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Addiction and Recovery

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Queen of Hearts

Rule #20: Never bring a book to work. It makes the customers think you’re better than them. It doesn’t matter what you’re reading. It doesn’t matter if you’ve finished cleaning all the glasses and it’s a quiet Monday afternoon — leave the book at home. You’ll know this when your father comes behind the bar looking pissed and tells you to come into his office.

By Kathleen Hawes January 2018
Poetry

A Bright-Yellow-And-Black Bird

Right now there is a bright-yellow-and-black bird — / whose name I used to know / before I started taking this pill / called Lexapro

By Sybil Smith July 2017
The Sun Interview

Hooked

Maia Szalavitz Debunks Myths About Addiction

As I said, maintenance treatment cuts the death rate for opioid addiction in half, which is better than any other method that’s been studied. If you went to a cancer center and weren’t even offered the treatment that reduced your risk of death the most, you would have grounds for a malpractice case. Yet most residential addiction-treatment centers do not offer maintenance treatment and, in fact, oppose it, saying it’s not “real” recovery.

By Arnie Cooper June 2017
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Peanut

The goat became my charge during my third week in rehab. My counselor, Victoria, suggested I browse the stuffed-animal collection at the clinic gift shop and select one to represent my inner child. “Care for it,” she told me. “Keep it safe. Treat your inner child as you would a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest.” She cupped her hands, as if to cradle a tiny chick.

By Brooke Ferguson June 2017
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Missed Call

It’s 7 AM, and I’ve finally come back to my car. I force myself to check my phone and assess the damage: four missed calls — three from Rebecca, my girlfriend, and one from my father. I’m parked at a Pavilions grocery store on Melrose in Hollywood, a few blocks from the gay bathhouse where I’ve been since yesterday evening.

By Robert Bitsko June 2017
Fiction

Recovery

Jeff is getting ready to start the meeting, pretending since I walked in that he hasn’t seen me. I don’t blame him for that, but I feel like telling everyone that most of the shit they spout in these places isn’t true. If it were, Jeff wouldn’t be ducking me; he’d be taking me on in front of everyone and forcing the Truth. Where’s your Fearless and Searching Moral Inventory, Jeff?

By Jessica Halliday June 2017
Poetry

Not So Easy, Saving Sentient Beings

When I drank, many people / tried to get me to quit. / When I drank, I drank the way / this cardinal is smashing into / our living-room window again / and again

By Lisa Bellamy June 2017
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Steps One Through Four

While my father was stationed in Germany and dating my mother, he wrote her a letter saying, “Someday I’d like to have twins with blond hair and blue eyes.” Twenty-seven years later, here I am, one of his identical blond-haired, blue-eyed twin girls.

By Megan Denton Ray April 2017
Poetry

Sobriety

Say there’s a game: You’re walking by yourself on a / dirt road through a forest at sundown, and all you / have to do is keep walking. Nothing to it.

By David Rutschman November 2016
Fiction

You Really Have To Stop The Killing

“Look, I’m not trying to be the ‘administrator’ here,” he says. He tells me that a student of mine has complained. This student felt uncomfortable with last week’s homework assignment: Attend a stranger’s funeral.

By Johannes Lichtman August 2015