Category: Powerlessness
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The Most Misunderstood Recovery Slogan of Them All: One Day at A Time
The phrase ‘one day at a time’ is popular in 12-step recovery programs, but its true meaning can be misunderstood. It’s meant to focus on daily spiritual growth, not just staying sober. Relying on willpower alone may not lead to lasting change. Embracing each day with openness and purpose is the key to thriving in…
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Still Living a Double Life in Addiction? Read This
Why secrets and lies keep you stuck in relapse. My first sponsor in recovery knew I was in serious trouble. A cocaine and sex and love addict who could barely stay clean a week, blowing tens of thousands each time I relapsed — the writing was on the wall for me. ‘Just come clean with everyone and surrender,’…
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Real Faith Is What Chronic Relapsers Need To Recover
I knew the answer I’d been looking for was to go to a higher level of consciousness around the relapse question, which meant surpassing reason and reaching for faith. But how do you have faith? A living, practical, working faith? The kind of faith you could place your life on as mine was rapidly heading…
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The Deadly Addiction Trap That Gets Addicts Every Time
Addiction is like a slippery slope that starts gently but eventually descends into a vertical drop that ends in a bottomless dark pit. However, there’s something sinister about this slippery slope. It’s also strangely sticky; you can’t get off it once you’re on it.
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A Highly Unusual Approach To The Addiction Problem
Why do we relapse? Why do we go back after all the promises, solemn oaths and daily hours of work to stay sober? It’s not that we can’t stop once we start (that’s old news; after all, that’s what qualifies us as addicts).
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Why Addiction Can’t Be Solved In a Three-Dimensional World
Scientists have spent decades trying to prove a visual link for addiction in the brains of hopeless addicts, but to date, no neural footprint has ever been found.
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How To Sponsor A Chronic Relapser
It’s not about hiring and firing sponsees. “We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” ~ Carl Jung. I had seven sponsors in total. Some were hard and militant in their approach, others gentle and loving. But my seventh sponsor was neither. He just said it like it was. …
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If You Constantly Chronically Relapse, You Are Indeed Truly Powerless
It Isn’t You That’s Deciding To Relapse. Question: which one of these addicts is truly powerless? A) Somebody that goes to any lengths to stay sober and clean yet still finds themselves relapsing? B) Somebody that goes to any lengths to use and act out in their addiction despite all the awful, painful consequences? A or…
Darren James 