“Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: Men learn as they teach.” --Seneca

Addiction is chaos, but early sobriety is upheaval.  Sound advice dictates we alcoholics and addicts have to change our habits and not just those regarding the use of our substances of choice.  Early in sobriety, you’ll likely be told to change your playmates and playgrounds.  

What does this mean?  If you have social contacts with whom your only real connection is drinking or drugging, you’re likely to need either complete separation or some very rigidly enforced boundaries.  Early sobriety is not the time to return to your favorite drinking or drugging haunts, either.  Those are the proverbial lion’s den into which you should not walk voluntarily.  

Relapse is not a single, conscious decision.  It is a series of them and you will probably find more success avoiding relapse by putting more opportunities to course correct between you and your slip.  If you are in a bar, how many decisions do you have to make to drink?  Raising the drink to your lips is but the last.  Ordering the drink precedes it.  Being at the bar in the first place is the decision that makes the first two possible.

What if you were not already in the bar?  In that case, you’d have to get dressed and get there.  In the time it takes to do those things, you’ve got time to re-consider.  Time to do something, anything else.  What should you do?

Reach out for help.  I remember having a very strong urge to drink a few months into my sobriety.  My spouse was away from the house overnight for the first time in my sobriety.  My kids were to bed.  The only thing keeping me from relapsing was my next decision:  I could grab some cash and get to the local liquor store and drink myself silly or I could do something else.  I called my wife and told her I was in a cold sweat because I’d considered emptying the kids’ piggy banks and using their money to buy booze.  That was my bright idea so my wife wouldn’t notice a suspicious bank transaction.  Believe me, confessing to your wife you’d been considering stealing your kids’ money to buy alcohol isn’t a proud moment but it was an impulse I needed to confess to get past that moment.  I did and I did.  I found in that moment I could be entirely honest with my wife about these feelings and it would help me not act upon them.

I have found the same comfort in working with other alcoholics, either in their moments of weakness or in mine.  I have shared every failing I could think of with others and I have listened to those of the newly sober.  I’ve worked the twelve steps with a sponsor and I have taken meetings to inpatient rehabs.  I have witnessed what I can describe as truly miraculous in participating in the recovery of others and allowing them to participate in mine.  

When we come to the aid of our fellow alcoholics and addicts, we get a sense of worth we have likely lacked in our own days of active addiction.  We get to be useful.  We get to use our painful experiences in a positive way.  We rely on one another.  We pick each other up.  It’s treacherous to try and do this alone.  If you have a support group or even a few people you can trust to reach out to you when the chips are down, you will be better off.  Know where your support network is.  Keep in contact.  

Seneca knew it would be beneficial to his character to keep the company of other men of high character.  He knew his lessons on living a more useful and serene life were wasted on individuals who would not or could not follow them.  There is a lesson here, particularly for the newly sober and it is to develop kinship with others who understand the same struggles and temptations.  I can give the advice to leave bad influences in the past because I have done it.  In turn, I could listen to someone give me that advice who had also lived it.  

Dear Reader, I hope you will someday find something useful out of the horror of addiction.  I remember thinking lucidly about it all once I caught my breath in sobriety and I wondered, “so now I’m sober, but that doesn’t seem to make me whole for the pain I experienced and inflicted.”  What I found was that when I turned my lived experience of addiction to the direction of helping others, my pain became a blessing.  It was like the Rosetta Stone that allowed me to communicate with other addicts and help them see a better life was possible.  The simple fact is that if it were not for other alcoholics, I would have never gotten sober.  In understanding that, I realized I had a debt to repay and the only way to do that was to make my experience useful to the struggling alcoholic or addict.  Just getting and staying sober was good, but it was insufficient.  My continued recovery required I pay recovery forward—that I could only keep was I was willing to give away.

In essence, that’s what this site is.  It’s an expression of my desire to share with as many people as possible the joy and possibility of a new life in sobriety.  I owe so much to my wife, family, friends, and fellow addicts, but I also owe it to the profound writings of these brilliant philosophical minds.  I want to share their wisdom with the struggling addicts and alcoholics because they are good company in a sobriety journey.  I hope you will agree.