Alcohol is often looked at as the magic elixir of life that will promise to deliver the good times, your dream love and is the ultimate necessity for having fun. Billions of dollars are spent in the advertising industry to embed into your unconscious mind that you truly need this substance for your life to

The Twelve Step recovery program is essentially a program for living, even if the person is not suffering from an addictive behavior. But there is a stigma associated with Twelve Step programs that make other people leery of considering implementing these steps in their lives.  If there was a way to let the world see

  I sat in my car with tear filled eyes, gazing up at the dilapidated old building I lived in wondering, how did I get here? How did I go from enjoying a successful career, living and working in a swanky highrise in downtown Dallas to a shaking shell of the person I once was?

    Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics [or addicts], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.   The first thing to do when you approach step twelve is to recognize the first portion of step’s language, “having had

Am I enabling or helping and what is the difference? This is a question I have been asked by clients many times. It is also a question I have asked myself. We can all think of fact patterns that we would consider enabling. However, sometimes the answer is not so clear. Sometimes the answer is,

    If you attend 12-Step meetings you’re bound to hear a bunch of corny sayings like “Denial is not a river in Egypt.” You’ll either laugh or roll your eyes dismissively. Where you’re at with your recovery has a lot to do with how information gets filtered through the addict-mind, what your ears pick

I have been holding Santosha (contentment) retreats for four years. This year is my fifth. Each of the topics is designed to investigate and address something that harms our contentment; preventing us of enjoying peace. This year I am presenting aspect of letting go. What is so difficult about letting go? Why do we hold

  Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Step ten is, in many ways, an ongoing version of steps four through nine. With step ten we take a quick inventory of the day or a specific situation, identify our part in any problems, and, when necessary, we self-correct and

  When you are unhappy, depressed, anxious, etc., it’s usually because you’re not getting your needs met. This is especially true when your partner or a loved one is in active addiction. Addicts focus on meeting their own needs and the needs of their addiction, and give little to others. That doesn’t mean they don’t

  I didn’t realize it at first, but I’m sure it was there. After countless days of coming home to them passed out on the couch, after so many bright mornings lost to drunken tirades, after so many little moments turn into major splinters, you slowly see what has been creeping in that dark space