THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON ADDICTION.COM.

Twelve-step programs are full of slogans meant to help people get and stay sober. When I first started going to meetings, I rolled my eyes at some of them: “Live and Let Live.” “Easy Does It.” “First Things First.” What? I thought. I just wanted to stop drinking and using cocaine. What did any of those slogans have to do with it?

Then, one of them stuck. For some reason, I decided to try staying sober “one day at a time.” Promising that I’d never drink again scared me. I didn’t know if I’d end up drinking the next week. But the idea of taking that decision on a daily basis, not a permanent one, was appealing.

Eleven years later, it’s still the same for me. I don’t think about never drinking again. I don’t say I’ll never drink again. I just focus on today. I find that if I do the right things on a given day, I choose not to pick up. I don’t have to worry about tomorrow; it will take care of itself.

While I have ended up finding most 12-step slogans helpful, if it were up to me, I might add a few more. Here are three of them:

1. “Just Don’t Be a Jerk.”
   I heard this said years ago at a meeting and it stayed with me. The phrase is applicable in so many ways and in so many situations. I can think about it through working the steps. In step 3, for example, when faced with a difficult circumstance or person, I need to take the next right action and let go of the results. But what is the next right action? To get an idea, I can try to better understand my higher power’s will for me (step 11). Of course, I can’t know exactly what that will is, but I can take a pretty good guess at what it’s not – being a jerk to other people. If I follow that thought, even if things don’t turn out the way I’d hoped, the fact that I behaved in a sober way is something I can feel good about. 

2. “Laugh and Let Laugh.” 
   People in 12-step meetings share a lot of stories about things that happened to them, both when they were drinking or drugging and after they got sober. At first, I was amazed to hear some of the wildly embarrassing things people were willing to reveal. I was even more amazed to hear entire rooms break out in laughter in response to these stories — the storyteller included. At the heart of reveling in the dark humor gleaned from addiction, I believe, is empathy. I have never related to the words, “There but for the grace of God go I,” more than in 12-step meetings. I could have been the guy snorting coke off someone’s ass when his mother walked in. I could have been the girl who stumbled into her own surprise party having just wet her pants because she couldn’t make it to the bathroom. And I was the girl who packed high heels and push-up bras to go to a locked-down city detox because I thought I might seduce a celebrity there. It’s as if telling these stories — and being willing to laugh at them — takes away their power to shame us. Of course, many stories from our past are not funny. Tragedies and grief are certainly accorded the somberness they deserve in meetings. But if we couldn’t find humor in the situations that ultimately brought us to a place of humility, and if we couldn’t laugh with other people in the world who have been there, too, it would be a lot tougher to keep coming back.

3. “Never Say Never.” 
   Before I got sober, I said I would “never” to a lot of things. Quitting drinking was at the top of that list. I assumed that if I didn’t drink, I would have to leave behind an entire litany of activities I enjoyed doing, but believed I only could do under the influence. Listening to music in clubs, taking a beach vacation, visiting Paris, attending parties and celebrating holidays would clearly be out because they mandated drinking. If I absolutely had to quit drinking at some point, I would become a hermit with activities limited to “Law & Order” marathons with my two friends, Ben & Jerry. Then I got sober. In time, I realized that almost all of these things not only could be done without booze, but many were better that way because they didn’t end in the shame, regret and scattershot memories that accompanied them when I drank. I admit that I still don’t love all of them. Parties aren’t my favorite things. But good times, like seeing a sober musician friend perform in an East Village club without feeling like I want to drink, far outweigh the bad. Then there are the things I do now that I couldn’t even imagine doing when I was drinking and drugging. I’ve hiked on glaciers in Patagonia, attended family Thanksgivings without embarrassing myself, made it past the 40th birthday I thought I’d never see and got married. And I write this blog. I will never say never again.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

MY 12 STEPS: STEP 1

“We admitted we were powerless over
alcohol – that our lives had become
unmanageable”

The first time I read step 1, I was sitting on a hard plastic chair in the dayroom of the detox unit at a New York City psychiatric hospital. The words were at the top of a giant poster listing all 12 steps. I was in the middle of a five-day medicated detox from alcohol and cocaine and required to attend a 12-step meeting. My jaw hung slack, thanks to the Librium I had been given to keep me steady through withdrawal, and I couldn’t remember my last shower. Things were not going well.

Even in my haze, though, when I saw the steps I was aware enough to think, Oh, no. Not that. I had checked myself in two days earlier because I believed that if I kept going the way I had been, I would die. I just wanted to feel better, not join a 12-step program.

Before detox, I had been a high-functioning addict, doing well at my law firm and keeping friends and family in the dark about the extent of my using. They didn’t know that I had to drink to get out of bed each morning, or how much coke I put up my nose to counter the booze.

“Powerless Over Alcohol”

Sitting among my fellow detox patients, the sight of the 12 steps struck fear in me. Like many people I knew, I had strong, yet thoroughly uninformed, notions about 12-step programs based on a few third-hand stories and rumors I’d heard over the years. I self-righteously likened the program to a cult in which God was forced upon members who sat in the dark basements of churches, drinking bad coffee and complaining about their parents.

That morning, my eyes fixated on the words “powerless over alcohol.” What could that mean? Sure, I had drunk virtually every day for the past 10 years. I knew I had a “problem with alcohol,” and that I was “dependent on alcohol,” but “powerless over alcohol”? It seemed like a whole different level.

If I were “powerless” over alcohol, all of my plans to get my drinking under control on my own would be useless. Of course, none of the plans I’d tried in the past had worked. The plan to take a week off from booze, the plan to take three days off from booze, the plan to have just two drinks tonight, the plan to stop sneaking out of work at lunch to drink, the plan to stop drinking and using in the morning — all of these had failed. Could it be that alcohol was in charge and I actually had no power in this relationship?

I assessed my immediate situation. It was a Wednesday morning in early spring and I was in a psych hospital, not at work. All sharp objects had been taken away from me and my blood pressure was being taken every few hours to make sure withdrawal didn’t give me a heart attack.

The realization hit me in the gut. Just like the driver of a car speeding head-on toward me, alcohol dictated what happened next, not me. But maybe I still had time to turn the wheel of my car and get out of its path?

“Our Lives Had Become Unmanageable”

When it came to the second part of step 1, I thought, I’m managing my life. Well, OK, right now I’m on a detox unit, but otherwise, I manage just fine.

Then I ran through some facts of my life. For example, I used to pay all of my bills on time and keep a keen eye on my bank balance. Recently, however, a giant pile of unopened mail had sprouted on my kitchen counter as if I were a teen idol who couldn’t possibly keep up with all of the letters that poured in daily from fans. On visiting my place for the first time, a new friend asked me, “Did you just get back from a long trip?” I looked at him as if he’d inquired whether I was fluent in ancient Latin. He pointed at the pile of mail. I silently scolded myself for not having hid it in a cabinet.

And there were small details, too. Before my using spun out, I loved getting weekly manicures. Now I couldn’t remember the last one I’d had. I was too embarrassed to let the manicurist see my how my hands shook uncontrollably. I told myself that nail salons weren’t sanitary, anyway. Similarly, I had gone from putting together stylish outfits for work each day to grabbing whatever was least wrinkled at the bottom of my closet because nothing was clean. If it didn’t have a visible tear or glaring stain, I wore it.

I had never considered “unmanageability” in my life before. As long as I didn’t get fired or overdose, I thought I was “doing great,” which is the inane go-to phrase I used to describe myself to friends and family. In detox, I realized that maybe it was worse than that. If unmanageability meant attempting to handle ridiculous situations I created as a result of my drinking and drugging, then, I had to admit, my life had become unmanageable.

At first glance, I thought step 1 meant I was defeated by alcohol. But the truth was, admitting my problem and asking for help actually freed me to walk away from the constant battle to control my drinking. I saw a glimmer of hope that perhaps someday I could tell someone that I was “doing great” and mean it.

Surprising no one more than myself, that day I decided that maybe, just maybe, the other steps would be worth reading as well.

 

This is the first in a 12-part series of essays — one essay on each of the 12 steps — by talented writers writing on the step that meant the most to them.  Please check back every week for a new essay in the series.

If you completed some or all of the 12 steps we’d love to hear about your experience, too: Please share your comments below.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

Shortly after I got sober, people in my life started saying they were worried — very worried — about me. Hands were wrung, questions were whispered, sidelong glances were leveled at me. What’s going on with Lisa? these looks seemed to say. What does she do at all those closed-door gatherings?

Their trepidation for me had nothing to do with my drinking or drugging, though. No, quite the opposite. My friends and family were concerned about the fact that I had started attending 12-step meetings.

“I’ve heard that AA is a cult,” various people told me. When I was still drinking, I would have said the same thing, despite having no evidence to support that statement. I couldn’t even tell you where I’d “heard” it. However, after spending five days in a locked-down detox facility, I found myself willing to listen at least to what the so-called “cult” people had to say. I did not want to go back to my old life of round-the-clock alcohol and cocaine use.

First Encounter with the “Cult”

At the first 12-step meeting I attended, I was wary but managed to raise my hand and introduce myself. Five or six women approached me after the meeting to say hello. One of them gave me a piece of paper with all of their names and phone numbers on it. They said I should call any of them any time if I wanted to grab coffee, go to another meeting or just talk. It wasn’t exactly a hard sell — more like a warm welcome.

So what was all the cult talk about? What is a cult, anyway? I checked the Oxford Dictionary, which gave three definitions for “cult.” This was the first one: “A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.” I quickly learned that the religious part of 12-step programs is entirely up to the member. You can be as religious or as secular as you like. Lots of people, including me, find a Higher Power of their own choosing that helps them to stay sober, but I can’t liken this to religious devotion. There is no standard, prescribed “God” in 12-step meetings. Personally, I haven’t had a religious transformation. I still start thinking months in advance of ways I can get out of going to temple with my family on Rosh Hashanah. And that’s OK.

Here was the second definition in the dictionary: “A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.” I’ve already discussed that I wasn’t too worried about “religious beliefs,” so here I considered the word “practices” in a general sense. Since getting sober, my “practices” have included going from drinking vodka for breakfast to drinking coffee. My morning practices also changed from trying to save enough cocaine for later in the day to trying to quiet my mind with five minutes of meditation. In the evening, my practice of sitting on barstools with strangers changed to sitting in meetings with people who were living lives I respected. Not that strange, and definitely not sinister.

Here’s the third definition the Oxford Dictionary offered up for the word cult: “A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.” Some people point to the strict adherence to the words of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob, AA’s founders, as the basis for calling AA a cult. But 12-step literature states that the only requirement for membership is “a desire to stop drinking.” Members don’t need to swallow every suggestion whole or express a devotion to the founders. In fact, the founders, knowing alcoholics’ and addicts’ penchant for defiance, encouraged people to try things their own way and if they found something better, to go that route. One of the best things I was told early on was “take what you need and leave the rest.” If I don’t like what I hear in any particular meeting, I can shrug it off and think instead about something helpful I might have heard. I’ve had personal trainers who placed more stringent requirements on me.

Despite all of this, I can see why the cult accusation might come up among those around me. Going to meetings, spending time with my sober crew and doing service for other alcoholics and addicts is a huge part of my life. Maybe others think that these are requirements of the “cult” — things only a brainwashed and vulnerable person would do.

But to me, these are the things that lifted me out of the gutter I was in and got me back on my feet when I thought that was impossible. Life has improved beyond recognition in the time I’ve participated in 12-step groups. It has nothing to do with being in a cult. It has everything to do with being able to make choices — choosing to go to a meeting, choosing to call a newcomer and, most of all, choosing not to pick up a drink — that help me stay sober one day at a time.

When I was using, my addiction dictated how I lived. My world was limited and I went where my addiction took me. (Hmmm, sounds a little like being in a cult…) But if I stay sober, my choices are endless. To me, that’s what freedom — the very opposite of cult membership — looks like.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

When I read Step Two of the 12 steps, ‘Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,’ I let out a heavy sigh. We’re only at Step Two and they’re already hitting me with the God stuff? I thought. This whole 12-step thing might not be for me after all.

It wasn’t that I had anything against believing in God or a “higher power,” or whatever anyone wanted to call it. I just didn’t think I wanted to live my life with that higher power front and center. Whatever I believed or didn’t believe was private. I neither wanted to talk about it in a room full of strangers nor did I want to have to sit through listening to their views, especially if they were going to push one idea or another on me.

After only a few weeks sober, though, I realized that two major improvements had happened: I felt like a brand-new human being physically, and I stopped pretending that I was fine while secretly downing wine like it was post-marathon Gatorade. So I wanted to keep doing whatever it was that made me feel this way.

I decided just to listen for a while and see if the program was really going to center on this higher power stuff. What I heard surprised me. People were all over the map with how they viewed God, a higher power, or whatever they chose to call it. Several people said they didn’t believe in God. I didn’t hear anyone judge anyone else’s beliefs.

The specifics of what “a power greater than ourselves,” meant or looked like was a decision everyone made on their own. Yes, the 12-step literature refers to “God,” but that reflects what the founders of the program believed. No one has to agree with them on that to be a part of and stay sober in 12-step programs.

I’ve heard people refer to God as he and as she. I’ve heard people say their higher power is the 12-step group itself, which has helped to restore their sanity. I’ve even heard people say that their higher power could be a doorknob — it doesn’t matter, as long as it works for you.

How A Higher Power Helps Me

For me, a higher power can take different forms on different days. What I find most important is acknowledging that some kind of “power greater than myself” exists, meaning I don’t run the world. All I can do is take the next right action, try not to be a jerk and let go of what ultimately happens. I don’t get to dictate outcomes, for myself or for others. Once I accepted that and learned how to let go of the things I couldn’t control, a huge burden came off of me. The constant frustration of not getting what I wanted eased up. And I discovered that that kind of frustration was what had fueled a lot of my drinking and drugging. So this ‘belief,’ if that’s what someone wanted to call it, was helping me feel better in the moment and keeping me from needing the relief of alcohol and drugs. Not a bad deal.

In accepting that “a power greater than myself” existed, I didn’t sign up for a God program or any kind of religious practice. I gave myself permission to loosen my grip on the steering wheel of my life. I understand that a lot of people struggle with or reject the idea of a higher power. I get that and whatever works for them is great.

For me, choosing to accept a higher power has brought relief. When I considered myself to be in control of my life fully, I couldn’t put down the bottle or the coke. Since I started going to 12-step meetings and being open to a power greater than myself, I haven’t picked up either in more than 11 years. That’s all the proof I need. Whether in fact it’s rightly or wrongly placed doesn’t matter to me. I’ll take it.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

The first 12-step meeting I attended was in a church in midtown Manhattan. Of course it’s in a church, I thought. I knew next to nothing about 12-step programs, but I felt strongly that they were full of sad people with boring lives, hoping to feel better through some intense, God-focused set of rules.

I was already going to outpatient rehab two nights a week following a detox stay for alcohol and cocaine addiction, but it was strongly suggested that I add 12-step meetings to my routine. I didn’t want to become a 12-step person, but I also didn’t want go back to life the way it was before detox. So I gave it a try.

I was sure that I was in the wrong room when I walked into that first meeting. I expected to see a bunch of crusty old men, mixed in with some social misfits who likely hadn’t seen the sun or cracked a joke in years. But what I saw was a group of average people, chatting and greeting each other warmly. Most of them were dressed nicely and seemed to be on their lunch hour, just like I was. This crowd could have been lifted from the waiting room at my dentist or a subway car at rush hour. They actually looked normal.

Warily, I took a chair at the back of the room and the meeting started. A pretty blond girl, probably in her early 30s, sat at a table up front and told her story. Her hair was in a glossy ponytail and her skin glowed. She talked about how grateful she was to be celebrating one year sober. One year! It sounded impossible. I had just a few weeks and I wasn’t sure I’d make it another day. But look at her, I thought. She’s a 12-step person. She’s talking about doing things like traveling, being with family and socializing with friends, all without drinking. And she’s happyabout it. She even joked about things that had happened in her past. Everyone else laughed along with her. Was I really in the right meeting?

It was a revelation. That woman – someone with whom I could identify — got better and built a great life through a 12-step program. I decided I’d keep going to these meetings, just to learn a little more. I realized quickly that many people in 12-step programs not only have gotten their lives back, they’ve expanded them, doing things they had only imagined before. They stand up in front of crowds and perform comedy in clubs. They run marathons. They write books and plays and movies. They even have children who grow up with sober parents. All things that seemed to me like pipe dreams.

When I was drinking and drugging, I met a lot of people who hung out in bars and talked about all of great things they were going to do: climb a mountain, get a new job or jet off to Paris. Then I’d see them the next night on the same barstool, not training for a climb or researching a new job, and certainly not jetting off to Paris. When someone in a 12-step meeting says they’re going to do one of those things, I’m pretty confident that it’s going to happen. It often does. And I get the chance to share in their excitement and achievement.

Of course, not every 12-step member is the model of sobriety or sanity. There can be some unsavory types around and it’s important to maintain boundaries. “Stick with the winners” was a helpful slogan to me early on. I found people whose sobriety and way of living I admired and I hung close to them. Another thing I liked about the “winners” was simply the way they approached their lives. Accepting life on life’s terms, finding gratitude in the small things and being honest with people changes everything. As soon as I got to know them, I wanted to spend more time with them. They were funny and supportive and walked through life with a whole lot more peace than I ever had. Now my 12-step friends include a wider circle than I ever expected; they are musicians, schoolteachers, cops, doctors, stay-at-home parents, journalists, lawyers, actors, corporate executives and more. Early in sobriety I went to a meeting with a sign in the front that said “You Are Not Alone.” It was right. I was with the cool people.

This article first appeared on After Party Magazine.

As I sat in my poolside lounge chair at a hotel in Miami recently, my travel buddy walked up from the beach to join me. She held a clear plastic cup with some sand stuck to it. Empty of liquid, the cup had mint leaves clinging to its inside, along with a couple of sad-looking, dessicated lime pieces. “Mojito?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied with a shrug that might have meant, “but it wasn’t very good.”

I appreciated her tact, intended to counter any envy I might have felt as I sat there with my sun-warmed bottle of sparkling water. She was right to think that I might have been jealous, but it wasn’t for the reason she likely thought.

I wasn’t envious because she was able to have a drink while sitting on the beach and I could not. Instead, it was the mojito itself that sparked a twinge of regret in my brain. I never had one when I was drinking. What did it taste like? Was it strong? Was my life not complete without having poured that particular blend of liquids down my throat?

As an alcoholic, I feel like I should know what a mojito tastes like and probably even have a mojito story or two—that Fourth of July that I drank mojitos on a boat, or the time I got sick after the mojitos at that Caribbean restaurant downtown.

I’ve been sober for a little while, so the list of popular drinks I never tasted has gotten quite long. Some of these sound like cocktails I would have enjoyed—a lychee martini, for example. Some sound like they pack a new buzz—absinthe, in particular. And some sound flat-out disgusting, such as the Flaming Dr Pepper—a mix of rum, light beer and amaretto. It’s even socially acceptable now to drink wine poured from a screw-top bottle. (Although I understand it’s still not appropriate to drink said wine directly from said bottle, as I might have been inclined to do.)

Over time, I’ve gotten some perspective on the lure of these drinks. Every once in a while, like in Miami, I just have to remind myself of a few things.

First, these unexplored cocktails need to come off the pedestal I’ve put them on. I am susceptible to thinking that people out drinking mojitos are having more fun than I had when I was out drinking, simply because they’re drinking mojitos. But if I’m honest, for the last several years of my drinking, pretty much everyone I knew was already having more fun than I was, no matter what cocktail they held in their hands. Once my drinking shifted from social to necessary, the fun was over, mojito or no mojito.

One of the most annoying things people said to me when I got sober was, “Well, the party had to end some time.” Really? I would think. I don’t know what party you were at, but I haven’t had fun in years. All that was left at the end was compulsion, shame and misery.

The second thing I need to remember is not to fantasize about the taste of a drink I never tried. While I can easily picture a delicious explosion in my mouth when first tasting a French 75 (gin, Champagne, lemon juice and sugar), it’s not as if I ever would have sat there and sipped it or paused over the flavors. I would have swished it down as quickly as I was physically able.

What something tasted like was never relevant when I drank. The only questions I mulled over were: Cabernet or Merlot? Absolut Citron or Ketel One? Margarita on the rocks with salt or without? Sure, there was a casual nod to the specific taste of the drink I was about to have, but the important thing was just to get it in front of me.

And finally, I have to remember that the reason I never tried a mojito when I drank is that I just never ordered one. They aren’t a glamorous new libation. Mojitos were around back then. The truth is that I only ordered what I knew would give me the best buzz the fastest—straight up martinis and margaritas on the rocks with a floater shot were solid and reliable. Why would I have wasted a precious drink order on something that might be too sweet and possibly too weak to get the job done?

I don’t often mention my regret at not having tried a specific drink when someone else orders one, mostly because I bristle at the common response: “Ask the bartender to make it virgin!” It could be just me, but those words make me want to deposit my non-alcoholic drink over the head of the speaker. I drank virgin cocktails when I was eight years old and my parents took us to a “grown-up” restaurant for dinner. At this point in my life, I’d rather exchange the calories in a virgin banana daiquiri for a real dessert.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what rationale I use to get rid of my feelings about not having tried one drink or another, as long as I get rid of them. While my friend tossed out her plastic mojito cup, I straightened my head out:

No, I don’t get to try a mojito. I cannot drink safely. After one mojito, I would know what it tastes like, but one mojito would lead to two mojitos, then four mojitos and pretty soon I’d be asking the bartender if he knew where I could get some cocaine.

I have to remember that every day. If I do, I get to spend Saturdays like that one in Miami, feeling healthy, with someone I love. Just don’t offer me a Shirley Temple.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

Last month I picked up a shiny new coin at a 12-step meeting, acknowledging another year of sobriety. I hugged the sweet, bespectacled gentleman who presented it to me, while my friends around the room clapped and cheered.

I sat back down in my chair, rolled the coin around in my hand and performed the math I do in my head every year around this time: When I checked myself into detox, I had been drinking about two bottles of wine a day. Many days it exceeded that and, particularly in the last two years of my spiral, my routine also included a whole lot of cocaine.

Two bottles of wine a day is 730 bottles a year. I just celebrated 11 years sober, so, theoretically, if I had continued, I would be 8,030 bottles of wine deeper into my addiction. That’s about 770 cases, or enough to fill a 20-foot shipping container. But the truth is, I wouldn’t have consumed all that wine because I wouldn’t have survived another 11 years of that life.

Gratitude definitely rules the day each year on my anniversary, but other feelings find their way into my brain as well. I remember the fear and shame that surrounded my using as I tried to hide it from the world. I can see myself back in my old apartment, alone, drinking, doing drugs and wishing everything would just end. I used to wake up each morning cursing the new day and swilling whatever booze was on my nightstand.

My bottom was high in the sense that I still had a job, apartment, friends and family. My bottom was low in the sense that I felt dead inside and had no plans to live to see my 40th birthday.

In the weeks leading up to my anniversary, I tend to flash back to those bottoming-out days more frequently than I do normally. It’s important for me to remember what it was like then, something I hear referred to as, “keeping it green.” If I ever forget how bad it was, I risk somehow thinking that it wasn’t so bad, which could lead me to thinking, maybe I can have just one. The truth is I never had just one and, if I remember my bottom, I don’t need any further evidence of my inability to control my drinking.

But anniversaries are happy occasions, celebrations of another 365 days of doing something that I previously believed to be impossible. A couple of months into my sobriety, I was at a meeting on the west coast. It was a Saturday morning in a beautiful church overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The place was packed. Near the end of the meeting, the celebrants of sober milestones were invited one by one to the front of room. They received congratulations, hugs and a piece of cake for their sober “birthdays.”

At first it struck me as over-the-top, this idea of birthday cake for staying sober. But there was so much joy and gratitude, not only on the recipients’ faces, but on the faces of everyone in the room who got to share in the moment, that it was impossible not to get swept up. Within two minutes, I wanted a piece of that cake. I knew that the people on stage had worked hard for it. I would have to do the same.

Earning a piece of that cake represented making the right decisions for 365 consecutive days, at least with respect to drugs and alcohol. After detox, when I first sat in rehab in the basement of an office building, I had 10 days “C&S” on the sign-in chart. I had to ask someone what “C&S” meant: “clean and sober.” The young heroin addict sitting next to me had 11 days. “Eleven days!” I thought. “I hope I can make it to 11 days!” That’s how daunting early sobriety was for me. Could I make it to 11 days? I only had 10. Eleven seemed a lifetime away.

So now, to have the opportunity to share 11 years with the group of friends that walk with me on this daily journey is nothing short of a miracle. I have to remember the past – look back, but don’t stare, as we say – but I also have to be grateful that I don’t live like that anymore. It definitely calls for a piece of very sweet cake.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

Throughout my 10 years in recovery I have never successfully meditated. I struggle with a distracted and overcrowded mind. So do most people I know. Meditation likely would be helpful, but it’s always been easier said than done for me – not that I haven’t tried.

One night, years ago, I sat in a 12-step meditation meeting. The lights were dim in the basement room and I could smell someone’s hazelnut coffee. I settled into my chair in the back row. “Close your eyes. Focus on your breath,” the leader said. I followed her instructions, but my mind couldn’t stay with my breath. It continued to dwell on the frustrating situation at work that had inspired me to go to a meditation meeting in the first place.

Clear your mind, I thought, forget about work. “Relax and breathe,” I heard the leader say. I couldn’t get comfortable, so I half-opened one eye to see how the people in front of me were sitting. I copied the woman with an upturned palm on each leg. My brain continued to race. I shifted around in my chair. I felt inferior to everyone else in the room, all of whom, I assumed, had already found a state of bliss I would never achieve.

I tried to stop my mental wanderings through sheer force of will. I silently screamed at myself, “STOP THINKING! BE EXTERNALLY STILL AND INTERNALLY QUIET LIKE THE LADY SAID!” It was as effective as an umbrella blown inside-out in a storm. For the next 15 minutes, I continued, albeit quietly, to obsess over the work issue.

Another time, at the end of a hot yoga class, I laid in corpse pose, flat on my back and saturated in sweat on my soggy mat. The studio was old-school, with a thin pile carpeted floor. “Let go! Stay with your breath!” the instructor said into her headset. Instead, my mind drifted back to the girl I had seen spraying some kind of lemon-smelling freshener on the carpet of the room before class began. It must have been meant to address the sweat and body fluids the last class had left behind. Was that spray all they used to “clean” this carpet? Didn’t it need a lot more after each 90-minute session in a 105-degree room? I had heard about a guy who picked up a staph infection at his gym, likely through a cut he had on his leg. Did I nick myself shaving yesterday? Is my leg touching the carpet? Rosie O’Donnell almost died from a staph infection. Am I going to die? Who will come to my funeral? Again, it was not a successful session.

There were further attempts at meditation, but they all ended up the same way. Between the obsessive thoughts that held me captive when I tried to banish them, and the anger I felt with myself for failing, I usually found myself worse off than when I started.

I began to resent my fellow recovering addicts whenever they spoke of their meditation practices. Phrases like “life-changing,” “required for sobriety” and “the best part of the day,” were tossed out. There was a whiff of superiority in those comments that reminded me of people who are fanatical about a studio Spin class or can actually do a juice cleanse for five days. The one time I tried a juice cleanse, I didn’t make it to lunch the first day.

Then, in a seemingly random occurrence, three 12-step meetings I attended one week included the topic of meditation. Maybe I was getting a message. It reminded me of the rope in elementary school gym class that I could never climb. “Just keep trying!” I heard my gym teacher say. When I complained about being unable to meditate, someone suggested a guided meditation website that I could try. “It’s really good for people who say they can’t meditate,” she enthused. “The first sessions are only 10 minutes long!”

The next morning, I sat at the desk in my apartment, which right now happens to overlook an incredibly loud construction site. I figured the jackhammers would ruin it for me, even with headphones, but I gave it a go. How hard could 10 minutes be? I thought. Very hard, I learned.

But the instructor made it clear that I shouldn’t expect to transport myself into another state of being or peace. In fact, I shouldn’t expect anything from myself. I should just try for those 10 minutes to be present in the room and focus on my breath. When I felt my mind wandering, which was normal, I could gently bring it back to my breathing. “Gently” was the key word.

For me, there’s benefit in the simple exercise of being gentle and patient with myself. My natural instinct is to be a perfectionist. I expected to achieve a true Zen state the first time I parked myself on the chair. But not finding meditative bliss right away doesn’t mean I failed. I see that meditation is a practice, not a competition.

So, even though I’ll probably never be that person sitting in silence on a mountaintop with the wind blowing through my hair, I’ll keep practicing. Gently.

This article first appeared on Addiction.com.

I heard a lot in rehab about the risk of addiction transfer — trading one high for another. Once I stopped drinking and drugging, I was told, unless I addressed the underlying emotional issues that helped feed my addiction, even if I stayed sober, I might become compulsive about another substance or behavior. Food, porn, exercise, work, shopping – the list of potential obsessions went on and on.

Early in my recovery, I got an idea of what the counselors had been talking about. I had read that eating something sweet, like a small piece of hard candy or chocolate, could help stave off cravings to drink. I gave it a shot and it seemed to work for me.

So, one Monday morning, I set a small bowl of miniature chocolate bars on my office desk. Other people did this and it seemed both friendly and delicious. The first day, I ate a few more than I had planned, but when I had to buy a second bag of chocolates on Wednesday night and that bag was empty on Friday morning, I realized I wasn’t destined to keep candy within arm’s reach.

I called my sponsor. “It’s like I can’t stop,” I said. “Why do you think that is?” she asked. “You never ate chocolate like that before. What’s going through your head?” It wasn’t hard to figure out. I felt awkward and prickly learning how to navigate the world without being numbed out, including in the office. Stuffing seven consecutive pieces of chocolate down my throat, unwrapping the next one while still chewing on the last, gave me some weird feeling of calm. I barely even tasted them going down. It wasn’t like that first sip of vodka, but it felt related.

The compulsion to go overboard still strikes me when I’m not looking. One recent, frigid Saturday, I was holed up alone in my apartment. Late in the afternoon, I felt restless. I stood up, walked around and looked out the window at the people outside below. I poked my head around in the refrigerator. With my hands on my hips, I stared at my elliptical workout machine.

In retrospect, I realize that I was experiencing some mixture of feelings that I had been warned to watch out for: hungry, angry, lonely, and/or tired (HALT). Any of these can make me vulnerable to behaving in a way I otherwise would not.

Feeling uncomfortable in my skin that day, what I should have done was go to a meeting or call my sponsor. What I did was log on to my favorite website for shopping. And there they were: the high, black boots I had been coveting. Never mind that I already had them in brown or that I had vowed to cut down on shopping. I wanted them. Immediately. As I clicked, “Purchase,” I felt a surge of joy and a pang of guilt simultaneously. I knew that I had bought the boots because having quiet time at home wasn’t enough for me that day. I needed something “more” to happen. Clicking “Purchase” felt like scratching an itch and getting relief.

Moderation is always going to be a challenge for me. I have an addictive personality and am susceptible to overdoing any number of things. It doesn’t, however, have to be a lifelong game of Whack-a-Mole, with one obsession popping up right after the last one has been addressed. If I work a program of recovery and take care of myself physically and emotionally, I can maintain balance overall. I need to pay attention to the urges to go overboard, find their root cause and take some action to make myself feel more at peace.

Of course, like with everything in recovery, I need to take it one day at a time. And the next time I find myself with an online shopping cart full of items I know I don’t need, I will do my best to close my computer and go to a meeting.

This article first appeared on After Party Magazine.

On a quiet Sunday morning a few weeks ago, my legs kicked out and my body sprang upright at about 5 am. I was soaked in sweat. No, I wasn’t breaking a fever. I was waking up from a “drunk dream.” This one had ended just as I was about to crash a car I was driving into a telephone pole. I had been speeding away from police, swerving all over a series of narrow, twisting streets. My only companions were a bottle of Absolut Citron on the floorboard and a small mountain of cocaine—enough to make Tony Montana proud—on the passenger seat.

I had been plowing coke up my nose by the handful in the dream, but that wasn’t the part that disturbed me the most. No. It was my state of mind as I dreamed. I felt drunk and high in a way that was far too realistic for my liking. In my sleep, I was right back in the frantic tension and misery of active addiction. The calm that I’ve managed to find most days in sobriety—in part because I’m no longer running or hiding from anything or anyone—was gone. Poof.

Dreams of relapse began early in my sobriety. And they weren’t fun dreams about a great night out in a club with friends. They were stressful and scary, extreme and realistic-feeling scenes of outlandish events that theoretically could have happened if I relapsed.

One morning, I woke up feeling shattered, believing that I had just been at work doing lines of coke off a conference room table in the middle of a meeting with the partners at my law firm. Not only had I trashed all of the hard work I’d put into sobriety, but I’d also exposed my secret publicly. As I blinked my eyes awake, I felt an ache in my stomach. What am I going to tell my sponsor? Was I fired?

Then my brain came around and I realized that I was safe in my bed. That horrific meeting at work never happened and, thankfully, I was still sober. I was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude, as if I had just avoided getting hit by an 18-wheeler that ran a red light. But it was a combination of feeling lucky that disaster hadn’t struck and terror at how easily it could have. Scary.

My sponsor told me to share about these dreams in 12-step meetings, so I did. I saw a lot of people nodding around the room when I talked about that initial moment of waking up and truly believing I had used.

Afterward, an old-timer came up to me and said, “Lucky you! You got a free one!” Really? I thought. Had he missed the part about the anxiety and fear? His comment, however, made me wonder if there could be such a thing as a “free one,” a dream that approximated using without any horrible consequences. It seemed to me that if picking up looked appealing—even in a dream—that would create a whole new set of problems. It didn’t sound exactly “free.”

“Let me tell you about my best drunk dream ever,” a long-time sober friend said to me when I asked him about this. “I was in a bar shooting pool with my brother. I picked up a beer and my brother said, ‘Hey, put that down! What are you doing?’ I told him not to worry. ‘This is just a dream!’ I said. ‘I’m going full bore while I can!’”

With that, in his dream, my friend donned a grass skirt and danced a hula to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n Roll.” He laughed at the image. The dream didn’t seem to bother him. “If I’ve gotten to the point where my brain knows it’s just a drunk dream when I’m having it, I think it’s okay,” he said. I couldn’t argue with him.

For me, it’s different. Maybe it’s because my average nightmare-to-good-dream ratio has always been about 30:1, but I can’t imagine having happy drunk dreams that I could smile about later. Even if I did, the fear of that kind of dream making me think picking up could be anything less than dangerous is enough to make me hope it doesn’t happen.

Through a lot of discussion with my sponsor and my sober friends, I’ve decided that what these dreams are for me are reminders. Should I ever start feeling overconfident or complacent about my sobriety, a serious drunk dream can put me in my place fast.

They give me a reason to pause and check myself. I have a tendency to go through life telling everyone, including myself, that everything is great and I’m just fine. When I have a drunk dream now, I try to stop for a minute and ask myself why it might have happened. Is there something under the surface that I’m not acknowledging and that needs to be addressed?

For a long time, I was having hardcore violent nightmares about gruesome murders and torture. My husband said, “Maybe you should stop watching those reality shows at bedtime about people who come home from work one night and stab their spouse 137 times. Maybe that would help.” I have to admit that it did. I could see the cause and effect.

Similarly, with drunk dreams, the cause can be as simple as anxiety about a situation or project at work. I’ve also found it happens if I haven’t gone to enough meetings because I’ve been “too busy.” Or maybe the margarita I saw someone sipping at a sidewalk café on a warm evening looked a little too good.

A crazy drunk dream can be like a two-by-four hitting me in the head to alert me that something’s off. But I also need to remember that, just as most two-by-fours don’t actually measure two feet by four feet, a horrible drunk dream in which I’m about to smash into a telephone pole doesn’t mean I’m about to go off on a three-day bender in real life. And sometimes there isn’t a clear explanation. A drunk dream can be just a dream.

I’ll err on the side of caution, though, and pay attention. And that’s not just because I don’t look good in grass skirts.