Thank you all…

We greatly appreciate the emails we received following last week’s announcement that we will be closing up shop at the end of the year with the last client’s scheduled for the week of October 22nd – 26th.

We are grateful for the ongoing support from our colleagues of these many years: Gabrielle Glaser, author of Her Best-Kept Secret, Why Women Drink – and How They Can Regain Control; And Dr. Tom Horvath, Founder of Smart Recovery.

As they each kindly noted, “You have helped hundreds of people over 14 years. They will be part of your legacy.”

That said, we have arrived at that time of year when I write my pre-holiday season reminder that we all prefer to postpone making changes. “I’ll do it after Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, the Super Bowl, Ground Hog Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day,” and so on until, once again Labor Day is upon us and no change has taken place, except, possibly, life, health, and relationships with spouses, family, and friends have deteriorated yet further.

Not to belabor that point, I will note that in our lives, only one commodity is finite and that is time. We may stretch money, find new relationships, move geographically any number of times, but time is not very elastic and we don’t know when it’s going to run out. But it will and you will have lost your opportunity to live your life and not medicate it away.

Many of us who struggle with self-medication have more than our fair share of self-destructive tendencies. I am not arguing that this is necessarily a bad thing – but consider how you manage it.

Self-destructiveness comes in two forms: life diminishing and life-enhancing.

Alcohol and drugs, in excess, diminish our lives by causing us to be mentally and emotionally “missing in action.” The opposite of what is currently referred to as “mindfulness,” previously as “self-awareness,” even more anciently as “living in the moment.”

Various activities from mountain climbing to shy diving to motorcycling, mountain biking, and so on actually enhance our lives by demanding that we focus “on this moment.”

As usual, I will note that we each get to make that choice.

Next year I will make the change from my professional career to semi-retirement. That will lead to making similar choices. Will I succumb to my rocking chair (which Mark Twain noted, “Gives you something to do but doesn’t get you very far.”) and the vodka bottle, putting in time waiting to die? Or will I finish those books I haven’t read or written yet, visit those places I always meant to see (Iceland first), and reconnect with people and places which have passed through my life over the past 7 decades?

I think I will manage the latter option. Which choice are you making today and for whatever future you have remaining?

“For all sad words of tongue and pen,
the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”
-John Greenleaf Whittier

Let us help design your escape from “It might have been.”