The Recovery Rant - Intro

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For me, "Many Paths" has become a practical tenet in my world, and means acknowledgment and respect for any and all paths to wellness. When it comes to my own recovery from problematic alcohol and drug use, I personally found a path different than Bill W's - my single beef is only with those who insist that their way is the only way, and/or that their ideal outcome (i.e.: 100% abstinence as they define it for themselves"), is the ultimate end goal on a spectrum.  Or even those who insist that any suggestion or promotion of other possible paths is equivalent to saying "the 12 steps don't work" (hence all the selfies with the tag line "I am evidence," etc.).  Seriously people, no one is suggesting that 12-steps and treatment don't work.  It's just that they don't work for everyone the way they worked for you.

Someone once said to me "it's like the recovery people can't comprehend that people who use drugs can still have fulfilling, meaningful enjoyable lives with connections and value and stuff." Her words made me think of the premise of harm reduction, which is compassion rather than moralizing judgement.

If someone feels they are no longer using alcohol or drugs problematically, or they found stabilization, safety and health improvement through medication and clinical therapy, or heroin assisted treatment, or just reducing their use to a rate they personally experience as not problematic - my position is that their recovery deserves the same respect and acknowledgement as any 12-Step path. 

And I know I'm not alone on this one - the concept of intersectional diversity is slowly beginning to seep its way into the discourse, even amongst those who found life-changing value in the traditional 12-steps.  (Case in point: Brooke Feldman's commendable acknowledgement of her own white privilege and the advantages it affords her.)

Any time I end up in the deep quagmires that are the “abstinence vs. harm reduction” dialogues (and there are just so oh-you-can't-even-imagine-how-many), someone invariably insists that 12-step culture is more progressive and open these days, and less shaming about relapse. 

And I always note that I am genuinely heartened to learn the rooms have in them open-minded folks who can appreciate a path to recovery other than the one that works for them individually.  My hope is that one day that open-mindedness will be the dominant attitude and not the relatively rare, unicorn exception.  I have spoken with and supported hundreds of multiply-stigmatized women over the years who could've used such open-mindedness.

(a note: most of the rest of this piece became, virtually verbatim, the afterword in my book)

Women like Kate, whose challenges to achieving two consecutive years of abstinence from her drug of choice (heroin) were herculean, and who then, following a breast cancer diagnosis and two mastectomies, was forced to choose between judgement, scorn and dismissal by her peers in recovery and integrating medicinal cannabis into her life for pain relief.  (She opted for pain relief and was promptly exiled from her "recovery community." Fortunately, she gained another positive community through the dispensary she accessed for her medicine.)

Women like the one who was standing next to Bryce, a woman I was conversing with at a Recovery Day event. Bryce had just disclosed her own relapse in recent months. Speaking to women who were experiencing shame and self-loathing over a relapse was literally a daily part of my job, and had been for nearly ten years by then.  I attempted to normalize with a common phrase I used at the time, which was "be gentle with yourself - seriously.  None of us quit the first time."  I hadn't noticed the woman standing next to Bryce, as hundreds of people were milling around us.  At that moment, though, she leaned over and said (her words dripping with rage) "Great. You just said I'm going to relapse."

As it turned out, she had about two weeks of abstinence and had moved into the recovery home where Bryce lived, and Bryce was her "buddy" for the weekend.  She stomped off, looking not only as though I just handed her a death sentence, but as though I actually had the power to hand her a death sentence.  Her trail of resentment filled my ears and heart and I felt like shit.  

It's been three years, and I still feel like shit that my words could hurt someone so vulnerable (although if I'd known she was listening to my conversation with Bryce I would have chosen different words to say).  Mostly, though, it still enrages me that vulnerable folks are conditioned to believe that recovery is no more or no less than "this many days 'clean'."  I've said it before and I'll say it again: those of us who know a thing or two about the biopsychosocial addiction model know that "um, it’s a little more fucking complicated than that, actually.”

So after years of toeing the standard recovery line, and becoming increasingly frustrated with the objectively and often harmful "all or nothing" tenets in dominant 12-step-based ideologies and narratives, I wrote this particular rant, posted it on Facebook, and outed myself as someone in recovery after intentionally withholding the fact for more than a decade of working directly in the field (because I don't practice abstinence, and there's literally no room for that conversation in a realm dominated by a prevailing notion that the ingestion of a single drink necessarily negates any recovery worth mentioning.  So why go there at all?)

When I wrote this piece, I was thinking of Kate and that woman from Recovery Day.  And all the hundreds of women I've spoken with and supported over the years, who for one reason or another became the lightning rods for shame and exile from their peers in recovery.  Or who simply became paralyzed in self-censorship and isolation out of fear.

These are the women I was thinking of when I wrote The Recovery Rant - all the too many I know, and all those I don't know but can well imagine.

This I know for certain: many of the women I know did not survive the shaming and exile they reported or feared. Here's to survival, healing and recovery, in all the ways, and for all.  With unconditional compassion, how about?