Normalize Sobriety | October 16, 2026 When I think about the loneliest time of my life, I don’t think about being physically alone. I don’t think about having nobody to talk to or nobody around me. I think about waking up in my own bed, staring at the ceiling, and having absolutely no idea what I did the night before. That was loneliness. Not knowing what I said. Not knowing who I offended. Not knowing if I made a complete fool of myself. Wondering if I had gotten into an arg

Normalize Sobriety | October 10, 2026 There was a time when I was the one still suffering. I was the one making excuses. The one who thought I had everything under control. The one who kept doing the same stupid things and wondering why my life wasn’t getting any better. And here’s something I want people to understand. I wasn’t always the person whose life was falling apart because of alcohol. I started out as one of those weekend warriors. I know that lifestyle because I li

I recently watched something happen that bothered me. Someone relatively new to recovery was getting hammered with God, Scripture, Bible verses, and preaching about what they supposedly needed to believe in order to stay sober. And I thought to myself: Stop. Yes, I believe in God. My faith is the Catholic faith, and coming back to the Catholic Church has become an important part of my life and has strengthened my recovery. But that’s my journey. That’s where my search for fai

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in recovery is that getting sober doesn’t just change what you drink or don’t drink. It changes how you see people. It changes what you’re willing to tolerate. And sometimes it teaches you a painful lesson about helping people. There was someone in my life who was struggling. I saw somebody who needed help getting back on their feet, and I stepped up. I helped because that’s who I wanted to be. Recovery taught me about service. AA taugh

There comes a point in recovery when something strange starts happening. Your old life starts disappearing. Not because you forgot it. Not because it didn’t happen. And definitely not because you’re trying to pretend you were somebody you weren’t. You still remember the things you did. You remember the mistakes. The people you hurt. The stupid decisions. The mornings you woke up wondering what the hell happened. The embarrassment. The guilt. The chaos. But you don’t think abo

Normalize Sobriety One of the strangest things addiction did to me wasn’t just what I drank, where I went, or the chaos I created. It changed the way I experience my feelings. Or maybe a better way to put it is this: It taught me how to protect myself from the ones that hurt the most. I still have feelings. I still feel anger. Frustration. Disappointment. Love. Joy. Fear. Compassion. Connection. I’m not emotionless. But hurt is different. I can recognize when somebody has don

For most of my adult life, religion wasn’t part of the equation. I spent 26 years as an atheist. After that, I spent about four years as an agnostic. I wasn’t angry at God. I wasn’t trying to prove anyone wrong. I simply wasn’t convinced. But something changed when I got serious about recovery. Recovery taught me to question a lot of things I thought I knew. It forced me to look at myself differently. It made me examine my past, my choices, my relationships, and the way I had

When I first got sober, I needed help. I needed people who had been where I had been. People who understood the insanity, the fear, the guilt, and the chaos that came with addiction. I needed someone to show me that there was another way to live. Those people didn’t owe me anything. They helped me because someone had helped them. That’s service work. Early in recovery, I thought getting sober was mainly about stopping drinking. Today I understand that stopping was only the be

For a long time, I thought I was living my life. Looking back, I wasn’t. Alcohol was living it for me. It dictated where I went. It dictated who I associated with. It dictated what I did on weekends, what I did after work, and what I considered fun. It even dictated who I became. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to hand my life over to alcohol. It happened slowly. Drinking became so normal that I stopped recognizing how abnormal my life had become. My Life Revolved Aro

September 5, 2026 One thing I have learned in recovery is that there will always be drama. Drama in meetings. Drama at work. Drama at home. Drama between friends. Drama on social media. Drama involving people you care about. And yes, sometimes even drama between people in recovery. You cannot control all of that. But you can control how much of it you allow to interfere with your recovery. When I first got sober, I had to learn something that felt strange to me: AA is a selfi

THE 16-YEAR SOBRIETY ANNIVERSARY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN August 27th could have marked 16 years sober for me. That is strange to think about. Sixteen years ago, I had an opportunity to quit drinking. Looking back today, I can clearly see what I couldn’t see then. I wasn’t ready. I knew drinking was creating problems in my life, but knowing something and being willing to do something about it are two very different things. I still believed I could figure alcohol out. Maybe I coul

There is a huge difference between not drinking and recovering. I know because I’ve tried both. White-knuckling sobriety is exactly what it sounds like: holding on as tight as you can, hoping you can make it through another day without picking up a drink. No real plan. No support. No change in the way you think or live. Just determination. And determination can get you pretty far. But for me, it wasn’t enough. I learned that lesson the hard way. I had years of sobriety before

August 23, 2026 Tomorrow I turn 50 years old. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like at 50. If I’m being truthful, there were years when I wasn’t doing much living at all. I was existing. I spent way too much of my life drinking. I spent years convincing myself that alcohol wasn’t the problem. I hid how much I drank. I minimized it. I justified it. I compared myself to other people. As long as I could find someone who drank more than me or had l

People talk about rock bottom like it’s a place. It’s not. Rock bottom is a decision. I know because I found mine more than once. For me, one of those moments was literally laying on the ground with a gash on my head. Hurt. Beaten down. Alcohol had taken control of my life, yet somehow I had spent years convincing myself that I could still handle it. That picture of me on the ground represents something bigger than the cut on my head. That was what my drinking had become. But

That title may make some people uncomfortable. Some will say God is essential for recovery. Others will point out they’ve stayed sober for years without believing in God. So what’s the answer? I believe in a Higher Power, and that belief is central to my recovery. But I do not believe everyone needs the same understanding of God that I have in order to recover. Does AA Require Belief in God? AA often refers to God, but it also says “God as we understood Him.” That phrase matt

When you first get sober, everybody talks about how much better life is going to get. And they’re right. But they don’t always tell you how bad it can feel before it gets better. Those first days, weeks, and months can be brutal. Your body is adjusting. Your mind is racing. You’re feeling emotions you’ve been numbing for years. Fear, anger, guilt, shame, regret, anxiety they can all come rushing back. And now the one thing you used to escape all of that is gone. That’s when t

It’s Time to Change — But Is It Too Late? Normalize Sobriety | August 7, 2026 In Wisconsin, drinking isn’t just something people do. It’s part of the culture. Weddings. Funerals. Packers games. Brewers games. Badgers games. Festivals. Concerts. Fishing. Hunting camp. Family reunions. Friday fish fries. Holidays. Birthdays. Graduations. And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking whether any of this was normal. We Made Alcohol the Default Growing up and living in Wisconsin,

People ask me all the time what my rock bottom was. Was it the worst thing I ever did? Was it the most embarrassing moment of my life? Was it when I had lost everything? The truth is… no. My rock bottom wasn’t my lowest moment. There were plenty of times when I should have quit. Plenty of mornings I woke up ashamed of who I had become. Plenty of promises that I made to myself that I broke before the day was over. There were relationships I damaged, opportunities I missed, and

When I first got sober, I thought my only job was to stop drinking. I figured if I could just put the alcohol down, everything else would somehow work itself out. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sobriety isn’t just about not drinking. It’s about building a life worth staying sober for. Over time, I’ve realized my recovery stands on three pillars: Recovery, Unity, and Service. If one of those pillars weakens, my sobriety becomes unstable. Pillar One: Recovery Everything start

If you’ve ever tried to get sober for someone else, you’re not alone. I know I did. I tried quitting because I didn’t want to lose relationships. I tried because I didn’t want to disappoint my family. I tried because I was embarrassed. I tried because I didn’t want to get into more trouble. Every one of those reasons made sense. None of them were enough. The truth is, you can have the best spouse in the world, the greatest kids, the most supportive parents, or the best friend