by Sally Rosa | Sep 1, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Recovery
Written By: Fiona Stockard
Let Me Paint You a Picture
The scene opens on beautiful Delray Beach, Florida. It’s a cool summer evening. The breeze blows just right.
Three women stand in a Publix parking lot. Woman one is me, your spunky narrator, Fiona Stockard. Woman two is elderly, maybe seventy-five. She has white hair and wrinkles. She could be your grandmother. Woman three is maybe twenty-one. She’s covered from head to toe in tattoos and wearing nothing but a tank top, booty shorts, and a backwards hat. A cigarette dangles from her lips.
The tattooed woman grabs a motorized shopping cart and starts driving around in circles. She’s bored and restless, you can tell from her expression.
The elderly woman starts hollering at the tattooed woman. “Hey, hey…hey,” she yells. The tattooed woman keeps driving in circles.
“F**king drug addicts, this town is full of ‘em,” the elderly woman mutters. She walks off into the night.
St. Paul, Minnesota
Two women, both in their early twenties, wait for the bus. It’s a brisk morning, both are sipping coffee. Steam rises from their cups. Both have recently checked into a halfway house. Both are out looking for jobs.
Woman one, let’s call her Jenny. Jenny has on ironed black pants and a light charcoal blazer. She’s wearing heels, not too high, and carrying a briefcase. Her hair is styled perfectly.
Woman two, let’s call her Tabitha. Tabitha has on a band tee shirt, ripped jeans, and ratty shoes. She hasn’t showered in days. Her hair looks more like a bird’s nest than anything else.
That night, in process-group, both go over their day. I sit among the rest of the women, bemused, pretty sure I know what’s going to happen next. Tabitha’s furious. “I got on the bus and someone tried to sell me crack! This town sucks. I can’t stay sober here! Every day it’s the same thing! ‘Want to get high?’ or ‘I got what you need, let’s party.’ This town is full of drug addicts!”
The therapist turns to Jenny. He asks how many times Jenny was offered crack. None, she responds. The therapist turns back to Tabitha. “You’re offered crack because you look like you smoke crack, Tabitha!”
The Moral Of The Story
Although I write a pretty killer dramatic monologue, both of these events actually occurred. I was there and witnessed firsthand why the stigma around addiction exists.
See, the rest of the world thinks addicts and alcoholics are bad people because of people like tattooed woman and Tabitha. We need to “practice these principals in all our affairs.” All of our affairs! Tattooed woman had about nine months sober, yet she acted like she was actively getting high. This hurts our entire recovery community!
The local Delray Beach Government is trying to pass anti-recovery legislation because of people like tattooed woman! Her dumb s**t only adds fuel to the fire. If you don’t act (or for that matter look) like a woman in recovery, you might as well keep getting high.
My parents told me they knew I’d changed when my words met my actions. Tattooed woman and Tabitha both sounded great at meetings. They seemed to have a grasp on sobriety. They could talk the talk. Still, they looked like s**t. They acted like s**t. They didn’t walk the walk.
Had tattooed woman or Tabitha told any innocent bystander they were in recovery, we all would’ve been f**ked. If someone had no contact with other recovering addicts, they’d associated tattooed woman and Tabitha’s behavior with the entire program. This hurts us now and will hurt us in the future.
Let me paint you one final picture. Remember that elderly woman? The one who could be your grandma? Well, she has a daughter. Her daughter works as a hiring manager at Publix. One day, Jane Doe walks into Publix and asks for a job. She tells the hiring manager that she’s in recovery. You bet your sweet a** the hiring manager is going to remember the story her mother told her about tattooed woman.
Act like a recovering addict, not like an active drug addict. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to the rest of us.
by Sally Rosa | May 20, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Written By: Katie Schipper
Negative Contracts and Women In Treatment
Many of us enter recovery with a limited and almost always skewed version of reality. Honesty is a foreign concept. We’ve lived with so many lies that we can’t tell what the truth is anymore.
Negative contracts are a necessity in unhealthy relationships. In fact, they’re the foundation of any sick relationship. The drive to keep secrets, deny the truth, and protect our drinking and drugging is paramount for an addict or alcoholic. So, the concept of a negative contract is incredibly natural in any relationship involving addicts. Even after entering a women’s treatment center, falling into negative contracts can happen very easily.
Learn how to build self-esteem and healthy relationships
What is a Negative Contract?
A negative contract is formed any time two people agree to keep a secret that is harmful or dangerous. Unfortunately, after entering recovery this habit doesn’t just disappear!
Addiction appears in many disguises and the heart of all of them is the idea that certain things must be kept secret. That’s why forming negative contracts is so natural. It’s easy to believe that being a good friend means keeping secrets.
Oftentimes, negative contracts start out innocently. The secret could be as simple as someone breaking a rule that doesn’t seem like a big deal. Think passing a note, or flirting with a male client. What’s overlooked, however, is that it usually isn’t the secret that’s the core issue. The bigger picture is that when engaged in a negative contract, both parties are forgoing honesty, a cornerstone of recovery. It’s agreed, across the board, that without honesty, long-term recovery isn’t possible.
Whether the negative contract in question is over a small or large secret, the end result is the same – the people involved stay sick.
How fear can shape relationships in sobriety
Bonding with Others
For females in recovery, negative contracts can take on special significance. Such a contract is a secret and serves as a bond and a type of camaraderie. Negative contracts can feel deceptively like friendship. They can feel like intimacy and, to be the one who tells the secret, can feel a lot like betrayal.
Of course, the reality is that making a choice to not keep secrets is the ultimate freedom. Like many things that are revealed to a newly sober woman, secrets have to be exposed as what they are – tools of addiction.
Knowing what a negative contract is, what holding one means, and the consequences involved is vital knowledge for any woman in recovery. Acknowledging that keeping secrets is not the foundation of a healthy relationship is very empowering. Learning to be honest above all else is a necessary trait for anyone in recovery.
In search of a quality women’s addition treatment center?
by Sally Rosa | May 16, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Safe Sex in Sobriety
Written By: Anjelica G
Hey, remember those safe sex presentations they gave in school and treatment centers? Yeah, of course you do, they were also known as nap time! Remember what was said in those presentations? Nope, me neither. They were boring as hell and pretty f**king unrealistic. Who stops in the heat of the moment and says, “Hey Bobby, I can see we’re about to start bumpin’ uglies but first I need you to answer a few questions. How many sexual partners have you had? Do you have any STD’s? Do you like STD’s? When was the last time you were tested? Ever use needles? Ever share needles? What about butt-sex? I just want to be safe!”
Are women in recovery practicing safe sex?
No One’s Using Condoms
Let’s be honest here, no ones asking those questions. No one cares. No one’s using condoms and certainly no one’s using dental-dams or whatever the hell they things are called. Asking a guy to put a condom on is enough of a boner-kill, imagine what would happen if you whipped a dental-dam out of your pocket. Yup, you’ll never see him again. You might as well just hop up and take a cold shower, honey.
Who the f**k has safe sex anymore? But more importantly, why don’t we? Listen, I’m a woman in recovery (with a past that makes Anna Nicole Smith look like a saint) and even I just sat here for a good twenty minutes trying to think of a reason why we don’t practice safe sex. There isn’t a reason.
Is it laziness? Do we truly believe that we’re forever exempt from STD’s? Hey, Magic Johnson is still alive and kicking. Maybe we just don’t care? I really have no idea!
I’m not going to write all the dangers of unprotected sex because everyone knows them and if you don’t you’re just dumb. So, if we all know it’s bad, why do we still do it so goddamn much?
IF ANYONE SHOULD BE HAVING SAFE SEX, IT’S DRUG ADDICTS!
I see a common pattern with women in recovery. Broken, insecure women go into treatment and fall in love with some day-one-dingbat who doesn’t understand how to put his life together. For some reason, these young women always say the same thing, “Bobby understands me.” No, he doesn’t! Bobby only understands that you have a zipper on your pants and it goes down!
Once Bobby and Whitney get out of treatment, they think their rehab romance is going to last forever. What do they do? They drive the good ol’ skin bus into tuna town. They don’t think of the huge risks associated with unsafe sex. They don’t think of the even bigger risk of having unprotected sex with an IV drug user, who’s just short of thirty days clean from his three year meth and heroin bender. Sounds like you’re keeping it real safe, Whitney.
You Can’t Fix It Later
See, as addicts, we’re stubborn. We don’t learn ‘till we crash. However, STDs aren’t, in most cases, things we can fix later.
You never know if the “man” you’ve been sleeping with has been sneaking out of his halfway house to meet up with those classy chicks from backpage.com. You never know if the “man” you showed your tata’s to, behind the dumpster of your local twelve-step clubhouse, has been sharing needles with BooBoo, the HEP-C infested homeless cowboy.
So, saddle up there sweetheart, you’re in for a ride – a ride to and from the hospital, several times a month, to treat your brand new STD.
There’s no women’s treatment center you can check into to get rid of HIV. There’s no twelve-steps that help you recover from Hepatitis. No, The Doctor’s Opinion isn’t about how to cure an STD. Being a woman in early sobriety, you’re already emotionally vulnerable – don’t make your bodies vulnerable, too.
by Fiona Stockard | May 14, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Tattoos: Sober Women Breaking Tradition
Written By:Anjelica G.
Body modification, meaning to deliberately alter your physical appearance, has become extremely popular over the last few years. I mean, it’s always been popular, but tattoos and piercings, as well as many other unique forms self-expression, have really blown up lately. I think body art is amazing and believe that pretty soon major community and world leaders will be tatted up. Hell, even our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, had a tattoo on his thigh. However, not everyone has the best ideas when it comes to ink.
Should We Be Broadcasting “Sober” on Our Hands?
Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that you’re sober is fantastic, but does everyone need to know? People get tattoos because they feel so strongly about something there’s no other way for them to show how goddamn awesome it is then to have it permanently etched into their skin! Still, I think there are ways to show gratitude for sobriety besides stamping it on one of the most visible area of your body! Don’t you dare put “sober” on your face. If you do, you’re never getting a job. “Oh Ms. Jones I see here on your face that you’re sober, good you should be, this is a job interview!”
Calling Attention to an Anonymous Program
Take a look at the images above. Not only do they broadcasting, “I’m a women in sobriety”, but they also call attention to an anonymous program and broadcast their sobriety date! Uh oh! I thought anonymity was our spiritual foundation? Looks like someone’s breaking a few traditions. I hope this person doesn’t ever have to change their sobriety date. This is basically a recipe for disaster. Weren’t you told not to get your significant other’s name tattooed on you? Well, sobriety tattoos should carry the same warning. I’d love to believe that your sobriety date isn’t going to change, but no matter how hard you try this sort of thing simply isn’t guaranteed. Now, you might be thinking I’m insensitive for writing this, or maybe I just “don’t understand,” but let me tell you, I get it.
This is Me
I had to go through addiction treatment as well. I’ve been a woman in recovery for over two years. I’m covered from head to toe in tattoos and piercings. I change my hair color more then some people change their underwear. All that being said, I’ve made some huge tattoo mistakes. I’m writing this article to save sober women from the horrible tattoo decisions I’ve made! I had tattoos before I got sober, but in early-sobriety I made the mistake of putting “Grant Me Serenity” and the Narcotics Anonymous symbol on my hand! It was embarrassing to know that regardless of where I was, people knew I was in a twelve-step program. Not everyone understands that being in recovery and being an active drug user are two different things. So, to many close minded people, I was seen as a criminal, a liar, an unemployable junkie, and a disappointment to the family. I was nineteen and had maybe a week sober. I relapsed not too long after I got that tattoo. Hell, I’ve had to go through getting it covered up, which wasn’t easy for the artist.
Change Your Insides Before You Start Changing Your Outsides
Take my advice and change your insides before you go changing your outsides! It’s more rewarding that way. Remember, and this is important, don’t try to match your insides with other peoples outsides. Listen up Ms. Sober Woman, I know what it’s like to constantly want to look aesthetically perfect and to try and keep up with the latest trends. What I didn’t understand, when I first began my sober journey, is that nothing looks better than a happy, healthy, sober woman. When you walk into a room, light it up with your heart, not your poorly done, tradition breaking tattoos!
