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Last night, on my way to a mutual aid meeting, I shared a few words with a man in tights. Blue tights, with red underpants outside and a pair of natty red boots. A red cape flapped in the evening breeze. It was Halloween after all.
I suggested he might get to his destination faster if he took to the air. He threw me a square-jawed, white toothed grin, even as he raised his eyebrows to the very skies I was talking of. “You’re the fifth person to suggest that to me!”
I realised I was going to have to get some new material.
Bill White, the US recovery historian, researcher and advocate has written of recovery as a heroic journey.
Here of course, he’s referring not to superheroes, but to the heroes of mythology. The adventure of the hero is filled with danger and risk (addiction), but ultimately he returns home (back into the community, reintegrated).
It rings true for me and others I know in recovery.
The return from active addiction does require an amazing splash of heroic power. We are all heroes. We continue to slip on our superhero tights when we help support other addicts who ask for help through mutual aid meetings and by making amends for past wrongs.
At the end of the evening, as I was going home, I saw “The Flash” on the back seat of a number 37 bus slowly making its way up the street.
If only real superheroes used their powers as much as us recovery heroes, the world would be a much safer place.
On the subject here is a poem that sums up the heroism of those in recovery. I am sure many of you will have seen it before but its worth another look:-
When You Meet a Sober Alcoholic
When you meet a sober alcoholic
You meet a hero.
His mortal enemy slumbers within him;
He can never outrun his disability.
He makes his way through a world of alcohol abuse,
In an environment that does not understand him.
Society, puffed up with shameful ignorance,
Looks on him with contempt,
As if he were a second-class citizen
Because he dares to swim against the stream of alcohol.
But you must know:
No better people are made than this.
— Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1831-1910).
I am sure that if that was written today you would iclude the word addict as drugs are also mainstream these days
That’s a great piece of poetry from so long ago, but still pertinent.
Thanks Androcles for making me smile yet again, i really like my own hero narrative and adding a chapter as we speak, not sure if my costume would be super woman or as my wee boy dressed up as the other night (yoda) or an old witch lol but what i know for sure is I would not have it any other way.
My journey will continue against the tide one day at a time, but I have hope that the tide is turning you know, just today mind! it may well pass.
Am x
Can’t picture you as a witch AM, but as one of us, you are certainly a hero. Came-to-believe Girl? Amends Woman? Step Queen?
You can see where I could go with this, but as I say above; I need to get some new material. Urgently.
lol, brill x
Great blog,
Recovery truly is an epic adventure and one in which you can gain incredible (dare i say super-human) strength and insight.
