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The Addict Who Still Suffers

 Brothers and Sisters in Recovery 🙏 Yesterday was sobering — no pun intended. I learned that my very good friend’s stepbrother passed away from an overdose. It hit hard. Real hard. Because every one of us knows the truth deep down… this disease does not play fair. Addiction does not care about age, family, intelligence, kindness, or potential. It steals sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, and friends. It leaves empty chairs at dinner tables and broken hearts that never fully heal. And the hardest part? Most of us know that person could have been us. Some of us have overdosed and somehow made it back. Some of us woke up in hospital beds. Some of us were brought back with Narcan. Some of us buried friends we laughed with just weeks before. We’ve watched addiction turn beautiful souls into statistics. That reality should shake every recovering addict to the core. But here’s what I also know: recovery gives us a responsibility. We are not just staying clean for ourselves anymore. We ar...
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Using Dreams Don't Define Us

 Brothers and Sisters in Recovery 🙏


Using dreams really suck. Last night was one of those nights. You know the kind — the dream feels so real that when you wake up, your heart is pounding and for a few seconds you honestly believe you threw everything away. In the dream you can smell it, taste it, feel the guilt, the panic, the disappointment. Then you wake up soaked in sweat, confused, and carrying shame over something that never even happened.


Those dreams can shake us up bad. They can leave us questioning ourselves and wondering where they came from. But here’s the truth — using dreams are not a sign that we want to go back. Most of the time they’re proof of just how deeply addiction affected our lives. Our minds are still healing. Years of chaos don’t disappear overnight just because we put the drugs down. Recovery is not only physical, it’s emotional, spiritual, and mental too.


A using dream can actually remind us how grateful we are to wake up clean today. In active addiction, waking up sick, desperate, broke, ashamed, and spiritually empty was normal. Today we wake up with a choice. We wake up with people who care about us. We wake up with another chance to do better than yesterday.


Don’t let a dream convince you that you failed. You didn’t relapse because your subconscious pulled an old memory out of storage. What matters is what you do after you wake up. Pray. Call somebody. Talk about it. Get honest. Stay connected. Isolation is where addiction does push-ups waiting for us to get weak.


Sometimes recovery feels like rebuilding a house after a tornado with a hammer and one nail at a time. It’s exhausting. But every clean day matters. Every meeting matters. Every phone call matters. Every time you choose not to give up, you are breaking chains that once controlled your entire life.


To the person struggling today: hold on. Your worst day clean is still better than your best day using. We do recover. Keep coming back. One day at a time. Progress, not perfection. Easy does it, but do it. Stay in the middle of the herd. This too shall pass.


With love and gratitude,

Gary G

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