# Recovery

I believe I’ve always been a sensitive, generous, and caring person—but too wound up in my own troubles to express that or to really be there for others

W e, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have re-covered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

“Don’t insist that what happens should happen as you wish, wish that things happen as they actually happen then your life will go well.” — Epictetus

“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

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.

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.

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.