordeal as I know that whatever I end up picking out will fit me properly. No longer will there be piles of discarded items as I struggled to find something to wear for the day! Already I feel a thousand times better about myself, not to mention so much more confident.

In some ways, I am mad at myself for allowing vanity to get the best of me, but it has and after four years, I know that this wouldn't go away on its own. I wasn't prepared at all for how much this weight gain was going to affect me. I'd been fortunate enough to go through my life never having a weight problem, so it was never an issue I had been forced to deal with. I didn't realize quite how lucky I was until it was too late. I think what has made it more of a struggle for me to get on top of this was the timing of my decision to start MMT. This just happened to occur while in my midforties, which is a time in a woman's life when her body starts to undergo a number of changes as it is. So the two combined together were a toxic combination indeed.

Victim Impact Statement

2010-04-30T16:41:00.001-04:00

If anyone is interested, the following is my Victim Impact Statement which I read to the court the day that two of the three accused were sentenced. One of the attackers received 8 years while the other received 7 years. Very emotional day to say the least.

"To completely articulate the impact that this attack and stabbing of Jim has had on us is really most overwhelming and near impossible. You would think that twenty one months would be more than enough time to complete this task, and in my head, I’ve easily written my victim impact statement at least a thousand times now, but when it finally came time to get serious about it, the task felt daunting at best. I wondered how I would be able to adequately convey the physical, emotional and financial traumas we were forced to suffer because of this event. The physical, emotional and financial impact that this attack ended up having on me has forced me to live a life I barely recognize anymore and become a person I don’t know.

In Sept of this year, Jim and I will have known each other thirty years – he was 14 and I was 16. For most of this time, he has been an integral part of my life. Both of our personalities just clicked and in no time, we had forged a strong friendship. Right away I knew he was someone that would always be an important part of my life. He made me laugh and cry and angry like no one had before or since. He was someone I knew I could always trust and depend on him no matter what. He made me feel safe and secure and gave me self-confidence and poise as a result of this. To me he was fearless.The day of the attack called all of what I believed into question. Everything I thought I knew was ripped away. This fearlessness, boldness, audaciousness that made up a large part of Jim and myself was torn from us that day. We are, and continue to be, in therapy because of the attack. Since the attack, I have had feelings of total loss and disparity. I have not really slept a full night. I require medication to assist my sleeping. I now have panic attacks and flashbacks that causes me to freeze. I have a fear of people in general. I will cross the street, rather than to meet and face people. I now have fears of something terrible happening to another family member, and am fearful for my safety and the safety of my family.

The attack itself was frightening but them to have to wait for hours to hear how Jim was doing was doubly so. He was so severely injured that he required over six hours of emergency surgery. I didn’t get to see him until close to 1am the next day. He was unrecognizable hooked up to all of the hospital’s machines. His body was bloated and initially he was unable to breathe on his own. He looked like the Frankenstein monster with staples all over his upper body, face and head. It was just short of a miracle that he even managed to regain consciousness and then finally return home. His physical recovery has been slow to say the least, but I will let him speak to this.

It has been our psychological recovery that is taking its time and toll, as well as the financial difficulties that have resulted because of the attack. In many ways, this has been harder than the physical and emotional recovery especially as none of this financial duress was a result of our own making. For something we had zero control over as well as nearly having to sacrifice a life for, it has been unduly stressful. It certainly has been a very bitter irony that one of the more dramatic consequences of the attack has resulted in affecting our family’s bottom line. While it is fairly easy to give a dollar value to our loss of income over these past twenty-one months, it is slightly more difficult to calculate other monies lost as a direct result of this attack.

As the attack occurred while we were fulfilling one of our job duties, our immediate supervisor was able to submit the appropriate forms necessary for us to qualify to receive Workers Compensation. Its another issue entirely though that the company we work for delayed almost three months in actually doing this. As neither Jim nor I were able to immediately return to work, we both began to receive Workers Compensation benefits which equal approx two thirds of our normal salary. Now, as part of our compensation package with our employer, not only did we receive our own two bedroom apartment, we also had our telephone, cable and internet paid for by them. Once we started to receive WSIB, our employer no longer covered the cost of the above. It was now our responsibility. So suddenly, not only were we receiving about a third less pay than we were used to, but from this reduced amount, we now had to cover these additional expenses of over $1000/month. This added stress is just one more thing that we’ve been forced to deal with because of the attack.

It hasn’t been just Jim and myself that have suffered because of the attack. Both of our daughters were teenagers at the time of the attack and as much as we tried to shield them from its effects, this proved impossible. They ended up being greatly affected because of the emotional and financial stress weighing heavily on me. While Jim and I attempted to adjust to each new change as it presented itself, I found myself getting increasingly angrier and bitter with our circumstances, and these feelings were then that much more difficult to hide from the girls. I was overwhelmed with feelings of self doubt and started to feel that I was failing them as a parent. I started to fall into a depression especially as relationships with my daughters started to change.

I have also just recently discovered that I may face yet another obstacle as a direct result of this attack. Currently, I have no job to return to as it has just been phased out of the company that employs us both since the beginning of the new year. Once again, we are victims not of our own making. Certainly, this will no doubt present another fairly large financial challenge to us – now just one of many. I really had begun to believe that we would soon be able to start to put all of this behind us, to make it a thing of the past. Yet, this seems near impossible as we seem to be faced with additional obstacles far too frequently.

Certainly the therapy that I continue to receive for my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at Victoria Hospital has greatly benefited me, and is starting to alleviate a number of my symptoms. Jim has also started therapy with a different therapist and I believe that he too is finally starting to feel some benefits. Still, this offers only small comfort. Yes, we are all starting to heal, but in the end, this attack has fundamentally changed me as a person as well as the way that I now look at the world. I no longer recognize my reflection in the mirror and am not the person that I once was, or will ever be. This experience has so altered my life forever, as well as how I view life.

I Can Almost See Our Ship On the Horizon...

2010-04-30T16:04:00.000-04:00

In another couple of weeks, it will be two years since Jim ans I were attacked, and Jim stabbed. In many regards, this event seems like it happened a lifetime ago, while at other times, it feels like only yesterday. To say that its been a challenging two years most certainly is an understatement. Yet, at the end of the day, no matter what we've had to go through, both of us are still standing and standing fairly darn strongly! Whew...anyway.

Financially, these past two years have certainly been some of our hardest, and there have been so many times when I have absolutely felt utterly gutted by it all. So, what does one do? What can one really do but soldier on? Apparently, this was the right thing to do, and when they say that good things come to those that wait, they may very well be spot on. Found out today that WSIB made an error in the disbursement of some of Jim's benefits and that they have corrected this error by putting a cheque for $6 500 in the mail to us as of yesterday. YES!!! We also found out on Wednesday that the company that looks after group benefits for the company we work for also made an error and will be correcting this very shortly - this was a $6 900 error by the by!!! So by the end of next week, our bank account will have over $13 000 more than it did this week. Thank you very, very much.

Don't get me wrong. No amount of money will ever be able to erase the events of two years ago, nor even begin to compensate us for what we've had to endure. This is so not the way to go about receiving money, but at the same time, I've not got so much pride that I'll refuse it either. HELLO??!! All this means is that we'll be able to finally start replenishing our savings account that we were forced to drain while waiting for our WSIB to kick in - thank heavens we ended up having a bit of a cushion to deflate back then as we would have been so royally screwed.

So, starting our weekend off on a bit of a high note floating through the rest of my Friday.

CHANGES

2010-04-19T22:07:00.000-04:00

I can hardly believe that we are now more than halfway through the month of April and that I've literally only gone near my computer, never mind surfing the net, about three or four times!!! Busy, yes, I guess I must be. I know that so far this year, there have already been a significant number of changes in my life. Where to even begin...

Very, very briefy, and in point form right now - plan on elaborating on each and every point over the next few weeks. PROMISE!!!

daughter moved out of our home into her first apartment with her boyfriend of close to three years, then moved back home after this relationship broke up, and then moved out again all on her own to her very own apartment
two of the three accused that had attacked my husband and I, plus stabbed my husband multiple times, decided to plead guilty right before we were about to proceed to trial so we had to attend both of their Sentence Hearings where I had to read my Victim Impact Statement
accused number three has decided that he wants his day in court and has elected for a trial by judge and jury although so far no date has been set so this whole ordeal is still so not over yet
spent a good, long month actually working on my Victim Impact Statement for real as opposed to continually composing it in my head
my baby brother, and his wife, who just had their fourth child a week and a half before Christmas decided that there was no real employment future for him anymore in Ontario so he accepted a job in Halifax, NS, and within a three week period had flown out for a job interview, accepted their fairly lucrative offer, found room and board for himself in a pretty decent house at an equally reasonable rent, moved his arse and whatever stuff he needed out there to start work, while having to leave his family behind to get their house sold and packed up, allow the kids to finish out their school year at the only school they've ever attended - their ages are 11, 9 and 7 currently - and generally just adjust to a very foreign situation for them as a family
decided on my own that I simply did not want to attend anymore PTSD therapy as I felt that I realistically was as well and recovered as I could possibly be, so had the hospital discharge me stamped READY TO RETURN TO WORK - boy, could I have been any farther removed from the reality of my situation???

Now, these are all of the major changes I've encountered so far in 2010. There are all sorts of minor and by far, less significant stuff I've also dealt with but compared to this heavier stuff, barely warrants a mention right now. Later, maybe. And, just in case, anyone is even still out there keeping track, I've muddled through all of this with nary a stumble. I am still on Methadone Maintenance Treatment - MMT - with a current dose of 40ml/day. At one point, I had actually gotten my dose down to 30ml/day but found that once I had returned to work, this dose was simply incapable of sustaining me for even a 24 hour period so I was forced to increase my dose - for now, anyway, or at least until my body has gotten used to its increased physical activity level which has obviously changed pretty dramatically since I've been back to work. Even though it seems to be rapidly flying by me so far this year, all in all ,though, life seems to be pretty sweet right now whicg suits me just fine!

She's Leaving Home

2010-04-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

Today Sara moved out for the second time! She had moved out last November when she and her boyfriend of close to three years decided that they were ready to get an apartment together – Jim and I thought otherwise but knew to keep these opinions to ourselves! When she phoned us in mid February I could tell that she was struggling with something and suspected exactly what that something was! A mother always seems to know, n’est pas? When she was finally ready to unload on me, I made sure that the only thing I did was listen patiently and empathetically. I knew that it was very difficult for her to share with me the fact that she had made this hasty mistake of moving in too soon with her boyfriend, and knew that the absolute last thing that she needed to hear from me was “I told you so!” Mean and petty I can save for others, certainly not my daughter!

Once she realized that I wasn’t going to take over with the feared stereotypical MOTHER lectures of well intentioned advice, etc she was really able to relax with me and be completely honest and truthful about her current living situation. She even was able to ultimately ask for my advice, as well as seriously consider what I had to offer, not to mention follow! Felt like huge MOM victory to me let me tell you!!! In the end, her situation was really nothing more than a rather uncomfortable one. Soon after moving in with her boyfriend, she realized that she had made a big mistake and was afraid of making it even worse the longer she stayed living there. Unfortunatley, she wasn’t entirely sure how the best way to solve this would be. Her big obstacle in her mind was the fact that her boyfriend had done nothing wrong. The whole three years that they were dating he has been nothing but a complete gentleman.

I told her that she didn’t need an excuse like infidility or battery or something equally heinous to end a relationship. Sometimes, there is nothing more than the relationship had simply run its course, and what may have been there at the beginning, simply wasn’t there anymore. Over time relationships change, and this had ended up happening to theirs. They may still have had strong feelings for each other, but these feelings had obviously changed over the years. Instead of being passionate lovers they now seemed to be more like very close and dear friends. I told her that there was never going to be a good time to approach her boyfriend especially if he wasn’t ready yet to end their relationship – he wasn’t. Told her the sooner, the better, but to make sure that she allowed adequate time to talk to him about what she was about to do, and to make sure that she didn’t introduce this serious topic if they were in the middle of a squabble as this wouldn’t be fair to either one of them in the end.

In the end, I think that she handled herself the very best that she could. She moved home with us for the past month while she got herself sorted out. Obviously, we told her that she was welcome for as long as she wanted or needed, no matter if that meant not leaving for months, or even years to come. She decided that the best thing for her right now though was to get her own apartment as soon as she was able to find a suitable, as well as affordable, one. She also decided that she didn’t want to have a roommate, but that she thought she would like to live on her own, or at least give it a try. I don’t blame her either as she had to share her bedroom for her last four years at home with us with her foster sister, and then when she did finally move out, had to share her first apartment with her boyfriend. I’m sure the thought of having her very own space is thrilling if nothing else. She can always get a roommate later on if she finds out that she doesn’t like living on her own.

For me, personally, I think that she will thrive beautifully on her own. She has blossomed into a wonderfully mature, level headed young woman whom I couldn’t be more proud. She has a fantastic job where she earns a better than decent salary, plus she also has the financial support of Jim and myself, as well as her Granny so money is not an area she has to worry too much about – except in ensuring she try to stick to a reasonable budget and not spend beyond her means. We have hopefully given her all of the tools she’ll need to get by in the world, plus she knows that we are always here for her no matter what, no questions asked.

So, I end this day on a bit of a melancholy note as once again, I’ve had to watch our daughter move out to start her life as an adult. She is no longer my baby! Of course, this melancholy is mixed with pride and happiness as I am also able to witness the beautiful young woman that my daughter has grown into.

Addict Children

2009-12-23T03:19:00.005-05:00

When the girls moved out they took each of their computers with them - of course they did, especially as the computers were actually theirs. Sara's computer had always been set up in our living room because their bedroom was already overflowing with their stuff. It simply made no sense whatsoever to attempt to set up her own work station amongst this disaster of a bedroom. Even if we had tried, I've no doubt it would quickly have vanished from view, buried beneath all kinds discarded crap! Our living room, however, had space to spare. We set up pretty comfy station for them, with loads of room on the desk that we decided to use - it measured 60" long by 24" wide, and had a pull out shelf that ran the length of the desk, although it divided into two separate pieces, plus a full bottom shelf to put the computer's tower and whatever else you felt like. What this meant was that with only the one computer/monitor on the desk, there was still loads of empty space over which was nice as it was then easy to keep neat and tidy.

OK, fascinating I'm sure that you're all thinking, but, really, SO WHAT? See, even though I have always had a perfectly decent computer that I didn't even have to share with anybody at all, I practically never went near it. While there was nothing remotely wrong with it, I utterly loathed where it ended up being located in the apt. Jim set it up in our bedroom right next to his. Now, we didn't have the same kinds of space limitations that the girls always seemed to face, but there were other things that prevented me from truly enjoying using my computer when it was in our bedroom. Hmmm, when I pause to reflect on all of this, I suppose in hindsight, we probably should have invested in at the least, one laptop!

From the start, I much preferred using the computer in the living room. Unfortunately, the only time that I would end up using it was when neither one of the girls was at home. It certainly wouldn't have been very reasonable of me to demand time on theirs when I had a perfectly good one sitting unused in my bedroom! Another reason that I tended not to use it was the moment I sat down at it, time no longer seemed to matter. Seemed to take no effort for five minutes to turn into five hours! Even if my bedroom door remained completely open the entire time, just being located there tended to promote a feeling of being isolated and as such, not being readily available to either one of them. This was not at all what was actually occuring, but, as a newly recovering addict I became hyper aware of ensuring that my behaviour at any time did not suggest possible relapse. Of course, there were times when I had no choice. Certainly, the last time I got hit with the flu, the very last thing I wanted to do was leave my comfy bed for anything. Not to mention, I was the farthest away from feeling sociable at any level.

So, while either one of my girls were at home, I tended to drift between the kitchen, dining room and living room. If they didn't feel like hanging around anywhere that I happened to be, then all that they had to was go off into their bedroom or leave the apartment. Now that they're all grow'd up and living on their own, I don't have to worry if I feel like staying in my room all day! I can do whatever I want! Sound kind of like I'm the one who no longer has to worry about following their parent's house rules and not the other way around! Well, I'm certainly not going to lie when I confess that since its now only Jim and I, there is absolutely no doubt as to how liberated I've felt this past month!

I also had Jim liberate my computer from our bedroom, and had him set it up where Sara's computer used to be. So, to make an already long story even longer...what I had been trying to do was let one and all know that because of our changed circumstances, I expect to be updating on a more regular not to mention more frequent basis.

-----------

Now, its time to get to something just a tad more serious, as well as extremely important. There is something that I have been meaning to address for a very long time now, but haven't gotten around to doing it. My very bad!!! Over the past year or so, I've been noticing that there has been a pretty dramatic increase in the number of blogs out there written by parents of addict children. Their collective cries for help, relief, support and recovery of their beloved is truly devastating. Even though I, personally, am myself a recovering addict, I have no knowledge of being on the other side of addiction such as they all are. That's not to say that I am incapable of empathizing with them, its simply that I've not had to view it in the same way that they do. So, while I am not necessarily proud of this fact, I am certainly able to relate to the many stories they share of their children's misadventures. I hope to never be in any one of their shoes either, and am pretty sure that it is by the grace of God that both of my girls have managed not to succumb to the many temptations that these illegal substances seem to offer. I hope with every fiber of my body that this never, ever changes also!

Their children are also oh so very, very young to have to go through some of the things that they do. This aspect of their addiction, though, is extremely difficult for me to relate to as I had actually never even tried drugs at their age. While I had done some experimentation while at university, I never really did it with any sort of regularity until I was about a year or so into my first real job after graduation. Once I found out I was pregnant, I stopped immediately and never resumed until Sara was about eight or nine. It then took five to six years after this for my previously recreational use to turn into full blown, hard core addiction. Shockingly, I was able to keep this from practically everyone. My own mother never knew I even had a problem until I had been in Methadone Maintenance Treatment - MMT - for over eighteen months. Jim's parents found out even later - this tidbit ended up being revealed to them while he was still in the hospital after the stabbing! We never even had a call, a visit or anything to do with Children's Aid either in regards to Sara's upbringing. For all intents and purposes our addiction was invisible.

Now of course, most of the above needs to be taken with a grain of salt as they say! Addicts are consummate liars who also have a massive capacity to rationalize any sort of potentially unethical or illegal behaviour, and I am sure that I was no better, even though through these years, I had pretty much convinced myself that this didn't apply to me. This particular topic, though, is too complex to go into much more detail right now, but I will tackle this subject in the very near future.

But back to the parents...their ever increasing numbers gives one pause for concern as I suspect that the blogs that are currently out there are barely a tip of the iceberg. Where we see one, I'm guessing there are ten more. Tragic, indeed. Below are some of the ones that I follow regularly. As my links are not as current on this computer as they had been on Sara's, I know that there are a few excellent ones that I have overlooked - I apologize in advance for this oversight. By no means is it at all intentional. If you have a similar type of blog that is not in this list, please feel free to let me know so that I can update my links section. I encourage anyone that has taken the time to read this entry to also make sure that they take the time to visit the blogs that are listed below.

Addiction – In God We Trust

An Addict in our Son’s Bedroom

Andrew’s Addiction

Blinded By Love For J

Fight of Your Life

Heather’s Mom

Her Big Sad

Hurting Parents~Addicted Son

INTERVENE: A Community For Parents

Journey of recovery…search for serenity

Loving and Parenting an Addict

Mom of Opiate Addicted Son

Mom vs Heroin

mother of a drug addict

My Daughter’s Addiction

OXY and OPIATE ADDICTION-A Mother’s Story

Recovery Happens

Writing From The Inside Out

MAN ADMITS TO STABBING

2009-12-19T16:32:00.003-05:00

The following article appeared in our local newspaper less than a week ago. The article provides a bit more info concerning the attack on us and the stabbing of Jim from a year and a half ago. In preparation for his sentencing hearing scheduled for the beginning of February, 2010, I've started to work on my Victim Impact Statement so that I can read it to the court on that day. Jim is also going to prepare and read one, as are both of our daughters - both of them came to me and asked if they would be able to do this as well, so of course, I agreed. This was very much a surprise as I had never intended to ask either one of them to go through this for us. Obviously, we are touched that they want to do this for us - our intentions originally had been motivated so that we could attempt to keep our babies shielded and separated from all of this ugliness. Have always said that they are made of strong stuff indeed.

The recent article is accurate except for one detail. It states that he had a 15-centimeter cut to his arm. This 15cm injury/scar actually appears on his chest, and was a direct result of the emergency surgery he had to have when the doctors cut him open to repair both his liver and lung. Anyway, if you are at all interested, you should be able to check out the original article for a few weeks RIGHT HERE. In case it expires, the following was printed:

By JANE SIMS, THE LONDON FREE PRESS
Last Updated: 10th December 2009, 11:07am

The noise coming from the sixth-floor apartment was too loud for the neighbours. That's all the superintendent wanted to tell the people inside the Wonderland Rd. apartment in London when he knocked on the door on May 12, 2008, at about 5 p.m.

What would happen next would threaten his life and leave him with lingering injuries. Three men ran out of the apartment, pushed the superintendent to the floor and began punching, kicking and stabbing him. P****** F*******, 25, pleaded guilty in a London court to aggravated assault for the stab wounds that punctured the man's lung, lacerated his liver, and left him critically injured.

F******* is one of three men charged for the attack. He, along with his brother L*******, 24, and M*******, 22, had already begun a preliminary hearing in October. F******* has been in custody since his arrest in downtown London after the attack.

Assistant Crown attorney Gary Fowler told Justice Deborah Livingstone the victim and F******* did not know each other. Several people in the building, including the victim's spouse, saw the attack. Along with the internal injuries, the victim suffered gashes to his arm and head and needed a 61/2-hour surgery. He needed 10 staples to close the gash in his head and had a 15-centimetre cut to his arm. Fowler said the victim needed a second surgery later. Livingstone noted that from the testimony heard earlier, the victim's ongoing issues from the attack are "significant."

F*******'s lawyer, K******* M*******, said her client admitted to causing the injuries from the stabbing and was involved in some of the kicking and punching. A pre-sentence report was ordered and F******* is to be sentenced Feb 3.

The preliminary hearing for the other two men is slated to continue Jan. 11.

COMMENTS:

CAROL ANNE SPIVAK: December 10th 2009, 3:12pm; A PERSON AS VICIOUS AS HE IS DOES NOT BELONG AMOUNGST THE REST OF THE HUMAN RACE, HIS FRIENDS AS WELL. HOPE IT WON'T BE ANOTHER SLAP ON THE WRIST, HE NEEDS LOCKING UP FOR A VERY LONG TIME. I'M VERY ANXIOUS TO SEE WHAT THE PUNISHMENT WILL BE.

Don: December 10th 2009, 1:41pm; I hope they give this piece of human trash a double digit pen bit. He damn near killed an innocent man for knocking on a door....? The community is a better place without him. A SEVERE punishment is the only way to go on this case. Him reforming himself should be concidered a distant 2nd priority

Ouch: December 10th 2009, 11:44am; That hurts !

seedless

2009-11-26T22:47:00.004-05:00

seedless

This is a link that I really should have put up ages ago, but then I managed to get distracted for quite a bit, and am now only returning to my computer after a fairly long absence. Hopefully this will make up for my negligence! Years ago, when I first started blogging, I was fortunate enough to be able to belong to a website that was, for better or worse, a real showcase for about two dozen fairly talented writers who just happened to also be opiate addicts. During my two years writing under junkylife.com, I met some truly remarkable and brilliant individuals. While we came from all over the world and our ages ranged from teens to retirement, the one thread that we all shared was our love and dependence and continuing battle with a varying range of opiates. As a collective, we managed to bring many, many lifetimes of experiences and stories to the table. At the time, we ranged from being completely abstinent with multiple years of recovery behind us to being knee deep in extremely active addiction with no thoughts of ever stopping.

The group had individuals who were top executives in international companies earning six figure salaries and then some to those who had no idea where they would lay their head each evening to sleep. We were all there to support the others around us. No judgments, no lectures and especially, no shame. For the first time in my life, I had found a safe and secure place to share my experiences without fear of any sort of recriminations. More than anything else though, I discovered that I wasn't alone, that there were others very much like me.

At the time that I received an invitation to join this group, I was as deep as I would get with my addiction. I was using the absolute heaviest that I had ever used in my life, and was doing this while maintaining a full time office job of responsibility, etc, not to mention, maintaining the semblance of a completely normal family. By the time junkylife.com imploded though, I had found the strength to stop using and to get myself back into treatment, but know that I may not have been as successful as I have been, had they not been there for me every step of the way. To any and all that are still out there, a rather belated, but heartfelt thank you.

The above link, seedless, was one of the original members of junkylife.com. He also is an utterly amazing writer with stories that will simply mesmerize you. Words can not begin to serve him justice. I urge one and all to take some time and check out the above link as you will not be disappointed.

P.S. Hope this makes up for my utterly disgracefully slow response to your earlier request! Cheers...

A Very Empty Nest

2009-11-26T22:14:00.002-05:00

Even though Katie hasn't officially moved out, it has now been pretty close to two weeks since she has really stayed here, and Sara officially moved into her new apartment last Saturday, so for all intents and purposes, I guess that Jim and I are now officially empty nesters! How very weird this is. We knew that this would end up happening sooner than later, especially as Katie turns twenty in less than three months, and Sara less than four. Our babies were growing up, and itching to spread their wings.

Obviously, there are a whole range of emotions that I am currently experiencing. Most are good. I am sad that my girls are really and truly adults now, ready to begin lives of their own, but this is very much tempered with the fact that I also know that they are indeed, well and truly ready to begin this part of their own life's journey. Both girls are exceptionally mature and responsible, with solid heads resting on their strong shoulders. I've got to trust that we've managed to equip themselves with the tools that the shall need to lead happy and productive lives. Mixed with this sadness and melancholy is a huge boatload of motherly love and pride and confidence!

Yes, our home has felt somewhat empty - not to mention extremely quiet - since their departure, but there is also a feeling of anticipation and excitement for what this chapter of Jim's and my life will bring to us. Kind of liberating for the first time in almost twenty one years! Obviously, all of these positive feelings couldn't be possible had we parted any other way but the way that we did. Their decisions to move out on their own came from a place of strength, and no other place. We parted in the absolute best way that one could imagine - no angry words or fights or any sort of bitterness imaginable.

It is due to this that I can look to the future with great optimism and hope. I know so many children that leave home for the wrong reasons, and I consider us extremely lucky and fortunate that this was something that I knew was unlikely to occur in our home. I love both girls so very much, and no matter what the outcome, they know that they can sleep securely each night knowing that the welcome mat will always be there should they decide to return home, no matter what their reasons.

Getting everybody organized has been the main reason keeping me away from my computer this past month and a half, plus dealing with the preliminary trial of our attackers. This, unfortunately, has not gone near as smoothly as the other, and in fact, the prelim trial has yet to conclude, and has now been held over until the last week of January, next year. Much more on this matter very soon.

Just wanted to stop by quickly to let anyone who still actually bothers following me to know that I am still healthy and happy and right on course with my recovery, and then some...

peace, love and happiness...

I Fought The Law

2009-10-15T21:08:00.005-04:00

After seventeen months, and a couple of false starts, it looks as if we may finally be getting our day in court. In less than 12 hours, the preliminary trial of the three men that attacked us and stabbed Jim is about to begin. Obviously, I am nervous. Am not expecting to get much sleep tonight although I also have no intention of actively sabotaging myself either - tempting as this may be!

Figures that the weather just took a turn for the worse. Yikes. The temp managed to reach a high of 4C today, although with the wind, I guess that it felt more like -1C. Tomorrow morning, they're forecasting the temp to be just above zero Celsius which is too cold for this time of the season that's for sure. Right now, this near freezing weather is causing me to have a near meltdown in my attempt to pick out an appropriate court - and now weather - outfit. I suppose that if this is the worst thing that I am currently battling then I am not really in as bad a shape as I might perceivce.

Additional mood updates as my evening progresses!!!

A Few Quick Updates

2009-10-03T00:16:00.004-04:00

Am going to try this online web word processor to update my blog. Currently it is still in beta, and my first attempt at using it failed miserably. Of course, before I hit update, I failed to copy all of the text that I had spent half an hour entering so mega frustrating...This time I shall be adequately prepared!!! If this experiment does indeed succeed, anyone that may be interested in trying out something new, then check out WriteToMyBlog - I am such a sucker and always super eager anytime something new and different gets introduced.

OK, so the past month has been on the busy side. It looks as if finally we may actually be getting ready to go to trial. i.e of the three guys that attacked us and stabbed Jim last year. We met with the Crown and Victim Services for a fairly lengthy visit last week, and both of them have certainly done their homework. We both are feeling pretty confident that they are the ones to complete this successfully for us, and to represent us fairly and competently. I mean at the best of times, its certainly a bit of a crap shoot so here's hoping. Got all of our fingers crossed. Am also as nervous as hell as the prelim hearing is now just two under two weeks away.

To top everything off, I have been slowly but surely decreasing my dose of methadone. From a high of 100, I am now at 45. I have been on my current dose now for about two weeks, and of all of the decreases, this one has most definitely been the most challenging. If I go much more than 24 to 28 hours between my doses then I actually start to feel as if I am starting to go into withdrawal - mild withdrawal, but withdrawal none the less.

We had all of our blood work done recently, and while my results were all above excellent, Jim had a bit of bad news. His hep c is currently active, and the various liver tests that they performed came back way out of the normal range so his doctor was kind of concerned. He'd like him to start interferon treatment once the upset of the trial is behind us. Apparently I've got an angel sitting on my shoulder as all of my tests show up as better than normal. Go figure. I suppose that Jim getting stabbed in his liver has done nothing to help him!

P.S. My above experiment failed miserably so I give up for now. Don't know if it is me or the web site, but thank goodness for copying and pasting or once again, I would have lost yet one more update!!!

Manic Street Preachers

2009-10-02T22:29:00.002-04:00

Hey, did I happen to mention that in less than 48 hours, I will finally be going to a show by the Manic Street Preachers? I've literally only waited fifteen years for this to actually happen. I am so stoked!!!

Funeral March

2009-09-12T14:03:00.004-04:00

Well, the funeral turned out to be absolutely beautiful and something Daniel would have been pleased with, if this were at all even possible. Standing room only, too. It was still somewhat weird having to return to the town of our youth especially under these circumstances.

The actual service ended up lasting just over an hour. Both of his sisters got up to speak - he was the middle child - as well as his best friend from high school and also one of his nieces - in total he was uncle to five nieces and one nephew. The minister's sermon was very fitting as she took time to address Daniel's two decade battle with mental illness and depression, as well as talking about how he ultimately died. In fact, no one that got up to speak shied away from these normally uncomfortable subjects. To be sure, his parents opened this door originally when they stated in the newspaper's announcement's section how their son actually died. This was certainly a most unusual, not to mention brave move on their part. I can't remember ever seeing something like this mentioned in any other announcement of death in a paper's personnel's section.

I certainly can understand their reasons behind doing this. Anyone attending his funeral would have already been familiar with the fact he was bi-polar and had been for decades. This eliminated having to respond to dozens and dozens of people asking how he died. I can just imagine how both of his parents would have dreaded this part of the whole service, but because of the type of people that they are, they would have answered each and every question without hesitation.

Jim and Daniel started high school twenty nine years ago, and except for a few of their class mates that just simply could not make it to the funeral, almost their entire class managed to show up. This fact alone speaks volumes and then some...Its unfortunate that Daniel never was able to recognize this fact. For most of his life, he felt irrelevant, or that he just simply couldn't measure up to the rest of us. If only he could have taken a step back and actually seen what it was we all saw and recognized in him.

He was a brilliant writer and artist, as well as an excellent student and athlete. Everything came naturally for him though he may not have quite seen it that way. He was one of the best looking guys in high school who could have had any girl that he wanted, but ended up spending his years there single. He was accepted into all of the universities he applied for, and even managed to excel while studying away in a foreign city away from his friends and family.

It was during his final year at university that he was diagnosed with manic depression - my understanding is that this is now called bi-polar - and even with this, he still managed to graduate. For about half a decade after this, he ended up in and out of institutions, so that by the time he was in his thirties, he felt as if he had really been left behind, and never recovered from this setback.

It really is all very, very tragic. His sisters read some of his most recent writings and while they were all exceptional, they certainly spoke to his current state of mind. He was filled with far too much pain it would seem, and nothing on this world seemed to offer him the relief he so obviously sought.

Peace, love and happiness...

Suffer Well

2009-08-27T00:54:00.001-04:00

Jim and I have to go to a funeral in the morning. I've only been to three other funerals in my entire life, which is a good thing I suppose. One of our friends from high school committed suicide four days ago. He had been suffering from depression for decades now, and I guess his wife of nine years leaving him recently was just too much for him. He had moved back in with his parents so it was his mother that found him. Even though at one point in our lives, we had all been close, we hadn't really seen him in the past decade. Out of respect for his parents, though, we are going. Jim's folks and his still live in the same small town we all grew up in, and they both attend the same church each and every Sunday. I hope that is suffering is over and that he has finally managed to find some peace.

The Informers

2009-08-22T17:20:00.001-04:00

I've just finished watching The Informers. Its a new film written by Bret Easton Ellis based on his book of the same name which was published in 1994. The book is actually a collection of thirteen short stories, and this film has done its best to adapt these stories. It was directed by Gregor Jordan and features an ensemble cast, such as Winona Ryder, Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, and Kim Basinger. It also was Brad Renfro's last film before his untimely death. The film basically covers stories of seven of the film's characters with these stories taking place over the course of one week in 1983 Los Angeles. These stories cover the lives of movie executives, rock stars, and other morally challenged characters.

This film was by no means great, in fact, I'm not even sure if it is even good, but for a number of reasons, it ended up kicking me in the stomach. In an instant, I was transported back to the year that I turned nineteen, 1983! This was to be a seminal year for me and my friends. This was the year that we graduated high school and were about to enter university. Our whole lives were supposedly stretched out in front of us, as in, the world was our oyster. We were invincible, or so we thought. We dreamed of going off to uni, being away from home and anyone that knew us. We imagined that this would be our time to finally be sexually free, to be able to experiment and to be able to do this without fear of any consequences. How quickly this was all shattered and destroyed.

1983 was also a time when we had first started to hear about some mystery illness that initially seemed to be randomly killing only gays and IV drug users. A plague of sorts. A plague that was also extremely terrifying especially since the medical community at the time appeared so utterly baffled and helpless. Uncertainty was everywhere. Once the heterosexual population started to show signs of this illness, fears escalated rapidly, as did denial. The medical community had yet to announce how this illness was spreading nor how it could be prevented from spreading.

One thing, though, that we seemed to recognize instinctively, were any thoughts of us finally being able to have indiscriminate sexual encounters would have to end if we were to remain immune. So much for us going off to university with thoughts of anonymous one night stands dancing in our heads. Didn't matter any more if we were on the pill as a much larger issue now existed. Not getting pregnant would be the least of our worries. The party really was over, as was our innocence.

This movies touches so many aspects of what me and my friends were going through in our own personal lives twenty six years ago. It seems eerie watching it now, almost voyeuristic. It also almost appears to be a sequel to Ellis's book/movie Less Than Zero. The book originally was published back in 1985, with the movie of the same name coming out a couple of years later, although there were a lot of changes and departures. What may really end up being interesting will be if Ellis does indeed publish a sequel to Less Than Zero, something he has been promising for a little while now.

P.S. Speaking of the above movie, I just had to go and dig it out to watch yet again. Even though its a bit on the dated side, it still remains one of my favourites from that time period.

Suicide Is Painless II

2009-08-13T19:23:00.001-04:00

Well, we really don't have much more info today than we had last night. The standoff with the police did eventually end peacefully approximately two and a half hours after it had started. No one was hurt, although allegedly Charley was holding his ex-girlfriend against her will with him in the garage. This is the same female that he beat beyond recognition last year, and who he was not to associate with by any form of communication imaginable as part of his sentence. Now, to be fair, it is never him who violates this order. Each and every time, it is her, and each and every time she does this, it comes to no good. Yes, she was very much the unfortunate and undeserving victim of last years assault, but otherwise she has been nothing but poison. He has changed almost beyond recognition from when we first met him six years ago, and these changes have all happened within the past two years.

To be fair, he has always struggled with mental issues. Since Sara was sixteen, over three years ago now, she has tried relentlessly to get this young man some form of medical help but so far, to no avail. His mother is in complete denial regarding his mental state of mind, even at times such as this. At one point Sara even became a patient of Charley's family doctor in order to talk to him about her concerns. He is beyond desperate and is badly in need of professional health.

Right now, I'm kind of pressed for time so have to be brief, but I'd be remiss if I failed to mention how absolutely amazing the police were in regards to my girls last night. I had to call 911 with the correct address, and was fortunate to get the same dispatcher as Katie. While on the phone I asked if the police would be able to call us back once they had arrived at the scene and everything had been sorted out - at this point there was no hostage taking, et al! She said that normally they don't do this but she would ask.

The girls continued to call his house. At one point the phone was answered, and he identified himself as one of the officers on the scene. He engaged in conversation with Katie and she was able to supply him with a bit of Charley's mental history and possible current state of mind, etc. When all was said and done this particular officer ended up calling the girls back twice, and both times their conversations were fairly lengthy. He deserves to be commended as he was able to calm the girls down considerably, plus assure them that now there was a very good chance that Charley would end up receiving long needed medical attention. Patience he had in spades to be sure.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Suicide Is Painless

2009-08-12T22:31:00.002-04:00

I was actually planning on talking about something entirely different than what I am about to talk about but even the best laid plans, etc, etc. Earlier this evening my foster daughter, Katie, and I were sitting in the living room having a bit of a chit chat. I was sitting on one of the couches while she was at the computer half heartedly surfing the net. We were'nt really talking about anything particularly heavy, just swapping humorous antidotes to pass the time. As Katie is a fairly social and popular girl, the phone pretty much rang endlessly while we talked. She's got call display so she pretty much ignored most of the calls. I had been dying for a washroom break for a bit so finally I made the move to head towards one of our bathrooms. One of the calls she had been ignoring was from one of the girls oldest male friends.

We're going to call him Charley. He's now 21, but I've known him since he was 15 and the girls were 13. He's always been a very sensitive and somewhat troubled young man. I never really knew how much until the past couple of years. Both my girls have been very protective of him often to there own detriment at times. By what Sara has told me as well as my own conversations with him, I suspect that he may very well be schizophrenic, and if not, then certainly mentally disturbed. He hears voices and often has black outs where he remembers nothing. Often these blackouts can cover many, many hours. He's also done some scary and violent things while blacked out or after voices have finished talking to him. While he was still a minor my daughter begged and pleaded with his parents to get him help of any kind. So far, they've done nothing although I would like to think that after what is actually still occurring this evening, that they do something now.

Once I discovered the entire truth about Charley and everything that was going on around him, I was forced to limit my daughters interaction with him. It was for their own safety. Any time that they've been allowed to socialize with him, they've had to do it under our roof. Yes, I am all too aware that they now are both adults and most likely going to interact with him whether or not they've got my permission or not. Thank goodness though, they are both pretty mature and level headed and recognize that right now he is not a positive factor in their lives. He has just recently finished serving five weekends in jail because of what he did last year to his ex-girlfriend. During one of his blackouts, he beat her to within an inch of her life at the busiest and major downtown intersection at 10pm on a Friday evening. Finding witnesses to this beating apparently was not an issue.

Not going into the immediate fallout from this attack, but there was a lot and it still appears to be happening a year and a half later. When Katie finally did answer his call this evening, he said that he was calling to apologize for what he was about to do. He said that he couldn't deal with the police anymore, nor could he return to jail. He couldn't go on anymore and was ending it now. She obviously started going hysterical. I didn't even get into the bathroom before I was back in the living room to find out what had gotten her so upset so quickly. Pretty much able to piece together what was going on from her end. He hung up as he needed to call two more people. She was convinced he was serious so we instructed her to call the police, etc. Finally after calling 911, she got him back on the phone. He was barely coherent by this point and understandably abusive on finding out what she had done - one of the others he called did exactly the same thing. I've never been so glad that when they were younger I had demanded the address and phone number as well as being allowed to talk to the parent's whenever they went to a friend's house for the first time. It made it easier providing accurate info to Emergency Services.

For about an hour and a half after she made the call she heard nothing. This was particularly distressing as during the course of their second call she had overheard him gasping for air, possibly vomiting and finally drifting away until she got no response from his end. Eventually, she reached someone at his house - one of the officers called to his residence. Currently Charley has managed to barricade himself in the garage with some sort of weapon, and most of his very residential street has been evacuated while SWAT or this city's equivalent deals with the situation. The officer was exceptionally gentle with my daughter. They actually asked me if they could go over just in case they could help. I said absolutely, as soon as the police spoke to me with their permission. Hello? OK, I get it. They were pretty much told that they would be turned away because they couldn't guarantee their safety, etc. The officer assured Katie that he would be looked after, and as long as the situation doesn't escalate into anything macabre or violent, he would be taken to the hospital and placed under 72 hour observation by order of the police.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Manic Street Preachers

2009-08-07T16:25:00.002-04:00

One of my all time favourite bands is coming to Toronto the first weekend of October of this year. Of all of the concerts that I've seen in my lifetime, this is one band that I've not yet been able to enjoy live! Until now! I just got my tickets for their show less than an hour ago. I am so excited that I am practically vibrating. I feel like a love sick teenager with my very first crush. Manic Street Preachers look out! I've been literally waiting to see you since 1992. I guess there is something to be said for patience after all. Much more later from me once I've come back down to earth...

Methadone Pretty Indeed!

2009-08-02T22:46:00.002-04:00

The following is a reaction to a debate - somewhat heated to be sure - that I recently got into with someone who once had been one of my dearest friends. Finally after a decade and a half of a pretty hardcore opiate addiction, he decided to go on methadone and has been on it just shy of two months. Already, he is spouting the rhetoric that I hear so very often from the majority of methadone patients at the clinic that I attend, and once again, I found myself frustrated. If some of what I am about to say doesn't make complete sense, I apologize in advance as I was on a bit of a tear when I typed most of this!

I know that Methadone Maintenance Therapy and its success/benefits can certainly be a hotly debated topic on any given day within the opiate addict community. I certainly can understand why it is something that can get both the for and against sides worked up into quite the lather. There are many times when I wish that there was at least another solution to MMT rather than cold turkey and abstinence available to me, but unfortunately, in southwestern Ontario, Canada this is pretty much all that I've got right now.

Quite often, the meth program in my city can be a very negative experience. The few doctors that are part of it often stress only the negative - the high recidivism rate if you were to actually complete the program or the likelihood that you would spend your entire life in treatment. There can be little to no counciling, plus often they push and push you until you are on an almost unmanageable high dose often prescribing amounts way above what was your true blocking dose. Then they discourage you when you want to start to taper down and decrease your dose. I refused to go any higher than 95mg once I felt that I had stabilized and am now currently on a dose of 60 that I find is more than adequate.. My husband stopped increasing his at 145mg and is currently on a dose of 90. A lot of the other patients were encouraged to go on doses that were at least double our amounts. No wonder they all felt like crap most of the time, not to mention feeling rather defeated.

Never mind all of the talk of methadone's side effects. This alone can defeat you before you're even given a chance to get started. How is it possible to imagine a life in recovery, if you're never given the required encouragement to attempt to even get there? I think that a lot of methadone''s side effects are in reality urban legends. Now after spending three and a half years on it - round two for me also, as I spent almost the same amount of time on it a decade ago - I found many of the supposed possible side effects or reactions never materialized unless you literally "willed" them upon yourself. I found that those that bought into and blindly believed and accepted all the garbage that our doctors were feeding us actually developed exactly what they were told they would develop. Self-fulfilling prophecy really.

For many this became their license to not have to work or even look for work and justified their desire to eat any sweet thing that passed remotely within their line of vision and pound on those extra 70 pounds. Suddenly they felt completely justified in needing a previously unprescribed prescription for Ritalin to keep them going. While many of the people that I met while I was in treatment fell firmly into this category there were some that could just not settle into the program and found meth treatment to be an unfulfilled painful step of their recovery process. For these unfortunate few there were real and valid issues with methadone.

Yes, you definitely feel more exhausted and it is hard to focus at times. Suddenly you feel as if you have developed ADD. No doubt years of opiate abuse combined with meth's assault on our bodies throws our metabolism right out of whack and we all seem to pacify this with an increase in our daily sugar intake. Obviously a weight gain will soon follow. But is this weight gain solely from the meth or are we no longer running ourselves into the ground constantly searching for our next hit? Once the hunt is removed we immediately become more sedentary. Combined with the fact that each and every penny is no longer being spent on illegal substances we find that for the first time in a long time we actually have a well stocked fridge and a full cupboard. We can finally get rid of that jumbo jar of peanut butter and $.99 package of plain crackers.

With this kind of philosophy from the clinic it was no wonder that the majority of the patients felt as if they had traded one losing card for another. Had there been a little bit more positive feedback from the doctors I think that they would have seen entirely different results. I talked to so many that were also suffering from constant low level depression while in treatment. Because I felt that I was being prescribed my true stabilizing dose, once there, all cravings for opiates disappeared. Honestly

Depeche Mode | Molson Amphitheatre | 2009 07 24

2009-08-01T18:58:00.003-04:00

Well, of course the concert was simply bloody amazing. All that I expected and ever hoped for, utterly no disappointment whatsoever! All of us had an amazing time that's for sure. I screamed and jumped around like mad and sang out the words to all of the songs loudly. It was insane. As I've not got much time right now, I'll leave you with a review of the show from the Toronto Sun . An update very soon.

Depeche Mode's Gahan Thrills Fans

By JANE STEVENSON, Sun Media 25th July 2009, 5:09pm

Veteran British electro-dance-pop outfit Depeche Mode kicked off the North American leg of their so-called Tour Of The Universe in Toronto on Friday night at the Molson Amphitheatre with frontman Dave Gahan looking no worse the wear.

Gahan, you may recall, had a health scare back in May when he had a low-grade malignant tumor removed from his bladder, leading to the postponement of six European dates that were eventually rescheduled.

And just earlier this month, he also injured his leg on stage at a gig in Spain.

But if Gahan is feeling the effects of his recent health woes, he sure didn't show it on Friday night in front of a sold-out crowd as he gleefully performed his trademark dance moves that included some sexy hip-wiggling, shaking his backside at the audience and twirling around with his mic stand high in the air.

Yes, Gahan looked skinny, but when doesn't he, and his deep voice was clear and strong over the course of a 22-song show that stretched over two hours.

The group, which included founding members Martin Gore on guitar-keyboards and a sunglasses-wearing Andrew Fletcher on keyboards, played on an eye-catching stage dominated by a large LED video screen and matching circular ball screen hanging above the group.

Gore also looked sharp in a shiny silver sequin suit.

Unfortunately, it took a while for Depeche Mode to find their groove as they trotted out the obligatory new material from their latest album, Sounds Of The Universe, including the rather somber In Chains and Wrong, and the slightly more upbeat, Hole To Feed.

The audience, however, seemed thrilled just to have Gahan, in particular, in their presence and were on their feet immediately, cheering whenever he took off an article of clothing or was in exceptionally good dance form.

And when the hits finally kicked in - this is a group who have sold 100 million albums worldwide since their formation in 1980 - with Walking In My Shoes, which featured a backdrop of a crow on the video screen with a large eyeball projected on the ball above - the crowd couldn't be contained as they happily sang, danced and clapped along.

A string of crowd pleasers, It's No Good, A Question Of Time, and Precious - the latter from 2005's Playing The Angel - were interrupted by another buzz kill song, Fly On the Windscreen, followed by Gore taking over on lead vocals for two back-to-back ballads, the new song Little Soul and Home (maybe to give Gahan a break), although Gahan eventually returned for two more unmemorable new song from Songs Of The Universe, Come Back and Fragile Tension.

The thing about Depeche Mode songs when they're good, they're great, but when they're bad, they seem to go on forever.

Thankfully, the second half of the show really kicked into high gear, beginning with the dramatic I Feel You, followed by the dance-happy Policy Of Truth, Enjoy The Silence - featuring Gahan, Gore and Fletcher as stoned-faced astronauts in a video - Never Let Me Down Again and an encore that brimmed with some kinky material like Master And Servant, Strangelove (featuring a video in which a young Asian woman sucked the toe of a young redheaded woman who eventually exposed her breasts), and the mother of all Depeche Mode songs, Personal Jesus.
---

***1/2 (3.5 out of five)
Depeche Mode
Molson Amphitheatre
Friday night
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SET LIST

In Chains

Wrong

Hole To Feed

Walking In My Shoes

It's No Good

A Question Of Time

Precious

Fly On the Windscreen

Little Soul

Home

Come Back

Fragile Tension

In Your Room

I Feel You

Policy Of Truth

Enjoy The Silence

Never Let Me Down Again

FIRST ENCORE

Stripped

Master And Servant

Stangelove

SECOND ENCORE

Personal Jesus

Waiting For The Night

just can't get enough

2009-07-24T06:21:00.001-04:00

In less than 24 hours, I will be swaying to the beats of one of my all time favourite bands - Depeche Mode. At times it seems as if it has taken a lifetime to get here - the moment I heard Just Can't Get Enough when I was seventeen, way back in 1981 I was hooked. I've remained hooked until this very day. They have been one of the constants in my life. It seems rather fitting that I'll be enjoying them with two of my other constants - my husband and daughter. Come September, it will be twenty-nine years since I met and was introduced to Jim. Imagine that, almost three decades ago. We've definitely shared some adventures over the years.

Now we are sharing in our recovery. Both of us have been on MMT for just over three years, and neither one of us has stumbled - yet, cause you can just never say never...Had we been still using, this concert would have been missed. In fact, I doubt very much that it would have even been much more than a blip on my radar. No time for stuff like that back then. Would have dismissed it with the excuse that we could simply not afford it, which was not at all truthful. In reality, we couldn't be bothered to afford it, as our money was already earmarked for something far more important. What a difference a few years has made. I paid $150 for our three concert tickets, and yesterday paid out almost another $150 for our three bus tickets to Toronto. I've budgeted another $150 to use for our spending money. To a former addict, this is a massive step forward. Being able to hold onto money, to put it away to use later, to actually save is a skill that we rapidly lose once we become a junkie. I am happy, and proud and plan on really enjoying our family day out together at the show - Toronto garbage strike be damned!

P.S. Jim also just celebrated his 43rd birthday on Thursday! Happy birthday baby...Love you always...

I Got The Music In Me!!!

2009-07-15T00:38:00.001-04:00

For as long back as I can remember, music has played an important part of my life. Discovering the wonders of Elvis Presley as a nine year old would forever alter the way that I looked at the world. To me at that time, I felt as if I had discovered something that no one else had any idea even existed. It was truly a magical and innocent time for me, and from that point on, I had to have music on in the background for every one of my waking moments - the hours of my day devoted solely to school would at times seem unbearable. From Elvis I moved on to pretty much whatever happened to be playing on the local AM Top Forty radio stations in my area. You can well imagine just how limited I actually was in regards to my musical choices, seeing how I just so happened to be growing up in the deepest, darkest musical abyss that was southwestern Ontario of the late 70's. To my young and naive being though, I didn't really know quite how awful it really was, and how much I was really missing out on. Of course, this all changed the summer that I turned fifteen, 1979. This would be the summer that, for better or worse, changed me in ways I can't even begin to describe. Those brief months became a revelation to me, and from this point on, there was no way that SW Ont would ever be able to hold me down!

It was getting towards the end of June 1979. Grade Nine was rapidly coming to an end, and summer vacation was beckoning us all. Couldn't wait for those lazy days of summer, especially as this summer just happened to offer something very, very special. My father was a teacher at the local community college, so he too, got to enjoy a couple of months vacation each and every summer, just like myself and my brother. As a family, we also had immigrated from Ireland to Canada a decade prior to this summer, and while my Dad had returned home a few times over the preceding ten years, the rest of us hadn't. This was all about to change, as my family would be spending this summer's vacation in Ireland, as well as England - my Mom's parents had moved there from Ireland a number of years earlier so we were going to spend an equal amount of time between both countries and both sets of grandparents. I was so excited, although at the time, I had no idea exactly what kind of adventures awaited me, nor how profound a change these brief couple of months would end up having on me.

Although, my brother and I had more cousins living in Ireland, we did have a handful our age living in London, England, and they were more than happy to show their cousins from the colonies exactly what a huge city has to offer. Nothing in Canada prepared me for the grandness of London. At the time, we lived in a small town with a population of slightly more than 1 100. The largest city was a twenty minute drive from where we lived, and even then, its population didn't quite reach 250 000. I was captivated instantly. I surrendered completely the second my cousins took us to Kings Road in Chelsea. I had never, ever seen or heard anything quite like I found here. Punk rock was alive and kicking, so to speak, although by the time I had arrived in the UK, the original punk movement that had exploded in 1976, had long since disappeared and been replaced by what many classify as a second wave of the punk rock movement. By the time that I arrived, punk had splintered into a number of sub groups, many of which I found exciting beyond belief, and for the brief couple of months spent in England and Ireland that summer, I couldn't consume enough of this new music fast enough. I discovered what would soon be called New Wave and Pop Punk were my favourites and to this very day, I remain faithful and true to my first loves.

In just over a week's time, I will be going to see one of my very first loves, Depeche Mode! They have a show at Toronto's Molsen Amphitheatre on Friday, July 24 - just so happens, this show falls on the day after Jim's birthday! We're going to make it a bit of a family day as Sara is coming with us - she was also allowed to bring a friend with her so she wouldn't be stuck all day with our boring selves! This is also a bit of a big step for us as we've been keeping pretty much to ourselves this past year. Certainly, this event will have the largest crowd of people that we've had to interact and function within since the attack. Could prove fairly interesting. If nothing else, it certainly is a testament to how much I adore this particular band as I can't think of too much else that would motivate me this much that's for bloody sure.

Now, as an aside and for anyone that might be interested, besides Depeche Mode, my other all time favourite bands would have to be the Clash, Social Distortion, and Manic Street Preachers. I have a boatload of almost rans but that list would be too long...If I were stuck on a desert island, though...

The Pen Is Mightier...

2009-07-08T17:58:00.003-04:00

I have been keeping a journal of some sort on and off since I was about 10 or 11, so about 34 or 35 years now. I kept one religiously all thru high school and university because it seemed like so much was happening with things changing so quickly, I was afraid that I would forget stuff and at that time in my life, I wanted to remember everything, good or bad. As I settled down into married life in my twenties and then motherhood in my thirties, keeping a journal was but a faint and distant memory. It was the farthest thing from my mind. At that time, there seemed to be no time left to undertake this sometimes time consuming task, plus, for better or worse, my life had seemed to have settled into something of a routine. Excitement and change seemed to be memories of the past. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Seven years ago this past June, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away the following March. For the first time in over a decade, I picked up pen and put it back to paper. Towards the end of his life, I found myself in a long since forgotten place, but suddenly it became extremely important that I remembered everything that was happening around me these last seven or eight months of his life. Now more than any other time, I did not want to lose so much as a single memory from what was happening. I was so very afraid that I might forget something about his last days. For all of us, it was definitely a time of change.

I carried my journal with me everywhere. I filled up dozens of blank ones over this period of time, and every time I started to feel restless, I would write, and write, and write. Many days, I had a lot of time to do this. For twenty plus weeks, I spent each and every week day waiting in various rooms at the hospital for my father to complete whatever appointment he had that day. Every day he had his radiation treatment, plus there were a multitude of other types of appointments related to his cancer. To top everything else off, he was also getting chemo at the exact same time as his radiation, although the chemo finished about a month after the radiation. For just over five months, I drove him to the hospital five days a week for his treatments. Most days we would be at the hospital the entire day, but there were others where we were lucky enough to get out of there within the hour.

Regardless of the length of each visit, there was plenty of time for me to reflect and write. It was also a time for me to really get to know my dad all over again, as well as he had a chance to reacquaint himself with me. Bittersweet is an apt description I should imagine. After he passed, I continued to write as an outlet for my emotions. To this day, I carry a journal with me everywhere I go, and any time I feel the need, I write something in it. An entry can be one word to endless pages. I have found that whenever I am restless, upset, bored, impatient, irritated, you name it, the moment that I start writing I am immediately calmed. My recent journals follow no set form. They range from neat and tidy to tremendously disorganized and messy. I paste pictures in them sometimes. I doodle in them. I make sure that each one is different from the next. I haunt stores looking for unique and different books to use as journals. I have become quite creative in my quest to make each somewhat unique in its own way.

Now, I also keep an on line journal, although it is nowhere near as current or updated as my written - I am hindered somewhat by my complete inability to type as well and as fast as I would like. It was about five years ago that I was told about livejournal.com . This became my first foray into on line journaling. It seemed to take me an exceptionally long time to feel comfortable expressing myself publicly, although once I more or less got the hang of it, it became easier and easier. For the most part, I have liked using livejournal, and in fact, initially, I ended up having a number of separate accounts there. In the beginning, I mostly used them to display and store my art work. But these earlier attempts were dishonest at best, half truths at the most. They in no way reflected my actual life, although they did allow brief glimpses of it from time to time.

As I became more familiar and comfortable with this method of journaling, it became increasingly important that they start to actually reflect what was really going on in my life at that time. Initially though this caused me momentary paralysis as I certainly had no desire to lay bare those portions of my life I had spent years pretty much hiding from the general populous. My "alternate" life needed to continue being exactly that - one face for the majority and another for the precious few that were familiar with my drug use/abuse. That face was not yet ready for public consumption.

With the identity that I had been using, I found that this was going to be impossible to be completely frank and open about my lifestyle. Finally one day, I created an alternate online identity to reflect my alternate life. This is the one that I continue to use today. Over the past four and a half years there has been a blurring of my real and of my alternate world. This has become possible because my comfort level continually increases allowing me the luxury of honesty. For the most part, my mask is still there. I try to keep my name and my families and those that are important to me as anonymous as possible in an effort to ensure that their privacy is respected, as there is no certainty that they may feel as relaxed as I.

The majority of my drug use/abuse years are currently not available to read anymore online as the site that I had been using for this particular period of my life, literally disappeared overnight about two years ago. I used to be part of a group of addicts and recovering addicts that all had their personal journals at JUNKLIFE. At any given time, there were about twenty to twenty five of us sharing our stories with each other and anyone else who was interested. Sadly, it is now gone. After a number of frantic months attempting to contact the web master, I finally was able to get all of my writings from my time spent there. Until I received them, I was utterly gutted, as I had well over two hundred separate entries just from the two years I had been writing there. More importantly, I needed these writings available to me as an aid in my current recovery. I had only just started MMT when my site disappeared, so the lion's share of what was happening to me during this period reflected my very active addiction, as well as documenting how I allowed it to get so out of control. With each passing month, you could see where I was inevitably heading - the proverbial, or cliched, rock bottom.

Now, while I have all of these entries stored on my computer's hard drive, I have utterly no clue how to get them uploaded once again to the INTERNET. They were sent to me as one .sql file - whatever the heck this means cus I've so got no clue! Ideally, I'd like to add them to this site, or even if I had to, start a new site for my archived writings from my addiction period. I can go through this very large file and enter one entry at a time by copying and pasting it, and then back dating said entry with its original publishing date and time. I've manually entered a few, but it is just too time consuming, and honestly tres boring to have to do it this way. This site was actually started approx May 2007 when I first started having trouble accessing my previous site. Any writings from that point on are all original to this site, any before this time, were culled from my previous two sites, and are sadly not remotely enough to really paint the complete picture of my severe addiction years. If nothing else though, they are a start. Perhaps I'll suddenly feel energized enough to enter a few more of my old entries! LATER...

Stings Like A Bee

2009-06-30T03:58:00.004-04:00

Someone recently commented about how I have somehow managed to keep this inside of me, or not to have posted about our attack and Jim's stabbing. Initially after the attack, I made a few brief posts and for those I think you can find them in the archives for May 2008 and perhaps even June 2008. I did save some footage that the local tv station broadcast the day of the attack as well as the few days immediately following it. Not for the faint of heart, but if anyone is interested in watching one of the news reports, simply click HERE to view. You'll need a simple media player to view this file.

Ultimately, three young men were arrested and charged with the attack on us as well as the stabbing of Jim. While all three of them participated fully in the attack, only one of them actually stabbed Jim. This was probably a good thing as the one fellow doing the stabbing managed to stab Jim a total of twenty four times. While a number of his wounds were defensive in nature, three of the stab wounds were extremely critical ones, and for whatever reason, should have been life ending rather than life threatening. To this very day, his doctors are still utterly amazed that Jim managed to walk away from this alive. He now has a near four inch scar on his neck where the knife ended up slashing through. By sheer luck or miracle, his main artery managed to be missed by the smallest amount, although the knife managed to damage nerves and tendons in this area. Jim still suffers the aftermath of this wound today as he has yet to regain feeling along that side of his body from the top of his head down through the upper part of this leg. He is by no means paralyzed on that side, but it is very apparent that some form of damage has been done, not to mention the loss of strength and co-ordination vs his other side. His lung was pierced which caused it to collapse at the site of the attack, plus his liver was also pierced b y the knife. Additional liver issues is exactly what a recovering addict wants/needs to deal with later in life as well! As a result of these two wounds, Jim now also has a major scar on his chest running from the end of his throat to his belly button due to the emergency surgery required to repair these wounds. Lucky me got to witness this entire attack.

To say that we have both been dealing with issues since this attack is definitely a bit of an understatement. Obviously, for Jim, his immediate concern was getting his health back which has required a lot of work on his part. He has had to go through some brutal physiotherapy sessions to get himself back to close to normal. He still has a long way to go but at least he's able to even do this, something the doctors weren't too sure of this time last year. Pretty soon he will be starting therapy to deal with PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I am currently in therapy myself getting help for the exact same thing. Initially, I had no idea how much this attack had affected me and my outlook on life and the rest of the world, but the longer that I am in treatment, the easier it is for me to see the damage. I have mixed feelings about everything IE the attack, our recoveries from it, the accused and what will ultimately happen to them. By this, I am referring to their ultimate criminal trial which has now been postponed twice. This is so very frustrating as we are now waiting once again to get subpoena to testify. Initially, the trial was to be held in January but that was canceled. We got another subpoena for the trial to begin May 7, 2009, but less than 24 hours before it was to start, we received a call stating that it was going to be adjourned until a later date and to disregard our most recent subpoena as we would be issued another once a new trial date had been set! Grrrr...Apparently one of the defendants decided he wanted/needed a new lawyer so now his new lawyer needs time to prepare.

I have mixed feelings about having to testify in court as in I'd really rather do anything else but this! I know that if this does actually proceed to a trial then I ultimately may have no choice. Obviously in the end, I will also do the right thing. I guess because for so many years, we lived in that gray area of drugs and dealers that for me, its kind of a knee jerk reaction to avoid the law and courts at all costs. Its like I'm being a rat of some sort if I testify against these three. I know that I am not, that this is an entirely different situation. These are people that you had never, ever seen before that day. These are people that don't run with the same crowd that we used to run with, nor will they ever. Yes, its now been three and a half years since I removed myself from that environment, but its still hard to shake off the stink. Also, ultimately, these three attacked and deeply affected me and mine, and by their actions, very much made it personal. I also know why they are dragging this out delaying their day in court, even though, to this very day, not one of them has been able to make bail and have sat in jail since about three hours after the attack. I understand that one of the accused is still only a landed immigrant to this country and that there is an extremely good chance that once he has served his sentence, that he will be deported back to his country of origin - the Sudan. I suspect that the other two - who happen to both be brothers - are counting on getting two for one credit when sentencing is finally handed down.

The thing is that, honestly, I don't really care what happens to these three now. Whether they are released five minutes after their trial ends, or whether they are sent away for another few years it doesn't really matter. Their damage is already done. No sentence or punishment will give us our old life back. Its gone, over, changed forever.

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By JANE SIMS, THE LONDON FREE PRESSLast Updated: 10th December 2009, 11:07am

COMMENTS:

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By JANE SIMS, THE LONDON FREE PRESS
Last Updated: 10th December 2009, 11:07am