Shame is such a strong and powerful emotion. It’s the emotion that can drive addiction and at the same time, the one that can stop you from getting help. That was certainly the case for me. The world has come a long way in its attitude towards addiction. The line “hello, my name is X and I am an alcoholic” has almost become a cultural cliche. Whether thats helpful or not is something I will explore another time - but it shows how some addictions have become more socially acceptable to talk about. Yet others remain shrouded in silence. Take sex addiction for example. Sex is a part of every human story, literally none of us would be here without it. It’s often described as one of the most beautiful expressions of love between two people. But still… we don't talk about it. Many of us would happily discuss our relationship with the toilet before we’d ever admit to struggles around sex. When you stop and think about it, that’s absurd. As long as there are topics we can’t talk about, the...
I feel that my recovery journey has been punctuated with inspirational quotes, sayings, excerpts etc. Some of them I have known for most of my life. Some are completely new. But all of them have taken on a completely different meaning now that I am on a recovery path. That is why each of my blog posts will be titled with one of these sayings or quotes and the subsequent content will be my reflections to that particular line. With that in mind I felt that it was only right to start with this ‘One Day… or… Day One’. As I feel it fantastically represents the fork in the road that people who are struggling with addiction, or poor mental health, often find themselves standing. “ I will get better one day” “Things will get better when…” These are lines that I found myself saying frequently while I was living in active addiction. I thought that my ‘acting out’ was a result of some unfair imbalance in the world. It was because I was overlooked for some promotion. Or because there was an a...