[Magdalen] Heather Cook

[Lynn Ronkainen]

Good for you M. I never foreword or "like" jokes based on drinking/drinks. Long ago ceased to find any humor there in person either. It is difficult to see friends and loved ones who can not break out of this cycle. 
Lynn 

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 4, 2015, at 12:15 PM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com> wrote:

Alcoholics have devices for finding each other. Long before there were apps
like meet-up, they spoke a coded language. I heard it at church all the
time. After a vestry meeting, someone would say, "God, I need a drink." It
took me a long time to realize what sounded like amusing irony wasn't. It
took me a long time to realize that often the response was
positive&sympathetic and off they'd sally to a neaby watering hole. It took
me a long time to realize that at diocesan events about a third of the
people didn't return after the afternoon break (dawn broke when I was asked
to carry a message to someone in a bar near the Colonial theatre, and, as
my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I recognized many who'd been in the
cathedral earlier). It took me a long time to realize that several of the
older devout church people were bleary-eyed on Sunday morning with
something other than sentimental belief.

I've known several people, clergy and lay, who died of their alcoholism,
some in amazingly gruesome ways. And God knows I've seen careers and
families ruined and intellectual promise buried, soaked and sodden.

As I said some time ago, I NEVER let a whiskeypalian references or a fifth
reference go unchallenged.
-M

> On Wednesday, November 4, 2015, Georgia DuBose <gdubose at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you, Renee. My friend Marie Winkler, an addictions counselor, says
> that the most fatal addiction problem in our society is alcohol. And we
> boost it all the time. A priest friend unfriended me for saying that a wine
> meme sustains addictive behaviors. It does, by indicating that if some is
> good, more is excellent. Bingo.
> 
> Georgia+
> party pooper
> 
> On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 8:26 AM, flyingfish224--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> I find it fascinating that we are so concerned about the "Justice"
>> delivered in the Heather Cook matter.
>> 
>> The bigger question, IMNSHO, is what are we doing to change the culture
>> where we laugh, with a wink and a tickle, at being known as
> "Whiskypalians"?
>> 
>> At our wine and cheese fundraisers, at our scotch tastings as an after
>> dinner activity at a parish retreat (my parish), at excuses to use
>> champagne for sacramental wine, at the sacred sherry after the 11:00
> Sunday
>> service.
>> 
>> Yes, I am in recovery.  Yes, I am a party poop.  But addiction, and
>> specifically alcoholism, is killing our brothers and sisters.  We cannot
>> keep silent
>> 
>> Renee
>