To Whom this May Concern:

Please allow this letter to inform you that I, Benjamin J, Kimmel, being of sober mind, body and spirit, and having completed several years of continuous sobriety regret to inform you there are no changes in the world of addiction.

Although names have changed since my time of activity, the accents on the street are different, locations to pick up have switched and there are more forms of addictive medication now, which are a bit easier to access through simple doctor visits. In most cases, they are easily attained with a prescription; the addiction game is the same as it was the day I walked through the doors of a treatment center in early September 1989.  I can assure you, the Continue reading →

I have never been anyone other than who I am so I could not tell you what it would be like to be anyone else. I have only seen what it means to be a son and not a daughter. There is a different bond between mother and son. It is sometimes turbulent and sometimes misunderstood with moms being the way moms are and sons behaving the way sons behave. Mom is the first to worry. She is the last to sit at the dinner table and the first to wait up when her son comes home late.

I am reminded of the  Continue reading →

Know this:
Know that even the smallest kind word can have the biggest impact on someone’s life.
Understand that you have the ability to inspire on a daily basis. And you do this all the time, but you somehow fail to see it.
Know that something you gave away, like something as simple as a quick and meaningless smile has the ability to be meaningful to someone else. This makes you a gift to those around you.

Same as misery is contagious—so is your spirit. Know that you being Continue reading →

I tell you this, you do not understand victory
until you are sat in a room with a group of kids,
all of them mad and starving to escape,
each one with a unique story
all of them lost and each one sick of life,the system,
and sick of the surroundings,
sick of the world they find themselves in.
and sick of the fact
that the only brief intermission of ease
is the momentary high that comes with drugs or alcohol.

I say you can’t know victory until you sit in this group,
institutionalized with Continue reading →

As a dad, there are sounds that I will always remember. These sounds are simple. These are the sounds of my daughter laughing and sometimes crying. They are the sounds a child makes while running through the lawn sprinkler and screaming happily in a high-pitched scream. My daughter has certainly made a few of these sounds. Over the years, I’ve collected them like tiny pieces of memorabilia.
I hold them close so that one day, whenever my little girl grows up and heads off into the world and the last thing she thinks about is her dad, I will have a collection of memories—and when I need to, I can Continue reading →

I spent decades running as fast as I could, only to stop one day and find that no matter where I went nor how fast I ran, I could never hide from me nor could I ever outrun myself.

I ran for decades and for this very reason—I never wanted to feel the feelings that come with life on life’s terms. I never wanted to feel pain or understand desperation. I tried to turn this off to the best of my ability.
For decades, I tried to be numb—I wanted to be callous and tough. I wanted to be impenetrable and unaffected.
Instead, I was only hiding from Continue reading →

This is a piece about beauty . . .

I was driving upstate and heading northwest to a destination far beyond the reaches of the city or suburban life.
Tall tree-covered mountains were on either side of the road. My windows were opened to allow the air to filter through and give me a taste of that early autumn breeze.
It is drives like this that cause me to change my definitions and descriptions of beauty.

I drove passed farmlands and pastures. I went across Continue reading →

This is nothing more than a personal ramble.
In fairness, I am not sure what you (the reader) will picture or what you will imagine if you decide to follow along. I’m not sure if this will even make sense to anyone else but me. Still, a ramble is a ramble and this is just that—a ramble .

I am driving up to see two of my most special friends this morning. Had it not been for them and others like them when we all lived together on The Farm, I would not be the man I am now. Had it not Continue reading →

“Take this,” she said to him—an old woman
sitting in her favorite chair, upstairs,
living in a house built by the man she loved,
in a room where life happened
and memories were built.

She was a mother above all things,
loving and caring,
and she handed him a white silken scarf
which had been folded carefully.
“This belonged to your father,” she said,
a wife, a widow in mourning. Continue reading →

I come from such an interesting time. Like others, my family moved from a busy neighborhood to something quiet. We went from the active street behind Queens Boulevard to a less active, certainly quiet town away from the boroughs and into the suburban life. I have pictures of my old home somewhere. When we first moved in, the siding was brown on our two story cape. Our street was one of the main ones in the neighborhood. Across from us was a large empty field, several acres in size, bordered and separated by mound of dirt, which traced the outline of the vacant lot. Only, this was no ordinary field or vacant lot. This was once Continue reading →