More debriefing from 12-step fellowships
Posted on Sep 24th, 2007
by 
Clifton
Clifton
One thing that seems to be important to my story relative to where I am now is the fact that I got clean SO young, followed ALL the suggestions, and have never really veered from the path. So? So, I don't have any other life or way of life to compare it to, or to contrast it with. My using was entirely during my adolescence. I never really grew into adulthood to have anything to lose. When people would share about "getting back," or getting things "back," I had never really lost anything like that so I couldn't relate.
Now, I have lost things while clean, but that doesn't really fit the recovery narrative, does it? People can't relate. And since for 90% of everyone in our membership recovery is a short-term thng--that is, they never stack up enough years, or decades, to really experience the seasons of life--I have grown increasingly irrelevant to them, and they to me.
I see this thing developing in members, where the bloom comes off the rose for them, the romance is gone, and they feel they have surely done or are doing something "wrong" relative to "working the program," they get discouraged and return to using. And little wonder, since they've been indoctrinated into believing that they ARE addicts, they ARE alcoholics, and that's what addicts and alcoholics DO. They procede as if there is no other alternative....when all along what they were experiencing was merely LIFE, shit that happens to EVERYONE if you live long enough--tragedies, loss, bewilderment, the loss of innocence, getting older, etc.
People like to talk about having a "pink cloud" when they first come around in the context of the first several months--I say, how about the first several years. Because you see, you can put on the mantle of having lots of time and use that to shore up your identity and your delusions as well, e.g., "I am this," "I am that," therefore, "I am special"...and these are dangerous things to need.
It's time, time for me to surrender the delusions of youth, become a member of the human race, just like everybody else, bereft of my specialness, my unique status, my narcissism that's turned from being a castle into a prison. I'm telling you, I get really, really sick around those people in the fellowship, they pull me down, down into a place I no longer need to be--as the old saying goes, they will get me sick before I will get them well...
Now, I have lost things while clean, but that doesn't really fit the recovery narrative, does it? People can't relate. And since for 90% of everyone in our membership recovery is a short-term thng--that is, they never stack up enough years, or decades, to really experience the seasons of life--I have grown increasingly irrelevant to them, and they to me.
I see this thing developing in members, where the bloom comes off the rose for them, the romance is gone, and they feel they have surely done or are doing something "wrong" relative to "working the program," they get discouraged and return to using. And little wonder, since they've been indoctrinated into believing that they ARE addicts, they ARE alcoholics, and that's what addicts and alcoholics DO. They procede as if there is no other alternative....when all along what they were experiencing was merely LIFE, shit that happens to EVERYONE if you live long enough--tragedies, loss, bewilderment, the loss of innocence, getting older, etc.
People like to talk about having a "pink cloud" when they first come around in the context of the first several months--I say, how about the first several years. Because you see, you can put on the mantle of having lots of time and use that to shore up your identity and your delusions as well, e.g., "I am this," "I am that," therefore, "I am special"...and these are dangerous things to need.
It's time, time for me to surrender the delusions of youth, become a member of the human race, just like everybody else, bereft of my specialness, my unique status, my narcissism that's turned from being a castle into a prison. I'm telling you, I get really, really sick around those people in the fellowship, they pull me down, down into a place I no longer need to be--as the old saying goes, they will get me sick before I will get them well...
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12 steps
August 2008 