One of the books I took on my recent trip to Japan was “The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking” by Nicholas Capaldi and Miles Smit. Not wanting anything work or even blog/recovery related to bog down my vacation into the same old ruts, I picked up the book on a lark just because it happen to look interesting at the bookstore. Yeah, foolish me, that’s right- I picked up a book on deception (not) thinking that somehow this would be a break from alcoholism and addiction issues!

The book describes the basics of arguments and critical thinking in a novel manner, mostly by explaining different mechanisms to subvert logic and even truth- ergo the title and why I should have immediately thought “alcoholic”. When I hit chapter 5 entitled Defending Your Case- the book went into overdrive shifting out of critical thinking into how to lie like an addict. With sample addiction scenarios in parentheses, Chapter 5 includes ways to defend a losing argument including Never Admit Defeat (until you hit rock bottom), Refuse to Be Convinced (denial), In Defense of Definitions (well, I wasn’t addicted to beer- just pills and vodka), and my favorite Damning the Dilemma (I’ll hurt myself sober or drinking, so it’s better to maintain a moderate buzz). The book is suggested as a primer for “intellectual self-defense”, but after reading it I think it serves just as well as a how-to for deconstructing the lies of an alcoholic or a codependency self-defense manual.

Regardless of the direction it steered my thoughts, the book was still very enjoyable. It is very basic without getting to technical and is a quick read. It has been reviewed fairly positive in the past with the few pans coming from what I assume are pure sophists that confuse the term introduction with comprehensive and Pollyanna’s irritated it could be used as a style manual for deceit. If you go looking for this book, keep in mind it is a revised and updated version of the 1987 original paperback. Don’t get it confused with Kevin Mitnick’s recent book on tech security with the same opening title that comes up in many searches (just click on the pic, it will steer you true).

I have a colleague that decided 2010 would be his year to quit a 20 year plus smoking habit citing several very sound and logical reasons for the lifestyle change including his health, the sake of his kids, and financial reasons. He had originally planned to go cold turkey starting New Year’s Day and scoffed at the thought of using any kind of smoke cessation medication. He promised his kids, steeled himself, and made a point to tell me and other colleagues of his plans to be smoke free as we neared last year’s Christmas/New Year holiday break.

Cue the all too familiar same old song and dance of the addicted mind and body (start the video if you please).

First the rationalization that no one wants to end a beloved addiction during the holidays, a time of frolic and excess not abstinence and denial. Back to work the following, now’s the time… to procrastinate. The inevitable guilt mounts with spurs, but the course has been altered – now instead of a sprint to abstinence it’s a tapering enduro. Owww- this is too hard, maybe medical help is notsuch a bad idea. On the drugs for a week – but it’s too expensive (not compared to cigarettes) so he practices quitting by giving up on the Chantix. Kids make unplanned visit with dad- embarrassing- still smoking. That’s the final straw.

It’s March. Ten days cigarette free and the reward… a cigarette. It took me thirty minutes to explain to him that a single puff resets the clock- he has now been smoke free for 12 hours.

Been there done that, in a way I think the craving for a harmless puff is much tougher to resist without the immediate and dire repercussions of a bender- it’s the same old song and dance.

Good luck my friend- you’ll need it!

My thanks to author and blogger Patrick Meninga of The Spiritual River for sharing his recovery experience and advice in this most excellent guest post.

Anyone who lives and grows in addiction recovery for any great length of time will start to recognize certain truths about the process that seem to be universal. These are ideas, concepts, and processes that just about everyone seems to go through and experience, if they are willing to keep learning and growing in their recovery. These ideas are not specific to certain recovery programs such as the 12 step program of AA, religious programs, or Women for Sobriety for that matter. They are just things that we notice on a broad scale when we look at people who have stayed clean and sober, and found a new life in recovery. Thus, would could consider these ideas to be fundamental to recovery.

These 10 universal truths are:

1. Abstinence is the foundation for recovery.
2. Personal growth must become a priority.
3. An emphasis on learning is important.
4. What got you clean and sober will not keep you clean and sober.
5. Addiction, and recovery, are complex.
6. Action beats thinking every time.
7. Helping others in recovery is critical.
8. Complacency is deadlier than resentment.
9. The strongest form of relapse prevention is building real self esteem.
10. The key to success is in taking massive action.

Abstinence is the foundation for recovery

Within the recovery community, this pretty much goes without saying. Those who try to moderate or learn how to control their drug and alcohol intake will either walk away from recovery successfully, or they will come crawling back with their tail between their legs facing utter defeat at the hands of their disease.

In other words, the need for abstinence is what defines addiction. If you can manage and control your life just fine without complete and total abstinence from drugs and alcohol, then you don’t really have a problem to begin with. Go live your life in peace and be thankful that you are not an addict.

If, on the other hand, you find that you cannot find long term success in your life while continuing to drink or use drugs, then it might be time to make a decision. Real addicts and alcoholics suffer major consequences and lose a lot of ground when they relapse–no matter how innocent or minor a slip it may have been.

Addiction recovery is a pass/fail proposition. Relapse means that you are back to square one, and often times much worse off than before.

Personal growth must become a priority

There are different programs of recovery that are available to recovering addicts and alcoholics. It should come as no surprise that most any of these programs have at least some emphasis on personal growth and development. This is a fundamental aspect of success in recovery, that the person is striving to become a better person, rather than to simply coast through life without seeking improvement.

Success in recovery is a holistic path. It can be no other way. This is because every part of our life is affected by addiction: our physical body, our mental acuity, our social relationships, our spirituality, and so on. There is no portion of our overall being that is left untouched by the disease. Therefore, success in overcoming addiction must address every area of our life.

Some people mistakenly focus too heavily on spiritual growth at the expense of other areas of their life. Addiction plagued our whole being, and our recovery solution must encompass our whole self as well. Recovery is more than just spiritual….it is holistic. Personal growth will happen on many different levels.

Those who relapse in recovery can look back at their journey and say “Yes, at some point I stopped growing as a person. I let myself revert back to my old ways without pushing myself to improve instead.” Thus, personal growth is fundamental to success in recovery. It has to be present in order to prevent relapse in the long run.

An emphasis on learning is important

When we first get clean and sober, what do we actually know about living a sober life, being relatively happy, and maintaining sobriety?

Not a darn thing.

In fact, we have to learn practically everything about how to live any sort of normal life, all over again. Our old way of coping with life through addiction was not working for us. And the enormity of it all is that addiction affected nearly every aspect of our lives, remember. It is not like we just have to learn how to sit in a restaurant without ordering a beer. The task at hand is so much deeper than that…so much more complex.

We have to learn how to live again. Period.

And so the emphasis in early recovery is on learning–most learning through experiences. It really does not do a whole lot of good to be told what to do…rather, we have to get out there and experience recovery first hand. Instead of just reading recovery literature, we need to practice the ideas we hear about in recovery. Instead of just going to meetings and listening, we need to actually work with others in recovery and reach out and help them.

And of course, in order to do all of this learning that is required in recovery, we have to be both willing to shelve our ego momentarily, and we also have to summon the energy to follow through with these directions. It takes a strange mix of courage and surrender in order to let go of our old ideas and yet be willing to put a massive effort into this new life.

But eventually we come to accept that learning is part of the process of recovery, and even a negative experience can turn into something halfway positive, so long as we can extract a lesson from it.

What got you clean and sober will not keep you clean and sober

The rate of relapse in recovery is relatively scary, and disappointing. Without arguing too much over the exact statistics, let’s just say that addicts and alcoholics can still relapse after a year or two in recovery, and some actually do. Why is it that people would fail, after having obviously found success in early recovery?

While no one is immune to relapse, statistics indicate that most people who make it past 5 years in recovery have a pretty decent chance of going “all the way.” Under 5 years, and it remains a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to relapse and success, and this is largely due to the fact that some people simply refuse to grow in their recovery. They get stuck in the tactics that helped them through their first 90 days of recovery, and never evolve and push themselves to that next level.

When you get the chance to observe hundreds of people in recovery you start to see this pattern emerge: what got you sober will not keep you sober. You have to change, you have to grow, you have to evolve. This is said in traditional recovery circles in so many words: “You are either working on recovery or you are working on a relapse.” And if you are working on recovery, then this necessitates change. You have to keep changing in order to grow in recovery. If you are just trying to hang on and maintain the status quo in your life, then things will go south quickly.

We cannot tread water in recovery and expect to stay afloat for very long. We have to push ourselves harder than that, seeking new positive learning experiences from which we can grow. Anything else is risking a slide back into relapse through idle stagnation.

Addiction, and recovery, are complex

There is a tendency for people to want recovery to be simple. This is only natural after the chaos and complexity that alcoholism has thrust upon their lives. They want a magic solution, something that can quickly and cleanly take away the disease of addiction, leaving recovery neatly in its place.

This is not a realistic viewpoint. Why not? Because alcoholism, and therefore recovery, are necessarily complex. We do not just become alcoholic overnight, nor does it just affect one tiny part of our lives. The truth is that alcoholism affects every part of our life, and as such, needs to be addressed with an holistic solution. One popular recovery program cites that over 60 percent of their successful members seek additional help outside of the program.

Think further about this complexity: most recovery programs are designed in an attempt to address several different aspects of a whole person. For example, the social aspect of our lives is addressed when we connect with others in recovery. There is a strong emotional component in WFS, and other recovery programs try to deal with our emotional recovery as well. Obviously the physical aspect is addressed in some fashion as we are taught to maintain abstinence, but some go further in this area and encourage exercise and fitness as a positive aspect of holistic recovery.

And of course there is the spiritual element, which is often focused on to the exclusion of all other aspects of recovery. This is clearly a mistake, because as we can see, there are many dimensions to addiction and recovery that go beyond the spiritual. As much as we would like for recovery to be simple, or to just be about spiritual healing, the reality is that we need a more holistic and comprehensive approach to overcome alcoholism.

Action beats thinking every time

It is easy to get confused in early recovery, because obviously we need to change our ideas about how to live our life. What we have been doing has not been working, and so we need to change and try something different. We know that we need change in our lives and we know that this is going to require new ideas, new attitudes, and a new mindset.

Yet the path to “get there” is not filled with deep thinking….it is filled with action. If we could recover from alcoholism by simply sitting around and thinking all day, then recovery would be a whole lot easier. The tricky part is that we can fool ourselves into believing that our deep thoughts about recovery are equivalent to taking real action. We can delude ourselves into thinking that our lack of action is fine, so long as we truly want to change and sincerely wish that our life was different.

But it doesn’t work this way. We need action to create real change.

For example, say that you are going to use affirmations in order to try to recover from alcoholism. Without the necessary action, this will amount to wishful thinking that does not really change who you are at a deep level. With the appropriate action, you would instead do the work of self exploration and self discovery, finding out the critical parts of your emotional makeup that really need work. You may talk about these issues with others in recovery. Then you would design a regiment that is specific to helping you to overcome your specific emotional issues.

This sounds like a lot of work because it is a lot of work. You are not just engaging in wishful thinking, but instead taking real action to create a new life for yourself, and then adjusting yourself mentally and emotionally to receive this new life. All thoughts and affirmations that you engage in are accompanied by real action and follow through. It takes effort and work to maintain these new attitudes and new thoughts into every aspect of your life.

Helping others in recovery is critical

One of the universal concepts that we find in recovery over and over again is that those who help others to recover are far more likely to succeed themselves. It is a natural occurrence that anyone who is teaching someone else how to achieve sobriety will have a tendency to stay sharp at doing so themselves.

But the idea of helping others with recovery goes far beyond that even. Really what is happening is this: the person who reaches out and helps the struggling alcoholic will get an immeasurable boost to their own self esteem. This comes from genuinely making a difference in the life of another, on a deep level that only a recovering alcoholic can understand. We know that this form of helping someone is precious, because we once struggled through early recovery and received this help ourselves. It was important to us in early recovery and so we see it as being meaningful work when we assist others.

Not only do we “sharpen our saw” when we work with other alcoholics, but we also boost our self esteem in a very natural and powerful way. Having this increased self esteem makes the chances of relapse go down drastically, so it makes sense to stay open to helping other alcoholics.

Complacency is deadlier than resentment

We are told in traditional recovery programs, at times, that resentment is the biggest threat to our continued sobriety. We have found this to be false over the long run, when we observe a large group of recovering alcoholics and question them following a relapse.

The thing that trips most of them up is not resentment. It is complacency. They get lazy and stop growing in their recovery.

The solution to this is to focus more on personal growth than we do on practicing acceptance. The key is to keep pushing ourselves to grow over time, and to keep learning new things.

One way to allow this to happen naturally is to take an holistic approach to recovery. For example, we could achieve growth in any of the following areas of our life:

* Emotional
* Physical – fitness, quitting smoking, healthier diet.
* Social
* Mental – education, new learning experiences.
* Spiritual

And so on. Why limit ourselves to one dimension of growth in recovery? Instead of just focusing on spiritual or emotional growth, we need to stay open to any growth opportunity, especially in long term sobriety.

Having more areas in which we can grow and push ourselves helps to insure that we do not become complacent.

The strongest form of relapse prevention is building real self esteem

Some recovery programs engage in a slew of relapse prevention tactics–a whole bunch of tips and tricks that are designed to bail the alcoholic out of tricky situations where they might be tempted to take a drink.

This is a poor solution, and one that does not scale well at all.

Imagine how complex life really is, and the different situations that a recovering alcoholic will eventually encounter. Just about any tempting situation that you can imagine will eventually occur, given enough time. The question is not if an alcoholic will be seriously tested, the question is when. Therefore, trying to prepare in advance for such situations and formulate specific reactions ahead of time is just about worthless. Life is too random for most relapse prevention tactics to be very helpful.

So what is the solution? Strength in recovery, achieved through real self esteem.

If you value yourself, if you have learned to love yourself and to love your life, then turning down a drink becomes much, much easier….regardless of the surrounding circumstances. Women for Sobriety understands this perfectly, and therefore puts a strong emphasis on building genuine self esteem into their program.

Understand, though, that having healthy self esteem is a fundamental quality to long term sobriety. Alcoholics in other programs who achieve long term success will naturally have to build real self esteem as well. It is inseparable from success when it comes to overcoming alcoholism.

The key to success is in taking massive action

In the end, it is all about action. We can almost predict the people who will succeed in recovery by examining how much real action that they take in their life.

Alcoholism is not a trivial problem to overcome. No one has ever put forth a small effort in recovery and somehow become lucky enough to get great results. No one accidentally stays sober for dozens of years and creates an awesome new life for themselves based on pure luck.

No, all of it takes work. Recovery takes serious effort. There are not shortcuts. None whatsoever. Every bit of growth and success in recovery is paid for with raw grit and fierce determination.

We can fool ourselves by comparing recovery with other ventures in life, believing that modest effort will get us modest results. This is not the case in fighting alcoholism. A modest effort will lead to relapse, every time. The only path to success is one of massive action, where the recovering alcoholic dedicates their entire life to the recovery journey. Full and total commitment is necessary.

Ask any recovering alcoholic who has several years of sobriety if this is true. Ask them if they had to take massive action in early recovery. Ask them if they had to change everything. Ask them if was really hard to do. In fact, ask them if it was the hardest thing they have ever done in their life.

In almost all cases, the answer will be “yes.”

But then, ask them if it was worth it. You will get a smile and a “heck yes!”

Patrick Meninga is a recovering alcoholic who authors a website over at The Spiritual River where he writes about addiction recovery.

Thank you author and speaker Lisa Frederiksen of Breaking the Cycles for this regular series sharing her decades long experience of dealing with family alcoholism and alcohol abuse. Click here to see the rest of the series.

One of the key messages I share in a number of my talks is the role early childhood trauma plays as one of the risk factors for developing the disease of alcoholism and/or an ongoing problem with alcohol abuse. And here is why.

We are born with approximately 100 billion brain cells but only a fraction are “wired.” It takes neurons (brain cells) talking to neurons — or “wiring” — for us to do whatever it is we do. Dr. Norman Doidge uses the phrase, “Neurons that fire together, wire together,” in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself. This “firing together, wiring together” causes the brain to form “brain maps” for everything we think, do, feel or say. For example, the act of my typing this blog post involves my fingers, my eyes, my mind recalling research, my body and its posture — all working seamlessly together in a manner I don’t even think about. It just happens; happens thanks to neural networks wiring together because they fired together to form the brain map for how I “write.”

Now, read this quote that I received in a newsletter from SAMHSA informing readers that National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day is on May 6, 2010.

“Research has found that core brain development, 85 percent of which occurs in the first three years of life, shows differences in brain structures and function based on the child’s experiences in relationships with others and with their social context.” Shonkoff, J. & Phillips, D. A. (Eds.). (2000). From Neurons to Neighborhoods. Washington, DC: National Academy of Science

It makes sense when you think about it. For although we are born with approximately 100 billion brain cells, at birth about all we can do is sleep, eat, poop and urinate, cry and breath. If our neurons were all wired at birth, we’d come out running, laughing, reading, talking and doing calculus. Now read Shonkoff’s quote again.

Because the brain continues to form brain maps and input gets more advanced and complicated (think school, sports, music, relationships…), in the first decade of life, trillions of neural networks are formed. So here is where childhood trauma comes in.

If a child is being raised in a home with undiagnosed/ untreated alcohol misuse, their neural networks for how to see, process and cope with the world are all being influenced by how their family members interact. For a better understanding of what I’m saying here, please read this excellent piece on Huffington Post by Dr. Tian Dayton, “Diane Schuler, The Heartbreak of Denial.”

Bottom line… long before the age at which we start to have a memory of our lives, our neural networks are being formed in response to what is going on around us. And that “what is going on around us” has a profound impact on how our neural networks wire. All of this to say, here is another reason to address alcohol misuse — whether it is the person drinking too much or the person reacting to it — for our children’s sake.

Straight from the Hiroshima train station, the public streetcar pushes into the crowded city center following a narrow channel through a blaring landscape of music, horns, and hawkers. Much unlike the corner inset of the tourist map, the actual guide keys to this area are a garish display of commercial signage that both overwhelm and yet substitute for the minimal municipal markers. Everything may not be bright and clean, but there can be no doubt that this city is fervently alive. After just a few stops, I see my destination. Now I am walking through an epitome of order where even the natural wildness of the river and the trees are tamed harmoniously with cut stone and planned lines. Children gallivant, couples bump shoulders, and teenagers carry out hidden agendas while those old enough, wise enough, or perhaps just unlucky enough ponder why and what happened here.

Near the Miyuki Bridge, there was a police box. Most of the victims who had gathered there were junior high school girls from the Hiroshima Girls Business School and the Hiroshima Junior High School No.1. They had been mobilized to evacuate buildings and they were outside when the bomb fell. Having been directly exposed to the heat rays, they were covered with blisters, the size of balls, on their backs, their faces, their shoulders and their arms. The blisters were starting to burst open and their skin hung down like rugs. Some of the children even have burns on the soles of their feet. They’d lost their shoes and run barefoot through the burning fire.

Even today, I clearly remember how the view finder was clouded over with my tears.

~ Testimony of Yoshito Matsushige cameraman for the Chugoku Newspaper

This is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial where the twisted, tattered remains of the old Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall now commonly called the Atomic Bomb Dome are preserved, an edificial testimony to the devastation of the world’s first nuclear weapon target. It is an ugly scar among 30 acres of pristine monuments dedicated to remembrance and peace; without it one could walk the grounds never realizing the absolute destruction of the first ground zero. Looking around, it seemed that many do just that… isn’t that what recovery is all about?

At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial the utter destruction, painful memories, and the slow rebuilding process have all been documented and molded into a recovery program. At least here, the lessons of the war are not forgotten. No anger, resentment, or revenge is displayed- just a message, a peaceful reminder to others that they should not repeat the mistakes of the past and suffer such dire consequences. In fact, as you exit the onsite museum you get exactly that- an audio presentation, a speaker’s meeting of the survivors like Toshiko Saeki who lived through the blast.

I could not help but think of Hiroshima as a recovery Mecca, ideal for the pilgrimage of recovering alcoholics. A vibrant city that was scoured down to the rock bottom by nuclear fires only to be built up again bigger and better under no pretenses of victimization or singular blame, just pure acceptance and a vow to honor the past, enjoy the present, and to protect the future.

If you need a spiritual reminder of what real recovery is all about, I suggest you make the trip to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

It has been a full year since I had taken a break from work not to mention the daily updates of TDA, so this vacation in Japan (minus the brief work-related foray) has been a Godsend. The original plan was to continue with daily updates of TDA along with some strategic guest posting, but the frantic pace of my trip preparations beforehand combined with multiple stops of the first half have made this too difficult.

I guess it’s time for a few days of private recovery that will consist of relaxing at natural hot springs (onsens), sampling/digging into the many dining opportunities of Fukuoka (yatais), and leisurely reading some books I brought along (the first will be The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking). No doubt I’ll slip in a post or two, but I’m weary and for the most part the next week will be all about me… resting, at peace.

Nestled in the mountains of Japan north of Tokyo is the city of Matsumoto. I rolled into to town yesterday evening via the Super Azusa with a little daylight to spare, but because of the light mist and overcast weather I ruled out a quick excursion/fact finding mission and instead went ahead and set up shop at my hotel. Once settled in, I did some internet research on restaurants in the area and came across this nicely done post from a travel blog (Kudos Paul!) which reviews in detail one of the traditional meals of Matsumoto, basashi . Basashi is raw horse. Wow.

Needless to say I immediately set out find a traditional basashi restaurant of my own and ended up at Shin-Miyoshi. They don’t have a website, but are in the same area close to the train station and the experience was very similar to that of the travel blog.

I thoroughly enjoyed the basashi, especially the horse liver served sushi style wrapped in seaweed with rice. I also tried a fish sashimi that was served along with its skewed donor- still flopping (see right side of picture). At least to my unrefined palate this sashimi was tasty but otherwise unremarkable, however the dish’s presentation and the realization I had midway through the meal that was absolutely not. While sitting there devouring that poor little fish with its dead yet still twitching body in full display… his colleagues were staring at me not three feet away in a fish tank (see left side of picture). Poor little fishies, it made me think of myself as the monster of Matsumoto!

What’s the recovery twist to this story? It’s a tenuous tie-in at best, but hey, I’m on a break! These days eating a raw fish in front of an aquarium audience is about as monstrous as I get, that’s a far cry from my past days as a guzzling Godzilla that left a far greater path of destruction.

Bon Appétit!

When it comes to traveling in recovery, it’s always smart to drop an anchor upon arriving at your destination. Whether it be a call to the family at home or spending thirty minutes blogging, importing a routine from you home base lifestyle help keeps away addictive thinking… and relapse.

Take for instance a old southern boy like myself while in Japan, definitely a fish out of water (albeit a happy fish) case. Gone are my day to day routines, familiar places and things, not to mention the added stress of trying to communicate and get around. If not careful there are two negative things that could happen, the first being that I’ll do something “stupid” because I’m breaking new ground in the old noggin and gotten out of my routine decision making practices.

That sort makes sense when thinking about the addictive brain, but the second possibility seems to happen to recovering alcoholics more often than not and is totally illogical. I call this occurrence a “New Rules” event. These events may be associated with a holiday cruise, wedding, foreign travel, or even major storms and the alcoholic becomes convinced that these new conditions temporarily exempt them from their disease. Just not true.

The names, faces, and places may have change, but I’ll always be the same alcoholic in recovery and there are no “new rules” and certainly no temporary exemptions.

(Same post, different year, new itinerary- stay tuned for TDA in Japan 2010!)

This is the last North American post and the kickoff of a two week work/leisure excursion to Japan. I still plan to update regularly, but extreme flight times and time zone changes may have my regular schedule off kilter. Keep checking often for updates, and wish me luck!

I guess it doesn’t really matter whether it was underwater nuclear testing or 24/7 intoxication that turns one into a monster, the important thing is how you act after the fact. Unlike my big green friend here that is planning a special party for Tokyo, my intention is to practice the exact same recovery program (travel-version) there as I do here in the US. The first few days of my trip to Japan will be spent meeting and traveling with Japanese businessmen, notorious for the hard drinking after-hours culture. I’m used to it, and will deal with the constant offers and queries about drinking the same way I always do; with a polite excuse- and not drink. It may be their culture, but it is my life and no job is worth drinking for.

One of my favorite actors, I’ve enjoy watching Samuel L Jackson play a drug addict, hit man (Jules Winnfield ruled), and Jedi master over the years but of course that’s not what earns him a post on TDA. I know many might scoff at my use of “earn” when it comes to being the subject of one my post, but I can think of no better word for a recovering alcoholic that has soberly navigated the caustic entertainment industry for nearly twenty years.

Instead of rehashing his bio I thought it might be better to share a few of his quotes from past interviews that I found interesting, like this one where he admits regardless of the high station he has achieved career-wise he still understands the humbling nature of the disease.

The irony is I never got to taste Cristal. Back then, Moët was my champagne of choice. Now I get sent crates of Cristal and I ain’t never tasted the stuff. Ain’t that a bitch?’… Joking aside, does he ever feel like having a drink, maybe raising a glass of champagne or two to his own extraordinary success? ‘Hell yeah, there are days when I feel like that, but I don’t do it. I ain’t the kind of guy who can have one drink. I never could. That’s what I have to remember. I never had one drink in my whole life. ~ Celebitchy.com

And then there is this one on the bastardization of “Hollywood” AA that was very revealing.

“It’s just too weird. You hear guys saying stuff like, ‘I’ve been hitting the red wine too heavy and I need to stop, but I want to keep smoking reefer (cannabis) and doing cocaine.’ In New York, rehab is for real. You sit next to guys who were IV users, guys who stole s#!, guys who sold their bodies. In Los Angeles you are sitting next to a guy who wants to go easy on the fine wine. Man, that’s a symptom of something right there.” ~ Bitten and Bound

Much like another famous alcoholic, Alice Cooper, Mr. Jackson counts golf as a major part of his recovery program. He even goes so far as to include golf breaks in his movie contracts, a smart way to break away from the rat race and “let go of the business of Hollywood”.

If you noticed, I used a picture of his latest role as Nick Fury above because I am very excited about the upcoming Iron Man 2… another tie-in to famous alcoholics. Click below to see the trailer and catch a glimpse of Samuel Jackson as General Fury.