07/17/2026
❤️A letter to our Team Sharing Vermont Families❤️
I began injecting drugs in 1967 in Haight-Ashbury, SF, and became an entirely different person than the 20 year old I was.
Methamphetamine took me and did what it wanted with me for years.
I abandoned everyone who loved me and barely survived the pervasive gauntlets at every turn: incarcerations, disease, violence, homelessness, stigma, self-hate, despair...
I happen to be in a near 42 year recovery, abstinence based, at this point and will turn 80 this year.
The last near 42 years have been full, meaningful, healthy, very productive and always grateful.
I can tell you that I engage in a living amends today, intending to accept responsibility for the pain I caused to others, the harm I did, and to use my energies to help others like me, with addiction and all its varied and dark consequences.
I was always "there", buried beneath my disease and its symptoms: bound, gagged, blindfolded: but "there"...
I couldn't respond to love...to help...
Today, in my freedom, I reflect upon my family, mainly my mother because she never saw me recover as my siblings have (my father passed away at my age 12).
To my mother, I am a "lost loved one..."
I am able again to love her today ~ and accept the suffering I caused~
I'm deeply sorry...
My decisions back then were not choices, they were the result of a fully compromised brain reward system and impaired pre-frontal cortex: addiction.
In some ways my work today as an advocate for people with addiction is my way of saying "I'm sorry"...
Also my way of saying "thank you" to the wonderful ones who have helped me so much in my life...
My mother would be proud, as would my father.
Every one of those taken from us by addiction has a story to tell, a life never reclaimed...They are our "lost loved ones..."
As we prepare to gather this year on 8/31 to be with each other in our reverent sharing of grief, commitment and hope, I'd like you to know that it is one of the treasures of my life
to stand with you.
My heart is with you and your families...
Thank you for your loving courage Team Sharing Vermont Families...
And it is equally with every person held hostage by addiction today...
PLEASE JOIN US ON 8/31 FOR OUR ANNUAL GATHERING...
This year at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, at the head of Church St in Burlington. From 5-7 pm. #