Monthly Archives: April 2015

It’s Throw Up Thursday!

“Gluttony” by Pieter Breugel the Elder Let’s talk about gluttony…   It was pretty early into my sobriety, that I realized alcoholics are gluttons. I can tell you that I still grapple with the bottomlessness of my desires. (Speaking of puking, doesn’t that sound like it belongs in a bodice-ripper romance novel?) ************** Thorn Bartleby […]

Alcohol Moderation Management – Bet You Can’t Drink Just One…

  Remember the old Lays Potato Chip commercial – Bet you can’t eat just one? Change “eat” to “drink” and it could be a great commercial for a rehab center, or a moderation management organization. I think the question arises in the dark mind of every recovering alcoholic at least once, “As soon as I […]

28 Days

I Dated Captain Ron for Three Years

Just beyond the wall and over the first mountain, you will find a pot of gold, happiness and sobriety…   In the year 2000, I was rocketing through the air on the way to Ireland with my family. We were configured in twos: My husband and son in the seats in front, my daughter and […]

The 7 Deadly Sins of Alcoholism

I Dated Captain Ron for Three Years

 Dante’s Inferno – Isn’t that a new club in the Meat-Packing District? When a disoriented Dante, of Dante’s Inferno fame, passes through the gates of Hell, he sees a sign which bears the famous inscription, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” I hear a version of that aphorism in emails and Facebook messages and blog comments all the time, […]

Shocking!

  I was feeding Kim’s koi in the rain last week. She has an outdoor pond, and when the koi get hungry, they become agitated and pull the water plants up by the roots. They chase each other in lazy circles like bathtub toys with magnets in their tails…They make it known somebody better do […]

Guilt vs. Shame

The personification (dogification?) of guilt. A muddy and regretful Fiona…   When my children were little they never admitted they had done anything wrong. Never. They would look at me with big eyes, a broken vase at their feet, slivers of glass in their pant’s cuffs and say, “I don’t know how that happened.”   […]

The Power of Words…

I Dated Captain Ron for Three Years

From an illustration by Tim Burton   I have a friend who calls me Word Girl. He says I have the ability to leap tall buildings with a single well turned phrase: save an alcoholic from drinking with a sentence. Although this romantic notion has me picturing myself in bicep-flexed concert with the X-Men (Colossus, […]

Temperance in a Tipsy World…

The Bahamas, a BAR, and temperance – not for the faint of heart…   Temperance is the espousal of moderation, marked by personal restraint. That sounds like me… One Christmas, my daughter (who is many things, one of them ironic), gave me a stemmed glass that holds an entire bottle of wine, and a change […]