Soulshine

Roxy Music- Love Is the Drug For those of us who grew up in an alcoholic household, it’s been easy to confuse love with lust. After all, many of us as children never experienced true love as we were growing up. When our teen years hit, and our hormones kicked-in, it was easy for us to think that lust was love. So lust became “Love” to many of us. It was all too easy then to “fall in love (lust)” with anyone who threw crumbs of attention our way. First, we confused “attention” with “love attraction.” We mistakenly thought that anyone who showed an interest in us was actually in love with us, when in fact, they were just being friendly. And we easily confused sex with intimacy. Sex is a form of intimacy, but only when Love is actually the true motivation for sex. I remember attending a CODA meeting once where a lady admitted that she had confused lust/neediness with love/intimacy for years. Love (actually lust) became her drug of choice. She mistakenly thought that if a man wa...

I don’t know about “magical,” but there’s definitely something mystical that happens when we work Steps 1-3 of the 12 Steps. For one, these steps teach us that there’s a big difference between control and power. Most of us ended up, as the result of our addictive personalities, wanting desperately to control life, especially the people around us. This was certainly true for me. When I first learned Step One, “We admitted we were powerless over others and our lives have become unmanageable,” I felt a great weight lifted off of my shoulders. It taught me that I’m not God. I can’t be my own Higher Power, and I am not responsible for fixing everyone else’s lives, or saving the world.  It was a huge eye-opening experience. I realized I didn’t have any authority over anyone else’s life, and that I had no right to try and control (or manipulate) them to ensure my own happiness, or to fulfill my need to be needed. Step 2, “We admitted that there is a power greater than we ...