Finding strength in surrender is a concept that baffles most people. Most people might thing, “Surrender – doesn’t that mean waving the white flag?” When we surrender, aren’t we admitting defeat? Aren’t we giving up when we surrender our worries, our fears, our grief, our self-will, our relationships, our past, our drugs of choice? Where’s…
Dear Loved Ones, I know I’ve haven’t been honest with you, but I’m learning that honesty in recovery is going to be critical if I want to get well. So let this letter be a beginning. And let me begin by saying, If there is one thing I wish you understood about me, it’s that…
If you’re sitting around waiting for a positive mental attitude to show up on your doorstep, that’s not going to happen. Try getting up and dragging out those tennies that have been hiding somewhere in the back of your closet, and just do it. Exercise, that is. There’s a biological basis for that advice. Research…
The 2014 Episode Data Sheet produced for government agencies reports that a significant percentage of people in treatment for addiction leave before completion, indicating that healthy coping skills in recovery may need to come from sources other than those traditionally used by therapists. Rehab centers are employing dance, music, yoga, recovery meditation and other alternative…
Some think that in order to travel to a sacred site, where spiritual connections can be made, you have to travel afar, to somewhere like Scotland’s Isle of Skye, Macchu Pichu in Peru, or to the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona in the U.S. These sites are known as places of peace and strength, where…
Sober life can actually be a lot of fun. That may be news for those who have been under the thumb of addiction for an extended period of time, but it’s important to find ways to make life in recovery a blast. Who would want to stay abstinent if it were a drag? Summer activities…
Seattle is treating drug addicts and alcoholics differently these days in the hopes that it will help these people get their lives back together. The city is using a program called LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion), which takes addicts off the streets instead of locking them up, providing them with the most basic of needs.…
“Ryan Douglas Bossie, 27, died January 30, 2015, in Portland, after losing a hard-fought battle with addiction.” Bossie obituary “All of the wonderful blessings that he had: talent, friendships, positive outlook on life, and, most importantly, family, were sidelined by a wrong decision to do drugs,” Hesse obituary. Addiction took the lives of two young…
A fascinating video tells a tale of addiction that sums up in five minutes the experience that all addicts finally come to know. In Nuggets, German animation director Andreas Hykade shows us a hapless bird—a kiwi—cruising along until it finds a golden nugget on the ground. He (why not?) passes the first nugget, but stops…
Clinical depression often accompanies addiction both before and during treatment, so it’s important to learn how to cope with depression in recovery. Some individuals started their addictive patterns as a result of depression – substance abuse was a way to cope with their depression. Those who enter treatment with the dual diagnosis of depression and…