When Your Higher Power Is a Mini-Dachshund with Natasha Ruby

When Your Higher Power Is a Mini-Dachshund with Natasha Ruby

Natasha explains how a mix of medication, drinking, and losing her religious framework led to mania and psychosis in New York: she couldn’t read the subway map she’d used for years, handed her phone to a stranger, and told hospital staff she felt “kind of like Bradley Cooper in Limitless.” What followed was a compulsory hospital stay, a move back to Utah, and secret drinking in a darkened room where she “pinned up a felt blanket over the windows so that no light would shine in.” From there, she talks about years of addiction, white‑knuckle attempts at sobriety, and the moment her partner said, “get sober or we’re done,” pushing her back to AA.

How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This chat on Recovery Rocks follows writer and artist Natasha Ruby as she talks about leaving the Mormon faith, surviving a terrifying psychotic break, and building an alcohol‑free life with the help of creativity, community, and a mini-dachshund as her higher power.

Nearly ten years sober, Natasha shares how secular and pagan meetings, sponsorship, and living in the 12 steps keep recovery woven into her daily life, even without regular traditional meetings. Her upcoming memoir, *Latter-Day Psychosis*, grew out of fifteen years of journals and voice memos. Editing the story became “really cathartic,” helping her soften old shame and see a clear narrative in what once felt like chaos.

She also describes how art and crochet eased early‑sobriety anxiety, and how her two wiener dogs now symbolise a gentler, non‑hierarchical higher power: “this tiny little guy that reminds me to be present.” If you’ve ever wrestled with faith, mental health, or the idea of a higher power in recovery, this conversation might leave you asking: what could your own version of hope look like?