A story of recovery

I hate addiction. It’s sneaky and greedy. It never takes just one. It tears families and communities apart and spreads its poison through generations. What many people don’t realize, though, is that recovery is an antidote. It also does not live in isolation. Like addiction, recovery is powerful enough to transform people, families, and communities. Recovery can change lives now and for future generations.

Recovery is so much more than not using drugs or alcohol. It’s more than simply stopping certain problem behaviours. Recovery is continual, personal healing. It’s about family, hope, and connection through good times and bad. It’s not about perfection, but an awareness and striving that keeps people moving towards a joyful life even when it feels easier to sink into despair.  

In the last three years, over 11,000 Canadians have lost their lives to opioid-related deaths. That staggering number doesn’t include the lives lost to alcohol or other drugs, or substance-related behaviours or health issues. But for every person lost, there are thousands more who have found wellness again, in recovery.

September 7 is Recovery Day, and September is Recovery Month. It’s a good time to remind ourselves that recovery is an option. Always, for anybody who wants it. Talking about recovery is important not because it’s political, but because it’s deeply personal to so many people. Stories of recovery are what people need to hear right now. Stories of recovery will change our world.

When I was raising a teen in addiction, I didn’t know what recovery looked like, for my son or myself. I didn’t know the joy and possibility of hope. I was simply surviving in a very dark world with a frighteningly bleak outlook. When my son entered recovery, he shone a light on a whole new world for me. I saw dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands of people living healthy, fulfilled, joyful lives in recovery. I saw happiness and connection. I saw that the gifts of recovery were available to everybody and that they were worth working for.  

And so, I started my own journey of recovery. Through that, I learned that my children are not responsible for fulfilling my dreams, even if my dreams are simply to see them happy. They have their own paths to follow, and their own wisdom to find. I learned how to love them without sacrificing myself. I learned how to mindfully build a life, for myself, that I could feel good about, regardless of what my kids were doing.  

One of my daughters also struggled with alcohol abuse. After almost a decade of over-drinking, she saw her brother in recovery and heard his stories of hope and sobriety and witnessed what recovery was to him. My daughter figured that if he could do it, so could she. She stepped onto her own recovery path and today she has a satisfying job, a loving fiancé, and is an amazing mom to her five-year-old daughter. Her brother’s recovery story gave her the strength to start writing hers, and to keep writing the story she wanted for herself through all the crazy ups and downs that have come her way.

The fact is, recovery is contagious, both within families and beyond. Even though we ultimately lost my son to his addiction, his example of living in recovery changed our family forever. It changed the way we cope and how we communicate. My daughter is now more than two years sober, and she’s parenting her daughter from a place of strength and wellness. Because I’ve been open about my own recovery process, friends and family have approached me to share their challenges of loving someone in addiction and began their own paths of recovery.

So many people take their first step towards recovery because of a story they hear. A story of how someone, like them, struggled and then found a way to more solid ground. Because my son took a chance on recovery, and shared his story openly, he’s made many lives better, for years to come.  

We need to raise our voices in recovery, so they can be heard alongside of the booming death-toll of addiction. So often, society sees only a stereotyped version of addiction. To them, addiction looks like homelessness, or bad parenting, or darker skin, or dumb choices. Anything that they can distance themselves from and say, “That’s not me. That’s not mine.”

Society rarely turns its eye to those who survive addiction and thrive in recovery. Even though we’re everywhere.

This recovery day, if you’re in recovery please share your story. Be proud of where you are, and how far you’ve come. Whether you’ve traveled an inch or a mile, whether you’ve walked a straight line or stumbled through many first days, you’re strong and inspiring and your story is needed.

And if you’re struggling, know that every one of us has a recovery story inside of us, just waiting to be told. Even you.