Recovery Road

In this time of coronavirus, many of us are spending hours each day looking at screens. In Cyber Junkie: Escape the Gaming and Internet Trap, Kevin Roberts describes the need to carefully navigate this landscape while staying rooted in the realities of supportive relationships and healthy boundaries.

When it feels like we're trapped and all we want to do is escape, how do we do that without turning to our addictions? Look to Jodie Gould's High: Six Principles for Guilt-Free Pleasure and Escape for how to use art to find pleasure.

The pandemic has brought with it new ways for the recovery community to connect, but what stays the same is the value of a sponsor, a mentor, a guide. In Undrunk: A Skeptic's Guide to AA, learn about how to find a sponsor in your own recovery.

These are times when it's easy to react negatively to those around us, whether it's in anger, fear, embarrassment, or some other emotion that was pulled to the surface by the people we're with. Melody Beattie in Codependent No More helps us learn how to detach, so we can react in a more healthy way.

As we are staying home during the pandemic, we can use the time to explore the concept of our boundaries and how we take care of ourselves while in recovery. In Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin, Anne Katherine explains why boundaries are important and leads us through a couple exploratory exercises.

Living in a time of pandemic-related isolation and uncertainty invites us to care for ourselves and others in new ways. In his book, Three Simple Rules: Uncomplicating Life in Recovery, author Michael Graubart makes the case that truly enjoyable, fruitful, spiritual, meaningful, and sober lives come from living by three simple rules: Trust God. Clean house. Help others.

What is the role of acceptance during the coronavirus pandemic? Where is serenity when we need it most? In this excerpt from his book, 12 Stupid Things That Mess Up Recovery, Dr. Allen Berger gently but firmly roots us in the reality that life is hard and always will be.

In this era of coronavirus, it's helpful to revisit three essentials in the anti-anxiety toolbox. In Almost Anxious: Is My (or My Loved One's) Worry or Distress a Problem?, Dr. Luana Marques reminds us how good sleep, healthy food, and regular exercise will help us maintain mental health, even in uncertain times.

In some of us, the neurochemicals associated with negative emotions trip the reward centers of our brains and we become addicted to unhappiness. In his book, A Gentle Path Through the Twelve Principles: Living the Values Behind the Steps, Dr. Patrick Carnes offers four strategies for rewiring our emotional pathways and reclaiming the functions of a healthy brain.

Beverly Conyers, Find Your Light: Practicing Mindfulness to Recover from Anything, puts suffering into perspective and reaches into philosophical and religious teachings to be able to reframe it for us. It's not a glib "suffering makes you a better person!" type dismissal, but it's more of a reminder that we, as people in recovery, have learned the most important lessons because of our suffering.