The True Story of Linda M.

In 1980, Linda M was the subject of a film about prostitution directed by Norma Bailey (Nose and Tina). 16 years later, Linda renews her relationship with the filmmaker and invites her back into her life. Now in rehab, Linda introduces her family and various boyfriends in a funny, sometimes upsetting, but always riveting account of her day-to-day life.

Flipping the World - Drugs Through a Blue Lens

Inspired by the hit documentary Through a Blue Lens, Flipping the World is an honest look at the world of youth and drug addiction, as told by those who have been there. Seven culturally diverse high school students meet with members of the Odd Squad – Vancouver police officers who, since 1998, have been filming people addicted to drugs. The students talk to the cops, then meet some young people in recovery and others struggling with drug addiction. An important discussion-starter, Flipping the World provides a wealth of teachable moments for educators and others who work with youth.

Through a Blue Lens

Constable Al Arsenault, along with six other policemen, document the people on their beat to create a powerful film about drug abuse. This group of officers developed a unique relationship with addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. In this documentary, drug addicts talk openly about how they got to the streets and send a powerful message of caution to others about the dangers of drug abuse.

An Equal Opportunity Destroyer

This is something I ran across on a forum tonight. So true...

I Am Your Disease
I hate anyone who claims to have a "program". I despise any and all references to a "Higher Power" To all those who come in contact with me - I wish you and your family shame, humiliation, and intense suffering. With you unwitting co-operation, I bring you hell on earth.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am the ancient disease of addiction. I am rightfully called cunning, baffling and powerful, but this is a gross underestimation of me. I have killed millions of men, women and children in ways that absolutely defy the imagination. Most often I slowly drown your soul before grinding down your wasted body. I gleefully ruin your reputation, self-concept and self-esteem. I specialize in marital, family, and child trauma. I leave them all with anxiety, fear and troubled dreams. I poison all with calculated efficiency and precision. My commitment to you and your loved ones' degradation and destruction is absolute.

I am the absolute master of disguise and seduction. I mask myself as your lover, your best friend, and your "ace in the hole". With great stealth I invade your rationality. I initially seduce you with instant gratification, with a feeling of peace, a feeling of belonging. I pose as being able to help you cope better, relate to others better and even to work better. I present myself as needed "fuel" for your creativity, your industry and your social and intellectual ability. I make you feel painfully inadequate without me. Toward the end, you will consider dying if you are separated from me.

I am perfect and breathtaking in my pursuit of your mind, body and soul. I am more powerful than your love and commitment to friends, family, spouse, freedom or life itself. You will compromise every decent value you have to serve me. I have established myself a velvet throne within your brain. I have imprisoned the real you. From now on your countenance and actions will mirror my malignance. I will become your flesh.

I never grow weak. I never sleep. I am totally aware at all times. I know where your weakest point is. I tempt and taunt you in your dreams. I can only be exposed by other humans and I can only be displaced by your awareness and action. I can't stand the light of day. I am intolerant of direct exposure. I hate anyone or anything that has the audacity to challenge my ownership of you . I will rage and fight bitterly to keep you. If possible I will kill you rather than let you be possessed by the real you again. I use you to defend me against those that try to help you. Such audacity is mine alone.

I am known as being jealous and demanding. You will offer all of you to me as I dictate. You will lie, steal, cheat, scam, assault and humiliate yourself and others in order to serve me. You will believe in your own lies. I absolutely will not tolerate the disobedience of my subjects. You may at times catch a horrifying glimpse of me and try to run away. You may make these pathetic attempts again and again. But you can never run fast enough because you carry me with you. I control you completely. Yet I am not satisfied with the extent of the corruption that I cause within you. I want more. I want it now and I won't stop shrieking within the back of your mind until I get it.

I refuse to participate with you. I flatly refuse to be moderated by you in any way. I will only consent to outright ownership of you. All of you. Completely. 24 hours a day until your "untimely death" I refuse to make "deals" with you. I will not make any exceptions for you. I am triumphant and pure in my malignance and destruction. I will not answer to you. I will not consult you. I will never, ever ask for your opinion or permission. Let me make this clear. You will forsake all other things, people and places for me. I am relentless in my quest for you.I can strike as fast as a rattler, or I can torment you for decades. Of this be sure -as long as you live- I exist.

Foolish people do not take me seriously. They take strokes, cancer and heart attacks seriously. This is fine with me. Ignorance allows me to flourish unchallenged. I have been killing people like you for millenniums. I am a disease of the mind, body, character, and soul. How unique. The success of my corruption lies within your ignorance of who I am and what I do. I want you to believe that you alone are more powerful than me. I want you to believe that you alone are the exception to the rule. I whisper these lies into your mind with a furious consistency. I make your enemies your friends. I make your friends your enemies. Your understanding of me is bound up in your shame and your elective ignorance. I make you defensive and angry. I make you feel self-pity, that "no one understand you". I make you believe in your own lies. I make you believe that you should be judged by your intentions, not your actions. I make you alone even in the midst of your own family. Suicide is the only options I won't deny you.

Even your own society protects me and my own deviously murderous ways. Well meaning people tell you that I am caused by your supposedly "addictive personality", your previous painful experiences, your maladaptive ways or your inability to think properly. Others tell you that I am caused by your supposed "bad character" or your alleged "immorality". I am again underestimated. Listen Now, I CAUSE PAIN, PAIN DOES NOT CAUSE ME! Actually, I come to you in the form of a genetic fragment. You are born with me. I come alive with the exposure to drugs and alcohol. I am the source of your dis-ease. People confuse me with an elective disease. This philosophy keeps you in shame and within my grasp. I will own your life and gleefully engineer your death. I am the source of your moral and spiritual poverty. I revel in your ignorance.

I take the young and the old. Men and women, the healthy and the infirm. The wealthy, the poor and the middle class. I lay claim to all those within my grasp. I'll take those of all races, all tastes, all customs and beliefs. The moralist, the achievers, the intellectuals, and those of high willpower are those that I enjoy the most. Yet I take it all. I am an equal opportunity destroyer.

Author: Unknown

Distorted Thinking

Really good article....
Styles of Distorted Thinking

by Gayle Rosellini, Mark Worden

Throughout addictive / alcoholic / codependent living one tends to pick up dysfunctional styles of thinking to cope with every day life.

Using them often ends in some sort of confrontation.

These are some that many have noticed. They are born out of anger, anxiety and denial; or just plain damaged thinking.

Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all the positive aspects of a situation.

Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you are a failure. There is no middle ground.

Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once you expect it to happen over and over again. (If something good happens it is a one of a time thing.)

Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you.

Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start 'what if's', What if tragedy strikes? What if it happen to you?

Personalization: Thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc.

Control Fallacies: If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you.

Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair but other people won't agree with you.

Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem or reversal.

Should's: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who brake the rules anger you and you feel guilty if you violate the rules.

Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true-automatically. If you FEEL stupid and boring, then you must BE stupid and boring, if I FEEL you are thinking about me, then you are.

Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.

Global labelling: You generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment.

Being Right: You are continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness.

Heavens Reward Fallacy. You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come.

Musturbation. An attitude of I must do this or, I must have done that or, I must be on time or, I must not do this or, I must go to meetings or, I must, must, must …. Etc. Musturbation' has the same effect as the masturbation. One may end up frustrated and missing out on some of life's pleasures.

RIP Edda Ingibjörg Hákonardóttir

I've photographed a few outcasts in society, Edda was one of them. She passed away this April, she was 57 years old. I took these pictures of her around 2003. She suffered from a mental problem and used to walk up and down the main street in Reykjavik every day. Sometimes she would sit at the bus terminal and drink a few beers. I always noticed her because of the sadness in her eyes. I talked to her for a while and she opened up a bit and there was some joy inside of her.

I got to know a man last year that knew her before she became insane. He told me that she was a lesbian and one of the first to come out of the closet in Iceland. He believes that the social rejection drove her to substance abuse and the mental problems followed. I know that many people left Iceland back then because they were gay, she was one of them.

Dope-Sick Love

This is a HBO documentary about 4 drug addicts in NYC. They’re followed around for 18 months and I have to say that this is the saddest and most realistic documentary I’ve seen on this subject.

Click on link to go to the site:
http://www.infocellar.com/Video/Dope-Sick-Love.htm

Septic Love

Septic Love , a documentary following the dysfunctional relationship of two men in the west end of Vancouver.