Full Blue Moon Dementia

Being sad is a normal human emotion. It’s natural to feel despondent when someone you love dies or you’re dealing with life altering events such as an illness or divorce. While these challenges are never forgotten the subsequent emotional distress usually dissipates over a normal period of time. However, if your sadness is constant and...

    “We’re building a platform for people who want to do better and be better than their past suggests. Criminal record clearing allows those who have completed their sentences and paid their debt, to move on as fully productive members of society without the stigma and shame of the past.”     Back This...

    October 19th, 2012: Jim Ruland and Todd Taylor invited me to their Gorsky Press Podcast. I read the excerpt “Something’s Wrong” from my soon to be published memoir: Hold-Up. The book was in published in France (no I did not read in French) by the seminal “mauvais garçon” press, 13e Note Editions (which...

Press To Play         Originally published in The Adulting Well Podcast, April (2019)      

    On iTunes     On Spotify                 Originally published by Sensitive Skin Magazine, February (2019)      

My memoir: Gun Needle Spoon begins with the last years of my heroin addiction, my consequent descent into crime, primarily armed bank robbery, and my eventual incarceration. My final arrest was June 25, 1997, and I look back at the person that I was then and wonder who that person was. He certainly is not who I am...

Gun, Needle, Spoon follows a punk rock pioneer on his slide into drug abuse and life as an armed robber, all the way through life in recovery and what it’s like to look back on those times. Hawthorne/Dzanc intern Alexis Woodcock talks with the author, Patrick O’Neil, about the book, his life, and rehabilitation.  ...

Today I have 18 years free from drugs and alcohol. I can safely say no one ever saw that coming. What with the way I was living and the destruction of everything I touched it was becoming more and more apparent I wasn’t headed down the primrose path to a long wonderful life. January 8th...

THE BOOK: Gun, Needle, Spoon PUBLISHED IN: 2015 THE AUTHOR: Patrick O’Neil THE EDITOR: Guy Intoci THE PUBLISHER: Dzanc Books SUMMARY: Before his life went totally off the rails, Patrick O’Neil was living the punk rock dream, working at San Francisco’s legendary Mabuhay Gardens, going on to become a roadie and then the road manager...

By Bianca L. Rodriguez I had the pleasure of interviewing Patrick O’Neil, Group Facilitator and Narrative Therapist at CAST Centers in West Hollywood, California. For the past 17 years he has lived and worked in the recovery community as a recovering addict/alcoholic, a drug and alcohol counselor, and a college instructor. He is the author...