[Issue #40] A Re-Creation of Self
An exploration on moving through the grief of our old coping skills (IE: addiction)
Find the first issue on identity and grief below:
"Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life."
- Anne Roiphe
Let me first begin with this:
Infusing meaning into my life has made my life feel more meaningful. Some of this meaning comes from writing these essays, hoping they have a positive impact on someone. And, some of this meaningfulness is thanks to you, dear readers. Thank you, from the deepest well of my heart, for continuing to read and encourage me.
Shall we?
The Grief That Collides With The Self
The journey towards recovery from addiction is often marked with profound grief. As as an addict in recovery (IE: me) begins to distance themselves from their vices, they are essentially saying goodbye to the maladaptive coping mechanisms that have, for a long, long time, provided them with relief and escape from internal distress.
This gray area, between no longer being an addict, or martyr, or victim, can often feel like a significant loss. These vices, no matter how detrimental, were part of our identities, our routines, and they were our way of navigating life’s relentless absurdity and insidious brutality. The departure from these shadow-sides of ourselves, from the known territories into the unfamiliar landscape of hope and expectation can evoke a deep sense of fear. Fear, and grief.
The intertwining of grief and addiction recovery cannot be understated. Vices (like drugs, alcohol, video games, sex, gambling, shopping), even as they cause harm, often serve as coping skills—they’re maladaptive, sure, but they were never meant to be permanent solutions to life’s nagging breath. The vices were supposed to be temporary, like salves for the open wounds of life.
But, because these vices offer a sense of relief, a form of escape, a kind of immediate soothing, it’s worth acknowledging the incredible amount of power those vices hold over us simply because they do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves: soothe. So, when one embarks on the journey of recovery, it's not just the vice that’s left behind, but all the shit we’ve been working hard at avoiding, at tamping down, at ignoring, at not feeling is still there. Life is still there, waiting for us. But what if we don’t know how to do life without the gambling, the booze, the shopping, the fucking, the thin lines of hope?
This grief is multifaceted and complicated, encompassing more than the physical absence of a substance or a behavior or an outlet. There's the grief of letting go of the comfort the vice provided, however fleeting (because trust me when I say, 95% of us addicts wish to be not addicts. The grief of relinquishing a familiar, if damaging, part of our identity and the assumptions, expectations, that come along with being an addict. Then, there's also the anticipatory grief of facing a future without the vice—a future that, while healthier, might feel daunting and unknown.
These feelings of grief are natural and can, in fact, be instrumental in the recovery process. They serve as poignant reminders of the hold that these vices had on our lives and the reasons why we chose to let them go. Grief, in this context, is not a detour on the road to recovery—it's a part of the journey itself, a signpost of transformation and growth. It means the healing is starting. And that means we need to be prepared for how fucking miserable it will be for a while.
But only for a while. After all, nothing lasts forever.
Revising the Story In Our Heads
Recognizing this grief is a critical step in the recovery process. It’s an acknowledgement of the void that the vice once filled and the challenge that lies ahead in finding healthier coping mechanisms. Embracing this grief is not a sign of weakness but a testament to our human capacity, your human capacity, for resilience and growth and curiosity instead of only anger in the face of adversity.
As we leave our vices behind, we’re often tasked with rebuilding our personal narratives. Which are also our very identities. This process of narrative reconstruction signifies our innate ability to make sense of our experiences and to weave them into a coherent, evolving story, regardless of how terrible, tragic, or traumatic our experiences have been.
Narrative Reconstruction is a process that involves rewriting one's personal story and identity (IE addict) to incorporate the loss of the vice (drugs) and the emerging identity without it (who?). When we begin looking at recovery from anything, (including mental health issues and physical diseases) we begin to see the threads of these narratives playing out over the years. We can see the decades of a life fraught with addiction, only to be plastered with hope, thrown into surprising and shocking grief without the drugs (or vice), back into the arms of the only thing that feels safe: our vice.
A paper titled "The Importance of Self-Narration in Recovery from Addiction" explores this concept in detail:
“Even as adults, we rarely self-narrate completely from scratch; rather, we continue to draw on the cultural store of narrative [identities] and the more specific narratives of others provide for us. This is especially the case when we face an unfamiliar experience.
“One form of narrative work is to reinterpret those aspects of the established self-narrative that render recovery-directed narrative threads implausible and alien. When trying to change fatalistic expectations, for example, one need to believe that one’s “future is open, in the sense that it is something one can create and shape through choice, resolve, and will” (Pickard, 2014, p. 12).
The study explains that individuals who have successfully recovered from addiction often engage in creating a new narrative about themselves and their lives. I’ve talked about this before, and this theory has become more popular over the last several years, which is - the narrative is equivalent to what’s often called the story. The story in our heads, the ones that aren’t true but we are convinced they are very true at the time they’re forming.
It’s these stories, or narrative threads, that weave into one un-cohesive-still-cohesive shit show that is so believable, it can become gospel. These narrative threads, for an addict, or someone suffering from mental health issues (or any other number of things) can and maybe have hung their entire identity on some sort of label like “addict” or “crazy” or “helpless.”
This study illustrates the ways narrative reconstruction can help us take on new roles, new identities, and still feel…ourselves, without so much pain and exhaustion from being ourselves.
In the study, the successful addicts who find long-term recovery tend to redefine their identity beyond the addiction (or other chosen poison) that’s been sinking them down. But to do this, to find long-term stability inside ourselves means to stand in the pain of our grief.
Grief of the time we wasted, giving it all to something which never truly gave back. Grief for the sickened knowing that to continue using means certain death and yet, to quit means definite death. The grief of being such a fucking disappointment to everyone in your life. To yourself. The grief of losing yourself to something that’s killing you. Maybe it already has, you wonder.
And this grief can become heavy. It can become our identity, and then we can find ourselves slipping with fervent haste back into the muck and the mire of the vices we hate. I mean, we hate it. And yet, how will we survive without it?
It turns out, integrating our past experiences and struggles with our vices into our new reality, into a coherent positive self-narrative, is the key to staying clean and sober. These new narrative threads are a guide for us. A guide to our new and redefined Self. This redefined self is no longer tied to the vices and the identities of addict or victim or enabler or abuser or cheater or dickhead. No, now, we begin the work of aligning our values and our core Selves with our journey towards recovery and growth (read more about personal values below).
Narrative reconstruction is a dynamic and challenging process. Yet, it's a transformative process, altering how we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. It's not just about denying or discarding the old self, but rather about acknowledging the past, learning from it, and using it as a foundation for the new self.
Facing life’s difficulties head-on while grieving the loss of vices may seem daunting, but it’s an essential part of our healing journey. Here, the first step is to recognize and validate the challenges. Life is complex and filled with stressors, and it's completely normal to seek strategies to cope with them. The key is to find healthier, more adaptive coping mechanisms that promote growth rather than causing harm.
This doesn't mean that the path is always smooth or devoid of setbacks, but each stumbling block is an opportunity for learning and growth.
Don’t Walk a Lonely Road, The Only One You’ve Ever Known
But, recovery doesn't have to be a solitary journey. And actually, we’re more likely to succeed if we can get some people in our corners. People who ooze compassion and kindness. People who have our back. People who truly care and love us, regardless of meltdown status.
Sharing experiences with others who have faced similar struggles can be therapeutic because it takes the power away from the story and places it back inside of us, its beautiful container and rightful owner.
Sharing the truth of what we’ve experienced with others who care has given me the gift of true friendships built on boundaries and compassion and the truth and an unnerving commitment for each one of us to be exactly who we are. There’s no strings. No performing. I don’t feel exhausted after spending hours with certain people. Find those people for you and you will find the oxygen tank to help you resuscitate your life, but this time, living life on your own terms.
I found a lot of my sturdy, honest, compassionate friendships inside the walls of 12-step recovery. And I am the last fucking person I thought would even enjoy going to those meetings. When I first began, it was at the behest of my therapist. Now, some of the most important people in my life stem from these meetings. Maybe that’s not for you, no worries.
Some people find their lobsters in church. Or classrooms. Either way, sharing our truths and experiences with people who care (and have a nearly-endless supply of compassion) can provide a sense of community for us and foster the realization that we’re not actually alone. And maybe we don’t want to be. And that maybe everyone in the world isn’t actually a fucking asshole (but they probably are).
I’ve also found a lot of peace inside my fantasy world, guitar and notebook, and a healthy sense of awe and ridiculous wonder of the physical world we inhabit.
So, to close this out, I’ll share with you this article I found on Medium depicting the chances of us reading these words (or even being human):
“Dr. Ali Binazir, who works at Harvard and has degrees from Berekeley and Cambridge, was in the audience in 2011,He calculated the odds of your parents meeting, given the sheer volume of humans on Earth at any given time.
Then he considered the chances of them having a child. Because that wasn’t enough, he also factored in the odds of your ancestors meeting.
His conclusion: “The odds that you exist at all are basically zero.”If that doesn’t boggle your noggin’, here’s a story that highlights just how unlikely your existence is by comparing it to this chain of events:
Imagine there was one life preserver thrown somewhere in some ocean and there is exactly one turtle in all of these oceans, swimming underwater somewhere. The probability that you came about and exist today is the same as that turtle sticking its head out of the water — in the middle of that life preserver. On one try.”