Recovery is Not a Fellowship Activity
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.
At one point I was staying with my parents, at 30 years old, staying in my old bedroom, and I was going to around 23 meetings per week and still couldn’t stay sober. Please, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying, “don’t go to meetings, they don’t work”, but I am saying that I have the type of alcoholism that meetings are not a long term fix. For me it’s the work that I need to live by, outside of the meeting that prevents me from wanting to drink or get high. Of course, this needed to be pointed out to me because at the time I’m going to 23 meetings a week and still relapsing, I just thought I needed to try harder. But I also understood that, when I would hear someone come into a meeting and tell us they had relapsed and that their relapse was because they cut back on meetings and now coming back, their solution was to get back to going to as many meetings as possible, I felt absolutely hopeless in that moment, because I literally could not go to anymore meetings. I went to all of them, and I would still drink. So, what’s next??
The program.
The program is the twelve step program. That is separate from the fellowship of AA. I had no idea that people actually “took steps” or that there was work to do outside of the meetings if I wanted peace of mind or sobriety. I just couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to people. I’m a “noncommunicative”. Someone who struggles to converse with people, on a good day. So, it does not come naturally for me to walk into a room full of strangers, in active relapse, and start “shooting the shit” or up for meeting new friends. I’m easily discouraged, you could say.
But when I was introduced to step work by an old friend and had enough willingness (notice I didn’t say I was ready) to show up once a week and be read a book, things started to change for me. Things continued to change for me as I progressed, under the direction of my sponsor, through step work. And step work changed for me the more engaged I stayed. My life changed and I changed. I did not become a perfect person, far from it, but I realized that the people who were helping me through my recovery journey, who I thought had it all figured out and were perfect, had nothing figured out and were just human beings who made mistakes and had faults as well. But they had this ability to be ok with themselves and life, and I started to feel this myself. It was an experience that was very new for me so at times, I felt lit up. And sometimes I did not. But I started to experience these waves of being. These ups and downs and I started acquiring a way to navigate those waves.
I had an experience that had tremendous depth and weight through navigating step work through self-reflection and the human experience. Many times, I find myself amazed by my sobriety when I think back on it. I find myself amazed that at times I didn’t drink or get high, when I was clearly sick and suffering. That’s one question I don’t have the answer to right there, and that scared me terribly. How could I be so far from “on track” and not drink when I’ve seen so many others fall seemingly so easily. The only answer I have for that is that the work I have done has deep and new roots that run very deep. Where did those roots come from? I’m not sure but I do know that they are there.
I’ve worked in recovery for a long time, and I’ve had the ability to observe many people succeed and many “fail”, pass away even. And one thing I can say is that from my own experience and observation of other experiences, it’s clear to me that some people mistake step work as a fellowship activity. What I mean is when people are only engaged in step work, or their recovery work, because others around them are doing the work and they are just following along, if that person following along, is removed from the others, they stand less of a chance at maintaining their sobriety because there was nothing personal about it. They were only following the crowd. Again, don’t get me wrong, I need other addicts and alcoholics around me. Ones that are well, and ones who are not and every kind in between. But more importantly for me, there is a need to have a personal relationship to the work that transformed my life. I need a relationship with my recovery process that is just with me and not dependent on who is around me. This, I believe, is where the depth and weight come from. This is where my introvertedness comes in handy.
This also brings up another dilemma for me. The dilemma of self-care, which step work or recovery work ultimately is. Well, that becomes problematic for a person like me who struggles to treat themselves as if they have value. I value my children, wife and family and friends. But when it comes to me…, well that’s not something that comes naturally. I am much better at taking care of others than I am taking care of myself. And…, that is something that must continuously be on the table for me to investigate and creatively work on, or else everything will unravel for me over time. The maintenance of self-care and momentum can easily be robbed from me by what I call “unintentional alcoholic manipulation”. I never see it coming so therefore, knowing my patterns, accepting them, and keeping them visible and continually working on them, creates smaller more manageable fires instead of ones that burn everything to the ground.