Recovery

Tonight I got together with a friend who is going through marital discord that has its origin in substance abuse. It is super sad to hear the familiar tale of separation of the man she fell in love with and the man she now finds herself with after 20+ years of numbing. Like anything else we do to our bodies consistently, there is a cumulative effect -- both in terms of the addling of the brain and in terms of the emotional disconnect -- and the only way to reverse those effects is to spend more time fully conscious -- i.e. clean and sober. I do believe that the effects can be reversed, to a large extent, but I also know that as hard as it can be for addicts to stop doing what they are addicted to, that part is relatively simple compared to the path of true recovery.

Many, many people who stop abusing a substance do so without seeking any kind of help for whatever it was that sent them down that road in the first place. I should know. My father is one of them. He drank heavily for the first 15 years of my life, and then he stopped. By himself.

I spent the first 35 years of my life desperately wishing, hoping, praying that my father would give me the love I knew (and have always known on some level) I deserved. I waited for him to recognize me, to see my light. And maybe he does, in his way, but never in the way I wanted him to for so long.

When I first started going to Alanon, just admitting that my father was an alcoholic was really, really hard, because it forced me to give up the facade of who I told myself my father was. The next step, which was considerably more lengthy, was becoming aware of what his alcoholism had wrought in my family and in the person I'd become. Then there was accepting that -- which would have been a whole lot shorter step if I hadn't become so attached, once I was aware of what took place, to the victim mentality -- to the "this shouldn't have happened to me" -- "this should've been different and it would have been different if my parents hadn't done such and such." Really? Who am I to say that things should be any different than they were and are? And if I say so, what good does that do?

What I can understand now, after years of Alanon meetings, reading books, seeing a therapist, acupuncture, energy healing, yoga, zero/balancing, rolphing, massage -- you name it -- it has taken and continues to take A LOT to invite the trauma that I stored in my body for so long to be on its merry way -- is that the love, the childhood, the parenting that I and all others deserve -- has absolutely no bearing on whether or not we receive(d) it. None. We're all equally as deserving, but many of us were and will continue to be born to parents without the necessary level of consciousness to truly recognize and celebrate our light.

Which brings me back to recovery. Because if I had to define recovery, what it has meant in my own life, I'd define it as embarking on a path of ever-increasing consciousness for the purpose of shining my own light as brightly as I can AND being there to recognize and celebrate the light of those around me -- my children -- my friends -- my lover -- my colleagues. And even, slowly, slowly, my parents, because they do have their light too, and I can see that when it's not obscured by the darkness I carried around for so long as a result of what took place decades ago.

But recovery is not an easy path. Just ask Frank Turner:

Blacking in and out in a strange flat in East London.
Somebody I don't really know just gave me something
To help settle me down and to stop me from always thinking about you.
And you know your life is heading in a questionable direction
When you're up for days with strangers and you can't remember anything
Except the way you sounded when you told me you didn't know what I should do.

It's a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

I feel sad for my friend and her husband, who now find themselves here:

And I've been waking in the morning just like every other day
And just like every boring blues song I get swallowed by the pain
And so I fumble for your figure in the darkness just to make it go away.
But you're not lying there any longer and I know that that's my fault
So I've been pounding on the floor and I've been crawling up the walls
And I've been dipping in my darkness for serotonin boosters,
Cider and some kind of smelling salts.

It's a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

And I hope he will find his way on the long road to recovery. I do think that love can help facilitate healing by providing both a glimpse of what it feels like to be truly recognized and by offering an incentive, as Frank says:

If you could just give me a sign, just a subtle little glimmer.
Some suggestion that you'd have me if I could only make me better.
Then I would stand a little stronger as I walk a little taller, all the time.
Because I know you are a cynic but I think I can convince you.
Yeah, cause broken people can get better if they really want to.
Or at least that's what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to survive!

It's a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

So darling, sweet lover, won't you help me to recover,
Darling, sweet lover, won't you help me to recover,
Darling, sweet lover, won't you help me to recover,
Darling, sweet lover, one day this will all be over.

But ultimately, the road to recovery is a path that each of us must decide for ourselves whether we will take...