Maryann Sears was a Playboy Bunnie.
She committed suicide around 1986 by hanging herself in her bathroom .
Maryann died in September 1986

photographs of Maryann

more photographs of Maryanne

We tried to get Maryann admitted to Shepard Pratt Hospital without success -

If she were a Quaker we could have had her admitted for free.



The year before Maryann committed suicide successfully she made an attempt by cutting her throat with a knife in 1984 .

She just couldn't face life .



Scott Brian Gilbert GILBERT, SCOTT BRIAN (Age 47)

On Thursday, September 19, 2002 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He died peacefully from complications of liver disease. He touched and saved countless lives as an addiction treatment professional. This native New Yorker received his BA from The American University.
He taught his children to love a good argument, to laugh, but most of all, to be about something. He taught others courage, dignity, and the importance of a sense of humor. He is loved by many.
Survivors include his wife, Jean, his children, Janet, 18 and Eli, 11, his mother, Bunny, his grandmother, Mae, his brother and family, Richard, Laura, Jenny, and Brigitte. Memorial services will be held in the sanctuary of Temple Emanuel, Kensington, MD on Wednesday, September 25, at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Johns Hopkins Transplant Research Fund, 1 Charles Center, 100 N. Charles St., Suite 435, Baltimore, MD 21201. I met Scott at the American University in 1978. We hit it off right away. He had an amazing sense of humour and saved many people's lives. When I met Scott again he helped me by writing a letter of recommendation for me.


Dee Dee Ramone

The urge for drugs was pretty strong
and the need for love was pretty strong.
I wanted a girl friend or someone to love,
a family, and some kind of normalcy in my life.

DEE DEE shared this quote for my book
Addict

Meridith Edwards, (Little), DOB: 11/7/59 - 05/08/2002.

Meridith passed away at home in Calvert County Maryland while trying to detoxify from Alcohol Addiction.
Meridth went to Jail on her 9th DWI for one year. She got clean and stayed clean for 6 years.
She became a nurse at Towson State and started injecting pain medication and resumed binge drinking. Last week she phone me to say she wanted to work with Veterans at the VA Hospital in Washington DC because she cared.
Meridith was one of the most beautiful women in the State of Maryland.
In 1988 Meridith gave me her story for my book Addict: After I had my daughter Elsie...during the process of nursing her, her first six months of her life, her first visit to the pediatrician when she was two weeks old, the pediatrician asked me if I liked beer.
And I told her I did like beer. She didn't know just how much I liked beer, and she told me to drink beer because it was good for nursing-babies. So I started consuming a lot of beer after Elsie was born.
The first drug I consumed was at the age of twelve. It was Cutty Sark.
LITTLE, MERIDITH EDWARDS (Age 42)
Meridith Mariana Edwards Little died in her sleep Wednesday, May 8, 2002, at her home in Calvert County, MD. She was a 1977 graduate of Sidwell Friends School in Washington and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing summa cum laude from Towson State University, Baltimore.
A runner, swimmer, and cyclist, she won many racing trophies in southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore. Meridith was the beloved mother of Elsie Little; daughter of Mike Edwards; sister of Mickey Edwards; and longtime companion of Bobby Breeden.
A memorial service will be held Friday, May 17, at 11 a.m. at Christ Episcopal Church, Broomes Island Rd., Port Republic, Calvert County, MD. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the Calvert Animal Welfare League, P.O. Box 350, St. Leonard, MD 20685, or a charity of your choice. This ad appeared in The Washington Post on 5/13/2002.

Henry Shaw died in Dunedin, Florida in an old folks home.

Born Seattle Washington, USA 8.23.1920. Died clean in 1999. Henry had one lung and Alzhiemers. Henry went to his first N.A. recovery meeting in the early 1960's at Walla Walla State Prison in Washington. When I took Henry's portrait on 7.2.1991 he stated , when I die, I will alume and turn all the colours of the spectrum as I burn up and there won't be anything left of me.

Born June 18, 1936. Atlantic New Jersey.

Barbara Blaze went to prison as a juvenile for murder. When she got out of prison she dedicated her life to helping Junkies. She died from Liver Cancer in the year 2000.

Blaze told me - When you are a fat kid, you are the joke. I wanted more than anything in the world to be a ballerina. but I ended up in the Roller Derby. What else can you become when you look like me? Then came Jail and it was no more tears ever again. Fuck with me now! Hate became my best friend; it was always there. Now I had a room full of friends who were scared to death of me, saying Anything you want Blaze.
The God Mother of Narcotics Anonymous passed away last night. Barbara Blaze from Atlantic City, NJ, has gone on to be with so many other heavy hitters; gone on to that big NA meeting in the sky. She passed with 26 years clean in NA. I wish to pass on to you a poem she wrote:

To All My Clean Babies In NA:
The Junkie Mother.
Now through you....
My dreams can come true....
Remember my years heavy with sorrow....
Make of these years ....
A torch for tomorrow...
Make my past.....
A road to light....
Believe in yourself....
Let none push you down....
Look upward to the stars...
For I will be with you....
Till no one dares keep you down....
The children of a junkie mother............From Blaze.
May the light from the love she has bestowed on this fellowship,
burn so bright, if the sun never shone again,
we would be warmed by her love.



Hi There,
My name is Gillis L. and I live in Regina, Saskatchewan. I was looking for
some NA humor....... we are having our twentieth convention and I'm MCing
it. That's why I was looking for some good jokes. On Sept 18/01 I lost a
good friend of mine to brain cancer, he lived to do 12 step work and do a
lot of 12 step work he did.

So out of curiosity I clicked on the link of
addicts that died. .......and once again I seen another friend of mine on
your site. That addict was Blaze, I had the privilege and honor to spend
about a week with Blaze when she came to Regina to speak at a Convention
about 10 years ago. She spent her entire time with me and my family, she
refused to get a hotel room and said to me that she wanted to spend her
time here with a family, a real family. Well we had a gas and had some real
memorable moments, one in particular was that after the convention on
Sunday we went out to the reserve, where I have plenty of relatives and I
took her to her first powwow.

She was totally amazed by all the colors and
bells and even more so by the heavy beating of the drums. I never really
noticed the impact that would have on a person until I lost track of her
for a moment I then looked around the tent to see her sitting by some
drummers and watching the dancers. When she looked at me there were tears
rolling down her face, she walked slowly over to me and said she has never
felt anything like this before in her entire life. I now look at powwows a
little differently.

I then got some of friends to come over and meet this
women from NewJersey, they had the full native outfits on and we got some
picture of her and her new Indian friends. She then asked my friend Dutch,
if she could pack him up and take him home. We all had a great laugh. I
then took her to my cousin and introduced her to him, and telling her he
was the Grand Chief of all the Indians in the province of Saskatchewan. She
was could not believe what she was hearing and then asked him if he was a
real Chief.

He started to laugh and asked her where she was from. We a
great visit with him and she was so interested to learn about Indians. She
then asked him if she could pack him up and take him home. We had another
great laugh.



But the interesting part comes now, When wife then and I parted of course
we go through pain and I was staying with my brother. All of a sudden the
phone rings:
Hello
Hi is Gillis there speaking Gillis, this is Blaze
That's all I needed to hear and I fell apart on the phone, I told that last
nite I was so full of pain that didn't think that I was going to last the
nite. She told that in the middle of the nite she felt that I was in pain
and that she had to phone me the following day to find out what was going
on. we talked for a long and this what friendship and love the NA way is
all about. Thank for posting that picture of her, I love her dearly.


Gillis


Carmelita B. Whitherspoon

was a founding member of Narcotics Anonymous in Washington DC,


on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 she departed this life.




Carmelita was involved with the VANATA program

at the VA Hospital helping many addicts getting clean.

Lou Popham died (alone) from a heroin and cocaine speedball injection, in a hotel room in San Diego, CA on May 15, 1996.

At one time he was clean for 6 years, in active addiction he once landed his plane loaded with dope and he himself was so loaded he ended up at Parris Island Marine Base by mistake.


Lou states - Cleaning up was obtainable, but never lasting. We had staples put in our ears. Had Hypnotists come out to my house, I went to England for Aqupuncture , and in nut wards stood in line in Methadone clinics for eleven years, My mother used to send money to the T.V. preacher, and some other shit. Tried alot of different things and nothing worked.


On Wednesday April 2, 1986, Colin Anderson died on the Zimbabwe / South African Border.

Colin was drinking as usual, was definately and perpetually surviving on some heavy pain medication too with a sharp tongue, ended in a drunken bar brawl that resulted in his neck getting broken. Nancy Burns wrote me in a letter that poor Colin died rather tragically on his way down south, popped into a bar at Beitbridge and got terribly drunk, the police were called in to remove him. He then turned up at the Beitbridge Hospital on monday with a severed spinal column, was then taken to Bulawayo Hospital where he died of a heart attack on the wednesday. According to a close friend , Colin was a very depressed man and seemed to be drinking himself to death. I remember one day we had a big party at my house and we all left the party to go to another one, leaving Colin behind and my parents came home shocked seeing Colin staggering by the pool with a bottle of Brandy in his hand. The biggest fear was that he may have fallen in the pool and drowned.

NADIA FREY

Dominatrix

Nadia Frey, 58, a New York woman who was shot to death amid whips, chains and cages, was a dominatrix, police said, an expert who offered fantasy bondage from "sensuous teasing to exquisite torments." She was found dead July 26 in her black-and gold-painted apartment.

Miss Frey -- who called herself "Mistress Hilda Pierce" and dressed in a black cowgirl outfit in sex magazines -- had been arrested three times on prostitution charges in Virginia and Washington since 1983.

Police said that her apartment showed no sign of forced entry and that their investigation included examination of her address book. The New York Post, citing a police source, reported that the book included the names of politicians and judges and that a police inspector's business card was found at the apartment.


William Houstan died from AIDS in the early 1980's.
He was very sweet and spoke with a whisper because he poked a hole in his Jugular vein injecting Heroin in to his neck. He died suddenly from AIDS with many years clean.


MEEKA, a transvestite on the left, became a priest with a full-beard before her death from AIDS in the mid 1980's


Meeka was a hairdresser.



Willie Pompey Born 08/23/46 Brownsville, Pennsylvania.
Marisue writes:
Our friend Willie Pompey passed away on Sunday July 24, 2005
Please let any friends of Willie's know that he passed peacefully at home.
There will be a memorial service here in Washington State at the Tulalip Tribal Center, Sat. July 30, at noon.
Willie passed away CLEAN after a couple years of complications from a kidney transplant.



In 1987,
Willie participated in my book Addict Out of the Dark and into the light.
My favorite quote of his was : before I cleaned up,
I wouldn't leave too far from home unless i took a suitcase of dope
and a suitcase with clothes in it.
And worried every time I crossed the state line
for I was going to get busted, you know, by some of these little towns that you through.

Willie Pompey got clean on December 2, 1981 and stayed clean until his death.


Pepe Manuel Acuna died of cancer.

He was clean for more than thirty years and continues to be a legend in Los Angeles , California . He said that I never realized when I got clean that recovery was about to introduce me to a thought system completely contrary to the thought system that I had when I was using drugs . That was my problem. The thought system that I believed in and lived by . My thinking was my problem and it's been corrected every day . I am begining to see perception a little clearer, and that's a miracle. A miracle is a shift in the perception. What I see and fear , I now see with love.

This Poet died in Washington DC around 1990 .

HE claimed to be able to make a woman orgasm seven different ways.


Roger Teague .

Played a major role in producing the Book Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text He died of AIDS in the late 1980's. He said I never had in my whole life sense of who I was .

Both Roger and Santos from New york City Narcotics Anonymous Died from AIDS.


All the things that were supposed to make me happy that I chased for years that I got whenever they made me happy just weren't important any more . I took a cut in salary
to work in a treatment program with other addicts and really started to find out that who I was spiritually was much more important than who I am materially.


Both Roger and Santos were founding members of Narcotics Anonymous in New York City.


That's when I really started to grow, I feel, when I really started to let go of a lot of the fears that kept me from doing what I really wanted to do. It was the beginning of letting go for me ,
letting go of controlling the need to have guarantees in life, and what I really started to understand that life is what happens to you while you are trying to make other plans.




Scott A. writes...

I was searching the internet to see if there was anything on my old dead friend, Roger Teague, and I found your site. Roger was my counselor at Gracie Square Hospital in NYC in 1984 and 1986. He was one of my great influences, and played a large part in getting sober. He also gave me the the best line ever:
A normal person is anyone with one personality or less.
When I last saw Roger a few days before his death, he was hallucinating, and we visited Paris together in his mind.



I stayed clean from 1987 to 1997. The past seven years have been interesting, but I'm ready to get sober again. Roger peering at me from your site might have sealed it.

Nice site and thanks for keeping Roger's memory alive.

Scott A.
Cambridge, MA



Gregory B. Writes:

It's funny how life is....Scott mentions being in Gracie Square Hospital in the upper east side of Manhattan in 1986.....et VOILA!...guess where I was in April of the same year! LOL (Roger was my counselor and first sponsor).

I leave you with MY favorite Roger T. quote....when I was trying to kick dope and Methadone.....He
said..."Treating drug addiction with another drug is like Fighting for Peace or Fucking for Virginity" !



Dave Moorhead died of AIDS in the early 1990's.

He said that as soon as he arrived in California , he slammed the car door , got out of the car , walked across the street , and
this guy with hair down to his waist comes up to me gets , right in front of me , takes out a nickel bag out of his pocket , sticks it in my pocket , and says , " Welcome to San Francisco, brother."
So I knew I hit the promised land. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever, no feelings of uneasiness, that I am absolutely where I am supposed to be to do the most good for humanity, for myself, and to be of service to God and society.
I guess as long as I stay clean, keep helping people stay alive and find a path to God themselves. Which is what we do and all great spiritual leaders and teachers thoughout time have done,
is save a life, point them to a spiritual path, and tell them they have a choice.
And then all my needs have been taken care of, a result of not trying to take care of my own needs.
Dave wrote in my Journal...
Love the Love
Seek Gods Will
and all will be well.
It's a lesson.
It took me 20 years of misery to learn and a few 24 hours to learn to share with others. Grateful Dave.


Dr. Richard H. Gaylord was often heard and seen reading poetry on 14 th Street, North West Washington, DC , he lived across the street from the Java Rama where I had my first photography exhibit!

Psychologist, Poet, Actor, Sailor, Statistician, Inventor, Playwright, Clown, Linguist, Rebel, Mountaineer,Theorist, Producer, Philanthroist, Gamesman, Dancer, Sexologist,
Photographer, Patriot, Teacher, Democrat, Physicist,Bohemion, Anglophile, Marksman, Shaman and Renaissance Man.






September 3, 1935-November 13, 1992.




Larry died of Emphysema.

He was my guideing light and role model and mentor.
He went from being an accountant for Kentucky Fried Chicken executive flying around the world



to waking up on a park bench in New York City on Skid Row.


He dedicated his life to saving addicts. He chewed tobacco, Nicoret gum, wore a Nicotine patch and smoked other peoples' cigarette butts that were left in his office.


This occured even with the oxygen tank near by. Larry's wit went way over my head most days. He often told me when you look see!



Larry North was panhandleling to get money for newcomwers to get registered
into the fifth East Coast Narcotics Anonymous Convention -
from Yale to Jail - at Yale University in New Haven Connecticut, June 1985 . He packed about nine toxic penniless addicts in to his van.
Three simple things...Don't use...Go to meetings...And...Change your Entire Life...God




The Outlaw Phoenix Motor Cycle Club.



Mac Mcfadden dedicated his life to saving addicts and helped homeless men in Ohio and Connecticut.

He died suddenly and anonymously from brain Cancer in the early ninety's
Mac wrote in my journal...
Pray for Love
Have Faith
They will become one
They will be you...MacMc

Marcie was a prostitute in New York City to support her heroin habit.

She was my first close friend to die from AIDS in the early 80's.




Mark Edward Peters
May 25, 1961 - August 13, 1993.

In Loving Memory
Marc Peters was my best friend . He died from AIDS


Mark Peters had 11 years clean when he died.

He wanted to be an oldtimer with 60 years clean.


He loved Santos's from Harlem quote, who also died from AIDS - that only punks go back out.


Marc was English and Czechoslovkian.

His father commited suicide when he was six years old and that had a great impact on his life.

June 15th 1985

Mark Edward Peters wrote in my Journal...
The sun's clean light streams
we live in a penthouse
close to the sky's shinny surfaces
we converse with angels
trade thoughts and miracles
with the needy,
fools and well-hewn channels
for the greater power
this god
O his face, it's presence
freed from those damned bonds
O the bliss
the bliss of the old ending,
the bliss of awakening
the movements
of whales fins,
shells soft whispers
the beat of babies joined
the secrets off our deepest selves
I in you, and you in I
such mysteries,
no addict need ever die
believe me.
this is the promise ...


Marc B. Alive - + - Marc Peters at the Artparticiparty MayFair House


On 9/12/06, Andrew Fusek Peters wrote:

Hi Chris,

13 years since mark died - I have been in touch with sylvana and didn't know

about the photographs on your site - wow and the poem - have been writing a bunch of new stuff and trying to get the angels book republished

Here are the poems and what I'm sending out to publishers -

I'm now 22 years clean - so I guess I'm going for Marks goal of 60 years, one day at a time - my two kids are now 11 and 5 and been married to polly for 15 years...time flies, feeling older - books are going well

{www.tallpoet.com}

still hitting meetings and living the best I can - yeah, I was in touch with Kim - but he's still smoking dope and really fucked up -

Mum and I offered to pay for his rehab, but he didn't want to know and has since stopped contacting me - it is so sad as he is my last connection with Mark {bloodwise} but I am so glad you are out there and others who knew mark

- was in touch with Jimmy D for a while..is Aaron still around and BJ? And Alexandra?

Lots of love

Andy

Jan 4, 2008 11:52 AM
Hi my name is Elaine and i have been reading the dead friends web site. I was devastated to see Marc on the site, I used to nanny for Marc and his brother Andrew in the early 70's when they lived in Swiss Cottage, London.

I have very fond memories of both of the boys, I was a young girl of 17/18 when I went to stay with them, picked them up from school, took Marc to his riding lessons.

I particularly remember bringing them both to stay at my parents house for a week in the north east of England.Marc was about 10 and Andrew would have been about 7.I have thought of them both many times over the years,

I always thought Marc would have been a successful actor or model, he was such a handsome boy, its upsetting to know he died so young, but am pleased to see he is being remembered on your site.

I am now a grandmother of two boys and have never forgotten the time i spent with Marc and Andrew. Fond Regards, Elaine

I first met Marc in 1971 when I was 17 and went to work for a Czechoslovakian actress in London looking after 2 boys Marc aged 10 and his brother Andrew.

Marc had the most beautiful big brown eyes and the worst haircut you have ever seen.

He had the longest fringe it was a miracle that he could see.

Both boys wanted to look cool so i gave them a haircut in the bathroom, they liked it,

I liked it, not sure about their mother though!

Marc was very keen on horseriding, i used to take him to his lesson every Saturday, and when I brought them both to my parents house for a holiday,

I took Marc to a local riding school and my best memory of him is watching him ride along the beach in Redcar, NE England,

in the rain! I have never forgotten my time with both boys, and wish i had known them longer,

I remember those big brown eyes every time i look at my own grandsons.I hope hes giving it some in that great riding school in the sky !!!!


Nadia loved Dunbarton Oaks.

Rootboy Slim died from a cocaine induced heart attack in Florida on 6/8/1993 .

The Root said "a line of coke will make you a new man and that new man wants another line."
On 8 June 1993 Foster MacKenzie III, aka Root Boy Slim, age 48, died in his sleep in his home in Orlando Florida.
The fast lane had finally caught up with him. His ashes were scattered in Scotland.





Laura Demongeot 1971-1997

Died from a Heroin overdose.

.Closing paragraphs of Laura's last journal entry September 1, 1997.

I suppose it really is one thing at a time. Maybe you give the most by requesting the least, by demanding nothing...

But existence demands action. And how to act? With what motives, goals, and paths?

These are the questions in myself today. Not very new or deep ... simply eternal. LM.




I met Nancy in Zimbabwe.

She loved to party like myself.
Nancy died from a prescription drug/Alcohol overdose in June 9,1999.
Onetime Nancy was arrested for a DWI after consuming massive amounts of Listerine
because there was no alcohol in the house.
Nancy had told me stories about myself that I had blacked-out.


Chris, my Mother and Nancy Burns
Like a time I was wearing a kaftan with dark sunglasses and a turban on my head with a joint the size of a tampax tampoon dangling from my mouth
repeating that I didn't want to hear anything, see anything or speak to anybody.
I wanted her to write our stories as I had no recollection. My last attempted suicide (1982), I swallowed handfulls of pills and then I called Nancy.
She told me to call an ambulance. I survived after being in a coma for three days.


Nancy on the way to Kariba Zimbabwe
Nancy smuggled drugs, sold drugs, used drugs but was never ever able to stop taking drugs.
She was a late stage alcoholic who was diagnosed with schizophrenia/Bipolar.
No medical professional ever treated her for her alcohol addiction.
Every time she called me in the last 15 years I would suggest she go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and that the answer for addicts was total abstinence. I loved Nancy.


Nancy on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, 1982.

Two Flyers of Nancy's party days
Art

Karl Kim Connell, an English professor, writer and friend died at the age of 44.

He was a writer, teacher and poet.

An avid fly fisherman who tied his own flies.

Born on April 20, 1953.

He became a Fulbright Scholar in Belgium 1981-82.





Kim Died from a heroin overdose in 1997,
found slumped at his computer in New York City.
Kim built his own cabln and house in the Catskill Mountains, New York. He loved fly fishing, hunting and isolating.
He was a writer. He was a Hippie. He was diagnosed with Depression. He was an Alcoholic. His addiction was never treated with total abstinence.
I gave Kim the book Narcotics Anonymous in 1986.
His alcoholism grew to heroin addiction in the late '80's. Kim had 300 acres of pure virgin Catskill mountains with a view that he created by chopping down trees.



He grew Marijuana.
We would joke about using Dynamite in the Neversink River and sell all the trout to New York City Restuarants. Kim always asked me when was I going to build my shack in the Catskill Mountains.
One of Kim's prized possessions was this board that had drifted down the stream from the Woodstock festival.
We were always tring to find Kim's Marijuana plants when we were dry. Kim drove off the road so many times drunk, he was a disgrace in Claryville, NY, the locals would scorn when they saw him.
He had lost his driving priviledges many years prior. Kim's lover of many years, Lynne, reports Kim's suffering and lifelong battle between the impulse towards light and his rage, confusion and pain. Kim was able to approach his struggle in a novel, 'The Battlefield of Love,' which concerns a day in the life of a manic-depressive addict who's decided to end that day with suicide.

Patricia H writes:

I knew Kim in NY in the mid/late eighties. I lived on St. Marks. We hung out. We drank, we didn't drink.
He told me that AA was the better program, but the girls were cuter in NA.
Then he changed his mind and said that girls got skinnier after they quit drinking, but fatter when they gave up drugs.
The he changed back. No, the girls were cuter in NA.
I always wondered what happened to him, I knew how it was, and if he lived. Now I know.
I was eight years sober when he died. I stayed in that cabin and watched him fly fish naked, only his boots on.
He shot a duck from the front stoop, plucked it and we had it for dinner. I've been sober fifteen years now and I'm sad tonight.
I'd forgotten how happy he could be. I hadn't thought of him in years, strange.
It was around '86 or there abouts. We just hung out for a time. I could swear I remember him speaking of you. You and NA.
...Last night as I lay in bed, my husband sleeping restlessly beside me,
I remembered a thousand things: stealing beet greens from Kim's grandmother's garden down the road,
the pot plants, the apartment across from Tompkins square, him running in the East Village in his short shorts, how his mother died.

And his short story about riding his motorcycle in Africa or something.
The novel, I think, with the imagery of cemetary markers falling like dominoes...
Or maybe they're the same work.

I have that story here somewhere packed away with my drunken years.

Tokens of good things slipped in between misery.
Thanks for I'm not sure what. Remembering, perhaps. Time traveling is more like it.
It has more the feel of breath than simple memory. While sleep eluded me last night, I starting listing all the the people I had lost,
who were alive in 86' and still tearing it up. Tony died of cocaine induced heart attack, 28 years old.
Walter jumped off a building, he was a violinist. Chris, heroin, left a young, beautiful son behind who's now a lovely man.
He was my highschool sweetheart...Dougie, AIDS, didn't want anyone to know he was gay.
Francey died sober in a plane crash - she was a child in 86 '

- Laura gave up coke in the eighties to die of ALS only a few years later...
I'll have to make my own site. These memories are strange, good company.
I'll spend the day wrapped in this sweet blanket of warm sorrow...
What a mystery it is to have survived when other good men have up and died

...Recovery's a strange bird, is she not? Good luck in all endeavors.


Lynne writes:

One of the most essential & beautiful things about Kim was his enormous generosity & wealth of spirit in sharing the blessings he was given.
The cabin & land were absolutely open to literally hundreds of people .. especially,
in later years, people beginning recovery or in early recovery who desired a refuge,
a reminder of the reasons for living, an experience of peace in a beautiful environment & an opportunity to contribute a little sweat to the general chores,
which was helpful to everyone. Some stayed for weeks or months. Kim offered what he felt best able to offer with a pure, though imperfect, human heart.
We realized what a difference the change in environment & the mountains' serenity could make even in a matter of days; this was our refuge also.
This is how the cabin & land became so special a place for so many people. Kim shared the wealth in as righteous a way as he was able.


Really, I think any elegy to his memory should include this. With the picture of a typical, self-centered addict
many will hold of him in their minds, this might make the true person a bit clearer.
He was enormously compassionate & openly generous with his blessings, even in his own incredible struggle.
Those who think of him with love know this.
Hey there Chris,

Thought you'd be interested in seeing these, as the mental image you
have of our space here & how it's represented at your site - the tiny
crooked shack on the hill - would most definitely be corrected for
you by KC himself. He was exceptionally proud of what he was able to
accomplish here over the years with the help of a few friends & three
essential books -- with very good reason, in my opinion. Most of what
we did on the final addition came out of his head. Unfortunately I
don't have a scanner, but these give you an idea of the cabin's
evolution before his death in '97. I
have many photos of the construction as it took place, generally
taken by me. That's Kim on the porch in the second one, just after we
finished the siding. The cabin now stands as it was, with few
alterations.

Just fyi, the Africa/motorcycle piece Patricia mentions in her note
is 'Mopeding Through the Sahara To Timbuktu', a truly beautiful
travel essay published in '81, I believe. Among Kim's lovers in '86
was a very close friend of mine; she was utterly taken with him & she
showed me the piece. This was my first direct awareness of him & I
found it stunning. I don't know if anything he wrote afterward
matched it for sensitive & evocative imagery.
Lynne




Shawn Carol Sharkey
Born: October 15, 1956
Died: October 7, 2000

Shawn was an AIDS Activist
She didn't mind breaking her anonymity in front of
the press, Radio and Films.
I remember seeing her
on the front page of the Washington Post
Metro Section leading an AIDS walk.
She was the leader of the pack
She worked very hard for the cause.
Shawn died from Kidney and Liver disease
due to Hepatitus C. She had amazing strength and spirit, always smiling,
in dealing with addiction, Aids and Hepatitus,
One Day at a Time.

Greg Pierce,
Died suddenly on April 29, 1999, from Liver Cancer

-- Hepatitus C. Greg was the first NA Purist, or we should say the first NA member committed to serving NA, an NA Service Junkie.
Greg showed up at his first NA meeting wearing a three piece suit. At one point I remember a story where he was so addicted to pulp fiction that he would read while driving, just one more chapter.


Greg wrote the I.P., imformational pamphlet, the Triangle of Self Obssession. I gave Greg all my NA archives from the 1980's because I believed that this would be the safest place and that the most people would have access.
You have to give it away to keep it. Recovery is a gift from God.

This is a prayer that Greg came up with some years ago. I thought it might still be appropriate for all of us. I believe that Greg's work here was done and that he passed on the mission to others in the program. Knowing Greg, I also have a feeling that he's probably asking God about starting an anonymous 12-step program for the angels. Greg was always ready to listen to any who called or came over - he might not agree with them and debate the issue, but he always listened. As the day-at-a-time book says for today, I will face the future with faith in God for today.

God bless all of you - and if you want to pass this message on to others that I have left off the list, please do so.

Lois

Prayer

Dear God, protect me and provide for me.
Guide me and illuminate the path of my pilgrimage.
Grant me courage, commitment, and strength.
Teach me to care and give without reservation.
Make me aware of gratitude and principle.
Help me recognize your presence around me.
And let my life be a reflection of your love.


Amen

Written by Greg Pierce, 4 December 1987

Greg's story is in the little white book and the Basic Text, "I Was Unique". He told me he was one of the first people to identify as simply an addict.
Greg had alot of organizational skills and became fast friends with his sponsor Jimmy K.
Together they shaped a course for this fellowship. Greg wrote the NA Tree, wich was our very first service structure.
He had a vision of linking all the NA groups in the world in a structure like a Willow Tree who's branches all hang to the same level of service. He got to sit in the very first Area Service Meeting in California and watch the dream become a reality.

One day when he was self obsessed, he sat and wrote the triangle of self obsession, wow! How many of us have taken great solice and peace from this little IP.
On a road trip from Oregon to Pennslyvania to speak at an early East Coast Convention, Greg stoped in Tennessee to see the World Liturature Treasurer Joseph P. Greg had been writting along the way on a draft for a guide to step 4 in Narcotics Anonymous.

Joseph asked if he could borrow it and Greg said sure.

Joseph arrived at the Convention with a box of several hundred copies marked, A Guide To Step 4 in Narcotics Anonymouse, Review Draft. This became our 1st 4th step guide in NA.

Greg's other works include, Living The Program, the daily inventory IP with questions you can answer each day to do an simple 10th step. His work on the Basic Tex was invaluable, in that we might still be working on it if it hadn't been for Greg's dedication and being at the center of power when the book was being written.

Greg's presence gave the book it's full legitimicy. He also sponsored several of the key players so his spirtitual guidance was behind the project in ways we will never ever see.

Greg wrote the entire tradition portion of the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous! When the Literature Committee was finnishing the Grey Book rough draft of the Basic Text, they only needed the Tradition Portion to complete it. Greg was in Oregon and they were in Memphis, Tennessee! They chose to get a woman who typed realy fast and they held a phone to her ear as she typed out the entire tradition portion from Greg's notes and editing as he shared it to her.

The phone call took 9 hours!!! When it was over, the Lit Committee voted to turn that portion over to the Board of Trustees, as Guardians of the Traditions, to review and approve. The section came back with barely a single change.. it was the least edited portion of the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous Wow!
The way it came out of Greg's mind is basicaly the way you read it today.


Greg at an NA WAY of LIFE writing Retreat

Bob Berg

BOB BERGH
Day of Birth: 9 / 17 / 32
Robert (Bob) Paul Bergh 9/17/1932 - 10/12/2000

Clean Date 11/1/76 San Francisco native, Retired Seaman and Yellow Cab Driver
Survived by: Daughter Antoinette Molina of Napa, husband Jorge, sons Miguel, Mario Roberto, and David, and their Daughter Annamaria,
Daughter Adrienne Bergh of St Louis Mo. husband Don Torrence and sons Christopher Robert Bergh and Kevin Michael Bergh.,
Daughter Shannon Raintree and her life partner Xarre` of San Francisco, Sister, Ann & her husband Kenneth Hanson, Nephews, Larry P Hanson, Larry K. Hanson, and Ron Hanson and family.

Affiliations: Sailors Union of the Pacific, Narcotics Anonymous.

Hobbies: Bob was an avid traveler and a voracious reader.
In later life he traveled around North America carrying the message of recovery
from drug addiction to Narcotics Anonymous convention audiences and to men in jails and prisons.
Bob's ashes were to be be scattered at sea between San Francisco and Hawaii.
San Francisco, California
He passed away on October 12 @ 7 AM
Liver Cancer
San Francisco, California
Bob Berg's quote from my book Addict:
"I'd go from heroin addiction to alcoholism,
back to heroin,
and any time you stick a full load of heroin
on top of a belly full of booze,
it's like setting a bomb off."


John Bramlett
Born 12/11/55
San Francisco, California
Died accidently

or of an intentional suicide
of a Heroin Overdose in 1997 in Alaska
John relasped after being clean for 14 years and some
He started with Pain pills
which eventually lead back to the spoon
filled with China White heroin or mexican Mud

John started using alcohol when he was twelve.
He proceeded into pot, pills, speed at the age of eighteen.
He did whatever he had to do to stay loaded, to try to support a habit and run on the streets.
He spent half of his youth in jails and institutions.

Rinia Artist Kamares Sifnos Island died from Cancer 2.25.2006.

Glenn Hampton

Lili writes: To let you know, my good friend Glenn Hampton, who helped me immeasurably,
had 11 years clean when he picked up again last December.
He was prescribed Vicodan for pneumonia and TB, which let to IV heroin and cocaine use.
He had been in poor health when he died, alone, in his mobile home last Tuesday.
In a way, his death has freed him from the misery of failing health and, of course, active addiction.
An NA friend saw him lying inside the mobile home, apparently unconscious, eyes open.
He had recently received his monthly Social Security check, which may have financed his final shot.
My mother and I and a friend in SD who runs recovery homes were trying to help him.
My mother was sending money so he could go into detox. I'm trying to organize a service for him from here in Minneapolis, and may go to SD next week.

xx's Lili
I was trying to get Glenn's story for several years
he was gonna have Lili write it and

Lili was dying from Heroin use too
now miraculously she is clean and back into recovery fulltime for the fourth time

Glenn was in jail and they removed his gall bladder by mistake thinking he was a different inmate.

He got the message of NA from a member of the Charles Manson Family and Disciple

in that same prison who became a minister of a church
doing life behind bars but got Glenn clean with the 12 steps of na



Homeless Man Found Dead in Wooded Area Of Tenleytown

Cold Led to Homeless Man's Death

Cold weather contributed to the death of a homeless man whose body was found Tuesday morning in a wooded area in the Tenleytown section of Northwest Washington.

John J. Maher, 46, died of acute alcohol intoxication and exposure to the cold, according to Adrienne Lavallee, an attorney for the D.C. office of the chief medical examiner, which conducted an autopsy Wednesday. The death was ruled an accident.

Though the cold played a part in Maher's death, the office could not certify hypothermia as the cause because it is not clear exactly when he died, Lavallee said. Maher was found near Wisconsin Avenue and Van Ness Street and was partly covered in snow.

John J. Maher, in an undated photo. An outreach worker said Maher, 46, was "probably the most upbeat guy I ever met" but resisted entering a shelter. (Community Council For The Homeless At Friendship Place) Homeless Man Found Dead in Wooded Area Of Tenleytown

By Sewell Chan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page B01

A 46-year-old man was found dead Tuesday morning in the Tenleytown section of Northwest Washington in what police said might be the first death from hypothermia in the Washington area this season.

John J. Maher was found in the wooded northern tip of Glover-Archbold Park, near Wisconsin Avenue and Van Ness Street. There were empty liquor bottles about his body, police said, and he appeared to have died while asleep.

An autopsy was completed yesterday, but an attorney for the chief medical examiner's office said the cause and manner of Maher's death have not been conclusively determined. About 10 chronically homeless adults have died in the cold in the past three winters in the District, where the region's street homeless are concentrated.

City officials said they have intensified their efforts to bring people indoors during freezing weather. Today, they are scheduled to announce the opening of a homeless facility in a converted warehouse on New York Avenue NE.

Maher, described as cheerful and friendly, with a quick smile that flashed easily from under his tousled red hair, was a familiar figure to groups that serve homeless people in upper Northwest Washington. He knew where to go to shower, to do his laundry and to obtain a warm lunch. But as much as possible, he avoided shelters, preferring an unfettered life outdoors, social service workers said.

Maher, a former student at Wheaton High School in Montgomery County, where he was interested in photography, became homeless as a teenager, according to Jean Duff, a board member at the Community Council for the Homeless at Friendship Place, a nonprofit agency that provided outreach and case management services to him.

Maher was diagnosed with chronic alcoholism and an unspecified psychotic disorder and was briefly admitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital in August 1996 and September 2000, according to those familiar with his history in the city's mental health system. They said the D.C. Department of Mental Health stopped serving Maher in 2001.

A department spokeswoman declined to comment, as did officials at Psychotherapeutic Services Inc., a company based in Chestertown, Md., that receives city funding and had been helping Maher get treatment.

Between 1996 and 1999, Maher was convicted in Arlington in multiple cases of drinking in public and trespassing, court records show. Since 1999, he had been arrested several times in the District on various misdemeanors.

Staff members at Friendship Place said they were devastated by Maher's death. Willa Bay Morris, a social worker who consults for the group, said she cried after hearing the news. "He always remembered everybody's name," she recalled. "He'd ask after their families. If he thought you had a nice coat on, he'd comment on it."

Mandrake Sumners, an outreach worker, described Maher as "probably the most upbeat guy I ever met," but he added that Maher resisted his repeated efforts to persuade him to enter a shelter.

Starting early last year, Maher lived for about six months in a small shelter at St. Luke's United Methodist Church. From February to October this year, after the agency helped Maher obtain Social Security benefits, he stayed at a hotel in Foggy Bottom. In November, he spent six days in the city-run detoxification unit on the grounds of D.C. General Hospital, but he declined to continue his treatment.

Duff recalled that Maher was proud of his Irish heritage and kept in close touch with his mother, Margaret, who had moved to Dublin. With help from Friendship Place, Maher regularly wrote to his mother. He even sent her fruitcakes.

Homeless people with mental illness and substance abuse problems, such as Maher, have almost no access to "low-barrier" shelters that admit people without requiring them to demonstrate sobriety and follow rules, according to advocates for the homeless. In December 2002, the city opened a sobering station for the homeless in Building 12 of D.C. General Hospital. It served 243 people from December to March. The center reopened Nov. 8 for the five-month "hypothermia season."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company


FAST EDDIE

To Order the Book : Addict Out Of The Dark And Into The Light
Copyright © 2007
C h r i s K e e l e y

Powerless Homeless
Art

Daily DreamTime

December 2006 Daily DreamTime links

November 2006 Daily DreamTime links

October 2006 Daily DreamTime links

Selection of Favorite Photographs

10.2.2006

September 2006 Daily DreamTime links

Sifnos Island Photographs 2006

August Daily Dreamtime

Paradise Life Photographs - the book

7.30.2006

July 2006 Daily DreamTime links

May 2006 Daily DreamTime links

February 2006 Daily DreamTime links

November + December 2005 Daily DreamTime links

September + October 2005 Daily DreamTime links

August 2005 Daily DreamTime links

July 2005 Daily DreamTime links

April 2005 Daily DreamTime links

December 2004 Daily DreamTime links

October 2004 Daily DreamTime links

August 2004 Daily DreamTime links

June 2004 Daily DreamTime links

April 2004 Daily DreamTime links

February 2004 Daily DreamTime links

January 2004 Daily DreamTime links

December 2003 Daily DreamTime links

November 2003 Daily DreamTime links

October 2003 Daily DreamTime links

September 2003 Daily DreamTime links

August 2003 Daily DreamTime links

July 2003 Daily DreamTime links

June 2003 Daily DreamTime links

May 2003 Daily DreamTime links

April 2003 Daily DreamTime links

March 2003 Daily DreamTime links

February 2003 Daily DreamTime links

January 2003 Daily DreamTime links

December 2002 Daily DreamTime links

Novemeber 2002 Daily DreamTime links

Daily DreamTime