This week marks one year since I made the choice to stop drinking and smoking weed. These two substances have been a part of my life since my teenage years, and while this post is not about the many-years-long devolution into becoming addicted and massively overdoing it, it’s fair to note that it was roughly 35 years of toxicity and numbing, and it should come as no surprise that holistic recovery takes way more time than one might think. But perhaps because of our culture’s cursory attention on addiction and recovery as a whole, that explains why for myself included, I have been surprised at how this whole recovery experience has gone (so far).
Another dimension that marks this period of time for me is that after I was laid off from my last corporate job I got in touch with a part of me who had been trying to get my attention for quite a few many years, who was telling me that working in corporate is not a good fit for me. Or in other words, it was sucking my soul, my creativity and stripping me of my sense of self. She helped me understand that I literally could not bring myself to step into any activity or gig that would have me working within the same types of work cultures or facing the same toxic scenarios that I had been exposed to way too many times.
This was also the year leading up to my 50th birthday, which really, really lit a fire under me. I told myself that I wanted to be proud of myself at 50, I imagined the look-back later on in life, where I could say “at 50 I transformed my life – and look at me now” … that kind of thing. And I knew in my heart, that my real truth was that I needed to get sober, to be present for my life – and to truly turn inwards and start the work of real repair.
And what I want to share right now, is that today I feel really good. Like so good that I have a giddy excitement rising up in me, something that feels like a new feeling. It’s not even like something I used to feel and then lost, this is entirely a new experience of myself that is difficult to put into words. And I also want to share that two weeks ago, I was experiencing some of my lowest lows. When my inner chatter was full of doubt and saying things like “you’ll never feel better, you’ll never truly heal”. And I am giving that version of myself compassion now, and telling her to trust herself – that her inner wisdom is guiding her to higher ground.
Early on in recovery I heard about how “recovery isn’t linear” … and that has been extremely helpful to remember along the way. And of course, we all know that life overall is not linear, but for some reason we still expect it and everything we experience to be. For me, now, my expectations are that the lows are normal, but may they get progressively less low, as the highs become more frequent. And this makes me happy to acknowledge and share.