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I've got another confession to make I'm your fool Everyone's got their chains to break — Foo Fighters I’ve got a confession to make. I have a real hard time with accepting things that are out of my control. Especially when it comes to my family. Especially, when it comes to my son. My son can be challenging. He has a strong will and is very smart. He knows when something is bullshit and he usually calls it out. He’s also easily distracted. Homework, especially project work, is difficult for us. And it drives me batshit crazy to watch him take hours to do something that I think shouldn’t be a big deal. My wife has told me for years that perhaps, just maybe, there’s some ADD/ADHD going on. And I’ve fought it. Fought it tooth and nail. ...

Today marks one year and two months since I put down the drink and started to rebuild my life. Of course it wasn’t planned, but it seems fitting that today is also Thanksgiving in the US. I am grateful so much in my sobriety that it can be difficult to list them, but I’m going to give it a go anyway. ...

I do not live in fear for my life, my son, my wife, my mother, or brother. I do not feel the violent assault, the insult of bellicose abuse because I am white. I have not walked intolerable miles in the shoes of our black, gay, Latin, lesbian, Muslim, and transgendered brothers and sisters. ...

The past 45–60 days have been insanely busy for me. Since October 10th, I’ve been on a plane every week except for one week, when I was sick as a dog and couldn’t even stay awake for more than a few hours. I’ve been to Massachusetts, Maine, Paris, London, California, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Many of these trips have been for nearly a week of travel. I don’t have the number of miles I’ve traveled at hand, and it probably wouldn’t be healthy to tally it up, but it sure feels like I’ve been around the world. This does not count my driving to local appointments or the activities that I’m involved in with my son. The autumn always feels compressed. There always seems to be too much to do and not enough time. This is probably due to the fact that we lose daylight rapidly in the fall. Our days get cut short and the angle of the sun is low. Everything feels constricted in the fall. With the addition of the travel schedule I’ve been maintaining, I’ve had a perfect storm for anxiety. And then there is the whole election, which has stirred up even more anxiety and venom. I’ve finally done what I said I’d do last Saturday and deactivated my Facebook account after what can only be described as a relapse of bad behavior. ...

There was a time, not too long ago, when I honestly wondered if I’d be able to let my son join Cub Scouts, not because I don’t value scouts, or because I was afraid for his safety, or because I don’t like the outdoors. It was purely because I could not imagine showing up to den meetings sober. Camping never entered my mind. ...

Much has been written about how social media, and Facebook in particular has contributed to the echo chamber effect. I’m not going to write about that. I’ve experienced it, and you probably have as well. What hasn’t gotten as much attention is how this echo chamber is affecting our mental health — at least, I haven’t seen much about it — perhaps because my particular echo chamber is uniquely curated by an algorithm to me. ...

I am going to go a bit off topic today, but I will try to bring this back to recovery. I know many of my brothers and sisters in recovery share my thoughts and are feeling sad, lost, and afraid this morning. I also know that many do not. You may not agree with my assessment. You are welcome to your opinion. I respect your opinion, please be respectful of mine. ...

Gratitude Today I’m grateful that I seem to have turned the corner on my head cold and I’m feeling better. I’m grateful that I made it to a meeting last night after a 2 week hiatus. It was good to be back in the rooms and to feel the warmth of the fellowship. I’m grateful that the sun is shining and the temperatures are cool. I particularly love autumn weather. Positive Experience ...

I’m starting a new series, based on the guidance from this article on Inc. I also must give credit where credit is due, my good friend HD started this recently, and his post today, was the kick in the ass that I needed to get started. ...

“As rain falls equally on the just and the unjust do not burden your heart with judgment but rain your kindness equally on all.” When I first came into the rooms, I was emotionally shattered, unsure of myself, unsure if I was in the right place, and frankly scared out of my wits. Like many people, I found that I was warmly welcomed by a group of strangers who had been exactly where I was each in their own way. After asking for help, I was given a list of names and numbers on the back of a piece of paper printed with the prayer of Saint Francis. “Welcome Home” was written at the top and I was told, “we’ll love you until you love yourself, keep coming back.” I felt absolutely no judgement from the group and for that I was thankful. I’d read much of the Big Book prior to coming into the rooms and understood a lot about the program. I was uncomfortable with what I saw as overtly evangelical religious language in the steps but chose to ignore this and to “take what I like and leave the rest.” There were other things that I was uncomfortable with in the rooms, mostly the trite little sayings… one day at a time keep coming back you’re only as sick as your secrets let go and let god just for today I know it’s the first drink that gets me drunk Over time, I became more comfortable with these little catch phrases, and I’ve been adopted some of them myself, because I now have a better understanding of just what they mean, even if I may think that they are overly simplistic in nature. I mean, lets face it, telling myself that I’m not going to drink just for today when I know damn well that I need to make sure I don’t drink for the rest of my life is a little mind game that I play with myself. And I’m okay with that. But there’s one turn of phrase that I hear in the rooms that really sticks in my crawl. He’s a Dry Drunk!...

I caught myself doing that thing again. The one where I rationalize my past. The mind sometimes races when it should rest. That happened last night. In truth, I should have been exhausted and fallen quickly into deep slumber but my mind had another agenda. It happens when I know I need to wake early, especially if I have a flight to catch as I did this morning. Rest did not come easy, and when it did, my sleep was marked by fitful dreams, walking in a seeat, and a phone call from the airline alerting me to a delay. ...

"fear of people…will leave us" Once I got sober I quickly found that I could drop many the things that I feared. I was no longer trying to hide the facts of my alcoholism. I was making positive changes that had big and immediate impacts on my daily life. I slept better, which meant I felt better. I quickly found that everyday pains and gut issues were subsiding. The physical wellness that arose out of my sobriety is a wonderful gift. And yet, there have been other, more important gifts – loss of shame, less irritation with life, less anger. Perhaps the gift I’m most grateful for is that the fear of people left me. I recall hosting meetings for my team in my hometown about three weeks after I surrendered. I was nervous for sure. I couldn’t take the guys out to the best bars in Annapolis. I couldn’t drink with my team. I knew that would be difficult, and it was. I remember the team dinner seemed to drag on and on, well after I was ready to call it a night. But I also remember talking with the valet parking attendant at the hotel for about twenty minutes before dinner. I had no room at the hotel because I was going home to my house. I had no business grabbing a drink at the hotel bar and it was nice outside so I’d gone out to catch some fresh air while the team got ready to go to dinner. I don’t recall the specifics of the conversation but I do remember that I recognized that I was actually connecting with this young man. ...

He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how. — F. Nietzsche Twenty-eight years ago, I was attending high school at a small Catholic school in a small town in Pennsylvania and we had daily religion class. Religion class was something I’d always dreaded from the time I started attending Catholic school in the fourth grade up until 1988, when religion class suddenly wasn’t about “religion.” In the final two years of high school, the religion class curricula focused on real issues rather than ancient biblical text and stories of some rabble-rouser preacher who claimed to be the son of God. In 11th grade the main topic was that of finding meaning in life as related by two Holocaust survivors. In 12th grade, the topics were to social justice and a study of marriage and vocations. The text for our 11th grade religion class consisted of Night by Elle Wiesel and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Both books detail the experiences of young Jewish men who were taken captive by the Nazi’s and who survived the concentration camps. Night was short and we read it first. To be honest, I don’t recall much of the book because it was over-shadowed by our study of Frankl’s book, which we studied from approximately October to May of the year. ...

A cool breeze drifted in through the window, mingling with the meaty goodness coming from the short ribs roasting slowly in the cast iron skillet in the oven. The room was darker than it had been a month ago at the same time on a Sunday, the sun’s late afternoon orange glow casting longer shadows on the wood floor. Save the faint sound of a lawnmower in the distance and the occasional plane passing overhead, the house was silent, and I was reading. My wife had taken my son to a birthday party and I was blessed with nearly three hours of uninterrupted quiet. I didn’t even put music on — an out of character move on my part, but welcome. Despite having a freshly brewed pour over coffee, I drifted off to sleep for a short 15 minute luxurious nap on the couch. This was exactly how I’d hoped that my Sunday would be; calm, peaceful, serene. No pressures, no agendas, no plans other than a slow pot of soup to make. ...

Recently, Jeff Vande Zane, contacted me to see if I might be interested in reading his novel Detroit Muscle and offered to send me a PDF version. Since, I’d heard good things about this novel from several friends on Twitter, I was immediately game. In fact, the book was already on my “to read” shelf on goodreads.com. Since I can’t stand to read PDFs even on an e-reader, I bought a copy from Amazon for my kindle. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was a bit concerned that I might not identify with the protagonist in the story, Robby Cooper, because his story was so different from my own. However, I quickly knew that I would identify with Robby because after all addiction is addiction regardless of the user’s drug of choice. Yes, my drug of choice was Alcohol, and Robby’s was Oxy, but that became immaterial once I got into the story. The book catalogues Robby’s first few weeks after he gets back to Detroit from a rehab facility. Vande Zande clearly knows Detroit well and includes details about the city and it’s landmarks that pull the reader into the scenes. A story about Detroit would not be complete if it didn’t feature a car and this one does, a 1968 Pontiac Firebird that Robby’s father had restored with his grandfather. ...