When I was using my idea of a healthy diet was coffee, a donut, crack, heroin, and maybe a McChicken. I know, sounds very well rounded. Forget about exercise or any sort of healthy movement, no daily walk or bike ride, in fact I think the only moving I was doing was to peek out

To say that 2019 is off to an incredible start would be an understatement. More on that later. To say that the close of 2018 was a dizzying swing between fear and faith would also be an understatement. As I shared, I lost my job in the beginning of November. And that month, or the

    What’s Wrong with ME? The purpose of the 6th and 7th steps in 12-step recovery is to uncover “character defects” and to pray to remove these defects.  I have two issues with this. First, the word “defect” sounds as if there is something wrong with me, something I think or do that is

As last year was drawing to a close I pulled a few old diaries (now called “journals”) from my shelf. It has been years since I looked at them. Some years due to fear and shame, other times avoided in disgust for the sheer repetition in the pain, but this time I pulled some down

“Love your addiction, love yourself.” When I first read these words, they stunned me. It was a complete paradigm shift. Away from guilt and shame and pain, and towards love and forgiveness and well-being. These words were the sub-heading in one of my favorite recovery books, 30 Day Sobriety Solution, part of Day 4: The Forgiveness Solution

  Plenty of things have been said about the road to recovery. It takes time,  patience and healing etc. etc. In truth, it can be like climbing Everest backwards and then starting from the bottom again. It’s hard, and like all things in life, it’s a journey. There are ways to make this road a little bit

DJ’s was the sober oasis disguised as a coffee shop that NutJob Bob introduced me to early in my recovery. It was Holy Ground. He and a motley group of brain-damaged followers would stroll in after their daily spiritual make-over, lifted from the meeting and ready for more coffee, cigarettes and fellowship, along with a

When I was in college my friends and I liked to party, which I always thought was normal until it wasn’t. Two weeks before my graduation I entered a drug treatment center. I think I was lucky to be able to get professional help. I also think I was lucky because I got to take

I believe that alcoholism is a family disease.  My father was an alcoholic, one of those unfortunates who never found recovery and died destitute and homeless at the age of 50.  I swore I’d never become an alcoholic, but at the age of 50 myself, my two glasses of wine had become 4 or 5