Hello, dear friends. I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be “in recovery,” and what it means to “relapse/go back out/slip.” So much of these concepts are tied up in the Christian indoctrination that is baked into the addiction recovery landscape.
It’s amazing to me when people argue against harm reduction as if the whole world exists in extremes of black and white. “It gives people an excuse to drink/use” echoes the abstinence-only education some of us received about sex back in grade school. They thought if they taught kids about safe sex and handed out condoms that it would give them an excuse to have sex before marriage. In reality — teens are going to be experimenting, and it’s obviously better to educate them and help them stay safe. It’s the same thing with substances. People are going to use substances, so why not help them stay as safe as possible?
Wouldn’t something less bad be better than something really bad?
We live in a world that is complex. Suffering and beauty exist in the same places at the same moment. We try something, fall, learn, pivot, improve, and try again. To say that a person has to be completely abstinent of all substance use and all bad behavior and all mistakes immediately upon deciding to quit drinking/using… well… that is a tall order.
As we learn to recognize our internal Addicted Voice and parse it out from the voice of our Core Self, we will hit bumps in the road. Purity culture teaches us that if we fuck up or make a mistake — that we have failed, and that we have to go back to square one and start over. Harm reduction teaches us that if we act out of alignment with our goals or morals, we can learn something, forgive ourselves, and try again.
It’s the internal Addicted Voice fed by purity culture that says “fuck it.”
Christian indoctrination and the concept of “sin” create an environment of low-hanging fruit for the Addicted Voice. When we haven’t been very good little children and completely obeyed, the Addicted Voice is foaming at the mouth to chime in. It’s there to kick you while you’re down.
Why beat yourself up after doing something out of alignment with your goals? In your Core Self, you can use these opportunities to ask what need was not being met when you made the choice to drink/use again. How can you meet that need in a way that nourishes and uplifts you instead?
It’s ok to not be perfect. Your recovery is a learning process, created and defined by you and your unique experience in the world. One slip doesn’t destroy everything — it’s data in your learning process.
May you be happy and free, dear reader.
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