Since posting this section on my web page I have been given several recovery stories. I hope to post more.. below mine is a recovery story:After Meth, Finding Life link

Recovery / Addiction  
 
 The way it all began doesn't matter any longer. The fact is, addiction messes up your life and at some point you realize you want more.
Although I realized this years before it became reality, I was under some kind of delusion that I should have serenity when what I had was chaos, and for this I blamed my therapist, my doctor, my children, friends, and parents. The poison of hate is powerful. In my experience many things came together to change my life.

This happened to me the year my Sun progressed into Gemini. Probably the most fundamental of all the changes the progressed Sun can make, is to change from one sign to another. To say this marks the beginning of a new chapter in your life is too weak a statement. It is more like an entirely unprecedented set of motivations and needs arise. Your goals, aspirations, experiences, everything changes. I was a creature of habit but something happened.. I saw new viewpoints and attitudes and circumstances changed to allow the growth I needed.  At this time I had already been clean for over a year., almost two, but the changes were taking place on a deeper, more permanent level now.

 Other Factors

At this same time another truly major-league astrological event unfolded for me.
   Saturn, the planet of wisdom and maturity (among other things)  reached conjunct aspect to my natal Sun the month after my Sun changed signs. This Saturn thing is big.
 When the Sun interacts with Saturn, a season of limits and definitions is upon you. Neither concept sounds all that attractive, but both are necessary for maturation. The road seemed to grow narrower before it widens up for possibilities and for me allowed the inner changes I had spent years working on to become reality.

Also talk about  major transit factors (Astrologer Steven Forrest, calls these 'Net One' configurations) contributing to these changes:

 I had Uranus squaring the Moon: tumultuous passage, peppered with unexpected developments and encounters. Inwardly, it signals a time of accelerated individuation... that is, a time in which who you really are and what you truly want are rapidly emerging and defining themselves.

Uranus also aligned with the Tenth house cusp. The wild card in life, Uranus entering this house,  vocational or professional prospects are a concern here, but more is at stake, the part you play in the world is represented by the Tenth house.. From political and religious affiliations, to your relationship status. It is about how you look to the people who don't really know you. Under Tenth house stimulation, you are invited to improve your status by inserting into it more of the energy and attitudes associated with Uranus. When the Moon is alloyed with Uranus, a mood (Moon) of rebellion, defiance, and independence (Uranus) fills the psyche. The impulses now flooding my mind ultimately proved useful and valid.

Saturn aligns with the Twelfth House cusp

Release... that is the spirit of the Twelfth House, being the last house in the cycle,  it refers to endings. Saturn entering your Twelfth House signals that a long chapter of my life is coming to a close.
The immediate question. of course, is what's next? But don't be too quick to ask it. That lies ahead is not merely unknown: it is unknowable.  The vision gathering time.. and a time for gracefully disentangling yourself from circumstances which no longer feed your spirit, and a time for gracefully disentangling yourself from circumstances which no longer feed your spirit.

Saturn opposes Neptune. Now Saturn emerges once  again in a new say.  Neptune is in my Sixth House.. an inherent desire to be helpful and competent. and I express it best when find ways to give people around you "gifts" of the nature of Neptune. Unconscious mind, or, your soul has a message and is trying to get in touch with you.. When hard-headed Saturn is stirred into the same pot with visionary Neptune, a season of brain-storming has arrived. A happy confluence now exists between creative imagination, and shrewd practicality. Keeping them in balance is the art. There is a middle course between optimism and pessimism in the so called visionary realism. This needs to be practiced!  This aspect opposition always calls for a leap into a new, more accepting level of consciousness. Something is missing in your view of the problem and that  the missing link  lies  in the wisdom embodied by those people or situations that are now antagonizing you.  The truth that can carry you beyond this impasse lies somewhere between the two positions.


These astrological energies (transits) did not cause my recovery. They just facilitated the change I had been longing for. They helped to cement the already inner changes to manifest outwardly.
The first thing needed for recovery is a genuine intent for change. I really had a desire for recovery. Dope no longer worked for me. Was no longer my true love. It had let me down and I no longer found it worth the price (physical, emotional, mental, psychic, political, sociological and monetarily) it cost me too much!

For years I didn't believe recovery was possible, because I didn't have a true desire for recovery. However once the desire Intent became real I began to have people enter my life who were long term addicts like me in fact as bad or worse addicts than I was and they were sober. Clean and staying that way.
I could not longer believe it was not possible. The next step was learning some skills (spiritual concepts) to live my life by, which brings more persons into view who are manifesting those principles and ready to share /teach life lessons.
The old saying, "When you are ready for the teacher, the teacher will appear" is true.

Once Intent is put out into the energy waves (universe), a shift is made on a huge level and the way is made for you r desire to manifest.
This is what makes Creative Visualization work so well for those who practice it.. for those who can visualize their desire.. to intend it to be, the work is done. The universe does the rest. All you have to do after that is show up and stay aware.
Remain open to miracles, remain open to magic. Because miracles do start to happen .. and if you are open to them you don't miss all this magic... happening for just for you!

 Become humble and make amends for any harm you've done. This puts the negative behind you and the strength coming from this enables more growth and more positive to enter your life.
Clearing karma allows you to get honest with your feelings, addict thinking patterns, habitual defects which  you again desire to change or delete from your personality. Replacing them with truth, honesty, compassion..
Blessing all of life you are blessed.
The  Circle of life grows, each spiral becomes larger and more inclusive as you cycle around ...

 
 As you see, I can't say the Sun leapt into Gemini and I was cured. I had begun a meditation practice about a year before and had not used any dope in over a year. Some how I became calm.
All around me the chaos was still happening, but inside me it was calm and quiet. The Trickster was still crouching  around the corner waiting for a moment of opportunity to mix up my mind again.


I had a wonderful opportunity for 2 full free sessions with an Hakomi therapist. I took these sessions with the intent of getting as much as possible out of them. Following with a few paid sessions. This is a body-centered psychotherapy method my Ron Kurtz. Using mindfulness and probes of different types, this therapy gets to core issues in life very quickly. For me it was too quick ~ scared me away.

My room mate was still actively using cocaine and living in the fast lane.  I had both grandmothers pass away within a week of each other. Paternal grandma on Friday of the first week,  Maternal grandma the next Friday. I had to fly home both times for the funeral and family business.
 At this time I simply made the decision I had been clean long enough to return home and stay strong.  This, thankfully  proved to be true.


anchor
After Meth, Finding Life
By Jacob Santini
The Salt Lake Tribune
07/06/2003 - LA VERKIN --

Dayna Pittman sighed as she looked down at the small, turquoise box on her kitchen countertop.

I did this," she warned as she opened the velvety double doors of the box. "I did."

The 44-year-old woman, her fingernails bitten to almost nothing, pulled out a snowy white cast of a newborn's right hand, a balled up fist no bigger than a golf ball with flawless nails and wrinkles where the knuckles bent. She placed a similar cast of a left hand on the countertop, then a cast of a tiny foot.

Finally, she reached for a grim photo of a newborn wrapped in a blanket, the child's lips midnight black, her closed eyes surrounded by purple, swollen skin.

These items are what's left of Virginia Lynn, delivered stillborn on a winter day in 1997 after Pittman's daily deluge of alcohol and methamphetamine during the pregnancy.

While the items in the box mark the end of Virginia's life, they also signal the beginning of Pittman's journey into self-evaluation, prison and eventual sobriety. It is a path that took years for the lifelong alcoholic and drug addict to take. It was a journey that began the moment Pittman decided to stay in this small southern Utah community, not running away from trouble for the first time.

Months after Virginia's birth, Pittman became the first Utah woman charged with child abuse homicide for killing her unborn child. About 20 years ago, state lawmakers extended murder and similar charges to those who do harm to an "unborn child." Until Pittman, the law had been used only in cases of fatal crimes against pregnant women.

Nationally, fetal rights have regained the public spotlight with federal lawmakers debating an act similar to Utah's statute, although the proposal would not apply to drug-abusing mothers.

It's a debate Pittman wanted nothing to do with. She declined to fight the law that made her a felon. She pleaded no contest, knowing that she had killed her daughter.

"I basically starved Virginia," Pittman said. "It makes me want to puke when I think about what I did to her."


A life of alcohol: Pittman's earliest memory of alcohol dates back to a family home in Hollywood, Calif. She recalled wandering through the house in the early morning, thirsty for water, juice or milk but instead finding a half-full martini on the kitchen table. She walked outside, sat down on the front steps of the house and finished the cocktail.

She was 3 years old.

Alcohol appeared everywhere during her childhood. Her mother held regular parties, her stepfather kept a cache of beer in a cooler in the garage.

"I've been drinking regularly since I was 12," Pittman said.

Initially, Pittman said she wanted to be cool in the eyes of older teens in her neighborhood, then in Riverside, Calif. She found that popularity by sneaking beer to them.

By her late teens, Pittman said she added drugs to the mix.

Alcohol and drugs -- primarily meth -- stayed a part of her life as she had a daughter, then married her longtime boyfriend and had two more kids.

The family landed in southern Utah by chance in 1994, while running from Pittman's legal problems of repeat driving on a suspended license in California. With no destination planned, they took a trip into Zion Canyon and remained in eastern Washington County, primarily La Verkin.

Despite her alcoholism and off-and-on meth use, Pittman said she kept herself out of trouble and in control. That changed on Christmas Eve two years later in 1996, the day her husband, Guy, a cement finisher, fell 35 feet onto a ravine's ledge on a hike and broke his hip. He spent six weeks in a Salt Lake City hospital.

The care of the family, financially and physically, fell to Pittman. She took three jobs, cleaning hotel rooms, working as a maid and selling homemade tamales.

She also started drinking more Utah beer than ever -- "two, three, four, 18-packs every night." She used meth to offset the intoxication. Methamphetamine, with its side effect of keeping users awake for days, essentially turned Pittman into what she described as a "standing drunk."


Danger signs: Pittman remained so drunk and drugged that five months passed before she realized she was pregnant with Virginia. Pittman believed she was "going through the change" -- menopause.

Her condition soon attracted alarm within the small community.

Several tips about a pregnant woman who was buying pack after pack of beer found their way to Kurt Wright, who at the time was a sheriff's deputy charged with policing the eastern half of Washington County.

"It was a nightly bender," said Wright, now the chief of the Springdale Police Department. "I don't think I ever saw her sober."

One concerned call eventually came from Phyllis Davidson, perhaps Pittman's best friend at the time.

Davidson, fearing Pittman's baby would be born with severe alcohol-related birth defects, unsuccessfully urged her friend to have an abortion, offering to pay for the procedure.

The pair's friendship ended about a month before Pittman delivered Virginia.

The two met at Pittman's home for a day of holiday baking. "She got so drunk, it was so horrible," Davidson said. "I got my kids and left my pans and everything there."

As Davidson drove away, she knew she had to turn Pittman in to the authorities.

"I couldn't stand seeing what she was doing," Davidson said. "It killed me to make that call."

Wright, meanwhile, had consulted the Washington County attorney in a frustrated attempt to find the legal means to stop Pittman before she might do harm to her unborn child.

But without any evidence of harm, Wright discovered there was nothing he could do until after the birth. Then, assuming Pittman delivered a drug-addicted child, authorities planned on bringing in the Division of Child and Family Services to take protective custody of the newborn.

"It just ripped my heart out," Wright said.


Jan. 17, 1997: About a week before the delivery, Pittman knew something was wrong -- she hadn't felt Virginia kick in days. She, however, kept that a secret.

On Jan. 17, 1997, Pittman went into labor. Her husband and oldest daughter Lori, 19 at the time, were in the delivery room and immediately knew something had gone terribly wrong.

"I saw the baby," Lori said. "I knew what my mother did."

Lori said she "blacked out" most of her memories of that night. She primarily recalls the pain she saw on her father's face. She remembers running from the room, soon joined by her father. Pittman said she couldn't face either.

Virginia weighed 3 1/2 pounds when she was born.

On the drive home from the hospital that day, Guy asked her, "What now. Do we have to move?"

"No," Pittman responded.

She would soon face the consequences of that decision.


Charges and chances: Three days after Virginia's birth, Deputy Wright stopped a mortuary from sending the newborn's body to a crematorium. Authorities wanted an autopsy.

A medical examiner in Salt Lake City determined Virginia had been born prematurely at about 31 weeks without physical abnormalities. But there was "a high level of methamphetamine" in Virginia's system, according to court records.

The autopsy labeled the cause of death as "maternal methamphetamine abuse."

On March 2, less than two months after Virginia's birth, prosecutors charged Pittman with child abuse homicide for killing an unborn fetus by using drugs while pregnant.

Although she faced up to 15 years in prison, Pittman pleaded no contest a month later without making any sentencing deal.

"I just wanted it out of the papers," she said. Her two youngest children were ridiculed at school each time a development in the case made headlines.

Pittman's gamble of a no contest plea seemed to pay off as 5th District Judge James Shumate opted for a year sentence in jail rather than sending her to prison.

His reasoning was simple: Drugs and alcohol were driving Pittman's conduct.

Months later, Shumate gave Pittman another break, approving a week-long furlough that released Pittman from jail overnight so she could take care of her children while her husband underwent and recovered from hip replacement surgery.

She blew her chance within hours.

"The first night I got drunk," Pittman said. "That's how stupid I was. I got home and got drunk."

The furlough ended when she returned to jail in the morning, stinking of alcohol.

Shumate, however, was still determined to help Pittman become sober. In December 1998, he sent her to Orange Street Community Correctional Center in Salt Lake City, a residential treatment center for addicts.

Pittman made progress, but she would self-destruct.

"She struggled with authority, minimized the rules, circumvented staff and distorted her value system to meet her needs," an Orange Street social worker wrote to the judge. "On the other side she made gains in her therapy, discovered how she operates in the world, grieved for her baby, explored her childhood, understood her substance abuse and accepted responsibility for her actions."

Officials tossed her from the program in July 1999 for meeting with her husband in a hotel instead of working, Pittman said.

Shumate had just one option left.

"The only thing left for me was prison," Shumate said. "By the time it came to do so, I had no other choice."


New view: Under her sentence, Pittman faced incarceration until mid-2014.

It took only a short time before Pittman said she realized prison would become her salvation. What was it about prison that worked when jail and treatment never did? Pittman said she finally saw herself, her antisocial attitude and manipulations to get her own way, in her fellow inmates.

"I'm sick of looking at people like that. I'm sick of looking at myself like that," she said.

Pittman credits prison counseling courses, the Orange Street program and the book Embraced by the Light, a near-death tale about life, family and death, for her change.

In July 2001, Pittman came up for her first parole hearing. In response to tough questions, Pittman revealed why she never stopped using meth during her pregnancy.

"Every time I would sober up and start thinking about it, I couldn't handle what I had already done," Pittman said on a tape recording of the hearing. "So, I'd just get drunk and use again because I didn't want to feel the pain and didn't want to know the reality of what I'd already done. So, I just continued and made it worse and worse until she is stillborn."

The five-member Board of Pardons and Parole, citing Pittman's "complete acceptance of responsibility" and "support system," granted her parole, which took effect December 2001.

She returned to her family and the home where she had been drunk and high for years.


Living with Virginia's memory: More than 18 months later, Pittman said she hasn't tasted a drop of alcohol and hasn't touched drugs. She has done so well, her parole ended in May -- 19 months early.

That's not to say things have been easy. Pittman said she has been close to relapsing several times, one as recently as two weeks ago after a close friend, her prison cellmate, died. She quit two jobs. She initially clashed with her parole officer and her family. She has had medical problems.

Today, however, Pittman said she has a job she loves at a restaurant and a family she has connected to like never before, including a grandson whom she gets down on the floor and plays with, something she never did with her own children.

She's also preparing to go to college in the fall.

"I'm so happy with the way I am now. I may be fatter," she said, referring to the weight loss that comes from meth use, "but at least my head is screwed on right."

The difference, according to friends and family, is remarkable.

"It's a miracle," said Davidson, who is friends again with Pittman. "I don't know how else to say it. She's completely sober. Her whole outlook on life has changed."

Added Wright: "Her whole aura looks different."

Still, Pittman knows she killed Virginia and she has to live with that -- with the sad mementos in the velvet box stored in her bedroom closet. But those difficult memories, she said, also give her strength to stay sober.

"She made the choice to come down here to teach me the lesson of my life. She gave her life for me. I choose to view it that way because that's the only way I can live with myself," Pittman said.

"She gave her life so I could get mine back," she added. "Actually, I never had a life before this."

Pittman said she doesn't care if people accept that explanation. But she does hope that someone like her hears her story.

"I'd like to be able to offer my story to someone who needs it."

 

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