we are not scumbags (+ writing workshop *this Saturday*)

pushing back on the narrative of "once an addict, always an addict"

Couple of quick reminders:

Next All Writers Welcome meetup is this Saturday, October 17 from 2-3:30pm PST. Learn more and register here.

Our inaugural *Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club* is this coming Monday, October 19 from 7-8:30pm, PST. CAN’T WAIT. Register here.

Both events are free! Come play…

---

“Balance” Haejin Park

Dax Shepherd has a podcast called “Armchair Expert” that I’ve tried and failed to listen to all that much, mostly because the episodes clock in at around two hours and that’s too long for me. My attempts have nothing to do with the fact that he is famous and interviews some pretty rad folks across many disciplines; more, what hooks my curiosity is that he is in long-term sobriety, and anytime a massively public figure is transparent about their recovery, my antennae can’t help but perk up.

Recently he interviewed Nadia Bolz-Weber, whose writing I have shared many times in this newsletter and who I wildly appreciate; for one thing, she is a tattooed Lutheran minister who curses like a sailor (mi gente!), and she grounds religion and the teachings of the bible in a way that expands my understanding of the traditions I was brought up in rather than contract me against them. For another, she too is in long-term recovery.

For those of us who abstain—or are attempting to abstain—from alcohol, there is a sweet recognition that happens when we meet another like us. There is an immediate base-line, mutual understanding that lets us go deep right away: it is a blessed bypassing of soul-shrinking small talk, and in it’s place a true honesty is present. These are some of my favorite moments, and how I want all my conversations to feel all the time. I was looking forward to listening to a chat between these two aforementioned brains.

I’ve stumbled upon sobriety as my path to freedom. What I forget inside my starry-eyed wonder is the ugly way some of us commiserate about our pasts.

The conversation is wonderful, and, I got stuck right at the beginning, after this exchange:

Dax: “Well I thought that maybe we could start with what I interpret as similarities between you and I, in that we’re both scumbag, addict-alcoholics, yeah?”

Nadia: “Uh, correct yeah.”

Dax: “And I think that could make us closer than anything that could make two people close.”

Nadia: “Yeah, I’m definitely a garbage person.”

Both: HAHAHAHA

Dani: tears hair out of head, shakes fist at sky, throws phone into Pacific Ocean

UGH.

I am aware (OK, self-conscious) of coming across as evangelical in my sobriety. Being a human is absurd, being a human in recovery infinitely more so, and I love to laugh and joke and tease and be playful about how fucking weird this path is. If anything, I have gotten funnier since I quit drinking, and I know a bit of self-deprecation can be totally disarming and hilarious.

And: now that I’ve established that I am still cool and hip 😎, what I’d like to say is this:

These stories—of the “once and addict, always an addict” ilk—keep us sick.

I stayed sick for a very long time. So long, that a lot of my work now is loving myself even though I feel like I’m so far behind my peers—it’s hard to reckon with what feels like time lost. And, let me be clear: my drinking was a symptom, not the sickness. My sickness was that I believed I was a scumbag, and when you walk around the world viewing your life through that lens, you make certain choices, fall into certain habits—all those coping strategies that help at first, until they don’t.

By the end of my drinking, my self-esteem had been in the shitter for so long, I am still catching gnarly whiffs of my past three years later. If I didn’t (if I don’t) do the work of dealing with my shit—of addressing the roots of my sickness—I could have stopped drinking, and the sickness would have just shifted it’s expression elsewhere. This does not make me an addict, or someone with an “addictive personality.” This is me being human; this is me showing you the most human parts of myself. This is me walking through the world heart first.

Something I seek to do here in my rambling and with the folks I feature is to tell a different story. To contribute to a shift in narrative. Because I want to see an end to the stigma that surrounds addiction in my lifetime. I don’t see a place where redemption or forgiveness, or, the holiest of all, LOVE, can exist inside a story that would forever have as view ourselves as scumbags.

Maybe this story is helpful to some. But I declare that for most of us, it is utterly defeating.

A million years ago, at the beginning of our descent into Pandemia, I wrote about how we in recovery are suited for these times, because we “…know what it’s like to get to the other side of a mess. (We) know how to let the mess undo (us) completely, and then re-wire (us) from the ground up. (We) know what it’s like to sit, for many many months, mostly alone, figuring out who (we are) and what (we’re) really made of and what (we) really want for (ourselves) and the world when everything we had been standing on had suddenly washed away.”

We are not scumbags. We are fighters.

Recovery doesn’t have to be about white-knuckling through life, always on the brink of a drink. It doesn’t have to be about lack, or deprivation, or missing out. What it can be is a going beyond. It can be liberatory, and expansive, and kind, and forgiving. This can be the story. I promise you, it is fucking gorgeous. It is beyond the most wildest of dreams.

---

⛓ Mentioned/related links:

Armchair Expert podcast
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Patty Petty and the Pandemics (my first post in Pandemia! God how things have changed in such a short time…)

---

Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

SMS is reader-funded. The small percentage of readers who pay make the entire publication possible. 

You can also support me for free by pressing the little heart button on these posts, sharing this newsletter with others and letting me know how this newsletter helps you. Thank you.