Alone in the Crowd | Sober and Unashamed

If you think reading about the impact of alcohol and recovery is therapeutic, you should try writing about it.

If you are battling a compulsion to drink, or if you are the loved one of a heavy drinker, you are probably protecting a closely guarded secret. It is the kind of secret that will eat you up from the inside while the poison does mental and biological damage to you, the drinker or second-hand drinker. The erosion of self-esteem, relationships and capacity to manage are all universalisms, yet we protect our secrets like we are somehow unique in a nation with over 15 million alcoholics.

And we protect our secrets because we can’t find a safe place to let them out.

What makes the healing work of discovery that we do different from other programs in the recovery community is our commitment to the written word. When we write about our stuff, we just go deeper. I don’t understand the psychological explanation, but I know it is true. When we write, we find ways to express emotions that our thoughts and conversations avoid and push further down out of reach. When we write, we heal.

With her permission, I am publishing here the written expression of painful emotion from Suzy, a participant in our Echoes of Recovery program. I don’t remember the prompt that stirred this touching and relatable story from her, but I’ll never forget the loneliness she felt safe to share.