Openness about Recovery
When I first came into recovery, I was very apprehensive about being open about my sobriety. When I met other people in recovery, it was easy to be open and share about the things that I had struggled with and was struggling with. But what about sharing with everyone else? I was afraid that I was going to be judged, that people were going to think poorly of me and that they wouldn’t give me a chance. So it became a taboo topic that was unmentionable. I told the people who already knew me back home that I was in California working. This wasn’t a lie, but work was certainly not the reason that I moved. When I met new people who weren’t in recovery, I just didn’t say anything about it.
What that did was created a wall between me and the people I met. My recovery journey was the most important in my life. I grasped that even at the very beginning. So how could I get close to people while leaving out this huge detail about my life? People would ask me what I was doing that evening, and I would stumble over my words as I tried to think of something to say other than “going to a meeting.” When people asked me where I lived, I told them I was staying with friends of my family in Malibu, when I was really at a sober living house. When people offered me wine with dinner, I would refuse because “I had to drive.” I just wasn’t comfortable telling them about my recovery. What that did was make it nearly impossible for me to get close to anyone outside of the recovery rooms. But all of that changed when I met Erin.
Erin and I worked together at my first job in California at a marketing agency. I liked her immediately. She was smart, she was funny, she was kind and she had her life together. As the months passed, we started hanging out more outside of work. We just clicked, and she was the first person outside of my recovery friends with whom I wanted to share my recovery story. But I was afraid. I was afraid that if I told her the truth, she wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore. I was afraid that she would think I was no fun or, worse, that I was not a very good person. So I kept it to myself. Then one day when we were having coffee, I ran into a guy from my group meetings who stopped to say hello. He didn’t break my anonymity, but our conversation was clearly a little confusing to Erin. So when he left, I took a deep breath and told her the truth. I told her the real reason that I moved the California, the struggles that I had with alcohol in the past and about my sobriety for the past six months. When I finished, I looked up at her, fully expecting her to walk away. But she didn’t. She just smiled and said, “That’s cool. I know a lot of people in recovery. Good for you!” My relief was immediate. I felt like, from that point forward, I could fully be myself around her.
Today, I am extremely open about my recovery. I realized that most people don’t judge me, and the ones who do aren’t people that I want around anyway. As a result, I have created an amazing network of people both in and out of recovery who love and support me. I am no longer afraid or uncomfortable with who I am and what I am going through. That has had a wonderful effect on my relationships with those around me. I’m so glad I took that leap and decided to open up and be honest with Erin. Three years later, she is still one of my closest friends. Our friendship has grown, and we have gone on to have amazing experiences together. Not only does she support me in my life but also she supports me in my recovery. She has been there to give me a cake for every single one of my sobriety birthdays. I truly believe that I would have missed out on this friendship if I had been too afraid to be honest.
We are all here to break the negative stigma of addiction, and I realized that it begins with me. The more people who are open and talking about recovery, the more we are going to change society’s attitudes about it. So don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of who you are, where you have been or where you are going. If you are afraid, you don’t know what you may be closing the door on.