Reflections on 1,000 days sober.

The collective process right now, when compared to the expanse of human history, has probably happened before. I’m no history scholar, but the literature and teachers tell me we have been here. The specifics are different, but symbolically the story is not new: we are in a burning, spiritually speaking.

This time has me sitting as close to the center of my sobriety as I did in the earliest days. I think about it when I wake up, when I make coffee, when I sit on my couch and look at the sun coming up, or the sun-having-already-come-up since my wake-up seems to be getting later and later.

My question is about myself and the upcoming Thanksgiving meal. I have known myself for nearly 20 years, and I have rarely been able to be around myself without drinking alcohol.

How do you ever get over the shame? Even with two years in therapy, I feel like I sit in a shame cave that I can’t escape.

It’s great more people are talking about this because, frankly, alcohol is stupid. It was time for a change in the dominant paradigm of how we talk about sobriety. But not drinking and a cool IG feed isn’t a light switch to a better life—it takes a hell of a lot more than that.

A poem for softening.

Saying “no” to drinking alcohol can cause some serious anxiety. Here are three common scenarios and how to approach them.

There are few things I love more than a book list, so here’s one that’s near and dear to my heart. A mix of memoirs, self-help, and psychological/scientific study, these are my favorite books about addiction and sobriety.

I was 28 when I got my first Ambien prescription. I'd just moved in with my boyfriend, and I sat in our bed one night holding half of the skinny peach-colored pill in my palm. Both of us wondered what it would do. How long would it take to kick in? Would I remember falling asleep? Where would I go?

Your goodness doesn’t cancel out your darkness nor the other way around. As Thomas Lloyd Qualls says, “Believing you are good is like believing in the half moon.”

I have been wondering if I have a problem. Drinking for me took the form of 1-2 glasses of wine every day with dinner. I recently, without much thought, decided to give up drinking for Lent.

The answers to the big questions are always both complicated and simple. There was a tipping point and there were countless things that nudged me toward it.

It took him a moment to speak, and when he did I realized he was drunk. Really drunk. I looked at my phone to check the time: 7:12 am. He’d been going since the night before.

I've been considering taking myself to AA for the past three days, but don't quite think I'm an “alcoholic." I just take the edge off... every night... with a bottle of wine.

My sister is addicted What if she's in trouble and her life has become unmanageable? I am stuck in this cognitive mess of "don't judge,” "just love,” but "don't enable,” "don't turn your head/sweep it under the rug/act like it's not happening" but I don't know what that is all supposed to look like from day to day.

I am almost five months sober, and I am incredibly grateful for my path at this moment. I recently have started socializing more and entertaining in my home. Do I buy booze for others? Do I keep some in the house for someone when they stop by? Tell them my house is BYOB? Or can I have nothing at all in my home?

I was driving my daughter to school earlier this week and absentmindedly reached for my chapstick in the console. I took off the top, and as I went to put it on, a few pieces of something poked my lips. I drew it back to investigate, annoyed.

Two years ago today, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, I woke up in a jail cell. I got my first DUI.