Recovery Source Blog

08/21/2022

Psychiatrist & Stanford professor Dr. Anna Lembke joins Rich to discuss the neuroscience of modern addiction, dopamine fasting, the opioid crisis & more. To ...

12/14/2020

Let us walk you through the basics of meditation, the benefits of regular practice, the various styles of meditation, plus free guided audio practices.

11/21/2020

11/14/2020

Health and psychosocial risks associated with COVID-19 fall disproportionately on historically marginalized populations. I recently reviewed published studies on preliminary findings related to COVID-19 among people experiencing or recovering from…

11/14/2020

Frequently Asked Questions - What is SAMHSA's National Helpline?

05/26/2017

Reservations are places in my program that I have reserved for relapse.
It may be built around the idea that I can retain a small measure of control, something like, "Okay, I accept that I can't control my using, but I can still break the law, or bend the rules to suit me can't I?"
I may think I can remain friends with the people I used with or bought drugs from.
I may think that certain parts of the program don't apply to me.
I may think there's something I just can't face clean - a serious illness, for instance, or the death of a loved one - and plan to use if it ever happens.
I may think that after I've accomplished some goal, made a certain amount of money, or been clean for a certain number of years, then I'll be able to control my using.
Reservations are usually tucked away in the back of my mind; I am not fully conscious of them. I must review them from time to time to expose them as weaknesses in my program.
It is essential that I expose any reservations I may have and cancel them, right here, right now.

05/17/2017

As addicts, we react to the word "powerless" in a variety of ways. Some of us recognize that a more accurate description of our situation simply could not exist, and admit our powerlessness with a sense of relief. Others recoil at the word, connecting it with weakness or believing it to indicate some kind of character deficiency. Powerlessness does not mean we are helpless. Understanding powerlessness - and how admitting our own powerlessness is essential to our recovery - will help us get over any negative feelings we may have about the concept.
We are powerless when the driving force in our life is beyond our control. Our addiction certainly qualifies as such an uncontrollable, driving force. We cannot moderate or control our drug use or other compulsive behaviors, even when they are causing us to lose the things that matter most to us. We cannot stop, even when to continue will surely result in irreparable physical damage. We find ourselves doing things that we would never do if it weren't for our addiction; things that make us shudder with shame when we think of them. We may even decide that we don't want to use, that we aren't going to use, and realize we are simply unable to stop when the opportunity presents itself.
We may have tried to abstain from drug use or other compulsive behaviors - perhaps with some success - for a period of time without a program, only to find that our untreated addiction eventually takes us right back to where we were before. In order to work the
First Step, we need to prove our own individual powerlessness to ourselves on a deep level.

Narcotics Anonymous Step Working Guide

01/05/2017

11/19/2016

Research.

Can classes in positive psychology teach students not just to feel good but also to do good?

11/06/2016

We have a disease: progressive, incurable and fatal. One way or another we went out and bought our destruction on the time payment plan! All of us, from the ju**ie snatching purses to the sweet little old lady hitting two or three doctors for legal prescriptions, have one thing in common: we seek our destruction a bag at a time, a few pills at a time, or a bottle at a time until we die.

Narcotics Anonymous Fellowship. Narcotics Anonymous (Kindle Locations 628-631). . Kindle Edition.

11/04/2016

November 4

Exchanging love

“...we give love because it was given so freely to us. New frontiers are open to us as we learn how to love. Love can be the flow of life energy from one person to another.”

Basic Text, p. 105

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Love given, and love received, is the essence of life itself. It is the universal common denominator, connecting us to those around us. Addiction deprived us of that connection, locking us within ourselves.

The love we find in the NA program reopens the world to us. It unlocks the cage of addiction which once imprisoned us. By receiving love from other NA members, we find out—perhaps for the first time—what love is and what it can do. We hear fellow members talk about the sharing of love, and we sense the substance it lends to their lives.

We begin to suspect that, if giving and receiving love means so much to others, maybe it can give meaning to our lives, too. We sense that we are on the verge of a great discovery, yet we also sense that we won’t fully understand the meaning of love unless we give ours away. We try it, and discover the missing connection between ourselves and the world.

Today, we realize that what they said was true: “We keep what we have only by giving it away.”

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Just for today: Life is a new frontier for me, and the vehicle I will use to explore it is love. I will give freely the love I have received.