I see my addictionist, a medical doctor, every three months in his office. At each visit he asks me: are there any people in my life who are an impediment to my Recovery? For the last few years, I have been able to answer in the negative, but this was not always the case.
In fact, for most of my life, both predating and during my drug use and even several years into my most recent sustained period of Recovery, I have cultivated toxic “friendships” both inside and outside of the rooms of Recovery. I do not intend to blame these bad influences for my shortcomings: after all, my shortcomings allowed these people into my life in the first place. I seem to have a “blindness” or an inability to accurately judge the characters of others. This has contributed to a great number of difficulties throughout my life. I have noticed that many other addicts and alcoholics share this challenge or “blindness,” which is why I am writing this blog in the hope that it might be of some help to others.
I once knew the founder of a treatment centre (deceased some ten years ago) whose good advice to newcomers was not to isolate; he encouraged everyone to interact, start making connections, acquaintances, even friendships in Recovery. Yet one day, when I walked into the founder’s office, accompanied by a “friend,” an alumnus or “graduate” of the treatment centre, the founder took me aside and told me in no uncertain terms to “stay away” from this particular individual. He didn’t give me any reasons because he didn’t like gossip, but I think he recognized in me an inability to read or judge people accurately and he was trying to warn me.
He was a very wise man and I wish I had taken his advice right at that moment. The person he was trying to warn me about turned out to be a compulsive liar with a long-standing and severe personality disorder who relapsed severely and chronically after a few years of questionable “sobriety” and who harmed a large number of people (including myself) in an astonishing variety of ways. Yet I, for my part, couldn’t recognize this person for what he really was until many years after I had been warned! Unfortunately, this example is not a solitary one and this “blindness” has been a recurring pattern in my life. I hope some people in Recovery can relate to this. I believe this inability to “read” people can have a very negative impact on the sobriety and Recovery of a great number of alcoholics/addicts.
Let’s take a simple and relatively benign example, commonly encountered in the fellowship meetings: a newcomer makes a connection with a fellowship member at one of the meetings, and pretty soon the newcomer enlists the regular and frequent help of the fellowship member to drive (the newcomer) to the grocery store and/or the bank and/or the doctor’s office, etc… citing a lack of transportation resources, even though transportation resources were never a problem in obtaining drugs and alcohol for this newcomer. This clearly is not what the fellowship meetings were intended for. A taxi service is not the basis of a healthy acquaintance or friendship in Recovery. The experienced “old-timer” who is in healthy Recovery (and who has seen this scenario more than once, since it plays out with some frequency in meetings) will put an end to this quickly and in no uncertain terms. The “old-timer” does not consider herself/himself to be a taxi service. Although this example is simple and relatively benign, it occurs surprisingly often and it illustrates a general principle of all bad “friendships” or “relationships”: invariably, we find the presence of abuse at some level.
About 5 years ago, I got rid of my last few “bad friendships”. The good friends I have today (both inside and outside of the fellowship) act as a kind of buffer or protection against the harmful influences that I am certain are still out there and waiting for me, if I let my guard down. I hope my judgement of other people’s characters has improved somewhat over the years, but it doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by good friends in Recovery who can offer sound opinions and counteract any faulty judgements of my own.
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