If you have been involved in any type of substance abuse treatment or counseling, you have likely seen the TED Talk by Johann Hari, who talks about “Rat Park” and tells us all that “the opposite of addiction is connection”. I certainly agree with this; however, I would take it a step further and say that from my experience, the opposite of addiction is, purpose!
For a long time, I thought addiction was only about the drugs and the cravings and chaos that came along with it. Over the past 8 years, I have come to understand that my addiction was not about the drugs at all but rather, the emptiness that I was attempting to escape from.
I always new that I was here on earth to do something important. I knew in my soul that I would “be something one day” but, what did that mean? Who was I meant to be? I struggled internally with my own thoughts; waking up everyday thinking, is this really it? Addiction became the one thing in which I organized my life to. It was something that temporarily silenced the questions I did not know how to answer. It alleviated the pain of my own choices, temporarily of course. Drugs did not give me purpose but rather, an escape from the pain of not having one.
Once I got clean, it was terrifying. I knew how to live because I had done it before but did I really want to be the old Andrea again? Starting over is where the real work began. Removing the substance does not automatically give you purpose, it just simply removes the distraction. There were moments in early recovery where I felt completely lost. I wasn’t the person I used to be, but I also wasn’t yet the person I was becoming. I had destroyed the old identity, but the new one didn’t exist yet. I was standing in the middle of that space, unsure of who I was or where I belonged. But slowly, something began to change. I started helping other people. I started sharing my story. I started building something bigger than myself.
When I finally decided to go back to school and finish my Bachelor’s Degree, I knew shortly after that I wanted to get my MBA. While in the MBA program, I finally was able to begin to chip away at some of my dreams and began building Beyond Bars Recovery Foundation, an organization that exists for the exact version of myself that once felt hopeless, lost, and beyond saving. And somewhere in this process, I realized something that changed everything:
Purpose makes escape unnecessary. When you wake up with a reason to be here, you stop looking for ways to disappear. Purpose does not eliminate pain but it gives pain meaning, while turning suffering into fuel. For that, I am grateful everyday that I spent years in an addiction because without it, I would have never grown. I would have still felt deflated. Addiction took everything from me but it also gave me a reason to exist that is greater than anything I could have ever thought possible.
If you’re in recovery and you feel lost right now, I want you to understand something: nothing is wrong with you. You are not behind, you are not broken. You are standing in a space where purpose is built and trust me, it does not all arrive at once. It begins with small decisions like, showing up everyday. Telling the truth. Helping someone and most importantly, believing your life can become something more than it was.
Remember, you do not need to have everything figured out you just have to keep taking one step forward. The world needs the person you are becoming…
Click here to view: TEDTalk
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