Saturday, May 1, 2010

EXCERPTS FROM AA to AD


DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my wife Diane. She has been part of my paradigm shift. This book tells about me. Like so many caretakers hers is the untold story.



The love that goes into being there, doing for me day in day out as I leave inch by inch, defies description.

The beauty of the love of Diane that has been mine these past 25 years has been first, my joy in giving to her. The giving has been in no way conditioned on getting back.

Secondly, it’s the wonderful twist that is mine. I receive that same love back from her bountifully.

That love demonstrated by the burden of caring for me, taking on the entire responsibility of our life as it yet remains, difficult as it is, is small compared to the bounty of her love so evidently visited on me all of that time we have spent together.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:



Introduction

Forward

Chapter I A Brief Foundation

Chapter II Rebirth In Recovery
Chapter III A Diagnosis Of Alzheimer’s Disease
Chapter IV In Light Of A Paradigm Shift

Chapter V Alzheimer’s Disease Can Be A Spiritual Undertaking.

Chapter VI Perspective

INTRODUCTION

This book is about what AA namely Alcoholic’s Anonymous where I learned the tools for recovery from Alcoholism. It is about using these tool to successfully recover and then to live a sober satisfied life.

It is also about using the tools of AA once again as I was faced with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) 31 years later.

Joining AA and using its tool has been the most significant undertaking of my life. I suffered the bitter fruit of addictive alcoholism from which I could find no remedy. I joined AA used the tools they taught me and quit easily.

I used the same tools to live the rest of my life. There is little doubt of the assistance the tools of AA gave me in vastly improving my life.

When I was diagnosed with AD I again used the same tools with that. Three and a half years later I can affirm the same result. Although the intrusion of a terminal disease into your life which has the audacity of taking your mind before it takes the rest of you using AA for AD has made the having of this disease far more tolerable and meaningful.

The key in the practice of overcoming Alcoholism is found in turning your problem over to your higher power for delivery from it. I did this and it worked for me admirably. When faced with a diagnosis of AD I did it again. Again it worked.

This story talks of the parallel and similarity of the process to overcome the devastating sentence both of which were imposed on my life.

The story talks more about the spiritual consequence and the spiritual discovery both provide in the acceptance of their consequence. In my case it speaks of how I journeyed from Christianity to Judaism then to Buddhism. It discusses the solace I found from each, the peace and serenity provided through acceptance. It tells finally how Buddhism provides a framework to follow and to understand why the suffering and the acceptance produce the result I have experienced.

I am writing for those of us affected by Alzheimer's. The person afflicted, their caregivers, and loved ones so devastated by the onset and progress of this disease. It is for all of them

AD is an affliction randomly imposed in which all those around this calamity watch the person afflicted inching his/her way to ultimate death with the mind leaving ahead of time.

Having this disease causes the anguish of asking why me? Haven't I suffered enough? My answer is found in my acceptance of the inevitability of its progression.
Doing so I learned to share my experience with others and help others understand how to cope with it. I can also speak and write to advocate on issues regarding Alzheimer's Disease with the hope of bettering the lot of all of us suffering from it.

FORWARD

My life has lived its own course in spite of every good intention I had to live it my way. My choices never got on its agenda. There was always other direction to it.

This is my story about its direction. It relentlessly and often painfully followed a course laid out in spite of me. Whatever I hoped for, whatever I set out to do this active agenda paid me little or no attention.

As I lived it my life seemed chaotic, always changing, divided into many different segments, going through many varying phases. I went places and did things I would never have considered, some of which countered what I believed to be ingrained in my core of values.

In the senior years of my life I began writing a memoir. Not even this followed the plan for which I started it. It was intended as an account of the events of my life written for any descendants that might have the same interest as me in family history. Its purpose was to give a greater account of my time than that left by any other ancestor before me.

It turned out very differently. It first included my view and opinion about many of the events of my life as they happened. It then began an introspection of the events as to how they related one with the other. Of the events it asked why; it then asked whether or not these events fit in; it then analyzed how these events fit into explaining my life in terms of what is it all about? “What’s It All About” became title of my memoir.

Looked at from the overall view of fit, the memoir focused not on my life’s apparent randomness, but rather on the order and purposefulness shown by its overall view. Every effect had its cause; all the causes and affects were linked; they all followed in a definite order. Their pattern was mind boggling; their results astounding; the quality of it all was both meaningful and personally pleasing.

The unique nature of what appeared as my plan presented its common theme in what I came to understand to be the major events of my life. From these events I started to understand all of the events of my life, where they were taking me and what they were about. The way they came together provided a sense and purpose for my having been part of this life. It further gave me the security and the serenity that these events were purposeful, planned and completely orchestrated.

Above all I garnered why my life did not follow my plan but rather one laid out by some manager neither known nor apparent in this life, namely the one lived by me from my birth to my death. My choices and plans were all predicated on my concept of what I was in a life that started with my birth, terminated in death and moved to a hoped for afterlife.

In the process of writing the memoir I developed a greater comprehension of my place in the Cosmos. I realized the purpose of my having lived. I found I was doing an accounting of the quality of my existence; dealing with the plus’s and minus’s of my current performance and past performance.

It is my hope that the order I am now able to perceive will lead to a greater enlightenment on the path I am following and give greater purpose to the way it has taken me.

Less this sound too esoteric let me encapsulate it this way:

I was born to purpose carried by me into this life. My life worked on its intention from start to its current state. The events of it have manifested the point of it and defined the path followed and to be followed by me. This path is introduced to me each step of the way and urges me on in its proper pathway.

Background

In the process of it:

I was born to a family with its own troubles that were reflected in the environment in which I grew up. I had four brothers, two older, two younger, who, along with my parents, grand parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and associates all impacted me in my development

Mine was an insular view of life, based on a small town view that looked to fulfill the requirements of its self enforced Cult of Mediocrity that dictated you know your place as defined by it and do nothing to show yourself above the crowd.

I was baptized into and educated 16 years in Catholic Schools. This provided a skewed view of my place and purpose in life. I lived according to the views in which I was trained most often to my damage.

I became embroiled in a difficult marriage, became a lawyer at the behest of my father and practiced with him just short of ten years. During that time it was very hurtful for both of us. It was a relationship that refused to work try as we did to make it work. My marriage was the same. We tried to make it work and found it in retrospect to be doomed from its very start.

The Solace of Alcohol

In the course of the events of growing up, marrying, becoming a lawyer, I discovered the deceitful solace of alcohol. Unbeknownst to me it commandeered my life and I spent twenty years abusing it and prescription drugs all to my damage and the damage of everyone around me.

This carried me to a life altering climax in 1974 when I was defeated by alcoholism and turned for help in order to survive. I found survival and renewal in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). When I capitulated to alcohol I was utterly defeated, could do nothing for my self. I turned to the higher power they told me to seek to defeat the alcohol and drugs that had appropriated my life.

Doing so I found a delivery I never knew it possible to discover. Following the direction of the AA program I turned my life and my will over to the care of my higher power and found through that higher power I was caused to quit, continued to abstain and started to live a life never before available to me.

It was truly an epiphany, a watershed, everything in my life having occurred to that time leading to my defeat was purposeful in getting me there, defeating me. It took me to defeat in order for me to find recovery from outside of myself. Everything I gained from being there carried me forward and served me in such a better way as to bring about a result in my life far better than I could have ever hoped for doing it on my own.


In Sum

This is the story of how I found my epiphany and what I did with it. It is the story of the formula provided at AA, the Twelve Step Practice, how with that I found recovery. It is the story of how my life continued to follow its way, producing episodes wholly unanticipated, causing reverses not wanted, painful in their experience, yet meaningful in their result. It is the story of how I used the tools acquired by my recovery to continue facing the events of life as they occurred using them to get me through each difficult time to a better result than I could have obtained working by myself.

This is the story of how my life’s path culminated in my diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). It is the story of how through AA I was able to accept this unexpected and unwanted calamity; How I was able to see where it fit into the process my life was following; How it fit so well leading to my decision to simply accept it and make the best of it.

My Spiritual Regeneration

It is in this entire progression that I discovered my spiritual purpose the subject of which I had been in continuous search throughout my life.

I had during my life made varying applications of what I hoped was correct. I started a Catholic, followed a Charismatic, and studied the occult and spiritism conducting séances. After much search and more study I found a sensibility and peace in Reform Judaism.

There I discovered the existential philosophy of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber. With their insight, particularly that of Buber I gained a clue to what was transpiring in my life. Buber described transcendence discovered in the “I Thou” as a means of rising above our material and finite consequence.

From Buber’s concept of transcendence available in the mundane he gave explanation to the miracle of AA. In the act of turning it over to the higher power within the confines of the AA group, the AA Hall, we can evoke what in his book “I and Thou” he describes as Thou. In this evocation an opening presents through which we are able to acquire a power not our own to do what we can’t! That is it evokes the power that can cause us to quit!

Doing so and continuing to practice turning outside of your self to find help continues this channel of contact with something more than self, something we can acquire and make part of our self. I learned that by turning the problems and difficulties of my life over to a higher power I could reliably get results not otherwise attainable by me.

I found it in the act of evoking the Thou. That is where I found this power accessible. I recognized it to be communing with the transcendent, the cosmos, tapping into it to improve and add something to my life.

Using this formula I found it improved my place and position in any event I encountered. It gave purpose to the encounter, to the events and to the way that lead to and through these events. I soon realized it was the glue that bound these events together.

In this process of seeing, understanding, living from event to event I continued my search of the spiritual significance of it. It is in this continued search I discovered the way of Buddhism. For me Buddhism gave codification to the process I had been taught from the experience of my life.

This was particularly manifested to me in the peace and serenity I found in accepting my diagnosis of AD and applying it purposefully in how I was living it. I was intent on making my having AD amount to something. I chose to speak and write about what it was like to have AD. I chose to become involved in AD matters in order to share my experience of having this disease, encourage early diagnosis, overcome the general fear of it, to do everything I could to ease the suffering of those who have it. I realized a fulfillment emanating from the act of trying to do this for others with what has happened to me.

This so fit the Buddhist aphorism:

Whatever joy there is in this world
All comes from desiring others to be happy.
And whatever suffering there is in this world
All comes from desiring myself to be happy.
SHANTIDEVA

What I hope will be my final adventure is a life full of love and compassion. A life lived acting on behalf of the desire of others to be happy. My AD is the vehicle given me with which to do that. Although I could get along quite nicely without this awful disease, I welcome the irrevocable opportunity of having it for the ultimate good I can do with it.
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FROM AA to AD, A WISTFUL TRAVELOGUE by Mike Donohue

(Paperback - Dec. 9, 2009) Buy new: $9.00

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FROM AA TO AD, A Wistful Travelogue

Editorial Reviews


PRODUCT REVIEW

Recovery from Alcoholism was the most significant event of my life. Living the way of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) became my pathway over these past thirty five years. The diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) three years ago has equaled the challenges of recovery. This is a story of my journey, about my paying the dues to qualify, about the tools of AA explaining how they are key to abstinence and to a better life. It discusses the tool at work in my life and finally with acceptance AD. I see both of these intrusions into my life as gifts. Once consigned irrevocably and accepted as such they turn into blessings the benefit from which is not to possible without first being afflicted by them. I examine the spiritual and mystical qualities that are at work seen through the eyes of a Christian, a Jew, and a Buddhist. These experiences have opened my mind to the deeper consequence of living.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike is a retired lawyer. He and his wife Diane live in Minneapolis, MN. Mike loves to write. Now having the time he writes on a variety of topics. This book is about his life defining experience of overcoming the tragedy of alcoholism and using the experience in living the rest of his life. It describes his recovering from Alcoholism 35 years ago. It is about using the tools in AA to both recover and live his life in a more satisfactory way since that time. A little more than three years ago Mike was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, (AD). Mike explains his life changing experience of recovery in AA and how that helped him accept his affliction with AD and make the best of it. He relates how this diagnosis brought him so much closer to understanding and appreciating his purpose in life.


ROSE LAMATT "AUTHOR OF 'JUST A WORD' ALZHEIMER'S" (Florida)


What's really important.,

January 10, 2010


This review is from:

FROM AA to AD, A WISTFUL

TRAVELOGUE

Mike Donohue,


The author takes you on his true-life adventure of recovering alcoholic, and sends you into his diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Thus AA to AD.


This will change him forever, he says, but will not destroy his faith. When you have lost everything you have, there is nothing more to lose. And when you have lost all, it is only then that you start to gain the importance of life. My words, the author's ideas.


Mike is quite an amazing person.

In his writings he leads you to understand what an Alzheimer's person goes through, taking away bit by bit everything you've known. How does the man who was called the Mario Andretti of Europe, stop driving?

How does he stop getting around on his own? In the long run he learns how comforting it can be to sit and write. He starts writing blogs, letting others know what he thinks and feels of this new adventure Alzheimer's. He helps others understand that there is more than just the diagnosis he has to contend with, but how this disease may take everything he's worked for to support his wife and family. How will he keep them from going to the poor house with his disease?

If you want to learn how a person diagnosed with Alzheimer's thinks, I highly recommend reading Mike Donohue's book. Read and learn from the horses mouth, so to speak.

In Mike's own words: "I have finally learned letting it happen as it is going to anyway is the soundest way to find contentment."


A Truly Inspiring Memoir, April 5, 2010


Al Past (Beeville, TX USA)

Books by alcoholics who beat the odds and save themselves from that deadly disease are not rare. Often, Alcoholics Anonymous plays a central role. However, I would think that books by someone with Alzheimer's Disease who similarly rises above his affliction (also with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous) must be almost non-existent. But in fact, From AA to AD, A Wistful Travelogue, by Mike Donohue, is such a book, and I found it fascinating and inspiring.

The young Mr. Donohue was expected by his lawyer father to follow in his footsteps, and he did, for ten unsatisfying years. He entered an unhappy marriage which ultimately fell apart. Those situations and others, including a bad chain-smoking habit, left him with a terrible drinking problem which nearly destroyed his life. He "bottomed out," as so many alcoholics do, and turned to AA out of desperation. Their twelve-step program finally enabled him to stop drinking and turn his life around. One can only imagine his exhilaration at being able to begin a glorious new life, a second, happy marriage, and to set new goals and repair his shattered relations with friends and family.

That all crashed in an instant when several odd symptoms sent him to a doctor and he was found to have Alzheimer's Disease, an implacably debilitating and ultimately terminal condition.

It is impossible to imagine the shock of going from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. The questions one would have are easier to predict: why me? After such a great personal triumph, why this horrible fate?

Mr. Donohue did ask himself those questions. Incredibly, perhaps conditioned by his habits of introspection and personal analysis learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, he set himself to come to grips with his new reality. This book was partly the result. In clear, straightforward style, he relates his personal search for meaning in his life in a systematic, even lawyerly, manner.

The Catholic faith of his upbringing, with its rigid rules, offered neither answers nor comfort. He studied Judaism and Jewish historians, and made a trip to Israel. He moved on to the Jewish existential philosophers, Herschel and Buber, and found their ideas fit nicely with the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Both stressed the transcendence of the mundane: turning oneself over to the "Thou," or higher power. From those he extracted three helpful tenets: do good for others, pray, and study.

Feeling at that point that he understood his own history, he went on to try to identify the spiritual significance of his life. He turned to Buddhism. Its meditations taught him ultimately to turn his disease over to his higher power as he had done with his alcoholism, to accept his suffering, and understand that having compassion and doing good for others was his final purpose in life. Thus he achieved serenity.

This review, condensed as it must be, cannot do justice to Mr. Donohue's description of the process of his journey, which, as I said at the outset, I found fascinating and inspiring. Each person's journey is his or hers to cope with, of course, and Mr. Donohue does not intend his book to be in any way a how-to volume. It is an account of his own personal journey only. For my part, I took it as a startling example of the power of the human mind to heal itself and to arrive at its place in the greater scheme of things. Surely, whatever our own individual situations might be, we can all take comfort in that possibility.

Dr. Al Past is the author of the four Distant Cousin novels, a popular adventure/romance/sci-fi series, contributed the photographs for Barry Yelton's OnWings of Gentle Power, author of a book of trumpet duets from Charles Colin, a reviewer for PODBRAM, and a member of the Independent Authors Guild. He lives on a ranch in south Texas.


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From AA to AD, A Wistful Travelogue


by Mike Donohue
(CreateSpace / 1-449-58367-9 / 978-1-449-58367-5 / December 2009 / 142 pages / $9.00 / Kindle $6.00)

Books by alcoholics who beat the odds and save themselves from that deadly disease are not rare. Often, Alcoholics Anonymous plays a central role. However, I would think that books by someone with Alzheimer's Disease who similarly rises above his affliction (also with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous) must be almost non-existent. But in fact, From AA to AD, A Wistful Travelogue, by Mike Donohue, is such a book, and I found it fascinating and inspiring.

The young Mr. Donohue was expected by his lawyer father to follow in his footsteps, and he did, for ten unsatisfying years. He entered an unhappy marriage that ultimately fell apart. Those situations and others, including a bad chain-smoking habit, left him with a terrible drinking problem that nearly destroyed his life. Hebottomed out, as so many alcoholics do, and turned to AA out of desperation. Their twelve-step program finally enabled him to stop drinking and turn his life around. One can only imagine his exhilaration at being able to begin a glorious new life, a second, happy marriage, and to set new goals and repair his shattered relations with friends and family.

That all crashed in an instant when several odd symptoms sent him to a doctor and he was found to have Alzheimer's Disease, an implacably debilitating and ultimately terminal condition. It is impossible to imagine the shock of going from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. The questions one would have are easier to predict: why me? After such a great personal triumph, why this horrible fate?

Mr. Donohue did ask himself those questions. Incredibly, perhaps conditioned by his habits of introspection and personal analysis learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, he set himself to come to grips with his new reality. This book was partly the result. In clear, straightforward style, he relates his personal search for meaning in his life in a systematic, even lawyerly, manner.

The Catholic faith of his upbringing, with its rigid rules, offered neither answers nor comfort. He studied Judaism and Jewish historians, and made a trip to Israel. He moved on to the Jewish existential philosophers, Herschel and Buber, and found their ideas fit nicely with the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Both stressed the transcendence of the mundane: turning oneself over to the Thou, or higher power. From those he extracted three helpful tenets: do good for others, pray, and study.

Feeling at that point that he understood his own history, he went on to try to identify the spiritual significance of his life. He turned to Buddhism. Its meditations taught him ultimately to turn his disease over to his higher power as he had done with his alcoholism, to accept his suffering, and understand that having compassion and doing good for others was his final purpose in life. Thus he achieved serenity.

This review, condensed as it must be, cannot do justice to Mr. Donohue's description of the process of his journey, which, as I said at the outset, I found fascinating and inspiring. Each person's journey is his or hers to cope with, of course, and Mr. Donohue does not intend his book to be in any way a how-to volume. It is an account of his own personal journey only. For my part, I took it as a startling example of the power of the human mind to heal itself and to arrive at its place in the greater scheme of things. Surely, whatever our own individual situations might be, we can all take comfort in that possibility.

Note: I discovered Mr. Donohue's book by virtue of the fact that he mentioned one of my own books on his blog, specifically here (near the bottom, just above the red graphic). He wrote this in an email: "I am aged 73, on the down hill slide. Do not be sorry about my affliction. Even though it has me sliding it has forced such opportunity on me to get everything in my wavering brain expressed in writing or in digital art. 43 years I was a successful trial lawyer traveling throughout the country handling cases. That is small potatoes to where AD has now placed me. Now I am totally involved with who I am, have always been but could not see it until all the glitter was removed. This parting segment of life is just not all that bad.... I work feverishly at getting it all done before my mind beats me to it. This provides me a pretty satisfying life in race with the demons."


FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2010

Distant Cousin Touches Another Soul: True Story


A blog came to our attention recently, a blog by a gentleman with serious health problems, whose only choice is to contemplate final things and his relation to them.

Imagine--if you can--the exhilaration of a person who overcomes a potentially deadly disease, alcoholism, through a supreme effort of will. Then, after that life-affirming triumph, imagine being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Such a cruel twist of fate would be incomprehensible to most of us. This particular man, however, has courageously devoted himself to attempting to reconcile his plight by seeking to understand his position with respect to eternity, by studying religion, the philosophy of Buddha, and more. In his blog he says he has finally succeeded--with the assistance, incredibly enough, of a bit of philosophy from Ana Darcy.

In his blog, he makes this statement: "My western trained mind continues asking, 'But where is God?' My Catholic mind keeps looking for the Last Four Things! ...I let this question go unanswered until I came across a statement of God that gave sense to the definition lurking within me." He then

cites a passage from Distant Cousin: Repatriation, the second volume of the series (slight spoiler alert). In the passage, Ana is in the clutches of a kidnapper, and her situation is deteriorating ominously. This is the actual dialog:

"Do you believe in God, Ms. Darcy?"


"Do I believe in God?"

"Yeah."

"Do you mean an an...anthropomorphic God or a transcendent God?"

"A what?"

"Do you mean, do I believe in a God who's like us, but maybe with a beard, or some kind of more abstract, spiritual entity?"

"Either one."

"Well, I don't think I believe in an anthropomorphic God who lives up in heaven, like some people do. But it would be hard to travel as far across

the universe as I have without considering where it all came from. I suppose I believe in God as an algorithm."

"A what?"

"An algorithm. A system of formulas or laws, like in physics, that explain how things have come to be."

"Yeah?"

"I think so. Yes."

"Interesting...not a lot of comfort in that, though, is there?"

"Comfort? I don't know. Maybe there is, some. It suggests, to me, anyway, that all we have for comfort lies in each other, in ourselves. Whatever

God is, we need to care for each other. I try to do that myself. Why did you ask me about God?"

"Oh, just curious. Never mind."

In an email message, the gentleman, Mike Donohue, explained: "I am aged 73, on the down hill slide. Do not be sorry about my affliction. Even though it has me sliding it has forced such opportunity on me to get everything in my wavering brain expressed in writing or in digital art. 43 years I was a successful trial lawyer traveling throughout the country handling cases. That is small potatoes to where Alzheimer's disease has now placed me. Now I am totally involved with who I am, have always been but could not see it until all the glitter was removed. This parting segment of life is just not all that bad.


"I am enjoying it, sharing it and having some sense of doing good with it. Like Ana I have an Algorithm working full bore in me.... I work feverishly at getting it all done before my mind beats me to it. This provides me a pretty satisfying life in race with the demons."

Mr. Donohue, racing those demons, is an inspiration. If we were ever to be in a similar situation, we can only pray we could face it with such resolution and grace. We are humbled and pleased that Ana Darcy's message has provided Mr. Donohue some comfort. We wish him well.

You will be always in our thoughts, sir.

Mr. Donohue's blog may be found here. His insight is here (near the bottom, just above the red graphic). He has written the account of his quest into a book, From AA to AD, A Wistful Travelogue, here.