# Recovery

Drinking helped me be the person I thought people wanted me to be. Recovery helped me find the person I actually was and to live the life I was meant to lead.

"True acceptance is very, very, very had; but true acceptance has been the key to my recovery, to my tranquility and happiness. I needed to accept that things, at this particular moment, are exactly as they should be—including me. I had to let go of the idea that it was up to me to traverse the chasm between what I was and what I should have been.... See more

“Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and... See more

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I didn’t begin a life of manipulation and deceit to gain anything other than acceptance. I wasn’t trying to trick anyone out of love or money, or really anything tangible, I just wanted to make them happy. I had come to believe this meant adopting a certain persona, trying to become the thing that each and every person needed and loved, even... See more

all the things I had assumed would make me happy in sobriety never panned out the way I thought they would. Many of the dreams I'd had before I got sober simply do not matter anymore. There are no more dreams big enough to replace this wild new reality. My life is much smaller than it used to be, but it's also the biggest it's ever been.

The AA motto— To Thine Own Self Be True —is not a tagline. It’s the heartbeat of the 12 Steps, the Traditions, and the Concepts. It’s not always evident on the surface, but the principles embedded in the 12 Steps are designed to bring a person home to themselves. Not to some idealized version of self-improvement, but to the original self. The... See more

True acceptance is very, very, very had; but true acceptance has been the key to my recovery, to my tranquility and happiness. I needed to accept that things, at this particular moment, are exactly as they should be—including me. I had to let go of the idea that it was up to me to traverse the chasm between what I was and what I should have been.... See more

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.

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.