Posts by Steve Wildsmith
Phil Bogard’s beautiful sobriety: Ingram Hill guitarist helps others return from the brink of death by alcoholism
Music aficionados would be hard pressed to put Ingram Hill side by side with The Doors in terms of rock ‘n’ roll similarities, but guitarist Phil Bogard, at the height of his alcoholism, nevertheless saw himself following the same life-and-death arc as Jim Morrison. “I had definitely resigned myself to the fact of dying an…
Read MoreBluesman Chris Beard: ‘There are no limits in my process of recovery … because I don’t put limits on myself’
When Chris Beard hit bottom and sought help at a Christian-based addiction treatment facility in Syracuse, N.Y., staff members did everything short of an exorcism. “I got dipped in water, I got prayed over, because I was just tired of living my life the way that it was!” he told The Ties That Bind Us…
Read MoreKillradio’s Brandon Jordan: ‘If you want to stay clean and sober … you have to believe in something’
Growing up, drugs and alcohol seemed like one of those old “road closed” signs in horror movies to Brandon Jordan, a harbinger of danger lurking on the other side of a distant hill. He was 21 before he even picked up, mostly because he saw the havoc they inflicted: He lost his father to a…
Read MoreThere and back again: Sister Hazel’s Ken Block finds life in recovery is always a ‘Beautiful Thing’
Sister Hazel is Ryan Newell (from left), Mark Trojanowski, Ken Block, Drew Copeland and Jett Beres. “Many people think that recovery is simply a matter of not using drugs. They consider a relapse a sign of complete failure, and long periods of abstinence a sign of complete success. We in the recovery program … have…
Read MoreD.I. guitarist, Rock to Recovery administrator Clinton Calton: Thanks to recovery’s promises, ‘I’m living the dream’
Courtesy of Jason Cook Drugs led to Clinton Calton getting arrested in front of a crowd of his peers, an incident that became the stuff of urban legend throughout the rest of his school days. It was only weed, but Calton was in the seventh grade. And, he told The Ties That Bind Us recently,…
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