John's Blog on Responding to Addictions with Compassion and Wisdom
Hello Stephen, I’d like to have a conversation with you about drugs, and solitude. Your latest book, The Art of Solitude, is my favourite among all your books, and I have read them all, except for The Tibet Guide, which I’ve never had occasion to use. And I reckon never will have, certainly not in … Read more
The Relapse Trilogy Intro: What a Coincidence I vowed in my wedding that I would learn to love this woman and my relapsing’s a sign that I’ve learned fuck all. Nothing of value, anyway. On the title page of the epic manuscript I wrote about how I cured my life-long addictions—actually I didn’t say … Read more
Uncovering Addictions will stand between Dr. Gabor Mate’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and Bruce K. Alexander’s The Globalization of Addiction because it is both a diagnosis of addictions as a response to trauma and an identification of addictions as a consequence of societal disconnection. Like Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, by Marc Lewis, … Read more
John has an undergraduate degree in music composition and a masters in ethnomusicology and the neuroscience of music from York University. In the 1980s, he was the music and opera critic for the Georgia Straight, for which he won a Western Canada Magazine Award for Best Arts Review. Before leaving Vancouver in 1988, he wrote … Read more
Every morning over the past 14 years, John has devoted an hour to his memoir. For the four years prior to the pandemic, he was been perched on a stool at a Starbucks on a gritty corner in downtown Toronto, half a block north of a sex shop/crack house, a noticeable hub of dismal activity … Read more
I have no shore power this morning. I was looking forward to playing with my new space heater. I’ve also got my guitar on the boat now, which I haven’t played since impulsively adding it to the carload of stuff I brought back from my trip to Toronto two weeks ago. The dead power … Read more
I find myself thinking about racing strategies, for example: situations where we might want to risk flying the spinnaker, the course in relation to currents, winds, shoals, our competitors’ positions, and such. It’s all very complicated, and this is very pleasurable. Before, I was focussed on boat maintenance and improvement. Also challenging. Also all … Read more
Like a downward fountain, that’s what I’m thinking this new blog is going to be. For more than ten years I’ve been writing a book, latest working title: Uncovery: Beyond Addictions and Recovery. And I must admit I quite love my book and I give my writing practice the pride of place in my … Read more