Posts by Steve Wildsmith
Levi Kreis: ‘The great thing about sobriety is … it doesn’t stop giving’
Courtesy of Rachel Love For Levi Kreis, home is a many-splendored spiritual mansion of vibrant rooms of memory intersected by long, dark hallways of shame and self-loathing. It’s the lined face and rough hands of Lee Roy, a grandfather Kreis remembers as a “remarkable man of faith, consistency, compassion and love, for me and my…
Read MoreOn the other side of sobriety, Dave Hause builds a beautiful life
They were standing on a bluff overlooking Southern California, singer-songwriter Dave Hause and his old man, taking in the view. The weather was undoubtedly ideal, as it usually is for those who seek respite from Philadelphia’s harsh winters. Hause (pronounced like “cause” or “pause”) had become a permanent Golden State resident in 2013, and but…
Read MoreSinger-songwriter Logan Bruce: Making music and staying sober, one day at a time
The cracks first appeared on the dark horizon that had become singer-songwriter Logan Bruce’s life while he was sitting outside a pawnshop, cradling his last earthly possession. He was at the end of a three-month heroin binge, he told The Ties That Bind Us recently, and the future was a bleak one indeed. Getting high…
Read MoreKevin Bowe: Songwriter, producer, rocker and 40 years sober
Growing up in the 1970s, Kevin Bowe — recording artist, producer, engineer and a fixture of the Minneapolis scene for four decades — operated under the assumption of the American dream. His mother’s family came to this country after escaping the horrors of the Holocaust. His father was a nose-to-the-grindstone upper middle class worker bee…
Read MoreSinger-songwriter Leeann Atherton on sobriety: ‘Everything about my life is better’
Leeann Atherton started partying at 14 years old, but it took the Texas-based singer-songwriter another four decades to see the unmanageability that had followed her from the beginning. To be fair, it didn’t destroy her life in the manner of some of the more colorful horror stories heard in the rooms that host recovery meetings.…
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