Sober and Shameless

Holiday Reflections

I was asked by Discovery Fit and Health to write about my favorite holiday memory...

I have been sober now a long time. I have had the privilege of having 19 sober holidays, filled with family, laugher and warmth.

 It would be difficult to choose one of the 19 that has been better than the others. Each holiday has been a new experience, as I grow into a new person, sober and clean. With each passing year I am better able to enjoy my family and friends, as I become more secure with myself and at peace with my addiction and life.

 I had holidays away from my family, while addicted. The holidays held a particular type of loneliness. It seemed that everything hurt a little more. The emptiness felt deeper, the cold stung longer and the days and nights felt endless. The streets were busy with shoppers and passers by, during the festive season, until the early morning of the actual holiday. The streets were empty and still, as if they bled out through the night, church bells would ring in the distance and the bittersweet sound seemed to vibrate through the freezing air, landing hard and shaking loose the lost memories of family holidays, when the days were better and the love between us still sweet and painless. I would be left with a hopelessness that would fill to the back throat, that was so painful and dark, I felt as if I might suffocate, standing upright, in the middle of the sidewalk, on Christmas day.

 It was then that I would desperately seek oblivion.

 The holiday season holds a different meaning since surviving addiction. One of my favorite parts is gathering around the holiday table, where my family, my sweet children, beloved nieces and nephews sit, and while we eat, there is laughter and love and feeling of family that binds us deeply and hard together. The other favorite time is watching my clients enjoy their first holiday sober. My phone rings and in my inbox fills with sentiments from the families I had the privilege to work with through the year. The messages are of gratitude for saving the lives of the ones they love most. I am very clear I do not save lives, but feel humbled and honored, to be apart of and to bear witness to, the awakening of their beautiful souls lost to addiction.

 During this holiday, I look forward to another season filled with family, children, friends, clients and the knowing that my life has purpose, which has been the greatest gift of all my years and holidays sober.

 Happy Holidays, my devoted fans, I am grateful for your unwavering support

 Sober and Shameless, Kw

One Year Later

One year ago today, September 5 my husband shot himself.

I was at a neighborhood BBQ with our children.
While the hamburgers were grilling, John was loading the gun.
As my son opened his soda, John was laying himself on the bed.
As my daughter ate her ice cream, John texted’ I love you’ to each of us
And as the band began to play, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

A shot rang out.
Like an earthquake, powerful enough to roll concrete, the gunshot, echoed through the hot sticky air, and fell onto us, deep within, where the heart beats, and breaks, and aches, changing our lives, forever.

One year later, I am still standing. Still sober. The year has been incredible painful as I try hard to make sense of his choice so I can answer the questions my sweet children ask. Strangely, the year has also brought great happiness. I have found great love and support in new friends, and my home has been filled with warmth, home cooked meals, kind hearts and laughter, and as I stand back and watch my children begin laugh and play, once again, I somehow feel hope that in time, all of this will have meaning.

I am not sure how the future will look, or where the path will lead, but as I sit here on my couch, reflecting on the last 365 days, I feel grateful for my family, my friends and each of you who have help carried me through the darkest days of my life.

As this first year closes, I want to say thank you. Your support, emails, messages, letters, thoughts and prayers, have held me up and given me strength to keep moving forward.

And to John, You are missed every day by our beloved children. We talk about you often as I remind them about your smile, your beautiful blue eyes, your voice, your hands, your laughter and many of our days together as a young family. You are still very much apart of our lives.
Rest in Peace, my sweet man.

Sober and Shameless, Kw

The Premier Of Addicted in Discovery Fit and Health

Season Two of Addicted will premier Tuesday August 28 on Discovery Fit and Health at 10pm, and I am asked each day how I am feeling about the day approaching.

Being a part of an award winning TV show was never on my radar, not planned or even dreamed about. 19 years ago, I was hopelessly addicted, homeless, hungry, cold and despairing, wanting to die every second I was alive. Finding recovery at 21, I slowly rebuilt my life, healing my spirit, facing the viscous and haunting memories of the street, made amends and peace with the people I harmed, and began to walk into a future that was uncertain and with sobriety, wide open.

 Intervention is a calling. Great interventionists are not created through studies and training but come from within. Intervention is the art of connecting instantly with addicted individuals, in a way that allows them to come forward and open themselves to the opportunity for change. This is a skill that cannot be taught, it is innate. Intervention is far more than my work, intervention is my calling and it has been an extraordinary way to spend half my life.

Addicted has been a life changing experience. For this addict from the streets, jumping in front of a camera, feeling vulnerable and afraid to expose my work, life and my heart, swallowing hard, standing face forward, chest out, feeling the fear and jumping anyway, has left me with a new sense of courage.  I don’t pay attention to the cameras anymore; they truly fade away as soon as I am in front of the addict and family. Addicted might be a TV show but the work is real, the families and stories are real, and that it what matters most to me. Addicted might win awards, could go onto season 3, 4 or 5and 6 but what matters most is the families, the work and the recovery. I am proud of Addicted and I am proud of the 16 very brave families who trusted me enough to allow their stories to be told. And long after the cameras and crew are gone, long after edits are complete, and long after the excitement and press about Addicted is over, I will still be here practicing intervention, working with addicts and their families and waging the war against addiction.

 I am humbled every time I see myself on TV. Honestly, I do don’t see it as my ‘success’ but a shared success with recovering addicts everywhere. 19 years ago I was hopeless as a person could be, my life was small and dark and purposeless and if I can come back from addiction, anyone can. I hope to be example to all addicts and their families that we can and do find recovery, sobriety is possible, change does happen and redemption and freedom are possible.

 Thank you for your continued and unwavering support.

 Sober and Shameless,

Kw

As many support emails and letters I have received, I have also received hate messages for Addicted, doubting the authenticity of the show and calling me a 'worthless and fake interventionist.'  There is nothing you can say to me, that will hurt, stop or slow me down; You matter not. I take great offense however, to doubting the authenticity of the show and the treatment. To all the haters and doubters of me and the show, These are the beautiful faces of Addicted. 

Jeremy from Season One; Aaron and Lindsey from Season Two; Sober, Shining and Healthy

 

The Truth

I have been asked many times how my husband died and for all these weeks I have been at a loss for words. As this year comes to close and the new year is slowly approaching, I want to be finished with that painful question. 
It is with a very heavy heart that I say, September 5 John committed suicide, after a battle with depression.
I did find him. It is a scene that will be with me until the day I die; the second I walked in the room, before I even saw him on the bed, I knew death was present. Death is quite and very still; it hangs in the air and freezes all movement and time. I knew he gone before I even found him. The angel of death is swift, certain and unforgiving.  
I have been left with great wondering. I wonder what he was feeling in the last minutes of his beautiful life. I wonder why he did not call me, or his family or his friends, or anyone. I wonder what he thought about when he loaded the gun, looked at the pictures of our sweet children, as he sat on the bed and texted each of us, ‘I love you’. I wonder what he felt in the final moments as he laid down and I wonder what his last thought was as he put the gun to his head. I wonder if he finally felt a sense of peace that his terrible pain would be over in a matter of seconds and I wonder if he heard the gunshot or if he felt any pain. I wonder many things. Sometimes, all fucking night long, I wonder.
I have had the private and spiritual privilege to witness incredible pain in the lives of others. I consider it, and always have, an honor to walk families and addicts through their darkest days. I have sat with a family as they told their 21-year-old son, as he came out of a coma, that while driving drunk in a black out, he killed a family of 5 and would be spending the majority his life in San Quentin. I have sat at the grave site of a 55 year mother who died in her sleep from drinking, while her sweet children slept in their rooms and finally I have sat with a father who lost 2 of his 3 kids to a drunk driver, as he sobbed and screamed beneath the crushing and insurmountable pain of the loss of his beloved children and I have watched each of these families, in time, know a new happiness and find meaning in their loss. I have found solace in the knowing that I cannot bare wittiness to the grace of god in the lives of others and not believe that same grace will be fall me and mine.  
It is said that pain is the touchstone to spiritual growth and I understand this now in new way. My heart has been broken, wide open, vulnerable, exposed, as if I am without skin. I am able to feel different, more and deeper. I am able love and laugh and cry in a way I could not before. I can see more clearly the pain in others and have a deeper understanding of the fear that can strangle slowly the life vibration out of a living being as they sit by helplessly and watch a loved one slip away into the dark. I have a new compassion for the helplessness and a new appreciation for the amount of love it takes to truly let someone go, knowing full well, you may never see them alive again. 
The pain of the last four months has, at times, left me with a feeling of wanting to retreat, as if he blew a huge hole right through the middle of my life, and all I have built is being sucked through the gaping wound. My faith was shaken, my legs weak and my heart broken but I as I caught my breath and my balance, I have emerged with a new and fierce motivation to rise above. I will not have John’s suicide define my children or me. I have worked each day for 18 years to heal, recover and to find the strength to face the world, chest forward, head up, and step into the life I was meant to live, with passion and purpose. I have a renewed inspiration to be of service and to fight and wage the war against addiction.  
In this new year, I recommit myself and my purpose to fighting, encouraging, inspiring and illuminating the way of the dark and into recovery, where a new life, a new hope and a new existence can be had by anyone who is broken and brave enough to simply surrender. 
I have been down the last many months but I am not out. I am back and I am ready for 2012. 
Thank you again for your unwavering support, thoughts, prayers and emails. You each have helped carry me through some of the most difficult days of my life. 
Sober and Shameless.

Surprise! We are not surprising you

I wrote an article on intervention for thefix.com.

Enjoy.

Sober and Shamless, Kw

http://www.thefix.com/content/surprise-were-not-surprising-you

I am often asked.....

I am asked often, ‘When are you going to write a book on weight loss?’ Let me be clear-I will not ever write a book on weight loss. I will not clog the literary world with yet another book on weight loss and sell false hope to the public.

Diets do not work. I am always amazed that there is yet another book on the next new diet, the new weight loss plan, the latest and greatest fad, the next named weight loss guru, or whatever else comes along. There is not a secret to weight loss. You must move more and eat less. This is a, tried and true, for as long as man has been on the planet-Successful equation- Eat less, move more.

Now addiction, to sugar is a whole another story.

There is an entitlement in our culture to being comfortable. There is an entitlement to quick fixes. We as a culture do not handle discomfort, well, whether it is, emotional or physical discomfort, we do not handle it well. We want to be at ‘ease’ as quickly as possible. We have gotten farther and farther away from hard earned change. If there is a book that will help us lose 20 pounds in four weeks, Americans will buy, If grapefruits are the next weight loss secret food, Americans will buy them by the truck loads, and if there is a pill that will help our ‘restless’ legs and our muffin tops, Americans will swallow them, without question.

The reason weight loss is difficult is because it must be earned, one day at a time. The reason sobriety is so difficult is because it too, must be earned, one day at a time. The reason so many diets fail, is because we are looking at sugar addiction. Substance addiction recovery will never be about control but about abstinence. In other words, you can remove sugar from your diet for a certain amount of time but then as it is slowly reintroduced to the diet, the relapse begins. With sugar addiction, a person will never be able to control the sugar intake for any true length of time. It is the same with alcohol. Alcoholics cannot control the alcohol intake once it is in the body; it creates what is referred to as a ‘phenomenon of craving’, and it is exactly the same with sugar. Once in the system, of a person who is addicted to sugar, they will over a course of time, lose control of the intake and will, either quickly or slowly, be right back where they began. One cookie, will lead to two and then to ten, it is not a matter of will but a matter of bio chemistry and frankly, bio chemistry will win every time. This is the highly unpopular truth of addiction and diets; sugar need to be eliminated not controlled. It the lack of control the addicts die from and the very reason to eat sugar for a sugar addict, is to head back down the path to being overweight and despair.

Without sugar, addicts will lose weight; add sugar, try to control sugar and in time the weight will return. Every time: This is a guarantee.

To all addictions there is a psychological foundation or a certain temperament and way of seeing the world that will propel compulsive and self-soothing behaviors. To be abstinent from all mind and mood altering substances, including sugar, the person will need to look at their way of being in the world, heal what is wounded and learn how to self-regulate their feelings from the inside out, not the  outside in. To maintain a life without sugar or substance is a return to hard earned physical and mental health.

This is the unpopular truth and why if I wrote a book on weight loss, it would not sell very well. We as a culture need to get back to the concept of delayed gratification and understand that the work I put in today to change and heal myself will pay off in six months from now. Healing takes time; you cannot rush it. Weight loss, even if you hate to hear this, takes time; you cannot rush it, if you want it to last. Addiction is a chronic issue, and cannot be treated with an acute model. Addiction is with us for a life time, and will not be gone in 17 days, or 40 pounds from now, and once you get into a size 6 jean.

I believe we as a culture need to have paramount shift thinking, from finding the next quick fix to accepting that lasting change comes slowly, and through a new way of living, not a strict food plan. Eat better food, whole foods, heal what wounds you carry, eliminate sugar, and move your body more. Weight loss will come, and better yet a deep love of self and a firm understanding that your life has purpose will fill you from the inside out.

We need to move from giving our power away to scales and clothes sizes and change our idea of beautiful. Imagine what it would feel like to love your body? To really love your body not for how it looks but how it feels and how it moves and what it does for you each and every day. I believe that true success is- to have an appreciation for the strength and power that our bodies innately have within. Change how you love yourself and your body will change too.

For me, I believe true success and health is, when at the end of the day, after the work is done, the children are asleep and lights are out, and it is just me on the couch that I honestly can say, I like the company that I keep.

Sober and Shameless, Kw

Gayle King Radio Interview

Thank you Gayle for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you and your viewers.

Sober and Shameless, Kw

http://gaylekingshow.com/b/Can-Charlie-Sheen-Really-Overcome-Addiction/583493765031731165.html

Twitter

Follow me on twitter....

http://twitter.com/kwaddicted

Helping others

I posted on FB back in June about helping a drunk women outside a meeting I attended. This is the post:  

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New York

The sounds of New York City bang my sleeping self awake. My head is aching and my eyes are hard to open, jet lag is wicked and the city garbage trucks don’t seem to care that I arrived late into JFK, checked in and collapsed into the hotel bed and fell fast to sleep, only four hours ago.

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