Tag Archives: recovery

Are You Anonymous?

I Dated Captain Ron for Three Years

I re-watched Anonymous People last night. Is it just me or does it need an update? It reminded me of the conversations I have had recently with folks who are new to sobriety and full of piss and vinegar. They talk about how they plan to tell the world they are sober and proud. I always […]

Today You Will Stop Drinking!

I Dated Captain Ron for Three Years

  Every morning of my adult life, I have woken up and given myself instructions that I almost never follow. “Today you will only eat leafy greens.” I mandate or “You are going to push your cuticles back in the shower.” I don’t know why I do it. It’s like I set myself up to fail. For […]

Sober City Parks

I Dated Captain Ron for Three Years

Park distractions… does the woman on the right look serious enough to be a Marine? She is out of formation and appears to be giggling… I finally hooked up with a women’s walking group this weekend in Riverside Park (“thanks” Jan, for setting it up). Riverside Park has a wide sidewalk and it runs along a […]

When You Wake the Ghost

Let Sleeping Ghosts Lie – Great Lakes National Cemetery – Holly, Michigan I had a conversation last week, with a young woman who had fallen off the wagon. She said, “I feel so horrible. So guilty. I feel like I have to start all over.” I tried to come up with the right words for her. I know […]

Music Therapy

If you look closely, there are coyote decoys on the shore… I stopped by the office yesterday and when I came out (on my way for a walk) there were small balls of ice falling from the sky. I felt like Henny Penny. I promise I am finished with metaphors and misery about the cold, but ice […]

Is it Okay to Lie (Occasionally) in Recovery?

  It’s Good Friday, and I try to be very honest these days. In fact there are some who say I am brutally honest – telling things that are best left unsaid or swept under a rug. Speaking of which, I have, not once, but twice, taken a sip of my early morning coffee, deep […]

The Skunk at the Dinner Party

After being a drinker, is it ever natural to be at a dinner party without a glass of wine? I’m asking, because even though I do not crave a drink anymore, the thought of drinking flickers across my mind whenever I am in a setting where I would have been drinking, when I was drinking. […]

Eating Disorders + Addiction (How Do You Kill the Hydra?)

That’s me on the left – I’m like, “I am NOT going to eat 4,000 calories of candy in one sitting – burn the head after I cut it off!!!” and the other guy is like, “Wait. Did you say 4,000 calories?” and I’m like “Don’t worry – I took Correctol” and he’s like, “Yuck…” […]

Drinking Dream (Nightmares)…

Yikes – I had a drinking dream! Whoa. I have to hurry to get this down. And this is not going to be some snippet of a pretty memory. Because I had a drinking dream last night. I was at a dinner party with a bunch of people and everyone was pouring drinks and I […]

The 7 Reasons Recovering Alcoholics Drink Club Soda

Laura was sitting on the couch watching Orange is the New Black with Lauren and me, and there was an AA meeting scene (one of the inmates had gotten a little too dependent on her handmade moonshine). Laura turned to me and asked, “Why do you guys drink Club Soda? I mean is there a reason […]