change therapy

i’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year, this time determined to do all i can to make it to the 50,000 word count. so my blog posts may be sporadic, or short and sweet, or both. like this one. only it’s not sweet.
at a walmart in lethbridge, told by a friend:
a drunk native [...]

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the following was a comment on my blog post alcohol and art. i really enjoyed the insights, and with the commenter’s (lew’s) permission, i am sharing the gift of his reflections here.
it’s hard to know what’s real anymore. on the one hand i know that alcohol hinders me, certainly in my social life, but [...]

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i was going to offer you another poem of sarah’s in this post but there’s something i need to say before we move on to that.
the braidwood enquiry into robert dziekanski’s death, the polish immigrant who was tasered at the vancouver airport in the fall of 2007.
and constance barnes.
right from the very beginning, the RCMP [...]

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a buddhist metta prayer for mothers who do not fit our stereotypical image. the throwaway mothers, the bad mothers, the ones we point our fingers to.

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this is a guest post by my blogging and twitter friend alexander zoltai. it’s the story of how, down and out with alcohol and homelessness, he almost … well, read for yourself:

at first, i was trying to push ahead when i really needed healing time.
went from a homeless situation in ohio to florida for [...]

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today for my post on mental health, i’d like to share with you a letter i received a few days ago from a fellow canadian. while it is about the mental illness of addiction, i’d also like to think about it as a move towards mental wellness; wellness achieved by sharing our stories [...]

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most people have little reason to fear violence from people with mental illness, even in its most severe forms.
historically, in the 1950s, mental illness carried great social stigma, especially linked with fear of unpredictable and violent behaviour. while there is greater public understanding of mental illness nowadays, paradoxically, the perception of people with psychosis [...]

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last thursday, i had the great fortune of meeting michael wilson of the newly created phoenix recovery centre in surrey, just southeast of vancouver.
a friend of mine, who has a little contract job there, had told me about it and said that i absolutely had to see it. so when i drove there, i [...]

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researchers at the boston university school of social work found that while parental alcoholism can serve as an indicator of long-term harm to children, contrary to common beliefs it is not a direct cause.
“the study shows that a positive family environment may be able to overcome very negative childhood experiences.” said lead author margaret griffin.
the [...]

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according to medicine.net, there is more and more agreement that alcohol abuse occurs on a continuum. it needs to be treated accordingly; traditional methods of helping alcoholics work for less than half of them. project MATCH, a project involving over 80 therapists, is now looking at ways to match patient preferences with different kinds [...]

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vote for mental health!
what mental health issue needs to go on the government’s agenda? if you have opinions about that – and i hope you do – and if you’re canadian, you can now participate in an e-consultation put up by health canada.
the questions are

do we need a mental health commission?
what should this commission [...]

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this nervous running and rubbing,
gargling and popping of eyes,
fingers racing up and down, legs twitching,
coffee-coated tongue and smoke on grey teeth:
all in the service of
art.

yellow-stained thumb pressing down again and again
until the colour stays
- where is it where is it
i knew i had it here -
the glue, under the papers? fell in the garbage?
give [...]

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i was intrigued by levy’s comment on the art and alcohol posting a few days ago and thought it would be worthwhile to dedicate a blog entry to it. here is what he says:
I can appreciate the turn around stories of artists and I

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these last few days i’ve been listening to quite a few people talk about their experience with alcohol misuse, either through their own struggles or because of alcoholism among their loved ones.
what is it about alcohol abuse that frightens us so? when i was younger, it was the strange and dangerous-seeming world that drunks [...]

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the last two blog entries here were about how the words “i don’t know” often come from information overload, or, alternatively, from a certain anxiety around the emotionally laden information.
today, let’s talk about how we can deal with this, how we can move from “i don’t know” to something like, “i have an idea” or [...]

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