Down The Road Less Traveled: Alcoholism To Shangri-La

An addiction to alcohol leading me down a road of despair and desperation powered most of my life until my final traversal through passages into freedom, ecstasy and Shangri-La. Thrust into the great American Southwest life faced me with a road fraught between the challenges created by emergent social expectations on the one hand and the successive phases of my personal development on the other hand. My path was marked with breathtaking natural wonders, astonishing friends, inspiring experiences and rich opportunity. The cumulative deficits of failures to obtain necessary shares of required virtues at each successive stage made it tough to adequately perform at expected standards of success. Alcohol became the substitute to provide escape and a sense of ?feel good.? At the brink of my dark abyss of self-destruction and despair groups of sober allies came into my life and lifted me up. The intervention has blessed my life with service and creation for good. Navigation through alcoholism and life?s traumas forged the self-confidence to traverse treacherous passages and support outstanding ventures?300 Navajo teachers ; indigenous professionals/leaders positioned in Gary and Navajo; an Apache Community School; and a Navajo model city cited by Harvard and a US Senate Subcommittee. ?You gave me a chance and changed my life forever,? epitomized my praise within HALL OF FAME COACH EMIL NASSER, a book I wrote for him and his foundation which?a finalist in the New Mexico-Arizona Book Coop contest in 2015.I was born in the old mining town of Jerome, Arizona and I am of Irish Catholic background, the great grandchild of the national vaudeville ancestors of the Lynch and O?Mara generations of Trinidad, Colorado. As an admirer of St. Damien of the leper colony of Molokai I studied for the Catholic priesthood two years at Immaculate Conception, Benedictine Monastery.I was rejected out of third grade in St. Anthony?s and sent over into second grade. The resultant fear of failure and the shame drove me through public school, and into postgraduate degrees, culminating in a doctorate from the University of Illinois.

• | Author: Dr. Gerald M Knowles Ed.D
• | Publisher: Gerald Knowles
• | Publication Date: Jan 20, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 334 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0578201283
• | ISBN-13: 9780578201283