Front Porch Thoughts

It took me a long time to understand that addiction is a disease of the family system. While there is the family member identified as the addict, the lives of all the members in a family system are impacted by substance...

August 31. A key date in the recovery community as it marks International Overdose Awareness Day.  Let’s be honest. It’s a date we all want to eradicate as necessary to be set aside on our calendar.  But for far, far...

The worry for the well- being of family members caught in the midst of an addiction crisis can trap you like an insect in a spider’s web.  This worry is not confined to the person identified as the addict . Substance...

The power of one. It is really easy to lose sight of that awesome power in our daily lives with the pandemic and the totality of its global fallout raging around us. But over these (way too long) months since March,...

I celebrated 30 years of recovery earlier this week at a 12-Step fellowship meeting.   That’s 10,976 days — one-day-at-a-time.   When I first began to attend those fellowship meetings, I never dreamed I would someday be what they call an...

During the years my son was in a heartbreaking addiction free fall, nights were my enemy. Particularly the middle of the night.  For years it felt as if I set an alarm for 2 am. I would wake up...

When my son was struggling in active addiction it was pretty easy to see what his part of the problem was.  The chaos and self- destruction resulting from his alcohol and drug abuse was front and center in our...

Encouragement. I was desperate for it when we were struggling in the family system disease of substance use disorder. And it was in very short supply. Addiction – which impacts every member of a family – can wear you...

Father’s Day can be an excruciating 24 hours for families struggling with the systems illness of addiction. There are so many perfect Hallmark card expectations of how family relationships are supposed to be. All together painful. Before our son, JP,...