Do you ever struggle with thinking you know what’s best for someone else’s recovery from an addiction? I most certainly have, especially when it’s come to those who are sober but working their sobriety program in a way that’s vastly different than my own.
Case in point, I have a friend who currently attends about a meeting a week and isn’t interested right now in doing the 12 Step work. Because of this, I’ve occasionally found myself giving them a lecture about how unhealthy that is and giving them advice on what they should be doing with their recovery. But the reality is that I have no business doing this. Each of us in recovery have our own paths with our Higher Power. What may work for me doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work for everyone else in their recovery.
The issue really comes down to the path I went down in life, where I spent the better part of 12 years avoiding going to most recovery meetings and doing next to no 12 step work. A lot of my present pain honestly came from doing this, but again, that doesn’t necessarily mean what happened to me will happen to someone else that might appear to be in similar shoes. And that’s precisely where I often get myself in trouble and find myself at odds with others.
My recovery is not the end all, nor is it better than anyone else’s. It’s just the recovery that works for me. If someone finds benefit in their own recovery by observing mine, then great! But for me to impart my opinion on someone who isn’t asking is really doing nothing but judging and trying to control them.
The fact is, I have no proof that anyone who goes to a few meetings and does not practice the 12 steps will end up living a chaotic and addiction-filled life like I did. All I have is my perception on what I think could happen. But there’s a good program out there that helps to deal with things like this. It’s called Al-Anon and it practices the principles of detachment, by allowing a person to find their recovery on their own, while we focus on our own sobriety.
While I’m pretty good in doing this with people who are still out there actively engaging in their addiction, I find myself still falling short with those I meet in the recovery who are sober, and do want to remain sober. There’s some part of me that constantly tries to grasp control of their lives, like in this friend of mine, or even with my partner and his addiction.
The irony in all this is that through all those years I remained sober and never worked a program of recovery, I had plenty of advice from people just like I’ve been with others as of late. Yet I never listened to any of them. I had to go down the many dead-ends paths I did to figure it out for myself. In other words, I had to allow my control issues to bankrupt me, before I finally became willing to ask for help and suggestions.
Thankfully, I’m aware of this behavior now and am taking measures to follow my Al-Anon guidance. I’ve also made amends to this friend of mine because ultimately they are a great person and are remaining sober just fine.
The bottom line is that I believe it truly is best to just allow each person to find their own road to recovery while each of us remain solely focused on our own programs. I think in doing so, it not only cultivates far better recovery friendships, it also allows God to be the ultimate guide in other’s lives, rather than our egos…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
