welcome!

This is the second life of Trezvennost blog of mine. The first one somehow fell unto the wrath of The Net and contact was lost. The carcass of it can and should be found here https://trezvennost.wordpress.com/. Please check it, there are hundreds of posts about sobriety and mental health related topics that I’ve been submitting for about 7 years.

“Trezvennost’” (Трезвенность) means “sobriety” in Russian, my first language. This word, however, means more than just “not being intoxicated.” It means sobriety of spirit, body, and mind. One could be not drinking alcohol or using drugs to excess, or addicted to porn, but not being free in the same time. “Trezvennost” means freedom. Freedom from the power of the harmful substances, from the pressures of the world that constantly tries to submit people to its will, while it is slowly devouring itself.

I’ve been writing for a while, mostly short stories, longer stories, and some poetry. I tried to have my writings about sobriety published in a couple of the subject-related projects, but it didn’t come to be. Finally, I decided that perhaps I could still have them being read by others, those who need recovery and perhaps needs some advice or inspiration, something to relate to.

I want this site to feature my writings about sobriety and “trezvennost’” as I have being experiencing it for the last five and a half years of being sober and “trezven” and how I tried to persevere that way. I wrote about myself, about AA program and the Twelve Steps, about Higher Power (God), and about how things worked for me and how some things didn’t. There are truths, and  some assumptions, and my ways of trying to deal with those.

Since my personal adventures with addiction were mostly related to alcohol, I will be writing about alcoholism and for people who can relate to alcohol problems. However, let’s not forget than an addiction is a spiritual disease in the first place, and therefore the Twelve Steps program that proposes a spiritual recovery can be used to deal with all kinds of addictions, be it alcoholism, crack cocain dependency, pot smoking, inhalants use, tobacco smoking, pill popping, porn, excessive shopping, etc. Certainly, the addicts’ experiences, mental and physical, will be different in each of these cases. What alcoholic feels is not neccesarily what a person addicted to cocaine senses, as my work with addicts showed. But the spirit is corrupted equally! If we deal with some kind of an addiction, especially substance abuse, we need to have spirit recovered, otherwise all else fails. This is why my writings are not about detoxification, but about things social and spiritual, about the nature of the Higher Power and human relation to it.

I will do my best to make sure there is no preaching, as well as blaming. However what I write is what I think. You don’t have to agree with a single word I write, but you might relate to some of it. This is not a manual for action. I just hope to inspire people for them to make a positive change in their lives with no one else being hurt in the process.

Thank you and enjoy the reading!

P.S. I will be mentioning Alcoholics Anonymous a lot, and I will do my best to cite them properly. I hope that if I fail to do that once in a while, they won’t be too hard on me!