NIRVANA! Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Staind, Three Days Grace, Pearl Jam, Audioslave, Mouthpiece, The Killers

LOTR, Harry Potter, Miracle, Legally Blonde, French Kiss, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Sunset Boulevard, Arsenic and Old Lace, Sweet Home Alabama.

BIG BOOK (the most selfless, passionate act of love ever written)!!!!! Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, LOTR, Harry Potter, Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller

Photography, outdoor activities, running with my dogs, crocheting, going to hockey games.

Surrender feels so good when you finally do it. I did it AGAIN on Valentine's Day. Doing the 90/90 thing regarding my cross addiction, which is bulimirexic/drug addiction/alcoholism.

Now the fog has cleared a bit more... I will tell you about myself. Clean for seven years before thinking I was "cured" and began to "casually drink" (because I did not really ever believe alcohol was a problem for me! duh! Get honest or die. Right?). Then I began to casually smoke pot (married the guy I relapsed with and within a year - diagnosed him as an addict!) After a while, casually no longer described the way I drank or got high. Before I had realized my life was in a downward spiral - I became very sick (no. like REALLY sick. lol).

My symptoms were chest pains, swollen stomach, difficulty breathing, which over the six years and ten months of being sick went inaccurately diagnosed. They kept telling me the chest pains were anxiety (giving me a drug I had never had called Xanax), they gave me oxycotin, hydrocodone and dillauded to try and deter the very real pain that began to spread all over my body. The first 2 years - I refused to fill the scripts and declined the meds. I was no longer smoking pot and had temporarily stopped drinking. Eventually, all of my joints began to swell and I could not walk unassisted so I took the meds with some reservations. At first, I made sure to take them as directed, then I got progressively worse until they began writing me higher doses because they were still not able to find out why I had "pneumonia" all of those years, with a daily fever. On the 4th of July, I awoke at 3 am with the most severe chest pain in the world while running a fever of 103. They admitted me to hospital and FINALLY found I had a 4 cm tumor in my chest that had calcified and my chest was completely filled with scar tissue so they cannot take it out unless I sign a waiver releasing them of libel if I die. FINALLY I was diagnosed with disseminated histoplasmosis, which has spread all over me. All it took was one little blood test to finally find I had contracted a fungal infection and was given the medication to get rid of it.

Of course, I kept calling for more pain meds (deep down inside knowing what was happening) until my doctor said I should be getting over the pain since the infection was clearing up. I KNEW it was time to stop, but just kept pushing it until I was taking 20 or more Tylenol PM's with liquid hydrocodone and Robotussin cough syrup all day long and never leaving my room for days on end. A few weeks ago I asked my doctor to start reducing my dosage and to give it to me in tablets instead of liquid. The last script ran out the day before Valentine's Day... I took my last hydrocodone on the 13th of February 2008. On Valentine's Day, I made the call to 12 step hotline and did not even realize until the next day that I had chosen to love myself on Valentine's Day by getting clean and sober.

The withdrawals have frankly been a m.f.in' BITCH, but I am so happy to know that today I hurt because I am getting the drugs out of my system and not because I am waiting on a refill. As for my health, they still cannot remove the tumor or scar tissue and it is not expected to go away. But hey, I live in a program of recovery with people who society did not expect to recover so anything is possible.

There are reasons for the suggestions and I have lived a wonderful life in the past where my wildest dreams came true in recovery. Those many years, I watched a great deal of faces come into the program and became friends with many of them only to see them go back out and use. I began to keep a scrapbook of the newspaper stories or obits of my friends who had relapsed and were murdered or O.D. because it broke my heart to see them believe the lie that they were able to "control" their disease.

Yet, after seeing eight of my friends die tragic deaths in under seven years, I began to think meetings were for newcomers and I could do one every so often. Then my sponsor relapsed and I moved away from my small town into the city. Being a very fear based addict, I did not have a desire to go to meetings in a big new city where I was a stranger. Besides... I thought I was cured and could "control" my life. Obviously, like my dear deceased friends, I began to use. Thanks to my God who allowed me to live through multiple overdoses and for protecting my children who I would pile in the car while I was severely trashed. My biggest gratitude is all of the people in the program who pounded those sayings in my head (In the beginning those phrases pissed me off because I could not comprehend a life of being clean and resentment free) and to the BIG BOOK for the words it wrote on my heart - helping me to finally realize that I was killing myself faster than the tumor. Today I will do the next right thing and not drink or use - Just For Today.

I love the outdoors, love to hike, run, rock climb be with people who are real. I LOVE HOCKEY. Photography, dogs and writing are my passions.

ADDICTIONS! Golf! Football! I HATE shopping malls!