Northwoods Recovery

Editor’s Note: This is the latest in a series of columns on recovery in the Northwoods.

Commitment to St. Mary’s third floor psych ward — by way of a court order — was only one more adverse consequence stemming from the bad choices I’d habitually made. Could finally making one good choice — sobriety — realize my desperate hope life might change for the better?

Well yes, but ...

I didn’t know then what was to be learned after years in recovery: my chronic substance abuse had caused some fundamental personality defects that would require persistent, prolonged effort to overcome, gradually subsiding only as a side effect of long-term sobriety. 

Yes, I’m in a good recovery, clean and sober for years, but not yet freed of addiction. Some aspects of a drug-addicted personality remain. Efforts to reshape this personality remain ongoing, with progress measured in baby steps. 

It wasn’t until my recovery coaching years that I recognized I’d begun training for addiction before my teens, with tobacco. I’d welcomed addiction into my life then, thinking smoking a very adult, grown-up habit. Stealing cigarettes and lying about it laid the groundwork for later patterns of addictive behavior. 

Although, until the first day of this recovery, I never would say out loud “I'm a drug addict” I wore the persona of a heavy drug user with false pride, thinking myself so much more sophisticated, much more cool, than those who didn’t share my affinity for drug use.

This is what’s impossible for bewildered parents of drug addicts to understand: their formerly right-minded child has developed an addictive personality as a result of drug abuse, and so is now a wholly different person, obsessed with feeding their addiction and compelled to do so by any means. Frantic attempts to help the person they once were merely enable the person they’ve become to continue using drugs. 

Not until an addict falls to rock bottom — as I finally did — leaving nowhere to turn, will he or she seek the outside help needed to find the way out of addiction. Desire for change comes only from within addicts themselves; families can only suffer and hope for divine intervention.

Praying that it doesn’t come too late.

Recovery is so called because it offers opportunities to recover lost potential, what we were once and were always meant to be, before substance abuse robbed us of our humanity. 

Growing past an addictive personality through making positive choices, we become living proof that here in our Northwoods, we do recover.

Alcoholics Anonymous can help. Call our Hotline at 715-360-4637 or visit our website at www.northwoodsaa.org for questions or to find a meeting in your area.