Category: Alumni

As recovering addicts, there is so much we stand to gain during the course of our recovery journey. More than just our sobriety, we get our lives back. We get back the chance to dream and to take full advantage of our opportunities. We get to choose to live. We get to shed the self-destructiveness […]

As recovering addicts, one of the most important elements of the work we do to recover is rebuilding the relationships that may have sustained damage during the course of our addictions. We may have separated ourselves from the people in our lives who were trying to intervene and convince us to get help for our […]

When we’re working to recover, one of the most important things we learn is how to withstand the very real temptation we face to fall back into our addictive patterns and start using again. We may have already relapsed, and many of us live with the constant fear that we’ll fail in our sobriety goals. […]

One of the most important things we can educate ourselves on when we’re working to recover are some of the signs that a relapse is imminent. While it doesn’t serve us to be overly afraid or paranoid that we’ll relapse, and while it doesn’t help us to assume relapse is inevitable, we can help ourselves […]

When we begin the recovery process, we enter an international community of people who have all experienced similar struggles and reached a specific place in their journeys as recovering addicts. There are certain things many of us share in common, some unifying aspects of our experience. Our experiences with both addiction and recovery will be […]

When we are new to recovery, we are often filled with a sense of excitement and optimism. We feel like if we can learn to abstain from our drug of choice, there’s nothing we can’t do. We can feel like we’re on top of the world, powerful and invincible. Being brand new to recovery, we […]

Part of the work we do in recovery is understanding the reasons why we relapse, especially when we’re committed to our recovery and the last thing we want to do is let ourselves and our loved ones down. Our addictions are much more complicated than the substance use and behaviors we associate with them. Our […]

The work we do in recovery and how much energy we put into it determines how successful we ultimately are in our recovery. Being sober tests our power, our strength, our resilience, and our capacity for growth. When we’ve been struggling with addiction for many years, one of the skills we’ve lost or been unable […]

When living with addiction, we’ve developed lifestyles that not only maintain our addictions but also exacerbate and compound them. Our lifestyles are comprised of everything we do in our daily lives – our routines, our relationships, our thoughts and feelings, and our behavioral patterns. When we’re struggling with addiction, we’re also attempting to cope with […]

While there are some common themes in addiction and recovery that many of us can relate to, we are unique individuals with unique stories, gifts, strengths, challenges and weaknesses, meaning that each of us will have our own experience with both addiction and recovery that is unique to who we are. Because no two experiences […]