I hope I don’t get caught. I hope I don’t get pulled over. I hope she doesn’t leave me. I hope I don’t get fired. I hope I don’t have cirrhosis. That was pretty much it for ‘hope’ before sobriety. My life was small, my outlook bleak, and fear ruled. I was beholden to alcohol. […]
Alcohol wants me dead. Not just dead though, no. That’s not enough. Alcohol wants to ruin me first. It wants to steal my joy, hope, love, health and freedom. It wants to get me fired and keep me unemployable. It wants to break my spirit and destroy my self-respect. It wants to make my friends […]
Aaahhh, resentments. That kid who made fun of me for tucking my shirt in my underpants 45 years ago. I call him “that kid” because I don’t want to “out” him as an atrocious person all these years later, and he probably grew up into a perfectly lovely man. Or a ghoul…part of me wants […]
Happiness is an inside job but it takes work. There are clinical studies that have shown being grateful leads to gratitude. I love that. All I have to do to be happy is figure out what works for me, do that and be grateful. Oh yeah, and don’t do what doesn’t work. It is that […]
Low self-esteem, high ego. I see this a lot. I see it in myself, especially before. Before my recovery, and sometimes during. I used to get mad at myself because I deserved better than me…Oof. Convoluted thinking, I see that now. But that’s how it was. One time I found a toy bull-head, and I […]
Do you know someone who needs an intervention for substance abuse? I know a lot of people who have. As a matter of fact, I am one of them. When alcohol or other substances become a tool for survival instead of something to do for enjoyment, only that’s when it becomes a problem. I enjoyed […]
Family really knows how to push your buttons. They know how better than anyone. They know, because they created and installed them. Family relationships can be tricky in the best of times. Add the tornado of addiction/alcoholism and things can spiral out of control in a flash. My upbringing is not the reason I drank, […]
My really good friend and I hadn’t been able to meet in quite a while because it was difficult to align our life schedules. At some point, we both decided it had been too long, so we made the time to meet. We sat at the table and the first thing he wanted to know […]
The first time I got drunk was with my best friend, we were about 14. He spent the night at my house and my parents went bowling. They had a fairly extensive liquor cabinet and we made it our mission to do a shot of everything. From whiskey to creme de menthe, I think we […]
Why? That was my great obsession. Why am I like this? Why can’t I drink like others? Why do these things keep happening to me? Why do I continue to screw it up at the worst possible time, time after time? Why me? What I discovered was that (especially at that time) why didn’t matter. […]