Here’s what I consider to be a super helpful way to start getting back on your feet, in case you do relapse on your drug — whether that relapse happens after three years of sobriety, three decades, or three days.

Repeat after me: “It’s okay. I’m okay. And I have faith that my recovery is going to be okay.”

Yet I know that affirming yourself with Unconditional Love might seem impossible after a relapse. For those of us who need and want sobriety more than anything in the world, it’s devastating to let ourselves down, and to disappoint those who are counting on us to stay sober, too. That’s why using your drug again after a period of sobriety, regardless of how long you’ve been sober, tends to trigger an emotional reflex of intense shame and regret.

I understand that self-flagellation might seem like the only logical response to the gut punch that is relapse. After all, you don’t want to let yourself off the hook. Beating yourself up is meant to be a self-inflicted consequence to ensure you don’t do it again. In theory, I suppose this makes sense. In practice, however, shaming yourself is no way to facilitate positive change. So I’m still going to urge you to act as if you believe in Unconditional Love, even if you don’t intellectually buy it, just yet.

Repeat after me: "It’s okay. I’m okay. And I have faith that my recovery is going to be okay.”

Excerpt From The Addict’s Guide to Recovery by Emily Sussman Illustrated by J.E. Larson

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Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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Okay, I’m about to give you the sagest relapse prevention advice you don’t have to spend $10,000 on professional addiction treatment to hear:

The craving will pass, whether you act on it or not.

I’m not sure where I first heard that bit of wisdom. It might have come from my own addiction therapist. Every time I’ve repeated it to my clients, they’ve come back and reported how shockingly true, and shockingly helpful, it turned out to be. How repeating it over and over to themselves gave them the faith they needed to not use their drug.

Because the thing about being in the midst of a craving for your drug is that it feels intolerably interminable. You feel like you might combust if you don’t get it, or worse, like you’ll be stuck in some intensely itchy craving purgatory — forever. So to hear a voice of reason telling you, fear not, dear child, this too shall pass! is often just what you need. It can be the saving grace that allows you to stick out that craving for five more minutes, or even five more hours, until it abates.

The craving will pass, whether you act on it or not is reassuring in a way that another popular get-through-the-craving expression, you can always use tomorrow, doesn’t quite pull off. Let’s face it, a lot of us would jump at the chance to use tomorrow, and we’d spend the rest of today in obsessive anticipation. That’s the kind of promise an addict simply doesn’t forget!

Even when you’re willing to take the leap of faith of actually believing that the craving will pass, whether you act on it or not, it still begs one critical question. What in the hell are you supposed to do until the craving DOES pass?

SOBER breathing is a relapse prevention exercise I learned about back when I was a rookie addiction therapist, trying to help people on probation stop smoking weed so they could pass their drug tests. “SOBER” is an acronym that can help you remember the five parts of the exercise.

STOP

OBSERVE

BREATHE

EXPAND

RESPOND

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Recovery is a process.

Recovery is a process.

Recovery is a process.

That’s right; recovery is a process, not an event. Learning to love yourself and the life you’re living is a muscle you’ll develop with practice. I say “practice,” because recovery is something you’ll have to “get up and decide to do every day until it becomes second nature. (Er, make that your true nature.) That’s as opposed to a one-and-done, POOFf! type of transformation — as many people erroneously suppose a three-month stay at an inpatient rehab will be.

Practicing a program of recovery on a daily basis is what will enable you to forge a path of positive growth, even in the midst of life¡¯s inevitable pain, problems, and setbacks — which potentially includes relapse.

Likewise, recovery isn’t about gritting your teeth and white-knuckling life without your drug. It’s about cultivating the good stuff: a sense of peace, freedom, and happiness within you.

That’s why recovery isn’t just about staying sober; it’s about making your life meaningful. Love is what gives life meaning and purpose. And in the day-to-day, love is also what makes Your True Self powerful and resilient.

My dear Addict friends, I’m willing to bet that your biggest challenge in recovery isn’t going to be staying sober. Your biggest challenge will be learning to love Your True Self.

❤️‍🩹

Excerpt from THE ADDICT'S GUIDE TO RECOVERY, by Emily Sussman. Available at online booksellers in paperback and eBook, and right here on this channel in a video series/playlist. 📼

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My dear Addict friends, the road of recovery is paved with a deluge of daily decisions:

Should I make my bed?

Should I go to that work party?

Should I take the long way home so I don’t have to pass the liquor store?

Of course, life presents you with all the same choices, whether you’re in recovery or not. But there’s one critical difference that makes all the difference. When Your Addict is the one doing the deciding, you aren’t making any decisions at all.

See, every time you deflect the problem, or minimize your drug’s impact on you, or engage in a futile bid for control over your drug, Your Addict claps its hands together in delight, because that means you’re looking the other way. Like a sugar-crazed kid with a distracted mom, it gets to reach its grubby little hand into the cookie jar just that much deeper, and for that much longer.

Thank God your head is no longer stuck in the sandbox of denial! Now you understand that your biggest problem is Your Addict, and that the way you allow its power over you to expand is by feeding it your drug.

As interminably powerless as you may be over your drug, though, the good news is that you don’t have to let Your Addict do your deciding for you any longer. Your biggest step toward taking back your power will be the day you decide to stop feeding Your Addict, in an UNEQUIVOCAL MASS STARVATION.

I’m talking about the day that marks your massive decision to make just one decision: the decision to be sober from your drug, right now.

Though I hope you will come to celebrate that day as your sobriety birthday, I want to point out that the decision to initiate the unequivocal mass starvation of Your Addict is not of the one-and-done variety. Especially in the first year or two of recovery, sobriety has to be a decision you make one day at a time. It’s simply too overwhelming, too confounding, and too terrifying, otherwise.

Sometimes, sobriety has to be a minute-by-minute, or even a second-by-second, decision.

In that sense, your decision to be sober isn’t one single decision at all, but a series of many successive decisions that will amount to building up Your True Self’s power, and diminishing Your Addict’s.

But I don’t want to overwhelm you, because the only decision you have to be concerned with right now concerns the right now.

What’s that you’re saying, my dear Addict friend? That you’re not ready to make the decision to be sober, right now? If that’s the case, then I thank you for your honesty. Feeling afraid to live without your drug is completely normal. We’re addicts, after all. Being emotionally, physically, and psychologically dependent on our drug is what we do!

I can assure you, though, that being honest about where you are, wherever you are, is the first step toward actually getting sober — next to admitting powerlessness, which is also an act of brutal honesty. So if you don’t feel ready to be sober, you can still start facing your fears by being honest about them with the kind of people who get it.

Just don’t kid yourself that fear isn’t the issue. Don’t delude yourself that you have good reasons for choosing to wait until your birthday to get sober. Or until the day after the Fourth of July. Or until New Year’s Day, that ol’ “I’m gonna be sober this year, I swear!” standby.

Picking a date well into the future can only mean one thing: that fear is plunking you back down in the sandbox of denial, which is exactly where Your Addict wants you.

So screw the idea of picking a sobriety date. Start with right now.

❤️

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

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"Sobriety is the most fundamental level of honesty for a recovering addict. Call it self-honesty, if you will. That’s because sobriety means existing with your unaltered truth, without your drug to hide you from yourself. Sobriety is about being yourself, in the most literal sense of the term.

At least initially, though, sobriety also means tolerating the noisy presence of Your Addict. Determined not to go down without a fight, it will rebel furiously against this honesty by trying to get you to go back to your drug. Even as Your Addict slings a barrage of intolerable feelings at you, along with a thousand and one tantalizing thoughts about using your drug, you must not revert to covering up those thoughts and feelings by actually using your drug.

I will warn you that in your first days, weeks, and months of sobriety, those thoughts and feelings might seem unbearable. They might make you feel like you want to crawl out of your own skin. This is not your cue to repress those feelings by running back to your drug, however. Doing so would cause Your Addict to rub its claws together in delight, salivating over how well its excrement-slinging campaign worked to feed its greedy appetite.

'Welcome back to the darkness!' Your Addict would crow. 'Now let’s eat! Shall I seat you right down this dark little alley, at your usual shit-smeared table for one?'

No, those unbearable feelings are your cue to release those unbearable feelings by being honest about them. Rather than running for dark cover, you must turn those feelings over to the light by connecting to the people who will give you a boost of powerful Unconditional Love in return — instead of using your drug, which comes laced with crippling shame and a bottomless need for more.

The people you most need to be honest with about those feelings are the strangers I talked about earlier: your fellow recovering addicts. Otherwise known as the people uniquely capable of giving you the Unconditional Love you need right now to stay sober and learn to love Your True Self. Your fellow recovering addicts will be accepting of what you reveal when you shine the light of honesty on all your ugly, unbearable thoughts and feelings. After all, they’ve experienced those themselves. They will also express hope for Your True Self in a way that no non-recovering, non-addict could.

I have a feeling you may already know where to find these recovering addicts, but in case you don’t, I’ll clue you in.

I’ll start with the free, community-based Twelve Step fellowships that meet every day, both in person and online, every hour, and in every time zone, all over the world. The granddaddy of those is Alcoholics Anonymous, which was founded back in the 1930s by a couple of recovering alcoholics who found they could successfully stay sober by providing support to each other. They recognized that this mutual support was a power greater than their own individual resources of willpower, which had always proved inadequate when it came to sobriety."

Excerpt From The Addict’s Guide to Recovery by Emily Sussman, LCSW

❤️

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

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THE ADDICT'S GUIDE TO RECOVERY, written by Emily Sussman, LCSW, Illustrated by J.E. Larson. Copyright 2023: Freedom Recovery Press. All rights reserved.

Illustration credits (all by J.E. Larson) are as follows:

Section One: Your Addict vs. Your True Self

"The Acting C.E.O. of Your Life"

Chapter One: A Few Words About the A-Word

"Under Glass"

"That Beast, Your Addict!"

Chapter Two: In My Book, a Drug Is a Drug Is a Drug

"Poison Control"

Chapter Three: Your Addict Isn't Who You Are

"Mirror Image"

"Growth of Your Addict"

Chapter Four: Your True Self... It's in There!

"Crying Out to Be Heard"

Chapter Five: Recovery Is Learning How to Love

"Learning to Love Yourself"

Chapter Six: Love Is What You Need

"Through the Haze"

Section Two: Sobriety

"Starving the Beast"

Chapter Seven: Admitting Powerlessness

"Tied Up in Chains"

Chapter Eight: Sobriety Is a Process

"Right on Your Heels"

Chapter Nine: Willpower and Control

"Going Head to Head With Your Addict"

"Feeding Your Addict Like a King"

Chapter Ten: Honest Connection Is the Best Protection

"Blocking the Voices"

Chapter Eleven: Deciding to Be Sober... Right Now

"Take the Long Way Home"

"Hungee Addict"

Chapter Twelve: The Craving Will Pass

"Waiting Out the Fear"

Chapter Thirteen: Rebounding From Relapse

"Assistance Needed"

Section Three: Getting With the Program

"Steady Now"

Chapter Fourteen: The Gift of Desperation

"Restless, Irritable, Discontent"

Chapter Fifteen: Get Yourself an Honesty Coach

"Open Up"

"Down in the Basement of Shame"

Chapter Sixteen: The Security of Structure

"Busting Out"

Chapter Seventeen: Meetings; Misery, Medicine, Magic

"Into the Light"

Chapter Eighteen: Finding Your Home

"Home at Last"

Chapter Nineteen: To Believe or Not to Believe

"I Believe That You Believe"

Chapter Twenty: Good Orderly Direction

"A Leader at Last"

"Unconditional Love Big Reveal"

Preview: The Addict's Guide to Love

"Through the Haze"

❤️‍🩹

All illustrations by J.E. Larson

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "WILLPOWER AND CONTROL," which is Chapter Nine of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson.

❤️‍🩹

"There are plenty of sober addicts out there who aren’t in recovery. Many of them are just gritting their teeth instead of using their drug. They may be so ashamed of having an addiction that their hearts and minds are closed to asking for help from other recovering addicts — the people uniquely capable of helping them learn how to love.

These are people who shun the idea of recovery meetings, and perhaps professional therapy as well. They regard their independence and self-sufficiency as a badge of honor.

In my experience, such people are generally miserable in sobriety. They live every day peering into the dark void left behind by their drug, but are afraid to look beyond themselves and venture into the unknown to fill it. They tell themselves that all they need to stay sober is their own willpower. These people are closed circuits, relying only on themselves to "be strong!" and stay away from their drug.

But what a life that would be! Picture a boxing ring in which Your Addict and your own unsteady willpower are going head-to-head indefinitely, with nothing and no one to help back you up. No relief, no comfort, no sense of security. At worst, that fight would be utterly unsustainable, and you’d wind up flat on the mat while Your Addict did a victory dance around your lifeless body. At best, that fight would be exhausting and demoralizing — day in and day out.

Because even if your willpower could stave off your drug for a while, the tragedy of relying on willpower alone is that you would be spending your days and nights fighting Your Addict, instead of loving Your True Self.

It doesn’t have to be that way."

❤️

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "ADMITTING POWERLESSNESS," which is Chapter Seven of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson.

❤️‍🩹

"Admitting powerlessness over your drug doesn’t make you a weak person. It doesn’t make you a failure, either. It doesn’t mean you will never have fun again. And it doesn’t mean you will lose your power to comfort yourself in the face of difficult feelings.

Admitting powerlessness is simply one of the first steps you’ll have to take to start walking the road of recovery. This is the road that grants you the power to break every limitation you’ve ever put upon yourself, or that others have put upon you. This is the road that grants you the power to overcome the fears and untangle the lies that have prevented you from living a peaceful, free, and happy life as Your True Self.

Unlike the collaborative, cooperative, and interdependent nature of nearly everything else you’ll do in recovery, though, admitting powerlessness is a step you’ll have to take on your own. I mean that in the sense that the truth of it has to come from you, and you alone. Ultimately, I can’t tell anyone else that they’re powerless, and have it mean anything constructive.

That’s why I’m here to hold your hand, my dear Addict friends, as I gently guide you along the road of truth. The road of truth is the road of love, which is the only real security, and the only real release, from powerlessness. And I don’t just mean powerlessness over your drug. I mean powerlessness over your feelings, your thoughts, your behavior, and the direction of your life itself.

Speaking of truth, I’d like to reiterate that admitting powerlessness over your drug is not a moral failing. It has nothing to do with the strength of your character, or of your inherent deficiency as a person. Neither is it an indication of how uncool you are, because you can’t control your drug the way other people seem to be able to. Powerlessness over your drug just is.

Researchers have pointed to a whole host of factors that contribute to addiction, trying to answer the question of why some people progressively lose control over a certain drug or behavior, and others don’t. Some research points to genetics, or to social conditioning, or to trauma, or to personality. Some research points to a combination of them all.

The WHY? question may be an interesting one, but it’s only slightly more helpful to your recovery than“rying to answer the shame and blame-laced question of why me? Do you need to know how electricity works in order to flip on a light switch? Do you need to understand the laws of physics to restrain yourself from jumping off a building?

Besides, there will be plenty of time to dig into the roots of your addictive personality — i.e., Your Addict — once you’re sober. We can’t put the cart before the horse. It’s only when you take away your drug, whose function was to numb or transform you, that you’ll have access to the feelings and facts that will help you make sense of how your emotional and behavioral patterns came to be.

Right now, asking WHY? won’t move you forward, nor will raging against the injustice of your condition. Accepting the truth about your powerlessness will.

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "SOBRIETY IS A PROCESS," which is Chapter Eight of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson.

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“I don’t believe that anyone should be shamed or coerced into adhering to a standard of sobriety that they aren’t ready for, or that doesn’t make sense to them. If complete sobriety from all substances is what you authentically need and want, that’s terrific. If not, then it’s critical to begin your recovery by exploring your willingness to get sober from the drug(s) you are clearly powerless over — the source of your out-of-control behavior, declining health, and emotional distress.

I recognize that there are plenty of people in the world of recovery (which includes both recovering addicts and the professionals who treat them) who believe that an addict is an addict is an addict, and that any addict who wants to recover needs to abstain from every potentially addictive substance, lest he or she risk becoming addicted to whatever could fill the void left behind by their drug of choice. To them, sobriety means no more alcohol or potentially addictive drugs — forever. (One day at a time, of course.)

I once saw a documentary about marijuana addiction where one of the addicts interviewed said, “If you put me on the moon without any weed around, I’d be smoking moon rocks in no time.” A good number of us addicts are simply wired that way. If there’s an accessible emergency exit that allows us to escape ourselves, we’ll head that way instinctively, no matter how well things are going otherwise.

I have a problem, though, when the total-sobriety people start condemning other recovering addicts who aren’t doing the same. Because shaming and peer pressure are such effective motivators for positive change… not!

Besides, what I’ve observed is that even such an unequivocal approach to sobriety isn’t a hard and fast solution guaranteeing peace, freedom, and happiness. What if a recovering alcoholic is successful at abstaining from all addictive drugs, but he obsessively pursues a series of intense, short-term relationships — the inevitable failure of which sends him into frequent spirals of despair and self-loathing? Such a person wouldn’t be able to reap the benefits of recovery, as long as he’s engaging in such self-destructive behavior.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen many recovering addicts suffer when they turn a blind eye to the impact of their dubious extracurricular activities, whether that’s compulsive sex, gambling, anger, cigarette smoking, binge eating, video gaming, or workaholism. It can be all too easy to fall into denial about the damage Your Addict continues to inflict, as long as you’re busy patting yourself on the back from a lofty tower of chemical sobriety.

Conversely, I’ve worked with recovering alcoholics who use cannabis edibles before bed without any symptoms of abusing them. I’ve worked with recovering sex addicts who have a glass of wine with dinner, but don’t think twice about alcohol otherwise. I’ve worked with recovering drug addicts who can put bets on the Super Bowl, or buy the occasional scratch-off ticket, and not get sucked into a gambling addiction.

Who am I to tell these people that they’re doing recovery wrong, if they’re not experiencing any emotional or behavioral distress as a result of those behaviors? Not that it would matter, even if I did raise an eyebrow. Growth is best facilitated when we can recognize and accept the truth about ourselves — not when other people try to tell us who we are, or what we need to do.

That said, it’s entirely possible that behaviors that have historically been non-problematic for you may become problematic. Hence, the trial and error aspect of many recovering addicts’ sobriety.

Please take heart, though, that falling into another form of addictive behavior doesn’t have to spell disaster, or be an ominous indication of your future in recovery. Instead, I would urge you to regard any slips back into powerlessness as critical information about what doesn’t work for you anymore.

The most important thing is your capacity to admit that there’s a problem, followed by your willingness to address it. Both of those skills will come with time, as you scale the learning curve of honesty and self-reflection that are integral to recovery.

❤️

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "LOVE IS WHAT YOU NEED," which is Chapter Six of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson.

❤️‍🩹

"Before I discuss the divine and miraculous solution that’s given me the power to free My True Self from the chains of My Addict, I would like to make one request: that you close your eyes for a moment, and visualize your mind as an open door. No locks, no fences, no complicated security codes. Now, leave that door open for the duration of this book, if you will. Even just a crack, if that’s all you can manage. Thank you.

Here goes: what keeps me sober, what keeps me healthy, and what keeps me happy today is love. Not watching YouTube videos about love. Not listening to podcasts about love. Not reading about love. Not meditating on it, or taking master classes on it, or even sitting around talking about it. What’s worked is actually going out and practicing love — with other people, yes, but with myself, unconditionally.

I can assure you that before I began walking the road of recovery, I didn’t know the first thing about love. But I’ve learned — and I’m still learning. How to accept that I need love. How to ask for love. How to give love. How to receive love. How to appreciate love. How to show myself love. How wonderful real love feels. And above all, how to practice love in my day-to-day life.

You can learn too, my dear Addict friends. That means that you, too, can live a peaceful, free, and happy life, safe from the soul-sucking, shame-inducing clutches of Your Addict. I have all the faith in the world about that."

❤️

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "RECOVERY IS LEARNING HOW TO LOVE" which is Chapter Five of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson.

❤️‍🩹

“Your liberation from Your Addict is a process that comes in two parts. The first part consists of starving and diminishing Your Addict by refusing to feed it your drug. That’s called sobriety. The other part of the solution is filling the void inside you. The void Your Addict always promised you could fill with your drug — that liar!

Instead of using your drug, you will fill that void with the best possible growing conditions for Your True Self to take root and flourish: love. That’s the process called recovery. Recovery means learning how to love and take care of Your True Self — and, by extension, learning to love other people, as well as the world around you.

Did you catch the word “process” in there, or should I say it a few more times for emphasis?

Recovery is a process.

Recovery is a process.

Recovery is a process.

That’s right; recovery is a process, not an event. Learning to love yourself and the life you’re living is a muscle you’ll develop with practice. I say “practice,” because recovery is something you’ll have to get up and decide to do every day until it becomes second nature. (Er, make that your true nature.) That’s as opposed to a one-and-done, poof! type of transformation — as many people erroneously suppose a three-month stay at an inpatient rehab will be.

Practicing a program of recovery on a daily basis is what will enable you to forge a path of positive growth, even in the midst of life¡¯s inevitable pain, problems, and setbacks — which potentially includes relapse.

Likewise, recovery isn’t about gritting your teeth and white-knuckling life without your drug. It’s about cultivating the good stuff: a sense of peace, freedom, and happiness within you. That’s why recovery isn’t just about staying sober; it’s about making your life meaningful. Love is what gives life meaning and purpose. And in the day to day, love is also what makes Your True Self powerful and resilient.

My dear Addict friends, I’m willing to bet that your biggest challenge in recovery isn’t going to be staying sober. Your biggest challenge will be learning to love Your True Self.

❤️

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "YOUR TRUE SELF... IT'S IN THERE!" which is Chapter Four of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson.

❤️‍🩹

"My dear Addict friends, Your True Self is the golden egg nestled deep within you, sparkling and precious. Your True Self contains the best of you, and all your potential. It consists of all the love and light you can bring to your own and others’ lives, and all the strengths and capabilities you can offer the world.

I don’t care if you’ve never experienced or acknowledged the beauty of Your True Self. It’s there, a brilliant thing that’s designed to create, contribute, and connect.

Your True Self understands that reaching out to others and having great relationships bring joy and meaning to life. Your True Self wants so much to swim free and strong in the stream of humanity. It wants to grow. It wants to bloom.

Which is another way of saying: Your True Self wants to LOVE.”

❤️

THE ADDICT'S GUIDE TO RECOVERY by Emily Sussman, LCSW, is available on Amazon in paperback and eBook (Kindle).

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press.

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "YOUR ADDICT ISN'T WHO YOU ARE," which is Chapter Three of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW; illustrated by J.E. Larson. ❤️‍🩹

"Personally, I think of My Addict as a toxic ex-boyfriend I’ve got to stay the hell away from. When life gets dull or difficult, it’s tempting to think back wistfully on the good times we shared: the excitement, the pleasure, and the escape from reality.

But whenever the thought of my toxic ex starts to seem all sexy and romantic again, I have to remind myself of all the pain he caused me. How he was never okay with me just being myself. How he always wanted me to be someone with no feelings, no needs, and no control over the direction of our relationship. How we went around and around in cycles of codependent craziness, coming up against the same dead ends every time.

I have to remember that even though My Addict may always be lurking around, trying to tempt me to come back, that doesn’t mean I should go back. My Addict will always be the same sleazy, loveless asshole he always was, a pretty parasite happy to exploit me for his own selfish gain.

I know that’s pretty damning as far as metaphors go, but that’s the point. You already know that Your Addict isn’t pretty. My point is that Your Addict isn’t you."

❤️

THE ADDICT'S GUIDE TO RECOVERY by Emily Sussman, LCSW, is available on Amazon in paperback and eBook (Kindle).

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press.

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

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This is "A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE A-WORD," which is Chapter One of "The Addict's Guide to Recovery" by Emily Sussman, LCSW.

No, not THAT A-word, the one you hurl in traffic when someone's just cut you off. The other A-word. ADDICT.

Know that calling yourself an addict is not a put-down. It's not a slur. It's not a judgment, and it's not a life sentence. It's simply a reference to the insatiable black hole of a beast who lives inside you. The one who demands more and more of whatever is breaking you down, even as it seems to provide some temporary relief or anesthesia for the problems of life.

Remember this: You are not the problem. How could you be? Not when the solution to the problem of addiction ALSO lives inside of you. ❤️

THE ADDICT'S GUIDE TO RECOVERY by Emily Sussman, LCSW, is available on Amazon.

Copyright 2025 Freedom Recovery Press.

For MUCH more, visit theaddictsguidetotheuniverse.com

Sent with True Love from the Universe ❤️💫