Barberton Recovery Centre

11/10/2025

11/10/2025

10/10/2025

The foolish and the dead never change their opinions.
—James Russell Lowell

As we grow in our recovery program, more of the fog of our denial clears away. We then see the world and our program in a different way.
Being alive means change.

08/10/2025

Erich Plontke’s “The Drinker” (1910) doesn’t show a bar fight or a tragic accident. It shows something much quieter,and much darker.

In a dimly lit room, a man slouches back in his chair, surrounded by wine bottles, flowers, and discarded clothes. He’s in formal evening wear, but everything around him is disheveled,half-eaten food, a spilled drink, a toppled pillow. It’s not a celebration. It’s collapse.

But the real punch? Sitting across from him, half in shadow, is Death itself,calmly watching him from the other side of the table. No scythe. No drama. Just a skeleton in a smoking jacket, holding a mandolin, waiting patiently.

This isn’t just a painting about drinking,it’s about decay. About a man who's already crossed the line between pleasure and oblivion. The flowers are wilted, the music is silent, and the only one still in the room is the one who never leaves: Death.

Plontke doesn’t need to exaggerate. He paints this moment like it’s any other Tuesday night. That’s what makes it hit harder.

🎨 “The Drinker” by Erich Plontke (c. 1914, often mis‑dated to 1910)
🏛️ Location: Private Collection

07/10/2025

07/10/2025

Jan-Michael Vincent’s chronic alcoholism was a genuine American tragedy. Once the highest-paid actors on network television, at the beginning of his career Vincent looked like an Adonis.

Likewise, Vincent became televisions highest-paid actor starring as hotshot helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke in the hit TV series “Airwolf” from 1984 until 1986—but was fired from the show's 1987 season because of his inability to control his alcoholism.

By the time of his death in 2019 he was an emaciated, shell. His body slowly poisoned over the years with alcohol.

First arrested in 1977 for co***ne possession, Vincent's life from that point forward became a series of substance-related mishaps interspersed with periods of creativity.

He starred in the star-studded ratings-bonanza TV “The Winds of War” in 1983. However he was replaced in its blockbuster 1988 sequel “War and Remembrance” as by that time alcoholism had rendered him unemployable.

Vincent had also become TV's highest-paid actor starring as hotshot helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke in the hit series “Airwolf” from 1984 until 1986—but was fired from the show's 1987 season because of his deepening alcoholism.

From that point forward, Jan-Michael Vincent’s life became a nightmarish downward spiral of arrests, fights, drunken brawls, automobile accidents—and incarceration.

Vincent died in 2019 at age 74--but at the time of his death hadn't been employed as an actor or appeared in front of a motion picture camera in nearly two decades.

Copyright ©️ 2025 by Carl Schultz. All rights reserved.