I was outraged when someone suggested that I suffered from a “family disease” when my child began using drugs. During the ebb and flow of our family’s now eight-year struggle with addiction, I have pondered the idea of addiction as a family disease. How could someone...
About two years ago, a mentor of mine invited me up to go sailing on Lake Erie to a somewhat famous tourist attraction called Put-In-Bay. It was October Fest weekend, which gave people all the more reason to drink excessively and act nutty. Of the group of guys I was...
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I was warned by my sponsor that many people find Step Four and Step Five very difficult—some...
On my path of recovery, one of the absolute best experiences I have had was my time spent in inpatient rehab. I spent 35 days in a facility in order to receive help for my addiction to pornography. However, to my surprise, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive...
Step Three: Made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to God. My 12-step experience has been in overeaters anonymous (OA). But it was in an area beyond food where the depth of my third step came into sharper focus for me: personal finance. I was on a walk...
One of the tools that I learned as I went through the Consoling the Heart of Jesus: A Do-It-Yourself Retreat spiritual practice to help navigate challenging situations was a beautiful breathing exercise. Even today, over three years clean of my porn addiction, when...
Why is the subject of death so hard to talk about? Is it because when a loved one dies each one of us responds and copes with this loss in a completely unique and personal way? And if I died today, would I be right with God, myself, and others? Would I be reunited...
When in the rooms of recovery, you often hear how people are depending on each other for support not only in staying sober, but for handling the difficult situations of life. The Twelve Steps are meant to guide us towards a God-reliance, which can be difficult to have...
Step Two: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I remember telling my sponsor early on that the first few steps in my 12-step program didn’t pose much of a challenge to me because I already believe in a “Higher Power.” I...
"Every man who enters a brothel is looking for God.” This quote, attributed to G.K. Chesterton, is one of the foundational concepts of Saint John Paul II's “Theology of the Body,” which is a collection of talks the pope gave on human sexuality. Theology of the Body...