I have a love/hate relationship with ‘feelings’. I’m in the place of pain today. While I have not had a drink in many years, I feel overwhelmed with pain—to the point of wanting escape. Note: I do not want to drink (I hate drinking) I just don’t want …
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living sober
9 articles tagged as living sober
Where are those magic words? Those words that let the reader know I understand. I understand where you are, but if you can just trust there is another way, I promise there is. Active alcoholism, especially when in it, is the worst kind of torture. Non-addicts have no …
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… Don’t say it. The Wednesday night mantra. And like any good irritant the issue and the mantra rolled right into Thursday morning. God must have been on hiatus when the vote came in to let me parent. I am confident, at these overly charged moments, that …
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The OGEL group started working on the 5-Key Competencies this month. Like many, it takes more than one go through for me to really embody new principles. I grew up believing that memorizing the information was good enough. But once the test was finished the information moved to …
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Let’s say, for conversation, that we actually found the “magic key” to controlling our drinking. Its magic actually stops the craving—today. What would this actually mean for addicts? There are at least two obvious answers and myriad more, but for conversation let’s stick to the obvious. Scenario I: …
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I feel compassion for those who struggle with alcohol—any addiction really. It is a stifling mindset. Addiction is lonely and truly unforgiving. The peak of addiction is an especially painful chapter in life. When we are near the end of our “drinking chapter” it seems overly agonizing because …
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The word competency comes from the root word competent which means having the capacity to function or develop in a particular way.[i] Competent is “derived from the Latin word competentia, meaning ‘meeting together, agreement, symmetry.’”[ii] Being competent declares that we are capable. At first, we may only be …
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Nothing in you is greater than the love in you. It’s just that you’ve let the love live so small. Love, in all its wisdom, is silently awaiting your humble return. You are tortured with guilt. Until recent, the only way to escape it was to use again. It never …
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The way we approach our sobriety is the way we approach life. We hate this parallel. We liked to think we were proficient in most areas and that our drinking was the only problem we possessed. We were shocked to realize that our alcoholic drinking was the effect …
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