Torn Counseling & Recovery Center

03/20/2026

AA says "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic."

That's not science. Thats indoctrination.

That's a sentence designed to keep you afraid of yourself for the rest of your life.

Think about what that phrase actually says.

It says you are permanently broken.

That no amount of healing, growth, or transformation will ever change what you are.

That the worst version of you is the truest version of you.

And that every good day you have is just borrowed time before the "real you" comes back.

What other area of life would you accept that?

Would you tell someone with depression "once depressed, always depressed?"

Would you tell someone who survived cancer "you're still a cancer patient even though you're in remission?"

Would you tell someone who escaped an abusive relationship "you'll always be an abuse victim?"

No.

Because we understand that people heal.

People change.

People become someone new.

Except alcoholics?

Alcoholics don't get to graduate.

Alcoholics don't get to say "I recovered."

Alcoholics get a permanent label and a lifetime sentence of meetings where they introduce themselves by their worst chapter.

Hi, my name is Kohdi and I'm an alcoholic.

No.

My name is Kohdi.

I practiced alcoholic behavior for 24 years.

I stopped.

I rebuilt my identity from scratch.

I rebuilt my nervous system.

I rebuilt my life.

And the man standing here today is not the man who drank 30 to 50 shots of vodka a day.

That man doesn't exist anymore.

Not because I'm avoiding him.

Because I outgrew him.

You don't introduce yourself by the thing you survived.

You introduce yourself by who you became after.

And if the system needs you to stay broken so it can stay relevant...

the system was never built to heal you.

It was built to keep you coming back.

The phrase isn't medicine.

It's a leash.

And today... you have permission to burn it.

03/15/2026

03/09/2026

Dialectical Thinking can help enormously in recovery from Addiction. This is when 2 seemingly opposite feelings/thoughts/situations or issues can both be true at the same time.
Addiction is often characterised by rigid/black and white thinking.
DBT - Dialectical Behavioural Therapy can help us see that often the magic - 'Wise Mind thinking' is in the overlap in the middle.

03/05/2026

Recovery.

03/01/2026

03/01/2026

Because you didn't want to lose him, you lost yourself in the process.
You became a girl who kept being mistreated and you formed a habit of saying "I'm used to it".

You became a girl who kept being unappreciated and you began to tell yourself "It's okay".

You became a girl who kept being undervalued and you learned how to say "I'm fine".

You became a girl who kept being put last and you naturally reacted with "It's whatever".

You became a girl who kept being taken for granted and you dealt with it by repeating
"Everything's okay".

You became a girl who kept being unhappy and you regularly told people "I'm gonna be fine".

And if you're reading this right now, then you need to understand that no guy is worth losing yourself for, no guy is worth suffering for at the expense of your happiness, and no guy is worth tormenting yourself over for the sake of making him happy.

At this point, perhaps losing him is the only way you'd be able to get yourself back because as much as you wouldn't want this to be true, he's the only thing that's in your way of finding yourself and he's the only reason you've lost yourself for so long.

02/28/2026

Pray for the safety of our troops, a swift and just resolution to the military operations in Iran, and a lasting peace to result in the Middle East

02/26/2026

Not because love isn’t there.
Not because the desire for connection disappears.
But because addiction quietly takes center stage.

Addiction — whether to substances, work, control, validation, or distraction — creates secrecy, avoidance, and emotional distance. It becomes the priority. And intimacy requires the opposite: honesty, presence, vulnerability, and safety.

You can’t fully show up for someone when something else is running the relationship behind the scenes. You can’t build deep trust where there’s unpredictability or hidden pain.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness.

Healing addiction isn’t just about stopping a behavior — it’s about restoring connection. With yourself first. And then with others.

True intimacy becomes possible again when honesty replaces hiding, and healing replaces coping.

02/24/2026

02/24/2026

The word "addiction" is derived from a Latin term for "enslaved by" or "bound to." Anyone who has struggled to overcome an addiction — or has tried to help someone else to do so — understands why.

Addiction exerts a long and powerful influence on the brain that manifests in three distinct ways: craving for the object of addiction, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences.

While overcoming addiction is possible, the process is often long, slow, and complicated. It took years for researchers and policymakers to arrive at this understanding.

In the 1930s, when researchers first began to investigate what caused addictive behavior, they believed that people who developed addictions were somehow morally flawed or lacking in willpower.

Overcoming addiction, they thought, involved punishment or, alternately, encouraging them to muster the will to break a habit.

The scientific consensus has changed since then. Today we recognize addiction as a chronic condition that changes both brain structure and function.

Just as cardiovascular disease damages the heart and diabetes impairs the pancreas, addiction hijacks the brain.

Recovery from addiction involves willpower, certainly, but it is not enough to "just say no" — as a famous 1980s slogan suggested.

Instead, people typically use multiple strategies — including psychotherapy, group therapy and self-care — as they try to break the grip of an addiction.

Another shift in thinking about addiction has occurred as well. For many years, experts believed that only alcohol and powerful drugs could cause addiction.

Neuroimaging technologies and more recent research, however, have shown that certain pleasurable activities, such as gambling, shopping, and s*x, can also co-opt the brain.

Although the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) describes multiple addictions, each tied to a specific substance or activity, consensus is emerging that these may represent multiple expressions of a common underlying brain process.