The wheels came off the day the bar results arrived. I have no idea how long I had been an alcoholic drinker by then, but I have a few guesses where it started. Years prior, I was in a serious accident, hitting the pavement at more than 55 miles per hour. A couple of surgeries and...
People take the anonymity thing very seriously. I personally believe that it is not because of some high-minded adherence to the principle of anonymity, but because of a deep-seated internal sense of shame and fear of lost opportunity. Read the full article here.
Something interesting happened when the world screeched to a halt and the courts closed in mid-March. The lawyers we work with as volunteers and clients did not respond as everyone predicted lawyers would. A feeling arose in many of our volunteers and clients that had them scratching their heads. For many of our LAP participants,...
My son is an addict. His addiction has had a profound impact on my life. Addiction—which includes alcoholism—is a disease, and it wreaks havoc on family members as well as the addict. In this 2-part article a LAP Volunteer shares about recovery on the family side….Read Part 1. Read Part 2.
I am smart. I really enjoy using my smarts to solve problems: logic problems, crossword puzzles, strangers needing directions, my clients’ problems, my friends’ problems, and my family’s problems. But, fixing problems has a sinister side, just like any addiction, and one can develop compassion fatigue. The best way to explain “compassion fatigue” comes from...
I’m here because somebody, maybe somebody reading this, dimed me out. Threw me under the bus. Lied about me to the authorities. Said I was drunk in court. The truth is, I have never been drunk in court: yet. Never been drunk at the office…yet. Never lost my driver’s license because I’d been driving drunk…yet....
One of the most-used words during the pandemic has been the word “change.” Each of our personal and professional worlds has undergone countless micro and macro changes; some for better, others for worse. The amount of adjustments we have been forced to make during the pandemic is almost incomprehensible to our brains and nervous systems....
When I think back and remember the latter part of my active alcoholism and its impact on my family, more than anything else, I think of the extraordinary amount of time I spent trying to hide my drinking. It felt like I spent almost all my time either hiding the purchase of alcohol, hiding the...
Alcohol is not my problem. It never was. My problem is me. Always has been and always will be. And the problem follows me wherever I go. I struggle to accept my imperfections or acknowledge that I make mistakes. I have trouble admitting that I am not the best at everything. When I was in...
While driving to the coast recently, I was listening to Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance. Brach is known for encouraging her readers and listeners to face and walk through their fears and problems. It made me think of that night of my first AA meeting where I uttered the magic words for the first time....