Addiction and Knowledge
July 7, 2009 by wendi
Filed under Wendi's Words
Addiction, Power and Change. Part 1
When I talk about addiction, it can ruffle a lot of feathers. There are many paths to the top of the mountain. (If you have succeeded with AA or 12 step, you have my deepest respect and continued support for your success!)Many of you know how passionate I am about helping people overcome their battle with addiction.
I got this email just recently and want to share it with you.
Many people suffer alone, afraid to find help, unable to afford it.
Is Addiction a Disease? Is the Disease Incurable? Or are we just misguided?
When you are taught that addiction is a disease, whether it is drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, fingernails or internet pornography, perhaps it creates a weakness and limits the ability to have a powerful core belief about living a clean and sober life. If we don’t look at it as a disease, is it possible that there is another model that makes sense? We know more than we used to about the brain. Based on new science, we know that our genes actually change based on our thoughts and experiences. Could it be possible that you are not permanently disabled by addiction? If you have been clean or sober for 20 years, should you really still be identifying yourself as an addict or alcoholic? Do you really want to continue to install the belief that you have a disease, even decades after you have overcome the problem? This results speak for themselves, and new thought is emerging as the evidence based approach for addiction. Evidence tells us that the brain can be changed. But to do this we have to pay attention to what we are learning about the brain and impulse control and neuroplasticity. For me, with the years of research and evidence with my clients and customers around the world, I see yet another element that is critical. This element is the mental and emotional core beliefs that create values and behaviors that determine the direction you take in your life. Bad or good, your life is determined by your deepest core beliefs, creating your values and boundaries, then your behaviors and impulses. And that, as a result of my unprecedented success with treating addiction, is the key. If you don’t have have these values set in stone in your subconscious mind, you will keep going back and relapsing. In 12 step programs they say that “relapse is part of recovery”. Really? Are you sure? Does it have to be that way? Maybe not. Tomorrow, I will explain why I think that it might be possible to end an addiction without fear of relapse. Ever.What are you addicted to?
Prescription Drugs Meth Cocaine Marijuana Alcohol Gambling Pornography Internet gaming Shopping Perfectionism Stress Anger Food Sex Relationships Drama WoW (you know who you are)Take a quick survey. Even if you have never had an addiction, please put your stats into the survey.
Be very honest, please. If you have a friend or family member who is addicted, please take the survey questions that apply. TAKE THE SURVEY NOW. As a gift for completing it, I will give you a $10 certificate good toward anything on my site. It’s short. 3 minutes, tops.Tomorrow- The Fear of Relapse.
Heal The World
Even if you don’t think your life is affected by drug, alcohol or other addictions, think again. It is all around you. Your friends, relatives, students, teachers, (not to mention our courts, jails, and police forces) are feeling the devastating effects of addiction. In the next few days I will show you why you cannot look away from the growing addiction issue for another minute.
Are we willing to be honest about your addiction?
On Friday- My new Addiction Freedom program will be released to a group of 250 people. If you are ready for a big change, be sure to read your email on Friday!
This will change everything! With Love and Respect, Wendi PS- I have a vision to change the way the world treats addiction. Please help me by sharing this post with at least one person. Remember to take the survey. You get a $10 gift certificate at the end. Please answer honestly! Click here to take the survey.
Change your personality
May 27, 2009 by wendi
Filed under Wendi's Words

Can you become a new person?
Super Healthy Foods
May 26, 2009 by wendi
Filed under Wendi's Words
| Pineapple | Speeds post-surgery | Promotes joint health | Reduces asthma inflammation |
| Blueberries | Restore antioxidant levels | Reverse age-related brain decline | Prevent urinary tract infection |
| Spinach | Helps maintain mental sharpness | Reduces the risk of cancers of the liver, ovaries, colon and prostate | Top nutrient density |
| Red Bell Pepper | Reduces risk of lung, prostate, ovarian and cervical cancer | Protects against sunburn | Promotes heart health |
| Broccoli | Reduces diabetic damage | Lowers risk of prostate, bladder, colon, pancreatic, gastric and breast cancer | Protects the brain in event of injury |
| Tomato | Reduces inflammation | Lowers risk of developing esophageal, stomach, colorectal, lung and pancreatic cancer | Reduces cardiovascular disease risk |
| Apple | Supports immunity | Fights lung and prostate cancer | Lowers Alzheimer’s risk |
| Artichoke | Helps blood clotting | Antioxidant Superfood | Lowers “bad” cholesterol |
| Arugula | Lowers birth defect risk | Reduces fracture risk | Protects eye health |
| Asparagus | Nourishes good gut bacteria | Protects against birth defects | Promotes heart health |
| Avocado | Limits liver damage | Reduces oral cancer risk | Lowers cholesterol levels |
| Blackberries | Build bone density | Suppress appetite | Enhance fat burning |
| Butternut Squash | Supports night vision | Combats wrinkles | Promotes heart health |
| Cantaloupe | Bolsters immunity | Protects skin against sunburn | Reduces inflammation |
| Carrot | Antioxidants defend DNA | Fights cataracts | Protects against some cancers |
| Cauliflower | Stimulates detoxification | Suppresses breast cancer cell growth | Defends against prostate cancer |
| Cherries | Alleviate arthritic pain and gout | Lower “bad” cholesterol | Reduce inflammation |
| Cranberries | Alleviate prostate pain | Fight lung, colon and leukemia cancer cells | Prevent urinary tract infection |
| Green Cabbage | Promotes healthy blood clotting | Reduces risk of prostate, colon, breast and ovarian cancers | Activates the body’s natural detoxification systems |
| Kale | Counters harmful estrogens that can feed cancer | Protects eyes against sun damage and cataracts | Increases bone density |
| Kiwi | Combats wrinkles | Lowers blood clot risk and reduces blood lipids | Counters constipation |
| Mango | Supports immunity | Lowers “bad” cholesterol | Regulates homocysteine to protect arteries |
| Mushrooms | Promote natural detoxification | Reduce the risk of colon and prostate cancer | Lower blood pressure |
| Orange | Reduces levels of “bad” cholesterol | Lowers risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, breast and stomach, and childhood leukemia | Pectin suppresses appetite |
| Papaya | Enzymes aid digestion | Reduces risk of lung cancer | Enhances fat burning |
| Plums & Prunes | Counter constipation | Antioxidants defend against DNA damage | Protects against post-menopausal bone loss |
| Pomegranate | Enhances sunscreen protection | Lowers “bad” cholesterol | Fights prostate cancer |
| Pumpkin | Protects joints against polyarthritis | Lowers lung and prostate cancer risk | Reduces inflammation |
| Raspberries | Inhibit growth of oral, breast, colon and prostate cancers | Antioxidant DNA defense | Lower “bad” cholesterol levels |
| Strawberries | Protect against Alzheimer’s | Reduce “bad” cholesterol | Suppress growth of colon, prostate and oral cancer |
| Sweet Potato | Reduces stroke risk | Lowers cancer risk | Protect against blindness |
| Watermelon | Supports male fertility | Reduces risk of several cancers: prostate, ovarian, cervical, oral and pharyngeal | Protects skin against sunburn |
| Banana | Increases Fat Burning | Lowers risk of colorectal and kidney cancer, leukemia | Reduces asthmas symptoms in children |
Dreams
I Dreamed a dream
He is back out on the street making his own choices. An opiate addict has many episodes where they make some really hard choices. But the moment they decide to use again, the choice instantly gets easy. They make a choice to go back to Oxy or heroin knowing they are also choosing fear, guilt, shame, failure and risking jail and anger and disappointment from their family. Apparently, opiates have the power to help make the one choice that outweighs the combination of all the bad things that will happen as a result of doing the drug. For those of us who are not addicts, it makes no sense. Why would anyone choose to give up everything- your home, family, love, support, safety, food, money, warm bed at night. And the drug is so powerful that you willingly trade in all of those for fear, homelessness, jail, having no bed, clothes or shower, pain, hunger… and no one who will lift a finger to help out. I don’t get it. I understand it, I just don’t get it. Some of you know exactly what I am talking about. It has been 4 days since he has been gone. Someone called and said they saw him at Taco Bell and that he looked really burnt. He finally called me yesterday and he can’t come home because he is using. He has only been out of jail for 2 weeks. Faced with your own ability to decide how your life is going to go, the temptation for opiate users is overwhelming when they are left to their own choices. I had a dream last night- one of those that goes on forever. In my dream Sean had died of an overdose and I had to decide if I wanted to see him one last time. The dream was torture. Opiates- vicodin, oxycontin, heroin, norco. They remove your ability to weigh consequences. You simply don’t have the ability any longer to connect action with consequences. This is ONE reason they are so devastatingly powerful. Opiates remove the ability of the brain to feel happiness. The addict cannot feel normal happiness like you and I when they see a sunset, or a puppy, or a baby or simply share a few laughs with friends. Their brain has changed to such a degree that they can only feel happiness when they are using. The brain takes about 1 full year to bring back the happiness function. That has got to be one long ass year. Our high school kids are doing opiates more than all other illegal drugs combined! They are partying with vicodin, just getting that awesome high for the day… and from there it is a just a matter of time. Soon their brain will change to accommodate the drug and will need more of it. Soon, just to feel normal feelings, they will need the drug every day. Soon, they will increase the dosage to get the same normal feelings. And soon, the pain of withdrawal will be so bad that it is impossible to quit without enduring extreme physical pain for over a week. And later, a mother will be picking her son or daughter up from jail wondering what the hell to do next. And the mothers will not be alone. But they will feel very alone sometimes, giving up everything to try and find the answer and find something that will just make it stop. Rush Limbaugh used opiates and chose to lose his hearing as he increased to massive doses of oxycontin to feed his addiction. Many powerful, smart and successful people have lost everything multiple times because of opiates. If you think you are not affected, think again. The jails are already overcrowded as 80% of the people in there are serving time for drug related crimes. The teens who are just getting into opiates are going to create an even bigger wave of addicts that will push the courts and correctional system way beyond what it is now. The crime supports their habits and everyone is affected. And it will take money to try to control it. More police, courts, jail, rehab. Lots of money that our already strapped state budgets just don’t have. And families will spend money on rehab that has a 5% success rate in hopes of saving a life. They will mortgage their houses, use up their savings or go in debt charging their credit cards trying desperately to find help for their child. I am so very grateful for all your comments and replies. Your thoughts really do help and I want you to know that feeling the love and support in your responses means everything to me right now. Love right back at you!
When you say you love me…
April 25, 2009 by wendi
Filed under The Wind, Wendi's Words
Bumps in the road.
There are good days. And days that could be better. I know I need to stay positive and focus on what is good. I often default to “It is what it is” and hope that it is true that everything changes. And everything changes. Not just for me, but for everyone. For everything. Everywhere. Everything changes. Remember that… you might need to use it some day. With a few good days under our belt my son and I enjoy his freedom, I enjoy jail stories, learn new lingo, and with his wit and candor I am amused at how he shares his experiences. And in the midst of the lightness and simplicity of just being together, reality stabs me to say “you are talking to your beloved first born about his time in jail” and I know this is not how it is supposed to be. The other parents don’t talk about jail toilets and cellies with their kids, do they? No one knows what it really feels like when parents tell me about the accomplishments of their beautiful, talented children who are at the university becoming something frikken fantastic. Listen, I am happy for you. I am proud of your kid, proud of how well it worked out for you. I’m dying inside, ok? Back at home I wonder how I will be able to hold it all together and figure out how to be the right kind of mom. If you think babies didn’t come with an instruction manual… try having a 25 year old addict coming home from jail. There is definitely no manual for this. I know I am not alone, and I know others have their pain and God knows that I don’t get a badge of courage for this one. I deserve one. But I know I’m not getting one. For so long I didn’t tell anyone the real story about my son’s addiction, his trouble with the law, or my anguish. Nobody wants to hear it anyway. And I when exactly would I reveal this interesting accomplishment? Right after I hear about the nuclear physicist their son has become, when they ask, “and how is Sean?” Under my breath I say to myself “My son? Well he’s in jail again, because he is an opiate addict who has been to numerous rehabs. Oh, and did I tell you I have spent over $100,000 on rehabs that are a horribly inadequate and antiquated way to treat addicts… just to try to help him get clean?” No, I haven’t shared the accomplishments of my son. Usually I artfully change the subject. And I try to keep from dying just a little more. The truth is that so many families are struggling with me, unable to share the horrors of how addiction has torn their family apart in ways they never dreamed when they held their babies in their arms and looked into those beautiful clear eyes. Those parents who speak up are brave and powerful, and those who are willing to tell the truth about the pain of addiction are like a hand that reaches out of the darkness. I’ll grab that hand. Today is a good day. After a few bumps in the road this week, today is a big breath of air. Is it OK if sometimes I have to hold that breath just a little? Last night was hard. Very hard. And when life gets hard there is often a breakthrough in the making. Sean has hard decisions to make about drugs and the tests that he is going to go through. No one can do it for him. I am so very grateful for my friend Bruce Muzik who stayed up with Sean until 3 am, willing to work things through and really hear him. I learned so much. And watching them work through Sean’s fear together, I really felt the depth of my love for my son. Today Sean is bright, shiny and lifted up. He has shifted. One step in a long journey, and it is a step.
Before he left to go to my office, he turned back around and gave me a long hug.
He says he loves me. I believe him.
When you say you love me…
The world goes still, so still inside.
When you say you you love me
In that moment I know why I’m alive.
And this journey that were on
how far we’ve come
I celebrate every moment
And when you say you love me
That’s all you have to say
When you say you love me,
do you know how I love you?
(from Josh Groban’s When you say you love me)
The Wind
April 18, 2009 by wendi
Filed under The Wind, Wendi's Words
The Wind
Last year when my son was in jail, and I used to sit on the beach and stare at the waves and wonder how it happened. How did I do this? How did he do this? How did I fail him? “I listen to the wind of my soul…”
Cat Stevens played in my headphones, and the words to THE WIND would take me to the depth of my soul’s longing to go back and make it different. I loved him. How could drugs take my son away from me and shred his life.
“I swam upon the devil’s lake…”
The words float through my head as I stare at the ocean and try to imagine how it must feel to be trapped in your own body with all the guilt, blame, anger tormenting you every minute. And then I try to imagine how he must think about having his life back. He hurts. And the drugs take away the hurt. The devil’s lake.
Last year I thought it was over and that this would be the new beginning that we hoped for. After I picked him up, his commitment was solid. He knew he was not like them… the inmates who kept coming back to jail over and over, unable to ever make good of their life. He was different. He is different.
He is not like them, the degenerates, the poverty stricken, the homeless, uneducated criminals who have no regard for others. Please tell me he is not one of them.
Last year I hated myself every time I had to stand in a line to get visitation privileges so I could talk through a glass window with a phone that has a 12 inch cord. Do you know why it has only a 12 inch cord? So you won’t strangle yourself!
I knew that this image of my son, my baby, now at 6’4” starting at me through glass would be the image that would haunt me the rest of my life. I hate him for it. I hate myself for letting it happen. There must have been something I could have done. I hate myself for hating myself. That last sentence makes me cry.
“I listen to my words, but they fall far below…”
Things didn’t go well after Sean got out. More rehab, more sober living houses and watching him surrounded by a lot of addicts who all have a hair trigger. Chin up girl, you can do this! (but really that feel more like a ?)
Yes, I will be the wind beneath his wings. After all, I am the great and powerful Wendi. I can help people to do anything, to make their life be like WOW. But wow, this is different in a million ways. And here just an arm’s length away, all the hugs and kisses and love can’t heal what is so badly broken.
I hate this drug culture. I feel bad for using the word hate so much. I don’t think that we should hate anything, it is not healthy. I am scared to look in the deep, dark scary place in my soul where that hate lives. I am scared. Gotta shore up the dam a bit.
A year later and I have to do this again. I have to go shove my ID into that little slot, take shit from a condescending, indifferent woman who will coldly tell me where to go. I am not one of them! But she, and everyone in the jail will treat me like on of them.
I am falling apart in ways I don’t really find very attractive. I hope the dam doesn’t break. I have worked really hard to make it sturdy. Hold tight.
Chin up, chest out.
My Son
April 17, 2009 by wendi
Filed under The Wind, Wendi's Words
My Son
Tomorrow I will go to the Eldorado county jail to pick up my son for the 2nd time. I am nervous. When I gave birth to my son, I made a lot of great choices that would create a foundation for a baby to grow up healthy and strong and bright. Everything was in place- I read all the books on how to give him the best of everything… I made sure he had the best foods, the best childcare, involvement in school, great family connections, love and dedication… And after spending his 25th birthday in jail, I am on my way to pick him up. They will take away all my belongings and coldly tell me to walk down the hall and follow the blue line.
I will look at him through a tiny window at midnight.
The guards will treat me with indifference.
I will see his face across the room as we wait for them to process his papers.
I will imagine what it will feel like for him to be hugged for the first time in months.
I will cry, and be the most confused, sad, angry and scared that I have ever been in my life.
After a lifetime of loving my child, this moment was never, ever in the plan.
Seal of Approval
April 6, 2009 by wendi
Filed under Wendi's Words
He hopped on and stuck around, so I took him for a ride then brought him back to his bouy.

buoy
A tattoo problem
March 30, 2009 by admin
Filed under Wendi's Words
Think before you ink. What would you do for a client like this?
I get many intersting emails for help. This one is really unique. He is desperate, wants help, has no money and has a really interesting problem. He gave me permission to post this and ask for help. Please put your answers on the blog post so he can see them. Your comments and ideas for how he can help this problem will be immensely appreciated! Wendi Here is his email: Hello my name is William and I am a 27 year old male. I have tattoos all over my body and would do anything to get rid of them. I have tried to have them removed by a ” doctor ” who left me with horrible scars all over my chest. I would do anything to get rid of all of my tattoos and scars. I realize in the past I have taken too many things for granted. I have had laser treatments since then but at this point I do not think it is even an option. Every night I pray to God for help and I know he hears me. I beg for forgiveness. I do not want vanity all I want is my purity. I know he can help me. I need a miracle. Please help.
Wendi Friesen, the famous hypnotist!
March 10, 2009 by admin
Filed under Wendi's Words


