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 […]
- Numb the Good, Numb the Bad, Numb the Ugly ()
“We don’t want to feel the hurt anymore. And so we numb it. And we numb it with everything you can imagine. But what happens when you numb the hurt and you numb the grief, is you numb the joy and you numb the light. You cannot selectively numb affect.” —Brené Brown, Rising Strong as […]
- The Elephant and Being ()
“Becoming becomes a denial of being.” —Bruce Lee A few weeks back on a trip to New York, I was explaining my elephant tattoo to a new friend. It’s not always easy to articulate ideas that have rattled around in your head for a long time, and admittedly I probably did a poor job at […]
- Believed to Be Seen ()
Believed to Be Seen is a writing project I published in February of 2013, when I was twenty-nine. At that time, I surmised its aim to be that of documenting “my evolving experience with the American addiction treatment industry, and how I finally found my way out of its maze.” The obvious angst of that […]
- The Downside of Getting My Way ()
From Believed to Be Seen, “When I was in high school a teacher asked our class to look at our futures and think of what goals we would like to achieve. Being seventeen years old I felt life would be complete if I could see some of my favorite bands perform live and own a […]
- The Elevator to Success ()
This evening, at a meeting, an older guy shared an experience he’d had earlier in the day. Reading the newspaper (which, as he said, is how you know he’s old), he was doing one of the word puzzles – the type where it provides the first few words of a phrase, leaving you to solve […]
- Fear of the Dark ()
“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation.” –Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost Embarking on any kind of new direction can be, and often is, overwhelming. A new beginning can come with fear – the What […]
- Right Action, Right Thinking ()
It’s often said that “right action leads to right thinking,” meaning that positive feelings often follow positive actions, rather than the inverse. For so long though my thoughts either led me astray from what that right action really was, or they rationalized questionable action in the name of something “right enough.” Such is the plight […]
- A Return, A Renewal ()
The first time I visited New York City was in December 2005 as part of a class trip. This was prior to TSA laws tightening up, and on the morning of our flight I loaded up two water bottles with vodka for our trip. I remember making a makeshift Bloody Mary on the plane with […]
- And Then What…? ()
“The honey doesn’t taste so good once it is being eaten; the goal doesn’t mean so much once it is reached; the reward is not so rewarding once it has been given.” —the Tao of Pooh It came up in conversation this morning, the idea of “And then what?” Let’s say I find an ideal […]
- Being the Party ()
“I can be the party, but going to the party’s difficult.” That line says so much for how I’ve felt for most of my life. When people ask me what it was like when I was drinking, they don’t always seem to understand the isolation that was a part of it. Going all the way […]
- Replacement Therapy ()
Within the context of recovery, the word “renunciation” is a new phrase for me. In Refuge Recovery it’s explained as “the practice of abstaining from harmful behaviors.” Similarly, the term’s Wiki article pins it as “the act of rejecting something, especially if it is something that the renouncer has previously enjoyed or endorsed.” In looking […]
- The Willingness ()
Willingness might well be inversely proportional to how well things are going in my life. Then again, even in the challenging times, when my ass is wholly engulfed in fire, sometimes it’s hard to find the willingness to do what it takes to put out the flames. Why does the shelf life of my willingness […]
- The Illusion of Relief ()
The illusion of relief goes beyond “self-sabotage” or an internal voice of doubt – the illusion of relief goes deeper. The illusion of relief masks its harm as a justified solution. The illusion of relief sells itself as the only viable option. The illusion of relief looks like a safe harbor in the midst of […]
- The True Burden of Self ()
A week ago it dawned on me: some clarity around the egomaniac with an inferiority complex dilemma that so many of us share in. There’s a voice in my head, looking at me, judging me, critiquing my every action. Rarely does it scream – it exists as an ambient hum, always present yet rarely noticeable. […]
- Speaker Tape ()
- Clarity ()
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.” —Kurt Vonnegut When I was in college one of my first roommates was a football player from Texas. Upon being placed on academic probation, he printed off a bunch of motivational posters and taped them to […]
- Adaptation ()
“How small we are when our minds develop minds of their own.” —Jennifer Senior Some of my earliest memories are daydreams of what it would be like to be the last person on the planet. At the time I only really considered the romantic and short-sided aspects of such a wild fantasy: I could do […]
- Reconsidering Alcoholics Anonymous ()
“Some might say that even if you don’t need God, you do need faith.” —Rogers & McMillin When I was a kid my dad would often take speaking engagements, filling in at various churches throughout the city we lived in. The thing I most took away from those all-but-forgotten Sundays is how they helped me […]
- All or Nothing ()
“I can resist everything except temptation.” —Oscar Wilde There are a lot of firsts in life that I do not really remember. I do not recall exactly when I had my first kiss or my first goal playing youth hockey, and to be honest I am not sure who my first grade teacher was either. […]
- A Crisis of Identity ()
“Mental health should be more than the absence of mental illness.” —Martin Seligman I woke up a few hours after I had fallen asleep, with a nauseating urge driving me toward the bathroom. I did not have feeling in my legs though, so I ended up crawling to the toilet where heaving voided some of […]