Thank you for sharing this. Also, "I mustered up enough courage to speak up as a professional person in addiction recovery while naming myself a safe drug user, right out in the open and in a professional public space." CONGRATULATIONS!
One of the things I've been trying to navigate in my book is how to talk about my relationship with drinking alcohol as someone who has struggled with alcohol abuse. People always assume I am 100% sober or that I'm in AA, and neither of those things are true. I hesitated with even writing my book because of those assumptions, but I'm getting braver each day and more committed to sharing what it looks like to be in alcohol recovery and be someone who still drinks, someone who does drugs, etc. It's tough with my family history and the other trauma-related parts of the book, we gotta do it, right? We gotta talk about it all if we're gonna talk about it, right?
Hello!! I feel so deeply about this comment, thank you. It's rare and def a less-known circumstance to straddle between worlds. Certainly, any addiction born out of trauma is harder to navigate bc we are acting out of absolute thinking that can not hold more than one truth. It's common in recovery to boomerang into the equal/opposite behaviour to feel safe and secure but ultimately the balance of informed choice between emotion/feeling and action will allow for more powerful safer choices. When I understood choices born out of chaos were problematic for me, I could focus on managing the chaos over the choice to avoid/engage the addiction. Do you want to talk more about this? I would love too!!
Thank you for sharing this. Also, "I mustered up enough courage to speak up as a professional person in addiction recovery while naming myself a safe drug user, right out in the open and in a professional public space." CONGRATULATIONS!
One of the things I've been trying to navigate in my book is how to talk about my relationship with drinking alcohol as someone who has struggled with alcohol abuse. People always assume I am 100% sober or that I'm in AA, and neither of those things are true. I hesitated with even writing my book because of those assumptions, but I'm getting braver each day and more committed to sharing what it looks like to be in alcohol recovery and be someone who still drinks, someone who does drugs, etc. It's tough with my family history and the other trauma-related parts of the book, we gotta do it, right? We gotta talk about it all if we're gonna talk about it, right?
Hello!! I feel so deeply about this comment, thank you. It's rare and def a less-known circumstance to straddle between worlds. Certainly, any addiction born out of trauma is harder to navigate bc we are acting out of absolute thinking that can not hold more than one truth. It's common in recovery to boomerang into the equal/opposite behaviour to feel safe and secure but ultimately the balance of informed choice between emotion/feeling and action will allow for more powerful safer choices. When I understood choices born out of chaos were problematic for me, I could focus on managing the chaos over the choice to avoid/engage the addiction. Do you want to talk more about this? I would love too!!