Category Archives: Sobriety

The Aha Moment

  Yesterday I was featured on Recovery Connection.org in an article called “What is Rock Bottom?” in which I stated “I’ve probably had ten rock bottoms, and none of them were the catalyst to my quitting drinking.” (By the way, please go to the website and SHARE the article on your favorite social media site, […]

How to Beat Self-Sabotage

  I have decided I am my own worst frenemy. I have polled my friends and they all say I am funny (even funnier now that I’m sober, but I think they think they have to say that or I’ll be all gaga-drunk to get a laugh…), smart, interesting and best of all confident. I’m not […]

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 […]