MondayBlogs on Walking in Sober Boots

Our writer has lost his voice

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 12:04:38 -0500

I feel that I’ve lost my voice in my writing. Since I started this blog, my posts have been largely confessional in nature. Early on, a lot of my posts were about my struggles with various aspects of the 12 Step world as I understood it at the time. Some, but not all, of those misgivings arose from my own misunderstandings of things.

Day-Dates, Reclamation, & Courage and Strength

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 09:25:51 -0500

On Saturday, my wife and I took a drive over to Easton, MD and had lunch at one of our favorite Italian restaurants, Scossa. We ate lunch outside, despite it being 48 degrees. Admittedly, it is a bit odd to eat lunch outside in January wearing our winter coats, but it’s as close as we are coming to normal right now.

Courage, Rebellion, and a Universe that has Your Back

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 13:24:31 -0400

Something that isn’t talked about enough in the rooms of the recovery community — courage. It takes courage to admit that we have a problem. It takes courage to ask for help. It takes courage to leave behind old habits and old coping mechanisms. It takes courage to get honest with ourselves and others. It takes courage to get sober or get clean.

Permission to Grieve

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 21:35:06 -0400

Before I begin, I want to say, categorically, that I’m not going to pick up a drink. When I think about the escape that alcohol provides, I can’t help but remember the emotional prison where it held me hostage for so long.

Semi-Viral

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 07:54:30 -0400

“People need to hear your story.”

“What do you mean, bud?”

“People need to hear your story. I think it’s inspirational. I mean you used to be a guy who didn’t do much besides go to bars and get drunk. Now, you do cool things. You love your wife, spend time with your son. You run. You hike. You bike. People need to hear your story.”

Skiing with the Scouts

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 15:02:13 -0500

A mounting sense of dread came over me as the weekend approached and I came to terms with the facts. I’d be driving four hours each way to a scout trip where the main activity would be skiing or snowboarding. I’d be giving up control of my weekend for the sake of my son and that of the troop.

Feelings and Fentanyl

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 19:04:33 -0500

It’s been over a week since I was released from the hospital. Generally, I’m feeling much better. I’m still a little weaker than normal, a fact I was reminded of by a short hike yesterday.

While I was in the hospital I had some strong feelings. Feelings that I haven’t had in a long time. Old feelings that no longer serve me. And yet there they were. Gnawing at me from the inside.

Fragility, Acceptance, and Patience

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 11:05:13 -0500

We are fragile creatures. We like to think that we are at the top of the food chain, the apex predator, the all powerful human beings, but in reality we are sensitive little organisms going about our lives as this tiny planet spins around on its axis orbiting one of billions of stars in the expansive universe. And we can be conquered by organisms that we can’t even see with our naked eye.

Step 12: Give Others Hope

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 09:43:33 -0500

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Fundamentally, the 12 Steps are a roadmap for change as well as a guide for living a rich and full life. Whether one calls it a spiritual awakening or something else is immaterial. Some folks do feel that they have undergone a monumental psychic shift as the result of working through the steps. Others feel that the change is more subtle.

Step 11: This Too Is Prayer

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 10:35:16 -0500

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

“Seriously? We haven’t talked about God for a while so we better bring Him back into the picture.” This was how I felt when I looked at Step 11 for a long time. The only saving grace for me was that the payer recommended in the Twelve and Twelve was the Prayer of Saint Francis, which despite being a Catholic prayer, has always been a personal favorite and that peculiar word “meditation” in the step.

Step 10: Pay Attention, Admit When You’re Wrong, And Fix It If You Can

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 10:22:01 -0500

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

At this point in our journey we’ve presumably learned how to identify patterns of behavior and how they lead us to make mistakes as well as how to make amends for our failures. Step 10 asks us to practice these skills as we move through life.

Step 9: It Must Be More than an Apology

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 15:00:40 -0500

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Most of us are taught from an early age that we must apologize when we do something wrong. We hear the words of a parent to a toddler:

Step 8: Focus on What Matters

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 14:22:19 -0500

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Let’s be honest, making a list of people who we have harmed can be a daunting task for anyone. No one wants to think about the mistakes they’ve made in life and how these mistakes have impacted others. Many of us have made poor choices in our active addictions.

Step 7: Get to Work

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 15:02:43 -0500

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

If you’ve been along for this ride with me, you probably know it was a foregone conclusion that I rejected the notion of a deity removing my shortcomings when I got to this step.

Step 6: Willing to Work?

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 07:28:44 -0500

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

When I first read the steps, step six seemed to be the step that would cause me to go over the edge. On the surface this step appears to be pulled directly from a nineteenth century revivalist sermon. The language is extraordinarily troublesome for a guy like me.

Step 5: Unburdening Ourselves and Finding a Path To Forgiveness

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:33:17 -0500

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Early in recovery (and as a recovering Catholic), this step reminded me of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, better known as Confession. In my younger years this meant going into a stall where there was a thin veil between me and a creepy old man who wanted me to admit all my failures in life. It was particularly important to discuss impure thoughts and impure actions. That’s right, sex fantasies and masterbasion. This was supposedly the only way to actually commune with God, through another human being, in a creepy space, talking about creepy things. Is it any wonder that I became agnostic?

Step 4: Honestly Recognizing Our Own Humanity

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 07:26:45 -0500

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

This step scares most people. The language feels foreboding, heavy, daunting. It sounds really hard. And for many people it is really hard.

This step is all about getting honest with ourselves. Some of us have suffered grave consequences and some of us have not. But we all know in our hearts that our addiction has caused harm. And so we must get honest about what we’ve done in our lives. Honest about how we’ve hurt ourselves and others. Honest about how our addiction affected others in our lives.

Step 3: This is Going To Require Some Help

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 08:11:22 -0500

‌Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

I must admit that upon reaching this step my thoughts were something along the lines of this: “So, here we are. Face to face with the religion inherent in these steps. God. Him. I’ll never be able to deal with this.

Step 2: It’s Not What I Thought

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 13:59:15 -0500

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I cringed when I first read this step. In my mind, that capitalization of the word power clearly meant something. And that something was an interventionist God that was going to fix me. I was having none of it.

Reflections on Counting Days after Four Years of Sobriety

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 19:53:58 -0400

Lets talk about counting days. Opinions vary about whether or not counting the number of days one has been sober is useful or not, just as opinions vary on so many other things in the recovery community.

Vigilance

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 13:20:00 -0400

A few months ago I was at a fixed menu dinner for work and I had glanced at the menu not really thinking about booze and agreed that it was fine for me — indeed it looked like a great meal with a number of delectable items that I’d surely enjoy. Everything was perfect until I put a spoonful of the vanilla ice cream that accompanied the pecan pie in my mouth. It was made with bourbon.

Stopping for Sam

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 10:12:38 -0400

If you follow me on twitter on Instagram then you know I’ve transformed myself from a relatively sedentary guy to a relatively passionate runner. In a little over a year, I’ve gone from barely being able to run for 90 seconds to running between 10 and 15 miles per week. Running has become a form of self care for me and I love it. I’m grateful that my body continues to heal from the damage I did when I was drinking.

Speaking My Truth, and My Truth Only

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 11:37:44 -0400

My story is pretty unspectacular. The abbreviated version is that I began drinking heavily in response to some unresolved trauma from my childhood triggered by the birth of my son. I subconsciously knew this at the time of my drinking and after getting sober I know this to be true to fact. I hadn’t always been a heavy drinker, there were times when I’d binged, but by my early thirties, I was pretty mellow.

False Narratives: Overcoming the Internal Voice that says, “You Can’t”

Mon, 28 May 2018 20:20:59 -0400

“I only run if someone is chasing me, like you know, the cops.”

I’ve said that thousands of times, perhaps hundreds of thousands of times. Usually, I said it either when someone suggested that I go for a run with them, or when they were bragging about their latest extraordinary run. Fitting that I’d move to a running town, made famous by some fool who runs in all sorts of weather wearing nothing but a Speedo. One of the few successful shops on Main Street in Annapolis is a running store. It’s been there as long as I can remember. You can’t take a drive for more than 30 minutes without seeing at least 25 of those obnoxious 26.2 euro style stickers on cars. I’ve always enjoyed seeing the occasional 0.0 sticker, thinking to myself “I’m not the only one who doesn’t run.”

Penn State's Campus Recovery Community

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 11:09:05 -0400

When I was in college my best friend tried to get me to start running with him. And I did go for a few excruciating runs with Gus at the IM building and around the town of State College, in the snow and ice. At the time, I was completely out of shape, drank nearly every day, and smoked about a pack to a pack and a half of Camel Lights a day. I had no business running.

We’re On a Path

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 22:58:13 -0400

The support that I receive from people who read my blog and tweets is simply amazing. I am always humbled when people who I’ve never met in real life take the time to read my blog and offer suggestions to me when I clearly need help. I am grateful beyond words for the support that pours in when I open my heart and share my struggles here.

Another Sober Christmas is on the Books

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 19:45:22 -0500

And, just like that, Christmas is nearly over. All the build up, all the anticipation, all the angst, and it’s over in less than a day. I have remarked to friends in the past that the entire fall sometimes feels compressed, as if time gets accelerated and there’s not enough of it between September and December. As if the entire fall is a run up to Christmas. And then, it’s over.

A Story Wherein Our Hero Finds Himself at Urgent Care on a Sunday Night

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 13:32:31 -0500

I’m sitting in the local urgent care center with a washcloth wadded up and held in place by a pair of boxer briefs. This is meant to stop the flow of blood that would otherwise have stained my jeans on the way here. I’ve done something dumb and it’s hard to believe that I still do these kinds of dumb things.

October 23, 2017: Reflections on Thirteen Years of Marriage

Mon, 23 Oct 2017 10:16:57 -0400

Thirteen years ago, I woke to brilliant sunshine after a week straight of rain, with a banging headache, in a hotel room at the O’Callahan on West Street, in Annapolis, MD. My addiction to alcohol would not take full root for several more years, but the previous night had been full of revelry with friends and family. We’d been celebrating in preparation of this day, the day that I would commit my life to the most amazing and beautiful woman I’d ever met. Yes, Mrs. TKD and I were getting married!

Reflections On a Weekend After Two Years Without a Drink

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 10:40:01 -0400

“Sir, Did the Rangers get ahold of you?”

Me, stupefied, “Did the Rangers get ahold of me? Um, no, they didn’t.”

“We’ve been trying to get ahold of everyone who rented a cabin, we have a problem, stinkbugs,” the kind woman with curly salt and sandy hair said as she motioned around the cabin that serves as the check-in station at the state park where I’d rented a rustic cabin for the weekend. The walls had many, but not an over abundance of, stink bugs crawling around.