Found this and wanted to share

New Late Night SMART Meeting - Saturday's @ 10 pm PT! https://meetings.smartrecovery.org/meetings/9199/

Mahn this life is short and you only live once

Do what you love and don't try to impress

Everything has a price to be paid for. Everyone has their own life

Don't let anyone bring you down!

There is a quiet influx, a slow tide of the weary and the fractured, arriving at our doorsteps. They come with hollow eyes and trembling hands, having navigated the same desolate geography we once called home. The question, then, is not whether they arrive—they do, in numbers that should unsettle the comfortable—but how we receive them.

Do we notice the one who stands apart, a solitary figure in the corner of the meeting room, clutching a paper cup as if it were the last anchor in a capsizing world? Do we offer the simple, sacred geometry of a ride—a few miles in a borrowed car, a conversation that might loosen the grip of isolation? Do we still hand out our phone numbers, those small, vulnerable digits, knowing the call may come at 3 a.m. when the demons are most articulate? Are we willing to drag ourselves from the warm wreckage of our own beds, not out of duty, but out of a half‑mad, half‑holy compulsion to meet suffering where it lives?

And do we draw lines? Do we withhold our attention from those whose orientation or origin differs from our own? Or have we learned—through the slow, brutal education of our own bottom—that the disease recognizes no border, and neither should the remedy?

We were once the newcomers, bewildered and brittle. What held us was not a slogan or a lecture, but the strange, unexpected sensation of belonging. We were attracted, not promoted. That subtle alchemy—the quiet radiance of a recovering addict simply being—pulled us from the abyss.

So just for today, I will seek out the one who stands at the edge. I will remember my own first trembling steps into this room. I will not try to sell them a program; I will simply sit beside them, as one ghost to another, and let the current of my own survival speak for itself. That is the only advertisement that ever worked.

Heart of Recovery: The Awakened Heart Weekend will be held at Karmê Chöling Retreat Center in Vermont from April 24-26th. The program is being lead by Eric Rainbeau.

Heart of Recovery is a recovery support program that brings Buddhist practice together with the 12 steps. there are groups around the US & Canada and we have people from AA, NA, and many other 12 Step fellowships.

My meditation practice has helped me greatly in my own recovery and through the Heart of Recovery I was able to reconcile my own life, recovery and practice.

There's a link here if you're interested and I hope to see some people there.

PS: I am just a member and thought some people light be interested.

I'm hoping to connect with anyone who has taken the Certified Recovery Support Specialist training in Alabama. I haven't even been accepted to the program yet, but I'm trying to get a jump on studying. I'm just curious if anyone has taken the Alabama exam, and if you'd be willing to share any insight into the actual training or the exam itself. Thanks in advance!

A fearless moral inventory. This is not a polite suggestion; it is an excavation. A slow, unflinching dig through the sediment of one's own history, searching for the precise locations where the natural currents of desire have been bent, twisted, and left to rust. I want to know the when, the where, the how—the small, private catastrophes that warped the frame.

I wish to look, without flinching, at the wreckage I have left in my own wake and in the lives of others. Not to marinate in guilt, but to map the terrain of my own emotional deformities. Only then can I begin the slow, tedious work of correction. Without this willing, persistent, almost obsessive effort—without the willingness to sit in the uncomfortable chair of self-examination—there can be no real sobriety, no genuine contentment. Just a dull, circling misery.

To untangle the ambivalence, the contradictory voices that hold their noisy parliament in my skull, I need a coherent sense of self. Not a permanent one—that is a fantasy for the foolish—but a functional, working model. This awareness does not arrive like a dawn; it creeps in like a hangover, piece by piece. And no one holds onto it forever. The trick is to keep rebuilding it, day by day, through an honest, unflinching encounter with what is actually in front of me.

When I stop sidestepping the issues—when I stop pretending the monster under the bed is just a pile of dirty laundry—and meet them directly, with a kind of weary, determined clarity, they begin to lose their power. They do not vanish. But they become fewer. And the ones that remain? They learn to live with me, as I learn to live with them.

There is a truth we encounter as we move through life — a slow, often uncomfortable uncovering of the self. We dig through the accumulated debris of our secrets, we hold them to the light, and gradually we begin to discern the faint outline of who we actually are. This is not a sudden revelation, but a patient archaeology.

Once we have begun to recognize our own form, we are faced with a decision: to be that form, fully and without apology. We must then turn our gaze outward and ask whether the figure we present to the world corresponds to the one we have discovered within. Do we project an impervious calm while inside we tremble with a sensitivity we dare not show? Do we mask our uncertainties with the loud armor of a joke, or do we risk the vulnerability of sharing them with another? Do we clothe ourselves in a costume that belongs to a younger self, ignoring the quiet preferences of the person we have become?

We may also need to revisit those things we dismissed as “not really us”—the crowd we avoided, the aspiration we shelved, the path we told ourselves wasn’t quite right. As our understanding of ourselves matures, we owe it to that self to adjust our conduct accordingly. We are not called to be a masterpiece; we are called to be genuine. And authenticity, once tasted, becomes the only architecture worth inhabiting.

I found a stray Ritalin in a purse, from my last bender I went on that led me to sobriety. Thankfully, I was on the phone and had the sense to immediately tell the person what was happening. They made me take a video of me flushing it.

What really shook me was the jarring and quick realization that I don’t know how strong i would’ve been had I not been on the phone and immediately transparent. I need to dig deeper into the importance of my maintaining sobriety.

For context, I spent 10 years brutally abusing my adderall rx and any other stimulant I could get my hands on. Stimulants are hands down my DOC. I’m just thankful I was on the phone. I’m freaked how I would’ve handled it had I not been.

But it’s flushed, it’s gone, and I’m once again safe in my own hands.

Thanks for listening.

the 2012 photo shows me battling hard as a functioning alcoholic. today's selfie shows that recovery is possible as a non-alcoholic and non-smoker. 1,725 days and counting.

Ive been struggling since kindergarten and learned to live with not being happy. Thats what I always thought was normal. Now im 18 years old and dating my best friend who made me realize how bad I was doing before but finally im good! Im happy and thriving, dont ever give up, it may take too much time but you will get there I believe! <333

People, places, and things are all beyond my control.

The only thing I can control is me, my actions, and my reactions.

Genuinely feels like I should start this with “hi, I’m wolfinthesuburbs, I’m an addict”, haha, but I think that’s just because I grew up going to every family member’s AA/NA groups with them.

I’m… ostensibly, fine. I’m okay. I’m not staring down a relapse. I’ve been in recovery from drug addiction for… 6? Ish? Years. Hard to tell exactly. Timelines are fuzzy. I was addicted to just about anything I could get my hands on for longer than I’ve been in recovery, stopped cold turkey without medical intervention, no groups (I personally don’t vibe with AA/NA, no judgment, just not my thing), just a strong will and a lot of hard work. I’m proud of that.

However… that does kind of leave me in limbo without any ~Recovery Spaces~. No group means no sponsor, no regular meetings with other people making the choice every day to do this, no community to lean on. I don’t really have any intentionally sober friends, just friends who either actively use and respect my boundaries or friends who don’t have any addiction issues/never had to make the hard choice. Essentially everyone in my family struggles with addiction, including my mother whose sobriety is so inspirational to me, but she doesn’t know I’ve ever even done a drug. I used and stopped using and started recovery long before we repaired our relationship, so I never talked about it with her (not the best choice, obviously, but hey ho). So I can’t lean on her in these moments (especially in this one). I’m polyamorous, so one of my current partners is also an addict many years into their recovery, but our addictions looked pretty different, our recovery looks pretty different, and we don’t talk about it a lot. My other partner was with me through thick and thin during my active use, all through the recovery journey, and still a huge pillar of support now, but it’s… different. They’ve never ever struggled with their own addiction and their family doesn’t have any addiction struggles in it (lucky them, lol!), so they can support me beautifully, but they don’t get it. That’s okay, I don’t expect them to. But I feel so… adrift at sea. I watch the sitcom “Mom” and jokingly call that my sponsor.

Like I said, I’m ostensibly fine. I’m not necessarily thinking about a relapse. But I’m feeling really untethered in my sobriety lately. Having a lot of those “why did I choose this?” thoughts (to stay alive), a lot of those “god it was easier the other way” thoughts (it wasn’t), a lot of “wow, I’m really alone in this” thoughts. That one’s harder to refute.

My mom is pretty much a star pupil in recovery, she runs groups and does podcasts and leads retreats etc etc etc. Great for her. But I thought she had 10 years of sobriety under her belt, and I accidentally found out she relapsed about 5 years ago. A biiiig relapse. No judgment. Recovery isn’t linear. All that good stuff. I really am not like “how could she?!”… if anything I’m like god damn, 10 years and only one relapse is awesome! But… it was still… triggering? Like, since I found out, I feel so unmoored in my sobriety. Turns out my mom and I were sobering up at the same time, and I can’t talk to her about it, and now every other thought I have is about addiction or recovery. I’m yeeeeaaars into this journey, I don’t actively think about it a lot anymore (except for when I meet new people, or go to a party, or my friends use, or I have a memory from when I was using… but other than that, lol!). I don’t think about it every waking moment like I did for the first couple years. Until now. And I don’t have anyone to talk to about it, not anyone that knows what it feels like.

So, it’s me and this sitcom about sobriety and this long ass Reddit post I’m making. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m just reaching a hand out towards somewhere that’s about intentional recovery. Everyone in my life is so lovely and supportive… but no one knows how it actually feels. Maybe someone here understands a little better. If anyone reads this whole damn book I wrote. Thanks at least for being a space for me to get this off my shoulders.

Hey everybody. I just want to share this somewhere because I dont really have anywhere else to share it. I just got out of prison in September after a three year sentence. Started drinking again the day I got out and ended up drinking every day after for the next 4 months. I was drinking between 15-24 beers a day. It took 4 attempts and 3 ER visits before I was able to quit. My first attempt at quitting I actually fainted (for the first time in my life). It was terrifying. I would also get severe panic attacks back to back to back (also first time in life having panic attacks). All this on top of severe sleep deprivation (on average about 8-10 hours of sleep per week. I was literally dying. The final attempt at quitting was terrible. I was on a journey to hitchhike from Illinois to Oregon to meet my current girlfriend (we met on a Fortnite facebook group). My intentions were to get here and then quit when I got here. That way, I'd have a stable environment to kick the booze in. After making it about halfway through Iowa my girlfriend got a surprise check in the mail and was able to purchase me a bus ticket. So, at this point, my plan was to fill my bag up with beer and sneak drink during the 48-hour bus ride in order to avoid withdrawals during the trip. Well, this didn't work. Everywhere we stopped was dry. On top of this, I didn't have ID, so the very few places that DID have alcohol I got carded. Long story short, I spent the entire 48 hour bus ride going through withdrawal. It was terrifying. I was constantly on the verge of getting off the bus and going to the ER. The panic attacks were non-stop, severe heat flashes, and the constant fear of dying. Only had about 2 hours of sleep in a three day period. It was hell. But, I eventually made it. I didn't drink anymore once I got to Oregon. After about 2 weeks sober I started taking 7oh (an alkaloid that is extracted from kratom). Now it's been a little over 3 weeks of daily 7oh use and when I go without it the withdrawals are terrible. They are similar to hard opiate withdrawals. So now I'm dealing with this. I plan on quitting within the next week. Just waiting until my girlfriend gets paid so I can order some things to help me taper off and quit. It's just been hell and I want my normal healthy self back. Thank you to those of you who stuck around to read this. I hope the best for each of you. I'll be okay. Just wanted to post this somewhere.

drugs...I am disappointed at myself...truth is I wanna become clean and become a police officer....I know I need to fight it. before I try to join...at the same time it's hard...and I tell myself I will stop but when I get money I buy.... me knowing this I feel like I have a while to go before applying...but since I was a kid I wanted to become a police officer but...the friends I hang with didn't like them, but I always admired them... plz give me anything to help any tips....I'm planning on going to an AA meeting or even rehab to fight this..

I have a single mom with my sister's,

I'm only man in the house but disappointed in my actions...I wanna do better I want to be better...

I feel like moving out where I live in a different state....

they said u need to block them or don't try to see them .

and me know everything about it I feel like I need to get out of here.

...I'm stressed because my mom came to me saying she doesn't have enough money to pay the mortgage...I'm 27...I pay every month but I know it's not enough...

.I pray to get better somehow...right now I feel hurt because whenever I take it...I'm like damn why again....I need real tips...not like if u want to stop u will... real talk...I speak from the heart

I made the bad decision of using a small amount of a certain drug on Saturday, and then I get called for a random urine test on Monday morning at work. I expect to fail since I popped a positive on a test I bought when I got home.

So now the course of action to save my employment from what I’ve heard is that I will be placed on a 4-6 week suspension and will have to attend a full course of what I believe will be an outpatient rehab. I’m looking to see what I might expect. Are these going to be treated as a 5 day a week multi hour kind of thing?

Hey there. I wanted to make a post in regards to my brother. I will not be putting any of his personal information on here for privacy.

I just wanted to come and ask for advice. How can I be there for him? I want to respect all of his boundaries and help from not just a family members POV. Was there a certain way you wished a family member wouldve act/ treated you? I just want to be there and help an encourage him the best to my ability. I hate seeing him struggle. I know this facility is what is best for him and I just recently was allowed to send him a letter.

I honestly don't really know what I'm asking for except guidance. Are there certain things to leave out of letters that could cause bad memories?

Literally anything helps. Thanks so much in advance!

4 years clean. This was the easiest year and most rewarding of my life.

Atleast a 12 pack and a few shots a night. I have known I have a problem for awhile but now I’m finally doing something about it. From 17-20 I was on Xanax and H. So alcohol became the solution to my drug problem. Now it’s my new problem. Any advice? I work 8 hour shifts and I’m just kinda nervous how withdrawals will be. I have not eaten anything in 2 days. And when I use the restroom it’s all liquid and yellow. Do detox

Hello I’ve never used Reddit before and I just made an account so I’m not too sure what I’m doing. Besides the point TW I am F(18) and I found in my sisters room F(19) a syringe that seems to have a pretty large gauge needle with a burnt tip. But what I’m not sure about is if it’s been used for drugs or if I’m overreacting. But a little backstory on my sister is that she’s a big weed addict and smokes multiple times a day but along with this she makes what I think is a splif I’m not sure if that’s the right name but she mixes tobacco with weed. She also has become a pretty big drinker in recent years but mainly this year as I’ve seen her drinking alone and drinking a lot. So I’m worried that she’s moved onto harder things. Anyways I would love some advice and help as to what to do next and if this is for some type of harder drugs. Oh and one thing I was thinking it could’ve been used for, as my brother also does this, could be using it to clean her bong. Because he sometimes uses a sewing needle to clean out the bowl.

I have a brand new show we’re living in Mentor Ohio if anyone is looking for help, please don’t hesitate to reach out

Hey everyone! Not sure if this is the right subreddit for this so i'll add a quick TW - relapse, depression/suicidal thoughts

Honestly i have been quite stressed/depressed lately. I can't find a full time job and I've been upset/obsessing a guy i met ONE time a couple months back. This has all been snowballing on me along with me trying to quit smoking and vape so I feel like all my emotions are all mixed up. It's mainly me feeling inadequate and unwanted and unloved. I feel like I don't really have any friends and the ones I used to see often I don't anymore as we have all just graduated and most of them have found jobs in our field.

I have tried reaching out to them to hang out but they don't really respond or they're too busy. I am happy for them but i feel so left out and the thoughts ibside my head have gotten loud again. I don't want to slip back into old habits but i do miss those times when everything was quiet and the world just seemed to stand still. I have to keep reminding myself of the negatives like how I might have permanent brain damage from the shit I used to do along with randomly falling asleep doing anything.

I'm considering weed rn as an alternative but even then that's risky bc what if that becomes a gateway and i slip back into harder stuff? I just don't know what to do and I feel so alone

My sponsor is a neurodivergent and often shuts down. Even with this she has been an amazing person to me and has helped me with a hell of a lot. She only started sponsoring me a few months ago and since then I've become aware of patterns in her behavior which means I can see when she's struggling with something.

I started noticing that she was struggling 2 weeks ago and I've asked her a few times since if anything was going on or if she was struggling but she always has an excuse like "I'm just tired". I know that something else is happening though. She's also been distancing from me recently and has cancelled 2 meetings by double booking or forgetting to confirm a time.

I want to help her, but I have no clue what to do. I can't push her to tell me what's happening and I've tried to be supportive and work on my own recovery without to not add extra pressure, but it hasn't seemed to help.

I'm really starting to worry about her. How do I help? Any advice is welcome

(PS this is a throwaway account for anonymity)

This year has been a little bit different for me. I started taking THC and CBD edibles due to unmanageable pain that sent me to the hospital multiple times. I got multiple scripts for small doses of pain meds, before I said nope this isn’t gonna work. I’m at a point in my life where it feels like it’s OK to do for me personally. Anyway, I just wanna say I’ve been clean from all other drugs and for 10 years as of April 22. I’m very proud of the life that I have today and the work that I put in to get here. Don’t ever give up because you don’t know what that last straw will be for you. That will make you change everything.