“The Absinthe Drinker” by Viktor Oliva. Is that a stupid question? I have a feeling I might be one of those people who do not want to be called a “recovering alcoholic”. Normally, I don’t care what you call me (just don’t call me late for the barbeque), but I am vaguely offended by the […]
Category Archives: Sobriety
I got an interesting email from a reader yesterday – Elizabeth runs the stellar website Recovery.org and wanted to let me know about a study they had done on the success rate of reddit Inc.’s Stop Drinking support group. Reddit is an online bulletin board where community members post comments on all manner of topics. The […]
So my new job has taken an interesting turn. I am now helping to complete construction on a beach house that is already rented for the weekend after next… punch lists and deliveries and schedules and the last minute tweaking of home goods… I am actually qualified to do this. Not the real work, like grouting […]
There was a time when the only thing I thought about when I woke was, “What island will we party on today?” I’d reach for a leftover glass of wine on the nightstand, a tangle of sheets and a foggy memory of the night before (which usually involved a party on a private island…) […]
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 […]
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, […]