- Alcohol
This week marks the eighth anniversary of my daughter’s sobriety. In 12-step programs this anniversary is called your birthday, and it really is. By coincidence her biological birthday comes only a couple weeks before her sobriety birthday. We celebrate the two together on her sobriety birthday. We do this because without the sobriety date we celebrate, there’d probably be no biological birthday party. Addiction is a killer.
I lost my sister to addiction three years ago. She struggled her whole life to find reasons to live. She was talented, funny, pretty, kind and smart. Our family loved her, but none of us could ever figure out how to give her what she needed to be happy. She had dear friends who felt the same way. I think everyone’s happiness is at least partly a matter of choice. We all have our part, and luck makes up the rest. My sister was unlucky in one important way. She had what turned out to be a fatal disease. I miss her often despite how difficult she could be.
There are a couple things worth noting about these two events. The first is that my daughter eventually decided to fight her disease with absolutely every ounce of will she has. My sister was unable to generate this amount of fight, and eventually she gave up. She couldn’t find reasons to live. She couldn’t imagine what a “dream life” might look like. Our conversations about this blew me away. My sister saw no path to happiness and nothing that was worth the effort required. She was afraid of everything. She had a mental health disorder and addiction (called a dual diagnosis), but no amount of pharmacological treatment or therapy helped.
The second interesting thing is that, as everyone familiar with addiction knows, addiction is cunning, powerful and baffling. When we gather as a family to celebrate another of my daughter’s birthdays, we implicitly recognize that there is no “cure” yet for this disease and that my daughter’s discipline and resolve combined with her training and hard work are the things that protect her from relapse. My daughter’s disease is as malevolent as my sister’s was. When we celebrate my daughter’s achievement each year, we’re quietly reminding ourselves that there are no guarantees she will be able to maintain her sobriety. That’s what makes the celebration so important. We want her to know how precious she is to us.
We don’t talk about it like this in our family. We smile about the fact that we’re all together and healthy, and we laugh and do fun things. We work to be a “normal” family, something which we were not during a decade of struggles against addiction. We don’t think about the possibility of our daughter’s relapse. It’s too terrifying.
This week I am deeply grateful for what we have: a definitely normal-enough family life. My daughter is in recovery, healthy and making progress in her life, and she thinks life is worth the effort at least for today. I’m so proud of her.