“I have to do what? The same thing, day after day, until I croak?” A lot of people are turned off by this aspect of recovery, who view it as boring at best; and at worst, unbearably repetitive.

A recent post listed some of the ways in which recovery from addiction is not a condition but a process, and a never-ending one, at that. Of course, the paradox is that there are a lot of other things we are very happy to accept as appropriately perpetual. Breathing is one of them. Who doesn’t want to breathe right up until the last possible moment? A bit of thought can produce other examples of things we might always want to do.

And yet, incredible as this sounds, it is possible for someone to be so disgusted with life that even breathing feels like a wearisome, meaningless chore. Being asked to take in oxygen is an intolerable imposition. Yes, plenty of people have felt like that, perhaps even someone we know well.

In the broadest possible sense of meaningful human discourse, a person so afflicted is ill. Even if they have done everything in their power to maintain the addiction that makes them hate life, that still means they are sick, not criminals. Adherents to this school of thought have tried hard against daunting odds, to help sick people get well.

To ever truly recover from any trauma, even the self-inflicted trauma of addiction, we are told that the person must learn to love herself or himself…. and that is a tall order. No matter how many fictionalized dramas they watch, or even how many absolutely true crime shows, an awful lot of people have no real notion of what goes on out there in the world that other people fervently wish they could escape from. How lucky that individual is, who has led such a protected life, they can’t even conceptualize, for instance, what it is to be terrified of one’s own parent.

Even when violence is not part of the family picture, there are other weapons and other wounds. People grow up with all kinds of burdensome knowledge about the circumstances of their birth. The 13th child of parents who could only afford 5. The child who comes to understand that the parents are staying together only for his or her sake. The product of an earlier marriage, and an ongoing reminder to the mother that she failed.

People are damaged in a lot of different ways, and many of them react by “turning to drugs.” As many newly sober individuals have found to their regret, it is all too easy to swap an alcohol habit for a doughnut habit. That is not a change, merely an accommodation, and a resented one. One part of the personality is so angry about having to quit a dangerous habit, it takes revenge on the other part of the personality by trying to destroy it with sugar instead of alcohol. This is not sustainable.

In many times and places, the treatment success rate has not been good. It is no wonder that many citizens are reluctant to allocate funds to the treatment of addicts. Of course, criminalization and incarceration are not great cures for addiction either, but they do keep addicts out of the way, where society does not have to see or think about them.

The information page for a randomly chosen private addiction center says, “We know when you’ve been through drug addiction treatments repeatedly with the same results, recovery can seem like a lost cause.” This particular place offers a non-12-step approach and guidance on the journey “to parts of yourself that traditional addiction rehab cannot reach,” and does not believe in claiming “the labels and limitations of addiction.” It does, the prospective patient is assured, require “an open mind and a willingness to go where you haven’t gone before.”

Sobriety has to be more than just white-knuckling it from one endless day to the next. That is not enough to build a future on. The future-builders are finding out what caused addiction in the first place, and making every possible positive change. Sobriety is not the end goal but a marker, a milestone, one first step on an infinite stairway.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published December 6, 2024.

Sources:

“Recovery vs. Sobriety: What’s the Difference?,” FHERrehab.com, January 12, 2015.

“The Sanctuary Holistic Addiction Recovery.” lp.sanctuary.net, undated.

Image Copyright: Jérôme Vançon/Attribution 2.0 Generic.