Three Things I Wish I Knew Earlier In Recovery

1.  It does get easier – a LOT easier (and fun)!

When I was drinking, and especially when I crossed the line into addiction, I couldn’t imagine a life without alcohol.  It was so much a part of my lifestyle and even my personality that it seemed almost like an appendage.  It was a part of everything I did.  If a restaurant didn’t have a full bar, I wouldn’t go there.  If alcohol wasn’t served at an event, I would bring my own.  It was an absolutely essential component of life.   When I was faced with the idea of getting sober, and then learning that this entailed going to meetings, believing in a Higher Power, and socializing with boring non-drinkers, I felt very hopeless.   At that point, I was an ego-laden ass who thought I knew everything, and I just KNEW that the recovery lifestyle was not for me.  And I was so resistant to the idea that it took me a year and a half to get sober and enter recovery.  It was an awful year and a half, filled with divorce, bankruptcy, jail, hospitals, sexual assault, a gnarly single-vehicle car crash.  It was during this time that the events leading to a lifetime of PTSD took place.  All because I couldn’t accept the idea that a life without alcohol would be worth living.  I had heard hundreds of people at meetings say things like “No one has ever regretted getting sober,” but I always found a way to differentiate myself from these people.    It was terrible, and I am still paying the price for being so closed-minded.  

Once life had broken me to the point of desperation, I literally had no option but to start listening.   I started applying what others in recovery told me about their experiences and applying their lessons to my life.   I learned that I wasn’t any different from others in recovery, and I started to include myself in this group of people.  It was then that my life started to change.   The 12-step program taught me to let go of everything I thought I knew about the world.  It was not quick or easy, and letting go of my old ideas was the hardest part.  I was just so sure my ideas were correct (spoiler alert - they were not). But working my program in earnest was like a magic attractant for good things in my life.  Good people, good work opportunities, and after years of misery, finally getting some hope for the future.  The harder I worked, the better things got.  I regularly attended meetings, worked with my sponsor, and did everything she recommended.   I got to the point where I was able to see the toll that alcohol had taken on my life and my potential, and I grew disgusted with it.  With continued work, this repulsion turned into indifference.  The point of recovery is not to hate alcohol; the point is to become indifferent to it.  I am now able to go to restaurants with bars and be around people who are drinking normally without being unnaturally aware of the presence of alcohol.  I was surprised by how the changes seemed to happen without me even being aware of it.  Sponsors and therapists told me that physiologically old neural pathways in the brain need to be replaced with new ones, and that is why recovery takes time and consistency to build these pathways.  Kind of like tire tracks creating a rut in dirt roads, the more these new healthy pathways are used, the deeper and more reflexive these thought patterns become.   And the old harmful pathways fall into disuse and slowly grow over.   So don’t just believe me (and millions of other people in recovery) - there is actual scientific proof for the assertion that things do, in fact, get easier. 

2.  Most people you meet in recovery will bend over backwards to help you, but there are some people who are there for the wrong reasons.  

When I say the “wrong” reasons, I mean people who are there to hook up, or find a drinking buddy, or because they are addicted to drama, etc.  I do NOT mean people who are not sure they belong there, or people who think 12-step programs are bullshit – that’s a lot of us at the beginning.  In my experience, if someone is unsure if they belong in recovery meetings, they absolutely belong in recovery meetings.  Everyone in early recovery is an emotional minefield, because the roots of substance abuse go deep.  Some are going through a breakup, some have just been fired, some have suffered horrific abuse, and the list of traumatic life events goes on.  But the critical point to remember is that everyone in early recovery is highly vulnerable, and wherever there are groups of vulnerable people, there will be assholes trying to exploit that vulnerability.  There is a general rule that women sponsor women and men sponsor men, due to everyone’s vulnerability and the potential to compromise a healthy sponsor-sponsee relationship.  I was lucky in that more experienced women in my meetings took me under their wing and helped me navigate some of the social interactions, and this is not uncommon. Helping each other is a critical component of recovery programs.

3.  Everyone needs different things in recovery (and in life) - and that's OK

I think everyone, not just those in recovery circles, has heard some of the very generalized bits of advice regarding addicts.  Tough love being a favorite recommendation.   Stay sober or get kicked out, etc.   In my experience, this is good advice in many cases but is detrimental advice in others.   The truth is that everyone is different, and we all need different things.  There is no one piece of advice that will apply to all addicts, and that is why I think it is critical to tailor your program to your own needs and personality.  For example, tough love backfired in my situation.   My family tried the “stay sober or leave” thing and it backfired for me.  Why?  Because the “suck it up buttercup” mentality I was raised with was a huge trigger for my trauma responses.  It was meant to make me tougher, but I am an incredibly sensitive person that will never be “tough” in certain ways.  (It took me years to be able to say this out loud.  I wanted so badly to be tough to earn my family’s respect, but that’s just not who I am.  I wasted so many years trying to be someone else, and alcohol was the perfect tool to help me pretend to be tough.)  But in recovery, when I was at the most vulnerable point in my entire life, more of the same “sink or swim” tactics made my resentments that much greater and only deepened my hopelessness.  What I needed was a show of genuine affection and unconditional love for once, but that didn’t happen.  And I didn’t have any real reason to get sober so at that time I didn’t.   As a result, I always encourage family and friends of addicts to try to seek out the cause of the drinking and not just react to the end results.   It’s hard, I know.  In addition to being in recovery myself, I have two other immediate family members in recovery.   I have been on both ends of addiction. 

One of the many blessings of my recovery program is that it taught me to pursue what I need as a person, and it gave me the courage to finally seek that out.   I learned that I don’t have to pretend to be someone else for the right people to care about me.  For the longest time I pretended to be someone else to try to achieve the unconditional love I desperately wanted.  It never worked and I couldn’t figure out why.   The answer I found is that in addition to having the courage to be myself, I also needed to accept others as they are. I stopped trying to get "blood from a stone." And that included accepting that I will never get exactly what I need from certain people.  That is a jagged pill to swallow, but accepting others as they are is the flip side of me being accepted as I really am.   Once I fully accepted that no amount of effort will yield the desired results in another person who has opposing ideas (i.e. once I let go), I achieved a freedom that made my life so much easier.