I’ve been writing on this blog for one year and 6 days now, documenting my healing journey. In a way it doesn’t seem that long, and in another way it seems way longer than just a year. I started the blog mostly to document my journey and also to help others if I can. I’m glad I did it. I look back at what I’ve written and I can see how far I’ve come in just this past year.
I’m happy with the progress I’ve made, but there are still things I’m wanting to improve on. Things like better sleep, working out more, and just not worrying about stupid stuff so much. I had no idea going into this process how heavy a toll it would take on my body. It’s a paradox really.
I’m definitely happier, but the detox process from benzos hurt me physically way worse than getting off alcohol did. I think it’s because they put me on benzos originally to help me get off alcohol but the dose kept getting increased, and I was on them over 20 years. By the time I entered the withdrawal process I was both dependent on them and addicted to them.
If I was asked whether I still agree with everything I’ve published in the past year I’d have to say no, not everything. But the vast majority of it I still stand by. For example, in the early days I would have written more openly about my spiritual beliefs, my “Higher Power”, that still helps me with recovery instead of holding back out of worry of upsetting some extended family that don’t agree with my beliefs simply because my beliefs are not the same as theirs.
Looking back at my older posts, I notice I was still writing from a place of pain, both physical and emotional. I might have written too much about or from that place of pain. Still, I promised from the start that I’d keep things honest, and I’ve done that and will continue to do that.
When I was going through the worst of it, other people’s stories from people who’d been through it helped me a lot. More than I can say. So if even a single post of mine has helped even a single person out there, then I’m happy with that.
Even at 60 years old, life is far and away better clean and sober than it was when I was younger and using/drinking.
My heart is full to the point it feels like it may burst When I count all I’ve been given Sometimes tears fall in overwhelming gratitude
I kneel every day in prayer and gratitude Often I also fall prostrate Face to the floor, arms out, wet-faced from tears, undone Thinking of the One who did not let go I am overcome with love and gratitude
Peace comes to me then Longing for closer connection The longing itself is sacred The longing is a prayer
My prayer is silent But echoes through my chest I know I am heard And I manage a “Thank you”
Because rest is prescribed for a concussion I’ve had a lot of time to think and reflect these last few days. I don’t like being injured but it has brought some clarity. One thing that’s been brought to clarity is the fragility of a 60 year old body when it meets earth and rock in forceful impacts lol!
I didn’t realize how much I was getting caught up in all this midterm BS until after I got hurt. I was eager to vote, and I did vote, but now that I have voted and after being hurt I just let it go now. I did what I needed to do, the rest will play out as it plays out, I have no control over that and it feels good to let go of it. Like a heavy weight lifted off me that I didn’t even realize what a burden it was until I let go of it.
It helps me to realize that that, like almost everything else in life, is beyond my control. I can only control what I do and how I react to things. I think it’s delusional to think we can control pretty much anything else. “Let go and let God” is an annoying but comforting thing that’s been in my head recently.
Annoying because it’s overused and cliche, but comforting because there’s wisdom in it. Even before I got hurt I found comfort in surrender to God, but now that I am hurt I’ve found even more comfort in it.
It used to be that whenever I’d read or hear anything about “surrender to God” I thought of it as some singular, one time event because the concept was so foreign to me. I imagined people having some singular event where from that moment on they didn’t worry about anything.
I don’t see it like that any more though, and surrender definitely isn’t like that for me. For me it means laying something, anything, at God’s feet the moment I catch myself worrying about whatever it is. Each and every time. For me surrender is an ongoing activity, not a one-and-done type thing. And it’s helped me. A LOT. I don’t obsess and stress over things like I used to my whole life.
Like these injuries I have now. The goings on in the world. Everything that starts disturbing my peace. I don’t have to make some kind of “ritual” of it, I can just do it in my head… “this is out of my control, I’m not trusting God if I’m trying to “fix” something I literally cannot fix.”
It’s a concept that works in recovery and it’s a concept that works even if somebody hasn’t ever had to deal with addiction and recovery. Here are some sayings from the contemplatives across both time and faith traditions regarding surrender. They say it better than I could ever hope to.
“Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all.” – Charles de Foucauld, Prayer of Abandonment
“The wound is where the Light enters” – attributed to Rumi, but might not actually be Rumi
“Abandon all supports and look to Me for protection. I shall purify you from the sins of the past; do not grieve.” – Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita
“Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment.” – Rumi again, pretty self-explanatory if you think about it.
“God is attained not by addition but by subtraction… you don’t pile up practices and merits, you strip away until nothing but God fills the space.” Paraphrasing of Meister Eckhart sermons.
“In His will is our peace” – Dante, Paradiso III, a line Merton returned to over and over.
Some things notable when reading the mystics and contemplatives is that this surrender, total and complete, is subtractive instead of additive. You strip away all sense of pride and ego and find God, and, especially crucial in my own life, is that every genuine account of this kind of surrender came from wreckage. And I’ve certainly had a lot of wreckage in my own life. Only Love and only God can heal that kind of wreckage, that kind of pain.
Had a bad fall yesterday in the mountains. Now I’m concussed, banged up, and cut up. I’m not supposed to be writing but I need to and want to. Plus, like with all my other posts, I do it to document for my own self.
I recognize this feeling from motorcycle crashes in my past. Bleeding from places I don’t even remember hitting, like my head. But I wasn’t 60 years old back then.
The fall happened while I was out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains with two of my sons on a fishing trip. Thankfully they are strong young men and were able to help me. I would have been in serious trouble had they not been there.
I realized something I should have already known… I’m old and my body just can’t do the things my mind thought it could still do. Makes me sad, really. It could have been much worse, because my right leg was hurting really bad when I came to but it was numb to the touch. I couldn’t find where all I was bleeding from, I had blood on my pants, my shirt, my hat, my head, my arms, and my hands.
I tried to play down how bad I was hurt so my boys wouldn’t worry, but they knew, and in my head all I could think was, “I’m really hurt this time, I just want to go home to Julie.”
From now on I’ll remember to be more careful and more mindful of the fact that I’m not young anymore. On top of that, we didn’t even catch any fish! But here’s a few pics without all the blood.
Some days don’t go as planned and you find yourself sitting alone with music and it turns out to be enough anyway.
Music has mattered to me my whole life. I can’t play anything myself but there are songs that put sound to the deepest pain and deepest love in me. Songs where it feels like my spirit lifts off and actually floats on the sound… rising when the notes rise and falling when they fall.
Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” for example, those long drawn out guitar notes/feedback can reach inside me drag a stuck sadness right out of me and release it.
Then there are the harder songs. Van Halen’s “And the Cradle Will Rock.” Where the music stops and he growls angrily, “Have you seen junior’s grades?!!” As a kid alone in my room I used to sing it as “Have you seen junior’s grave?”!! because back then I believed even in death people would still be angry with me.
That’s where I was back then. I rarely listen to it now. But recovery taught me something that kid didn’t know yet… that I’d make it, I survived.
If there’s a song that holds your hardest memories I wouldn’t blame you for skipping it. But I hope you’ve got the ones that let you float on the music too.
Trying for spiritual perfectionism has derailed me more times than I can even count.
For so much of my life I had the very misguided and distorted view that God demands perfection. So each and every time I would try to approach God, that’s what I aimed for, perfection. And predictably each time I would fail. Fail again. And again. I’d get so frustrated and distraught that each time I’d just give up. That was a recurring pattern throughout my life.
I also can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say that they’re afraid too, afraid that they’ve upset God regardless of the religious or spiritual tradition they follow. Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews. I’ve seen the same unhealthy, obsessive fear I had.
What I understand now is that I’m not a perfect person, so I literally can’t be perfect. Nobody else is either. Anybody, and I do mean anybody, who tries to give you the impression that they’re perfect in the way they approach God is one of two things, a liar or deluded. There have been countless cases of both throughout history.
The goal of spiritual perfectionism and performance always backfires. At least for me it did. If God truly knows all hearts, and knows mine, then He knows I tried.
The time I wasted.
When I think about how much of my life I’ve spent worrying about what people thought of me, the people who were never going to accept me anyway, it makes me sad. So much of my life utterly wasted.
So much time also wasted worrying whether God loved me or whether He was going to send me to hell. What an utterly twisted, distorted, and completely transactional view of God I had. So much time wasted thinking I could control things beyond my control. Thinking I could make God love me.
All that time wasted. All that grief and sadness and fear. Once time is gone, it’s gone forever, like words spoken in anger. Once they’re spoken, there is no withdrawing them.
What that transactional God actually wasand did.
That transactional view of God, the belief that as long as I did everything perfectly, God would love me, I now realize was deeply unhealthy and misinformed/misguided. Because the very second I inevitably “sinned” in thought, word, or deed, whether by commission or omission, that love was immediately withdrawn.
This is just another thread of the same tapestry, the same fear and shame that fed my alcoholism and addiction. I remember a therapist I went to many years ago telling me that he’s never worked with an addicted client who wasn’t on a “spiritual journey” and that when I finally healed, I would finally have a healthy view of God.
The kind of transactional relationship I used to believe about God is unhealthy in human relationships and it’s unhealthy spiritually. It’s a repeated spiritual whiplash… now God loves me, now He doesn’t. Now He does, now He doesn’t.
What I want to do with whatever time I have left
With whatever time I have left, even if it’s just one more breath, I want to spend it unafraid and not worried. I want my wife, my sons, and my grandkids to know I love them beyond the capability of language to convey. I understand now that God does love me, even with or despite my inability to be perfect. So do my wife, sons, and grandkids.
A lot of us, definitely myself included, burn through life as if we have all the time in the world. That is until something happens that forces us to come face to face with the fact that, wow, this life really is brief.
Things that seemed so extremely important suddenly aren’t important at all, and other things, things we took for granted, become all important.
Peace in the heart and mind, time with family, finally being at peace with the God of your understanding… suddenly those things become the only things that really matter.
Suddenly, other peoples’ opinions of you are completely irrelevant. Only the opinions of your closest loved ones and God really matter.
I think it’s important to let go of the regrets of the past and focus only on the here and now. The love of your spouse, the hugs from your adult children, and the smiles on your grandchildren’s faces.
Instead of replaying old wounds from the past, listen to the gentle sound of raindrops falling. The leaves rustling in the trees as they are released from the branches because Fall is here. The warmth of the sun on your face. These things we’ve taken for granted our whole lives, suddenly they are more precious than all the gold in the world.
Wherever you are in the world, I wish you peace. I wish you love, the most precious gift we can have.
I haven’t posted anything here in a while. A lot has happened between my last post and now, and I’ll do my best to describe what I experienced. It may not look like it has much to do with recovery, but I believe it has everything to do with recovery. At least for me, I don’t pretend to know what’s best for anybody else.
Because of a health issue that has become impossible to ignore any longer, I’m going to be speaking and writing freely from this point on. The health problem is that my memory and thinking aren’t what they were, and I can feel it and my wife and sons have noticed it. Some pretty rapid cognitive decline. I’ll leave it at that. Until now, I’ve held back what’s in my heart out of worry that if I said what’s really in my heart, it would upset a few family members’ religious beliefs and that they wouldn’t understand, or wouldn’t even try to understand. I’ve come to realize that holding back my own heart has been backfiring and causing me grief. So, definitely no more of that.
If you’ve read much of this blog, you’ll know I practiced Buddhism for somewhere around twenty years. Not always actively, especially not during active addiction. But when I started on my recovery journey I leaned heavily into Buddhism, and it got me through the worst of it.
There’s something I’ve touched on only vaguely and infrequently in my writing. Something that had been eating at me for a long time. I won’t go into all the “technical” details here, that would take more space than a single blog post allows. But I want to finally say it plainly.
During one of the most intense, painful, and frightening phases of withdrawal/detox, I really thought I was going to die. Not like “oh, this is terrible, what if I die”. No, I really thought I was going to die. I had two seizures and that terrified me.
What I’ve never mentioned in my writing is that until recently I carried a very intense fear of death. More accurately, a fear of what I had been taught from a very early age happens after death.
The teachings I grew up hearing were, at least to my young ears, nothing to take comfort in to say the least. My young mind heard all that talk of “hell” and “the wrath of God” and understood it to mean there’s a monster waiting on the other side, so death is something to be avoided at all costs. That fear stayed with me for decades.
It made my life miserable and it flared more intensely whenever I got sick. Because sickness can lead to death and death was the doorway through which one fell into the hands of that angry, wrathful, vengeful god literally just waiting to throw you into an eternal burning lake of fire.
The verse that lived in my head from a very young age was Revelation 14:11: “And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night…” That is an absolutely terrifying image for a kid to absorb.
So when I thought I was dying during detox, I tried my best to believe in Christian doctrine and started going to church. Not because I actually was a Christian, I wasn’t and I knew it, but because I was so afraid of that “monster on the other side” that I was doing it solely to avoid hell. That was the only reason. I didn’t believe the rest of it. I still don’t.
Fast forward to recently, from around the time of my last post here. I came to realize more and more that I wasn’t being completely honest with myself in my spiritual beliefs and practices. Buddhism answered the vast majority of my questions, and there’s absolutely no doubt its teachings on the mind were a big part of what got me through detox.
But there was something I kept getting stuck on and it’s where my dishonesty with myself finally became undeniable and unbearable. The firm, unwavering Buddhist teaching on Atman and anatman/anatta. Self (capital S) and non-Self. In plain English, soul and no soul. Nothing permanent whatsoever within a person. This is a foundational concept in Buddhism and there is absolutely no budging on it. When I finally became honest with myself, that’s what I fundamentally disagree with. That, and the teaching that there is no God.
I will say this though, I agree with Buddhism’s absolute refusal to entertain the question of who created the heavens and the earth. I completely agree that question is utterly irrelevant to the problem of suffering and liberation from suffering here and now.
That left me in a particularly confusing and painful spot. The faith I’d practiced for a large part of my life didn’t answer my deepest questions, not after it had gotten me through detox. And I don’t believe in the teachings and doctrines of the Abrahamic faiths either. So what was I to do now? Where could I possibly turn?? Pretending doesn’t work for me, especially at sixty years old.
What I did was start reading the mystics and contemplatives from several traditions. Merton, Francis of Assisi, John of the Cross, Rumi, Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, Meister Eckhart, and modern contemplative voices like Richard Rohr. Almost every page I found myself yelling “Yes!” in my head. These people were talking about things I utterly do believe. Finally! Here were people speaking of God in ways that actually makes sense to me. Reading them had a profound effect on me. It would be accurate to call it life changing because it was/is. So began my search.
I longed for, ached for, connection with the Godhead they wrote of. I went in search of it, knowing that at last there were words for what I had only briefly touched before and what I had been so desperately seeking. I found it in the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita uses language very familiar to me from my decades of Buddhist study and practice. Words like “dharma” and “Atman.” But it goes beyond those words to describe the very essence of what I’ve been searching for. Finally, answers to the questions that have been gnawing at me for so long.
I suppose I’m a bit late to the game at 60. But that’s OK because being late is better than not arriving at all. I still have deep respect and love for the Buddha and his teachings. But I’ve finally admitted that I disagree with the anatman/anatta doctrine so fundamental to Buddhist thought, and I’ve finally found where my heart actually lives. I feel settled. I feel at peace, even with this new/worsening cognitive decline, this battle I must fight. I feel… like I’ve arrived home.
Disclaimer: I don’t like AI, so obviously I don’t take a neutral stance here.
I know that AI can be a useful tool in certain circumstances. For very important things, like health, it’s crucial to get an actual doctor’s opinion. The same holds true for topics regarding recovery. AI makes a lot of mistakes. A lot.
It can be very tempting to just take what AI says at face value because it’s designed to sound very confident in its responses, even if those responses are nothing more than AI “hallucinations”. Personally I think that’s extremely dangerous, it can be very misleading.
People all over the world are asking various AI chatbots questions about their health. I’ve read several news articles about AI diagnosing things doctors had missed. That’s great… when it works. But there are many more stories about AI chatbots giving horrible advice, causing great harm to individuals.
Then there is the affect of AI data centers has on local environments. These data centers require an insane amount of energy and water. I’ve read that just asking a single question to any AI chatbot consumes, at minimum, a bottle of water.
A single question. Imagine every person in the country asking just one question per day. That’s a minimum of 342 to 349 MILLION bottles of water per day.
People in recovery can be particularly vulnerable during certain points in recovery. We need help, and fast. Sometimes it can be the middle of the night or 3 AM and we need help right then. Unlike people, AI never sleeps. It’s always there.
It’s extremely tempting to open up the laptop or use the phone and ask an AI chatbot for help as if it were a person. AI is trained to mimic empathy. The key word is “mimic”. But it’s a machine. It has no feelings one way or another toward a suffering human being.
And as good as AI is at mimicking human emotions, it can be easy to forget that’s not a human on the other side, it’s a machine. It has no body so it has absolutely no interoception. With no interoception, it is utterly incapable of accurately guessing a human’s current emotional and physical state.
I write this because I know there are people out there who feel isolated and turn to AI. That’s why I think recovery groups are so vital. Recovery groups are both in-person and online. Real people, not machines. And those real people can provide something no machine ever could, true understanding through lived experience.
A machine has never felt afraid at 3 in the morning, experienced flashbacks from trauma, or desperately wanted a drug or alcohol.
A machine doesn’t know what any of that is like because it’s never experienced any of that. The people in recovery groups have. They KNOW what it’s like because they’ve experienced it themselves. They can help someone in ways no machine ever could.
I’m under no illusion that AI is going to disappear or that it doesn’t have its uses. But I’m also under no illusion that it knows what’s best for us or is even capable of WANTING what’s best for us.
As someone in recovery myself, I just want to encourage others to connect with real people, not machines. We are social creatures, we need each other. If you ever find yourself in great need and wanting to use or drink again and decide to use AI, please consider asking it about the nearest recovery group. That would be the best use of an AI chatbot at a time like that.
I haven’t published anything for the last several days. I’ve still been writing but those writings have just been for me. I needed the break.
I want to publish because I want to, not because I feel like I have to. I don’t write as a job, and sometimes the things I’m working through need to stay private for a while before I’m ready to share them.
I’m 19 months and one day out now with no substances. 579 days and I’ve realized something during these past several days… I’m still learning. I can still get knocked down pretty hard by a bad day, or by a couple of bad days in a row. But the important thing is I get back up.
Nineteen months and one day. 579 days. That may not seem like much to some people but it’s huge to me. I don’t pick up a bottle. I don’t seek out pills. I can vividly remember so many times when I would have done one or the other or both.
I’ve come a long way. I’m still alive. I’m not drinking or taking pills. I’m still healthy enough to practice Tai Chi and qigong every day. Since I last published anything I’ve even started learning Bai He Quan (White Crane kung fu).
But something had been eating at me somewhere in the back of my mind since January 15, 2025, the day I took my last benzo after more than 20 years of taking them, alcohol before that, and more than a year and a half of tapering.
I couldn’t put my finger on it. I just knew something was there gnawing at me. At times I got really frustrated because I knew something needed my attention, but I couldn’t identify it good enough to address it.
During this break, it finally became clear. I had been holding on to the struggle. That’s hard to put into words. My nervous system had been on high alert for so long, not just during withdrawal, but for decades. Getting off benzos certainly didn’t make that any easier. My brain and body have had to learn how to regulate themselves without the substances I relied upon for so many years.
But this goes back a lot further than substances. I’ve been on guard to one degree or another since I was a kid. There’s a reason I started drinking vodka in seventh grade and using drugs at 15. Things like that rarely happen in a vacuum.
Somewhere along the way hyper-vigilance felt “normal” to me. Always watching. Always scanning. Always looking at people, places and situations for some sign of danger even when I was somewhere safe. Even when I was alone. Even when there was absolutely nothing to defend myself against.
I finally saw this clearly during a particularly prolonged meditation session. I had gone into that meditation specifically wanting to understand what was happening inside me. And when the realization actually came it was utterly and painfully clear. I broke down and cried… “wept” would be a more accurate word. And then I wept some more. It was such an intense release that I actually felt a little physically unwell afterward.
But I needed it, I needed to understand. Because once I could finally see what was happening I could start working on it instead of blindly struggling against something I couldn’t even name. And that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I’ve been actively working with my body, my mind and my nervous system. Reminding them over and over and over again that we’re safe now.
I’m learning that I can’t just “think” my way out of patterns that have been carried in my body for decades. So I’ve been using practices that involve the body as well as the mind. I already feel a little bit more at ease. Not because everything is suddenly or magically fixed but because I finally understand now what I’ve been carrying for frikkin decades.
Letting go of the struggle doesn’t mean that the struggle magically disappears forever though. It might just mean realizing that I don’t have to stay braced against life every second of the day. I don’t have to constantly scan the horizon. I don’t have to keep fighting battles that ended a long time ago. I can learn every day bit by bit that this time in my life is different.
And that I’m still healing. That I’m still learning and still in the process of becoming who I am when I’m not in danger anymore.
There’s a saying heard a lot in recovery that goes “One day at a time.” After 579 days I understand those words more now than I ever did before. There isn’t some imaginary finish line where I’ll finally be able to declare myself completely healed. There is just today and what I choose to do with it.
So if you’re struggling too, be gentle with yourself. Whether you’re healing from substances, trauma, hard or bad experiences, or from years of living in survival mode, give yourself time. Healing is a journey not a race toward some imagined finish line.
We are all works in progress. Sometimes progress is just realizing that we’re safe enough now to start letting go of the struggle.
