Monday, June 20, 2011

Recovery, Straight Up & Disease Transformation


[click on bold for depth]

I can’t fully articulate how tickled I am enjoying Maer Roshan’s latest creation: The Fix: Addiction and Recovery, Straight Up. This daily website portrays the most authentic, multi-dimensional, in-the-moment perspectives on the addiction & recovery phenomena I’ve run across in a while. (Read the press reviews about The Fix: The New York Times, The New York Observer, New York Magazine, Salon, and NPR.)

The critics think something interesting is happening, and I’ve found it a healing tool that offers an unexpected humorous glimpse at our reality. It’s a gift from Roshan, the founder of Radar magazine, and radaronline, among other things. Always candid about his own alcoholism, he says, “there’s no rule out there that sobriety is supposed to be this dull, earnest monastic exercise. There’s tons of humor in the surreal situations that we find ourselves in. The Fix is certainly not going to ignore that.”

Humor is not only a significant element of the Fix, it’s a core component of individual and collective healing. While recently preparing for an upcoming retreat for HIV+ gay and bi men, (click bold for retreat information) I was inspired to write an article for GoodTherapy.org: Focalizing Disease Transformation, about my transformation of the disease of alcoholism and other serious afflictions. After a client read it, I was thrilled to be told how it beautifully portrayed her recent freedom from a 30-year-old, daily crippling eating disorder.

Healing can seem bizarre and paradoxical, just like our maladies.

One Love, Michael