“Duncan, you gotta recover out loud.” Fine. This is me recovering out loud.
Stop saying recover!
It’s the wrong word for what we do. It’s part of an outdated concept that alcohol problems are an illness. They don’t work like that.
If you have a cold, you want to recover. You want to get back to what you had before the cold started. But drinking isn’t like that. You don’t want to go back to where you were before you started drinking.
But worse than that, recovery obscures the best bit about getting sober. Discovery.
Personally, I have discovered so much in the last nine years. I’ve discovered what loving relationships are really like. I’ve discovered a purpose that burns like the sun and forces me out of bed every morning. I’ve discovered that the risk of falling off my skates and hurting myself (again) is worth the thrill of skating fast and busting tricks.
I had none of that before I started drinking. I have not recovered any of this. I have discovered it.
And if you think about it for a second, it has to be this way. We started drinking before we had stopped growing and developing. We began our drinking career before we had reached maturity.
We drank before our brain had fully developed. We drank before we had discovered self awareness. We drank before we had learned the meaning of love. Before we started to drink we did not know who we were and what we should be doing with our lives. We did not truly know how to love, or grieve, or empathise or jump for joy.
We cannot go back. Nor would we want to.
What we get when we stop drinking is new and scary, dangerous and exciting. The things that are important are not things we can recover because we never had them in the first place. We must discover the things that are important.
And the truth is many people – never mind their relationship with alcohol – simply don’t develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence. These are not bread and butter, these are precious gifts. The majority of people never discover them.
Let’s not do down our achievements by saying we’re recovering something that we misplaced. Let’s celebrate it (we still know how to party). Let’s honour our discoveries, let’s praise each other. Let’s bring the joy.
Let’s discover out loud.
