1 July 2020
In recent SMART Recovery meetings, two states of being were thrown into the ring: being sober versus being in recovery. As the illustration above indicates, sobriety alone, often referred to as “white-knuckling it” (i.e., hanging on for dear life), is sheer desperation. Recovery, when fully embraced, is a full colour, values-based, outward-reaching life of well-spirited growth.
At his worst, the white knuckler spends his time alone in a constant neurotic battle against his desire to use. It’s almost a formula for failure as thinking obsessively about that which one is trying to grow out of, is shockingly parallel to the on-the-street definition of addiction: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It’s impossible to escape the goal of one’s own obsession e.g., Don’t think about pink elephants. The first image that pops up is—a pink elephant.
In examining the etymology of the word “sobriety” some unforeseen history was unearthed. Around 1400 i.e., six-hundred-years-ago, the original Latin sobrietatum had morphed into the Old French for “moderation in indulgence (etymonline.com).” Please note that this is moderation of excess, not moderation of statistically normal behaviours. A century-and-a half later, sobriety was understood as “steadiness or gravity.”
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics famously extolled the virtue of moderation as the reasonable route between too little and too much. If you consistently behave with moderation, you probably have nothing from which to recover. And here’s the takeaway: if you consistently behave with excessive indulgence, you are headed toward high losses in your social, financial, spiritual, health, and family relationships. The difference between sobriety and recovery is the difference between the first 30 days not using versus 1,000 days later: if, 1,000 days on, you’re obsessing over the same issues, you’re sober; it you’re moving toward a fully realized and sober you, you’re in recovery.
This article brought to mind something I once heard from a girl suffering with anorexia. The young lady explained that she thought about food all the time. I was stunned to hear that! It is tragic that the suffering was made impossibly worse by the fact that she was haunted by thoughts of food and calories, even as her body starved.
Somehow the transition to recovery must include a release from haunting thoughts. But, if the haunting thoughts led a person into the pattern of indulgence, then it’s a struggle to break the circle.
Hi Patti, you’ve raised two really interesting issues. Thank you for commenting so thoughtfully.
1. When I think of the young lady suffering from anorexia, I hear the body’s insistence on gaining nutrients as life’s insistence on sustaining itself–which is fundamentally to the good and in opposition to the entropy of self-starvation. The tragedy, to me, is that the young lady didn’t yet have the tools to amplify that call to natural, life-sustaining action over the entropic voice of self-starvation. It is also interesting to note that the addictive maladjustment of anorexia is toward a destructive self-image based on too little whereas the addictive maladjustment of intoxicants is toward too much i.e., they have opposite polarities. Where they are united is in Aristotle’s assertion of moderation as the key to a well-spirited life.
2. The phrasing “…the transition to recovery…” is in keeping with my understanding of that experience. Alternately, “…a release from haunting thoughts…” implies (to me) a sudden letting go that frees the person with an addictive history from cravings, nightmares, and self-incriminating memories. My understanding, of the process of recovery, is that there is no “release.” Instead, there’s a gradual ebbing and flowing of good and bad thoughts trending positively toward a new consciousness of self and life. That new consciousness has a much lesser need of addictive behaviours because the emotional avoidance(s) that caused the turn to addictive behaviours is no longer in a dominant role i.e., the new consciousness is more open to a full range of social-emotional experience framed in healthier boundaries.
Thank you, again, Patti, for these points. In responding, you’ve provided a chance to further clarify my own understanding of these complex issues.