days a week and it’s pure joy and all for the good. I think about friends who write or make art or who have small businesses that they love. They pour themselves into their passion and that both reflects and enhances their recovery.
What’s under all of it? For me the common denominator under the many manifestations of addiction is a special “cocktail” of shame and fear and feeling “not- good-enough.” The shame mantra pushes me toward too many pairs of shoes, or buying expensive gifts simply to impress. I’m still tempted to believe that the right handbag or sweater will fix me. But another woman with that same “not-good-enough” drumbeat in her head won’t allow herself anything; she “treats” her shame with deprivation and denial. She might not allow herself to have anything but bargains and secondhand clothes. If you looked at our outsides you’d think we were different but inside we’re a matched pair.
We need to keep talking to our sponsors and to women friends about anything that feels uncomfortable, shameful, or that we want to keep secret.
But we keep on. Recovery from our primary behaviors of addiction may have given us our sea legs, but we need to stay vigilant. We need to keep talking to our sponsors and to women friends about anything that feels uncomfortable, shameful, or that we want to keep secret. Those are the signs and hallmarks of addiction. It’s your relationship to the substance or behavior—not the substance or behavior itself—that makes the difference.
I ask myself, “Does this behavior stop me from feeling my feelings? Feelings that, if I felt them, would help me to grow?” I know that keeping busy may still be my longest lasting addiction. As my friend Brigid likes to remind me, “Feelings can’t hit a moving target.”
Can we ever get to the bottom of our addiction? As someone said when I was new in recovery, “If you want to know why you drank, stop drinking and you’ll soon find out.” It was good advice. When we stop the addictive substance or behavior and we “sit still and feel,” the source will reveal itself.
All of this requires discernment, which is defined as judgment, perspicacity, or penetrating insight. (Please note: “judgment” is not always a bad word.)
This is why at a certain point in our recovery we need to find meetings where we can talk about a wide swath of topics. It doesn’t help if I am only attending meetings where exclusively the discussion of a particular substance is welcome. By year seven or eight our drunk- or drugalogues have all been told, and may be growing old—but we might be killing ourselves with food, gambling, or sex addiction. We have to shine a light on our patterns—all of our patterns. Something that helps me with this discernment was said by Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst and teacher: “The natural gradient in us is toward growth. Whatever we use repeatedly and compulsively to stop that growth is our particular addiction.”
DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
But what happens when it’s not the booze or the blues alone? Compared with men, women with drinking problems are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and marital discord. So for women in recovery, coping with clinical depression or another mental illness is frequently an additional serious topic.
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