For those of us struggling with addiction, one of the challenges we face is how to handle all of the cultural stereotyping, misinformation, hatred and apathy surrounding addiction and addicts. We see it on a regular basis, everywhere around us, and we’re sometimes on the receiving end of it. We might have lost friendships becauseRead More
One of the fundamental concepts in many addiction recovery programs is the idea of admitting our powerlessness over our addictions. The goal is to surrender our problems and our struggles, to stop fighting and resisting them, and to turn them over to our higher power to help us navigate them. The problem with this conceptRead More
Our stories with addiction are often riddled with denial, avoidance, emotional suppression, silence, and secrecy – the many coping mechanisms we develop to keep ourselves from having to face our addictions and do the work to get better. We refuse to see ourselves as addicts and our problems as being caused by addiction. We refuseRead More
The work we do in recovery is all about learning more about ourselves and developing the mindfulness and self-awareness to really be able to heal from our mental health issues and addictive patterns. For much of our lives, we’ve been compounding our own pain, exacerbating our own unwellness and hurting ourselves. We’ve been acting outRead More
If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The work we do to recover involves learning how to abstain from our drug of choice, transforming our lifestyles and routines to support our sobriety, and looking at our life circumstances to see how we’ve been negatively impacting ourRead More
Unpacking the connection between education, our recovery journeys, and the power of helping others through our experiences. Our recovery work is comprised of many different elements that support our sobriety and help us to maintain it. For many of us, continuing our education is a highly beneficial and therapeutic part of our recovery. When weRead More
One of the reasons we become so dependent upon alcohol and other addictive substances is how they can make us feel, how they influence our self-perception, and how they can cause us to feel differently about ourselves relative to other people and to the world. When we drink or use, we can feel changes inRead More
Our work in recovery involves having to do some of the hardest things we’ll ever have to do, challenges we never thought we could rise to because they seemed too painful and too difficult. One of these challenges is saying goodbye to loved ones who, for whatever reason, are contributing to our unhealthiness and infringingRead More
The work we do in recovery is deeply personal and quite emotional in nature. We’re unearthing suppressed emotions and uncovering wounds we’ve been burying for years under layers of distraction. We’re confronting issues from our pasts and our families, traumas we’ve experienced, and fears we haven’t wanted to address. Because this work is so personal,Read More
As we’re working to recover, we learn that our recovery is a journey comprised of many different chapters, chapters of self-discovery and expansion, and chapters of releasing the past. We discover that there are some chapters we have to close in order to move forward. As hard as it can be to let go, weRead More