sobriety

Now I__sober and Irealize, Ididn__ drink toescape the world,I drank to escapemyself

Just as others pray daily, you should think to yourself daily about what you can do to be closer to this Ideal Image. Think: "What can I do today to make my life better?" "What can I do to become more like my Ideal Image?

You don't have to make it big, but you do have to make a big impact.

Gately can't even imagine what it would be like to be a sober and drug-free biker. It's like what would be the point. He imagines these people polishing the hell out of their leather and like playing a lot of really precise pool.

I lived to be forgotten because I'd forgotten how to live

Getting sober is a radically creative act.

When was the last time you woke up and wished you'd had just one more drink the night before?I have never regretted not drinking. Say this to yourself, and you'll get through anything.

I don't have to live that way anymore

Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.

Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life.The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances.I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances.It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve.

Happy to say you passed the sobriety test. Sad to say you failed the asshole test.

I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again.

Honesty. Sobriety. My virginity. No way to regain the first two, I almost gave away the last.

And I'd started thinking about my mother's last weeks--the way she'd drifted listlessly about the house in her dressing gown, cigarettes in one hand, glass of something strong-smelling in the other.

And you know what the worst thing was?The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.

Sex parties, alcohol and drugs lost their appeal to Sven after a while. Music never did, in his continual search for that sober connection--intimacy with one person over a long period of time, as opposed to periods of intimacy with a bunch of random faces.