Interview with a 52-Year-Old Sober Person: Ana Marie Cox
There’s something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia, that disabuses you of the belief in externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth a
... See moreCaroline Knapp • Drinking: A Love Story
I am convinced that some people are driven to addictions to quiet their constant inner critic, but it only gives them another thing to hate about themselves. What a vicious cycle! Moral scrutiny is not to discover how good or bad we are and regain some moral high ground, but to begin some honest “shadowboxing” which is at the heart of all spiritual... See more
sobriety is about freeing yourself from any behavior, relationship, or way of thinking that enslaves you and keeps you from being present to life.
Laura McKowen • We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
Addiction is in all of us. This argument has come to matter a great deal to me. The reason I care about it is that when I truly felt this notion in my bones, reading accounts of addiction and recovery from across history, it was profoundly reassuring and comforting. As I write at more length in the book, I developed a sense of fellowship with all t... See more
Toward a Unified Field Theory of Human Flourishing
I once heard a woman at a meeting define alcoholism as a fundamental inability to be honest, not so much with other people but with the self.
Caroline Knapp • Drinking: A Love Story
In meetings you often hear people say that, by definition, an addict is someone who seeks physical solutions to emotional or spiritual problems. I suppose that’s an intellectual way of describing that brand of fear, and the instinctive response that accompanies it: there’s a sense of deep need, and the response is a grabbiness, a compulsion to latc
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