I was in an AA meeting not long ago, and someone was sharing about consequences. And my mind went somewhere it hadn’t been in a while.
The first time someone told me I was an alcoholic.
I was PISSED. Full of resentment. I was angry at a lot of things in my life at that point, but in that moment I was angry at her for saying it. How dare she. Who was she to tell me what I was.
Then, while sitting in a meeting recently, I remembered the very last time someone told me I was an alcoholic. Maybe three or four years later.
And this time, I felt relief.
A friend said, “Kate, you are an alcoholic,” and then he said, “and it’s going to be okay.”
And for some reason, I believed him.
Same words. Completely different experience. And here’s the part that matters for you: I was still drinking. Both times.
So what changed?
Between that first moment and that last one, I had been going to meetings. Trying therapy. Going to outpatient. Trying and failing and trying again. In the beginning, I was full of mostly addiction. But slowly, step by step, I was stacking recovery on top of it. Each meeting, a step. Each session, a step. Each attempt, no matter how it ended, a step.
They were building on each other. Even while I was still using.
Addiction and recovery can happen at the same time.
Which is why, by the time I heard those words the last time, I had enough recovery stacked up in the background to finally receive this truth.
I think about this a lot when I’m working with families, because families almost always see it as binary. Either sober or not. Either recovering or using. Either it’s working or it isn’t.
But that’s not how it works.
Addiction is progressive. Recovery is also progressive. And for a period of time, they overlap. Your loved one can be actively using and actively recovering at the same time. The recovery is happening underneath the addiction, building, stacking, even when you can’t see it.
I’m sharing this story this week in particular because Tuesday is my 13th sober anniversary. Thirteen years ago I was someone full of anxiety and denial and a disease that had me completely convinced I didn’t have one. And now I teach this for a living.
The stacking works. I’m standing in the proof of it.
And when families understand this, something shifts. They stop measuring every moment against a sober/not sober standard. They start looking for the layers. The meeting their loved one went to, even if they used afterward. The conversation that was different this time. The moment of honesty that didn’t used to happen.
The moments.
None of it is wasted. All of it counts.
Here’s the other thing I want to say, and it connects directly to last week.
While your loved one is stacking their recovery, you need to be stacking yours.
Because if they get to the place I got to, where the recovery finally catches up to the addiction, and you haven’t done your own work, you will still be full of fear, hurt, confusion and resentment. You’ll bring the fear and the control and the chaos loop right into their early sobriety and it will stay with you in your life. And you deserve to recover. You deserve to heal.
From where I sit, family recovery is not optional. It’s not secondary. It is the preparation for what comes next.
And it starts now, whether they’re ready or not. In fact, if they are NOT ready, all the more reason to start.
If you want to talk about what that looks like for you and your family, a connection call is free and it’s where we start.
Talk soon,
Kate
P.S. Next week is my anniversary, and I’m going live on Tuesday the 14th to share some recovery stories, mine and others. If you want to be there, watch for the link. It’s going to be a good one.
P.P.S. Next week I want to show you what the stacking looks like from the outside, because most families are watching it happen and calling it failure. That reframe changes everything.
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