What Recovery Means To Me

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it. ~ William Arthur Ward. 

As National Recovery Month draws to a close, I have been reflecting a great deal on what recovery means to me. The truth is, it means everything to me, because for me- it all began as a dream that came true and is now my reality. 

The year before I got sober it was still the late 90’s. I was working at a restaurant that was essentially a truck stop (although the owner referred to it as a “family style” restaurant) in a small town in Vermont. I would have to go in VERY early, around 4:30 am, so I could serve breakfast to all the regulars that would come in before their work day began. Practically every morning I would show up hungover (or still drunk) from the night before, and I was miserable. Customers would notice how unhappy I appeared and they would say things like, “You’re too young to be so sad!” , or, “You’re too young to be so stressed!” Little did they know that I felt like I had the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. At that point in time I knew I was an alcoholic and the customers had no idea what a tremendous struggle it was for me to show up to that job every morning and attempt to even think straight. Most of my thoughts while working were consumed with the fact that I knew I couldn’t stop drinking, but I desperately wanted to. I would always feel so sick and queasy and nauseous at work and it was basically hell. 

There was one thing that I DID enjoy about that job, and it was the regulars who came in early in the morning. I was fascinated by them, mostly because they got up SO early to socialize and eat breakfast together before work. Completely the opposite of myself, who went out late to socialize, but drank so much I blacked out, didn’t remember any of the “socializing” I took part in, and always ended up in a black hole of shame and self-hatred by the time they were gathering for breakfast.

One of these regulars was a guy who always seemed to have something positive or inspirational to say. I swear every single thing that ever came out of his mouth was positive. At first, this annoyed me to no end. Shut up man! Why do you always have to be so positive?! 

But it just so happened that one day he came in and said something that really touched me: “Hey did you see the sunrise this morning?! It was SO BEAUTIFUL! Wow God’s creation! I can’t believe how beautiful that was!”

Now, I didn’t remember seeing or noticing the sunrise that morning. Everything was always such a blur when I was hungover. Even if I had seen the sunrise that morning, I wouldn’t have remembered or cared, because I was so busy trying not to puke, or beating myself up inwardly for drinking so much the night before. I never noticed anything beautiful anymore. 

Truthfully, I was somewhat amazed by this man, who was a lot older than I, being so blown away by something so simple and uncomplicated. I thought, “Wow, that’s really sweet” and thought about how sad it was that I didn’t even care to notice those things anymore. All I cared about was numbing myself. I felt an ache in my heart and thought, “I want to be like that.” I wanted to be normal, like a normal person who found beauty and pleasure in nature- in life. To be as positive and so easily made happy suddenly seemed so desirable to me. Alcohol brought me temporary “happiness”, but when it wore off, I was the saddest, loneliest person on Earth. I wanted real happiness, like that guy had. 

Around this time and during my off hours,  I began to study goal-setting and various other self-development techniques, such as visualization. I set a goal to get sober in a year’s time. One thing I learned that I put into practice quite a bit was how to visualize myself having already achieved my goal. To visualize my goal of getting sober, I would practice seeing myself as a “normal” person, a person who could wake up in the morning not being hungover, not needing alcohol to feel better. A person who could wake up early and go watch the sunrise and feel happy. I would conjure up what I thought that would feel like. What would it feel like to be that normal? That to me, would feel like genuine happiness. I would do my best to try to conjure up those feelings inside of me while I visualized myself being a “normal” person who didn’t wake up every morning and NEED alcohol to feel good. The future me just felt good naturally. This was almost like having a daydream where you envision the best-case scenario, and you REALLY hope it will happen. So many times, over and over, I allowed myself to visualize, daydream, and feel the feeling of simply being happy, and being a person who lives my day to day life without needing to drink.

Another thing, I would practice seeing myself in the future, reflecting on my past, and remembering when I used to NEED alcohol to function and how that made me feel so trapped. This future version of me I was seeing did not need alcohol to function, however. She was at peace. I would think about how the future version of me would feel when she thought about the old version of me who was still enslaved to her addiction. I would think, how would she feel looking back on that, knowing that that part of her life is over? She would feel relief. Sweet, sweet relief. She never has to go back there again. That relief is a beautiful feeling, and something I let myself feel through my imagination, over and over again. I never really focused on how this was all going to happen (because I had NO idea), I just focused on the end result: what would it look like and how would it feel when I don’t need alcohol (or drugs or anything else) to feel good. And ultimately, what I pictured and what I felt, came true.

To make a very LONG story short, this did indeed all come true. I got into a program where I was able to quit alcohol, drugs and smoking all at once, a little over a year after I had set a goal for myself to get sober. Recovery has been quite a journey for me, it has been a long process, sometimes very raw, very difficult and emotional- but at the same time really beautiful, healing and freeing. 

Looking back over my sober years, I see myself as the person I envisioned. I see myself as happy and easily amused, a person who finds so much joy in the little things- such as a beautiful sunrise. I believe a lot of people would describe me as a happy person, and now I am probably pretty similar to Mr. Positivity who came into the restaurant gushing about the sunrise all those years ago. There’s so much more I enjoy as well: there’s laughter, fun, bonding with others, music, dancing, all the things I thought I needed to chemically alter my mood to be able to enjoy. I enjoy them ALL now, sober. I have no desire to return to the past that I know is dead and gone, and I don’t feel any kind of physical compulsion or inner battle to drink or take drugs or even smoke cigarettes again.

I could go into a big explanation about the principles that I practiced, and every step I took to get me to where I am now, but the truth is that the journey is different for everyone. I said all this, to make one point, and to emphasize one thing: the most important step I took in my own personal recovery journey was believing that it was actually possible for me to live a better, happier life apart from drugs and alcohol. I believe that the vision I created for my future was the spark that caused my reality to unfold in favor of my recovery and the happiness that I have now. So if I am asked what recovery means to me, it is a dream come true. It really is. And that would be my message to those still in the trenches, that recovery is possible. And it’s really really beautiful.