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Being sober isn’t a competition

Today, I received my first 1 star review for one of my books on Amazon. Within the review, they stated that my 6 years of sobriety (it’s actually 7 now) was merely a blip, and that I would not be sober until it was at least 60 years. Attitudes like this are incredibly dangerous.

Early sobriety is complicated and messy. At times you are clinging on for hours or even minutes at a time. Setting yourself goals and hoping that you can stumble painfully across the finish line. For me, those early days were spent in a psychiatric ward. One might think that’s a safe place for someone getting sober, but trust me, there isn’t a lot that doesn’t make it’s way past security checks in those places.

Drugs and alcohol were readily available.

I remember celebrating one year of sobriety. A friend and I went to London and saw Lindsay Stirling perform live. It was a huge moment in my life, I had managed to go 365 days without getting drunk or high. Had someone like the aforementioned amazon reviewer spoken to me then, they way they have today, it wouldn’t have gone well.

When someone is getting sober, they need support. It’s likely they have done things they are not proud of, they probably wish that life could be as simple as switching of their emotions with a drink or a pill. Invalidate a person at the wrong time and they might just throw it away.

When you’re a sober addict, you live with the knowledge that your brain will find any excuse to go running back to its addiction. It doesn’t just go away. Anyone claiming it does is lying to you. Telling someone they’re not sober enough is gambling their life. This doesn’t just apply to length of time as a sober person, I have seen people be told they can’t be sober because of medicine they take or the way they have separated themselves from the harms of addiction.

Quite frankly, if you are sober, I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it; I’m proud of you. Even if sobriety has been an on and off affair; I’m proud of you. Perhaps you’re just thinking about it but haven’t quite started; doesn’t matter, I’m proud of you.

Every time a person makes the decision to heal themselves, the world becomes brighter. We are the cycle breakers. We are the one’s who stand proud and say “this suffering ends here, I choose to live”.

So, people like my Amazon reviewer can take their crappy opinions and keep them to themselves. I am proud of everyone fighting this battle.

The weight of recovery

As many of you know if you have followed this website for a period of time, I am in recovery from addiction and psychosis. I have spoken extensively of my experiences from when these things were in an active state for me, but today I want to zoom in on the experience of recovery.

Recovery.

Aptly named because it is a time when you try to recover your former self, you try to recover a time before all the shit hit the fan. While a hopeful title for such a period of time, it is perhaps the hardest part of the mental health cycle.

When you start to recover, you are left with the pain you may have caused, the guilt, the shame. There are times during recovery when quite honestly it’s quite difficult to love yourself. You are left with the questions that may never be fully answered.

It is a lonely time that can weigh on your mind a great deal.

What if the damage done is irreparable? How can people trust me again? Am I worthy of the love I have received?

While the burden can be shared with others in the recovery community appropriate to you, the burden is ultimately yours. We are the ones who have to decide to make a difference, which in the case of things like addiction and psychosis can be incredibly challenging; how can I decide to get help at a time when I don’t understand how ill I am?

For many of us, all we have is the wreckage of the life we once hoped for. Taking it’s pieces and trying to rebuild.

But hope is not lost. Because we can find ourselves again. While we carry the scars of our former battles, they stand testament to our victory over the immense pain and suffering that befell us. The people that love us are there, we just have to shine a light in the dark, whatever that may look like in our life.

Please don’t lose hope. You can find yourself. You can recover what wad lost.

Although life may be different to how it was before, I promise it can be a beautiful thing. Choose to carry the weight of recovery, and emerge a stronger you.

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