How Resolving Trauma and Learning to Breathe Can Finally Help You Overcome your Addictions
There are several programs out there that deal with addiction. The 12 Step program is one of them that has incredible value. It works; it has saved people’s lives. In fact, I’ve worked the program myself. But, for whatever reason, some people just can’t see themselves doing AA. Or they discontinue going to meetings and lose their support network. Or maybe they worked the steps and they are sober but still can’t surrender to a new way of thinking and living. The Get Unstuck program is for anyone who struggles with addiction — whether to...
read moreFinding Peace Beyond Life and Death
My stepson Aaron was found behind a restaurant in Salinas a few weeks ago. He was taken to a hospital. He was resuscitated three times. The fourth time he slipped away, the hospital made a call to his family, and they said no more. Let him go. Aaron’s mother and I were together from the time he was 2 years old until he was about 12, when she and I split up. I spent some time with him after that, but not much — he began using drugs at a young age, and stealing things to fund his habit. That was almost 30 years ago. Aaron lived his life with...
read moreThis Unusual Addiction Treatment Shifts Your Focus Back to the Basics
In a traditional addiction treatment model, the most important part was to abstain from the substance on which you are dependent. Putting the plug in the jug, so to speak. At AA back in those days, they allowed cigarettes, coffee, sugar, because it beats drinking and doing lines. If you’re not drunk, then you’re good. The smoke would be thicker than you could cut with a knife in some of those meetings. There was this attitude of, “I’m not drunk today and I’m not destroying my life today, so the rest is viable.” Things have evolved a bit...
read moreWhy You Need a Higher Power
We’ve been having fires here, where I live, for the last week or so. The closest, as I write this, is about 10 miles away. People have been evacuated, and there may be a storm brewing that will bring more lightning — that could very well start more fires even closer to us. But even from 10 miles, the smoke has been awful, to the point of aggravating my breathing. On top of that, there are other life stressors like, of course, COVID-19, family issues, working on this project… so this morning, I woke up feeling that anxiety. I do a...
read moreYou Should Be Grateful for Your Addiction
We’re taught to look at addiction like a negative thing that happens to us. But that’s not really what it is at all, and to think of it that way is to misunderstand an addiction’s true function. Addiction, at its most fundamental, is a primitive reaction to trauma — or, essentially, a coping mechanism for your life. Your addiction is a human predicament that is programmed within you as a child. It has nothing to do with who you are. We have to reframe the narrative around addiction. Instead of perceiving addictions as monsters that...
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