Make no mistake about this, being sober in the world today is HARD. Wonderful, amazing, infinitely worth it, but also hard. Not the getting sober, which is also very hard, as we all know, but just existing as a person who has experienced addiction and then has to live in a world which glamorises and reveres the very thing you were addicted to. Especially as the world and everyone in it also seems to then take every available opportunity to tell you in subtle and less than subtle ways you that the problem was with you, the ‘addict’. Not the addictive substance.
We live in a world where International Overdose Awareness Day is A Thing but the vast, vast majority of people, otherwise informed and intelligent people, still think addiction is something ‘other’. Something over there, not anything to do with them, while all the while regularly consuming an addictive substance and believing that has absolutely no connection to the person they saw on the news who died because they were addicted to a substance. We live in a world where people are disconnected and hurting and the available ways to numb that pain are seemingly infinite and ever increasing. Where countless women have to say #MeToo and where antidepressant prescription is through the roof (£266.6m spend by the NHS in 2016). We live in a world of Mummy’s Wine Memes, where gin comes in cans you can drink on the train, where birthday cards and notepads and fucking door mats tell us we should be drinking prosecco, but it is still widely considered so shameful to be addicted to alcohol that the primary recovery support group has the word ‘anonymous’ in its name.
The further I get into sobriety the more I realise that so much of what led us to drinkng is just our essential human-ness. Everyone feels a bit lost nowadays I think, we’re all looking for something that helps us to cope with the modern world, whether that’s a drug or food or sex or the internet or exercise or religion. But I think anything that comes from the outside in, like booze or drugs or food, is bound to fail ultimately in making anyone feel better because happiness and contentment can only come from within. And in ditching one of the biggest ‘life anaesthetics’ of the modern age we are a bloody great big step closer to realising that, which actually makes us, the ‘poor unfortunate addicts’, very very fortunate indeed. And incredibly brave – day 1 or day 1001, you are all warriors who are helping to make the world a better place for the next generation, showing our children that they don’t have to spend their lives numb and disconnected, that there is another way to live. So be proud today ❤️.
