Altered States

I've gone through and reviewed all of my links as I had noticed that some were no longer active, as well as discovering a number of new ones.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...

• A Mom's Serious Blunder
• A Mother's Heart
• A mother's heart...broken by heroin
• Addiction Stink's Blog
• An Addict In Our Son's Bedroom
• Awakening Through Love
• Dawn's Early Light
• Enabling Love
• Heart Speak
• Heather's Mom
• Helplessly Hoping
• Her Big Sad
• Her Mother's Blog
• Leaving Addiction Behind
• letgohangon
• Living Life with an Addict
• Mom trying to Detach With Love
• Mom vs Heroin
• Mom's Painful Awakening
• Mother of a Beautiful Addict boy
• mother of a drug addict
• My Daughter's Addiction
• My son is an addict
• One Mom Talking
• OXY & OPIATE ADDICTION
• Parent 2 Parent
• Parental Hades
• Patiently Waiting
• Recovery Happens
• Stay Close
• The Addict In My House
• The Delicate BALANCE
• THERE IS NO HERO IN HEROIN
• Works Aside
• Writing From the Inside Out

Life of a Recovering Drug Addict

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

Don't Know What To Do...

Well, it looks as if I was wrong all along about getting my old writings back from my previous site. I did actually have them returned to me which has made me outrageously happy. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to bits to have them back all safe and sound. There is just one tiny, tiny problem. The type of file that was emailed to me is one that I am not remotely familiar with, so I have no idea now what to do with this file!

I somehow was able to view the file through one of the programs that I've got installed on my computer that I use as a substitute to Windows Explorer but after confirming that all of my writing was there, I've no idea how tro proceed. If anyone is able to help, please let me know. The type of file extension that I got is .sql

Thanks to anyone that is able to give me a hand.

Journals

I have been keeping a journal of some sort on and off since I was about 11, so about 32 years now. I kept one religiously all thru high school and university because it seemed like so much was happening and things were changing so quickly that I was afraid that I would forget stuff and 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 the farthest thing from my mind. There just didn't seem to be the time and if seemed as if life had settled into somewhat of a routine. Excitement and change seemed to be a thing of the past. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Five years ago this past June, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away the following March. Towards the end of his life, I picked up pen and put it back to paper in a large part to work thru my emotions while my father was dying and because I was afraid that I might forget something about his last days. Also my writing became a relief in many ways for my mother who was afraid that she would forget some minute detail of my father's final days. It suddenly became extremely important to her that I was able to recite in great detail everything that might have occurred on a specific day or over a specific time period. My journal became her security blanket in many ways. It was definitely a time of change for all of us.

After he passed, I continued to write as an outlet for my emotions. I carry my journal with me everywhere and any time I feel the need, I write something in it. An entry can range anywhere from 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. Needless to say, 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 made them all my very own by decorating them in some special way covering many of them in scraps of expensive taffeta and similar fabrics.

About three and a half years ago I was told about livejournal.com. This was my first foray into online journaling. It took me a long time to feel comfortable expressing myself publically, but once I got the hang of it, it became easier and easier. I have liked using livejournal and in fact now have a number of accounts there. Mostly I use them to display and store my art work or to join one of their many communities that have interested me in the past. At first I really liked having my journals there and especially liked the whole "community" mentality but after a bit of time there, I started to want or need something different. I started looking for alternate places where I might be able to share my alternate life, something I had yet to be honest with at livejournal.com.

I also wanted my journal to actually reflect what was really going on in my life but because of my "alternate" life I found that this was near impossible using the identity I had been using, well mine. One day I created an alternate online identity to reflect my alternate life. No one would know that it was me. Hence sickgirl was born, a name that I got from bastardizing a Social Distortion song Sickboy plus the whole addict world of dope sickness.

I've now frequented various places on the net as sickgirl now since about the fall of 2004 so I guess its been about three years now. I'm still not completely honest with the world as for all intents and purposes I'm blogging anonymously but then I guess lots of us are doing just that too. While it would be ideal to be able to be completely forthcoming, I know that this would be impossible because there are other people than myself involved in this endeavour and it wouldn't be fair to them.

New Home

Well I guess that this is it, my new home. Goodbye to junkylife.com. That's really too bad. I had spent quite a bit of time really making that site my own. Lots of hours went into creating my own graphics as well as all that time wasted now, stumbling through learning css, html, php, etc, etc. Never mind the time I'll never get back. This I can get over and move on. The near two hundred posts made there over two years are now gone like the wind. I'll never be able to recover or remember them and it is this that may take a bit of time to get over.

These past two years there had a pretty detailed account of my addiction at its absolute worst as it was occurring. Of course I can remember particular events of the past couple of years but these entries allowed me to transport myself back in time with absolute accuracy. Also there was my story of getting back on MMT and how I was doing with it and how I was feeling about the whole recovery thing and what a success its turning out to be for me and mine.

I also thought that my archives could one day possibly help someone else struggling with similar issues. There was a lot of detail and hopefully some inspiration there too, plus I had spent a good chunk of my time putting together a massive amount of links related to addiction and recovery and the whole darn thing.

Who knows, maybe it was my time to move on from junkylife.com and start a new chapter somewhere else. Perhaps this is nothing more than fate doing what its exactly supposed to be doing. I don't really know. I know this whole experience has left a bitter taste in my mouth especially the way I had to find out and all. If it truly was my time to move on, I wanted to be the one to make this decision not have it arbitrarily made for me.

OK AM BEING INTERRUPTED BY MY HUSBAND AND WILL FINISH THIS ALL UP LATER.

OK, back now, although for how long, I am not too sure, as everyone seems to want me to be doing anything else but be on the computer. Anyway, I suspect that my time had probably arrived where I actually should have been thinking about packing it in over at junkylife.com. I haven't been an active junky now for a year and a half and while I know that this is something that will forever be with me, it no longer was the primary focus of my existence and being.

Again, all that I really wanted in the end was to be the master of my own fate as much as this is realistically possible. I was also gutted that I wasn't given some sort of heads up so that I could have been prepared for my discovery. Not to know what is actually happening with my site at all is what galls me the most. I suppose I expected more and I still do to be honest. I'm doubly distressed by the total lack of response from the other end.

I find it all very confusing and disconcerting. It's not only not responding to any of my emails that troubles me but I've left a couple of comments at his blog plus filled out and submitted the contact form at junkylife.com twice. Again nothing. Someone suggested that perhaps my site was inadvertently lost and he is afraid of having to deliver this bad news. Until this was said to me this never even crossed my mind. It certainly makes a lot of sense and I could see something like this happening.

Doesn't make this any better but...I suspect that junkylife.com may also be on its last legs as parts of the site that should be accessible are no longer. Hopefully this will be only short term. I did have another journal at livejournal.com for close to a year before I started writing over at jl and for a few months after I joined, I continued to post identical entries at both sites. Yesterday I started the task of copying and backdating these entries so when I am finished this site will appear to have been around for a few years. Is this cheating? Don't think so.

Well, I Guess That is That

Well, it looks like two years of my life have been wiped out in an instant with nary a thought od me and how I might feel about the whole thing. Grrr...

It has now been a month since I've been able to access my previous site, the site where I have spent the past two years updating, meeting and healing. It appears that it is no more and it appears that I've got no say in this matter either. How utterly devestating if the truth be told. I never thought that it would actually come to this but I've obviously been sadly mistaken. You know that this site had almost two hundred entries which was a lot of work, not to mention all of the work that I had put into making the site graphically appealing. Hours of my time that I'll never recover.Obviously it's more than just the hours of time but this is the easiest item to point toward because its somewhat tangible where everything else is not. junkylife.com had become a real safe haven for me. I also managed to meet a lot of wonderful people through this site. I realize that I hadn't been updating as frequently as I had been these past six to eight months but never the less, I was still updating at the very least bi-monthly - way more than some of the sites that still remain. Double Grrrrr...

I had good reasons also - my broken wrist combined with returning to work full time and to a job that was brand new to me. I also managed to move in this time also, so realistically I didn't have a whole bunch of time available. But that shouldn't even be the point. There were other sites that updated less frequently than I and certainly no where near as often, and yet, they are still standing. One site that wasn't removed hasn't bothered to do an update since February!!!!

I'm also mad and frustrated because all of my recent emails have been returned to me. I've even left a couple of comments at his site and even filled out one of the contact forms at the main site but nothing of mine has been answered. This is the most frustrating aspect of it all. A small acknowledgement would end up going a huge way with me but no, nothing at all. Obviously there are a few other things equally frustrating but there's nothing I can do about them by the look of things.

When I initially signed up for a site two years ago, I was promised that should I leave for any reason that my entire site would be saved and sent to me. I was also told that my site would not be archived unless it had been inactive for three months or more and even still, people would still be able to access my archives for at least an additional six months, and that, of course, my site would be sent to me. I also was under the belief that I would first be given the chance to update before my site was archived. Obviously I've been under quite a few misunderstandings.

No, wait, I don't think so. I think that someone that isn't me has neglected his obligations entirely and now is attempting to ignore any and all of my pleas, perhaps in the hope that I will meakly and quietly go away. Not going to happen. I am moving from feelings of despair and sadness to full blown anger that will be hard pressed to be satisfied successfully. I mean, come on, you couldn't even take the time to send me a head's up email that my site was going to have to disappear? Instead, I have to find out all on my own. That's pretty low if you ask me not to mention cowardly but whatever...

Now I Am Mad

Pretty much my title says it all. My site is still not back up and running nor have I received the site emailed to me as the original Terms of Service promised when I decided to place my site at its location. Any of my recent emails to the webmaster have also been returned to me as undeliverable so now I am also concerned as well as mad.

My most recent email stated the following - it was a response to my initial question of what had happened to my site and his response of removing some inactive sites that may have been causing the server problems:

"Not sure which of my emails you've recently received because I've had a few undeliverable so if this a duplicate then my apologies.

Please reinstate my web site ASAP. Admittedly I had only been updating once a month lately because of circumstances but I still had been updating way more frequently and recently than some. The highlighted ones below all have entries that are older than my most recent one. As I can't access any of my material, I don't remember the exact date of my last update but I know that it has definitely been within the past month. I certainly do not consider this an inactive site especially as you had previously advised us you wouldn't archive sites until at least three.

Kel July
Seedless July
blake March
Bonkers May
Beautiful Disaster July
Paint it Black June
Kitten July
Naomi April
Ogre June
Peregoric Kid July
Junkyard saint July
History of Madness Feb
Saturine July
Hacker May
b1ll1 April
sweetdreams July

If you are unable to put it back up then could you at least send the site to me? I have to admit that this has really upset me especially as you didn't notify me beforehand and I hadn't any idea what was even going on. Just checked it a few miinutes ago and it is still down.

Thanks... "

What's a girl to do???

Oh Where, Oh Where Has It Gone

I know that it's been an eternity since I posted here but so much has happened in the last little while that I haven't been able to dedicate as much time to the computer in general plus I also have another site that I use as my primary one - or at least I thought so. I'm actually kind of mad right now because without so much as a warning, my site was removed. I wasn't even given a heads up email before this was done.

One day about two and a half weeks ago, I tried to go to it to do an update and I received an error message stating:

The requested URL /sickgirl/ was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

WTF?

At first, I thought that the whole server was down so I didn't think too much about it but when I tried a couple of days after that and then a few more after that well, I started to kind of panic - two years of my life were invested in this site and I didn't have even the tiniest bit of it backed up. I darn near cried.

I emailed the individual that looks after the site but no response so I emailed him again at another one of his email accounts and finally after six days he responded by stating that he had removed all of the inactive sites but that he could put mine back up. Inactive. WTF? Mine had been updated less than a month prior while there were at least more than half of the ones that he kept hadn't even updated in three months or more. Man, the more I think of this, the uglier I get.

I've requested that it be reinstated and also if that can't be done, then to send me my site. He said to give him a day and that was today that I received his email so we shall see what happens tomorrow.