Day 1: I did a quick run to the drugstore a few mornings ago. My favorite corner Walgreens – I go there almost every day. It’s the place I buy my gassy water and Ice Cubes gum (and benignly yen for sweet-n’-cheap in the wine isle). The go-to where (at the worst of times these […]
Category Archives: Sober Article
I got the most gorgeous email from DZ a couple of weeks ago. Gorgeous because the voice was so raw. And the picture she painted so vivid I could actually taste cheap white wine. DZ was in the middle of a craving that was “surging up and down her solar plexus and choking her out”. She […]
I was at a Families Against Narcotics (FAN) meeting several months ago. It was a cold, miserable night and the room was full of folks who had lost a loved one to addiction and overdose. The topic was processing grief. The room was bursting with the collective swell of tears and regret and rage… Where […]
I think it makes sense that 50% of people who have eating disorders also have a co-occurring substance use disorder. I used to fall asleep with the remains of my wine glass on my night stand. Now, it’s often a cute little bin of ICE CUBES gum, or the remains of my soupçon of TV […]
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a divining rod that foreshadowed alcoholism? It would start shaking when a person was about to hit the point of no return – that moment when over-drinking morphs into reliance. I can picture some modern day Carrie Nation entering a pub, water-witching her way along the bar. […]
Lest you think I am starting the new year with a bad attitude, I’m here to tell you I woke up full of piss and vinegar. That could be because I am actually on steroids. I went to an orthopedic surgeon yesterday, convinced I had bone cancer, only to find that the radiating pain in […]
When my son was a toddler, a resourceful mother bird built a nest in the tree outside his bedroom window. It was stressful for both of us to watch. The sparrows built their nest during a Florida wind storm. And because they took up residence in our tree, we felt responsible. We’d sit on the […]
I just read an article by William White about the difference between Relapse Prevention (RP) and Recovery Management (RM). In a nut shell, he opines that one focuses on “deficits and vulnerabilities” and the other on “assets”. RP implies we are running from monsters (waking up the ghost?). RM suggests we are “being positively drawn […]
I went to CPR training/certification last week. I felt a bit anxious as the trainer painstakingly itemized all the unfortunate things that can happen to a person. In the video, after someone cut themselves with glass or collapsed while ordering coffee at a kiosk, there was always someone who stepped forward. They would hold up […]
I bought a new pot of face cream. The package promised to “erase fine lines in a week,” which is great because it’s my birthday today and I wanted to have a wrinkle-free face by that milestone… The Quick Fix… I mean, I actually bought the cream – $37.99 – because the box said it […]