First, I want to say that your conviction comes through very clearly in this piece, and that I relate. I could have never conveyed the type of power from within that you convey here had I continued to drink. I was stuck in neutral.
I have come to see that, as human being, I was lost. There was a path that led to the person who I was always supposed to be, and, for many reasons, I deviated from it. I used alcohol, and other things, to soothe myself from the distress that came with betraying myself.
In terms of recovery and recovering, the thing I needed to recover was myself. So, whether or not I am in recovery or recovering, I am engaged in an endless pursuit to become the most genuine expression of myself that I possibly can.
As a guy who coaches people in early recovery, here is a position I take that some of my peers take issue with. “I don’t care how you get sober. I care that you get sober.” I can tell you what worked for me. I may have some suggestions about what might work for you, but you have to find what is going to work for you, and what is sustainable.
The one prevailing idea among people in the recovery mainstream that I take issue with is the notion that I am fundamentally different from other human beings. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that there is nothing wrong with me and there never was.
In some ways, this piece echoes something I said in my men’s group just yesterday. The point of all this is to not need it. The point of therapy is to not need therapy. All the work I have done on myself, I did it so I can lead a fulfilling, meaningful, and enjoyable life.
Damn. This is such an important distinction that I never thought about. I have never identified with recovery myself. Sure, there are things to recover from, but yes it is a process that can be completed. A couple years ago I wrote something called, "Discovery not recovery."
Thank you so much for inviting us into your thoughtful piece and discussion. I would be interested in your thoughts about how to understand, or perhaps define, when we are "post recovery"? I ask because I have recently realized I was too quick to label myself as recovered (as a way to not feel like a burden to anyone), when I actually need more help and time working on recovering not only from addiction but the traumas that were underneath. My guess is that for each individual the "finish line" (if there is such a thing) is a matter of vast nuance and gray area. But I'm always open to new perspectives. Thank you again, your work here is really inspiring to me.
I'm not joking I've been writing the response as a comment for two hours and I'm still not done with it. It's such a good question that I've had to attack it from so many angles. I've copied it into a document and it's something to consider as an article down the line. Please bear with me. Or perhaps share your approach and insights? What do you think - can and individual recover from addiction or can they not?
I am so heartened to hear that you are approaching this from many angles because I have been working and reworking this as well and I think it speaks volumes just to realize there's no quick answer. It speaks to the complexity, which for me is a delight, tbh.
For me it begs the question of defining recovery - are we speaking about recovery from the substance, or from the addiction, or from the trauma, or from a previously unconscious way of living into a deliberately conscious one where we go from 'recovery' (acute danger of falling back into addiction) to more of a 'refining' (not high danger, but not out of the woods yet) type approach... meaning we move on a sliding scale closer or farther away from a 'danger zone'. I don't think the 'danger zone' ever fully vanishes, but not because we are addicts, but rather just because we are humans and life is hard in ways that can knock the wind out of us at any time.
At present, I believe that without a conscious effort to stay mentally healthy in the specific ways my recovery has taught me, I am at risk for developing a new addiction or falling back into an old addiction as a way to cope with life instead of deal with it head on. So if I am at some level of risk of falling prey to addiction, I must commit to some level of maintenance of my freedom from it.
Is that maintenance always called 'recovery' though?
Yes I think the definition needs ironing out for a start. I think it’s been hijacked. I sometimes bring this up as a joke. At what point is a ‘recovery’ activity just the activity? Why are we calling it recovery two years after leaving rehab? I’ll often hear individuals say I’m doing XYZ for my recovery, like a recovery walk or a recovery art class or recovery badminton or looking after my mental health for my recovery. I can’t help but feel that they would do themselves a favour to leave this idea of ‘recovery’ and just go do the ‘activity’.
Then we get onto the question that needs to be asked. When does recovery culture become recovery cult? That’s a mammoth essay too.
Can we have criteria of a completed addiction recovery? When maintenance transitions into exit. Like:
Entrenched healthy habits and choices,
Awareness and agency over one’s own mental health,
An overall state of health and wellbeing,
A lifelong ability to utilise effective coping strategies
An urge frequency of less than X per week.
A sense of new identity or sense of self.
A confidence to tackle everyday life
A solid commitment to lifelong self regulating sobriety
To name a few.
Nobody is a complete person. Everyone is on a journey to some level. I’d argue it was entirely possible to exit the recovery from addiction journey and go into the wild like everyone else. Probably better equipped than some, too.
Damn, this could be a whole podcast episode - so much richness here.
I really like your tangible example - I totally get what you are saying about doing an activity 'as part of recovery.' What makes anything 'part of recovery' or not? Instead of thinking of recovery as a period of time, we can think of it as the acquisition of a very specific set of life skills that hones our attention in on awareness of what could be or become an addiction. Recovery skills (like you outline above), I believe, can absolutely be mastered and integrated into all aspects of life. Which then could mean the question isn't "Is my recovery 'over'?" but rather "Have I fully integrated these skills and perspectives into my way of life?" So that life keeps happening, and I keep applying my skills, hopefully more and more easily/readily.
By chance have you read 'The Biology of Desire' by Marc Lewis? He argues the learning model of addiction versus the disease model, essentially that we learn addiction (the same way we learn anything else) and we can unlearn it, too. Controversy abounds, of course!
That’s it. A mastery, internalisation and embodiment of recovery skills laid as a foundation for new or simply functional walks of life. They’re so embodied that they are no longer recovery skills. They are just ‘skills’. And to be fair some recovery skills really could be classed as everyday skills. Ones we sort of never picked up, especially if our skills in addiction were picked up early in life and at the expense of healthy skills.
I haven’t read the book but I can tell you I’ll already be on board with it. I’m against the disease model. I think an addicts brain is a brain that has learned addictive behaviours through normal learning neurobiology. The physical maladies caused by the addiction are downstream of the learned behaviours. Plural. A podcast is something to deeply consider here, I reckon.
I agree! I am finding that there are ways my brain was wired to harm me that I was not aware of, and I'm now, through recovery skills, learning to carve new patterns that would never have occurred to me on my own to pursue. It's wild and complex.
I could do a whole other riff on the recovery culture vs. cult but I will leave you in peace. I have loved our discussion so very much, Adam. I'm so grateful you took the time to share your thoughts with me. Thank you.
It definitely sounds like you would dig the book. Keep me posted if you do that podcast (like you need another thing to do, right. :)
This is exactly what I’ve always thought. That you can’t always be ‘in recovery’ the same way as you can’t always be ‘healing’. It’s demoralising thinking there’s no end to the journey. It’s about your self image. I don’t want to spend my life recovering from child abuse. I’ve done the work. I’ve faced the demons and I don’t feel that I need to anymore. I wrote a post about moving from survival mode to living again. We can’t stay in survival forever! That’s no life!
Really appreciated this piece, pretty much completely agree with all of it, something I've been feeling and frustrated by for awhile now. I think I first approached it from the shame perspective - I drank because I was so deeply ashamed of myself, and I got sober only once I was able to start caring for myself. I can't help but feel like saying I'm permanently in recovery is saying I'm permanently broken, or permanently need to carry a bit of shame.
Am I still working on things? Am I growing? Am I still figuring new things out? Absolutely. But that just feels like being on the journey, becoming more self aware. Getting sober was part of that, just as learning how to communicate kindly and authentically has been part of that. Saying I'm permanently in recovery just feels like giving drinking too much power, when it needs to be about the much larger picture, our entire lives.
I also really appreciated the blurb at the end about cravings. Important nuance.
Thank you for your thoughts, Patrick. I agree with yours. I think the people we associate with and the frameworks we use have a massive impact on our wellbeing. I smelt something off when I was around the ‘I am always an alcoholic’ people and frameworks. I simply don’t believe it’s helpful. On the contrary, I think it’s harmful. I don’t think believing those things will take the shackles off. Well maybe they’ll take one shackle off but replace it with another. Our knowledge, understanding and research on addiction has come a long way since the early days. And while important at the time, I think there’s better now.
I deeply respect your progress and your realisations, Patrick. Keep on, my friend.
I’m a recovered sugar addict which escalated to life-threatening binge eating disorder before I cured it with Internal Family Systems (IFS).
I totally agree that without doing the deeper work of healing trauma, we will forever be white knuckling, or controlling our addictive tendencies, instead of healing the root causes.
It has taken me 22 years of hard-core therapy to finally say I am free of my sugar addiction. Over 7000 hours of therapy. This summer I had a relapse, which seemed like a harm reduction episode in which I ate 2 pounds of tangerines a day + drank some “low sugar” type mushroom kombucha (with erythritol) for 10 days (much improved over eating boxes of cookies, I thought) but it broke my intestines in a way nothing before has. (Might have been the erythritol?) They really did not work for about three months after that. It was a scared straight kind of experience. Like when William Styron lost his capacity to drink, and wrote about it in the book, A Darkness Visible.
I know my body can’t take another relapse. So between the therapy I’ve done and this extremely scary last episode, I know I’m done for good. I honestly feel a phobia of sugar — just thinking about eating fruit or anything that triggers my addiction is a no go for me.
I deeply appreciate what you wrote because I don’t want to be “in recovery“ forever. I want to know that that phase of my life is behind me and I am free of the substance that I just can’t handle. My life doesn’t work when this substances in it, and it works when the substance is not in it, and so I am living a life that works. Full stop.
I'm 43 days into my recovery and I know I have a lot of work to do in the coming months as well as a lot of undoing. I innerstand the route of my addiction so now I can work on healing this wound, which as you've articulated, is what recovery is all about.
I know how powerful 'I am' statements are and I haven't felt comfortable saying "I am an alcoholic" over and over again as people do in AA... I choose to say "I am powerless over alcohol" which feels more authentic for me but still don't see the need to say it multiple times in a one hour period. I have been thinking lately that while AA has and continues to be an amazing resource in my recovery process, I don't think that I will be one of the ones that continues to go after many years of sobriety... However I have noticed that the old timers that do go frequently really do seem to get something out of it, so I can't say for sure what my future will bring. For now, I'm incredibly grateful for the AA rooms and for all the people that support eachother through this process.
That’s awesome to hear, Rebecca. At 43 days I feel you don’t need to use inverted commas for your recovery. You’re in recovery. And I congratulate you sincerely.
And I understand the route you’ve chosen— AA is everywhere, it’s the go-to, and everyone has heard of it. Most people start there. AA was my first port of call too, but not for long.
I deeply encourage you to stick to what authentically meets your needs, whatever they are, and whatever that authentic solution looks like. I make a little point of this in my more recent articles if you’d like to view them. You know you best.
💯 agree on this. Can’t tell you what a good take this is. From my experience (I’m 7 yrs now), I couldn’t wait to be well enough to get out of the recovery endless cycle. Hamster-wheel-like in ways. When I sponsored, I was a square peg in a round hole - b/c I used to say the goal is to get well, live freely and fully, and not to live on a daily basis IN your affliction. Anyway, one person right here is in agreement with you. :?
Just realised I replied in the thread and not on your comment. This is what it said:
Thank you for your words, Mike. I think there’s an essential crossover where a person can exit upwards and say confidently to their group or situation,
‘I’m flourishing now, and the past is behind me. Thanks for the support but I’m not actually what you keep telling me to say I am. This chapter is closed.’
First, I want to say that your conviction comes through very clearly in this piece, and that I relate. I could have never conveyed the type of power from within that you convey here had I continued to drink. I was stuck in neutral.
I have come to see that, as human being, I was lost. There was a path that led to the person who I was always supposed to be, and, for many reasons, I deviated from it. I used alcohol, and other things, to soothe myself from the distress that came with betraying myself.
In terms of recovery and recovering, the thing I needed to recover was myself. So, whether or not I am in recovery or recovering, I am engaged in an endless pursuit to become the most genuine expression of myself that I possibly can.
As a guy who coaches people in early recovery, here is a position I take that some of my peers take issue with. “I don’t care how you get sober. I care that you get sober.” I can tell you what worked for me. I may have some suggestions about what might work for you, but you have to find what is going to work for you, and what is sustainable.
The one prevailing idea among people in the recovery mainstream that I take issue with is the notion that I am fundamentally different from other human beings. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that there is nothing wrong with me and there never was.
In some ways, this piece echoes something I said in my men’s group just yesterday. The point of all this is to not need it. The point of therapy is to not need therapy. All the work I have done on myself, I did it so I can lead a fulfilling, meaningful, and enjoyable life.
Wonderfully articulated. We share the same sentiments. Thank you, Tom.
Damn. This is such an important distinction that I never thought about. I have never identified with recovery myself. Sure, there are things to recover from, but yes it is a process that can be completed. A couple years ago I wrote something called, "Discovery not recovery."
Discovery not recovery. That’s bang on. I’d love to see that if possible.
Thank you for your feedback, Holly.
Maybe I will rework it for my 4 years coming up 11/26. Thanks Adam. So much inspiration all around!
Awesome, I look forward to it.
Thanks Holly.
Thank you so much for inviting us into your thoughtful piece and discussion. I would be interested in your thoughts about how to understand, or perhaps define, when we are "post recovery"? I ask because I have recently realized I was too quick to label myself as recovered (as a way to not feel like a burden to anyone), when I actually need more help and time working on recovering not only from addiction but the traumas that were underneath. My guess is that for each individual the "finish line" (if there is such a thing) is a matter of vast nuance and gray area. But I'm always open to new perspectives. Thank you again, your work here is really inspiring to me.
Wow. What a question. What. A. Question.
I'm not joking I've been writing the response as a comment for two hours and I'm still not done with it. It's such a good question that I've had to attack it from so many angles. I've copied it into a document and it's something to consider as an article down the line. Please bear with me. Or perhaps share your approach and insights? What do you think - can and individual recover from addiction or can they not?
I am so heartened to hear that you are approaching this from many angles because I have been working and reworking this as well and I think it speaks volumes just to realize there's no quick answer. It speaks to the complexity, which for me is a delight, tbh.
For me it begs the question of defining recovery - are we speaking about recovery from the substance, or from the addiction, or from the trauma, or from a previously unconscious way of living into a deliberately conscious one where we go from 'recovery' (acute danger of falling back into addiction) to more of a 'refining' (not high danger, but not out of the woods yet) type approach... meaning we move on a sliding scale closer or farther away from a 'danger zone'. I don't think the 'danger zone' ever fully vanishes, but not because we are addicts, but rather just because we are humans and life is hard in ways that can knock the wind out of us at any time.
At present, I believe that without a conscious effort to stay mentally healthy in the specific ways my recovery has taught me, I am at risk for developing a new addiction or falling back into an old addiction as a way to cope with life instead of deal with it head on. So if I am at some level of risk of falling prey to addiction, I must commit to some level of maintenance of my freedom from it.
Is that maintenance always called 'recovery' though?
I'm not sure it has to be.
Yes I think the definition needs ironing out for a start. I think it’s been hijacked. I sometimes bring this up as a joke. At what point is a ‘recovery’ activity just the activity? Why are we calling it recovery two years after leaving rehab? I’ll often hear individuals say I’m doing XYZ for my recovery, like a recovery walk or a recovery art class or recovery badminton or looking after my mental health for my recovery. I can’t help but feel that they would do themselves a favour to leave this idea of ‘recovery’ and just go do the ‘activity’.
Then we get onto the question that needs to be asked. When does recovery culture become recovery cult? That’s a mammoth essay too.
Can we have criteria of a completed addiction recovery? When maintenance transitions into exit. Like:
Entrenched healthy habits and choices,
Awareness and agency over one’s own mental health,
An overall state of health and wellbeing,
A lifelong ability to utilise effective coping strategies
An urge frequency of less than X per week.
A sense of new identity or sense of self.
A confidence to tackle everyday life
A solid commitment to lifelong self regulating sobriety
To name a few.
Nobody is a complete person. Everyone is on a journey to some level. I’d argue it was entirely possible to exit the recovery from addiction journey and go into the wild like everyone else. Probably better equipped than some, too.
Damn, this could be a whole podcast episode - so much richness here.
I really like your tangible example - I totally get what you are saying about doing an activity 'as part of recovery.' What makes anything 'part of recovery' or not? Instead of thinking of recovery as a period of time, we can think of it as the acquisition of a very specific set of life skills that hones our attention in on awareness of what could be or become an addiction. Recovery skills (like you outline above), I believe, can absolutely be mastered and integrated into all aspects of life. Which then could mean the question isn't "Is my recovery 'over'?" but rather "Have I fully integrated these skills and perspectives into my way of life?" So that life keeps happening, and I keep applying my skills, hopefully more and more easily/readily.
By chance have you read 'The Biology of Desire' by Marc Lewis? He argues the learning model of addiction versus the disease model, essentially that we learn addiction (the same way we learn anything else) and we can unlearn it, too. Controversy abounds, of course!
That’s it. A mastery, internalisation and embodiment of recovery skills laid as a foundation for new or simply functional walks of life. They’re so embodied that they are no longer recovery skills. They are just ‘skills’. And to be fair some recovery skills really could be classed as everyday skills. Ones we sort of never picked up, especially if our skills in addiction were picked up early in life and at the expense of healthy skills.
I haven’t read the book but I can tell you I’ll already be on board with it. I’m against the disease model. I think an addicts brain is a brain that has learned addictive behaviours through normal learning neurobiology. The physical maladies caused by the addiction are downstream of the learned behaviours. Plural. A podcast is something to deeply consider here, I reckon.
I agree! I am finding that there are ways my brain was wired to harm me that I was not aware of, and I'm now, through recovery skills, learning to carve new patterns that would never have occurred to me on my own to pursue. It's wild and complex.
I could do a whole other riff on the recovery culture vs. cult but I will leave you in peace. I have loved our discussion so very much, Adam. I'm so grateful you took the time to share your thoughts with me. Thank you.
It definitely sounds like you would dig the book. Keep me posted if you do that podcast (like you need another thing to do, right. :)
This is exactly what I’ve always thought. That you can’t always be ‘in recovery’ the same way as you can’t always be ‘healing’. It’s demoralising thinking there’s no end to the journey. It’s about your self image. I don’t want to spend my life recovering from child abuse. I’ve done the work. I’ve faced the demons and I don’t feel that I need to anymore. I wrote a post about moving from survival mode to living again. We can’t stay in survival forever! That’s no life!
Hear, hear.
Love this take, thank you. Proud of you dude!
Thank you, Cole. This article was a "By the way, before we continue, this is how I roll... Are you in or are you out?"
I'm glad you love the take, and thanks!
Really appreciated this piece, pretty much completely agree with all of it, something I've been feeling and frustrated by for awhile now. I think I first approached it from the shame perspective - I drank because I was so deeply ashamed of myself, and I got sober only once I was able to start caring for myself. I can't help but feel like saying I'm permanently in recovery is saying I'm permanently broken, or permanently need to carry a bit of shame.
Am I still working on things? Am I growing? Am I still figuring new things out? Absolutely. But that just feels like being on the journey, becoming more self aware. Getting sober was part of that, just as learning how to communicate kindly and authentically has been part of that. Saying I'm permanently in recovery just feels like giving drinking too much power, when it needs to be about the much larger picture, our entire lives.
I also really appreciated the blurb at the end about cravings. Important nuance.
Thank you for your thoughts, Patrick. I agree with yours. I think the people we associate with and the frameworks we use have a massive impact on our wellbeing. I smelt something off when I was around the ‘I am always an alcoholic’ people and frameworks. I simply don’t believe it’s helpful. On the contrary, I think it’s harmful. I don’t think believing those things will take the shackles off. Well maybe they’ll take one shackle off but replace it with another. Our knowledge, understanding and research on addiction has come a long way since the early days. And while important at the time, I think there’s better now.
I deeply respect your progress and your realisations, Patrick. Keep on, my friend.
I’m a recovered sugar addict which escalated to life-threatening binge eating disorder before I cured it with Internal Family Systems (IFS).
I totally agree that without doing the deeper work of healing trauma, we will forever be white knuckling, or controlling our addictive tendencies, instead of healing the root causes.
It has taken me 22 years of hard-core therapy to finally say I am free of my sugar addiction. Over 7000 hours of therapy. This summer I had a relapse, which seemed like a harm reduction episode in which I ate 2 pounds of tangerines a day + drank some “low sugar” type mushroom kombucha (with erythritol) for 10 days (much improved over eating boxes of cookies, I thought) but it broke my intestines in a way nothing before has. (Might have been the erythritol?) They really did not work for about three months after that. It was a scared straight kind of experience. Like when William Styron lost his capacity to drink, and wrote about it in the book, A Darkness Visible.
I know my body can’t take another relapse. So between the therapy I’ve done and this extremely scary last episode, I know I’m done for good. I honestly feel a phobia of sugar — just thinking about eating fruit or anything that triggers my addiction is a no go for me.
I deeply appreciate what you wrote because I don’t want to be “in recovery“ forever. I want to know that that phase of my life is behind me and I am free of the substance that I just can’t handle. My life doesn’t work when this substances in it, and it works when the substance is not in it, and so I am living a life that works. Full stop.
I love this message, thank you for writing it.
I'm 43 days into my recovery and I know I have a lot of work to do in the coming months as well as a lot of undoing. I innerstand the route of my addiction so now I can work on healing this wound, which as you've articulated, is what recovery is all about.
I know how powerful 'I am' statements are and I haven't felt comfortable saying "I am an alcoholic" over and over again as people do in AA... I choose to say "I am powerless over alcohol" which feels more authentic for me but still don't see the need to say it multiple times in a one hour period. I have been thinking lately that while AA has and continues to be an amazing resource in my recovery process, I don't think that I will be one of the ones that continues to go after many years of sobriety... However I have noticed that the old timers that do go frequently really do seem to get something out of it, so I can't say for sure what my future will bring. For now, I'm incredibly grateful for the AA rooms and for all the people that support eachother through this process.
That’s awesome to hear, Rebecca. At 43 days I feel you don’t need to use inverted commas for your recovery. You’re in recovery. And I congratulate you sincerely.
And I understand the route you’ve chosen— AA is everywhere, it’s the go-to, and everyone has heard of it. Most people start there. AA was my first port of call too, but not for long.
I deeply encourage you to stick to what authentically meets your needs, whatever they are, and whatever that authentic solution looks like. I make a little point of this in my more recent articles if you’d like to view them. You know you best.
Keep on. And my best wishes.
Thank you, I just edited out the commas as I agree with you on that.
I will continue to bring authenticity to everything I do. :)
💯 agree on this. Can’t tell you what a good take this is. From my experience (I’m 7 yrs now), I couldn’t wait to be well enough to get out of the recovery endless cycle. Hamster-wheel-like in ways. When I sponsored, I was a square peg in a round hole - b/c I used to say the goal is to get well, live freely and fully, and not to live on a daily basis IN your affliction. Anyway, one person right here is in agreement with you. :?
Just realised I replied in the thread and not on your comment. This is what it said:
Thank you for your words, Mike. I think there’s an essential crossover where a person can exit upwards and say confidently to their group or situation,
‘I’m flourishing now, and the past is behind me. Thanks for the support but I’m not actually what you keep telling me to say I am. This chapter is closed.’
Sort of thing.