January 27 Blog

A dear friend of mine sent this my way. 

THEY BURIED BRUCE COMPTON TODAY

They buried Bruce Compton today
They say
he drank himself to death
or maybe it was drugs.
Both dominated his life.
He lost his wife
then his second wife
then his practice
and finally even his lights.
PG&E shut him off.

By then
We, his friends,
were gone too.
I don't know if we
shut him off
or simply gave up 
a race
we couldn't win.
I do know that 
no matter how much we gave
he drank
and used
and continued going downhill.

I was tempted to say sliding downhill
but it wasn't
a slide
It was a headlong gallop.
There was no resistance
no grasping
no asking
for help.
Bruce didn't need help
because you see
he
didn't have a problem.
The problems were
his wives didn't understand or appreciate him
His partners let him down
even PG&E was unreasonable in insisting on payment.

We all thought he would hit bottom someday
and wake up
from his nightmare
and ours.
And then our guilt 
for not doing more
(even though more was never enough)
would be over too.

Well he did hit bottom
but he didn't wake up.
So there will be no happy ending
no redemption
no more time for a sinking ship
to be righted.
What might have been
isn't to be.

A friend
bright witty
good looking 
and tremendously talented
drank himself to death.

Maybe he will find
the peace
in death
he never found 
in life.
And maybe we will find 
in life
the peace 
that comes
with accepting
what we can change
and what we can't.

   --J.S.--

It is painful to read these words and realize what my friend, and his friend, went through. It is even more painful to realize that one-third of all alcoholics die of suicide. Another third die of their disease.

When you think about it, there really isn't much difference between the two.

jh

January 19. 2011 blog

January 19, 2011 BLOG

SELFISHNESS IN A BOTTLE

A young friend was sharing his alcoholic life history with me. His mother was an alcoholic. His father left them when he was two. He never realized she was an alcoholic until he was five-years-old and she came home one night very drunk. He didn’t know what was wrong with her. She talked loud and crazy and she kept falling down. He was very frightened. After several similar episodes he figured it out; it was that stuff she was drinking.

He grew up isolated from his schoolmates. They had fathers and mothers and they could count on them to pick them up after school. Time and time again she never showed up or arrived several hours late…drunk.

He swore he’d never be like her but at thirteen he took his first drink. It made him feel better immediately and it filled the great emptiness inside him for a while. He didn’t stop drinking for eight years. In that time he ran away from home, was thrown out of three schools, and had three DUIs. The last one was a hit-and-run and he sideswiped four cars in his getaway and took the front wheel off his truck. He continued driving on three wheels until he was run off the road and surrounded by police holding weapons drawn.

In March he’ll be two years sober, and lucky to be alive.

“Alcohol made me so selfish,” he said. “I didn’t care about anything but where I got my next drink.”

When we were drinking, our need for alcohol superseded everything in our lives. It was the proverbial eight hundred pound gorilla.

It’s not easy, but there is a way out.

There is an infinitely better way to live.

jh

Jan 13 blog

JANUARY 13 BLOG

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: EDUCATE

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR 2011

There is nothing like the light of truth to dispel the darkness of ignorance. 2011 will begin the American public’s enlightenment. Just as we came to understand thirty years ago that we had been misled into thinking that cigarette smoking was not harmful, so too will there be a gradual awakening to the myriad negative health consequences of alcohol, and the deliberate effort to misinform the public.

GOALS FOR 2011
·      Dr Herten will present the Informed Consent talk at Cuesta College on Wednesday, February 9 at 1:00 PM in the Associated Students Auditorium, room #5401. The lecture is for the addiction studies students at Cuesta but the room is big enough to accommodate the public. Selected high school student government students will be invited to attend but concerned parents, students, health educators, and any one with an interest is welcome.
·      Have the Informed Consent DVD viewed by players of Major League Baseball during Spring training as part of their alcohol education program.
·      Have the Informed Consent DVD viewed by players of the National Football League in their training camps as part of their alcohol education program.
·      An e-book will be available by March, 2011
·      The book will be distributed to bookstores across the country by May, 2011. Distribution will be undertaken by the Emerald Book Group, a division of Greenleaf Publishing.
·      The Informed Consent DVD  will be made available to middle schools, high schools, scouting groups and churches across the country.
·      A petition to increase the California State sales tax on alcohol (which has not been done since 1991!) by 10% will be written and downloadable from The Sobering Truth website. They will be mailed to Governor Jerry Brown. It will be suggested that revenues derived from this tax increase be used for alcohol counselors in county jails, alcohol rehabilitation programs, public education on fetal alcohol syndrome and the health consequences of alcohol, and alcohol intervention programs in California State prisons (60% of inmates have a history of alcoholism).
·      Dr. Herten will make himself available to present the Informed Consent talk to high school and college students and parent groups whenever possible.
·      The first SOBERING TRUTH SEMINAR will be held at the Vets Hall in San Luis Obispo on Saturday, May 21, 2011 from 9 AM to 5 PM. Topics will include:   1) Health consequences of alcohol, 2) Neurophysiology of alcohol addiction,  3) Economic impact of alcohol, 4) Psychological basis of alcohol addiction, and 5) Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Admission will be free and invitations will be sent out to Cal Poly students, the high schools, local churches, educators, and law enforcement officials.
·      At the conclusion of the seminar, the first annual Most Valuable Sober Person Awards will be given to the man and woman who have had the greatest positive influence as sober role models in our society.
·      The day before the seminar, a delegation of  “SOBER VOTERS” will present Governor Jerry Brown with petitions for the sales tax increase at the state house in Sacramento.
·      We will endeavor to get our message out to a minimum of ten thousand people in 2011.

I don’t know the origin of this quote. If any of you do, please let me know. I think it is an appropriate theme for our work in 2011.

“IF YOU KNOW THE WAY, LIGHT IT FOR OTHERS.”

jh

jan 12 blog

JAN 12 BLOG

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: COMBAT ALCOHOL PROPAGANDA!!

I have always used the New Year to reflect back on goals I had for the previous year, assess how well I did in achieving them, and to formulate some new ones. Over time, I have found it important to make those goals reasonable, by that I mean achievable. Over the next few days, I will do that with regard to the message of The Sobering Truth.

Please help me. If you have strong feelings about people that we should be trying to reach or additional information we should be providing, comment on this blog or send me an email at drherten@soberingtruth.com.

GOALS MET IN 2010

·      Gave a talk to college-age students on the hazards of alcohol and produced a DVD of that presentation. The talk, Informed Consent, is patterned after the medical practice of a physician giving a patient all the possible side effects or negative consequences of a prescription drug or a medical procedure. The patient then signs a legal document, an informed consent, that they have been apprised of these and wishes to proceed with the treatment. This is a very powerful presentation, especially for young people who may have lost fellow students or friends to acute alcohol poisoning.

·      Informed consent DVD is being used by counselors in our county drug and alcohol services.

·      DVD has been distributed to local high schools, probation department, and county jail.

·      DVD is available through our website for schools, church groups, scouts, parents, and any youth gathering.

·      Final editing of The Sobering Truth was accomplished and the book was published. It is available at our website, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble,  Borders, and at our local bookstore, The Novel Experience, in San Luis Obispo.

·      Produced an informative website soberingtruth.com with excerpts from the book, video clips of the Informed Consent DVD, and links to our local fetal alcohol syndrome outreach and to an incredible public education video on drunk driving from Australia.

·      Expanded our research into the medical consequences of alcohol, including new information on the causation of stroke and death by stroke in heavy drinkers, and the exacerbation of psoriasis by alcohol use.

I would say that is some pretty good progress for one year. My sincere thanks to Jane Broshears and Dan Weber for their hard work and support.

Tomorrow you will learn that we have extremely ambitious goals for 2011. As always, the prime goal is education and overcoming the misinformation and propaganda that claims that drinking alcohol is a healthy habit.

Happy, Sober New Year!

jh