Breaking Chains of addiction

Breaking Chains of addiction addicts and the path to recovery

09/18/2026

Half measures availed us nothing. That line used to make me roll my eyes because of how it is worded. Then I lived it for about a year and found out it is just a plain description of what I was doing.

My half measure looked like this. I quit the thing that was going to kill me fastest and I kept everything else. Same phone, same numbers in it, same three people I told myself were just friends now. I went to a meeting on Tuesday and then I drove home the long way, past the street, just to see. I did not go down it. I want credit for that, and there is no credit for that, and that is the point.

I was not building a life. I was running an experiment to find out the smallest amount I could change and still not die.

You cannot get a little bit well the same way you cannot get a little bit out of a hole. The half I was keeping was not a souvenir. It was a plan I had not admitted to yet.

What finally moved me was not a big night. It was a guy asking me a boring question. He said, what are you saving it for.

I did not have an answer. I have never had an answer.

Whole measures are not about being tougher than everybody else. They are about being done negotiating. You are either going to hand over the whole thing or you are going to keep holding a door open for the one thing that has never once been good to you.

Anybody out there keeping a half, check what you are saving it for. 🤍

09/18/2026

I still know how he took his coffee.

Two sugars, no cream, and he would stand there stirring it with the little red straw long after it needed stirring, because his hands had to be doing something. I can see his hand doing it right now, three years later, standing in my own kitchen on a Thursday morning.

He did not make it.

I am not going to put his last months in a Facebook post. He was somebody's son and he has people who are still standing up under it and they do not need me telling the story. What I will say is that he was one of the funniest men I ever sat next to, and he got me through my first ninety days, and when he went back out I called him twice and then I got busy, and then it was too late to get unbusy.

That is the part I carry. Not that he died. That I had two weeks in there where I could have driven over and I did not, because I told myself he knew where we were.

Everybody knows where we are. That is not the same as being able to get there.

So I go now. I am the guy who shows up at your door with a coffee you did not ask for and sits on your steps until you talk or until you tell me to leave. I am sure I have annoyed people. I would rather be annoying than be standing in my kitchen in three years remembering exactly how somebody took his coffee.

If somebody has gone quiet on you this week, go over there. Do not text. Go. 🤍

09/18/2026

I set an alarm last night. That is the sentence.

For years I did not own one and did not need one, because there was nothing on the other side of the morning that required me. I did not wake up so much as run out. Whatever hour my body gave out is when the day ended, and whatever hour it came back on is when the next one started, and in between was not sleep. Anybody who has lived it knows the difference. Sleep puts something back. What I was doing just stopped the clock for a while.

The alarm goes at five fifteen. I get up, I make coffee, I am at the shop before six thirty.

Here is what I did not expect. The first two months clean I still woke up at three forty every single night, on the dot, because three forty was when I used to get up and take care of the thing before the shakes started. My body kept the appointment for weeks after I stopped going. I would lie there in the dark with my heart going, and there was nothing to do, and nowhere to be, and that was somehow worse.

Then one night it did not happen. I do not know which night. I just noticed a while later that it had stopped.

Your body remembers longer than your head does. It is not a sign that it is not working. It is the last part of you finding out that the war is over.

Set the alarm anyway. Get up anyway. It gets quiet in there eventually. 🤍

09/17/2026

Progress not perfection. I hated that one.

I heard it as an excuse. It sounded like something people say right before they let themselves off the hook, and I had spent my whole life letting myself off hooks, so I was not interested in a saying that helped with that.

What I did instead was try to be perfect at getting well, which is the funniest sentence I have ever written about myself. I was going to do this flawlessly. Every night, every morning, every phone call, every single thing they suggested, done right, done on time, done better than the guy sitting next to me. I kept a streak going in my head. And the day I missed one, I did not miss one thing. I threw the whole month in the trash, because in my head a broken record is the same as no record, and that is exactly the thinking that had me where I was in the first place.

An old timer watched me do this for about six weeks and said, son, we are not building a saint here, we are building a Tuesday.

A Tuesday. Something that can survive being ordinary. Something that still counts when you do it tired and late and badly.

I do things badly now on purpose sometimes, just to prove to myself that badly still counts. I show up late instead of not at all. I make the phone call short instead of skipping it. I have kept more days doing this poorly than I ever kept doing it perfectly, and it is not close.

Perfect was just another way for me to quit with my chin up.

Anybody out there about to throw a good month away over one bad day, do not do it. Keep the month. 🤍

09/17/2026

My daughter asked me for a ride at four in the afternoon and did not think about it for one second.

That is the whole post. I know it does not look like much written down.

You have to understand what four in the afternoon used to mean in my house. By four I was gone. Not out of the house. Gone. Everybody knew it and nobody said it, and the entire family built their day around not needing me after about two o clock. Rides got arranged with other people. Her mother left work early for years and told her boss it was something else. My daughter learned, without anybody ever sitting her down and teaching her, that the answer to can dad take me is no. She learned it so young she did not know she knew it.

Then last Tuesday she came through the kitchen with her bag over her shoulder and said, can you run me over at four.

Not can you if you are alright. Not are you good to drive. Just can you run me over at four, the way a kid asks anybody's father anything.

I said yes and I got my keys and I did not say one word about what had just happened, because saying it would have made it into a thing and it deserved to stay ordinary. I drove her. She talked about somebody on her team the whole way. I do not remember any of it. I was busy.

Trust does not come back as a speech. Nobody stands up and announces they believe in you again. It comes back as a small assumption somebody makes out loud without checking with you first.

Four in the afternoon. That is what I got back this week. 🤍

09/17/2026

I packed a lunch last night and put it in the refrigerator and then I stood there looking at it like a fool.

Turkey sandwich, an apple, one of those little bags of pretzels. A grown man, proud of a sandwich.

For a long time I ate once a day, usually around midnight, usually standing up at a counter, usually whatever was closest. I did not eat because I was hungry. I ate because my body finally made me. There was no such thing as tomorrow's lunch because there was no such thing as tomorrow, not in any way I could plan for. The whole day was one long negotiation with the next few hours and food lost that argument every time.

So a sandwich in the refrigerator with my name on the bag is not a sandwich. It is a note I left for a man I now expect to still exist at noon. Somebody in this house believes he is going to be here, at work, hungry, in his right mind, at lunch time. That somebody is me, and it took me a long while to become him.

That is what they mean about the little things. Nobody claps. There is no anniversary for the first lunch you ever packed. You just open a refrigerator in the morning and see proof that you have started planning for yourself, and you carry it out to the truck.

Anyone out there eating once a day standing up, I know exactly where you are. Your appetite comes back. So does your tomorrow. 🤍

09/16/2026

First things first. I heard it my first week and rolled my eyes so hard it is a wonder I did not hurt myself.

I had a list, and my recovery was somewhere around fifth on it. First I needed my job back. Then my wife not looking at me like a stranger. Then money, then the truck fixed, then, somewhere down the page, this meeting stuff. I was going to bolt my life back together first and get well after, once things calmed down. Things were never once calm.

An old boy with silver hair listened to my whole list and said, son, you are rebuilding a house on a foundation that is still on fire. He said everything on that list got broken by the same one thing, and everything on it breaks again the day that one thing comes back. First things first is not a bumper sticker. It is an order of operations.

I hated that because it was true. So I flipped the list. The one thing went on top, every morning, before my phone, before the job, before anybody else's emergency. Not because the rest did not matter. Because the rest does not survive without it.

The job came back eventually. The wife took longer, and she had every right to. The truck still rattles. But everything on that list that came back, came back because the top line held.

First things first. Protect the one thing that makes everything else possible. Anyone rebuilding tonight, check what is on top of your list. 🤍

09/16/2026

Ten habits that keep him sober and the first one is simple. Do not be around it. I could not be anywhere near it the first couple of years and I had to be honest about that. This one is long. Watch the whole thing. Which habit on his list do you actually do? Comment the number.

Addiction lies to everyone in the house, not just the person using. The closed door. The long bathroom trip. The story t...
09/16/2026

Addiction lies to everyone in the house, not just the person using. The closed door. The long bathroom trip. The story that doesn't add up.

If you're living with that right now, you're not crazy. You're not alone.

Tell us your story below.

09/16/2026

My daughter got a birthday card from her grandmother the year she turned nine. There was fifty dollars in it.

By that night there was not.

I told myself I was borrowing it. That is the word the disease handed me and I took it, the same way I took the money. I was going to put it back before she ever counted it. I have said I was borrowing things from a lot of people who never saw those things again, but this was a little girl's birthday card, and I want to be honest about it instead of sanding the corners off it.

She never said one word to me. That was the worst part. She just learned something about her father that year, quietly, the way kids learn everything.

Two years into my recovery I handed her an envelope. Fifty dollars, and a letter that took me four drafts, because the truth kept trying to crawl off the page. I told her what I took and what I was back then, and that borrowing was a lie I told myself, and that she never owed me the silence she gave me.

She read it twice. Then she hugged me for a long time and said, I knew, Dad. I was waiting for you to know.

Addiction took things no court ever heard about. Recovery pays them back with the truth. The money was the smallest thing in that envelope. Anyone with their own envelope to write, it is worth every draft. 🤍

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