A friend of mine, Karen Nagy, wrote a very important book: Girlfriend of Bill: 12 Things You need to Know about Dating Someone in Recovery. I spent many days looking at the book, as it sat next to my bed in my cue. Even though I’m not a girl, I felt as though some instinct nudged me to read it. I actually didn’t even know that it dealt with a problem I just began to resolve in my mind. I recently released a budding relationship, because of a Meth addiction that I was unaware of. So, the content was important.
If you had never heard of the phrase “Friend of Bill,” alcoholics use it to keep anonymity at parties and social gatherings, while revealing their proclivity to addiction. As long as I have been dealing with addiction in my family and with clients, I had never heard someone speak this phrase, or it fell under the radar, where it belonged. In fact, I had to make a great distinction, of late, between helping addicts and befriending and dating them.
I had this amazing pal Kati (name changed to protect her) for ten years. We spoke every day, walked our dogs together, shared our problems, and knew everything about each other. But, what I didn’t know, was that, one day, she would simply disappear from my life without even a word. The reason she left, I heard years later, was because she began drinking again after 20 years sober.
The guy I mentioned at the top of this Discovery also disappeared for a week. In fact, disappearing and avoiding is something you can expect from an addict, usually in the early stages of getting sober. However, when an addict relapses, he or she must go back to Day One again, and again… and again! One of my dearest friends in the world is sober 18 years. I call him my brother. My family calls him a brother. My mother calls him a son. Yet, in the many years of our friendship, the one thing I’m absolutely sure of about addiction is: No matter how much a person tries to be sober with not drinking or using a drug, the psychology of an addict stays the same.
What Ms. Nagy does in this book is help you learn the language and mental temperament of an addictive person. Her technique is spot on, because she uses her own revelations, while dating an addict, to prove her point. I feel this book could be a great help to many people. You can count on one of twelve adults being an addict. When I use this term addict, it includes all people in 12 Steps, sober or in their addiction.
Friends of Bill are all around you, especially in certain social pockets. You are likely to have dated one, married one, or have a child or friend who is one. If you can get this book into the hands of someone who may be dealing with relating to someone as this, it would be a great gift.
If you are a gay man or woman, you may want to direct your gaze to my newest blog: Uncommon Gay Spiritual Warrior. This blog is an extension of my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/UncommonGaySpiritualWarrior/) and group meetings about the rare combination of spirituality and "being gay" defines the most important part of us, even in relationship. Join me at: http://uncommongayspiritualwarrior.blogspot.com/.
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Chosen to show his new hypnotherapeutic techniques on The Learning Channel (TLC) and also given the opportunity to teach at the world conference for Learning, and received the award of excellence for Helping Overcome Obesity in Nashville, Bo Sebastian is the writer and director of Finding Authentic You and Uncommon Gay Spiritual Warrior. Go directly to Amazon/Amazon Kindle to buy any of his wonderfully inspired books: ]
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