While the broader recovery world experiments with apps and one-on-one psychotherapeutic approaches to sobriety, those of us with a twelve-steps orientation have a reminder: Sobriety Takes a Village.

The twelve steps are, of course, based on an individual’s personal journey to hope by way of helplessness.   But that private journey does not end privately.  It is that first step, the solitary epiphany that “I am powerless,” that moves us from “I” to “we.” 

How come some people stay sober and some do not?  Is recovery an unpredictable pursuit?  What I have learned over the years in recovery is that many questions will go unanswered, and also many questions don’t need an answer.  I feel for the people who need an answer to every question.  That seems exhausting. 

Thinking back on my early days in the pursuit of my own personal recovery, I remember getting to a point and realizing that I have the type of alcoholism that going to a meeting a day will not fix.  I knew nothing about recovery when I first walked into AA.  I knew nothing about what alcoholism was, although I called myself an alcoholic.  I felt lost and thought that I was destined to a life of short busts or sobriety and then a relapse and I thought my life was just going to be that never-ending cycle forever.