Recovery Sucks: An Extraordinarily Imperfect Journey of Recovery

By Amy Hart

Being crowned homecoming queen fast-tracked me to an identity crisis that catalyzed my disclosure of ten years of sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather. I dropped out of high school for the first half of my senior year while the disclosure was incinerated in my notorious stepfather's career-climbing kiln. I am recovering my authentic self from the rubble of losses amassed over years of enduring entirely narcissistic parents.

I felt shame and disgrace about the unsavory and scandalous parts of my life. As a result, I kept quiet and kept my words to myself. I had every reason to die in a self-destructive implosion. Instead, I wrote this book.

Recovery is a gritty and ceaseless process that has no finish line. My mother always told me I was going to "need a lot of therapy." She also told me to "never have kids because it will be the worst thing you ever do." My mother was right about the therapy, but she was wrong about the kids.

Life is riddled with conflict. Conflict motivates my writing and passion for conflict resolution. Twenty years of therapy at two to three times per week helped me construct a useful and productive life, and it has allowed me to hone my native genius: being a mother.

I've given myself a self-accredited PhD in life with a master's in conflict resolution and personality disorders. My greatest hope is that you are entertained and inspired by my life story. The self-discovery that occurred during the creation of this book holds some shocking conclusions.

Is it possible that being sexually abused was my saving grace? Is it possible that my alcoholism is not destructive? This book is not a how-to about recovery. It is about self-discovery and where I am in the sucky recovery process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887634913

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Homecoming Queen

How Being Crowned Homecoming Queen Ruined My Life Then Set Me Free

The Logistics

Adults Are Dumb

My Inner Philosopher Surfacing

Truth Teller

Researcher

My People

My Brother

My Sister

My Uncles

My Mom

My Dad

My Stepdad

My Journey through Shame

Weight Management

Keeping Up Appearances

My Divorce

Divorce—It's Not the Answer You Think It Is

Jeff

I Can't Follow a Recipe to Save My Life

Motorcycles

Emotional Abuse

Who's the Manipulator?

Deconstruction

Conscious Recovery

How I Became a Mediator

Mediation

High-Conflict People

Island of Misfits

I Was in My Addiction

Steve

I'm an Alcoholic

Alcoholics

Healthy People (Drinking or Nondrinking)

Alcoholics Not in Recovery (Drinking or Nondrinking)

Alcoholics in Recovery (Drinking or Nondrinking)

Were You Raised by Wolves?

Addiction

Daily Poisoning

Single and Not Looking

Fucking Narcissism

Heavy

My Garage

The Beginning of the Transformation

Resentment

Who's to Blame?

Therapy Was a Means to Align My Self-Concept with Reality

Healthy Relationships

Unconditional Love—The Holy Grail

I Must Be a Mermaid

Problem-Solving Team

Therapy

Therapy and Re-parenting

Doing Therapy Right

What You Allow Is What Will Continue

Admitting That I Don't Have My Shit Together Even Though It Looks Like I Do

Getting My Shit Together

What Is Recovery?

Recovery from My Perspective

My Recovery

The Biology and Reality of Recovery

The Grief Process

Search and Rescue

Step 1: I Admitted I Had a Problem

Steps 2 and 3: I Surrendered

Live Your Life on Purpose

Steps 4 through 12

I Am God—God Is Me

About the Author

cover.jpg

Recovery Sucks

An Extraordinarily Imperfect Journey of Recovery

Amy Hart

Copyright © 2023 Amy Hart

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-490-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-491-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to Jenny and Donna, whose therapeutic help saved my life from misery. Jenny taught me to be a good mother to myself and my children. Donna helped me take it to a professional level. Jenny and Donna, your services changed the course of my life in a perfectly positive direction. I will be forever grateful.

Introduction

Recovery is not restricted only to addicts and alcoholics. Often, we think of addicts and alcoholics as the people with the real problems. These are the people who have a problem with substances. If addicts and alcoholics would just get treatment and recover, their life would be just fine. If they would just get some control over these substances, they wouldn't have all the problems they have.

This is absolutely not true. First, we all have some level of addiction to something. In fact, most of us have what we call co-addictions in addition to our addictions. For instance, I'm addicted to unhealthy relationships with men, and I'm addicted to alcohol to numb the pain of the unhealthy relationships.

Something often overlooked is that people can be addicted to healthy and life-sustaining activities too, such as exercise, food, and sex. We cannot separate alcoholics and addicts into them and us. We are all addicts struggling to manage our drug of choice.

Second, recovery is not about getting control over something. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. It is letting go of the illusion of control. Recovery is about acceptance and balance and aligning with a higher purpose. It is about growing up and taking responsibility for the choices you have made as an adult, even if those choices (especially if those choices) didn't turn out like you hoped.

Thirdly, we all have problems. Not all problems are solved by quitting an addiction. Not all problems are solved by living a healthy, balanced life. Life is full of problems, and recovery is about becoming a good problem solver.

Hi, my name is Amy, and I am an alcoholic. I'm also an overeater, a codependent, an adult child of an alcoholic, and I'm cursed with loving addicts and alcoholics that refuse to take responsibility in relationships. There are recovery groups for all of my defects of character.

Overeaters Anonymous (OA) welcomes all that want to stop eating compulsively. There's Co-dependents Anonymous (CoDA), where the only requirement for membership is the desire for healthy and loving relationships. Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA or ACA) is where men and women meet to share their common experiences of growing up in dysfunctional homes where neglect, abuse, and trauma infected us. There's Al-Anon for those of us that love and worry about the people in our lives with drinking problems.

Of course, there is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), where I am not welcome. AA welcomes those with a desire to stop drinking. The very first step is to admit that you are powerless over alcohol. I can't take this first step. I don't believe it to be true. I do believe I am powerless over the effect alcohol has on my body and mind, but I don't believe I am powerless over alcohol. I don't want to stop drinking.

I'm also addicted to Mexican food, hot sauce, jalapeños, and coffee. In the past, I was addicted to cigarettes and low self-esteem. There are no recovery groups for these addictions. These are the addictions I have to learn to manage on my own without a support group.

I do believe, however, that I am powerless over the laws of the universe. The universe will carry on however it carries on—with or without me. We live on a blue planet that circles a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea. Do you believe you understand how it all works? Nah. No one does. It's ludicrous to even consider that there is any one person that understands it all, including God.

The most important part of twelve-step recovery groups is admitting you are powerless. This is the first step in any twelve-step program. Powerless over what, though? Some people are powerless over alcohol. I am not one of those types of alcoholics. I am, however, powerless over the laws of the universe.

Knowledge is power. However, knowing the laws of the universe does not give me power over them. Knowing and understanding the laws of the universe allows me to work effectively within the confines of those laws.

The greatest gift that is born from admitting you are powerless is access to humility. Access to an understanding that you are not in control of that which you have an illusion of control. Access to understanding that which is in your control and that which is not.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I am a huge fan of twelve-step programs. Twelve-step programs were there for me when I was at rock bottom. My rock bottom was the moment I realized I could not control the man that I thought was the love of my life. My rock bottom was when I had nowhere to go except to admit that I was powerless over his choices. My rock bottom was when I pursued recovery consciously and with the intent to never feel rock bottom again.

There is a reason AA and all its subsidiary twelve-step groups are the largest, most successful worldwide organization. These groups have no formal leadership and no marketing department. They are required to be self-sustaining and are not permitted to accept outside contributions. Their public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of these traditional groups, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. Twelve-step programs work if you work it and you are worth it.

I have never experienced any hard drugs. I have always been terrified of cocaine, heroin, and LSD. I never understood why I was so terrified of these drugs when my peers were not. I've determined that, deep down, I knew I would inadvertently kill myself.

Today, I am prideful that I heeded Nancy Reagan's say no to drugs campaign. Although I really should credit my fear more than that slogan. Also, credit goes to those who died to prove my fear accurate. I am talking about the lives of John Belushi, Chris Farley, and my heartthrob, River Phoenix (less than a year older than me). These deaths reinforced my conviction that accidental overdose would be too easy.

There was a stirring deep inside me that knew just how self-destructive I could be. I believe this is where perfectionism saved me. Perfectionism is one of the most common addictions in our culture today, from my cursory measure.

My perfect persona allowed my self-destructiveness to come out in less deadly ways. Compulsive eating, compulsive drinking, and compulsively engaging in unhealthy relationships are my heaviest hitters. Overthinking, overanalyzing, and overdoing are my backup hitters.

Over the course of my life, I have gone through periods of heavy drinking, usually when the workload was heavy. The heavy drinking leads to overeating. The weight gain leads to less exercise, which then leads to more weight gain. I've spent the last twenty years in therapy analyzing this pattern.

One of the first questions I entered individual therapy to resolve was Why does my weight fluctuate by sixty pounds? Why not five or ten pounds? Why, when I'm gaining weight, do I not resolve it when the problem is smaller? Why do I wait for the problem to be sixty pounds? Twenty years later, I have the answer. Which is why I am writing this book.

I began this book years ago when I lost all the weight for the fifth and final time. However, I have never gone back to see what I wrote. My guess is it was all bullshit. I was thinking I had it all figured out because I had lost the weight for the fifth and final time. Fast-forward to today and the evidence shows that I didn't have anything figured out. I'm sixty pounds overweight as I write this, with a full belly of a Chipotle Mexican Grill burrito.

Today, I can look back and assess what I did well and what went wrong. I have gone through periods in my life where I took excellent care of myself. I would lose the weight and get to a place of satisfaction with my health and fitness. Then, slowly, I would fall back into compulsive drinking, eating, and toughing out an unhealthy relationship. The weight would come back on, which is where I find myself today. Same pattern, same results.

I am sixty pounds heavier than I have been for the last six years. This is the sixth time in my life that I have been this heavy. The sixth time! It will be the seventh time that I get my weight back down to a healthy weight around 135. At forty-nine years old, I'm running out of years to live in balance.

Something I've learned is to look at patterns, not people. The pattern has become entirely evident. It's not me. There is nothing wrong with me. The pattern is to blame. I've got to change the pattern if I want to change the result. This time, I'm doing things differently.

First, I am not forcibly requiring myself into the daily practices required to maintain a healthy weight. Right now, my workload is heavy with assembling this book, managing a new career, and providing my children with the attention they need during COVID-19. Once I get these words out of my body and into this book, my self-image will be in greater alignment with the healthy image I desire. I'm cutting myself some slack and allowing myself to be overweight without the intense insistence that I lose the weight now.

Maintaining a healthy weight requires a level of discipline that I know I possess. I've done it before, and I will do it again.

Discipline is not to be confused with willpower. Discipline is about organizing your life in such a way that supports healthy weight management without the power struggle over your drug or drugs of choice. Considering my drugs of choice are food, alcohol, and unhealthy relationships, what I'm doing differently is not engaging in the power struggle.

The other thing I am doing differently is that I have recovered completely from my addiction to unhealthy relationships. I do not have the chaos in my life that an unhealthy relationship brings. The stress and pressure have been entirely eliminated from my life. It's almost like living life in a vacuum—living in an environment void of the context by which it was established, becoming comfortable with the absence of something that has always been present. Therefore, the part of the pattern I'm changing is the toughing out an unhealthy relationship.

I'm not in a relationship, and I'm not pursuing one. I have always preferred being in a relationship to being alone. So much so, I would heavily pursue an unhealthy relationship rather than remain alone. An unhealthy relationship was better than no relationship. This, I would eventually realize, is the root of my addiction to unhealthy relationships.

You know how you sometimes drink too much, and the next morning, you say I'm never drinking again? You know, how that overdose of a substance catalyzes abstinence from that substance, at least for a while? Well, that happened to me with unhealthy relationships. I overdosed and now I'm abstaining.

I've finally realized that if I'm going to be alone, I prefer to be by myself than alone in a relationship. It took me my entire adult life to develop this genuine preference of being alone by myself. I have done the work of recovery, and I consider myself recovered from my addiction to unhealthy relationships. My preference to be alone by myself is indicated by my lack of desire to pursue my addiction.

I do not have to convince myself or try very hard. I'm just not interested. I'm not interested in an unhealthy relationship, and I'm definitely not interested in the chaos an unhealthy relationship brings to a family. I'm satisfied and I'm not in pursuit of the thing I am addicted to. I feel recovered because I have organized my life in such a way that I am not in a power struggle with my drug of choice.

Being alone by myself is extraordinarily lonely. This feeling of profound loneliness was the feeling I was suppressing with bad relationships, alcohol, and food. And it worked too. That feeling of profound loneliness was neutralized with chaos and interminable hustling for my worthiness. I was so busy attending to and trying to organize chaos that I had no time to feel lonely.

The thing about recovering from unhealthy stuff is that the rewards are built in. Not feeling miserable is the reward. Feeling good has not been reason enough for me to endure recovery, but not feeling miserable has given me plenty of reasons. Removing the things from my life that were injecting me with misery brought the measureless reward of feeling not miserable.

I will never be fully recovered from all my addictions. The best I can hope is that my life continues heading in the right direction. With each day that my life brings me, I learn, grow, and contribute. I will always have my addictions. This is a truth-telling exercise about how I learned to snuggle up to my addictions rather than fight them. It begins with recovery (a.k.a. growing up).

The purpose of this book is to give me the forum that I can't find in my everyday life. I can't find a recovery group for alcoholics that don't have a desire to stop drinking. I don't work with a group of people who understand me. My clients come to me to be understood, not to understand me. I don't have a family that understands me outside of the context of their fucked-up functioning. I don't have a forum to feel truly heard and understood. This is why I write to you.

I want to connect with like-minded people. I have a pragmatic, no-nonsense approach to life. I have a good sense of humor and a great attitude. I stand for connection. This book is my reach for connection. This book is me stepping into the arena in a meaningful way by sharing who I am with you.

I want to share what I believe to be a common experience. I believe I have lived a normal life. I had an awful childhood, but it balanced out with an exceptional adulthood. I don't think my experience is all that unique from yours when you obscure the details. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't change a thing. That's how I know I am in recovery and recovering well.

I will always be in recovery, and I am proud of that accomplishment. I accept my defects of character, and I hope to encourage you to accept yours too. Defects of character are what recovery groups call our shortcomings, such as our addictions. I have learned to live a productive life despite my shortcomings. I have learned to allow my defects of character to exist without my needing to extinguish them.

Everyone needs recovery, not just those of us that actively admit that we have addictions. Recovery is an instrumental period of growth in an adult's life. It is necessary in order to be a healthy, well-adjusted adult.

Not everyone moves easily through this period of growth. Many people resist and deny its necessity. Many people never acknowledge recovery as a natural growth milestone. This is entirely understandable. Recovery sucks.

Homecoming Queen

Never in a million years did I think I would be crowned homecoming queen. It was the start to my senior year of high school. Almost done. Almost there. My life was going to start as soon as high school was over.

I had been a cheerleader every year in high school. When the high schoolers came to the middle school to teach us the cheer for tryouts, I knew I had found my calling. Loud? I can be loud. Louder? No problem.

To this day, thirty-six years later, I still remember that cheer and most of the moves. I am sure if I really tried, I could remember the cheer in its entirety. That is how much I practiced before tryouts. Enough to never forget it and more than enough to not make a mistake.

This must have been the start to my personal constitution that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. This is a blessing and a curse. It makes projects take way longer and use way more energy than they need to. Yet the results produced are extraordinary. I can't underdo anything. It's not in my constitution. Good enough is not an achievement; it is a starting point.

Apparently, I was popular enough to be on the homecoming court. This came as a surprise to me given that all the popular girls were on the homecoming court. Wait. You mean I'm one of them? Does not compute.

You know that message you get on your computer when there has been a fatal error? You know how your stomach sinks and you wished you'd backed everything up? You know how crushing and deflating and infuriating that message is? That is how I felt.

Of course, at the time, I didn't know that's how I felt. I can only tell this truth in retrospect. I did not have the emotional intelligence back then that I have today. The one truth I can tell you is that everything that followed from that moment only makes sense when you hear the entire truth.

To this day, I wonder if the system was rigged. I have had enough experience in life, which tells me it is entirely possible that it could have been rigged. But what was to be gained by rigging the system? It would make sense if I wanted to win and rigged the system so I could win, but it doesn't make any sense that advisors would rig the system. I guess this probably speaks to my distrust of authority.

Although I was crowned, I still didn't belong. This may not make sense to you because, as far as appearances go, I fit the image perfectly: blond, big tits, head cheerleader, popular with the boys, and loud. I was really loud, both vocally and metaphorically.

I felt like it was a scene from the movie Carrie, like the crowning was a joke to make a mockery of me. My suspicion was high, and reality was low. Looking back, the crown sent me into a personal crisis that no one understood. I wouldn't understand until at least fifteen years later.

How Being Crowned Homecoming Queen Ruined My Life Then Set Me Free

The term cognitive dissonance refers to the confusion that you experience when you have two competing concepts in your thoughts. For instance, I hate camping and I've agreed to go camping. Logic and reasoning would say that if you hate camping, you wouldn't go camping. I'm going to use this extremely real dissonant concept for me to explain the concept of cognitive dissonance.

Our brains don't like cognitive dissonance. Our brains like cognitive consonance, which is congruency between our thoughts. When there is dissonance in our thoughts or behaviors, a feeling of discomfort is created by our brains. That discomfort is relieved when the dissonance is resolved. Our brains have all kinds of mechanisms by which they resolve cognitive dissonance, not all of which are helpful.

This is not intended as a lesson in cognitive dissonance. It is a simplified explanation of what happens psychologically for us when actual reality and the reality we construct in our heads bump up against each other. This camping example is an easy one.

I truly hate camping. I don't understand why people work so hard to provide a home and the comforts of home for themselves and then purposefully use vacation time to pretend they are homeless and sleep on the hard ground, exposed to insects and wildlife and the elements. It is even more dissonant when people try to bring the comforts of home to the campsite. That's a lot of work when you could just stay home and relax instead of rebuilding your home somewhere else temporarily and using vacation time to do it.

Cognitive dissonance is something our brains don't like, so our brains have all kinds of tactics to reduce cognitive dissonance. Self-justification is born of cognitive dissonance. We use self-justification to convince ourselves of one concept or the other. That way, the uncomfortable feeling of dissonance is reduced.

If I've agreed to go camping, I promise you there is a very good reason that has convinced me to brave the elements and pretend I'm homeless. This very good reason would be congruent with my other values, such as it is a desirable activity for someone important to me or a level of amenities will be provided so that I don't feel the pain of being homeless when I am not. Otherwise, I side with the concept of I hate camping and say no to every opportunity where camping is involved. Either way, the cognitive dissonance is resolved, and I am at peace with the camping issue.

A more serious version of cognitive dissonance occurs when our self-concept bumps up against data that proves our self-concept wrong. For instance, my self-concept is that I believe cheating is wrong, and I will never cheat. When I am offered an opportunity to cheat, most of the time, I decline. For instance, a cashier might give me too much change back. Most of the time, I would correct the error and return the excess change. However, there have been times when I have not done so.

This point is to illustrate how real data bumps up against self-concept. I'm not trying to open a debate about whether or not I should return excess change or whether this example is technically cheating or not. My self-concept is that I am an honest, kind, and generous person. Knowingly keeping excess change is data that bumps up against my self-concept. An honest, kind, and generous person would return the excess change with grace.

If there is ever a time that I don't return the excess change, it causes somewhat of a personal crisis. Maybe I didn't notice the excess change until I got home, or the next time, I spent cash and wondered where that $10 came from when I thought I only had $1. Should I drive back to the store and return the change before they close the tills for the night? Or maybe I noticed, but the cashier irritated me, so I didn't mention her mistake since it was in my favor. Is this something an honest, kind, and generous person would do? Cognitive dissonance creates a personal crisis when it bumps up against self-concept.

When I was crowned homecoming