September 24th, 2024
September is National Recovery Month.
If you’re reading these words, then congratulations: you know someone who struggles with addiction!
I couldn’t begin to list all the reasons why I’m public about my own sobriety, but there are two big ones:
1. I believe that light is a disinfectant; that so many of us suffer with darkness privately, when parting the curtains and opening the windows can do so much to alleviate that loneliness. I think that if I would have seen more people I know be honest about their struggles, it would have encouraged me to be more open about my own, and maybe even earlier.
2. I wanted to give a different, specific face to the abstract ideas we have of addiction. There are general stereotypes that are both harmful and easy to subscribe to, boxes we can drop addicts into without a second thought, and while I can’t introduce you to every amazing person I’ve met through recovery, I can show you me, and I can share as best I can what it’s like to live with blessings dressed as curses.
So I have, for almost seven years now. I do the normal social media stuff: photos of my dog, memes, please buy my new book. But I also write about hard stuff, like loss and grief and my sobriety journey. I do this because I believe life is about balance, and extending that to the internet only makes the internet a better place (and the internet is all too often not a very good place).
I knew my life was unmanageable, and I eventually came to realize that alcohol was keeping it that way. The idea of ingesting actual poison was impressively carved into my Play-Doh brain as normal consumption for a species that claims to be the most intelligent on this planet; my physical being is often possessed in ways I don’t completely understand.
This is just a reminder that recovery is possible. It looks different for everybody. No one does it wrong, as long as it works for you.
I’m grateful for my family and my friends and for kind strangers; I’m grateful to the monster inside me that loved me enough to change.
If nobody has told you today: I love you, there has never been and never will be anyone like you again, and I’m glad you’re here.
Your life starts today, over and over again.
The Den 