Welcome to Shoutout From The Pit

Become part of a huge community of folks that support one another’s endeavors to live, laugh, and love.

You are not alone! Love and tolerance is our code.

Well, it’s finally here. After a couple of years of talking about it and finally recording some episodes, we’re launching Shoutout From The Pit, a recovery podcast!

Latest Episode

Episode 0028 Ben Grimes – Finding Peace in the Pentameter

Ben Grimes is a former 82nd Airborne Ranger turned professional theatre artist and founder of Riverside Actors Theatre, shares how classical theatre—especially Shakespeare’s rhythm and language—became the unexpected framework that helped him and other veterans move out of trauma. In a wide-ranging, raw conversation with Bob (“the old rucker”), RedBeard, and Pat the Marine, Ben walks through his journey from stage to combat to healing, the development of his trauma-informed ensemble work (“The Breach”), and the daily practices that keep him grounded. He also reveals the “toolbox” he lives by, the empathic power of storytelling, and his new chapter as Managing Artistic Director in Paducah, Kentucky. This episode is about purpose, community, rhythm, breath, and the quiet power of letting words do the work.

https://www.riversideactorstheatre.org/

https://markethousetheatre.org/

Shakespeare, Rhythm, and the Vagus Nerve in PTSD Recovery

Disrupting dysfunctional nervous system patterns—even briefly—can create a window of opportunity to build tools for long-term PTSD recovery. Whether through rhythmic speech, breathwork, or clinical intervention, these resets offer a moment of clarity. Over time, repeated use of these methods helps develop a reliable toolkit for resilience—restoring rhythm, breath, narrative, and voice.

Latest Post

Dianne’s Missives August 1

Thought to Consider…

It’s not making a mistake that will kill me. It’s defending it that does the damage.

Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.

At first, I thought the “God thing” was a crutch. Turns out to be stilts.

Life didn’t end when I got sober – it started.

AACRONYMS

N U T S =Not Using The Steps

G I F T S = Getting It From The Steps

“We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful.”

We should remember that all A.A.’s have “clay feet.” We should not set any member upon a pedestal and mark her or him out as a perfect A.A. It’s not fair to the person to be singled out in this fashion and if the person is wise, she or he will not wish it. If the person we single out as an ideal A.A. has a fall, we are in danger of falling, too. Without exception, we are all only one drink away from a drunk, no matter how long we have been in A.A. Nobody is entirely safe. A.A. itself should be our ideal, not any particular member of it.

Self-will

“The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful.”

Ambition

” . . . the certainty that we are no longer isolated in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things – these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.”

A.A. is like a dike, holding back the ocean of liquor. If we take one glass of liquor, it is like making a small hole in the dike and once such a hole has been made, the whole ocean of alcohol may rush in upon us. By practicing the A.A. principles we keep the dike strong and in repair. We spot any weakness or crack in that dike and make the necessary repairs before any damage is done. Outside the dike is the whole ocean of alcohol, waiting to engulf us again in despair.

New Life
“We die to live. That is a beautiful paradox straight out of the Biblical idea of being “born again” or “in losing one’s life to find it.” When we work at our Twelve Steps, the old life of guzzling and fuzzy thinking, and all that goes with it, gradually dies, and we acquire a different and a better way of life. As our shortcomings are removed, one life of us dies, and another life of us lives. We in A.A. die to live.”

We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men.

Dianne