Needs to be said.

There is something that has been brewing inside me for awhile. I have kept this little storm secret from most as I don’t want to seem ungrateful to the path that once served a purpose. I don’t want to say it out loud, because there is a permanence in words.

I feel empowered by the new life that I am living. I feel honoured to be alive. I feel so hopeful to continue to be of service to people by becoming a social worker. I feel a greatness in my life that I had only ever experienced by the hand of drugs and alcohol. My life has purpose and by focusing on my strengths I can help others do the same.

I have learned so much in school, during these last four semesters, and the thing that stands out the most is the strengths-based approach. This resonates with me so deeply as that’s how my recovery started to begin with over five years ago.

But in the recovery program that I have been a member of for the past three and a half years, I have been told time and time again that step one means that I am 100% guaranteed to drink again. This doesn’t sit right with me. This never has. I do understand that I am powerless over alcohol, but that’s once it enters my body. Step one is taking away all power from me, and in the following steps I turn that power over to something greater than myself and I get that too, but what about how empowered I feel about who I am as a person now? What about my strengths as an individual. I don’t want to be powerless anymore, because I am NOT. I was the one that put the drink and drug down. I was the one who decided to get my driver’s license. To start volunteering. To go back to school. To stay in school. To get a new job. I am the one that makes all these decisions in my life and I stick with them, so I feel empowered. I feel blessed to be alive to make these decisions, but I will not continue to look at my deficits everyday and allow them to take control of me.

I have learned that each person has a different path in their recovery, and some many never get the chance to see that path. But it’s not up to me to push the solution to what helped me, onto other people.

I found myself judging people who said they quit drugs, but still drank. Those who chose to smoke pot instead of opiates. Those who were on the methadone maintenance program. I found myself judging those who were not truly free of substances in the eyes of what I was told, and here I was taking medication myself for my bi-polar and anxiety.

I am not leaving you recovery, but I’m done with focusing on my deficits. I know this will upset some of those in my fellowship but I am no longer powerless over my life.