You Have More Than You Deserve

You Have More Than You Deserve

A man sat across from me and listed everything he was owed. A wife who appreciated him. Parents who showed up when he was ten. A boss with eyes. A body that didn’t ache getting out of bed. One run of luck that finally broke his way instead of over his head. He...
Stop Hiding Who You Are

Stop Hiding Who You Are

We don’t just hide our indulgent behaviors. That would be manageable enough. What we actually hide is deeper and more damaging: who we are, what we’ve experienced, what we feel, what we need. We keep the real stuff locked up and call it protection. We tell...
Count the Wins

Count the Wins

I’ll be straight with you. I drank six times over a three-year stretch. That’s not a success story in the traditional sense. I’m not standing on a stage with a chip and a perfectly clean record. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise, because...
Nobody Gets Sober Alone

Nobody Gets Sober Alone

Nobody gets sober by himself. I don’t care how strong you are, how determined you feel on day one, or how many times you’ve white-knuckled it solo before. Recovery is a contact sport, and the men who make it are the ones who let someone else into the fight...
Starting Over Again

Starting Over Again

Fourteen years sober. That is not a small number. That is years of meetings, of honesty, of grinding through the days when the craving felt like a physical thing sitting on your chest. And then a rough enough season arrived that I convinced myself the only way through...