🍴Food for Thought: Recovery Can Make Your Life Bigger

Hi, I’m Sal.

I’m a husband, father, friend, coach, traveler, a Yankees fan, an Italian American kid from Brooklyn who somehow wound up living in Mexico, and someone who loves good food, music, karaoke, conversation, and a lot of other things.

I’m also someone who recovered from addictive gambling. I haven’t made a bet since 2018.

Recovery has shaped my life, my work, my relationships, my spirituality, and the way I understand myself and other people.

But recovery isn’t all of me. Not by a long shot! 😊

Especially early on, recovery may need to take up a lot of room. Meetings, phone calls, honesty, financial safeguards, therapy, prayer, routines, community, whatever helps us get some distance from gambling and find our footing.

Over time, though, when recovery is really taking hold, I think something else important begins to happen too. Recovery can start giving us more of our lives back.

A life organized entirely around not gambling is still, in an odd way, organized around gambling. Eventually, we get to become more things again.

A more present partner or parent. A better friend. Someone who travels, exercises, cooks, laughs, learns, works, creates, watches a ball game, enjoys a meal, or becomes interested in something that has absolutely nothing to do with gambling or recovery.

Maybe a key measure of recovery, one that can sometimes get lost in all the necessary focus on prevention, is not simply how far away we get from gambling, but how much more available we become for everything else - the joy of living.

The principles I learned through recovery are deeply internalized and remain part of how I live. But for me, recovery was more of a transition than a permanent identity. The principles endure beyond recovery. The defensive posture doesn’t have to.

I don’t want or need to spend my life simply getting better at not gambling.

I live a life so rewarding that gambling no longer fits.

Ready for a 30-minute no-pressure call to gain clarity & discuss what kind of support might be most helpful for you? We’re here for you.