Tag Archives: health and wellness

How to use essential oils for sobriety

How essential oils aid in sobriety I love using essential oils as part of my sober toolbox! Last year, I believed with my whole heart that wine was the only thing available in my handy little toolbox. But times change and so do people! [Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at […]

Boy Did this Little Wine Bottle Take Me Back…

Day 1: I did a quick run to the drugstore a few mornings ago. My favorite corner Walgreens – I go there almost every day. It’s the place I buy my gassy water and Ice Cubes gum (and benignly yen for sweet-n’-cheap in the wine isle). The go-to where (at the worst of times these […]

Recovery Pitfalls – Are They Self-Fulfilling Prophecies?

I got the most gorgeous email from DZ a couple of weeks ago. Gorgeous because the voice was so raw. And the picture she painted so vivid I could actually taste cheap white wine. DZ was in the middle of a craving that was “surging up and down her solar plexus and choking her out”. She […]

Where is the JOY? Does Addiction Sap Feelings Forever?

I was at a Families Against Narcotics (FAN) meeting several months ago. It was a cold, miserable night and the room was full of folks who had lost a loved one to addiction and overdose. The topic was processing grief. The room was bursting with the collective swell of tears and regret and rage… Where […]

An Alcoholic Walks Into a Pain Doc’s Office…

Lest you think I am starting the new year with a bad attitude, I’m here to tell you I woke up full of piss and vinegar. That could be because I am actually on steroids. I went to an orthopedic surgeon yesterday, convinced I had bone cancer, only to find that the radiating pain in […]

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 […]

“Buying” the Sober Life (With the Proper Packaging)

I bought a new pot of face cream. The package promised to “erase fine lines in a week,” which is great because it’s my birthday today and I wanted to have a wrinkle-free face by that milestone… The Quick Fix… I mean, I actually bought the cream – $37.99 – because the box said it […]

Read the Signs: Turbulent Water! Violent Waves!

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy… Gordon Lightfoot It would not have been a trip to Marquette without thinking of the time my brother almost got swept off a break wall there, during a storm. A couple of days ago I said the UP […]

Why do I get the impression you pity me?

I heard from another long lost friend this week. Whenever someone from my past contacts me they say, “You just popped up on my computer.”  As if my details appear randomly in their ad column on Facebook. (Like the pair of suede boots you were checking out on Zappos that materialize in your feed for weeks […]

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

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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 […]