The Daily Work of Recovery

My sadness at the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman surprised me, and I have been reading every related column, article, and blog that crosses my path. Addiction is a professional interest as well; my work is teaching, writing, speaking and sharing a message that no matter how virulent an addiction becomes, there is a pathway back into the world that many of us are walking.  I don’t study addiction or the brain, but I do listen to stories of recovery and relapse daily. Here’s what I’ve witnessed of lifelong recovery from addiction and the all-too-frequent slips that occur for those working to stay clean and sober each day.

Addiction is a disease of the mind as well as of the body, so in order to recover we have to be consciously on that path every single day developing healthy habits.  The most common tale when someone relapses is they stopped attending meetings regularly, lost touch with a sponsor, and/or became too busy to be a sponsor because life was good and full again. After 20+ years in recovery, it’s easy for an alcoholic to forget she can’t drink like 90% of the population—socially, moderately, stopping when it is no longer fun.

Addicts and alcoholics whose disease is in remission gather regularly (weekly) to remember we can’t have even one drink, hit, joint.  We also need to be useful to those new to a life of recovery so that our hearts and our minds move in a healthy direction of service rather than scan every environment for the next fix, which, left alone, addictive minds will do.

Recovery doesn’t have a long shelf-life; we have to refresh it each day to get the reprieve from addiction promised by daily work along spiritual lines. Yet even with all that work, there is an element of grace that I can’t define or predict but can only appreciate and share. 

Today my heart cracks open with this loss of a talented public figure and the local loss of a young woman of promise who left us this week.  I hope that this heartbreak allows me to be filled with more compassion, greater tenderness, and a commitment stronger than ever to walk this well-lit path of freedom from addiction one more day.