I never even ended up with the cool biker like “Slash” or “Killer”
I usually ended up with some looser called “Tater Nut’s” that was just as grateful to have me as I was to have him.
Or worse the loud obnoxious one that everybody hated and he would take his crap out on me.
Biker life was all I ever wanted to be a success at but was a miserable failure from the start.
I always wanted to be the”Cool Chick”that everyone wanted to hang out with but just never knew how.

I lived a life of poor imitations.
As my drinking and addictions grew worse so did my reputation and I started straying further and further away from the family,convinced I could never return.

After several years away I ended up doing in-custody treatment.
Nice way to say JAIL but at least I was in the program unit and it worked.
When released I really thought I had nowhere to return to so I spent my first year feeling isolated but practicing a program of recovery in my fellowship of choice.
That’s when I rediscovered Sober Bikers.

I had known about a group long ago but had heard they had disbanded now I learned they had formed a new group and I searched out their meetings…
It was love from the first one I attended !
For the first time I felt like these were people that knew where I had come from and what I had been through and all they cared about was I no longer partook of the lifestyle they too had left behind.
What I admired most was the fact that they were still bikers in every sense of the word but yet different in so many other ways than I had ever known a biker to be.
They still road hard and fast…
They still cussed and spit.
The men still wore leather and the women wore even more….
And I felt accepted.
I began to see a new life path in front of me.

Now 4 years down the road….
I no longer have to bury my issues.
I have kindred spirits that want to help me with them.
My Sponsor is a member of a Women’s MC and asked me if I would like to Probate with her club and it took me all of 1/8 of a second to say “Hell Yeah” !
Life as I knew it is over yes, but…
A new mile marker is on the horizon for me….
Gonna get my boots outta the closet..
Gonna put back on my leather…
and…
I never did stop cussing and spittin anyway…
Today I am Simply_Sandra and…
I am Gonna ride once again!

1. Having no known name, identity or known source
   “anon. authors“;
   - anonymous

The parameters for our individual Fellowships can make being a Recovering Misfit confusing.
I find that I can find someone at any meeting to identify with if I just listen and reach out my hand.

I practice tolerance, Love and understanding.

I practice Fellowship

Today I am Just Simply-Sandra

They tell us in the beginning “Do not get into a relationship for the first year”
I was told…Get a plant..keep it alive one yr then maybe you might be ready….
The desire to have someone in our lives can override the desire to recover.
We long to have someone to lean on, that will take away the pain and co-sign our crap.
Not a good idea, in fact I have seen first hand just how deadly this desire can be.
We tend to think that it was our drinking and drugging that caused our relationships to fail in the past and now that we are practicing a program and abstaining from those behaviors that somehow we will magically have healthy relationships…NOT !
There is so much more work we have to do inside our minds and hearts and our bodies for them to heal. So many of us never even had a person in our lives that a healthy relationship we could have learned from.
Two “sickies” don’t make a well..neither do one person with some time and a “newbie” either.
Sometimes…but rarely they do make it but in my opinion what recovery They achieve takes longer and is much harder.
I feel as if I would have cheated myself out of the experience of being “just me”.
Of finding out who I am without outside influence.
Time to enjoy the person I have become and life I am building by standing on my own two feet is priceless to me today.
In my past I always made myself into who I thought someone else wanted me to be in order to trap them. I lied,cheated and manipulated my way into countless lives and then proceeded to destroy them or to be destroyed myself by them. I set myself up for failure each and every time, why would I want to do that now ?
Why would I rob myself of this precious time to get to know me ?
One of the best decisions I have made in recovery is to also abstain from the gratuitous sex and shallow behaviors.
I have had sex only once in my 3 1/2 yrs and it left me feeling hollow and
“less than”
It did not make me feel loved or wanted..needed…and that actually freed me to become me.
That encounter..that bad feeling gave me the power to move forward on my own.
It gave me the desire to know myself and any future partners I may have better.
Today I can see what or whom is before me.
I can take the time to identify the predator’s that will try to rob me of “self” That just want to take a piece of me and not the whole package.
And my children are seeing this change in me also and I hope UN-learning the examples I had shown them in the past. I was a bad roll model and I have given myself and them the opportunity to see that it does not always take two halves to make a whole just one whole to make myself happy and perhaps one day…someday I will be ready to give what I have found in me to another human being.
I am still single but I am never alone if I can enjoy my own company

Simply_Sandra

One our contributors, here at Aglobalrecovery.com, recently shared their thoughts about a recovery event they attended yesterday in Miami, Fl, as part of National Recovery Month. Enjoy…

“Hey, fellow recoveries at A Global. Yesterday, I attended the South Florida Rally for recovery as part of National Recovery Month, and it was awesome. The day began with a walk around the beautiful and famous MacArthur Causeway. There were probably 5,000 people in attendance (just guessing – but seriously – a lot).

We then cam back to the Bi-centennial Park grounds were we had some great food. There is nothing like a delicious meal after working up an appetite. I met some new friends in recovery while listening to guest speakers, and that was cool.

Before the concert, I came across a booth for a new website called Recoverydate.com. I had to find out more. Initially, I thought that it seemed like a bad idea, because I remembered how my sponsor told me that people in recovery shouldn’t date for at least a year; however, I now have two years in recovery and don’t remember anything ever being mentioned again.

Basically, I’m single, and I signed up for free because after talking to the person at the booth, I realized that Recoverydate.com offers me something other dating sites can’t – a chance at having a sober relationship with someone that shares my ideals.

I’ve had horror stories before, so it made sense to give it a shot. The idea that I could meet someone and have so much in common, and hit off right away seemed like a realistic possibly I thought worth exploring.

Anyway, after that I checked out the show and they were sweeeet! Richie played Pink and all his best stuff. And later, the Animals killed it with House of the Rising Sun. In the end, it was a fun day. I met lots of cool people, got turned onto Recoverydate.com and supported the local recovery community and National recovery Month with my participation…Hope to see you there next year!

Anonymous Jay”

Thanks for the insightful reflections AJ…

As many in the recovery community already know, September marks National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery month. During the month-long festivities, the recovery community tries to engage addicts, recovering addicts, potential addicts, and families to raise awareness about the realities of addiction and the possibilities of recovery.

Many organizations, nationwide, have planned events that include charitable walks, outdoor concerts, guest speakers, and much more. One such event will take place on September 12, in Miami, Fl; it is the 2009 South Florida Rally for Recovery. The goal is to raise money, through a charitable walk, to be able to gift recovery scholarship to recent recovering addicts.

With only a week left, the 2009 South Florida Rally for Recovery has not yet met its goal, but is calling upon people in the recovery community worldwide to help out and donate anything they can. For more information, please click the following link: Make a Donation.

Lastly, we’d just like to mention that the online social-networking recovery site, IntheRooms.com, is hosting the “Rally for Recovery.” IntheRooms is one of the biggest international sites dedicated to connecting people in recovery worldwide for support. ITR has 45,000 members with more than 131,000 years of combined recovery time.

Starting today, Intherooms.com will now have a Facebook app available for any user looking to personalize their Facebook profile with their recovery time. The ITR Facebook app will display the member’s recovery time for friends to see. It will also show the combined recovery time of the 50,000+ IntheRooms members, which now totals over 100,000 years.

Another feature is that any friend of the ITR/Facbook member who has the app will be able to join the free recovery community anonymously through their friends Facebook page. Addiction can carry a big stigma making getting help more diffucult, but the hope is that the app will reach out and encourage people out there that need help but are still hesitant.

For those unfamiliar with ITR (intheroom.coom), it is one of the premiere recovery communities on the web. Like Facebook, ITR is also a social networking site; however, its focus is recovery. The goal of IntheRooms.com can be summed up with its mantra, which is the word H.I.T.C.H. and stands for Help, Inform, Touch, Connect and Heal. At ITR, anyone can join for free and connect with tens of thousands of other members, across fellowship lines, who are also in recovery.

Want to know at exactly what location and when the next Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is in your area? Now you can very easily. IntheRooms.com has just launched their listing for Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings across the US and the rest of the globe.

One InTheRooms.com member, ScottWDavenport, described the database in the following way: “It’s great to know that InTheRooms.com is working on a Alcoholics Anonymous database that’ll not only benefit its members, but anyone in recovery whether they’ve heard of IntheRooms or not.”

Please follow the link to visit the AA listings: http://meetings.intherooms.com/wiki/AA_Meetings.
Also, be sure to click through the main listings page, Meetings.InTheRooms.com to find similar listings for other fellowships’ meetings, like: Gamblers Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous.

Every September, SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration) and CSAT (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment) sponsor National Recovery Month across the US. The goal is to educate the public on the benefits of recovery treatment. As part of this year’s initiative, SAMHSA and CSAT have teamed to update the official website with the most comprehensive reporting on National Recovery Month.

The official website can be found at: www.recoverymonth.gov. There, anyone can find information covering a wide range of topics including: Community Events; Press Release Information; Mailed Publications, etc. I recently visited the site and found a couple of new updates since last time I’d visited.

The first update noted that SAMHSA and CSAT are offering downloadable flyers that outline the national campaign, right from the official National Recovery Month website. The second update gave a full report that outlined the details of the 2008 National Recovery Month campaign. More specifically, it outlines details that pertain to community awareness raised, and statistical information on addiction and recovery treatment.

Check back to A Global Recovery often for the latest details on National Recovery Month. Also be sure to click on the link above to take you to the official website.

The Bangor Area Recovering Community Coalition (BARCC) has launched a new addiction recovery website. BARCC is a community addiction recovery organization located in Bangor, Maine.

The website offers a variety of resources, such as recovery support, which includes online self-help links, 12-step recovery information, and means through which to access licensed professionals. Bruce Campbell, chair of BARCC, states that the website will provide information and communication.

One of the main intents behind this online addiction recovery tool is to reduce the stigma and discrimination associated with substance abuse, and to highlight the positive aspects of addiction recovery.

The new BARCC website is:
http://sites.google.com/site/bangorrecovery/

Reality TV show star, Khloe Kardashian, from the hit series, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” will be hosting “Khloe After Dark” on Miami’s radio station Y100, every Friday between 11pm – 2am, starting May 29th through June 19th. “Khloe After Dark” is a radio talk show that will be geared towards covering the latest and hottest music, and entertainment news and feature interviews with some of Hollywood’s most talked about stars.

For those unfamiliar with IntheRooms.com, it is the premier recovery, social networking site on the net. Similar to MySpace or FaceBook, InTheRooms.com lets members post photos, chat online, and meet other members in recovery across the globe. Currently, InTheRooms.com has more than 30,000 members with over 100,000 combined years of recovery time.