What Is Recovery?
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
Some years ago I remember leading a family group at a drug and alcohol treatment center. I opened the group with the question: What does it mean to be a family or couple in recovery? Some people struggled with the idea that the non-addicted members of the family had some part in going forward in recovery. Until that moment many partners had viewed their (addicted) loved one as having the problem; the idea that the non-addicted partner too had recovery issues didn’t fit their expectations of treatment. Either the idea of couple/family recovery never occurred to them, or they simply admitted to feeling angry about having to take some responsibility for fixing things given that they weren’t the ones with the addiction. This feeling is very understandable. The damage to relationships from addiction usually has a history built on broken promises, and countless unintended disastrous outcomes. It is like something destructive has invaded the family unwelcome but unshakable, that is until recovery. Family members often cling to the hope that once the alcoholic/addict gets into recovery their lives can finally be normal. What we know from the research is that while recovery is the end of something - active addiction, it is also the start of something - a healing process and the beginning of building new relationships in family and couple life.
Addiction in the family can be thought of like a mobile or wind chime, one of those hanging art objects that have parts connected by lines, so that when the wind blows all the parts all move. Think of the family as the parts of a mobile and think of addiction like the wind. The wind blows and all the pieces are affected. Recovery is like that too, like addiction recovery affects everybody in the family. All the pieces of the mobile are still connected, but what moves the pieces is different. Families need to know that adjusting to these changes takes time. Everything may seem different and even though the alcoholic isn’t drinking, there still are problems, issues and concerns that need to be addressed: This is normal!
So what is recovery? That is a question that a hundred people might answer a hundred different ways. I would begin the answer with the idea that individual recovery is taking stock of how the addiction has impacted oneself and starting to address the question of what the individual needs to do to keep what is healthy in their lives and change what isn’t healthy. I also would emphasize that the same thing needs to happen with relationships. How has addiction affected relationships and what changes will make those relationships healthier?