The spectrum is all there is
and 6 great resources helping me make sense of confusing things lately
(Click play to hear me give an overview of this post)
Happy Friday to you. :) Here are just a few things I watched or listened to recently that broadened my understanding of my own recovery from addiction. If you are on this path, or are taking the time to try to understand this recovery path for any reason, I am thinking of you and sending you strength and peace. Thank you so much for sharing in this with me. It means the world to know we are in it together. x
This fascinating Harvard Book Store live discussion & Q&A session between Carl Erik Fisher and Leslie Jamison (author of the outstanding book The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath) about Carl’s book The Urge: Our History of Addiction. I haven’t read The Urge yet but it’s on my list for March. I would read and listen to anything Fisher shares because he is measured, honest, a survivor, and his works are massively well researched and delivered with utmost compassion and respect for all on the recovery path, whatever it looks like for them. He’s outstanding.
This NPR interview with Dr. Anna Lembke on pain-pleasure connection and why those of us in recovery have much wisdom to share with society at large about the importance of inviting pain-with-purpose into our lives to help us ultimately be happier. Also a good discussion about why radical honesty is so important for recovery. Dr. Anna Lembke is a Stanford Medical School psychiatrist, researcher and author of the book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
This Flourishing After Addiction podcast episode with Carl Erik Fisher and Holly Whitaker about addiction, recovery, and how we are taught to think about both through the lense of a (fucked up) drinking culture. A really fascinating and probing question Carl asks is: Is recovery a special category outside of generalized health and wellness and the quest for self-improvement? Holly’s answer is a reframe on self-improvement and the capitalistic system. Good stuff.
This YouTube video by Dr. Peg O’Connor about “Higher and Friendly Powers” and transforming addiction and suffering, in which she explores the interesting influence philosopher and psychologist William James had on Bill W’s creation of the Big Book. Out of transparency and respect, I want to say that I’m not a “member” of AA, though I think AA and 12-step is a beautiful construct and live in gratitude for many of its teachings (which I now live by as well).
This Heart of the Matter podcast episode with Elizabeth Vargas and Carl Erik Fisher on the history of addiction and the capacity for recovery, and why it’s misleading to call addiction a disease. “The most impactful thing is to get people to tell their stories.” (That gave me hope that to keep telling my story is worth it.)
This exceptionally thorough, extensively informative, heavily linked, and important post by Veronica Valli called The Misinformation About Alcoholics Anonymous and Sobriety. It’s lengthy and well worth the read / consideration.
I’m so grateful to be able to experience the changing of seasons day by mindful day. Never in my life have I had the presence, time, and financial ability to pay this close attention to the way seasons don’t change on a single calendar date. Right now, as I send you this note, I’m sitting by the window in my writing room and noticing there are more little birds chirping and fluttering by (signs of spring) even as there are still small frozen piles of snow scattered here and there on the ground (notes of winter).
The nature of alive things is to be on this spectrum all the time. It’s beautiful and interesting and far more nuanced than we allow for in the average popular discourse. It’s making me think that so much of my recovery now is about learning who I am without labels. Who I am when I’m not ‘winter’ or ‘spring’; not ‘sick’ or ‘cured’; not ‘addicted’ or ‘recovered’ (because let me tell you: coffee is a thing, sugar is a thing, fear is a thing, destructive thought patterns are a thing, I still have things).
Thanks so much for spending this time with me. I’m exploring new ways of connecting with you and I’m here if you have ideas, too. :) Until next time, I’m wishing you well. Do take the best care of yourself. x
Free gifts for you *yay* Free subscribers get a free copy of 30 days of sober exploration journal prompts. Paid subscribers get a free copy of my sobriety memoir ‘Love Me Sober’ and access to my pre-recorded audio sober coaching series on overcoming the 5 biggest obstacles to continuous sobriety. Cool. :)
Allison Marie Conway is a published author (Love Me Sober, 2023; Luminae, 2018), addiction recovery coach, mentor, researcher, and advocate. Allison currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, John, of seventeen years. She is deeply grateful to be recovering during midlife.
“The nature of alive things is to be on this spectrum all the time.” I like where you went with that. For me, identifying as anything is just another trap. Who am I? All of it…the full spectrum..all the time; recovering and not recovering, ecstatic and depressed, arrogant and humble. I’m all these things at once but it’s what I align my consciousness with that drives my behavior. Yeah, you were pointing at some important things there Allison. Good stuff!!! 🙏
Love Anna Lemke. Right up there with Gabor Mate. 🙏
Great essay. Thank you.