Getting sober or overcoming an addiction (drugs, food, shopping, binge-watching Game of Thrones, etc.) to placate someone else rarely works. We need to want it for ourselves. We need to make it our number one priority in order to foster the willingness to do whatever it takes to get and stay sober. In recovery, willingness…
God loves imperfect people. This world is messy and imperfect. We are here to learn lessons. Like a beginning pianist learning to play Chopin, we don’t get it right the first time or the second. If you are as musically ungifted as me, you may not get it perfect even after months and months of…
It was a Wednesday morning rush hour commute. I was nearly four months sober. Gone were the days where I had to stop by the liquor store for a little “hair-of-the-dog” before heading into work. I was actually scheduling meetings first thing in the morning as I was no longer trying to hide my eighty-proof…
As with any bipolar worth the salt known as lithium, I am not unfamiliar with that local fine dining establishment known as county jail. Not any jail mind you. My home is just southeast of Phoenix, Arizona, so Maricopa County’s infamous Lower Buckeye Jail (LBJ), erected by that pink-underwear-loving humanitarian Sherriff Joe Arpaio, was my…
It was late at night. My wife insists on having the TV on while she sleeps. My one request? Tune the TV to real-life crime shows. The monotone narration makes it easier to sleep. Half awake, half asleep I listened to a show about a man who died after eating dinner with his estranged wife.…
In every contact with others there is an impact on our energy level. Most of us are conditioned to think of others as either giving or taking energy. When we are sapped of energy we view the person on the other end of the relationship as an energy vampire–people who are either on the attack…
“Wear the world as a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly” –attributed by some to St. Francis of Assisi, but probably made up by some guy named Fred Wearing the world as a loose garment. It’s a phrase not uncommon in the rooms of Twelve Step recovery due to…