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Breaking Good: What Breaking Bad Can Teach a Recovering Alcoholic

Be the Reverse Walter White The great television show Breaking Bad is all about transformation.  It grabbed people’s attention because it showed such a shocking transformation, which was the centerpiece of a very controversial and hard-to-watch story.  We watch, season after season, a school teacher getting into the manufacture of crystal meth, becoming known for the purity of his product, getting mixed up with fearsome criminals, building a web of lies, killing people, destroying his family, … [Read more...]

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Moderation Management: One Recovery Option

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Moderation Management: a stripped-down AA? One of the reasons recovery from drinking throws such a fright into people is that when many people think of abstinence, they think of just that: giving up cold turkey.  It’s not a fun hobby, that’s for sure.  But there are other ways of doing things.  Today we’ll discuss moderation management, a form of recovering from alcohol without going cold turkey. Moderation Management—with the details to follow--just the idea of drinking in moderation while … [Read more...]

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Taking Charge of Your Recovery

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Take Charge of Your Recovery There’s a paradox: recovery is insanely hard.  When something is insanely hard, the tendency is to back off, slack off, maybe quit a little.  But the paradox, of course, is that if you don’t work super hard at it, it will be impossible.  It’s something that requires your full attention and full effort. I’ll tell you the difference between just thinking you’re going through recovery and really taking charge. Albuquerque: Feeble Attempts I did my heavy … [Read more...]

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Alcoholics Anonymous: Wildly Successful?

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What is success, and who deserves the credit? Most times when I discuss my alcoholism recovery with folks, they ask me about Alcoholics Anonymous.  They want to know if I went through, did it work, what did I like about it, etc.? Some people think AA is synonymous with recovery the way google is now synonymous with searching the Internet.  Some think it’s an annoying religious brainwashing cell; some think it’s too simple and simplistic; some think the sponsor component is the best part of … [Read more...]

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New Relationships Can Threaten Sobriety

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So, new relationship can threaten your sobriety, ironic, isn't it? I had a friend named TJ.  This was back in Albuquerque in the 90’s when I was drinking a lot.  I met TJ just before he started getting clean.  He was the manager of a convenience store I frequented, and we got to talking that way, also finding out we had a friend in common. TJ—as happened with me—had a hard time with his girlfriend while he was still drinking.  Or it might be more accurate to say that she had problems with … [Read more...]