Good afternoon!  My name is Lauren, and I'm a grateful, recovering alcoholic/addict.  Addiction and alcoholism is a "cunning and baffling" disease as the Big Book calls it.  It is the scary how it makes us think that we are not addicts, that we are "normies."  I will never be normal and I'm ok with that.  I know that my addiction is still in the back of my head doing pushups, just waiting for the right time to trip me up.  Just waiting for the right trigger, the right opportunity, the right smell, to catch me off guard.  But I have to have my ammo stacked up.  I have a sponsor I call when I need help, I have a Big Book, I have my other Big Black Book, the Bible, that I go to, I pray to my God, I go to meetings, I do meditations in the mornings.  I do all these things to keep my sobriety in check, because I will never be healed, I will never be recovered. My addiction is always there, and that disease is will trick me to tell me I am better, that I don't need these things, so that is can creep back into my life.  So I will do what I need to to stay on top and make the right decisions.  That's all for today.  Have a great one!

Good morning!  My name is Lauren, and I'm a grateful, recovering alcoholic/addict.  I had a comment yesterday, that I thought I would reply too.  Every day I say that I am a grateful RECOVERING alcoholic, not a RECOVERED alcoholic. I had someone tell me, nicely, that I should probably get a sponsor to go through the steps and I would probably be RECOVERED.  Well, I disagree.  I believe that recovery is a process.  I have a disease that I will always struggle with.  I will always be recovering.  I DO have a sponsor.  I HAVE worked the steps, and continue to do so on a daily basis.  That will be a lifelong continuance as well.  I have to for me to stay clean and sober.  When I first got sober, my boss asked me how long I would go to "those meetings."  I said, "Probably forever, or as long as I wanted to stay sober. People just don't go to church and become Christians and quit going, they continue to go, to learn, for fellowship with other Christians."  She said, "Hmm, makes sense."  So I believe, I will always be a recovering alcoholic/addict.  There is nothing that I will be able to do that will make me recovered, if so that means I will be able to drink like normal people, and I KNOW that will never happen.  I know the Big Book says "recovered" in it, and people can argue about that all day long, but this is just my belief, and why I say it.  :)  That's all I have for today. Have a great one!

Good afternoon!  My name is Lauren, and I'm a grateful, recovering alcoholic/addict.  Hope, faith, and courage are some positive, uplifting words we hear a lot in recovery.  But for any of them to happen takes action.  You can't just think they will magically get you clean or sober.  We all have hope, but taking that next step and having faith,  and then the courage to do something about it.  We can do this.  Everyone is struggling in their own way.  Some keep their issues hidden, some people, (like myself), share (some of them) with the world.  But I do so to hopefully help someone else.  Maybe you need that extra push to take that step to make the change today. We are here for you. There are so many people ready to help you, you just need to reach out your hand.  That's all I have for today.  Have a great one!

Good morning!  My name is Lauren, and I'm a grateful, recovering alcoholic/addict.  When I was drinking/using I was always do so to try to get away.  I was trying to escape from the problems that were right in front of my face.  I thought that by drinking or using that would make them go away, but that didn't make the problem go away, it make the solution further away.  The only way I could solve the problem was to face it head on.  It took me a long time to realize that, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of people told me that, but "I" had to be the one to tell myself that that the way it was, for me to actually believe it.  And that's the way with a lot of things.  It has to be MY idea.  People tell me things over and over and over again, but it only "clicks" or "the light only turns on" when I think it is my idea.  So quit running away from the problem, because you are really only running away from the solution.  It is never going to fix itself.  That's all I have for today.  Have a great one!

Good afternoon!  My name is Lauren, and I'm a grateful, recovering alcholic/addict.  This kind of goes along with yesterday's quote.  But I really wanted to expand on it, and it kind of goes at a different angle.  What we see, depends on what we are looking for.  It all depends on our perspective.  When all I was looking for was drugs or alcohol, that's all I was going to find, negative things.  If I'm looking for the bad in things or people, I will find it.  If I'm looking for the good in things or people or circumstances, I will find them.  Getting sober changed my vision. When I stopped looking at life through the bottom of a bottle, I saw things so much clearer.  It really depends what we are looking for, as to what we find.  So really think about what you are looking for, before you get upset about what you are finding.  That's all for today.  Have a great one!

Good afternoon!  My name is Lauren, and I'm a grateful, recovering alcoholic/addict.  I was listening to a Chalene Johnson podcast today and she hit the nail on the head today with a motivation one.  One point she made was "What you think you become." This is along the same lines of a Buddha quote, and it is so true.  If you think negative, negative happens.  If you think positive, positive happens.  If you feel miserable and are having headaches all the time, and keep telling yourself that, you will continue to do so.  That's just how it is.  If you think you are in a terrible marriage, that is what it will become.  If you think your life is crap, then that is what it what it will be.  But on the other hand, if you change your perspective, like I had to do, and I did when I got sober, and think positive, good things happen.  And I don't think they happened by chance, I made them happen, well God made them happen, but only because I had a good attitude and had a good spiritual connection with Him.  When I was drinking I had built a wall up between God and I. There was a spiritual disconnect, and with that disconnect came a lot of negativity.  Once I got reconnected, my perspective changed, my priorities changed, my life changed.  So just think about that for a minute.  If you want your life to change, you can change it.  It is up to you.  That's all I have for today.  Have a great one!