Category Archives: Sober Vacation

Alcohol Recovery Management or How to Trick Your Own Brain…

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 […]

What Did You Do On Your (Sober) Summer Vacation?

bahama

A few short years ago, the month of August would have been like every other month. I would have woken in a tangle of sheets, maybe bloody (certainly besmirched) with nausea rising in my throat and no memory of how I got the abrasions on my knees. Read it and weep… I’d reach over to […]

I’m Solitary Sober… What Kind of Sober are You?

I guess, if I were being honest, I’d have to say I am the kind of person who enjoys being alone in a remote cabin in the woods. I am writing from one now. If you met me, you would not think of me as some solitary, grizzly gal. I shave my legs, I carry on lively […]

What if Quitting Drinking Doesn’t Stick the First (Fifth, Tenth) Time You Try?

Try, try again… Get ready – I’m about to use climbing mountains as a metaphor for quitting drinking again. I can’t help myself, it’s too symbolic. Especially since the first time I tried to climb the “big hill” on my vacation in Puerto Rico last week, I failed. Let me explain. The road to get to the […]

Feeling, Seeing, Smelling Vacation Without the Booze

I spent three hours yesterday lying in the Puerto Rican sun. On a lounge chair and in a bathing suit. I haven’t done that in years, but I felt the need for some Vitamin D and it was windy enough to be comfortable – not too hot. Happily, I am past the point where relaxing seaside […]

Is it Easier to Be Sober in a Warm or Cold Climate?

I’ve spent a lot of time in The Bahamas and Russia. Florida and Michigan. All of those places seem to be fueled by alcohol. I have been drunk in all of them and watched others be drunk too. In tiki-huts on the Exuma Sound, in a gondola on a St Petersburg canal (with a brown paper bag…). At Irish/Polish funerals in […]

The Amazing Lack of URGENCY to My Sobriety…

Imagine That… Imagine that. My daughter Lauren and her boyfriend John were visiting from Florida. I spent my downtime last week preparing for their coming.  Groceries were purchased and I filled the pantry with canned goods. I did not want them to think I live on Skinny Pop and blackberries. Or that I would not […]

Excuse Me Madam, There’s a Monkey on Your Back…

Nice monkey… I think it’s universal that people who are in active addiction feel a sense of urgency. There is always the need for “more”. It’s why we hide wine bottles in winter boots. It’s why we look around sheepishly, and polish off the dregs of other people’s drinks while they are in the bathroom. There is […]

Plow Horse Therapy

I’m not talking about Equine Therapy, folks. A few weeks ago, I was at an old-fashioned country fair in Ellsworth, Michigan and they had what was billed as a “horse pull” in a park on the outskirts of town. If you have never seen a horse pull before, it involves teams of enormous, draft horses; […]