RAW Recovery Podcast

Why Help People Anyway?

Helping people sounds simple until the person we help disappoints us, criticizes us, misunderstands us, or gives us absolutely nothing back.

Today we’ll talk about why we help in the first place, what happens when expectations get mixed into service, and how we can continue being useful without letting other people’s behav...

Least Possible Organization?

Alcoholics Anonymous has always tried to walk an unusual line: enough organization to get the work done, but not so much organization that people begin governing one another.

Today we’ll talk about the idea of the least possible organization—why AA needs groups, committees, service positions, and structure, while stil...

What Does ChatGPT Think The Daily Trudge Is?

After spending a long time helping me build topics, descriptions, outlines, thumbnails, and conversations around The Daily Trudge, I thought it would be interesting to turn the question around:

What does ChatGPT think The Daily Trudge actually is?

Today I’m going to hear that answer ...

Expectations Are Aligned With Our Serenity

Expectations can quietly become one of the biggest sources of frustration in recovery. We decide how people should act, how situations should turn out, how quickly things should happen, and what life is supposed to give us—and then lose our serenity when reality does not follow the plan.

Today we’ll talk...

We Made Direct Amends

Making direct amends is more than saying we’re sorry. It means facing the harm we caused, taking responsibility for our part, and doing what we can to repair the damage without creating more harm in the process.

Today we’ll talk about what direct amends actually look like, why changed behavior matters, and how making things ...

Two Kinds of Pride

Pride is usually talked about as something dangerous in recovery—and it certainly can be. Self-centered pride can keep us defensive, dishonest, unwilling to listen, and convinced that we have to prove ourselves.

But there is another kind of pride: the kind that comes from doing the right thing, keeping our word, taking responsibility...

We Must Be Neutral To Alcohol

The Big Book describes a point in recovery where alcohol no longer has to dominate our thinking. We are not spending our lives fighting it, fearing it, or constantly trying to prove that we can stay away from it. Instead, we begin to experience what the book calls a position of neutrality—safe and protected.

Today we&rsquo...

Why Do We Have To Have Everything Right Now?

Alcoholism trained many of us to look for relief right now. If we were uncomfortable, we wanted the feeling changed. If we wanted something, we wanted it immediately. If life was not moving fast enough, we tried to force it.

Recovery teaches us something very different. Some things take time. Relationships rebuild...

Language of the Heart

In Alcoholics Anonymous, people from completely different backgrounds can sit down together and somehow understand each other in a way that can be difficult to explain. Bill W. called this kind of connection “the language of the heart.”

Today we’ll talk about what allows one alcoholic to reach another, why identificati...

Your Dark Past Is The Key To Life For Others

Today’s Daily Reflection, “Lightening the Burden,” points to something powerful in recovery: the very parts of our past that once brought us shame, pain, regret, or embarrassment can become the exact experiences that help someone else believe recovery is possible. The reading draws from the Big Book, page 124, where our ...

How to Work With Big Emotions in Recovery

Recovery does not mean we stop having anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, or moments when everything feels overwhelming. Emotional sobriety is learning what to do with those feelings when they show up.

Today we’ll talk about how to recognize big emotions without letting them run the show, how acceptance can keep us from fighting what we feel, and ...

What Does It Mean to Be Restored to Sanity?

Step Two says that we came to believe a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. But what exactly does that mean for an alcoholic?

Today we’ll talk about the insanity connected to alcoholism—not as an insult, but as the repeated thinking and behavior that kept taking us back to the same destructive place. We’ll a...

My Opinion on Non-Alcoholic Sober Bars and Kava Bars

Sober bars, alcohol-free nightlife, and kava bars are becoming more common—but are they actually helpful for people in recovery?

Today I’m going to share my opinion on these spaces: what I think they may offer, what concerns me about them, and whether recreating the atmosphere of a bar without ...

The Family After the Drinking Stops

When the alcoholic gets sober, the drinking may stop—but the family does not automatically return to normal. The Family Afterward talks about the adjustments that can come next: old roles, hurt, expectations, control, fear, resentment, and learning how to live together differently.

Today we’ll talk about what recovery can look like inside the...

Meeting Others Where They Are At

One of the most important things we learn in recovery is that not everybody is going to be where we think they should be. People come in with different experiences, different beliefs, different levels of understanding, and different amounts of readiness.

Today we’ll talk about what it means to meet people where they are instead of where we want them t...

There Is A Solution

Alcoholism can leave us believing there is no way out. We try controlling our drinking, changing circumstances, making promises, and relying on our own thinking—only to end up back in the same place.

In There Is a Solution, the Big Book begins showing us something different: alcoholics who once seemed hopeless found a common solution through identification, fellow...

The Psychic Change That Makes Step One Possible

In The Doctor’s Opinion, Dr. Silkworth says that without an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of recovery—and that once this change occurs, the alcoholic begins to experience alcohol and recovery differently. AA itself summarizes the psychic change as necessary for recovery.

Today we’ll talk about that change ...

The Psychic Change That Makes Step One Possible

In The Doctor’s Opinion, Dr. Silkworth says that without an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of recovery—and that once this change occurs, the alcoholic begins to experience alcohol and recovery differently. AA itself summarizes the psychic change as necessary for recovery.

Today we’ll talk about that change ...

Alcoholism and Other Mental Illnesses

The Big Book recognizes that some alcoholics also live with serious emotional and mental disorders—and says that many still recover when they are capable of the rigorous honesty the program demands. That makes an important distinction: alcoholism may not be the only thing we are dealing with, but recovery still requires us to become honest...