In one of my support groups, there are some brilliant and wise people having moments of pure genius. In the best meeting I’ve ever been to, a shining star said something that moved us all. To paraphrase, she said that we, as recovering addicts and alcoholics, have qualities that the post-COVID world will desperately need. We’ve been in the depths of our own behavior and have seen what it takes to give that behavior up. We’ve had to make sacrifices to protect others and ourselves. We’ve had to completely revise our priorities and learn to live a life that is totally transformed. I wish I could remember everything she said, but these stand out to me.
We addicts know a lot about giving up what we thought was essential to survival, but turned out not to be. We are experts at voluntarily surrendering a behavior that was deeply harmful, and ending that addiction because it was what was best, even though it was really effing hard. After all, continued use is always an option on the table. Some people pursue that choice until they literally die, and no matter how hard you feel like you’ve hit bottom, picking up the drugs again the next day is a choice available to you. Whether it’s wearing masks, or staying distant from people we love and desperately want to see, or walking away from fossil fuels and the dream of perpetual growth, addicts can show the rest of the world how to give it up for the sake of the greater good. Even though it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
And we got through COVID without drinking. Or some of us, the bravest and hardiest, gave up drinking in the middle of COVID. We did it even though we only had Zoom meetings. We did it even though we were home all the time with little to do but think about drinking. We did it even though our kids were home every second and driving us crazy. We stayed sober even though the economy was turned on its head, even though we lost people, even though we were simultaneously bored and terrified.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous offers this portrait of recovery: “I feel myself a useful member of the human race at last. I have something to contribute to humanity, since I am peculiarly qualified, as a fellow-sufferer, to give aid and comfort to those who have stumbled and fallen over this business of meeting life.” Addicts are peculiarly qualified to coach on how to live without what you thought you needed to get by. On loving what you have, and not demanding more.
Our post-COVID future will need people who are adaptable and resilient. I’ve known a lot of recovering alcoholics and addicts, and we fit the bill. We don’t know what the post-COVID world holds for us – and throw in a heaping helping of climate change, and a reasonable guess is that we will be making a lot of sacrifices in an unstable economy. You start with not drinking, and the next thing you know, you’re learning how to live in a world where you can’t have what you want, when you want it. These are the skills it will take to thrive in a world most of us didn’t see coming. Recovering addicts are experts at giving things up and living with the world as it is, rather than as we want it to be. Lean on us, we’ll get you through.