In addiction treatment, we often remind our clients, “The opposite of addiction is connection.”
It’s true that addiction is often a disease born of disconnection, of not belonging, of not feeling worthy to belong, of being born on the outside and wishing you could get in. Lots of addicts fancy themselves hermits. But there’s a big difference between being a hermit and hiding. Retreat isn’t the same as running away.
I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times, a newly sober person with multiple layers of defense comes into a recovery group, scowling, slumped in a chair, refusing to open up. They won’t get vulnerable, get in the sandbox, get their feet dirty or risk getting seen and known. The person imagines that layers of defense provide protection, but of course, there’s no protection here.
I remember my dad telling me that 11 people a year used to die trying to get change back from Coke machines—from tipping the machines and shaking them. He also shared how the “L” in a giant Blockbuster sign fell down and killed a woman, and how a man walking home from work died when a 150-year-old tree happened to fall on him. But I digress. Protection is our greatest illusion. Just ask the people in LA how quickly those layers of defense burn up.
In addiction treatment, the very act of protecting ourselves can be what kills us. Addiction thrives in darkness. One of the myriad of slogans one is forced to endure in recovery from alcohol and/or drugs is, “you’re only as sick as your secrets.” Most newcomers hate the sayings because they are true, and addiction loves lies even more than it loves secrets.
But secrets serve a purpose for the addiction monster. Secrets keep us alone. Your addiction hisses in your ear, “If you tell people who you really are, they won’t love you. Stick with me,” it says, now purring, “I’ll always be here for you.”
Addiction may be the problem, but it presents itself as the solution, and that’s the problem. They don’t call it “liquid courage” for nothing.
With my addiction running me, I don’t have time for other people anyway. I don’t need connection because I am consumed with wanting moremoremoremoremore. The next one will be the best. Enough is just around the riverbend. My addiction wants me to think I am a deep thinker, as sensitive soul, and introvert, yesssss, a hermit. That’s what I am! Not a loser with the shades drawn, sitting in the dark smashed again, but a hermit. Just replace the lantern with a handle of vodka.
But for addicts like me, I’m going to die in the dark, and there is safety in numbers if I am brave enough to risk it. Brave enough to say I am a complete fuck up. I’ve made a mess of things. I can’t do it alone. Help me. Thank you. These are the hardest things to say.
This is why AA meetings help. People call it a cult, but if it is a cult, it’s a terrible cult. There don’t want your money, they don’t even know your last name, and they don’t care if you come or if you don’t come. They just happen to be living fairly productive lives without drugs and alcohol. How’s that working out for you, powered by your own brilliant choices?
Any group will do though, you just need to be able to be who you really are, somewhere with other people in group because it’s terrifying. Find your tribe where you can say, help me stop killing myself. Your DNA doesn’t want you alone or dead, even if your addiction does.
Lean in closer, would you? I need to whisper this in your ear: you’re looking for love and they have it there. They will love you until you can love yourself.
I hope there comes a moment for you when the equation shifts and the pain of life using drugs or alcohol exceeds the fear of living without it. You’re isolated and scared and broken and so, so, so tired. Maybe it’s time, time to find the kind of courage that doesn’t come in a bottle, but comes when you can, as e.e. cummings would say, “Grow up and become who you really are.”
I’ve been sober for 33 years and ironically, it is by going to those meetings I hated, by stopping the secrets, by asking for help, by dropping the overcoat of protection and the handle of vodka and risking true connection with others that I could finally connect with myself.
A paradox among many in recovery
What you recover in recovery is you. The best version of yourself, which is your birthright, and which has never gone away but has been silenced by fear, plain and simple. Fear that you, just being you, will not be enough when it’s the one single thing you have enough of. Despite your addiction’s protestations to the contrary.
You are enough and nothing out there can ever change that. You can’t be “more” you and you can’t be “less’ and you don’t need to be, and you finally get that.
That’s when you can move on to being a Hermit. You’re not running away from anything. Instead, you realize that it is the time you spend alone, connecting with yourself (someone who you happen to like most days) and the godness or the goodness within you that allows you to do the bravest things out there in the world: things like show up and suit up, things like fail and fall on your ass, and things like love like it will never hurt.