The Junky’s Wife had a great post yesterday, where she passed along Eckhart Tolle’s advice on acceptance: if you can’t enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do, stop.

Already today I had the opportunity to put this advice to work in my life, and it really served me well.

I went to yoga class this evening, in the hope that I could loosen up enough to get into the right state of mind to work on a paper for school. Tuesday evening yoga at my gym has been my favorite class for a while, but I haven’t been for a few weeks. In…

From the AA Grapevine Digital Archive:

ONE THURSDAY evening, April 2, 1840, nearly 100 years before the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous, six good drinking buddies were gathered at Chase’s Tavern on Liberty Street in Baltimore, Md.

The more they drank, the more their discussion centered on temperance, which was one of the most popular topics of the day. This meeting and subsequent discussions led to the formation and brief, spectacular life of the Washingtonian movement, which grew in membership to over 400,000 “reformed drunkards” and then destroyed itself overnight and dropped out of sight.

The story of the Washingtonian movement brings sharply into…

In this last week before my marathon, a time when only marathon, marathon, marathon typically occupies my brain, I have only other thoughts. My friend Jeannie is still hanging on. I’m not surprised. She’s one resilient lady. She is surrounded by family and friends 24 hours a day. Her CaringBridge site is inundated with gushing praise, love, admiration and support. She’s touched and changed lives from coast to coast. Recovery will do that, and she is a shining example of what living The Twelve Steps can do. I will miss her.

Addendum: My friend Jeannie quietly passed away just before 1:00 PM…

by William C. Moyers

On my way to the airport the other day, the hotel van driver asked me that stock question that is inevitable whenever strangers share a ride: “What do you do for a living?”

I told him I work for an organization that helps addicts and alcoholics, loath to go into much detail because the ride was too short to explain treatment, much less the dynamics of addiction.

But the driver picked up on it right away: “Man, I was in treatment six times before I gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “I turned my life…

That’s about the best thing I can say regarding today - it’s basically over. I wish I had something more inspiring or uplifting to write about, but that’s all I’ve got right now. I muddled through it, and I didn’t use.

That’s something.

A year ago I could not have weathered this level of physical and mental discomfort with the calm and grace that I’ve mangaged in these past few weeks.

Meditation has been a great tool for me throughout my recovery process, and especially lately as I grapple with the physical discomfort of withdrawing from my meds. Meditation helps me put my…

But the answer I was hoping for was about something I’m not equipped to make decisions about all by myself. Any time I stand to directly benefit from something that I may be doing for any reason other than that it is the right thing to do, I need the help of others.

My friend Dennis and I have been talking about getting an apartment together. He’s a newcomer. He hasn’t managed to put together more than 2 months clean in over a year. He thinks, and frankly I think, he’d be better off not living alone anymore; that he’d do…

I just finished Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth last night. I’ve been reading it for a while, kind of in between other things I’ve been reading, and through the peaks and valleys, I’ve found a lot of things that helped me re-think my choices and re-view my life. In many ways, it felt like reading familiar material put into new words…and not in a bad way.

Something I read last night was really helpful, and it helped me mull over some of my most recent decisions to ask my husband to leave and then in deciding the conditions to allow him to…

I ran a big woman’s race yesterday called Women Run the Cities, which benefited the Ann Bancroft Foundation. Ann is an internationally famous explorer, the first woman to both the North and South Pole. Her foundation aims to “inspire courage, risk-taking, integrity, and individuality in girls and women.” I finished third.
I finished THIRD overall. Quite an exhilarating surprise…

Expecting to write an exhilarating post about my race, I arrived home to a message saying my friend Jeannie was about to die. This is only days after I talked with her (thanks to the feedback from TSR readers), and months before anyone…

AT THE GATE I EMAIL MY KIDS, ALL ADULTS, TO TELL THEM ABOUT MY TRIP.

Why would I bother texting with thumbs on a cell phone when in only a few hours I’ll be home? The anxiety. It’s the anxiety. Maybe I won’t make it home. Maybe the plane will go down. Who knows? So I email them. I say:

The trip was great, a real vacation. Four days I didn’t make a single meal. People fed me. This is what it must be like to be a child. It is a very good deal. Kids shouldn’t complain so much if there’s food…

My friend Jere is dying. He may even be dead by now. We just heard about the cancer a couple of days ago. Someone told Michele at a meeting. And now he’s probably gone.

Jere’s no kid. I’d guess him to be closer to 80 than 70. You know how it is with people you’ve known, seemingly, forever. They age, but you don’t notice until one day you look and realize that you’ve both suddenly grown a lot older. It was that way with Jere. He was the soul of vitality, one of those people who radiated energy even when standing…

Today is my fourth day on this lower Suboxone dose, and I’m feeling pretty crap. It was a long and difficult week anyway, so it’s hard to say what is withdrawal, what is my fibro, and what is just being tired. I guess it doesn’t really matter that much anyway, I still feel how I feel and I still need to find ways to take care of myself. In light of that, here is my list of things I can do for myself to help me succeed:

1. Go to bed on time. No, make that: Go to bed early. Sleep…

Last night, Mark and I went out to dinner. We had a wonderful evening, eating dinner at a favorite restaurant and browsing a local bookstore. We talked about politics and the personal struggles and triumphs (large and small) we’d had during the week. In many ways, it wasn’t very different from evenings we spent together ten or fifteen years ago; we were in the same places, eating the same food and talking about some of the same types of things as always. Yet, the tone and tenor of the conversation was different; God was noticeably present in our talk and…

Life at the new homestead has been challenging recently. The kid has told me repeatedly since I’ve been here that she hates me, but tensions escalated the other night.  Hopefully that will be as bad as it gets.  Hatred is a word easy for kids to throw around, so I’ve been taking it in stride.

I’ve been called an idiot a bunch of times and often a normal run of the mill days escalates into a hysterical, unexpected conflict. We began to pinpoint the anger and misbehavior. Every time she comes home from stays with her father, she is a different…

In our most recent Group Conscience meeting for my Nar-Anon, we discussed a need to clarify our stance on feedback and crosstalk in our meetings. While it’s rare that these events occur, there are some folks who have felt criticized or felt like other group members offer advice that is unhelpful and unwanted. We have been noodling through some ways to clarify the wording, and I volunteered to take our Opening Statement and add a few sentences that clarify what we mean by “We do not give advice, dialogue, debate, or crosstalk” in our meetings.

There have been times at meetings…

Ever have one of those days where the past smacks you in the face over and over again? I created one of those days today. I’ve been missing some important items for a few years, and I set out to find them today. Why have I been missing things? As I’ve remarked here previously, I had ECT treatments for my treatment-resistant depression. As a result, I lost my memory–totally–and therefore lost a few years of my life. I moved into this house right in the middle of that lost time period. I don’t remember packing or moving so it’s not…

One week ago today I turned 58.  I’m on this birthday thing - just wait - when you turn 58 you’ll be doing the same thing.  I was doing the math the other day and I realized that I have finally reached the “break-even” point where I have been clean and sober for as long as I wasn’t clean and sober.  So, for 29 years of my life, I lied, cheated, stole, drank, drugged and for 29 years I didn’t do ( or haven’t done) those activities.  When I first thought of that 29:29 ratio I was really depressed.  I…

I’ve been working on Step 1 and thinking about unmanageability in my own life and had one of those lovely moments of coincidence last weekend when my husband Mark and I went to see Burn After Reading, a funny, clever movie just drowning in unmanageable lives.

WARNING: Spoilers from here on out!

John Malkovich plays an alcoholic who refuses to acknowledge he has a problem, even as his drinking gets him fired from his job at the CIA. His marriage falls apart, his wife locks him out of both the house and the bank account, and his checks start to bounce. Looking…

The film Choke, screenplay adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, releases today. I have yet to see it, it’s a limited release, and the closest theater is 40 miles away.

The main character Vincent Mancini is a case study. He splits his time working days as a colonial re-enactor and at night he runs a scam at fancy restaurants, taking bites bigger than you would consider healthy, until he stops breathing. He seeks the help of his friend Denny, a chronic masturbator, who he met at sex addiction meetings, another way that Victor spends his evenings.

It remains to be seen…

When I went to my first Al-Anon meeting, I met a lot of people who were welcoming and kind. I listened but didn’t understand what I was hearing. I was told to “Keep coming back” which I did. At the next meeting, I met the person B. who became my sponsor. It was one of those moments of clarity that I’ve had throughout my life when I sense a kindred spirit and someone with whom I feel comfortable.

Anyway, as I attended more and more meetings, I learned that most of the people attending were all sponsored by one person. Although…

So often the best action is no action. So often things sort themselves out on their own. Without any interference on our part. “We pause when agitated or doubtful” and sometimes that is all that is required.

At least that seems to have been the case here.  I spoke with my sponsor regarding the handsome sponsee. He agreed to take him back on. And I haven’t seen him in two days now. I understand from someone else in the program that he’d called yesterday looking for help.  He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

I guess I’m sad for him, but…

by Lilian & Murdoch MacDonald

Reviewed by Ginger B.

If you’ve read any of my reviews you will know that usually I am a kind person.  Even if I do not agree with someone’s viewpoint or am not swept away by their prose, I can find something worthwhile in every book I read.  Just the fact that someone took the time to write it is worthy of praise.  However, Lilian MacDonald and her husband, Murdoch, have managed to pluck my last nerve in this 183 page attempt to prove that alcoholism is “a self-harming behaviour problem, (and not a disease),  which can…

If you ask someone who loves an addict what the most painful thing about addiction is, the answer you’ll hear most often is: the lies.  The lies.  The lies.  Oh, the lies, lies, lies, lies!  They hurt and they burn and they sting.  Most of the little festering resentments I still have left around my husband’s sex addiction are around the lies he told, rather than the actual behavior he engaged in.  The lies keep me up at night.  The lies make me wonder what’s real.  The lies keep me distant and separate.

Of course, I, the honest and loving codependent…

by Beth Elliott

Dear Lord make me know

That life is an ebb and flow

And, it is okay

To feel the anxiety, fear and loss

When the wave retreats and I wonder

If I can live with just my bare feet on damp sand

And, it is okay

To feel expectant, exuberant and joyful

As the wave returns and licks my feet

Like the happy, unconditional love of puppy kisses

Dear Lord make me know

That I can live with this ebb and flow

And breathe into this rhythm

Just as I accept the beating of my heart

…

It rained all this morning, and on into the afternoon.

I was home by myself, a rare treat, lying in bed reading. The storm outside grew more intense, the sound of the rain on the roof rising from the background into consciousness. I set the book down beside me, shut my eyes and just listened.

The sound of the rain overhead moved through my body like a feeling, relaxation spreading to the tips of my fingers and toes. The room was cool but I was warm under the blankets. I felt like I could stay there forever. I let go of all…

This day could not be more beautiful. Bluer than blue skies, wispy white clouds, warm sun mixed with cool, dry air. It is a day to behold, an awesome and awe-inspiring day. Today reminds me I am but one minute particle in this enormous collage we call the world. I am so grateful. It’s a beautiful day.

I picked her up from school. We said our hellos. She is quiet and shy. She often looks uncomfortable in her own, ever-changing skin. I remember… Thirteen is a tough age, especially for a girl. I wouldn’t do it again if you paid me!

In…

I got a call from a sponsee last night. He started about 4 weeks ago with me. He seemed willing and wanting to work but for a couple of weeks I had begun to notice that he wasn’t doing much of what was suggested.

I like to have daily contact with a sponsee for a while. That happened at first but then there would only be a call if he was down. And then there was the reading of the first four chapters of the BB. That wasn’t happening nor was he reading over the printed material that I had given…

I don’t know what I want. I’m struggling to figure it out.

I want to be happy. I’m not sure if happiness and peace can come together. It kind of seems like happiness might only be available in a bundle with misery.

I haven’t seen my husband since Sunday, and we’ve only spoken briefly on the phone. I’m not sure when we’ll see each other again.

I am trying to determine what is my bottom line. There are lots of things that I want from him…but I am not sure what is the baseline that I’ll accept for him to come back home.

Part…

Spirituality is a difficult subject for many people in early recovery. There are a variety of reasons, but what they usually boil down to is a bad experience with religion.

Forgetting, for the moment, that religion and spirituality are not the same thing, we need to help newcomers reach some sort of accommodation with their possible misgivings about all the discussions of higher powers, God as we understood him, spiritual awakenings and all the other recovery jargon that flies around the rooms.

This is sometimes an awkward situation, and one that needs to be dealt with gently — perhaps passed over altogether…

My favorite writer, Paul Monette, along with several collections of poetry, an acclaimed collection of essays, and two biographies, one of which won the National Book Award, wrote a bunch of pulp fiction.  It is pulp.  The stories aren’t challenging. They don’t really give one much to think about. But they are so beautifully written that I have read several of them many, many times.

“Halfway Home” is one of those books for me. “For I’ve never loved anyone all the way through-or maybe it’s no one has ever loved me back. You’d think I’d get the direction right, considering this…