For All Those Sick and Suffering

Vol. 3, Issue 39

September was the start of Recovery Month, which is notable mostly because I’d never heard of it until last week, never mind that it’s existed for 32 (!) years. This is the sixth September I am a recovering person and not once has someone in my 12-step orbit acknowledged it. Based on a brief look over SAMHSA’s website, purple and white might be the official color scheme of Recovery Month, but purple is also the color chosen to raise awareness for (inhale) animal abuse, Alzheimer's disease, domestic violence, epilepsy, lupus, sarcoidosis, Crohn's disease, and pancreatic cancer. And September is a crowded awareness month, too, as Recovery Month has to make room for Sickle cell disease, ovarian cancer, arthritis, children’s eye health and safety, cholesterol education, and, like, five or six other maladies. Not to mention it’s Breakfast Awareness Month, Sewing Month, Chicken Month, Rice Month, and Baby Safety Month. (I’m sure there is a Substack dedicated to some if not all of these topics. The Riceman Cometh, I hope.) Plus, football season started.

I’ll tell you straight up it’s tough for me to be earnest about something like Recovery Month, but I’m gonna give it a whirl. Because I believe it’s meant to celebrate aliveness. Recovery is not only a willingness for some of us to stay above the dirt, but a genuine commitment to be a better version of a human while we’re here. I didn’t know what better was, let alone how to be it. Luckily I’ve met many other people – in rooms and in Zooms – who’ve helped pull up my rope. Those who understand the complexities of addiction, depression, weirdo-ness, hollowness, otherness, can attest to the emotional overhaul that’s needed to move one inch closer to better. I won’t call it miraculous but it’s a huge, huge win. So celebrate.

The list of ways to die from This Disease – which I was reluctant to call it that for most of my life, but I think it’s important to do so now – are innumerable: Heart explosions, liver rot, misadventure (as the Brits call it), hypoxeia, drunk driving, falling off a deck, jumping off a bridge, all sorts of cancers and cavernous sadness. Death is defied, until it’s not – and it’s on the loose out there right now.

So my one request for everyone reading this newsletter today is just to connect with the living and remember the recovering. Say thank you and I love you and I’m so glad you’re still here. Some days that’s all it takes.

Shout out to all my Lamictal kids who chose to hang in and RIP to Michael K. Williams who fought hard for many.

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It’s the first Tuesday of the month so that means our readers take over. As a reminder, this month’s prompt was simple: Check-in and tell us how you are. Their answers and updates are in the feature pit down below. Stay safe, stay sane. Let some light in. – AJD

Everything’s Broken, Everything’s Fine

by The Small Bow Family Orchestra

*****

“I haven't been doing too great lately, but I'm doing my best. I'll try to keep this brief. I met someone a little over a year ago and we became good friends. We just clicked. It felt like I had known her my whole life. Two months ago we took a trip out of our city together, just for fun, and after we returned she cut me out of her life. No warning or explanation, and when I tried to get an answer, I was only told I didn't do anything wrong but she needed time to herself. Now I've blown up a few friendships during my drinking days and always knew when a reckoning was coming. But this blindsided me, and the fact that I didn't do anything wrong doesn't help as much as it should. It adds a whole new layer of hurt, to know I didn't screw up but was tossed aside anyway. This was the first genuine, long-lasting connection I've made since I sobered up almost 5 years ago, and it felt good to develop a healthy friendship. You know, one not based on trauma bonding and emotional dumping. But it's no more now and I don't know what to do with the love I still have for her. I just have to set it aside while I move on.” – K.G.

*****

“I’ve been drinking and/or on drugs since I was in my teens. For 25 years of my life. For all intents and purposes, my whole life. I gave up drugs quite some time ago, knowing that it was unsustainable. But I kept drinking, a lot and for a long time. I decided to quit drinking because I just knew that it was holding me back from something in life. Many things in life? Everything in life? I knew it was keeping me from living. And I didn’t know what to expect on the other side of sobriety. I did know one thing for sure: where I was is not where I wanted to be, and the most straightforward path out of that place and into a new place was through not drinking. So I quit drinking. And I started evolving. 

Evolution was slow at first. Really slow. Small things, like being able to sit through crippling anxiety. Then being able to work with it. Then being able to feel it coming and interrupt it. I started naming my feelings and taking things less personally. I started speaking my truth with confidence and clarity. I fell into the type of love that makes me take accountability for how I show up in a relationship. I started considering the role that I play in the outcomes in my life. Through shadow work, I found the ability to love and care for all of me, not just the pieces of me that I deem acceptable and admirable. 

I started really resting. I started seeking out joy and peace. And I started to feel real hope for my capacity for change and growth. I started to live the life I have always wanted to live and be the person I have always wanted to be. Much of it has been painful. There has been a lot of mourning for lost years and lost chances. And there has been a lot of painful stretching and uncomfortable realizations. And god knows that the last 18 months have been challenging beyond my wildest dreams. And through it all my compassion for myself and others has reached depths I never thought myself capable of. So to answer the question: How am I? I am evolving, I am on the path, I am free.” – ANONYMOUS

*****

“I was diagnosed with ADHD a few weeks ago (turns out it gets hard to mask when you’re trying to finish a PhD in a pandemic), and when my psychiatrist was walking through symptoms that she’d seen in me, she brought up emotional dysregulation and alcohol abuse. I’d always thought ADHD was just hyper kids, but hearing that it could be a partial answer to such big question marks in my life left me feeling cracked open. it also made me sad, because I’m 27, and I can’t help but wonder if I’d been diagnosed at seven, or even seventeen whether my life would have forked off away from alcohol. or maybe this was always going to be my path; it’s not like ADHD makes the anxiety and depression go away.

Otherwise, we’re eight and a half weeks into a lockdown that’s going to last at least another five, and I worried (worry) that the stress and sadness around the situation would make me want to drink. and the thought has been there, but the endless dessert deliveries and CSI marathons I’ve been using to get through the day seem to be doing their jobs. Thank God they made 35 seasons of that franchise.” – G.C.

*****

I am up. Pretty high up. No drugs of anything to get me elevated. The difference is I don’t have my ex to bring me down. Sure, I had issues aside from him. But his gaslighting, manipulative bullshit really fucked me up. And a year and a half after leaving, I’m free! I see life so much more clearly. I see me so much more clearly. He was my drug- really. I’d have withdrawals when he’d discard me and ignore my attempts to fix whatever needed mending. I kicked the habit and it changed my life in ways I could not have imagined. – ANONYMOUS

*****

“I had a nervous breakdown in July, and every day I feel a little stronger, but that I've been seriously weakened is self-evident, is terribly uncomfortable. I see movement out of the corner of my eye and I jump; every day begins with a jolt. The progress I've made is so fragile, like I might be knocked down by the next email I receive, or by remembering I have to wake up every morning. I feel like I wake up and I wake up and I wake up. I'm grateful to not be full of anxiety in this moment, and I'll just have to see about the next one.” – S.M.

*****

“I feel like an asshole–like I'm regressing. I met a friend for an outdoor lunch, and it was full of awkward pauses and talking over each other, like a fucking zoom meeting. She drank pink wine, ate half of a $27 salad, and told me about her air fryer. I'm sweating all the time.” – H.B.

*****

“I threw up violently for hours.” – ANONYMOUS

*****

“I'm not really doing all that well, to be honest. Three years into sobriety and things with my partner are really starting to fall apart. The disillusion we relied on to keep whatever fragments of our marriage together have been viciously torn down by an extended pandemic and pure exhaustion of the bullshit my addict projects all over this house. Shit, I am exhausted by it and have been for a while. It feels like we are on an inevitable freight train collision with divorce, and my codependency is freaking the fuck out.

Other than that, I'm fine.” – ANONYMOUS

*****

“Started doing yoga again regularly after about 4 years. And I’m NOT letting myself do it for hours on end/get obsessed. It’s really helped my new chronic pain issues I’ve been scared to deal with. I think this is a solid, good thing!” – S.F.

*****

“I am currently inpatient for my suicidal ideation. In the hospital, my eating disorder gets much more severe, and I don't tell them. The weight loss makes me want to stay alive in the worst moments.

If that's too anti-recovery, I understand. Just kind of wanted to share with someone.” – S.B.

Thank you to everyone who contributed. We raised $60 for the Katal Center this month. If you’d like to be part of October’s Inverse Pitching, see the gray box below for details. Subscribe here.