This morning I was up before the asscrack of dawn (as I always am), gulped down my black coffee with the ice cube (as I always do), and grabbed the dog’s leash (as I always have). The run is more than my routine....it is my ritual.  On this last day of May I believe there may have been one single day I did not do this, and that was only because I had awoken at a friend’s home with a 90-minute drive to get to work by 7am. It was a perfect exercise morning- really a perfect anything  morning- 57 degrees, crisp, clear, and windless...the ideal running environment for both man and beast. We began the shuffle out of the house at “wake up” pace but within a mile had settled into our comfortable trot. Predawn color filled the sky. Even in rural America, the telltale markings were everywhere. It was Sunday morning on one of the first warm weekends of the summer season, after all. Empty bottles in ditches. The crushed cardboard of spent 12-packs. A shattered “forty.” As pristine as...

1,301 days ago I had my last sip of alcohol; and while I have come so, so far in my recovery and personal growth, there are moments when I am reminded how far I have yet to go. Tomorrow is my youngest child’s bar mitzvah, a ritual signifying coming-of-age into adulthood in the Jewish tradition. It is a milestone in a young person’s life and a day to remember forever. 40 years later, I reflect on  my own as if it were yesterday. I am not invited. Even after 3 1/2 years of recovery and making living amends “one day at a time” as my program teaches me, I have not achieved any measurable progress with my children. Sometimes staying on God’s timeline is difficult. But it is what it is, and I will keep doing the next right thing. And praying for my son, his brother and sister, and their mother. Peace out ✌️

They say that football is a game of inches. Emergency medicine is a profession of millimeters. There are some situations in which the width of a pinhead in either direction can mean the difference between life and death. I was on night shift. She was carried in from triage by her mother. The nurses checking her in knew that something demanded our immediate attention. The sound emanating from the six year-old’s airway was called stridor- a high-pitched squeak made with every breath. It was a very unnatural noise. She sat there, unfazed in her mom’s lap wondering what all the fuss was all about while we nervously circled with our stethoscopes and IV accessories. The CT scan of her neck revealed the cause. She had been eating sunflower seeds while playing and had aspirated one, which had lodged itself in her upper airway. The shell was no more than one millimeter narrower than her little breathing passage. In that tiny difference in space, air managed to sneak by the obstr...

.......I was a burnt out, broken, washed-up excuse for a doctor, father, and man. In November 2016, as I lay in my hospital bed, lamenting my alcoholic bottom and wishing for my end,  I would have never envisioned that a short  3 1/2 years later I would be a rehabilitated emergency physician back at the top of my professional game as well as available father to my three incredible children. Add to that I am on the verge of my first book release- a memoir of my recovery- and the miracle is complete. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of my family and friends in recovery,  as well as the Program.... Best, JD Remy, MD Author, “Ballad of a Sober Man: An ER Doctor’s Journey of Recovery” @Remy_JD #BalladofaSoberMan #JDRemy