I felt out of it all morning.  I guess my body is still fighting off this virus.  I wondered if my joy/reward system is still screwed up.  I wondered if motivational fatigue is a form of depression.  Not the sort of depression where one feels sorry for themselves, but rather the sort of depression where one's motivational drive is low.  I thought about how I would probably do better at getting going if it were not for the immediate clamor of children in the house.  There were two kids here that spent the night in addition to my four.  Then two more came over and the party from last night continued.

I tried my best to recover at mid day.  I wanted to study but never was able to find the solitude.  My wife went to work at 3 so my service load doubled at that point.

At some point in the evening I was cooking dinner and I suddenly smelled something that made me think of cocaine.  I felt a moment of desire in my mind.  It passed immediately and I just found it remarkable that this could still happen, and so randomly.  I wasn't fantasizing about any part of the old life, I wasn't stewing in anger, I haven't had any conscious desire for anything remotely close to partying in years now.  Other than the occasional dream in deep sleep, the old life is like an ancient myth that doesn't even seem relevant anymore.

I was too busy to stop and think about it at the time but later I wondered again about this.  I also thought about how much time I still spend thinking about my addiction.  I thought back to the class about grieving and loss.  I thought about how drinking and using and my sex attitudes were part of my identity.  I was really attached to the part of me that savored imported beers, high quality blow, and lustful pursuits.

It is easy to understand how this left a void within me when I was in early sobriety.  When my sense of identity was still edgy, just without the intoxicants.  But what I find astonishing is how it still exists now after all these years, now that my concerns are so different.  Now my thoughts and identity are dominated my family, my studies, and religion.  You would think that there would be nothing in my thought life that were attached to the old passions.

Thanks be to God for this day.

This morning I recalled looking for an easy reference to the Erikson's stages yesterday in class and decided to find one for a single page. I had to draft it myself and fell into a flow with it and couldn't stop until I was done.

This and a review of the stages of grief lead me to the stages of change model.

Stages of Change
1. Precontemplation - Has no intention to take action within the next 6 months
2. Contemplation - Intends to take action within the next 6 months.
3. Preparation - Intends to take action within the next 30 days and has taken some behavioral steps in this direction.
4. Action - Has changed overt behavior for less than 6 months
5. Maintenance - Has changed overt behavior for more than 6 months.
6. Termination - Overt behavior will never return, and there is complete confidence that you can cope without tear of relapse.

Today I learned of the condition of sensitization which is the opposite of tolerance. I realized that I experienced this.

I also came across the I-Change model of change:
1. Awareness - the result of accurate knowledge and risk perceptions of the person about his own behavior
2. Motivation - a person's attitude (the results of perceived advantages and disadvantages of the behavior), social influence beliefs (norms of others, behavior of others, and support of others) and self-efficacy expectations (the perceived ability to perform a particular health behavior).
Action - Self-efficacy, action planning and goal setting. Performing the new behavior, Coping or maintenance Development of skills required for the new health behavior.

This morning during prayer my thoughts drifted into the idea of critical thinking. I thought of it as a filter. There have been times when this concept has come up in conversation and the terms critical thinking have not seemed precisely right, it seems too aggressive. Maybe critical filter, or rational filter, or filter of reason is more appropriate.

In Personal Adjustment class our professor talked more about death and dying. It was very helpful in understanding how to be attentive to the needs of those coping with death or life crisis. I thought of my friend with a serious illness, and of my sister with cancer.

This got me thinking about Kubler-Ross's 5 stages of death. I thought about how this could be helpful for both those near, and the person themselves, in understanding the psychological states in the process of dying. I thought about how this could facilitate the state of acceptance and help improve the time that the person has and perhaps in their legacy.

My biggest interest in these stages however, is in relation to all the other losses and changes in life. We talked about the losses in our lives and drew pictures of them. I remembered how i went to the Kubler-Ross website and looked into her books and found out that she and others apply the stages in this way.

I think this will be extremely helpful in helping those struggling to admit their addiction to understand where they are and move towards action.

During Human Growth and Development class a discussion ensued about the condition of learned helplessness. There was a guy in class who couldn't get how people could fall into this behavior. I thought of all the book reports in Personal Adjustment class that covered the deeply traumatic lives of people that explain this problem. I realized how much I have befitted from these accounts, however difficult they were to sit through.

This morning I remembered that a friend called last night and asked to borrow a few bucks. I didn't meet his request last night, partly out of caution with people in recovery, but mainly because I was putting my kids to bed. I felt a little guilty for not being more willing to be helpful but looking back it was probably the right choice.

This morning the guy followed up with me and met me at school. I wished that I could help him more as he is genuinely trying to get on his feet. Interestingly enough, the topic in my Social Services class was on the good and bad of being a SS worker. Our professor talked at length about detaching and not trying to help too much or getting personally involved or too invested in outcomes.

Today I thought some more about existential psychotherapy, I read on a website of the givens of existence that listed them in additional terms and included a fifth:
1. Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency
2. Death, Human Limitation, and Finiteness
3. Isolation and Connectedness
4. Meaning vs. Meaninglessness
5. Emotions, Experience, and Embodiment
I also thought about my own theory of the structures of the psyche. To the idea of the being as composed of 3 parts:
1. Intellect: the mind, thinking, logic, reason
2. Emotion: the heart, instinct, motivational force,
3. Intuition: the soul, gut feeling, choice, judgement
I thought of how they have distinct but not separate functions. How they overlap in a sort of Venn diagram.

This afternoon I had to write up my mom's life story. I felt a great deal of honor and gratitude to have her as my mother.

Once again I have a cold. This morning 10 minutes before rising I felt so bad that I didn't think I was going anywhere today. I had to abbreviate my prayers today. I am grateful to have this worked out and that I did get to make take my youngest daughter to school and make it to my first class.

We got to talk about isolation, loneliness, and solitude today. The professor introduced us to the existential approach to psychotherapy. This approach resonated greatly with me. I was immediately taken with the idea of a common set of givens of existence: Freedom, Death, Isolation and Meaning.

After class I fell into a great deal of discomfort and felt distressed. I stopped at the bookstore but was in so much physical discomfort that I had to leave. When I got home I thought that there was no way that I was going anywhere else the rest of the day. I ate some chicken soup and drank a 7 up, took some medicine and went to bed.

Amazingly I felt better later and made it to my afternoon class.

I got to go to a meeting tonight. I got to connect with some friends that I have been missing lately. Our topic was about spiritual fitness and the psychic change that comes with this work. I thought about when it happened for me. About how I had gotten sober many times and struggled through months of fighting off the obsession to drink and/or use every day like clockwork. This was a monkey on my back that I took as a given. But when I began the 12 step process and had begun the personal inventory, at about 35 days clean, I noticed that the obsession had not come that day. Then a little while later I couldn’t remember the last day that this happened. I also had begun to experience an entire paradigm shift in my life struggles. This was astonishing to me because I had never experienced this type of sobriety.

Thanks be to God.

This Monday all my kids were home due to a school holiday. After my morning class I packed a lunch loaded the girls in the bicycle stroller and the boys rode on their bikes to the park. We had a great time, the weather was nice, the boys and i threw the football.

In the evening my mom came over and she helped me with my end of semester project by telling me her life story. I felt like I got to know her better through the perceptions and feelings that she shared with me about the events in her life. We went on for a long time and she had much more to share but I had to cut it short. I would like to do this again and hear more.

Thanks be to God.

This morning in meditation I thought of the idea of "Physician Heal Thyself" as the focus of my end of semester report. I started out my prayers in a state of worry and fear about school but found a good sense of focus and received a few more increments of clarification.

I also thought about the idea that my prayers (and those of the newly sober) should include a petition for removal of craving and obsession.