Recovery Road

Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself is a modern classic, packed with personal reflections and exercises. In this excerpt, Beattie explains why some of us are prone to react in unhealthy ways, and offers eight insights to help us reframe how we feel and rethink how we choose to respond to others.

For decades, the book A Program for You: A Guide to the Big Book's Design for Living has helped millions of people understand the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and apply the Twelve Steps to their lives. In this excerpt, we learn about different ways that resentments can appear in our lives and how they can present a roadblock to our recovery.

Anne Katherine, in her book Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin, explains the need for boundaries and how they can affect various aspects of our lives. This excerpt emphasizes the importance of communication in all of our relationships.

In Drop the Rock: Removing Our Character Defects, Bill P., Todd W., and Sara S. discuss the principles behind the Sixth and Seventh Steps, not only for understanding but also for action - so we can transform our lives and our relationships in recovery. In this excerpt, we examine Step Seven: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."

In his book Passages Through Recovery: An Action Plan for Preventing Relapse, Terence T. Gorski explains the recovery process through six stages - transitioning from active addiction to sobriety. This excerpt describes the importance of conscious growth in our lives. It also compares two very different ways of coping with "stuck points" in recovery - approaches to problem-solving that lead to very different results.

In her book An Invitation to Self-Care: Why Learning to Nurture Yourself Is the Key to the Life You've Always Wanted, Tracey Cleantis explores how to improve self-care in many areas of life by applying seven key principles. In this excerpt, we learn ways we can incorporate self-care into our daily routines at work.

In his book First-Year Sobriety: When All That Changes Is Everything, Guy Kettelhack discusses the milestones and obstacles that are common in the first year of recovery. This excerpt explores the anxiety we may have around celebrations.

Step Up: Unpacking Steps One, Two, and Three with Someone Who's Been There by Michael Graubart is a practical guide for people who wish to find or deepen their recovery through the Twelve Step program and who are working on the first three Steps. In this excerpt, we examine Step One and what the word "unmanageable" means during active addiction.

It's tempting to think that the Twelve Steps are the on-ramp to a life of recovery - the things we have to do to get onto the easy road of contented sobriety. In this excerpt from the revised edition of his classic book A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps, Dr. Patrick Carnes explains the significance of Step Ten - that the Steps are actually a pattern for life. They offer an ongoing set of practices and habits of heart and mind that we return to daily.

In his book Twelve Step Sponsorship: How It Works, author and sponsor Hamilton B. writes for both sponsors and sponsees about this important part of the program. In this excerpt, he explores the practice of face-to-face relationship repair that is at the heart of the Ninth Step.