# Recovery

I knew that I had once again repeated the same old pattern: I threw everything I could into the relationship (all caution to the wind) and spent no time on taking care of myself and dealing with my own problems.

I bet all my chips on thinking that if I could find “love” that my relationship would solve all my problems.

I was wrong.

“Dear Frau V.,

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with... See more

Everyone else is having a great time, everyone else knows what to do, everyone else’s life is just better.

I drank for 45 years to try and live like I thought everyone else lived.

Perhaps a better metaphor would be a spouse facing illness and refusing treatment, the anger that could bring. Even so, I want to believe I did alcoholism to myself. It flatters my independence, no matter how much damage I did.

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.

classic Adult Child of Alcoholics, afraid of conflict and largely focused on the need for everything to be OK

The lie in every alcoholic heart is this:

I need to be something different than who I am in order to make my way in the world.

At first, alcohol helped me make that difficult caterpillar to butterfly transformation., from who I was to who I thought I needed to be. Later on, it helped me forget about the burgeoning distance between what I knew of... See more

The goal is not accumulating the longest list of days of no drinking, the goal is to reclaim a potentially mythical, long-lost treasure. We must leave what we have become accustomed to and strike out in search of something we may not find. It’s the commitment to that goal that is heroic, the willingness to face fears with abandon, to stand at the... See more

Go to bed earlier. Wake up and move right away. Find sunlight and get in it. Even when you feel tired, go on a walk. Cheer yourself on the entire time. These small shifts are creating an entirely new version of yourself. Commit to them, and you’ll be a different person.