Prologue: The following piece was written after meeting a homeless man, in the depths of insanity, one afternoon in Dublin, last year. He appeared to be a hopeless case. However, over the course of the last 2.5 years, I have learned (from listening intently) that there are no hopeless cases. I spend a lot of time

The statistics speak for themselves; according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health 88,000 people die from alcohol related causes annually, making Alcohol the fourth leading cause of death in the United States alone. As a culture, we seem to underplay the pervasiveness of people who suffer or die from alcohol related

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. The Alcoholics Anonymous authored book, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, famously calls step six “the step that separates the men from the boys.” What the AA folks mean by this is that compiling a list of one’s character defects and then becoming

  Clean and sober: now what? 90 meetings in 90 days, read the book, get a sponsor, write out your steps longhand, read the Morning Reflections, change everything and did I mention;” Go to meetings”?  I thought that getting sober was going to be a long slog from one recovery oriented duty to another. Sure,

  After rehab, I entered ‘the rooms’ as a protocol for what I, and others, believed would be helpful. I was desperate to overcome the feelings that I had tried to outrun my entire life. As life would have it, my life improved for some time. I went religiously to meetings three times a week,

  I connected with Trista Hendren in 2015, during the deep self discovery phase of my recovery. Trista is founder and creator of The Girl God series of books, which you ABSOLUTELY, have to check out. In this podcast we talk about the development of the Girl God books, her memoir, Hearts Aren’t Made Of

  Precious, Precocious, Lyric Running, rushing, reaching up, giggling & smiling like- an angel Pushing her love in, touching every nook & cranny of my heart  Eyes lighting up like- fireflies sweeping through dark night Clinging, holding on, wrapping chubby arms around my legs  Refusing, daring even mommy- to separate us/pull us apart    

Several years ago, a national credit card company had a marketing campaign that used the slogan “What’s in your wallet?” The presumption from that advertisement was that so long as you had their credit card in your wallet, you had everything you needed for financial support. The title of this article has the same focus. 

  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  After completing your fourth step, you suddenly find yourself staring at step five. Step five is one of the simplest steps to work. However, many recovering addicts approach it with dread. And that is a perfectly understandable feeling

It occurred to me that perhaps we need to be a little more culturally proficient in our group. Because we are global, we have people participating from many different places with different ways of doing meetings. Maybe we need to become more aware that we all probably think that the way we facilitate meetings is