Recovery
Blog posts and long reads about addiction and recovery. See also: Believed to Be Seen.
- Three Years ()
The other day I was sitting at the library, studying, when I got a call from a manager at work. There was miscommunication about who was covering which responsibilities and something important had fallen through the cracks. Several days prior I’d moved on from the job where I had been reporting to him, the ownership […]
- “A Spiritual Axiom” ()
“[W]hen a person experiences nearly identical events and reacts two different ways, then it is not the event which is of prime importance, but the person’s spiritual condition. Feelings come from inside, not from outward circumstances.” —Daily Reflections, October 9 There’s this guy at work who leaves his cell-phone ringer on whenever he’s visiting the […]
- Shut Up and Dance ()
In a meeting yesterday, noting their history in theater, someone said, “As they say in my world, shut up and dance.” I’m paraphrasing, but it rattled me. As people were sharing their thoughts, the Daily Reflections book was being passed around, with the October 6 reading titled “Facing Ourselves.” “How often I avoided a task […]
- Getting Lost ()
“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? […] That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost.” –Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost Some time […]
- Imperfection in Recovery ()
“Never in our lives, long before we had a drink, were we able to settle for status quo. Nothing that was normal ever merited our attention for more than a split second. If it wasn’t better than normal, we didn’t like it. And that’s before we ever had a drink. So, we had better jolly […]
- Courage and Self-Kindness ()
“Knowledge is important, but only if we’re being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are.” —Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection While an undertaking the likes of making a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” brings with it a tremendous potential for self-knowledge, participating in such a thorough […]
- Resisting Gravity ()
“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 […]
- How Life Should Be ()
“Egocentricity is having a better idea about how this moment should be. […] Ego talks in terms of ‘This is right… This is wrong… I have to do this… A person must…” — phrases like that. When we are listening to egocentricity we have the feeling that we know beyond doubt how we should be […]
- Restoration vs. Renovation ()
I heard someone comment on an interesting distinction last night, noting the difference between a renovation and a restoration. The latter is a reclamation of a past state, a return to its former self, and a way to make new again, while a renovation is really just the process of fixing something up. In a […]
- Addiction Creates Suffering ()
“Suffering is the stress created by craving for more. Suffering is never having enough to feel satisfied. […] Suffering is the thought that I cannot be happy until I get… Suffering is the anguish and misery of being addicted.” —Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery With each return to addictive behavior there’s an implicit denial of self […]