Real Recovery Isn’t Abstinence- It’s Community
I took my last drink on this day five years ago.
I spent the next 4 days in detox, coming off my physical alcohol dependency under the supervision of medical professionals. But knowing that 60% of people coming out of formal addiction treatment will relapse I consider the 2 days after my release as the first 48 hours of “hard time” sobriety.
I remember walking into my first AA meeting, I felt alone and overwhelmed. My anxiety was so high I could barely muster enough strength to pull open the 1,000 lb door, but that converted pretty quickly once I noticed other people turning their heads watching me stumble in. I felt my fear turn into cold steel armor, my shoes like combat boots ready for battle, impenetrable and stiff, no matter that I felt as though everyone could hear my nerves rattling the inside of my armor like Altoids floating around a tin can.
I immediately avoided making eye contact and thought to myself, ‘I can probably turn around and back out. There’s a bar across the street.’ The embarrassment of being the girl who didn’t know what she was doing is probably the only thing that kept me from tripping over myself to run out, so I quickly grabbed the nearest folding chair and pulled it out from under the dirty plywood table and took my seat.
Fear has a funny way of disguising itself as judgement and superiority. I started criticizing the size of the room, the bad lighting, someone had turned the heat way too high- it was only October and in the PNW it’s the peak of our mild climate we always boast about. I started getting angry that everyone seemed so happy and comfortable making jokes with one another- don’t they know this is the lowest a person can go?! Don’t they realize how embarrassing and shameful this room is? I separated myself from “them.” They obviously had problems I didn’t have to be this comfortable in such awful living conditions.
Then an older woman sat next to me and broke my target practice concentration; she handed me a small blue book and slid a bookmark out of the center of another similiar book she was still holding. The bookmark had a poem written on it, “The girl in the glass,” I read the title out loud and she smiled, “welcome.” I sat back, ‘thank you.’
She must’ve known what she was doing but I’ll never be sure. She was loaning me her strength.
The truth was I didn’t know how to sit in that room, or any room, without alcohol. I didn’t know how to sit still with the wild pain of loneliness or how to shut the fucking mean and hateful voices in my head up. I was so full shame and guilt and self-pity that all rooms felt too hot, too small and poorly lit. I was angry for a long time during my early recovery that other people seemed to have found joy in sobriety, it was hard for me to imagine a time when I would be happy again, if I’d ever be happy again. But for that hour, for the first time in months- somebody could see I was nervous and alone and instead of trying to take advantage or exploit it, they lent me their strength and I was able to take my first step to a group of nurturing and empathetic strangers.
What I’ve learned from the last 5 years of sobriety is that recovery isn’t about staying abstinent. Recovery isn’t privileged to the “strong” either. Real recovery requires a nurturing and a nourishing community. It requires borrowed strength from people that believe in you because they themselves know it is life or death or hospitalization. When someone receives support like that, borrowed belief turns into self-esteem and as self-esteem grows confidence and the capability to continue to walk the path grows which means we’ve turned despair into hope. Hope is the key ingredient. Hope keeps an addict alive and fighting for their life. There are over 380 alcohol related deaths a day and long term recovery rates are less than 33%. Because someone who had walked this path before me reached back to give me their hand I am a proud member of the 33% and I hope to contribute in lending out my new sense of strength and hope to raise that percentage up.
