Articles by Keith Howard

One of my favoritest of favorite days, though, comes next Saturday. Hope for New Hampshire Recovery’s annual Recovery Festival is at Arms Park September 30 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Arms Park is a new and much, much larger space than Veterans Park, the festival’s previous site. Taking up space about two-thirds the size of a football field, the festival has grown from a trade show for businesses in the treatment-recovery industrial complex to become a genuine gathering of the recovery tribe.  READ MORE

The world is filled with folks who are very smart, but who accomplish little, people who are very strong, yet move little, and humans who are very charismatic, but change little.  I honestly believe, and believe it with every fiber of my being, that attitude accomplishes more than ability. READ MORE

As I was writing the above, sitting at a table at the front of Hope, the place where members congregate for cards or chess or conversation, a woman I’ll call Carol sat down next to me. I greeted her with some sort of jackassery, and Carol looked into my face, hers slowly melting. On the verge of tears, she told me she hurt. Clearly, this wasn’t a headache or an ingrown toenail. I asked her if she wanted to walk down to my office so we could talk in private. She nodded. READ MORE

I needed peers, not professionals. I needed to be surrounded by folks who knew and understood me almost instantly—and who still seemed to like me. I did not need a DSM diagnosis of Alcohol Use Disorder. I did not need to explain myself to someone who’d never been within a thousand psychic miles of me. I needed recovery, and recovery was all around me. READ MORE

Two days ago, I lost a friend to overdose.  That’s a sentence I could have written dozens times over my time at Hope Recovery. I could also write of the thousand or so people I’ve met here who are still in recovery. They go to meetings, work a program of some kind and stay away from drugs and alcohol. Still, the losses mount and my heart gets broken. READ MORE

One thing I know about addiction, or at least my addiction, is that it’s nearly impossible for the addicted to learn from the past. Or the present. Or even the almost-certain future. For example, the following four data points demonstrate that drug and alcohol use have a negative impact on my ability to hold a job. Before I left home at 17 to go to basic training, I’d been fired a number of times, including each of the following data points.  READ MORE

Recovery has taught me a lot of things, beginning with how to live life without chemical assistance. When I was using and drinking, chemicals—whether powdered, pilled, herbal or liquid—solved all kinds of otherwise overwhelming problems. These solutions, of course, came with their own problems, but those challenges could be handled with more and different substances. READ MORE

While I have new thoughts bubbling up all the time, I’m not above stealing borrowing employing the fair-use doctrine to create derivative works for the purpose of satire. READ MORE

You know you’ve got a problem. You’re using every day, maybe drinking to black out every night. Maybe dope has stopped being a once-in-an-ever-increasing-while thing and has become a habit—which is what you suspect you’ve got. You feel like you might be powerless over the substance, but you’re pretty sure you can quit on your own. READ MORE

I haven’t had a drink or used any mind-altering substances since May 21, 2007, which seems a long time to many of you, long enough to raise the question of why I continue to go to various meetings and focus daily on my recovery.  READ MORE