A therapist asked me early in recovery what I thought the next life was like, if there was such a thing. I was still coming out of the fog of my addiction, so I said I didn't know. Instead, I asked him what he thought it was like.

He said, "I think it's probably just like this life, only more so."

I asked him what he meant.

He said, "Well, just as I said -- like this, only more so. So if you've gone through this life giving it your best shot, and you die and wake up in the next world and discover it's much the same as this one, you say, 'OK, that's fair enough -- I made the most of my previous life, so this one can't be too bad.' But if you've gone through this life in misery, doing what you don't really want to do in the hope that somehow you'll be rewarded in the next, and you wake up and find it's exactly the same as the place you left, just imagine how you'd feel. How you'd feel cheated; how you'd feel you'd taken yourself for a ride; what you'd wasted by not living your life in the moment for the moment."

"So, is there a next life?" I asked him.

He shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "But if you're living this life on the basis of what you hope to find in the next, I think you're going to be disappointed."