Featured Refresh
Text & Image
How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
This was a booklet in the Hospice room of my best friend for 50 years. I watched her as she died for 4 days. It was traumatic for me and I was told I had to leave the building on one occasion because, due to COVID, only 4 visitors per patient were allowed. The other 4 all knew each other from Florida so I volunteered to leave the room, but the Hospice people made me go out into the cold. I went out to my car because it was cold and I was not prepared to go outside when told I had to leave immediately. I cried in the car, then drove away for a while. I was already hurting because my friend was dying, but this unecessarily harsh rote adherence to a rule hurt my feelings. I watched the stages of dying alone except for the nurses.
December 6, 2021
Text Only
Have people in your community supported one another during the pandemic? Talk about why or why not, and maybe give some examples.
... In my community of recovering addicts and alcoholics, I felt like we really pulled it together when covid happened. We understand and know that if we don't have human connection we are more likely to self destruct by using substances. We quickly assessed meetings on zoom and soon there was a whole slew of meetings all throughout the day and a few at night. There's international ones, in our country, state, and small community. We put together face groups communicating and reaching out to one another, organized chairs for meetings, put together openers, closers and prayers for the meetings that we would do in regular meetings. It was different, but we did the best we could to make it like a normal meeting. Believe it or not, I met a lot of people in my community that I haven't ever seen before, just because maybe we go to different groups here in town (there's quite a few different NA and AA groups in each town). Numbers were high for those meetings for awhile, but as soon as we could get back into the rooms, we did. Now here is where the problems started, when to go back, how many people in the room, enforcing masks and so on. The problem with this was, so you could only allow ten people in a room for awhile, well who would be the person to tell that 11th struggling addict they had to leave? This was a problem for our community because we know very well what the cost is of something like this. We know it doesn't take much but one bad decision to end up with death. And at the time, it was likely people relapsing, jails were closed, drug testing for the courts was closed (which I have never seen in my life). There was ample reason and opportunity to relapse, and could live with yourself if you were that person to tell one struggling to leave? I know I couldn't. Meetings are vital to our community and to recovery people. They are a lifeline, a means to live through an hour, a minute, a day. It's what keeps us sane, clean and healthy, one day at a time.
June 20, 2021