My Funny Mix-Match Recovery Discovery Quilt

There was a time when I thought it was not possible to get sober without AA. I eventually proved myself wrong in 2015, when in my first months sober I discovered a big mismatched mess of different influences that helped me find my way. I read everything I could get my hands on about alcohol abuse, addiction, and recovery from books that expressed the strictest sort of traditional Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step recovery protocol, to books like Charles Deemer’s Staying Sober Without AA and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

In 2015 the idea that recovery from alcohol addiction could come in many forms was still somewhat new. To many people, AA was THE way to stop drinking, and wandering off the proven path to recovery was dangerous. To others, Alcoholics Anonymous was a cult and as such a dangerous choice. The battles between the two poles in the comment streams of online forums were sometimes horrendous and not at all conducive to discovery in recovery.

This is something that I saved from an article published in 2017 in the online magazine The Fix.

“Addiction is bigger than our understanding of it. This is why we are being destroyed left and right all over the world. Fortunately, Recovery is also bigger than our understanding of it. It is a mansion with many rooms. And if one person goes into a room we didn’t find help in, who are we to criticize, condemn, harass, rant, and rail that it doesn’t work for those who have found peace in those rooms?“

The topic of the article this quote was taken from (which is no longer available because The Fix has gone offline) was the ranting and railing over AA versus other paths to recovery that was common in the comment streams of The Fix in 2017.

I stepped away from the noise of those combative voices while taking something from each of the proactive voices I read.

Recovery is a mansion with many rooms. How beautifully put!

I don’t call myself an alcoholic and I don’t identify as diseased but I understand why the people who do adhere to that traditional AA approach, and I respect that. It works for them. It just doesn’t work for me and I spent a lot of time figuring out what does work for me. It’s mine. I own it.

My mansion of many rooms, or what I call my funny mix-matched recovery discovery quilt, was a quilt of ideas stitched together one at a time. Other people’s ideas that resonated with me and helped me rediscover myself. It was a beautiful vibrant quilt that I wrapped around myself. It allowed me to live in that “mansion with many rooms” and life there is spectacular. Like a cathedral really! Full of light and hope and beauty. I still enjoy living there today.