You can stand here with me if you want but you’ll have to agree not to talk about the heat – from the movie Body Heat What is it about the sluggish, dog-star days of summer that has us all strapped for conversation? Normally articulate people enter rooms like extras in British farces – a door […]
Category Archives: Sober Article
Where Have I Been? I spent a fair amount of time in fabric stores yesterday: bolts of chintz and dingle-ball displays, semi-snippy clerks with yardsticks and sharp scissors. Fabric stores are the purview of women who are freshening their lives, by reupholstering their armchairs. You do not see businessmen in Boca Bargoons frowning over the crab bedecked […]
Yesterday… I’m flying through the air right now. Seat 29A, 5:55 a.m. I’m contorted like a David Blaine endurance art performance: snagging my laptop with a toe; my head in my neighbor’s lap to hook the strap of my purse with a pinky. I drag the items from the seat under-space to my lap, by doing a […]
The words “behavior modification” ruffle my feathers. In case you did not notice, I am a bit defiant when it comes to rules and regulations, and the act of “modifying behavior” sounds suspiciously autocratic to me… I wrote an article for Recovery Connections.org yesterday on Making Long Term Recovery Stick. Talk about behavior […]
So, you’re at a fireworks display and you’re going to buy light sabers and glow sticks? “Pink Cloud” is the tem used in the recovery community for the sense of false euphoria one feels in the early stages of sobriety. I am still waiting for that to happen. I have felt nostalgic, blue, satisfied, […]
If I were to ask you where you thought the photo above was taken (and you didn’t know I was in Flint for my mother’s birthday) what would you say? The Thames near Windsor Castle? Some other pastoral setting perhaps, the folding chairs and picnic blankets the harbinger of a string quartette on a barge, […]
The bundle smothered in the white blanket is me… “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Alcoholics Anonymous “Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.” George R.R. Martin – Game of Thrones I am in Michigan for my mother’s […]
From photos taken at an AA meeting – spring of 1964 It didn’t happen… I heard that people attended 90 AA meetings in 90 days, and I knew I could never pull that off, so I invented a truncated version of the dictum – 30 Meetings in 30 Days – and announced to my […]
Have you been to Michigan? I’m on my way there this morning. By the time you read this I will be shooting through the air, drooling on the shoulder of my neighbor in that opium-dream, slumber that only happens on planes or trains when you’ve gotten up at 3 a.m. to pack… I […]
The worst hangover I have ever had was in St. Martin. It was one of those delayed reaction deals. I woke up with crazy energy at 7 a.m. and went out on the pool deck to do lunges. We were staying in a hilltop villa – open air and sprawling – Kim was there, and when she padded out […]