Category Archives: Recovery

Letter to Someone Considering Suicide

10 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Depression, Health, Men's Health, Mental Health, Poetic Blog, Recovery, Suicide, Women's Health

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Suicidal2

by Bill Watkins, formerly suicidal
3/10/2022

Dedicated to the memory of Robin Williams

***

I would have told Robin just to sleep.  Stop trying to breathe.  Stop doing stuff and thinking you have to do stuff.

What suicidal people sometimes forget is the glory of the “mini-deaths” cleverly built into this life: sleep.  The complete cessation of activity.  The suicidal want to stop, want all thinking to stop, so… STOP!

Complications arise with drug and alcohol addiction.  Next to that, or maybe the same thing, is a bedevilment of negative thinking, insane thoughts—which any human being is capable of thinking from time to time.

There is a snowball forming, and suicidal people might start to believe the lies they are telling themselves that all would be better, if they were dead.  If they took an action to stop the heart and stop breathing… for good.

I was a victim of a suicidal depression that lasted about three or four years.  Parts of it are cloudy still, but I can now sum it all up as:  Alcoholism.

I started drinking Dad’s last sip of bourbon when I was five.  I started drinking the flammable, volatile, toxic liquid on my own with friends by the age of twelve.  I was blacking out on the substance by thirteen.

The above facts were not of interest to the multiple doctors I saw for depression at the end of the last millennium.  They saw and heard some symptoms, started to prescribe me drugs.  One of those doctors is now a recovering alcoholic, but because they missed my obvious alcoholism I sometimes think all of them were either alcoholic, drug addicted or just plain incompetent in the field of mental health.

I forgive them.  Alcoholism is “cunning, baffling and powerful,” to quote Alcoholics Anonymous—a powerful, tough, formidable foe.  I don’t blame anyone for my alcoholism and subsequent suicidal depression, but have come out of it to celebrate twenty years of consecutive sober days to distrust Western medicine in some areas.

They and all of us are fallible!

To the person who is at the time of reading this letter considering suicide, I say: “I love you. Thinking of suicide is a normal response to pain, when the pain builds and builds and sustains over a long time.  Love and accept yourself in this moment, but if you have a place to sleep that is warm and sheltered, be grateful for it and ‘die’ the mini-death that is sleep.  Stop trying so hard to breathe.  Slow down.  Do nothing.

“Do nothing for as long as it takes, with no time limit.  Based on my experience, the good rest and permission to stop will after time become a meditation or dream that makes you want to ‘go’ again.  You might get a vision that is positive.

“As far as managing life through a suicidal depression, stop doing that. Get out a piece of paper after your rest, and write down one or two things you want to do.  Eventually a bucket list (since you’ve been craving death anyway) of passions and activities.  Today, of course, you can only manage one or two of those things.

“Do them.  Love yourself for this one day.  That’s the only day that matters and exists.  If something makes you smile (that is not harmful to anyone, drugs or alcohol), note that and do it.   Repeat it, and follow that bliss throughout your day.  Your day is now your life!

“Note stuff in life we can’t control, like results or the future.  Let them go.  Maybe even consider prayer to a power greater than yourself.  Call it whatever you want to call it.  Just know you’re not in control of everything, and if you let yourself go… if you stop trying so hard and just rest… you’ll find the world continues to spin, and I do believe based on my own experience that positive thoughts and dreams are within us all…

If we wait for them.”

No Mistakes Too Great

30 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by in Amends, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery

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Awareness is all; Truth paramount,
Words trying so hard, give them
a chance!

Where were you at the middle school
dance?  Were you trying to be cool?
The truth is…

We were all made perfectly, like a
Christian Scientist would say, things
are just right.

“Nothing useless is or low, each thing
in its place is best,” why anyone wrote
poems after

Longfellow is a mystery, to improve on
genius one needs to study history, admit
each feeling.

No matter how bad things got or whatever
mistake or crime one commits, there is
always a way…

A way back, forward, out in overcoming
the problem, give the body and mind
a chance.

I was blinded at the dance, the devil in
my life since I drank with Dad, his last
sip of bourbon,

then I had a first crush and never told her,
the devil happy because I was a liar.  Third
grade!

So when other crushes came down the pipe
in middle school, I was a master liar, looking
for what?

How do you improve on the first girl the
LORD gives you to love?

Haha!  You cannot!

You live a life of lies, until you admit the
truth in a 12-step meeting or somewhere
else safe.

Truth wounds all heals, sews them up,
heals all wounds, over time all mistakes
and sins!

It’s never too late to change, to make
amends, to live the true life where Truth
itself…

becomes your best friend.

Nostalgia

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in 1984, Alcoholism, Healing, Nostalgia, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery, Sobriety

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Nostalgia1

Sometimes a wave
of emotion overwhelms,
regret mixed with memory
mixed with pain mixed
with extreme pleasure,
near uncomfortable but
inescapable as passing gas.

Truth shines as rainbows
after storms, but stuck in
clouds are chances lost
to time to do or say the
right thing.  I wish I could
go back and be a true soul
in place of the wet rag I was.

1984, English Beat becoming
General Public, the middle
school dance floor opening
up, everything ready to go
except me.  I’m half there,
half aware, half unsure and
in the end 100 percent alcoholic.

It’s not just about the drink,
it starts with not expressing love.
She was there, I loved her,
I never told her.  She was there,
I loved her and never told her,
it repeats over and over the
great sin of dishonest omission.

The pain, the year, that rain,
the rainbow after, the songs
the dances free of commission—
relationships half engaged like
marriage without consummation,
or love without children, songs
without rhythm beating funeral

marches to the grave like
Longfellow said.  Recovery
is being the “Hero in the strife”—
changing your life, watching you
and it grow away from the past
like survivors from the fire,
it tries to lick you to safety.

Ouch, don’t get hurt!
Nostalgia is a flash from the
past, a time when you faced
a world of opportunity and fun,
was not ready and can only
hope now that once begun
is half done, heal thyself—

Watch Mary Poppins and be
a child, this time the one
that tells the truth and falls
fully in love with the moment
in the dance that years ago
left you that taste of regret.
Now is all, for old age to forget.

The Summer of Blackout and Throw-Up

20 Friday Jul 2018

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The Summer of 1984 started in 1983, of course,
all paths that led to my insanity laid out and
carved by then.

I was twelve, going on thirteen when everything
was not as it seemed, blackouts and throw-up
becoming routine.

Nothing worked, when it came to reporting
my feelings!  I loved her!  That girl in third
grade, my dream!

But I lacked the words in a house about
to “divorce,” no one listening to the wise,
rebellious Nazarene rabbi,

who said “man cannot separate what God
had bound together,” and so we went our
separate ways—

Love, peace and happiness on one side,
trading “up” we thought for more, so
wouldn’t it be fun to

Have two Christmases?  Two homes?
Two codes by which to live, two lives
in one, distinct and yet same?

We were split down the middle, alcohol
a great religious or scientific riddle, “God”
if you will or won’t

standing at least for unknown creating
and moving… God needed by Need itself,
the atheist using other words

to mean the same exact thing!

***

Anne in third grade was good enough,
and Mary said that was a sure “feast,”
but lack of truth

festering in the pit of Bourbon and water,
psychotic sips taken because a commercial
or mother or father

thought it was okay, and pitched the flames
into our very best days…

Anne was good enough, but I lacked the words.

Sorry, indeed, I was bound for a hell of
my own sad making! From Anne I went
to plan B, then C, then D, then all the others
doing the same thing!

Lying and loving, lying about loving, not
telling them of my feelings but getting
darn good at alcohol drinking.

Barf. That and blackouts, like the one during
the Mexican world cup of 1986.

Peeing on my friend’s couch, being awakened
in the middle of the sleep by sister’s
friends, laughed at because I was small,
immature and two years from puberty.

Proverbs and Malachi warned against certain
things, among them not treating the wife of
your youth well.

To deal treacherously with her was to curse
your life, and make all clear wins a steady
blur; pastimes like baseball only hiding the
love for an hour or three.

God a word sung but nothing good without
meaning!

Bill Maher and the atheists—I love you—
a rose by any other name as sweet, so bitter
leaning, the journey back to youth,

all our adult plays and words so futile,
as we look at Grandma, give her a hug
and say good bye.

Grandpa surrounded by loved ones with a
tear in his eye!

This, if not a place in the clouds could
certainly be eternal life!

Never have to die…

***

Movies and tennis, trips to a beach
with friends.  I didn’t know I was a serious
talk with one person away from a
spiritual awakening!

I had to almost die, before the choice
is made to live—not because you have to,
but because you want the love you find
when you discard the lies.

Every dance in ’84 was one away from Anne
and the wife of my youth.

Cursed I write this song; cursed I seek a
better home; cursed I walk along, penitent
and aware of my horrible sins of putting
myself and my fears ahead of God and his or
her will for me.

Alcohol is a False god.  Kills more people
spiritually than physically, but then again they’re
the same thing, the worlds collide in the mix
of pain and joy, the rainbow after the rain
our path to the sober and sane!

Feel that!  Yeah, feel the pain!!!

We have a path to Heaven not by our
actions but efforts; imperfect we reach for the
thing babies reach for, Creation smiling,
ourselves powerless over the next caress,
hurricane or frilly red dress.

We purge our old life in the memory of
sickness on the ground, picking up the
pieces of the mess of messing around.

Rich kids, poor kids, the only thing that
matters our commitment to being as
little kids!

Heaven is the gate in front of us, open
when we halt our advanced studies of
love and hate. Look up…

Give and love today…

Before it is too late.

I Like Life

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Life, Nature, Peace, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery

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Just as it is.

It needs not our sour rot,
the grape is better than the
wine—a reason they call war
trophies spoils,

the disease of more plundering
the till that is perfect as is,
Lao Tzu’s quiet, uncarved block.

I like Life!

Sunshines and rays against the
mist making ready rainbows of
our worst rains and pains…

I like life!

Just as it was; God, Higher Power
the mantra hated by an atheist,
his or her right but look not to
altered states—

Put up a fight!!

Do not say good bye until true
fatigue sets in, the eyes close
in a smile—

Good night!

I like life, citizens of Rome, nothing’s
wrong until we think too much,
adult games forgetting that philosophy
that to get to heaven (peace of mind)
one must be like a child.

I like life—

Calm in the middle of strife.

The worse thing that can happen
often out of our control, ask
the powers above for Wisdom,
be like King Solomon and grow
very old!

Not 100 years like today, but
hearken back to the Old Jews’
day.

“He was 946 years old, and was
gathered to his people.”

I like life!

Sunny, rainy, put up a fight!  Sing
song, God, good, no?

Rain.  Sunshine.

Bow.  Rainbow?  Fine—the end?

no.  Beginning?

Always

Amends

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Native, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Recovery, Slavery

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You feel good, yesterday a gem of service
instead of a face-down rumble into rum
and the glass,

All is possible looking down at a schedule
for one day, with God at the top, sleep
at the bottom,

Recovery the dream of getting back what
you never really had, so hallelujah!!  It’s
back to youth,

the dream of all that could be and the action
to “move the chains” toward it, as footballers
might try to say,

In love with life, just for today.

***

You feel good, no more running away,
acceptance the key before changing
what we do and what we say.

But before all that, truth must shine,
we must admit our faults to God,
ourselves and another human being

this is a basic AA thing, 12 steps
to freedom and growth, to
God only knows—sunshine and rain

producing a golden rainbow to block
out and record the pain.  Write a book,
or just plan this day, God laughing with you

as we climb the trail toward the
Great Mother’s sinewy sinew, a waterfall
worth a thousand pictures, a stream

trying to win back Los Angeles and
become her river once more.
Concrete from rock, we break down

our modern thoughts.  We seek
a Native voice, but must study and go
back to see the facts for proper choice.

God be with us, to turn our good
into better, to rise in our sobriety
to remember the native and slave

in chains.  To make amends for the
pain that stains, the rain that reigns,
the peace that shames because it

was not justice for all but for only
the white, privileged kings. God
grant us more than shiny new things,

but the wisdom to see what the
Chiefs saw and were: the Gold of the
land in its true love.  Gratitude.

The lost art of standing.  Sitting.  Laying
down in the midst of greatness when
the buffalo spirit returns, dirt to the shirt,

Take off our ties, go back to England
and tell the Crown at Last!!!!

“We found the gold, Ma’am. Yes,
it was the native people.  Their wisdom.
Their love of land and connection to it.”

Sound the pipes, rattle the skins,
scrape the strings, the Celtic song
revives to the native revival, a sign

from all the gods that to call yourself
a child of God, be grateful for what you
have, forgive the wrongs done you,

help another find shelter, if you are
blessed to have it, and join the alcoholic
as he or she marches backwards to

right the wrongs never more wrong
than now…

It feels good.

It’s Kinda Fun

17 Thursday May 2018

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Walking in Peace, the drug and alcohol,
gang affiliation in the rear-view, you
stop destroying so bring on the peace.

It’s kinda’ fun, the hope of a day, it
can go this or that way, on we
walk or run, it doesn’t really matter

as long as we walk from the fire
that was your old life of disillusionment
and fear, that wide path to funeral pyre,

caught in the mosh, smoking and drinking
flammable liquids and plants in confused
trances non-transcendental tangential mire.

It’s kinda’ fun!

This life without the harm. You harmed
because you didn’t know the option not to
do so, you had your defenses that it takes

sometimes long hours, days, weeks, months
and years to discard—it can be hard!

You let go the bull, accept the cow, or heck,
you can even go vegetarian, it doesn’t much
matter, as long as saved we walk the narrow

for heaven.

****

Which may just be a peace of mind, knowing
we did our best to be the best people
we were capable of becoming, John Wooden’s

success through the front door blowing,
the wind of change through the front door
coming—you cannot slip out the back

anymore, unless the move could and would
help mankind, women too—you mom or
wife waiting at the door to see what you can do.

Waiting and waiting, but it was God, not them
that shined in the cracks, shined to give you
facts, that I’m not an animal a la White House
prejudice, throwback racist forays into bathroom
locker room talk, excuses to behave like jerks
not the way or the Tao but a sure path wide and
secure for the hell of your own making.

We walk away!!

Isn’t this fun?

You bet yer tail, this is a blast!!

Long songs absent the whine nor wine
this could be your time, one day at
a rhyme, the pen it moves and dances of
its own, you wake up to dreams of lines
to time thou growing, because you prayed
not to yourself or loved ones but to God
all-knowing!

It’s kinda fun!!

I could turn and/or twist this way or that,
walk up, walk down, make decisions,
which is to declare victory for one side
of an argument—

No one in war winning, we look over the
fallen with tears in our eyes, be they from
ours or their side of the fight—

God has the might!  We should not
wield a sword or force just because we think
we have it, turn around!!!!!

It is not tough to stand in the way of love,
the soft and weak blessed by God through
Jesus Christ, a rebellious rabbi not
enough listened to in Jerusalem or
Gaza strip, who will walk there and
preach the message of peace, willing to
die for it like the Indian Chief, stepping
into the caldron of war to prove a point
that nobody wins when the heart stops
its beat?

Killing is killing, and never defense, the army
and Navy getting it wrong when we train,
shoot for the torso on the range!

Turn around, follow me, put your weapons
down, learn true defense, martial arts,
only for defense and restoring peace when
peace is thwarted, then return,
all of us—grow flowers with our tears,
it’s never wise nor tough to roll on
the ground with other men, “friends” in
quotes egging us on, walk away,

Walk away, Walk away—

walk with me and the rebellious rabbi
toward a new day, follow me!!

Isn’t sobriety fun?

Giving flammable drink the “hasta la vista”
dance of “no more, no more,” no thank
you sirs and ma’ams, yes to say “No”
can be a complete sentence as we head back
to the old community full of new ideas,
hope and changed attitudes—

Our latitude often the same, you cannot
geographically escape from yourself,

us facing the greatest enemy alone, we must
choose blessed or cursed, we can
find our land someday, get off Native land
I never bought to find my own land someday.

To stop the curse.

To stop cursing.

To see the native family never using
curse words, pushed to the side and what
we thought was the worst land, until forever
the archetype is repeated, that the wise and
soft win heaven in the end.

Peace of mind.

Sexual Mistakes

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poetry, Recovery, Sex, Sexuality

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Anna's art1

We are where we are, we cannot
be better than our best in the moment
we act.

Looking back, we wish we did better, have
power only to tell the truth about it
and Apologize.

Many people despise looking back, get
offended at my wanting to do it, but they
are not in A.A.

We have twelve steps, all written with
past tense verbs, showing the spiritual
program used

by the first members of the program.  They
went back and made amends for the past to
make a better

Future.

***

Before there was sex, there was sexual feeling
and attraction.  We stripped the Barbie Doll
down and got aroused.

I looked in a mirror, and marveled at parts
of my body that intrigued me; I thought I was
amazing!

My first favorite person was Dad.  Mom “divorced”
him, a long-term separation of bodies, but Jesus
spoke truth,

Said “Man cannot separate what God has bound
together.”  Divorced people fail lie detector tests
when they

say they are not married.

Marriage is for life.

Who’s the Wife of Your Youth?

I thought mine was my third grade crush,
Anne Devereux, but she has moved on so where
does that leave me?

Life is cool, Jesus changing water to wine, a
metaphor at least for moving mountains with
faith and hope—

a newborn baby making it all new again, anything
possible under the sun!  God bless the child, the daughter
and the son!

There she was in third grade.  So pretty.  So cute.
And I, I had no clue what to do, no one to help me;
I let a huge moment pass;

I died a bit, then kept dying until I sipped my
first wine, stole into parent liquor cabinets to
douse depression.

“Everybody does it!”  We’re so adult here, getting
drunk and escaping.  Now we’re really disobeying some
commandments and law—

God is watching.  Counts every hair on our heads.

You will wish you were dead.  Better to get up, follow
God instead of the devil no matter the short-term pain.

There is a rainbow after the rain!

No joy without the pain, this is life!!

***

I was going to talk about sexual mistakes; impossible
without sex.

I was a virgin until 33—seven years short of a
crazy movie comedy.

It really wasn’t funny to me.

A lot of my mistakes, looking back, come from
fear and pride—fear of rejection, and being
too proud to gush for another person, a wife.

So you run and run, oh and then you masturbate—
because no one with authority told you “no.”

No one talked to you at all about deep, intimate or
sexual stuff—adults, like children, lost and not
knowing what to do!

****

I declare, and in the new light of new revelations
of sexual abuse in America—that Masturbation
could very well be a very bad thing—as the Puritans
would say… Maybe they were right!

Give your will and life to God.

Then honor a Sabbath and your parents.  Kill not,
ah! Then:

Marry, honor and rejoice with the Wife of your
Youth!!  Do not stray or treat her treacherously!!

Consult Solomon and Malachi and see!

***

Well, where did my fear, pride and masturbation go?

It went where it could, was thirsty without a well,
a desire creeping up, temptation un-resisted—it went
online, it found lonely women who liked it too.

Once, I got an eighteen-year old to engage with
me on Facebook, used a friendship to corner her
into a sex act.

Not illegal, not the worst thing ever, but if I could
go back, I’d rather have kept the friendship, let
something bloom, keep in touch with a beautiful
young woman who had dreams and ambitions like me—
was an artist and a writer like me.

In a moment, I reduced her to a sexual object, and
no longer are we in touch…

***

I quit “sex” two and half months ago, but mostly
that meant I quit abusing myself to get a sexual high
every or every other day.

No more jacking off.

And now I have female friends.  More contacts and
options.  Intimacy without vulgarity.

I still want sex.  Dream of it!!  Need it!!

But it is under the thumb of my prayers and
higher desire to please God and the Wife of my
Youth.

Anne?

I am available to her, unless God gives me some other
convertible water—something to change to non-
alcoholic wine,

A woman to honor, a love to shine.

2nd Adolescence of a 33-yr Old Virgin Alcoholic

30 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Recovery, Sex, Sexuality

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Whew!

It’s hard to make a comeback, especially
when there is nothing behind you—only now.

Drinking fire on Dad’s lap at five, I let
my first crush pass me by…

There were no feelings, nor a safe place
to explore or express them…

Until I got to Betty Ford at 22, and a black
social worker named Lee intervened on
my dishonesty.

In time for me to abandon the sickness of
telling lies, in time to join Al-Anon, overdose
twice, join AA, and finally have sex on my
third sobriety birthday.

I was thirty-three in human years.

Thirty-three!!!  Seven short of a Steve Carell
comedy on the subject, and of a sad topic in
my Abnormal Psych class at UCSB.

I’ve been on a long second childhood and
adolescence post-Lee and Al-Anon, since
telling the truth and trying to “move on…”

It’s hard to be a child with a beard.

It’s hard learning to say “I love you” and
other truths for the first time in a man’s
body when they expect you to “Go to
Work.”

My mind without alcohol beating down on it
was “working.”  That work I did…

Work was Force multiplied by Distance, said
my Physics teacher, known to live a life of
Celibacy—how could he?

Easy.  Hard.  Difficult, but with a God or Higher
Plan about you, anything you want to do can be done,
even moving the canyon from there to there.

I have given up sex to honor my first crush, the
Wife of my Youth.  No one told me to do this,
but the idea came like a prayer to wrestle my
mind from confusion.

Honor.  Honor your parents, yes, keep the
Sabbath day holy, believe in God, don’t kill,
lie or steal, but also:

DO NOT COVET and DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

Do not pretend to be single, when you have failed
to keep your commitment to the Wife of Your
Youth…

I am married to God and her.  She lives not with me;
therefore sex is not possible for a moral man.

No one told me what to do with sex growing up,
No one told me about it, what it was for and
with who to have it…

My first life was a dishonest pass through love,
never admitting or expressing it.

A “childhood” of alcohol consumption, sports
and superficial relationships.

That “childhood” had to die; a new one started
in the middle of my body’s manhood—which made
many, including me, uncomfortable.

But it had to be done; I had to live the Truth, get to
here, pray to God—find my sexual and loving path,
reason and pray sex away in the current moment,
make an adult decision to Honor all that makes
us proper men and women.

“Be as a child” to enter heaven, and “rejoice
with the Wife of your youth…”

That is the plan, not handed to me by any
person, though spiritual friends have helped.

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”

We can make our lives sublime, Longfellow
reminds, go big or go home.

“Be perfect as God is perfect,” strive to be the
best we can be, and attain John Wooden’s
famous peace of mind, if you merely strive
you surely get it.