Tag: Alcohol

Is it time to break up with alcohol?

I am considering this information from Dr. Sarah Wakeman, Senior Medical Director of Substance Use Disorder at Harvard’s Mass General Brigham Hospital:

For your convenience, I’ve also added an AI summary of the article if you’d like the high notes in 30 seconds:

Mel Robbins Podcast Summary

This episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast delves deep into the science and personal impacts of alcohol consumption. With expert insights from Dr. Sarah Wakeman, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of how alcohol affects various aspects of health, the risks associated with different levels of drinking, and practical strategies for reducing or addressing problematic alcohol use. The conversation emphasizes empathy, informed decision-making, and the availability of effective treatments for alcohol use disorder.

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How To Help A Drunk Driver

Or at least stop it from happening.

via How To Help A Drunk Driver.

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Powerlessness & Unmanageability

Melody Beattie writes:

Willpower is not the key to the way of life we are seeking. Surrender is.

“I have spent much of my life trying to make people be, do, or feel something they aren’t, don’t want to do, and choose not to feel. I have made them, and myself, crazy in that process,” said one recovering woman.

I spent my childhood trying to make an alcoholic father who didn’t love himself be a normal person who loved me. I then married an alcoholic and spent a decade trying to make him stop drinking.

I have spent years trying to make emotionally unavailable people be emotionally present for me. I have spent even more years trying to make family members, who are content feeling miserable, happy.

What I’m saying is this: I’ve spent much of my life desperately and vainly trying to do the impossible and feeling like a failure when I couldn’t. It’s been like planting corn and trying to make the seeds grow peas. Won’t work!

By surrendering to powerlessness, I gain the presence of mind to stop wasting my time and energy trying to change and control that which I cannot change and control. It gives me permission to stop trying to do the impossible and focus on what is possible: being who I am, loving myself, feeling what I feel, and doing what I want to do with my life.

In recovery, we learn to stop fighting lions, simply because we cannot win. We also learn that the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.

Today, I will accept powerlessness where I have no power to change things, and I’ll allow my life to become manageable.” via Daily Meditation ~ Powerlessness & Unmanageability – Miracles In Progress Codependents Anonymous Group.

Today, I am thinking about how to apply this to my in-laws…

My mother in law will never love me like a son and my sibling in laws will never treat me like a brother. Three years ago during the ‘summer of forgiveness’, I made amends and was forgiven and yet I remain in their ‘penalty box‘. I refuse to let myself in an close the lid on top of me. I refuse to play a role in their drama. If I’m not going to get what I need it’s not worth the work…

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Crazy People Can Make You Crazy

Crazy People

“He’s making me crazy I don’t understand. Why would someone say they were going to do one thing, then do something so different from what they say? He looks so good and talks so good. His promises sound so, so real, but then everything falls apart. I end up doing all this work, and he just disappears. I get so dang angry Then about the time I’m ready to blow a gasket, he calls, charms my socks off, and the whole cycle starts over again. I walk away, scratching my head and wondering, ‘What’s wrong with me? Did I just imagine this whole thing? Did I overreact?’ I don’t get it. I don’t understand,”

Maybe it’s time for an Al-Anon meeting.

“And when we’re talking on the phone, I feel like I’m the only one for him. But then when I see him, I know he’s lying to me. I know he’s seeing someone else and standing there looking me right in the eyes and lying about it. When I ask him, he says, ‘Your insecurity is enchanting, and you’re usually such a together person.’ I don’t understand why I feel so insane.”

Maybe it s time for an Al-Anon meeting.

“And then I catch him straight-out lying to me, and I blow up. I just can’t stand that lying stuff especially when

I knew all the time he was lying to me and he denied it. I put up with it and put up with it and then finally I can’t take it anymore. By the time I blow up, he’s standing there looking calm and serene and I’m acting like an insane person.”

Crazy people make us feel crazy. It’s not you. It’s him. How about that meeting?

“And then he calls a few days later, and he says how sorry he is and I can tell he’s sorry Before I know it, I’ve forgotten about everything that happened, and it starts all over again. I keep wondering whether I’m being used, and then I look at him and I just feel so guilty for everything I’m feeling and thinking. Oh yeah. That Al-Anon meeting.”

Step One: Powerless over people, places, and things. My life has become unmanageable. Take a deep breath. Say it again. Then say it one more time. Crazy people make us feel crazy It will happen every time.

Value: Detach in love. Disentangle. Un-embroil yourself from other people’s insanity so you can be restored to sanity. It’s a value many of us learned the hard way.

Source: January 2: Crazy People Can Make You Crazy | Language of Letting Go

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Take Care of Yourself no Matter What

Alcoholics Anonymous
Image by KayVee.INC via Flickr

Some days, we wake up in the morning, and by the time we go to bed that evening, our life has twisted, changed in a way that we couldn’t predict and don’t want. Our worst fears have come true.

Life as we have known it will never be the same again. The problem isn’t just that this tragedy has come along and knocked our lives for a loop, although that alone would be enough. To complicate matters, we now know how vulnerable we are. And we wonder, in that vulnerability if we can ever trust God, life, or ourselves again.

Many years ago, the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, a spiritually based program designed to help alcoholics recover, cautioned people not to base sobriety and faith in God on the false notion that any person is immune from tragedy. They knew that life would continue to be life.

You are not alone, in your joy or in your sorrow. You may feel that way for a while. But soon you’ll begin to see that many others have experienced, surrendered to, and transcended a similar misfortune or loss. Your pain is important. But you’re not being singled out. Don’t use your misfortune to prove that you were right all along you’re a victim of circumstance, fate, and God.

“God must really love me,” a young man said one day after walking away from a motorcycle accident that should have been tragic.

God loves all of us, whether we walk away pain free or not.

Keep taking care of yourself, no matter what.

God, transform my pain into compassion for others and myself

via melodybeattie.com
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