courage

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the taking of action in spite of it.

Am I courageous or am I stupid? When looking into the face of an impossible enemy, is it a display of valor to hold steady and continue trudging the road to an almost certain death or is it a display of recklessness? In making the decision to return, where did my motivations lie? Were they in the possibility of returning to the past, proving to other people something that was impossible to prove, escaping from a difficult situation? Is that really what I wanted, despite how futile the attempt to return to an intangible moment months past, despite the innate impossibility of proving something to people that they do not want to see, despite the multitude of difficult situations that continue to cross my path? Or do I want something more, do I want an adventure, do I want to feel safe or secure? An adventure I will get regardless of where I am. Safety and security are two states of being that I haven’t experienced since the moment that I stepped onto that airplane.

Courage is something that I lack. I lack the gumption to bring out my six-guns and fight for myself. It is curious, because when it comes down to it, I have always been a fighter. But, instead of fighting for myself, I find myself in the constant, never-ending battle of placating those around me. And within this struggle, I have lost myself.

When I look in the mirror, I see something. I see an outline, a vision, a future, a potential. But I can never see what is really there. It is as if I dig through my closet daily to find the appropriate mask. It is unbearable, those first few hours of the morning or last few hours of the evening, when I catch a glimpse of myself, naked and vulnerable, in front of the mirror. This is my fear. Myself.

Taking action. Action. An act. A moving, breathing, tangible act. For one with so many ideas and desires, this ‘taking of action’ ends up being my ultimate nemesis. For while it is so easy to sit and contemplate life and the things that I will one day accomplish from the safety of my room, taking these ideas and giving life to them is the most difficult challenge that I have faced to date.

Putting it all together, I recognize and gladly admit that I am afraid. I am afraid of the past, of the present, of the future. I am afraid of being unlovable and being incapable of truly loving another human being. I am afraid of death, but even more, I am afraid of life. I am afraid to step outside of my room when it is too cold, afraid of the ghosts in my closet, afraid of failure, afraid of success. I am afraid of spiders. I am afraid of the grocery store. I am afraid to check my voicemail.

Afraid. A, Frayed. How appropriate. A, an article, me in this case, being ripped to shreds, hence ‘frayed’, by invisible and most of the time nonexistent attackers.

To live in the moment is to remove myself from fear. Because at this moment, sitting at my desk and typing on my keyboard, nobody and nothing is attacking me. I have no idea what type of horror or joy awaits outside my door, but I cannot be concerned with what I do not know. And if all I know is now, and if now there is no reason to be afraid, there is nothing to fear.

And so I choose to take action. I choose to be secure and safe in this moment because in this moment, I am secure and safe. And so I choose whether or not to be afraid. What is the worst that could happen anyway?

I have lived so much, experienced so much of the human spectrum of emotions, seen both the beauty and tragedy of humanity. And I am still alive, bent slightly, but never broken. Because, while many have tried, nobody can steal or break my soul. Amongst all of the material and physical possessions that I have, that people have proven time and again to take advantage of or destroy whenever possible, I will always retain that which resides inside of me. And I must nourish it by maintaining my integrity and self-worth. I must guard it carefully and always take care when bearing it to another. I must listen to its intuitions and when I do, will always be carried in the right direction.

In the end, I guess I am courageous. Through the multitude of lives I have lived, for the amount of times that I thought I was destroyed, for the joy and love and laughter, for the tears, for the blood curdling screams and unimaginable pain, here I am. Nearly bludgeoned to death by fear, I still leave the comfort of my bed to face the day. And even though some days are better than others, I somehow find the strength to carry myself through it all and at times, find the even deeper strength to smile through it all.

pieces

Have you ever experienced the complete inability to do anything? As if to breathe, walk, eat, even sleep, were a long, daunting to-do list that you wanted nothing more than to crumple up and throw out the window. When the blank stares, counting the infinite number of white dots on the painted dry-wall and concrete make your eyes start to water. When you can no longer distinguish whether or not your eyes are actually watering or if the tears have transformed from a steady stream to the last drops of a leaky faucet that cannot be shut off. When to move your mouth, your lips, your eyelids, creates the internal sensation of moving mountains. Where every word sounds like gibberish, both those that leave your mouth and those that hit your ears. When sitting in a crowd of people makes you feel infinitely lonelier than when you are alone. When time moves in slow motion.

This is the space that I live in now. It is cold and empty and lifeless. I breathe, not of my own volition, but as a mechanism to keep me moving from one tortured moment to the next. In the hope that maybe, just maybe, that next moment will be less painful.

My life has not been easy. This is a euphemism for: My life has been really fucked up. I have delivered myself to Death’s doorstep countless times, as if it were the gates of heaven, and He is never home when I come calling. There is quite a bit of irony in this. Through the myriad disguises and tactics I have used to get myself a date with Him, He always rejects me. But for the countless people that I have loved, those who brought themselves there and those who were brought there by the external taxi ride of life, He is always home, welcoming them into his home with a stiff martini and a gift basket. It is as if He is mocking me. I have probably cursed Him more than god.

I don’t know where to begin. Every time I try to piece the puzzle together in my head, it ends up backwards and sideways, or missing a crucial piece, or like one of those puzzles that are all black and nearly impossible to complete unless you are Stephen Hawking or something. I want to know how I got here. I want to know where ‘here’ is.

I suppose I should begin at the beginning. At least that is what I have heard countless times, nestled backwards on a plushy couch in countless rooms, deliberately facing away from the countless strange and foreign faces that claim to know better than I how to solve my problems.

The beginning.

The beginning.

History has never been my favorite subject.

Vlog

BREAKING DOWN THE WALL

BREAKING DOWN THE WALL: An exploration of drug and alcohol addiction and recovery in Berlin.

How do young people in Berlin cope with addiction and alcoholism? What are the challenges that young people in sobriety face? Are the services provided comparable to those in the United States (specifically Seattle?) Are drug and alcohol use more acceptable, considering Germany’s proximity to places such as Amsterdam and the laxity of legal restrictions on drug use there, as well as the younger legal drinking age?

I plan to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous while in Berlin in order to meet young people in recovery. After talking to the young people and conducting interviews, I hope to be able to speak also with people in active addiction. This can potentially happen on the street, or through observation in dance clubs or other social gatherings. Based on case studies of these people, I want to discover why they started using drugs and whether or not their drug and alcohol abuse resulted from the more liberal environment, peer pressure, family influences, etc. In exploring how drug addicted/alcoholic youth are experiencing recovery in Berlin, I will ultimately compare it to my own experiences of young people in addiction and recovery in the states.

An experiential methodology is the most appropriate for conducting my research; being a participant observer will ultimately generate the most compelling and informative research. Through conducting interviews with the young people that I meet in the program, I plan to compare the information that I gather about their experience in recovery to my own. As my research is based on a comparative approach, interviews in Berlin will coincide with information I have collected from friends in recovery in the United States, as well as with my own experience. The more interviews that I collect, the more adequately prepared I will be to determine a case study to conclude my final research project. Again, in line with the comparative approach, I am ultimately searching for a person to act as a mirror to my experience in the United States. The ultimate goal is not that this case study has had the exact same experience as the general majority of sober youth in the United States, but that there is a common thread that knits youth and recovery together, regardless of location.

The challenges that may present themselves while I am in Berlin are most predictably speaking with people in active addiction and I do not know if I will have the opportunity to do so. Even if I do end up meeting active alcoholics and drug addicts, an essential aspect of the disease is a lack of honesty and openness and I do not know if they will be willing to talk to me about their addiction; they may not even recognize that the addiction exists. In traveling to different places around the world and going to meetings, as well as being active in my personal recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, I have found that people following a similar trajectory tend to open themselves in ways that are pretty profound. The challenge then lies in finding these people in meetings in Berlin; English-speaking meetings tend to be dominated by travelers or foreigners in residence in the country.

The following questions will be included in some form in the interviews that I conduct:
How old are you?
At what age did you have your first drink? Was it with your family or friends?
When was the first time that you remember getting drunk? Why (peer pressure, just because, family issues, etc.)?
What drugs have you used and what ages?
Do you feel like you have a problem with drugs and/or alcohol?
If so, at what age did you realize that you had a problem with drugs and/or alcohol?
What factors (social, personal, etc.) do you feel contributed to your addiction?
What services, if any, have you used to cope with your alcoholism/drug addiction? Do you feel like there is enough support for young people in Berlin?

Finding young people who will be willing to serve as research subjects in recovery will be based on my ability to create friendships within the meetings; as I share my experience and listen to others’, I plan to integrate myself into the community, especially during the first week, so that people are more willing to talk to me than they would a total stranger. As I become more integrated into the community and progress with my interviews, I plan to use the ‘snowballing’ effect, whereby I will ask the people who I am interviewing whether or not they have friends who are still in active addiction who would be willing to talk to me. If not, I plan on contacting a friend of mine who lives in Hamburg to see if she knows anyone who would be willing to talk to me. In finding a case study who is on the active side of his or her addiction, I am planning on finding service work to do through the program where I might be able to help in a homeless shelter or speak in a drug rehabilitation center. I do not know if these opportunities are available in the breadth that they are in Seattle, but I will have to wait until I attend several meetings to determine whether or not this approach will be viable. In the case these approaches do not yield the desired outcome, I will go to bars and nightclubs and simply observe the level of alcohol intake, whether or not drugs are an integral part of the evening, and the level of intoxication that occurs within a given population.

Protecting the people I am researching is a major priority; not only is anonymity one of the keystones of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the nature of alcoholism and drug addiction is so sensitive that I doubt that I would find people living in active addiction who would be willing to expose themselves. Therefore, in recruiting my interview subjects, I will engage with them immediately by first stating that whatever they say will remain completely anonymous. I will draft a document that reiterates this fact and will sign it, explicitly stating that the only reason that I would break their anonymity is if they gave me direct permission to do so. Unfortunately, unless this permission is granted, I will not be able to audio-visually record any of my research and will have to either take physical or mental notes. My hope is that through the common bond of addiction and recovery that my peers will allow recording of some nature, but will accept and respect their decision either way.

RESEARCH SCHEDULE
Contact for Alcoholics Anonymous in Berlin 030-787 5188
Contact for Narcotics Anonymous in Berlin e-mail: info@na-berlin.de

FIRST WEEK
I plan to attend a meeting a day in the first week of the program in order to make contacts orient myself in the program in Berlin. As the week goes on and I continue to meet people who are willing to be interviewed, I will pass out consent forms and make appointments for interviews.

MONDAY 20.00-21.30
Step & Tradition Meeting, Closed Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
TUESDAY 19.30-20.30
"Round Table", Closed Style Meeting
Alvenslebenstr.25, 10783 Berlin-Schöneberg.
WEDNESDAY 20.00-21.30
Discussion Meeting, Closed Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
THURSDAY 20.00-21.30
Big Book Study Meeting, Closed Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
FRIDAY 19.30-21.00
Speaker Meeting and sobriety anniversaries, Open Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
SATURDAY 12.00-13.30
Step Study, Closed Style Meeting
Barbarossa Str. 64, 10779 Berlin-Schöneberg, backyard, right.
SUNDAY 18.00-19.00
"As Bill Sees it", Discussion Meeting, Open Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.

SECOND WEEK
I will determine which meetings have a majority of young people and stay in those meetings, but if none of them have the demographic population that I am looking for, I will try Narcotics Anonymous.
MONDAY 19:00 - 20:00
Berlin Friedrichshain:DTZ Zentrale Anmeldung Frankfurter Allee 40 U5 - Samariterstrasse
TUESDAY 19:30 - 21:00 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg:: English Speaking International KIS, Fehrbelliner Str. 92, 2. Floor U2 - Senefelderplatz / U8 - Rosenthaler Platz
WEDNESDAY 12:00 - 13:45 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg:: KIS, Fehrbelliner Str. 92, 2. Floor U2 - Senefelderplatz / U8 - Rosenthaler Platz
THURSDAY 19:00 - 20:30 Berlin Tempelhof: Christliches Selbsthilfezentrum Lichtblicke, Tempelhofer Damm 133 S Ring Tempelhof, U6 Alt-Tempelhof
FRIDAY 08:00 - 09:00 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg : "Morning has broken" K.I.S., Fehrbelliner Str. 92 U2 Senefelder Platz, U8 Rosenthaler Platz
Over the weekend, I plan on doing whatever service work that I have found to do in order to meet alcoholics/ drug addicts in active addiction or just starting the recovery process.

THIRD WEEK
By this time, I hope to have found at least two people to focus on in my case studies, one from the recovery perspective and the other from the addiction perspective. I will continue to spend this week going to meetings and doing service work, but will ultimately spend more time with specific people as opposed to conducting more dispersed interviews.

FOURTH WEEK
I will continue to attend meetings, but will be focusing more on writing my findings from the previous three weeks into a cohesive final report, as well as working with the larger group on our compositions.



REFERENCES
Alcoholics Anonymous. (accessed 11 June 08)

Narcotics Anonymous. (accessed 11 June 08)

Outreach in Europe: Social Integration. (accessed 11 June 08)

Permien, Dr. Hanna. “Street Careers in Germany Between Families, Youth Welfare Services, and Prison.” In Referat auf der Internationalen Konferenz: „Problems of Vagrant Children“ in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China vom 21.-25. 10. 2003.
<> (accessed 1 June 08)

Weinhauer, Klaus. “Drug Consumption in London and Western Berlin During the 1960s and 1970s: Local and Transnational Perspectives”. In The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 20 (Spring 2006): 187-224. (accessed 1 June 08)

My love child for the next few months

DRUG ADDICTION/YOUTH CULTURE IN BERLIN

How do young people in Berlin cope with addiction and alcoholism? Are the services provided comparable to those in the United States (specifically Seattle?) Are drug and alcohol use more acceptable, considering Germany’s proximity to places such as Amsterdam and the laxity of legal restrictions on drug use there, as well as the younger legal drinking age?

I plan to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous while in Berlin in order to meet young people in recovery. After talking to the young people and conducting interviews and surveys, I hope to be able to speak also with people in active addiction. This can potentially happen on the street, or through observation in dance clubs or other social gatherings. Based on case studies of these people, I want to discover why they started using drugs and whether or not their drug and alcohol abuse resulted from the more liberal environment, peer pressure, family influences, etc. In exploring how drug addicted/alcoholic youth are experiencing recovery in Berlin, I will ultimately compare it to my own experiences of young people in addiction and recovery in the states.

These are the sites for both A.A. and N.A. in Berlin; meetings are every day of the week. Interestingly, there are more N.A. meetings than A.A. meetings, which is certainly not the case in Seattle. I don’t know if this is because there are more drug addicts than alcoholics, but it is something worth exploring.

http://alcoholics-anonymous-berlin.de/pages/meetings.php
http://www.na-berlin.de/meetings/eng_meetings.htm

The challenges that may present themselves while I am in Berlin are most predictably speaking with people in active addiction and I do not know if I will have the opportunity to do so. Even if I do end up meeting active alcoholics and drug addicts, an essential aspect of the disease is a lack of honesty and openness and I do not know if they will be willing to talk to me about their addiction; they may not even recognize that the addiction exists. In traveling to different places around the world and going to meetings, as well as being active in my personal recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, I have found that people following a similar trajectory tend to open themselves in ways that are pretty profound. The challenge then lies in finding these people in meetings in Berlin; English-speaking meetings tend to be dominated by travelers or foreigners in residence in the country.


It would be wonderful if I could find a way to get in touch with this person. He seems to have direct experience with my research question and I am going to look for a way to contact him while I am in the city.

http://tsforum.event123.no/rme/Outreachwork/speakers2304.cfm

Mr. Stefan Schützler, Gangway e.V., Berlin, Germany
Reaching out for new target groups – experiences and perspectives of working with groups of adults in public spaces. What is common, what is different?

Biographical data:
Stefan Schützler has been a street worker in Berlin since 1992 where he worked in a social project for young homeless in Berlin Friedrichshain for two years.. From 1994 he worked for five years as social street worker for Gangway e.V. in Hohenschönhausen, primarily targeting groups of youngsters who used to meet on or in shopping malls. Since 2000 he has been working in the district of Treptow-Köpenick in South of Berlin, where the main issues of his clients are violence, criminality, unemployment and political radicalism.


This is a historical account of youth drug use in Berlin in the 1960’s and 1970’s…always good to know how/where/when/ and why things got started.

historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com/SHADv20n2Weinhauer.pdf

This is a great Q & A on street children in Berlin and is more recent than the previously mentioned study.

www.childcentre.info/projects/street_children/germany/dbaFile11445.doc

Bitte? Bitte! Bitte? Bitte!

I. Am. So. Excited. The closer that we get to the end of the quarter, the closer I get to a nervous breakdown AND the closer we get to being in Berlin. This is both thrilling and mildly terrifying, especially because I am leaving on June 20th for Italy and going straight from there to Berlin. The exercises in class and the way that time in class is spent is getting increasingly more meaningful, although i still get confused about why we spend so much time with guest lecturers versus actually being in our groups. And, I'm just going to put this out there, I miss Heidi and the big funky looking B.

The composition exercises gave me a lovely little window from which to peer into what future compositions might look like. It was interesting to see the different ways that the groups approached the exercise and that even though we didn't necessarily have to incorporate our topics into the composition that nearly all of the groups did. They didn't seem so much like "drama" to me as a collaborative get-together and make something fun exercise. A creature of drama school, the Viewpoints method has been challenging because I am so used to spending hours upon hours with a text, getting my actions and objectives the way that I want them, playing with dialogue (and occasionally weapons), and this whole 'here are the elements that need to be included, pick your text, and be ready in 2 minutes' thing doesn't jive well with my internal dramatist. BUT, I am enjoying them thoroughly and I am always open to new experiences and methods. Maybe not always. Most of the time. As long as they are "ohne Fleisch". And kudos to Tanya for being such a good sport.

My research has been progressing almost painfully slowly because I feel like most of the work is going to be done through interviews with young people in Berlin. The second lecture, however, made me think about how exactly I am going to video blog my research, especially considering that most of it is going to be through Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous which is inherently...anonymous. I have concluded, therefore, that I will have to talk to people in meetings and then get their consent to talk to them after the meeting, maybe video recorded or audio recorded or maybe not. Another concern of mine is that when I have traveled and gone to meetings in other countries before, most of the English speaking meetings have been full of either Americans or other foreigners, which defeats the entire purpose of my research. I am well aware of how drug addicts and alcoholics cope with their addiction in the States and so am going to need to figure out a way to either go to German speaking meetings and see if there are any English speaking people there, or have a German speaker come with me. Any takers? Bitte?

One final note, something that I can hardly wait for is the Berlin Salsa Congress. One of my best friends, John, is flying to Berlin to be my partner and it is going to be the best experience EVER. Counting down the days...

this is our youth...culture...in berlin

Um...LOVE our group. I felt like the class last week was one of the best and most productive to date. At first, I was concerned with the size of our group in terms of working out schedules and personalities and conflicts, but these fears were dispelled after the first few minutes of our conversation. The rule now seems to be the more the merrier and a merry, merry bunch we are. Everyone is interested in looking at topics that involve a lot of direct "field work" and I am soooo looking forward to romping around as a group through the streets, in dance clubs, music venues, and gay cabarets.
Our composition exercise went really well. Everyone contributed equally and we combined all of our ideas to create something slightly strange and beautiful...just like us! In Berlin, the creation of our composition as a day in the life of a drug addicted closeted dancing musician who promotes himself as an actor on YouTube...but really wants to develop his own fashion line. Writing that sentence makes it seem really complicated, but I have faith that we will make it work.
In terms of my own personal research, I have found some great lists of meetings to go to and I am hoping that there will be young people there who will be willing to talk to me and let me talk to them about their experiences with drug addiction. The only issue that concerns me about my field research at this point is that when I have gone to English-speaking meetings abroad before, they have generally been dominated by tourists instead of locals.
I shared my sobriety with the group and they were extremely supportive...I can't even begin to describe how relieving this was for me. It is hard to be young and sober, especially traveling with young people who aren't, but the response was amazing and I am really happy that I shared this aspect of my life.
Looking forward to the performance today...