# Recovery

Regardless of what label we give it—we already know some of the most important things about addiction. We know it can, and often does, kill. We know it hurts the people we love and ourselves. We know it’s a medical condition. And we know it’s possible to recover.

I shared at that meeting about how I have always felt like I have to prove to someone that I’m worthy of love, how it has sabotaged my love relationships, and how it all began with my mother, who left my dad and me when I was three

I drank to avoid: that I have to make myself essential so people won't kick me out or abandon me, that my only value is in how useful or accommodating I can be to other people.

I got the help I needed. Medication helped turn down the volume on my feelings enough that I could hear my thoughts over them, and made them small enough to get my arms around. I ask myself questions like, “Is this true, and how do I know it?” and say things like, “The problem will be there tomorrow.”

Fear is the answer. I think, at the bottom, I was afraid to get sober. I was afraid that I couldn’t do it, I was afraid that I couldn’t cope with life’s challenges, afraid that I wouldn’t have a safe refuge to hide from the world, that I wouldn’t be able to stay sober and afraid that I really just couldn’t manage to live without drinking.

It takes time and patience and steady pressure to extract the weed, the negative traits, the damaging and self-destructive ways of thinking. That process, by itself, is a profound act of self-acceptance. The next profound act of self-acceptance is understanding that the job will never be completely done, some traits, some thinking patterns that... See more

Accountable people look for solutions, not scapegoats. They blame no one-not even themselves. If a "self-critique" is warranted, they ask QBQs like "What could I have done differently?" and "How can I learn from this experience?

"Your point of view is something personal to you. It is no one's truth but yours. Then, if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad. And you get mad because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear."

Basically I was trying to gather impediments in my mind to pull me back from pushing myself outside my comfort zone.