Using Things Outside Yourself to Cope With Emotional Pain

I’ve heard addiction described as—among other things—using something outside of yourself to cope with painful feelings. This can happen even after you quit using substances; it’s one of the reasons many people with substance use disorders also struggle with other, behavioral addictions. Looking to things outside yourself to “solve” your emotional pain often leads to […]
Recent Seasons of the shows POSE and Feel Good Deliver Honest and Complex Portrayals of Addiction

Attn: Spoilers TW: Sexual Assault, AIDS, Death The most recent seasons of the shows POSE and Feel Good both deal with addiction. While the two are very different, each illuminates the links between trauma and substance use disorders. This last season of POSE, season 3, takes place in 1994; previous seasons were in the late […]
Eileen Myles
The poet Eileen Myles—who reached some mainstream fame as the inspiration for a character on the show Transparent—has been sober for decades. “I remember the first spring I wasn’t drinking; it was 1983,” they said. “My friend Tom and I were walking around the West Village, and we were staring up and pointing. ‘Isn’t that […]
Father’s Day Feels Different For Everyone

Happy Father’s Day! Just like each person has a unique addiction story and approach to recovery, everyone has a different relationship with their dad. Some are close with their fathers, some have a strained relationship, some have lost their dads, some are in recovery while their dad is in active addiction or vice versa, and […]
Recovery in Summer 2021

The prediction that this summer may feel closer to “normal” as more Americans get vaccinated is exciting for many. But for people in early recovery, it might be anxiety-provoking. My sober date is August 1st, but I planned to quit a month in advance. This was for a number of practical reasons, but a small […]
What is Ketamine?

Ketamine is a drug used by physicians as an anesthetic. It is sometimes misused by people outside of a medical setting in order to get high. Ketamine is a dissociative, meaning that it makes people feel detached from reality. The colloquial phrase for this sense of disconnection is “falling into a k-hole.” This drug also […]
Lessons Learned From More Than a Year in the Pandemic to Bring to Early Sobriety

We’ve now been in a pandemic for over a year. It’s been a hard time for a lot of people. Still, there are things to take from this experience—not to brush aside what we’ve been through, but to provide a blueprint for the future. When I think back to my early sobriety in 2015, I […]
Star-Studded Addictions: Eric Clapton

Musician Eric Clapton has been sober for over three decades. He went into addiction treatment for the second time in 1987, ten years after releasing a cover of the song “Cocaine” and a year after his son Conor was born. He’s been sober ever since. Clapton’s addiction was to cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. At one […]
Embracing Messiness, Even in Recovery

In our society, we tend to brush over nuances and keep up appearances. You may feel like your life was a mess in active addiction, and you should make up for it by being buttoned-up in sobriety. But recovery is a process of healing, and healing isn’t neat and tidy. There are ups and downs, […]
Commonly Abused Medications that Require Prescription Drug Abuse Treatment

We are fortunate to live in a world in which medical advances have resulted in the prevention and cure of numerous diseases, the ability to alleviate crippling symptoms through medication, and a greater understanding of the human body and mind than at any other time in history. Millions of Americans responsibly take medications that their […]