I’ll spare you the George Thorogood song. Like a lot of people, my early drinking was always with a group. Like a lot of people, a happy effect was feeling looser in socializing, and fitting more easily in with the group. Even when the drinking reached binge-status after hours of partying, no one was concerned… Continue reading I Drink Alone

The first two weeks I quit drinking were terrible. I was obsessed with thoughts of alcohol. I wanted nothing more than to drink. I wasn’t a better person who didn’t need to drink any more. I wasn’t a more mature person who had learned better coping skills for her problems. I had sobriety in a… Continue reading The First Two Weeks

Drinkers, after all, find other drinkers. We tend to choose people who speak a certain language: Let’s go get a drink. Let’s have another. Oh, c’mon. Just one more… The chorus plays in the mind, liquid lyrics. The drinker who’s always game for another, who’d rather stay and drink than go out and eat, who… Continue reading A Chorus of Drinkers

It’s the framework psychologists love to hate – Elisabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler’s 5 stages of grief. A lot of this hostility is rooted in the misunderstanding that the expectation is that people march through these stages in order, when in reality, they are constantly shuttling between them – in denial about one aspect,… Continue reading Addiction and the 5 Stages of Grief

When you’re thinking about your drug and alcohol use, your mind plays all kinds of tricks on you. Even the healthiest among us falls into maladaptive patterns of thinking sometimes. Throw chemical dependency in there to mess with your motivations and rationales, and the addicted mind is a powerful and single-minded captain of the ship.… Continue reading Brain, Heal Thyself

I’ve written before about patterns of thought that stand in people’s way as they consider whether to give up addictive substances. There are ways of looking at the problem that stand in your way, but below are some patterns of thought that I have actually found very helpful as I moved from addiction into sober… Continue reading 3 Thought Patterns that Help Release Us from Addiction

In my early drinking days, it was a source of praise and pride that I was able to binge drink with the guys and hold my own. It helps to carry hundreds of extra pounds to absorb and modulate the poison you’re pounding. Whether you were an indie Elliott Smith or a frat brother, I… Continue reading Hanging with the Boys