The Power of Choice

The word addiction comes from the Latin addicere, ‘to surrender oneself.’ The opposite of surrender is to conquer, from the Old French conquerre, ‘to overcome.’ If you talk to enough addicts, or work with them as I do, you will notice a common current running through our stories: we lived through painful events that left…

The Power of Now

For decades, I lived in chronic, deep depression. I had no idea why I was there, or how to get out from under the black cloud. So I did what a lot of people in that situation do: I self-medicated with drugs to numb the pain. Then, one day when I was twenty-eight years old,…

Addiction or Connection

In 1992 I began what became a two-year process of letting go of street drugs so I could spend more time with my new-found love, climbing. When I give presentations, I inevitably get asked the same question: “Didn’t you just trade in one addiction for another?” And I always give the same answer: Yes, and…

From Cacophony to Coherence

One minute it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and the next thing you know the vaccinated are variant super-spreaders who are responsible for ushering in end times. One person accuses the other of stockpiling livestock medicine, while that other believes we’re all being secretly fed self-spreading vaccines via Mexican tomatoes. As ludicrous as some of…