Monthly Archives: May 2013

Whales are Bigger than Me

I grew up identifying as Atheist until I was about 34 years old, just 2 years ago. Religion, in my mind, was ridiculous. I thought people who believed in God were nuts. I was “sent” to Catholic school by my parents in the middle of 10th grade. This was a shock to me because I had minimal experience with religion. I stayed seated when my classmates went up for communion every week. I cringed when I heard the word God. The problem was that I was judging something I knew absolutely NOTHING about. I stopped drinking on 10-25-2006. I stopped on my own and did not seek treatment or any help to treat my alcoholism. I was a dry drunk for 4 years and filled my void with everything outside of myself, instead of looking within. That is, until a special force brought an amazing sponsor into my life. This was certainly my first God moment in AA. Continue reading

Early Recovery Struggles

Hello my name is Joe and I’m an alcoholic and a addict! I came through the retreat on December 5th of 2012 and my journey ended on January 4th 2013, rehab saved my life!!! I was addicted to crystal meth and it was running my life inside and out. I needed help and couldn’t find a way to tell anyone, one night things got out of hand with my fiancé and me. The next day I went to my mom’s to stay a couple days, two days later my fiancé came over to my moms and with that urgent look in her eyes saying we need to talk. Continue reading

Sober House Living

Many of us, myself included, are hard headed, stubborn and believe ourselves to be completely self reliant. Of course, those attributes have directly contributed to where we find ourselves today: sitting in a treatment center. Our self reliance has completely failed us. In order to stay sober, we need others in AA to help us. This realization is the beginning of our new journey and leads into the topic of living in a sober living home, I also have a better lifestyle with my nutrition and daily exercise, find vega protein and greens on this website here if you want information for a better diet, and Art + Interior Co for information about Sober House Living desings.

The last time I went through treatment at Next Wind Recovery, it was highly recommended to me that upon leaving treatment, I should move into a sober house. Deep down, I knew this was the right thing to do but it was nonetheless a smack to my over inflated ego and pride. My ego/self reliance told me I was better than that. It told me I didn’t need to share some bedroom in some grimy sober house with people who didn’t have jobs or not much of a future. Continue reading

Cost of sobriety?

Is there a cost to sobriety?

I personal believe there is and what it truly requires is some change. I’m not here talking about the monetary type but more so the inner self type. Change comes form my willingness. We don’t need to change our physical features or the state we live in but we do need to change the things we can’t physically see in ourselves. We know they are there. The important stuff. In Amity Wellness Center in Phuket there is a great program, we need to allow this program to change us. A little change in the beginning will always turn into a lot of change for the better. When I say I am willing to be in this program of addiction recovery therapy, I am saying I am willing to change the way I think, the way I feel and most important to me, change the way I act. I had made this decision in Step 3, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” In this step when we say our “will”, this is the way we think and feel. When we say our “lives” we are talking about our actions. It’s no wonder I struggled for many years in Recovery and I now see it was because I wasn’t willing to do a thorough 3rd step and I sure as heck was not willing to change anything about me but I did take the light therapy from https://circadianoptics.com/pages/science-light-therapy Continue reading