# Recovery

God’s will” for him is that he live a life filled with compassion, love and service.

preoccupied attachment — always scanning for proof we’re loved, always bracing for abandonment. We’re so used to checking the “supply line” to feel okay — whether that’s alcohol, a person, or constant external validation — that we forget we can carry the reassurance inside us.

You get to be the person you want to be, lead the life you want to lead, when you accept what is.

“Young man, do not forget to pray. Each time you pray, if you do so sincerely, there will be the flash of a new feeling in it, and a new thought as well, one you did not know before, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is education.”

What are the biggest benefits or gifts of sobriety?

The greatest benefit, to me, is the ability to handle adversity and joy with the same heart. To know that despair and bliss are feelings and not states of being, and that my feelings won’t make me or break me. The greatest gifts have been my spiritual life and having true relationships

But of course calling oneself a monster can be a form of self-aggrandizement. The worst part of myself is my occasional feeling that I am a very, very special kind of monster. A dumb story I can get caught up in is this one: No one is as big a monster as me. The grandiosity of my self-loathing (and its attendant self-pity) could blot out the sun if... See more

“Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth. Love all of God’s creatures, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love each leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of... See more

I felt sick in that house all the time because it’s a terrible feeling to be cast in the role of co-conspirator before you’re old enough to choose, or to have any say at all. It makes you feel meaningless and powerless and like you’re part of something secretive and ugly, even if you don’t fully understand what it is.

I thought the self-loathing, anxious, ‘not enough’ aspects of my personality were integral to who I was. But they weren’t. Turning to alcohol to cope with that inner critic was a bad decision.