Gratitude Friday 7 11 25 – That First Summer in Recovery

Recently, I was reflecting on my first summer in recovery. I just turned 22 and I had nine months in recovery. I actually got my yellow plastic nine-month recovery token at the American Church of Paris on the left bank of the Seine, on Quai d'Orsay, a thing I could not have foreseen in the small cage that addiction had me in just a few short months prior. I had no money. I was not in college and had no set plan for a future beyond staying sober. My driver’s license was suspended because of a DUI the Fall before. I held a part time job at Taco Bell. That trip to Paris occurred because I volunteered to be involved in a mission project and only needed to cover the cost of a plane ticket and I managed to save enough to cover that cost. That was my life 38 summers ago.

It was probably the most critical summer of my life. Summer had extra drug using cues for me and at the ripe age of 22, I suspect that is true for a lot of people. Given the era I got into recovery, me not using took a lot of focus and there were very few community resources to support it. There were no recovery centers or peer supports. I had meetings and a weekly outpatient group and individual session with a lot of free time to manage. Free time is not a friend in early recovery, at least for me it was not.

Just about everyone in my age group was a risk factor for me as this in an age in which experimentation with substances is most common. According to the stats, young adults aged 18-25 have the highest rates of illicit drug use, compared to adolescents and older adults. For example, in 2023, approximately 36.5% of individuals aged 18 to 25 were current users of illicit drugs. The rates of young people who used were even higher in my day. I always found some humor that use among high school students peaked the year I graduated high school. Suffice to say I had to stay busy and avoid people to stay safe. I walked everywhere that summer and did so with music from a now ancient technology, the Sony Walkman that played cassette tapes.

It was a period of significant turmoil. I had to develop coping skills, manage mood swings, sleeping challenges and a host of other things associated with what is called post-acute withdrawal syndrome. I navigated that while living and working in settings that were not conducive to recovery. Yet, it got easier as it went.    

In some ways, it was a very difficult summer, in others ways the greatest gift of time and focus over the course of my life. All I had to do was stay sober, reevaluate my life and make the requisite course corrections. I did not have a whole lot of responsibilities of other pressures. And as that trip to do volunteer work in France was beginning to show me, there were positive things on the horizon if I could keep on the heading of recovery.

During that trip to France, I was emersed in another culture. I saw architectural and historical treasurers while feeling useful as a volunteer. I met people on another continent with home I had common ground with in respect to recovery. My horizons broadened. I saw possibility for a far different life than I had.

I made it through the summer. I did other volunteer work. I met people in recovery, all of them older than I but people with whom I formed positive relationships with. That hope of a life worth living, that was a glimmer on day one was something that increasingly in the realm of probability. I worked hard. My word meant something, and I could remember where I had been and what I had done and not feel remorse or self-loathing. I started to get glimpses of possibility in my future to live in a way in which I could look at myself in the mirror and feel good about who I saw looking back at me.

I would dare to observe here that journeys of self-discovery quite often begin in ways that look like insurmountable challenges and abject failure. It is not that they are impossible to overcome, it is more typically that one needs to learn or try things outside of what one has become accustomed to. Real growth is not comfortable. To become a better version of oneself, lean into the challenge. That is perhaps the most important lesson I learned in the summer of 1987, and I am grateful for it.

What are you grateful for today?