When we are willing to stand up for our own dreams and beliefs, we are exercising a deeper kind of self-advocacy.
Living Purely, Chapter 6, “Finding Our Place in the World”
Drug addicts are often treated and portrayed as disgruntled fringes or rebels without a cause. Many of us were (or still are) quite comfortable with this image. Even so, identifying what we believed in or what we wanted out of life eluded most of us before recovery. Getting out of our routine and actually supporting something other than the people in our lives during the period of use was rare – and certainly not something we thought of as self-support.
For one addict, reaching out and finding self-support came at the end of the road: “My whole family used and I let that stop me from getting clean more than once,” the member wrote. “I didn't want them to think I was abandoning them or that I thought I was better than them. But I couldn't live like this anymore."
Changing our lives is already scary enough, even without the added burden of having loved ones who don't share our interests or goals. Not everyone we used to use with them wants recovery, but many people still respect our needs and boundaries when we get clean. We may drift away from some people, but those who care about us want us to go our own way.
We may feel a similar sense of hesitation about pursuing interests in recovery. We don't want to leave our friends. “When I was two years clean,” shared one member, “I was the youngest person in my NA group. I wanted to take classes in college, but I thought I would be abandoning my people. My advocate told me it's okay – he got the prison experience for me, now I could go get the college experience for him.”
We don't have all the time, energy or money to do everything we want. We cannot be in two (or more!) places at once. Practicing self-reliance means taking responsibility for choosing how we use our limited resources. Some of us may still rebel, but we are more likely to now have a cause to support.
The people who really love me want me to follow my dreams. I will honor my love relationships by choosing to stand by my own choices.
