Can poetry come out of recovery from alcohol?
In September 2018, I spoke with Hoke Kimball, author of Transitions: Collected Poems about Addiction and Recovery. He had stopped drinking in September 1989, and the poems in his book were written during his first years of trying to stay sober.
We talked about therapy, meetings, quitting cigarettes, prayer, sculpture, and helping others. This is an archive episode, recorded when the show covered addiction and recovery broadly.
How did a collection of poems begin?
At 1:03, Hoke said he never set out to write a book. He would go months at a time without drinking, start to feel better, and feel a need to express himself. The poems were what came out.
That went on for six years. Only once he was doing well did he think of gathering the poems into a single collection.
What was drinking like in the home he grew up in?
From 2:12, Hoke described his childhood. In his account, his mother became dependent on alcohol and on a medication she took for cramping problems, and she died when he was nine. His father also liked a drink when he got home, so alcohol was part of every good time and every bad one.
By college, he felt that drinking was holding him back. He described himself with an old phrase, a high bottom. He kept working and had only a little legal trouble, yet he knew something was wrong.
What brought him to his first meeting?
At 3:30, Hoke explained that after his father died, he used part of a small inheritance to start therapy, first on his own and later in a group. A young college student in that group talked about going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). At first he thought the idea was ridiculous. Still, listening to her week after week made him look at his own drinking, which was mostly beer.
After a move to Raleigh, a counselor told him that if he had to choose between therapy sessions and meetings, he should choose meetings. In fact, he said he needed a drink before and after his early meetings just to find the courage to go. At 5:42, he described his surprise at the people he met there. He had grown up thinking meetings were shameful, and instead he found ordinary people he might work or live beside.
Do mutual help groups accept people who take medication?
At 7:28, I described a difference between AA and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). In my account, NA had written pamphlets saying that a person taking methadone or buprenorphine, prescribed by a doctor for opioid dependence, could not be considered clean. That has been an issue for many patients.
I also told the story of a meeting between Bill W., the founder of AA, and Dr. Dole, who created methadone maintenance. As I told it, Bill W. asked for a medical treatment that would help people stay sober long enough to work their program. So, I said, many people I knew who used drugs went to AA meetings instead.
At 9:19, Hoke said he had attended Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics, and in his view the AA message was the clearest and strictest of them, which he felt mattered early on.
Does recovery mean losing yourself?
At 9:49, I said that some of my patients feared that recovery would leave them unable to think for themselves. His poems, deep and personal, seemed to me to show a person who had kept his own voice.
Hoke agreed at 10:31. In his words, he found himself. He described AA as open about the idea of a higher power, asking only that a person find a source of strength outside themselves and outside alcohol or drugs.
Interestingly, he also called himself an introvert who still does not like going to meetings. At 12:11, he said that every time he goes, he leaves with something said by someone that stays with him.
What helped him besides meetings?
From 13:46, Hoke listed what he credits, starting with about thirty years of therapy. As soon as he started going to meetings, he joined a health club, and in his view exercise helped as much as anything.
Exercise worked for him like an Etch A Sketch. When his thinking was scribbled over with worry, breaking a sweat felt like shaking the screen clean again. At 22:21, he used the same picture for meditation, even three or five minutes of sitting calmly and repeating a word.
At 22:47, he said he has kept a journal for three decades. He started it before he stopped drinking, to track what he ate and how he felt. It turned out that he has a blood sugar problem.
Why was quitting cigarettes so hard for him?
Hoke said that once he stopped drinking, he moved everything into cigarettes and caffeine, and it took him about six years to give those up. At 18:49, he said cigarettes were harder for him to stop than alcohol. A second sponsor asked whether he had tried prayer. He tried it for several months, stopped smoking for the first time in his life, and has prayed every day since.
At 20:52, I said nicotine is one of the hardest substances to quit, and that people early in recovery are often told to deal with it later. I also said prayer had come up again and again on the show. Praying has never hurt anybody, and a person does not have to believe in it to give it a chance.
What did sculpture give him?
In Hoke’s view, drinking and using take up a great deal of drive, and when they stop, it has to go somewhere. For him it went into making things. He saw an advertisement for a clay sculpture class, joined it, and found a whole new world. At 16:26, he said he now carves stone, working once a week with a mentor in Atlanta.
At 17:00, I connected that to something I had seen in patients. I spoke against sheriffs who had said they no longer wanted to give naloxone to people who overdose on opioids, and I called that completely wrong thinking. In my experience, I said, people with alcohol or drug dependence are often among the most creative and intelligent people in society. Unfortunately, much of that creativity stays locked up until a person has time away from substances and a place to put it.
Why does helping others matter?
At 23:58, Hoke said there is some kind of magic in helping someone else. You often get back more than you gave. At 24:18, I wondered whether service to others might be the most important item on the list, and he agreed that the twelfth step is about carrying the message to others.
Of course, service can take many forms. At 24:59, Hoke said he now goes to fewer meetings and instead volunteers with his congregation in Atlanta. In his view, any outlet where a person works alongside others to help out does some good.
Who is Hoke Kimball?
Hoke Kimball is the author of Transitions: Collected Poems about Addiction and Recovery, published in 2018. He served in the Navy before finishing college, lives in Atlanta, and works in clay and stone sculpture.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
Hoke’s story is one of small, daily practices that added up over decades. Exercise, writing, meditation, prayer, creative work, and helping others all had a place in it. The poems themselves show that a person can come through a long struggle with alcohol and still sound entirely like themselves.
How do I approach this today?
My thinking has kept developing since this conversation was recorded. Today my practice is built on one idea that runs through all of it: when the body has adapted to a substance, the safest way off is usually gradual, with the smallest steps the person’s nervous system can tolerate. Physical dependence is not addiction.
For alcohol dependence I use the Sinclair Method. The person takes naltrexone about an hour before drinking, and over time the drinking itself becomes less rewarding, so the urge fades gradually instead of being fought every day. It does not require stopping on day one, and it does not rely on willpower or meetings.
Like a slow taper, it lets the brain change at its own pace. For many people that makes it a more humane path than a sudden stop, which can also be medically dangerous for someone whose body depends on alcohol.
Call 911 or go to an emergency department if there is a seizure, confusion or hallucinations, or thoughts of self-harm. For thoughts of suicide or any mental health crisis, you can also call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (27 minutes)
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Thank you for joining me today on the Rehab Podcast. Hoke Kimball, author of the book Transitions, collected poems about addiction and recovery. And thank you for joining me today.
Hoke Kimball [00:57] Thank you so much, Mark, for having me.
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:58] So tell me, how did this book come about? What led you to write this?
Hoke Kimball [01:03] Well, I really didn’t set out to write a book. It happened many years ago when I was first starting my recovery. I was just trying to get sober from alcohol, and I just would go through bouts of sobriety. I’d go for months at a time where I wasn’t drinking, and I’d start to feel better. And during those times, I would have a need to express myself. So it just kind of came out in the form of writing poems. So that’s kind of how it started, just individual poems during bouts when I started feeling better. And that went on for six years during my recovery. I got through my recovery and started really feeling better and doing better. I thought about putting them together as a collection in a book.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:47] How long have you been sober for now? How long has it been?
Hoke Kimball [01:50] I have been sober since September 10th, 1989, so 29 years.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:55] Wow, that’s a long time.
Hoke Kimball [01:57] Yeah, it is. I can’t believe it’s been that long. If you had told me that in the beginning, I would have said you were crazy.
Dr. Mark Leeds [02:04] That’s incredible. So, I mean, tell me a little about your story. Like, what happened before you got clean?
Hoke Kimball [02:12] Well, when I was growing up, my mom was an alcoholic. She was really allergic to a lot of medicines, and I think she had some female cramping problems or whatever, and she took the medication for that. And I think that medication got her hooked on addictive things like alcohol and that medication and other things like that. Anyway, we grew up with her with that condition, and she died when I was nine. So just growing up in that household, I guess, and then my dad would also drink when he got home. He wasn’t an alcoholic, but he loved to have his little toddy when he got home, I guess you could say. So I guess when I grew up, everything we did, whether it was a good time or a bad time or whatever in between, alcohol was involved, you know. So I kind of grew up that way. And so when I left home, got out of high school and went to college, of course college is a drinking time for a lot of people too, but I just felt like I suffered from drinking a lot. I felt like it was holding me back. I was never what they call a bad alcoholic, one that gets arrested and put in prison and all that kind of stuff. I guess I would call myself a high-bottom. They used to call it high-bottom alcoholic. I still was able to work, and I didn’t get into real legal trouble. I got into some legal trouble, but not a lot.
Dr. Mark Leeds [03:25] When you got clean, did you get clean in Alcoholics Anonymous? Did you start by going to meetings?
Hoke Kimball [03:30] I did. I did. Actually, what happened was after my father died, I think I was 35 when he died, And I took a little bit of money I inherited from him, and I started going to therapy. I had just gotten out of college. I didn’t go to college immediately after high school. I went into the military. I went into the Navy after going to junior college for two years, and then went into the Navy, and then went to college. So it was like 10 years after high school, by the time I graduated from college. And after my dad died, I had a friend who had been in therapy and advised me to try going to therapy to see if it would help me kind of get a hold of myself. I just was kind of at loose ends, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and I just felt emotionally mixed up. So I started going to therapy, individual therapy, and then after several years, I ended up in group therapy. And it was in group therapy that one of the members was a young girl. She was in college. By that time, I was in my late 20s or whatever, but this girl was pretty young, and she was in our group, and she came in and said that she was an alcoholic, that she had started going to AA. And I thought to myself, well, that’s really ridiculous. This woman is, what, 20 years old, and she says she’s an alcoholic? That’s ridiculous. But, you know, week after week of listening to her, talks a little bit about her experiences in meetings and things like that, it got me to thinking about myself because I never thought that I was an alcoholic either because really all I drank really mainly was beer. I did drink hard liquor some, but mainly beer. But the more I thought about that, the more I thought I would look into that. I moved from one town in North Carolina to Raleigh, from Winston-Salem to Raleigh. When I moved, the counselor that I went to see there was kind of specialized in alcoholic patients. And he advised me, he said, if you have a choice between going to meetings and going to see me, I recommend that you go to meetings, to AA meetings. So that’s what I did. I found AA meetings in the Raleigh area, and I started going. I used to have to have drinks before I went and drinks when I got home to get the courage to go. But that’s how I got started going to meetings.
Dr. Mark Leeds [05:36] I know for Narcotics Anonymous, they tell people even if you’re high, you can still come to a meeting. You just don’t share in the meeting.
Hoke Kimball [05:42] Yes. Anything to get you there, I think, is important. Because when I went, I was of the mind that I guess a lot like my parents, I always wonder why my mother never went. You know, a long time ago, it was kind of shameful to go to 12-step meetings. People that went there were considered gutter snipes and people that were just bums and all that kind of thing. And so when I finally went to an AA meeting, I was absolutely shocked at the caliber of the people. They were regular people. They were just people that you see every day, that you work with, that you live with. And that fact alone so impacted me that it just really was a very strong message for me to help me with my sobriety.
Dr. Mark Leeds [06:20] Now, did you at some point eventually get fully involved? Like, did you get a sponsor and work through the 12 steps?
Hoke Kimball [06:26] I did. Once I moved to Raleigh, I got a sponsor. I started going to meetings regularly. I went two or three times a week, probably for several years. And I got a sponsor, Harry, and he is still my sponsor after all these years. But yeah, it’s very important to get someone to talk to when you run into the many, many rough spots that you run into when you’re trying to get sober.
Dr. Mark Leeds [06:50] Do you sponsor people also?
Hoke Kimball [06:53] I haven’t sponsored myself. I have not sponsored a great deal of people. I have sponsored a few people, but it’s mostly been kind of indirectly. My own brother being one of them, I kind of listened to him and he finally found his sobriety about seven or eight years after I did. He called me in the middle of the night one night, about two o’clock in the morning, and I wanted to know how I got sober. And I told him the story about going to meetings and stuff. I also mentioned a book called The Courage to Change, which is a book still out there, which somebody had recommended it to me and I recommend it to him. It’s stories about personal stories about famous people. He read that book and that helped him get started and he has now been sober for many, many years also.
Dr. Mark Leeds [07:28] One interesting thing about Alcoholics Anonymous compared to Narcotics Anonymous and those are the two big ones that have I think the largest number of groups and meetings around the world. Narcotics Anonymous has an official position against using medication for treating addiction or specifically, you know, there’s really only three medications that we use for opioid addiction, which are methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone. And specifically methadone and buprenorphine, they’ve actually, you know, they’ve written pamphlets saying, you know, basically if you use these medications, if it’s prescribed by a doctor for the purpose of treating addiction, then you can’t be considered to be clean. And it’s been an issue for a lot of patients. And Alcoholics Anonymous, I don’t know that they have an official position, but I know that the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, it was Bill W., right? Bill W. At some point met with the creator of the methadone maintenance program, Dr. Dole, and they had a meeting where they discussed medical treatment for addiction. And Bill W. Said, I’d like you to come up with some kind of a medical treatment to help us with alcoholism to help alcoholics stay sober so they can get the message and work their program. So he had no problem with the use of medication to help in the recovery process where Narcotics Anonymous is completely against it. I don’t know what their position is on naltrexone if they have one. But because of that, a lot of my patients and people that I know of who are dealing with drug addiction, they end up going to AA meetings, and they go in, of course, to fit in, identify verbally as being an alcoholic, even though really they’re primarily for drug addiction.
Hoke Kimball [09:19] Yeah, the one thing, I’ve been to a lot of the different, I haven’t been to NA. I never got into the hard drugs like that, but I have been to adult children of alcoholics alcoholics and to Al-Anon and I think that to me aa is the strongest one I just think their message is very clear some of them are the others their messages are a little less strong and a little a little more vague but aa tends to be pretty strict about what they are about and I think that’s important in the beginning
Dr. Mark Leeds [09:49] One thing I like about your book transitions is that it’s some really deep poetry you know some of it dark and you know very personal and you know beautiful poetry. It’s something definitely that should be read, and it’s something that when I read them, I think some of my patients, they fear going into recovery, into a 12-step program, that they’re going to lose themselves, that they’re going to kind of become brainwashed and just kind of be reciting the literature all the time and not think for themselves. And this is evidence that’s not true at all. I mean, you’ve written these poems in recovery, and they’re very deep and beautiful and incredible literature that shows that you’ve definitely not lost yourself in recovery.
Hoke Kimball [10:31] Oh, gosh, if anything, just the opposite. I found myself, I wouldn’t be standing here right now talking to you if I hadn’t gone to AA. AA is one of the most marvelous programs the world has ever seen, in my opinion. It’s just so marvelous to go in and hear people speak from their hearts and their souls about all the trials and tribulations they’ve been through. And yes, I think that’s a real misnomer about people thinking that it’s a cult and that you have to give up your life into some kind of cult. It’s not that at all. It’s a very liberal, liberal program as far as having a higher power. Basically what they’re looking for is for you to find something outside of yourself, outside of alcohol or outside of drugs, for you to gain strength from outside of your ism and your drugs. That they’re just very, very liberal about that. And I wish people would not be hung up about that, about feeling that way.
Dr. Mark Leeds [11:31] I think there’s a lot in there that people can identify with. And that’s another thing. I’m sure you’ve seen that a lot of people coming into recovery, they think they’re unique and no one else has lived their kind of story. And maybe they feel like they don’t fit in. You can go to meetings and hear different people share and realize that maybe you’re not unique. At some point you’ll hear your own story. And one thing I like about these poems is that I think if a person picked up this book and was suffering in active addiction or drinking and thinking about getting sober, they might find reading some of this that they can relate to it and that they’re not alone, that other people have had these same thoughts and feelings.
Hoke Kimball [12:11] Yes, that’s really so true. Yes, I heard my story many times going to meetings, and in much more dramatic fashion than I had. But, yes, I could relate to people’s stories. And just being in that environment helps you get more structure in your life and gives you a structure to try to get sober with. I know there’s some people that just have a really hard time with the meetings. I used to hate to go to meetings. I am very much an introvert, and I don’t like to go into meetings, much less go in there and talk about my own personal life. It took everything I had to be able to go to meetings. I still, to this day, do not like to go to meetings. But every time, every single time that I go to a meeting, I get something out of it. I never leave there without being impressed with something or someone or something that was said. So, yes, it was very difficult for me to go to meetings, but yet I credit them with getting me on the right road.
Dr. Mark Leeds [13:05] Another thing is, as far as getting insight, I was thinking of people who are new in recovery or maybe thinking about getting clean or getting sober. Reading these poems and realizing that maybe identifying with a lot of the things you’ve written about. Maybe also this would be helpful to the loved ones and family members of someone struggling with addiction or alcoholism. Maybe to get some insight that it’s not just all about that your loved one has turned into a criminal and they’re out there drinking and passing out and going to parties and doing all kinds of bad stuff, that there’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot more depth to the experience of the addict and the alcoholic.
Hoke Kimball [13:46] Yes, there are many things that I credit and again I say it’s one day at a time, you know, you’re sober one day at a time. Going to therapy helped me a lot. They say you should go to therapy as long as you were in an environment that you had a bad experience. I ended up going to therapy for like 30 years. I don’t go anymore but it helped me tremendously. As soon as I started going to meetings, I joined a health club and I started with exercise. Exercise, I think, aerobics and doing some weights and stuff. I think exercise has helped me just as much as anything because when I get what they call thinking, thinking, pour me, pour me, pour me a drink or whatever. If you can break a sweat at the gym, either running on a treadmill or running around the track or whatever, something happens to me. It’s like an Etch-A-Sketch. It’s like somebody has scribbled all over my Etch-A-Sketch and then when I break a sweat, it’s like somebody lifted the screen up and put it back down and it’s clean again. That’s the way I feel, kind of renewed a little bit with exercise. So I can’t say enough about that. I try to do what your mother and your grandmother tells you to do about eating right and getting enough sleep and all that kind of boring stuff. But it helps a lot. I found a book years ago called Medical Makeover that helped me a lot. It’s how to get yourself off of cigarette smoking. I smoked for years and years and years. And when I stopped drinking, I transferred all of my isms into cigarettes and caffeine. I would get high on cigarettes and caffeine and just get to the point where my throat was hurting and I was just nervous as a cat from the caffeine. And it took me a long time to get off of that and to get sober from cigarettes and caffeine. It took me like six years to get off of that. Something happened once I stopped smoking cigarettes. There must be some kind of energy, some kind of energy that goes into drugs, doing drugs. Because when I stopped doing the cigarettes and the alcohol and the caffeine, I discovered or rediscovered. When I was a kid, I always used to like to make things, build things when I was a kid. And I was looking through a magazine one day and I saw an ad about sculpture. And I thought, well, that would be really cool to try. So I went over to Durham. I was living in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I went over to Durham and joined a sculpture, a clay sculpture class. And it was like a whole new world for me. It’s become my hobby. I’ve transferred now from clay sculpture into stone sculpture. But there’s something about that. There’s an energy that goes into drugging, that when you stop the drugging, you’ve got to do something with that energy. For me, it’s like a creative type energy, and I had to put it somewhere. That also has helped me keep going one day at a time.
Dr. Mark Leeds [16:20] Now you say stone sculpture. So are you actually like chiseling sculptures out of stone?
Hoke Kimball [16:26] Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. I know. But yes, I love doing that. And I have a mentor here in Atlanta that’s my instructor. I go once a week. It’s like a workshop. You work on a piece, you know, three hours at a time once a week. Yeah, it’s great. Great therapy also. Do something with your hands and just keeps your mind free a little bit.
Dr. Mark Leeds [16:44] Do you feature your work anywhere? Like do you have a website or Instagram where you have pictures of your artwork?
Hoke Kimball [16:49] I’ve got it on my Facebook page. I’ve got my artwork on my Facebook page. But no, I haven’t really. I’ve shown in a few shows, but I haven’t really. I don’t have a website yet for myself.
Dr. Mark Leeds [17:00] I’d love to see the work, you know, your sculptures. I’m sure the people listening, you know, would love to see that. And one thing it reminds me of is something I’ve seen in treating patients with addiction. And something I think is troubling is that, you know, a lot of people out there who don’t understand addiction and alcoholism, and this is an issue now with naloxone, with providing naloxone to people who are overdosing from opioids. You hear these sheriffs around the country saying that they don’t want to provide life-saving therapy anymore. They say enough is enough. If a person overdoses, just let them go. We’re better off without them. These drug addicts on the street who just keep using heroin over and over again, and they just can’t get it, so we’re just not even going to try to save them. And I think that’s horrible. I mean, that’s completely wrong thinking. And people who are addicted are not, you know, a waste of life. I mean, these are, if anything, it’s the opposite. In my experience, I’ve seen that people with addiction and alcoholism are the most creative and intelligent people in society. If anything, they’re more susceptible to addiction. And there’s just some incredible creative genius that’s just lost or locked up that can be released. Just like you say, when a person gets some clean time, it probably takes a lot of clean time, but like you say, exercise is very important, but also some kind of creative outlet to get that back. Because I think some of our greatest artists and potentially most productive members of society are the people who may be out on the streets using and lost. And if we can just help get them back, there’s just so much incredible creativity, artwork, ideas that we can get from, that these people can help and contribute to society.
Hoke Kimball [18:49] Yes, definitely. Mark, I wanted to say something too about addiction. The way I felt, I felt it even stronger. I know that cigarettes are not considered that big a deal, but they really were harder for me than even alcohol to stop. I really was powerless over stopping smoking, and it was so toxic to me to smoke, and yet I just couldn’t quit. So I got another sponsor during my recovery, during those six years after I stopped drinking. And this man, I kept telling him about my cigarette abuse, and he said, well, have you ever tried prayer? And I know a lot of people may not be open to that, but I said, no, I haven’t. And he said, well, try, if you’re open to it, you might want to try getting down on your knees and just asking God to help you or your power to help you stop smoking. So I tried that. I tried that. I don’t know. I tried it for several months or whatever. And for the first time in my life, I was able to stop. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I don’t know what happened. But I have continued to pray every day since then. And I’ve been cigarette free the 90s, the mid-90s. So I don’t know what that is. But I just know that for me, it worked. So I wanted to share that. And I also wanted to share that when you talk about addiction, to me, when I was addicted to alcohol and cigarettes, it was like when I would quit, I would be free, I’d be sober for three months at a time, and then something would happen. Something would happen at work or something would happen at home, some kind of emotional thing that would just shake me. And then I would get what I used to call a tractor beam, you know, like Star Trek. I mean, it’s like you get this thing in your mind, And you just, you can’t get away from it just says you’re going to use and you don’t have any power over it. You try, I tried everything I could to not use. And yet I would end up going back. When I got that feeling, whatever that is, that tractor beam feeling, I was helpless. And I knew I was going to go back and use again. And eventually that went away. I don’t know how away, but by the grace of whatever, it went away. So I’m very fortunate.
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:52] Yeah, I wanted to say when it comes to nicotine, it’s known to be the most addicting substance on earth. So it definitely is very difficult to overcome. And then on top of that, when people come into recovery, they’re often told, we’ll work on that later. That’s not something to focus on now because a cigarette is not going to most likely kill you tomorrow or make you crash your car or sell everything in your house or whatever. But yes, nicotine is probably one of the hardest things to quit and maybe there’s not the same kind of framework and structure of recovery out there that you find with alcohol and drugs although there are some new tools I think there’s a program AHEC that is implemented by various institutions around the country and paid for by tobacco settlement money where people can go to classes and groups and get therapy and get nicotine patches. But yeah, and then as far as what you said about prayer, I think that’s very important, and that’s been a recurring theme in multiple episodes of this podcast is prayer and asking for help and praying to, some people have said praying to the universe or to your higher power or to God. No one’s ever been hurt by praying. Praying’s never hurt anybody, so it’s not something that people need to shy away from or say, say, well, I don’t believe in that. You don’t really have to believe in it. You can just do it and give it a chance.
Hoke Kimball [22:21] And the same for meditation. Taking five minutes, three minutes even, to sit and be calm and just kind of say a word over and over again and just let your mind be free of thought helps a lot also. Like that Etch-A-Sketch thing where you’ve got a muddled screen and then you can kind of lift it up after meditation, you feel less burdened by your thoughts. That helps also.
Dr. Mark Leeds [22:45] Do you also do a lot of writing, like journaling?
Hoke Kimball [22:47] I do. I’ve kept a journal for 30 years. Yes, I do journal. In fact, that’s why I started journaling before I even stopped drinking. I journaled because I was trying. I thought maybe I was eating the wrong. It turns out I’m hypoglycemic. I have a blood sugar problem, and I have to be careful about what I eat. Not a lot of sugary stuff and not a lot of high-low foods. But yeah, I started journaling before I stopped drinking to try to find out, to try to keep track of what I was eating and how I was feeling. And after I got sober, I just kept going with the journal. Yes.
Dr. Mark Leeds [23:22] So yeah, I think you’ve brought up some really key things that are really important to people. Early recovery, regular daily prayer. I mean, not even just once a day. I don’t think it has to be a formal thing where you get on your knees by your bed in the morning or night. I mean, you can pray in your car while you’re driving. I mean, so your prayer, journaling, meditation, physical exercise, creative outlet, whether it’s music or drawing or sculpturing, these are all really positive things to help a person move forward in their recovery and hopefully stay away from relapse.
Hoke Kimball [23:58] Yes, and the other thing is helping others. I don’t know what it is. There’s something there, too, about if you can help somebody else, I don’t know what happens, but there’s some kind of magic with that. Sometimes you end up feeling like you get more than you’ve given the help to somebody else. I mean, you get something back from helping others. I don’t know what that is, but there’s some kind of magic with that involved too.
Dr. Mark Leeds [24:18] And maybe that’s even the most important of the list is service to others, helping others to get clean in other ways also, whether it’s charity and helping people that need a place to live or food. But very much if you’re in recovery, helping other people to get clean or at least carrying the message of recovery. Maybe one of the most important things. Isn’t that the actual 12-step is carrying the message to others who are suffering?
Hoke Kimball [24:43] Yeah, that’s the 12-step, yes. The 12-step talks about having had a spiritual awakening and trying to carry this on to others.
Dr. Mark Leeds [24:52] And that’s one incredible thing about getting into recovery, the 12-step recovery, is it provides a lot of opportunity for service.
Hoke Kimball [24:59] It does. Yes, I actually don’t go to as many meetings as I used to. I kind of have transferred my meetings into going to, I’m a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation here in Atlanta, and I kind of have transferred going there every week and trying to help there doing volunteer work and going to service. Yeah, but some kind of outlet where you’re involved with other people and trying to help out as a group, I think that helps anybody in an addictive situation.
Dr. Mark Leeds [25:29] I want to recommend this book and I think you just published it recently in 2018 Transitions Collected Poems about addiction and recovery and can people go to any bookstore or to Amazon and order this book?
Hoke Kimball [25:43] Yes, it’s on Amazon but you have to, when you search, you have to put in Transitions Collected Poems you have to put in at least that much for it to come up
Dr. Mark Leeds [25:52] Can they also search for your name, Hoke Kimball? It’s an excellent book, I highly recommend it some beautiful poetry, and I would recommend to all of my listeners, look up this book and buy this book. It’s excellent. This is a book that I’m going to be showing my patients in my office and sharing with them and with the family members, and it’s excellent. So, Hoke, thank you for coming on the show with me today, and I really appreciate it. Thank you for talking to me. You’ve given some really excellent, useful tools that people can use, and I really appreciate it. Thank Thank you.
Hoke Kimball [26:26] You’re so welcome, Mark. Thank you so much for helping me, and thank you for all the work you do. Looking online, you do such a tremendous job in helping others, and thank you so much for that.
Dr. Mark Leeds [26:36] Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to The Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to The Rehab. Thank you.
