Your Story of Self
“We all remember the parts of the past that allow us to meet the future,” wrote the late David Carr in The Night of the Gun, a book that chronicled his journey as an addict, father, and New York Times journalist.
His story of one night and one gun is central to the book and his personal narrative. Woven throughout the book is the theme of memory and self — of forgetting, of remembering — who we are. He reminds us that we are all constant works-in-progress, shaping and reconstructing our view of self. This fact is not an act of fanciful self-indulgence but a malleable tool crucial to learning, surviving, and thriving.
View of self has wide-ranging impacts on addiction and recovery. Researchers Doug McConnell and Anna Golova, for example, explored how a state of self-ambiguity, defined as “uncertainty about whether one’s established self-narrative represents who one really is,” is a liminal state necessary for both reinvention and recovery. They explain:
We illustrate this third form of self-ambiguity in the context of addiction where people’s established addiction self-narratives make it difficult to identify with recovery. We argue that recovery will require embracing, especially, our third form of self-ambiguity as a chance for positive self-transformation. Treatment for addiction should, therefore, support people in going through and ultimately narratively resolving the inevitable self-ambiguities of the recovery process. (Emphasis added.)
McConnell and Golova emphasize that conflict of self-view must be resolved, “either by effortfully reconfiguring the self-narrative to align with the judgment that one can recover, or by reverting to the judgment that accords with the established self-narrative — ‘I am an addict after all’ — and relapsing.”
The “Benefits” of an Addicted Identity
Earlier, researcher Hanna Pickard investigated the complicated relationship between self-view and addiction. She put the challenge brought by identity this way:
Given that an addict identification carries expectations of continued consumption despite negative consequences, there is therefore a parsimonious explanation of why people who identify as addicts continue to use drugs despite these consequences: they self-identify as addicts and that is what addicts are supposed to do. I conclude by considering how it is nonetheless possible to overcome addiction despite this identity, in part by imagining and enacting a new one. Importantly, this possibility requires the availability of social support and material resources that are all too frequently absent in the lives of those who struggle with addiction. (Emphasis added.)
Pickard’s work is interesting because she argues, in part, that people use drugs to secure a sense of self and social identity. As she writes, “[drugs] are a means to many valuable ends,” later adding that “drugs continue to provide relief from pain, fatigue, stress, boredom, negative emotions and psychological suffering (even if addiction creates its own suffering).” From here she lays out — in detail and with caveats to guard against judgment — how self-identity with an addiction can provide, perversely, a range of benefits to the person with an addiction.
This excerpt is chilling:
An addict identity can also function as a psychological defence mechanism — a barrier protecting against the experience of looking inwards and finding, not a stable, core sense of self as positive and morally good, but only a dark and empty void where that self should be.
This is the very definition of self-ambiguity. Who am I? Carr described this state in his book: “All of the smoke in all those pipes was going both ways: The narcotic was being inhaled while my soul was exhaled.”
Transforming Your View of Self
Recovery is a period of significant transformation of self-identity. How does one reconcile the inner turmoil between old and new self-identities? How does one authentically build a new identity unrelated to an addiction?
This is the work of recovery. It is an ongoing project undertaken by the individual to rebuild identity and personal narrative.
To do this, some find benefit in structured methods (e.g. meetings and groups). Others seek and create tailored programs of renewal that are personally motivating or offer meaning. For example, some look to philosophical study and spiritual traditions to explore ideas of self in a larger context. Some do all of the above. What these approaches have in common are active steps taken to rethink and rebuild who you are outside your addiction. They all require changing the story you tell yourself about you.
Crucially, this highly personal work cannot be completed in isolation. Self-identity is made through self-expression, social connections, and community contributions (“sober through service” as an example). How this unfolds is unique to every life.
Carr’s writing provides a lasting contribution to anyone who wishes to peer inside the recovery process and see what it demands of the stories we tell ourselves. His book is a look into the struggles and triumphs of examining and redefining self. Writing of the large and necessary reconfiguration of self-identity:
I stopped identifying myself as an alcoholic and an addict and began thinking of myself as someone who just didn’t drink or do drugs.
Written by Katie McCaskey. First published October 23, 2024.
Sources:
The Night of the Gun, David Carr, August 5, 2008.
“Narrative, addiction, and three aspects of self-ambiguity,” Taylor & Francis, September 4, 2022.
“Addiction and the self,” Nous, December 2021.
“Staying Sober Through Service,” Greater Good Magazine, March 13, 2012.
Image Copyright: godongphoto.