3rd Street Beat Produced by Clients of The Recovery Center 8 east 3rd Street 10003 #41 October 2023 https://www.justcolor.net/kids/wp-content/upl oads/sites/12/nggallery/halloween/Coloring-f or-kids-halloween-99679.jpg
The 3rd Street Beat Mission Statement
The Third Street Beat is a newsletter written by and created for people with substance use disorder. Our mission is to validate that experience so people know that they are not alone, and to emphasize the many unique roads that we take to recovery. This is an opportunity to share our experiences to creatively support each other. We are non-political, non-denominational, multi-racial, and gender neutral. Our mission is one of recovery and harm reduction, and all experiences are welcome. All the viewpoints herein are personal in nature and related specifically to our contributors’ recovery.
The 3rd Street Beat Editorial Team
The 3rd Street Beat is produced byThe Recovery Center community with assistance from the occupational therapy team.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Plant Sale!! Pg. 3 Bookmarks by A.T. Pg. 4 Lessons From An Absence by J.K. Pg. 5-6 Friends by S.F. Pg 6 Happy Halloween! Pg. 8-9
Street Beat back issues can be downloaded
www.projectrenewal.org/rc-newsletters 2 Follow TRC on Instagram! @recoverycenternyc
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Plant Sale!!
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Created by Anthony T.
Lessons FromAnAbsence
By John Michael Koroly
I’m back at The Recovery Centre after missing 9 days. Heretofore, I’d been attending nearly every day for three months. The first day, it pains me to write, was because of a one-day relapse in my drinking. The following days were partially due to a really bad nose cold, but also to just an emotional inertia.Allow me to explain…
On a Thursday evening, I let the relapse happen because I didn’t give myself time to think of negative consequences. Consequential thinking had kept me from drinking since January of this year. (Liquor is my only addiction.) I’d gone out for some groceries (celery, bagels, cranberry juice; the usual boring stuff), and on my way home passed a local liquor store I’d passed countless times in the past couple years without ever going in. This time, the impulse control failed me, and I got a bottle ofAlexi vodka (guess the cranberry juice inspired me to make Cape Cods).
I can point to no particular “trigger.” Nothing bad had happened to me personally. I’d lost an old college friend from Rutgers a month before, which saddened me, but that was a month ago. Money was still tight, but I was by no means living a pauper’s life. I still had all the books, CD’s, and DVD’s I could enjoy via the local branch of the Brooklyn Public library for free. I get to wear nice clothes. I’ve a gorgeous one-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights I call home. (That thanks to Project Renewal’s “In Home” programme.) I wasn’t feeling any panic or anger attacks like the kind that had sent me to the bottle to quell them. I’m supposing a part of my brain just remembered the euphoria I used to feel with a gut full of drink in me and wanted to feel it again.
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When I got home, I went through the bottle (with cranberry juice) while watching a bunch of mindless amusements onYouTube. Old time sports from the 70s, the Three Stooges, 1980s rock videos (lots of Stevie Nicks), stand-up routines by George Carlin and David Brenner, etc.All of it stuff that a short-term, booze-addled attention span could enjoy.
Here’s the dangerous part: I DID enjoy it. It wasn’t some “dark night of the soul” out of a Eugene O’Neill play. I had a FUN time, then slept soundly. It was too damned easy! The next day was, fortunately for me, a scheduled home visit from my Housing Now case manager. I left out the vodka bottle to show him what I’d done and came clean. I was worried I’d jeopardized my lease, but he assured me I was in no immediate danger of that. By the time he got there (4PM), it was too late to come in to TRC for a session.
The following Monday and Tuesday, I was in the middle of that inertia and didn’t come in. Then, I suddenly got hit with a severe cold in my nose, sneezing my brains out every five minutes, and so couldn’t come in. The following Tuesday, I came in for its own sake, and Wednesday I met with my Case Manager here to get myself back on track.
I regret that there’s no miracle cure I can offer for recovery through this experience. Just the wisdom that the compulsion to use is ever there and requires one to be constantly on guard for it. President Grover Cleveland was once asked “what is the price of liberty?” He replied “eternal vigilance.” Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but I honestly believe that approach, eternal vigilance, is needed to live a meaningful, rewarding life while also living with an addiction.
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Friends
Where would I be without friends? Well I don't know because luckily I've had a few friends on my lifetime. My friend Max called me today. He is a friend, not only a friend but a surrogate parent, mentor and sort of sponsor. How we met is not important but how our relationship has evolved is where the meat and potatoes of this story is. Max is a writer, artist, magazine owner, caretaker and an amazing all around human being. I learned how to think critically observing how he interacts with the world. He has he has a unique way of seeing the abstract in people, places and things that have always fascinated me. An uncanny ability to spot the real from fake, he is at an age where all the noise and BS are just that, noise and BS and very little to no time should be wasted on them.
He encourages me, gently nudging me to do better and don't accept anything but the best for myself. To me Max is more than a friend but an angel if you believe in such things.
Like any human he is not perfect and our relationship has gone thru ups and downs but he's still remains a highlight in my story which would have been a lot darker if he wasn't around. So yeah I feel comfortable calling him one of my many angels.
Suez Foster
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