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Posts tagged with “addiction”

Free Yourself from Sugar Addiction This Holiday Season

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“Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drug is to fool you into believing that life without it won’t be as enjoyable” ~Alan Carr

“I’m okay, thanks.”

See that? I just turned down a Tony’s Chocolonely from our family advent calendar.

I don’t care that it’s a white raspberry popping candy flavor I have never, ever tried before.

I don’t care that I remember being a kid, opening chocolate coins from my stocking.

I don’t care!

Because this year, I’m going into the holiday month already sugar-free. And I am tentatively walking on air about it!!

I’m forty-five, …

Lost, Scared, and Broken: How Self-Awareness Saved My Life

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“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” ~Nathaniel Branden

I felt lost. I felt broken. I felt scared.

As I sat alone in that cold, dark jail cell, I felt like I had hit rock bottom.

My feet chilled against the cold stone floor. The creaky wooden bench, stitched together with narrow strips, tormented me.

Inmates shouted all around me. Their voices echoed in the dark. It was like the noise of the outside world had finally caught up with the noise inside my head. I just wanted to scream.

I was sixteen, but I …

How I Healed from Addiction One New Belief at a Time

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“Recovery is all about using our power to change our beliefs that are based on faulty data.” ~Kevin McCormick

I struggled with what I would consider a disconnect with myself from a very young age. I was born a free spirit, curious and interested in so many things. I was also very shy and sensitive. I was not the type to be put in a box or expected to conform to the norm. That just wasn’t me. I needed to be accepted and supported for who I was.

Instead, my well-meaning parents attempted to “domesticate” me, especially my father. I …

Why I Love My Sober Life: Everything I Gained When I Quit Drinking

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“Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself.” ~Rob Lowe

I tried and failed to have a fabulous relationship with alcohol for many years.

When my children were tiny, I drank far more than was good for me, thinking I was relaxing, unwinding, socializing, and having fun. I’d seen my life shrink down from a world with lots of freedom and vibrancy to a socially restricted void, and I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to join in with everyone else.

All my birthday cards had bottles of gin or glasses of fizz on them, all the Friday afternoon …

How I Healed My Strained Relationship with My Addict Mother

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“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ~Sam Keen

Like so many of us, my relationship with my mother throughout my life is best described as complicated.

We’ve had our fair share of turbulent times in our journey, and her alcoholism and drug abuse while I was growing up fueled great dysfunction on every level: literal physical fighting when I was a teenager (yep, Jerry Springer-style), seemingly continual acts of rebellion, a total lack of understanding, deep mistrust, unwillingness (or likely even an inability at the time) to …

How I Embraced Alcohol-Free Living: 4 Things That Made It Easier

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“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” ~Abraham Maslow

A few years ago I decided to take a break from alcohol, and I also decided I would probably be lonely, miserable, and boring for the duration of my break.

I’d allowed a lot of social conditioning to affect me, and I was sure people who didn’t drink either had no friends, had hit a drastic rock-bottom, or had no fun. I didn’t know if I was going to find happiness or even contentment on the other side of my drinking career, and …

How I’ve Stopped Letting My Unhealed Parents Define My Worth

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“Detachment is not about refusing to feel or not caring or turning away from those you love. Detachment is profoundly honest, grounded firmly in the truth of what is.” ~Sharon Salzberg

A few months ago, my father informed me that he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Although he seemed optimistic about the treatment, I knew that hearing such news was not easy.

After a few weeks, I followed up with him. He ignored my message and went silent for a couple of months. Although his slight ghosting was common, it made me feel ignored and dismissed.

In the meantime, I …

How Getting Sober Healed My Dating Life (When I Thought It Would Ruin It)

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“Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again.” ~Shane Niemeyer

When I faced the prospect of no longer drinking anymore (at age twenty-one!), after eight years of heavy boozing, I had so many questions about my dating life.

Will I be fun anymore? Will I have FOMO? How will I cope with stress? What will I drink on dates? Will anyone want to be with me? What will sober sex be like? Omg!

These questions paralyzed me, as I couldn’t imagine …

How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

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“One of the greatest awakenings comes when you realize that not everybody changes.  Some people never change.  And that’s their journey.  It’s not yours to try and fix it for them.” ~Unknown

In 2021 my father died. Cancer of… so many things.

Most of the events during that time are a blur, but the emotions that came with them are vivid and unrelenting.

I was the first in my family to find out.

My mother and sister had gone on an off-grid week-long getaway up the West Coast of South Africa, where there’s nothing …

One Missing Ingredient in My Recovery and Why I Relapsed

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“The Phoenix must burn to emerge.” ~Janet Fitch

Many people were shocked when I relapsed after twenty-three years of recovery. After all, I was the model of doing it right. I did everything I was told: went to treatment, followed instructions, prayed for help, and completed the assignments.

After returning home from treatment, I joined a recovery program and went to therapy. Once again, I followed all the suggestions, which worked when it came to staying sober. I had no desire to drink or do drugs—well, at least for a long while.

When I went to treatment, I was …

How I Started Appreciating My Life Instead of Wanting to End It

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“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

Few things have the power to totally transform one’s life as gratitude. Gratitude is the wellspring of happiness and the foundation of love. It is also the anchor of true faith and genuine humility. Without gratitude, the toxic stew of bitterness, jealousy, and regret boils over inside each of us.

I would know. As a teenager and as a young man, I lived life without gratitude and experienced the terrible pain of doing so.

Outwardly, I appeared to be a friendly, happy, and gracious person. I …

How Grieving My Parents’ Divorce (20 Years Later) Changed Me for the Better

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“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ~Zora Neale Hurston

At the age of thirteen, my childhood as I knew it came to an end. My parents sat my brother and me down at the kitchen table and told us they were getting a divorce. In that moment, I could acutely feel the pain of losing the only family unit I knew.

Although my teenage self was devastated by this news, it would take another twenty years for me to realize the full extent of what I had lost. And to acknowledge that I had never …

Beyond Dry January: 5 Benefits of Extending Your Break from Alcohol

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“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” ~Anne Sweeney

So many people make the positive choice to have a sober start to the year in January, whether it’s a New Year’s resolution, a detox, another wellness goal, or part of a fresh start program, but perhaps it’s worth considering prolonging the benefits further into the year ahead.

A break from alcohol is always a good thing, whether it’s a few days, a week, a month, or longer, and the bigger the break, the more you get a …

I’m Kelly and I’m a Heroine Addict: Why I Get My Fix from Fixing People

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“Self-will means believing that you alone have all the answers. Letting go of self-will means becoming willing to hold still, be open, and wait for guidance for yourself.”―Robin Norwood, Author of Women Who Love Too Much

My drug of choice is not the kind of heroin one shoots in their veins. My drug is the kind of heroine that ends with an e—the feminine version of hero.

When I help someone, and they are grateful for the gifts I offer, my brain fizzes with a cocktail of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, resulting in a “helper’s high” I ride …

How I Got Sober and What I Now Know About the Impacts of Alcohol

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“Sometimes deciding who you are is deciding who you’ll never be again.” ~Anonymous

May 13th, 2011. I finally surrendered to the fact that I had a drinking problem and desperately needed help. The comments from acquaintances, the concern from friends, the complaints from my flatmates, the intensity of my depression, the conversations with my therapist—they all culminated in the decision that I had to break the chains from my liquid abuser.

It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, one that entailed waving goodbye to the life that I had led before and diving into a …

The One Thought That Killed My Crippling Fear of Other People’s Opinions

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“Don’t worry if someone does not like you. Most people are struggling to like themselves.” ~Unknown

For as long as I can remember, I have been deathly afraid of what other people thought of me.

I remember looking at all the other girls in third grade and wondering why I didn’t have a flat stomach like them. I was ashamed of my body and didn’t want other people to look at me. This is not a thought that a ten-year-old girl should have, but unfortunately, it’s all too common.

Every single woman I know has voiced this same struggle. That …

Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

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“Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

I knew my son was watching me. We were inhaling fistfuls of popcorn while Frozen 2 played on the screen above. (Spoiler alert…)

Anna has just realized her sister, Elsa, is dead, frozen solid at the bottom of a river. Anna must carry on life without her.

My son …

How My Trauma Led Me to the Sex Industry and What’s Helping Me Heal

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“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

The hardest battle I’ve fought is an ongoing one. It’s an all-consuming shadow of dread that never leaves, only resting long enough for me to catch my breath.

I know what it feels like to be depressed. I know the feeling of pain and hopelessness so well it almost feels like home.

I remember being around eleven years old and thinking, wow, this all seems so meaningless. I had become awakened by my consciousness and overwhelmed by emptiness. I knew then that there was more to life than …

Addiction Is Messy, But These Things Help Me Stay Clean

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“Staying sober really was the most important thing in my life now and had given me direction when I thought I had none.” ~Bradley Cooper

I remember that exact feeling of shame that washed over me when I was filling Yeti water bottles with 100 proof vodka instead of water. Then I chugged it, all while knowing it was the worst idea. Yet, I couldn’t stop.

Addiction is messy.

My social outings were with the wealthiest in the town, always with plenty of other alcoholics in my midst. I surrounded myself with people who drank like me because why on …

How I Healed from Childhood Trauma and Stopped Sabotaging My Happiness

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“We can all make powerful choices. We can all take back control by not blaming chance, fate, or anyone else for our outcome. It’s within our ability to cause everything to change. Rather than letting past hurtful experiences sap our energy and sabotage our success, we can use them to fuel positive, constructive change.” ~Darren Hardy

I parked my car and began to walk toward the mall while covering my puffy eyes with black sunglasses. I was fresh out of a session with my therapist, where I had hit a breaking point. We both came to the conclusion that I …