Author: Steve Barnard

and my not-so-clever portmanteau… Our thoughts and feelings come and go and are situationally dependent; we have little control over them in the moment. That said, they tend to stabilize into a more enduring mental and emotional state we call disposition or attitude, and it’s easy to allow a frequented attitude to become our default […]

What is the Key to an Extraordinary Life? If you’re a 12-Stepper you know we have a Program and ‘it works if we work it’, we have the Steps and we’re encouraged to ‘work the steps with a Sponsor’, we have Meetings and we’re encouraged to ‘don’t use and go to meetings’, we have a […]

Discover Your One Word to Ensure Your Legacy Have you considered there may be one word that 1) describes you at your most basic level, 2) acts as a lens through which your most important decisions are made, and 3) is the one thing for which you’re most remembered – your one-word epitaph? There is […]

The Basic Brain Science of Addiction & Recovery We have two fundamental functions in our brains – not the left-brain/right-brain distinction that contrasts analytical vs. creative expression, rather the function that deals with emotions (and feelings, memory, attention, learning, and behavioral regulation), and the function that deals with reason (and logic, facts, values, goals, critical […]

Part-1 of: America’s “other” Epidemic Much has been written about America’s opioid epidemic – from the runaway greed of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family misrepresenting Oxycontin’s highly-addictive potential[i], to the mounting annual death toll from drug overdoses directly attributed to opioid dependency[ii], to the move to synthetics and other opioid-based drugs (e.g., heroin, fentanyl) […]

Self-directed Wellbeing begins with a declaration,or it doesn’t begin at all! Self-directed wellbeing is defined as the capacity, resources and skills necessary to manage all areas of one’s life without significant assistance from another person, institution, or agency. To avoid any misunderstanding, there’s a similar-sounding movement called Mental Health Self-direction that focuses on helping people […]

A Finance-based Metaphor for Recovery An interesting way to look at recovery is through the eyes of our finances. When I came into the program, I was not only broke, but I was also seriously in debt with no hope of ever finding a way out of the deep hole I’d dug. I’d become accustomed […]

Why porn addiction, like drug &alcohol addiction, is a brain disease. I recently joined Reddit to participate in the numerous communities related to addiction and recovery. My first impression was, gosh, there are sooooo many people suffering either from addiction disorders or as family and friends of someone who is. My second impression was, holy […]

To discover the right answer, one must first ask the right question. I recently watched a Ted Talk where the infamous investigative journalist Johann Hari shared his research into drug and alcohol addiction, along with his own personal history of substance use and his journey to recovery. The Ted Talk, titled “Everything you think you […]

Winning the War on the Inside. I once heard a story told by a Native American Indian at a 12-step meeting. I was moved by the story for its stark resonance with how I’ve felt my entire life – that there’s a great and terrible battle raging inside of me, and I’m not always on […]