Best Addiction Recovery Poems

Cracked Doors


It offered solace
an escape from life’s torment,
false comfort – oblivion’s
denial of the truth,
the lie of living’s afterlife.

Trembling hands reached out
in search of hope’s lost promise,
a door ajar,  a welcome,
open invitation
to shed death’s robe, to live again.


John G. Lawless
contest – Door to a Wayra
7/16/2014...

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It's like your world is ending 
Everything comes crashing down
Can't catch your breathe
Down, down, down you drown

Waking in the morning
To another dreaded day
Going through the hustle
Just to keep the pain at bay

Escaping is what you want
Numbing you try to survive
Hating the world when you're sober
Hate...

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Day old coffee
in its maker
a cold witness
sometimes
to broken dreams
and war stories
and proclamations
of
getting well
of
new beginnings
of
hearty hope.

Solemn stories and
cloudy memories
and Joe
laughter’s echo
at some obscure
joke but
the window
knows
how schemes get
distorted
deformed
disfigured.

Some have just
flown that way
inevitably
some do go
without ceremony
without fanfare
no hoopla
simply vanish
and all that’s left
are
empty seats
empty room
empty maker
waiting for
the next batch
of...

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I want to be
the best version of me.
I want to believe
in myself
and my recovery.
I'm tired of living
a life of insanity,
that's not the person
I want to be.
I'm not that person anymore,
now I live in accord.
Harmoniously happy,
thanking God
for my sobriety.
I was once surviving,
now I'm thriving.
This is my...

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I replied to the beast, “ We are done!”

No longer will I be captive to your powder
of numb thought and emotion.
No longer will I need to have a special
cup, cotton, and spoon next to those
dirty syringes hidden in the vestment.
I will no longer be waking...

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All you need is the will. Where there is a will, there is always a way.
But, my polluted mind couldn't see the path to success ahead.
No map exists to sobriety, or a magical compass to recovery

The lifestyle I once lived, so empty and desolate.
Only able...

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(Year 1)
You try to hide
somewhere deep inside
As the blood spatters on the window
You try to compromise with the needle
Like a hero without a soul
As it throws you to the ground
There are no reasons to hold on
It's like falling in love, just to unfall again.
Like a...

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Rock and Roll

Feed me things
That keep me awake
I feel alive
What a perfect date
False friends
Within my circle
False visions
I can't escape
Line after line
Star amongst the sky
Strung out, supernova
Reaching for that first glorious high
Tears welling up
Filling my guitar moon
No more strings to pick
No music to brew
I was born...

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Dear Sister's,

            I remember when you arrived on that very first day.
You looked really sad and had nothing to say. The pain in your eyes told your story all 
To well. But I knew...

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I walk amongst them but nobody sees
I blend unnoticed 
As I inhale my disease

The air is constricted causing me to fall
All the things which once mattered
Now seem not to matter at all

Going nowhere just standing still
Trapped inside of loneliness
Since the day I grew ill

Clocks keep...

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No one is powerless against their addiction.
All that's truly required is to seriously practice self discipline,
and work on those issues of yours unresolved within,
that prompts you to hide behind drugs or abusive drinking.
I celebrated thirty years of sobriety by having a drink.
That was five years...

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I once had a Lazy Susan
Adding confusion to choosin'
I gave her a spin
But never could win
And that's why I turned to boozin'...

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life sentence 
I can’t go on with my life in addiction 
How can I ever have any kind of relations 

A week a month a year 
I really have no idea
It’s all the not knowing 
That’s stops life growling 
You build it all up 
begin...

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How do we harvest light? 
We dig through the darkness. 
When light is a turnip
Growing in the rocky Newfoundland soil
Digging through the darkness
Hands bloody and torn
Digging into my past
Through trauma
Stories and roots 
Block the path
Rocks and fears
Make the work
Challenging, draining
Often I need to rest
Light is...

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For Diane

You are young and so alive
and I am old but with the fire still alive

We come from places far apart
and still we connected at the heart

I have fought the fight you face
it happens in a very frightening place

Your troubles lie within your past
and time...

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