pain in recovery

In early recovery, I was doing really, really well.

One meeting, I shared this.

Right afterward, a well-weathered woman called Christina came up to me.

And she said:

“Yeah… Things get good. Then they get really good. And then they get REAL.”

I nodded in acknowledgment. But, internally, at the time, this comment vexed me. And I wasn’t entirely sure why. Was it because she’d cruelly punted me from my pink fluffy cloud? Was it because she was right and I didn’t want to admit it? Or was it because she was wrong? It’d take me a while (nearly three years) to realize which it was. But today, I realize it was the latter of those three. Because right now, I’m writing beside my dog and best friend, Minnie. She’s laying on her death bed. And, as kidney failure takes over her frail little body – I feel anything but that fluffy pink cloud, watching her cuddle her fluffy pink poodle with her last few, precious shreds of life.

Yet, despite my darkly clouded current logic, I’m clean.

And that means I get to have those moments of clarity I rarely had during chemical dependency.

Like the following fact:

Yes, this is “real”. But so is the compendium of wonderful memories we made together. Brisk autumn jaunts in the park. Summertime snacks in the sand. Thunderstorm snuggles and walks on the dock. The way she’d air-swim if I just held her over the bathtub before a wash. The way she’d calm down two minutes into me meditating – and how she’d match my energy. How we’d howl-sing together if an ambulance drove by. The day she learned to high five. How she’d come running with her bone when I got home from work – the best gift a best friend could offer her guardian after a long day. Yes, it’s all really, really painful. My heart feels like it’s in the same state as her kidneys. But it’s no more real than the decade of my life she elevated with her presence. That was real too. The only thing is – it doesn’t help me deal with the horrendous “real” I feel now.

So, how do I manage that?

It’s times like this I reach for this book a member once gave me in a meeting.

Although the title sounds kinda boring (“Living Clean”), it’s become a bit of a scripture to keep me off the scripts that led me into the rooms in the first place. The wording is perfect. The topics cover all the little life-nuances that annoy us enough to want to use. And the advice is less direct and more anecdotal – referencing how other members stayed sober through the painful parts of reality.

(I’d advise you buy this book.
Especially if you can’t don’t frequent meetings as much as you should. Like myself.)

And what was the main takeaway that I got?

To honor this horrible feeling I’m having.

It sounds counter-intuitive to an addict, but if I need to cry, throw things, or write (like I’m doing right now) – that has to happen. Not to the point of self indulgence – but like any other release. We release physical pain with massages and stretching. We release sexual tension through intimacy with a lover. We release any variation of emotions via creativity. Likewise, pain demands to be felt. Acknowledged. Released. Back when my other family dog, Chloe, died, I was too numb on valium and painkillers to feel it. In fact, that day I took far more than my prescribed dose to avoid genuine sentiments of loss. And you know what happened, years later, when I finally quit?

It all waited for me. Like a prisoner, it’d been working out during its sentence, awaiting its release. And when it came for me, I felt.it.all. Not just the back pain, but each thing I’d dusted under my mental rug was ejected from every crevice of my emotional landscape. And it came for me. Big time. Chloe’s loss. How I’d not been as supportive as I should have been for my mom’s hard times, my sister’s hard times. How I’d not been stable enough to celebrate the news I had a niece on the way. And you want to know what’s worse than reliving those moments and the pain you missed out on? The guilt for not having felt it in the first place. Because you bet your azz it hurt those around you to see a glassy eyed, sociopathic mannequin standing where their loved one used to be.

But, a good friend of mind reiterates a quote often:

“The best apology is changed behavior.”

Of course I wanted to use the moment I heard about Minnie’s terminal condition. But, as I’d continue to read in “living clean”, there are alternatives to feeling numb, isolated, and going through this alone. If you’re lucky enough to have family like I do, you can take advantage of that. My prior M.O. was always to shut others out. Go through it solo. But something happens when you let loved ones in. It’s the same thing that happens when you walk into a meeting for your first time and decide to put your pain on the table. Because suffering shared – whatever it is – is suffering halved. Everyone suffers. But by recruiting your connections, sharing averts despairing. It’s a way to relate, connect, and hijack your internal pharmacy of its connection chemicals. I can’t lengthen Minnie’s life. But I can strengthen the bonds of the lives that are still in mine – by inviting them into this process of letting go.

I can’t imagine moving past this. Yet, I know I will.

And, as I do, things will continue to get “real”.

Christina had that right.

But what she had wrong was that real is somehow separate from “good”. And, when I review my early recovery, I already know this. I say I was doing really, really good in early recovery – and I was. That was real. But you know what else was happening? I was going through some other “real” stuff. Valium detox was horrifying. My back and neck pain woke me every couple hours in the night. Back to back attacks of kidney stones assaulted me – all through which… I remained clean. So why was I doing so well? I wasn’t on some deluded cloud vessel headed for a reality iceberg, like Christina was suggesting. No. Rather, I’d been offered, early on, all the weaponry I needed to employ against the enemy – against my default reaction to unfortunate events. To take it exactly as it is, react accordingly, but issue no more emotionally than that. And, in the interim? Allow loved ones and connections to be a part of it with you. Because it serves them as well.

See, the nature of reality – real reality – is devoid of the qualities we ascribe to it. There is no good and bad without our opinions painted over the thing in question. From great to emotionally eviscerating – we get to decide how we respond to it. This is what the serenity prayer teaches us. Can I change that my furry best friend is leaving me? No. Can I choose to make her final time here comfortable? To let my loved ones in – instead of shutting them out, as I tend to do? Can I choose to honor my feelings of hurt this time – versus employing my former forte: anesthetizing any kind of pain? Yes. To all of those. Because numbing discomfort now, only ensures it’ll be both waiting for me later – and amplified. I may only have a two and a half years behind my black keytag, but the key, I believe is to straddle a realistic version of a pink poodle cloud – as well the inevitable thunder filled cumulonimbus one that’s on its heels.

And finding that balance is to live with serenity.

That’s dealing with the “real”.