The Gifts of Addiction (and recovery)
“My willingness to see my addiction as a teacher, forgive myself and choose love has helped countless people.”
-Gabby Bernstein
Gabby Bernstein is a spiritual teacher who found her calling in her recovery from substance abuse. While her work is not necessarily about recovery, she reiterates how she refuses to feel shame over that period of her life. She emphasizes how deeply grateful she is to her addiction and the way it led her to her life’s purpose.
Over the years I have read many a brilliant memoir about addiction and recovery. Many of them are dramatic, with extreme rock bottoms and miraculous stories of intervention and redemption.
My own story with addiction and recovery has been a slow, steady process spanning many years.
About ten years ago, when I was many years into my sober recovery, someone I trusted and loved made a very public, very shaming comment about me and my past. I was stunned in that childlike way we are when someone betrays our tender heart.
But it was a great moment. Because even though the intention of the comment was clear, I was not ashamed. Instead I was proud of myself that I was sober. I was fiercely proud that I had walked through the fire and emerged better and stronger. Cleansed. And I burned with anger that this person had dared to step on such holy ground with such carelessness and mean-spirited intentions.
When I read Gabby’s comments about her addiction in her most recent book I was inspired to revisit some of my ideas about recovery. I saw an opportunity to dig a bit deeper.
I saw some deeper lessons. I saw an opportunity to bestow some love and gratitude on my addictive patterns and behavior for the beautiful gifts they have brought into my life.
Here are some of my thoughts.
The gift of getting real
Nothing will jolt you into reality like the ugliness of substance abuse. My addiction forced me to get real about was how deeply I was hurting. My recovery was not in the context of rehab or a twelve step program. In a truly miraculous series of events I ended up in therapy with a “Shamanic Psychotherapist”. This was back in about 2000 and it all seemed really far out of the mainstream. Today, pretty much all the processes my therapist availed herself of are recognised as essential in healing trauma and now a respected part of somatic psychotherapy. I spent about ten years working in this vein, both individually and for many years in weekly and monthly groups and weekend workshops with other women. It was a truly beautiful experience.
I learned how very hurt I was. This was hard to accept. I come from a background of great privilege. But I think that learning about who we are and how life has affected us truly, regardless of how we think we “should be” is an incredible gift. According to F.M Alexander, self knowledge precedes all other knowledge.
Recovery from addiction shatters our illusions about ourselves and the world. At the time it felt like a brutal process. Looking back, it seems more that I was gently lowered by loving arms into the ground of truth and reality.
The astrologer and writer Tosha Silver says that in order to transform you life, you must bless your Karma. By looking our trauma in the face and loving ourselves in the process, I believe we do just that.
The gift of hope and renewal
Addiction is wretched. The craving leaves you feeling so weak. Every time you betray your values to feed your addiction, you feed the monster of self loathing. As your addiction grows, your self esteem diminishes. When you have moved beyond this and feel the serenity of sobriety one thing becomes abundantly clear: renewal and healing are possible. You become a bringer of hope. Because you know. You have crawled underground and yet emerged triumphant.
While I am not part of a twelve step program, I think the 12 steps of recovery are true signposts on the path of recovery, whatever path you choose (or chooses you). The tradition of sponsorship is a beautiful expression of this idea, where one addict further along the path of recovery reaches out their hand to a fellow traveler and offers them hope.
When I would bemoan my fate and be full of self pity my therapist would tell me that one of the gifts I was gathering was learning how to see in the dark.
The gift of surrender
The first step in the 12 steps is to surrender your addiction to a power greater then yourself.
I don’t know why, I don’t know how this works, but I think this is the greatest wisdom we can take on board as humans.
I don’t understand the universe, there is mystery beyond mystery, but when I surrender my life circumstances to a loving higher power (I say God) it all works out so much better. Prayer in my life leads to healing both physical and mental, beautiful opportunities and so much more.
As an addict, in full despair, you are forced into surrender. And in a way, you already know about surrender. Giving yourself over to your addiction you have surrendered to a destructive force, but you can use that same ability and give yourself over to a constructive force. Love.
The gift of humility
As an addict, it is certain that you have done really shitty things. You have burned bridges, you have lied, you have probably stolen, if only someone’s trust in you. You have been sneaky.
Knowing what you are capable of is horrible, but also wonderful. It allows you to take pride and joy in the little noble actions of life that many people might take for granted, but not you!
More importantly, you learn, at least to a degree to withhold judgment of others. You have been on your knees and you can’t look down on anyone else flattened in any moment.
To me, true humility is knowing that you are no better then anyone else on this planet, but also knowing that you are no worse.
The gift of self forgiveness
If you are truly going to move on from the self destruction, you must forgive yourself. This sounds so easy, but in my experience is deeply painful and difficult. There is a process of atonement that we must all go through that can feel humiliating and like death. It is the truth we have been avoiding through addiction.
But growing big enough to forgive ourselves gives us more capacity to just, well, be.
The gift of wisdom
This is the most precious gift you can receive from your addictions and personal ruin. While not everyone goes down the path of addiction, life does not leave any of us unscathed. The human condition has loss, disappointment, disease and death baked into the cake.
I believe any experience of recovery, from any kind of destruction in our lives adheres to the same principles. Marianne Williamson talks about us having a emotional and spiritual immune system that kicks into action to heal us, just like we have an immune system that starts certain physiological processes when we cut our finger.
Learning how to navigate this process of healing and renewal is the greatest gift that addiction can offer us. It is a meta skill that applies to navigating life in general.
When I was in my twenties I was so ashamed that I needed to do “healing” work. I actually loved the process. It felt so exiting, creative and intellectually stimulating to me. I loved learning about how I really felt, I loved encountering the truth. But doing this kind of work did not fit how or who I thought I should be.
I remember one day, sitting in my therapist’s front room with a group of women going through extraordinary experiences of healing and love and thinking how miraculous it all was. It felt incredible that we could be ordinary women, in an ordinary living room, in an ordinary suburb having such extraordinary experiences. We were addressing some deeply human part of ourselves that has been expressed since the beginning of time. It felt like we were resurrecting some forgotten way of life, connecting to something essential we had been cut off from for too long. Something that was a potent antidote for the depression, anxiety, despair and self hatred that had brought us to this place of seeking out support and healing.
But in the narrow world that I so longed to be a part of, a world where people were wealthy, well dressed and presented something totally “together” to the outside world this wild, crazy, hippie, messy me felt so awful and out of place. I was so ashamed of it, I was so ashamed of me.
I was also angry and resentful. Why could I not be like people I know, getting good jobs in banks and buying starter homes? Going on holiday and being, well, normal. There I was, flailing about in life, barely able to make ends meet, constantly careening from one disappointment to the next.
Now I am so grateful for all of it. Having the experience of such despair and navigating my way out of it has given me some of the most precious gifts of my life.
In my twenties I did not know how many meaningful connections I would make along the way because I knew this path. How many times I could be present to someone in the depth of despair and say with 100% certitude, this too can heal, you will be ok. In fact you already are. How learning to sit with someone in grief or despair and just be there would be a gift I could share in my life. And that I could be wonderful friend who understood these stages of healing we all go through when life brings us to our knees and we are attempting to stand up again.
I had no idea that all this “work” would open the door to the biggest blessing in my life, my marriage. That working in these groups would teach me about relationship, about communication about patience and tolerance and just plain devotion.
My despair opened up a vein of richness in my life from which only good things flow.
So thank you Gabby, for those words. It has been a gift to take a closer look at my experience of recovery. If you are struggling with any kind of addictive behaviour, and if I am honest, I believe we all are, I hope some of this can offer you support and understanding.
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