by Duncan McLeod | Oct 21, 2024 | Emotions, Mental health, Recovery, Recovery from addiction, Sobriety, Trauma
Some say that the opposite of addiction is connection. (If I don’t connect to some-one, I will connect to some-thing) Whilst it is undoubtedly true that Cannabis became my companion, alcohol my comforter, and Nicotine my aid de camps, as with all things Human,...
by Duncan McLeod | Aug 8, 2024 | Alcohol free, Life Skills, Living without alcohol, Recovery, Recovery from addiction, Sobriety
One year, eleven months, two weeks and three days ago, I initiated a program of change which began with removing alcohol and went on to help me amend patterns of behaviour and re-evaluate belief systems I held about me, my life and the world around me. What began as a...
by Duncan McLeod | Feb 15, 2024 | Alcohol free, inner child, Life Skills, Sobriety
What Eckart Tolle calls a pain body, others refer to as a wounded theme of consciousness. It is a clump of tangled negative energy brought into existence by my mind’s naive interpretation of life’s knocks and trapped within my being. A pain body can lie...
by Duncan McLeod | Jan 13, 2024 | Alcohol free, Freedom, Life Skills
If I understand the mechanics of my car, I can fix it when it goes wrong. Likewise, if I understand the mechanics of a human being, I can fix myself when I go adrift. Here are the three steps I used to resolve my unhealthy dependency on alcohol. ONE I...
by Duncan McLeod | Dec 14, 2023 | Alcohol free, Living without alcohol, Recovery, sober curious, Sobriety, staying sober
I haven’t stopped drinking; I have become a non-drinker. Those two things may seem the same, but they are profoundly different. A drinker tries to stop drinking, whereas a non-drinker just-doesn’t-drink (There’s a clue in the title)...
by Duncan McLeod | Sep 24, 2023 | Freedom
To be or not to be – Free? Autonomy Independence Emancipation Self-government Liberty Release Or Dependence Captivity Subjugation Enslavement Imprisonment So Peaceful vs Suffering On the world’s political stage, these are words denoting the state of play...
by Duncan McLeod | Sep 14, 2023 | Life Skills, Sobriety
What do I think is real? Does thinking it make it so? I accept that the chair I sit on is real because I can A) see and B) feel it. I experience both confirmation senses via my brain. I am used to relying on my brain to tell me what is and what is not, and like...
by Duncan McLeod | Sep 4, 2023 | life building,
Am I asleep right now? (Are you?) How could we be for I am writing and you are reading? Asleep is unconscious is unaware. Am I asleep? Maybe, but I am waking up. Sleep is that sublime place I adore drifting into at 9pm, and whence I emerge from 8 hours later,...
by Duncan McLeod | Aug 28, 2023 | Alcohol free, Grief, Life Skills
I see a rhythm and pattern reflected repeatedly across the universe. Expansion followed by contraction. I notice this rhythm in my lungs as I breathe and my heart as it pumps. My whole life, from conception to death, reflects this cadence as first, I expand...
by Duncan McLeod | Aug 27, 2023 | Life Skills
Cohabiting with uncertainty is a given. It is unavoidable. No one has a crystal ball. The future is unknown. Every moment, encounter, and situation has multiple variables. I can have a pretty good idea of what’s coming next, but I can’t be sure. So, one...
