Topic: maintaining sobriety

Most people in stable recovery got there the hard way, through major alterations in the way they live.

When you give in to panic, you find yourself with two problems rather than one: The thing that’s scaring you, and the fact that you’re panicky and can’t reason clearly.

But no matter how difficult a challenge or how great a triumph it is for us to get from there to here, life’s still going to keep throwing more problems at us.

We were using the same kind of language to talk about it: Focusing, centering, in the moment, relaxing, stress-reducing, peaceful.

If you’re not fighting your own conscience, you feel better about yourself, and conflicts with others diminish, too.

The coffee is just not that tasty. Yet they were getting something out of it that was important to them.

This is where ‘recovery work’ comes in, in the form of acquiring healthy strategies to successfully handle (i.e., without resorting to substance use) stressful situations and resulting emotions.

By focusing on the welfare of someone else, James had gotten the full benefit of the Ninth Step.

What I like about resolve is that it has no sell-by date. Resolve focuses on progress, not perfection.

As if he were proud of it — as if his list of treatment ‘failures’ represented a weird sort of achievement.