Category Archives: Sober Article

What’s the Opposite of Addiction?

I’m so bored, bored, bored I think I’ll eat that huge chunk of cheese and drink some heroin laced water…   You are thinking “sober” right? In an incredible article in the Huffington Post by Johann Hari, he posits, “So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”   The article goes […]

How Not to Relapse

Fiona – an exhaustive, recidivist chewer of anything bacon flavored…   I’m like a dog with a bacon flavored chew toy. Once I get an idea in my head I can’t stop nibbling, until I’ve exhausted the subject and myself. Take relapse for instance. I wrote about relapse yesterday, because it seems to be top of mind in […]

Relapse

  The word “relapse” scares me. And so do its synonyms: recidivism, recurrence, regression, worsening, backsliding, fall, lapse, loss, retrogression, return, reversion, setback, fall from grace and the ever popular – turn for the worse…   I have been going to a lot of different recovery meetings recently, and although they seem to be (overall) a […]

An Alcoholic Walks into Rehab…

 …to listen to a lecture on alcoholics. I infiltrated Jacksonville’s impressive Lakeview Health on Friday. I went to a lecture on “Saucy Women,” suggested to me by a reader, which was intended for addiction professionals, but open to the public. It wasn’t like an episode of Law and Order where Detective Benson goes undercover, prison bars clanging behind […]

Drinking at the $t. Regis Hotel

A seat at this bar will set you back a month’s rent…   I keep getting these chirpy email messages from Bergdorf Goodman. They announce with preposterous hauteur, “The Dresses you Need for the Sunny Season,” or “How will you wear lace?” or “Oscar de la Renta knows Feminine Charm.” I have resisted these attempts to woo […]

Flooding the Senses

This may have it all covered, but the Junior Mints…   What is the thing an alcoholic fears most? Taking a drink. No joke. Every alcoholic I have ever talked to will say the same thing eventually (if they’re honest): they are afraid that one day, all their good intentions will pack a bag and move away and without […]

Liquid Confidence

This weekend I said to Lauren, “I used to have a lot more confidence when I was drinking. I felt more attractive.” She gave me a wry look and said, “Uh, yes?”   Duh. It’s not just me. It is one of the primary reasons people drink – to give themselves a confidence or courage boost. It is […]

Molesting Animals

A baby sting ray in a tide pool I tormented for a while yesterday…   In Florida, it is an unwritten rule (actually it is written) that you are not supposed to “molest” manatees, or sea turtle hatchlings, or alligators or any of God’s creatures. In other words, you are to leave them alone and you […]

Getting Caught in the Rain

God’s finger…   I was taking my Happy Hour jog on the beach last evening and it was opulent. Perfect, white clouds stood in neat, straight lines like school girls on field trips. Mollusks and asteria punched their way out of the sand to bask in a late-day sun: starfish, olives, whelks, pastel coquinas… Gangly seabirds pecked at hyacinth tide-pools. […]

Happy Hour

My Happy Hour – 4 o’clock, low tide, solo Guana walk…   The term “Happy Hour” comes from American Naval slang in the 1920s following the First World War. According to Mental Floss Magazine, it was an allotted period of time on a ship where sailors engaged in various forms of entertainment to relieve the monotonies of the seafaring […]