A dear friend shared with me a description of quitting drinking that I absolutely love (sorry, she said she read it somewhere, and I don’t remember where – if you know the origin of this concept, can you drop it in comments?). Drinking is like going to a house party where the house is starting… Continue reading The Party House
Gas prices are the highest they’ve been in a long time. I hear a lot of complaining about this. And then I think, “If you were an alcoholic complaining about the high price of alcohol, I would tell you that now is the time to quit.” We’ve known about the ruinous effects of fossil fuel… Continue reading Addiction and Withdrawal: Fossil Fuel Edition
See, I thought I was so clever borrowing this concept from natural history to describe the human condition, and just last month came across a delightful Meditative Story, “Writing the Main Character” by Franklin Leonard, using “punctuated equilibrium” in exactly the same way. Great minds, I guess. Still, I thought I was so clever. To… Continue reading Punctuated Equilibrium
Our attention is all we have. You’ve maybe heard, “Time is all we have.” That’s not exactly right. I’ve spent plenty of time doing something and paid zero actual attention to it – watching TV, petting the cat, spending time with family – and had it pass by without me truly noticing it. It’s right… Continue reading Time and Attention
Fear and anxiety are widespread human experiences in this modern age. In modern societies where many of the external pressures of subsistence are solved for us, our attention settles on less tangible problems to fret over. We have food and shelter and, for the lucky ones, health care, but now we worry about our careers… Continue reading Fear, Pain and Anxiety
Addiction is a shortcut to feelings of success. Drugs and alcohol are addictive because success feels good. But instead of working hard, achieving milestones, and getting the intrinsic satisfaction of a job well-done, alcohol just slips in those effervescent good feelings without having to do a lick of work. It’s a cheat to make your… Continue reading Why I Stopped Digging
So I was a working alcoholic for a long time before I got sober. In my 20s, I did lots of sketchy things – I was stoned at work every day at all my jobs (that was actually well into my 30s), I drank on the job occasionally at one place, I passed out pills… Continue reading Working for the Weekend
