My Recovery Rocks Interview
So check out an interview I did for Veronica Valli… and check out her fantastic blog. http://veronicavalli.com/2014/09/recovery-rocks-rick-bernhisel/
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What is Spiritual Maintenance?
As is often stated in the rooms of recovery, we are granted a daily reprieve [from our addiction] based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. But what does that mean? As I learned in years spent developing software for oil refineries, maintenance can take one of two forms: preventive and “oh-crap- it’s-broken.” Refineries are…
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Surrender to Win
I’ve only held the prongs on an electrical cord once while plugging it in. The attic room I called home as a child had an in-wall air conditioning unit that had come unplugged. It was dark. I was trying to align the plug with the socket. The resultant shock was sufficiently jarring to alter my…
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First Manic
The old man–a hitchhiker I had picked up on I-10–marinated the warm burgundy interior of my Nissan Maxima with a stench that lingered for weeks. I labeled him a hitchhiker although he hadn’t proffered the universal thumbs-up ride seekers are known for. He was just wandering a few hundred yards away from a broken down…
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Pray to Die
The slugfest began with my first 12-step meeting. I was 28. I was 42 when I put the bottle down and called it quits. After first acknowledging a problem, I spent more than a decade in the ring fighting a disease that knocked me down more often than not. A professional boxing match lasts 12…
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Finding Spiritual (not religious) Power
Those familiar with Twelve Step recovery know that the First Step begins “Admitted we were powerless over [alcohol], [crack], [meth], [food], [Amazon’s next day delivery option]”. I could expand the list ad infinitum. But what do we really mean by proclaiming ourselves powerless? I’d argue that it doesn’t mean that I am incompetent, feeble or…
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The Journey Past Suicidal Thinking
Hollow. So spiritually empty inside that I was hollow. I couldn‘t drink enough, sex enough, gamble enough, or degrade myself enough to fill the void. So hollow it ached. Over the two decades that I drank it progressed from a vague unrest to an inner void so pronounced that I was an existential vacuum sucking…
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Overcoming Resentments
Drunks who want to upgrade to recovered alcoholics tend to take a hard look at their resentments. This is a process that can benefit not only addicts, but anyone with a desire to free themselves of resentments as well. A written moral inventory is the fourth step in Twelve-Step recovery and is the first step…
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