If you have navigated to this website, you are curious about changing your relationship with addictive substances and behaviors. I am glad you are here. I am one of you, having wrestled with an addiction to alcohol and bumbled my way into recovery. The path hasn’t always been easy, but it has been worthwhile.
I came to recognize I was deeply disoriented in my own life. I didn’t recognize myself and I really had no idea who I was or wanted to be. I didn’t have any self-respect. I didn’t belong to myself but rather to the alcohol I was drinking, the unrealistic expectations I put on myself, and a boatload of grievances. Color me absolutely miserable.
I knew that I didn’t want to keep living the way I was.
Knowing what we don’t want to do or to be is a first step to changing. It isn’t enough, though. We need to figure out who we are and what we stand for. We need to learn how to live a better and more meaningful life. Our addictions provide us with an unwanted but perhaps ultimately liberating opportunity to wrestle with these questions. Philosophy is a great traveling companion on this journey; I believe it helped me to get and stay sober. Philosophy helped me to name what I had lost and later plot a course to get it back. Or create it for the first time.
Over thousands of years, philosophers have asked:
- What is a good life?
- What does it mean to live a meaningful life?
- What is happiness?
- How do we compose our character?
- How should we care for ourselves and others?
- What is self-love?
- How do we forgive others and ourselves?
- How do we trust ourselves?
- What do we owe others and ourselves?
- How do we belong to ourselves?
Active in our addictions, we may not have struggled with these questions at all because we believed we already had the answers. A good and meaningful life was impossible for people like us because our use made us bad people. We may have regarded ourselves as fundamentally damaged and unreliable. There should be no forgiveness for us. Those answers may have come so quickly and emphatically.
What if those answers are wrong? You will only know if you give yourself permission to explore them.
The Ready to Recover quiz prompts people to consider where trust, self-respect, forgiveness, empathy, responsibility, hope, and character—all important to flourishing—fit in a person’s life. Every one of us deserves to flourish.
Are you willing to do what it takes to wrestle with these questions and live your way to answers that are good and right for you? I hope so.
January 2027
Description and Endorsements
Description:
When people develop addictions, we lose ourselves in myriad ways. We may lose relationships, commitments, values, principles, aspirations, and even the will to live. Addiction affects our character to such a degree that we may no longer recognize ourselves. In many ways, we no longer belong to ourselves; we belong more to addictive substances and behaviors. We may belong to other people and their views and expectations of us. Some will understand all they have lost and may still lose while others will have a much harder time realizing the toll.
In recovery, we come to belong to ourselves, which is a moral stance towards our own selves and to others. We intentionally compose our character, which is our masterpiece. We become better able to take others into consideration while not allowing substances or other people to have dominion over us. We acquire for the first time or rehabilitate vital moral goods such as self-love, self-knowledge, self-trust, and self-forgiveness. We become far better at caring for ourselves and for others. These are tremendous achievements for people struggling with addiction. In cultivating our character and coming to belong to ourselves, we become both more free and more responsible. As such, we may be able to live well and even flourish.
Recovering Character is compatible with many forms of treatment and recovery but has no allegiance to any of them. People must decide for themselves what may work as a program of recovery.
Endorsements:
In this wonderfully readable book, Peg O’Connor draws on ancient and modern wisdom to illuminate the path from active addiction to flourishing in recovery. She reveals how self-deception, perfectionism, and shame keep us trapped, and shows how to intentionally compose our character through virtuous action and genuine friendship. Compatible with any recovery approach, this philosophical reflection offers profound insights for anyone struggling with addiction, navigating recovery, or seeking to live with greater integrity and purpose. Here, you’ll learn what it truly means to belong to yourself.
-Candice Shelby, author of Addiction: A Philosophical Perspective
Stopping drinking or drugging is a great relief and achievement. But for many of us who lost aspects of our integrity, as well as a clear vision of what a good and successful version of ourself could be, there is an enormous amount of self-repair and self-reconstruction that needs to take place to be healed. Peg O’Connor’s new book is an extraordinarily wise and sensitive exploration of how addicts can undertake the project of renewing, rebuilding – in some cases even constructing a robust flourishing self for the first time. Rebuilding character is the most important part of true recovery and O’Connor is a masterful guide to this essential part of the process. A must read for recovering addicts.
-Owen Flanagan, author of What It’s Like to Be an Addict? Understanding Substance Abuse
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Description and Endorsements
Higher and Friendly Powers: Transforming Addiction and Suffering
Description:
An expansive alternative for those who have struggled with the “higher power” of AA’s 12-step program, Higher and Friendly Powers offers a sense of human decency, moral ideals, and even a better version of oneself. In Higher and Friendly Powers, Peg O’Connor addresses an audience much like herself: those in recovery who have struggled with the Christian-centric God at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous. She brings our attention to a little-known fact: the term “higher power,” a touchstone in the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, was coined by William James, philosopher, psychologist, and intellectual giant of the early 20th century. By acting as our personal field guide through the world of William James, Peg shows that “higher power” as James conceived it is far more expansive than we might imagine. The book, which combines Peg’s deep personal wisdom with James’s adventurous intellect, has the power to transform the way we live.
Endorsements:
What is an addict who is also an atheist, agnostic, or spiritual but not religious person to do about the advice to turn “their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understood Him”? Peg O’Connor’s Higher and Friendly Powers provides an uplifting answer by taking the reader on a journey into the thinking of William James, no ordinary theist, frequently a religious skeptic, and the source of the ideas of spiritual transformation and higher power reflected in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. O’Connor’s book is artful philosophy. She shows the way to freedom from addiction without requiring belief in the God or gods of any sectarian tradition. A brilliant and important book!
— Owen Flanagan, Author of What’s It Like to Be an Addict
Many addicts don’t believe that it is necessary or possible to be saved from addiction. We are just too low, or wretched or lost to touch something “high enough” to rescue us. This is the very old problem of spiritual salvation. And so many alcoholics reject Alcoholics Anonymous because they don’t believe in God. But what if our salvation turns on us simply realizing the possibilities and chances of a world that does not reject our attempts to explore it? What if these chances never forsake us even in our darkest hours? What is this is the higher and friendly power that aids in our rescue? O’Connor with the help of William James explores these questions and recasts the meaning of being saved from addiction. If you pick up this book, I promise you need to read it to the end.
— John Kaag, Author of Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life
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Description and Endorsements
Life on the Rocks: Finding Meaning in Addiction and Recovery
Description:
Addiction and recovery are, at their core, about the meaning of life. Life on the Rocks is the first book to address addiction and recovery from a Western philosophical perspective, offering a powerful set of tools sharpened over millennia. It introduces some of the core concepts and vexing questions of philosophy to help addicts and those affected by their addiction examine and perhaps transform the meaning they make of their lives.
Without assuming any familiarity with philosophy, Dr. O’Connor illuminates issues all addicts and their loved ones face: self-identity, moral responsibility, self-knowledge and self-deception, free will and determinism, fatalism, the nature of God, and their relations to others. Life on the Rocks is an indispensable guide to the deeply philosophical concerns at the heart of every addict’s struggle.
Endorsements:
O’Connor is a gifted writer who has a most unique take on addiction and recovery. She makes Life on the Rocks accessible and fascinating, using practical insights—not only from the wisdom of philosophers but also from personal experience—to put a new spin on old clichés about what it takes to live a rich, meaningful, and joyful life beyond addiction.
—Anne M. Fletcher, Author of Inside Rehab and Sober for Good
While science, psychology, and sociology have dominated discussion of recovery, philosophy has been largely silent. Now it finally has its say, as O’Connor takes us back to the ancient Greek roots of philosophy as care for the soul. She not only illuminates the recovery process but also shows that philosophy is more than an academic subject—it is a way of life. Life in recovery is a quest for meaning, and philosophy is the ideal guide for the quest.
—William Irwin, PhD, Herve A. LeBlanc Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy at King’s College Wilkes-Barre, PA
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Articles by Peg
Knowing What You Are Up Against in Your Own Self
When we look deep inside ourselves, we often encounter fun house mirrors. Self-knowledge is in part seeing the distortions they cause.
What If Versus What Is
People whose lives revolve around "what if" lose the present and the future.
Can the Use of AI Chatbots Be Compulsive?
Teenagers are worried about their reliance on AI chatbots.
Who Gets to Be an Expert on Their Own Experiences?
Not all of us are regarded as reliable sources of information about ourselves.
On Brad Pitt’s Decision to Drink Again After 7 Years
What does it mean to be sober or in recovery?
The Cost of Losing Self-Respect in Addiction
We tend to shrink ourselves and our world when we lack self-respect.
Six Challenges Later in Addiction Recovery
People in long term recovery can generate challenges to their own sobriety. There are six challenges that we ourselves create but can overcome.
Feeling Hollow in Everyday Life
Feeling empty makes it much harder to care for anything or feel any joy.
Online Gambling and the Losses It Brings
The ability to place a bet—any time and any place—courts ruin for some people.
Recalibrating Friendships when Someone Changes
When a person changes, their friendships may need to change as well. Old friendships may be retired or renovated while new ones are cultivated. All of this can be disorienting.
The Art of Grieving Well
Grief has the potential to crush us. It is challenging for all of us, especially those in recovery from addiction. How do we learn to grieve appropriately and fully?
The Destruction of Joy, Meaning, and Value
"World sickness" provides a powerful framework for understanding the effects of acute or chronic suffering.
When Roles Swamp Our Identities
We run the risk of losing ourselves to the roles we play in life. We take them to be all-defining, which is a form of self-deception aided and abetted by others.
Why Some Balk at Surrendering in Recovery from Addiction
The concept of surrendering in addiction recovery is contentious. An alternative is renouncing, which can be empowering and liberating.
Stuck in Unhealthy Patterns?
Human life is organized in patterns. Addiction comprises multiple and overlapping patterns. Recovery involves creating new ones.
Self-Doubt Corrodes Self-Respect
Self-doubt tends to spread like wildfire. People struggling with addiction or living with trauma know this well. The challenge is to tip the balance towards self-respect.
People-pleasers Lose Themselves to Others
By folding yourself in ways that please others or curries their favor, you risk losing yourself. People-pleasers are origami masters.
Seven Challenges in Early Recovery from Addiction
While there are many externally imposed obstacles early in recovery, some of the biggest come from within us.