Numbers - Bamidbar

It can be a hard pill for such an insecure lot as us to swallow, but if we know people who have real quality sobriety, we should admit it and aspire to be like them.

It has been said that the Twelve Steps work but that no one is really sure how or why they do. It can be unsettling to give oneself over to a process that you cannot understand.

It seems that Balaam knew what many of us have learned in recovery—that it is the pursuit of gratifying our most basic instincts that disrupts our natural connectedness with G‑d.

We don't understand those people who "stop and smell the flowers" and extol the simple pleasures of life. Some of us wouldn't recognize a "simple pleasure" if it jumped up and bit us.

Abstention is a humbling admission of defeat – "There's something in the world that G‑d created for a purpose; other people are capable of using it for that purpose; I cannot."

During our recovery, chemical sobriety may have been the beginning of our Exodus. But "getting dry" is not the end of our journey to freedom.