How to Behave Around Someone in Recovery
Hint: We Don’t Want Special Treatment
If there’s one thing that bothered me the most since I quit drinking, it’s how others act around me now. After publicly admitting to alcohol-use disorder (preferred term), problem drinkers don’t want others to magnify the difference we already feel.
Many of us, especially at the beginning, are battling our own mental health demons, struggling against long-established destructive coping habits and sheepishly confronting the wreckage we’ve left in our wake. While your careful consideration of our needs is well intentioned, we already feel like a fish out of water, treating us with kid gloves only amplifies our discomfort.
We don’t blame you. We know you’ve never been through what we’re going through, and you probably don’t have a handbook on how to treat us. Even if you did, it probably wouldn’t cover this anyway.
Based on my experiences during my first year of sobriety, here are seven unwritten rules that can help you to make us more comfortable.
1. Don’t Treat Us Special
As noted, we really don’t want to be treated differently than before. If we’ve just walked out of a rehab or detox facility, you can be fairly positive that we already feel very strange.
Many of us haven’t been sober since childhood. Some of us couldn’t function without alcohol in our system for the last few years. We may have gone through extreme withdrawal symptoms. If we were in a facility, it’s likely that we saw some strange and uncomfortable things.
Regardless of how we quit, life in sobriety will be a little strange. We may have been drinking to hide from emotional pain, guilt, anxiety, insecurity or fear — all of that will come rushing back to us without our trusty crutch. The mental fog from our drinking can take a while to wear off, but it’s a safe bet that we’ll feel some foreign feelings in the beginning. Let us find our sea legs.
2. Don’t Change your Behavior (Unless We Ask You)
This is where things can get a little weird.
While we are the ones who admitted the problem, the odds are that alcohol was likely involved in our relationship in some way. You may have been an enabler. We may have hidden it from you. Maybe you looked the other way and ignored the severity of our problem.
Our quitting is about us, not about you. It often makes us uncomfortable when you go out of your way to change your behavior. The last thing we want is to impose on the loving people who stuck by our side through the dark times. If you drink, don’t necessarily assume that we want you to suddenly stop drinking around us.
It doesn’t need to be weird. Just ask us straight up: “Mind if I have a drink?” That’s a whole hell of a lot better than the awkward silence where you want to ask but don’t want to be rude. We can feel that awkward silence too…
We’re likely not going to want to meet you in a bar until we’re comfortable with cravings and triggers, if ever, but, other than that, we likely don’t want you to change anything major.
3. Be Patient with Us, We’re on a Roller Coaster
Sober life is likely a dramatic shift for each us. When you’re addicted to a substance, you end up numbing out your feelings and emotions. As our primary coping mechanism, we used alcohol to escape from things we didn’t want to think about and emotions we didn’t want to feel.
When we’re no longer comfortably numb, we can experience a dramatic rush of feelings and anxiety. I know that I was emotionally raw and hyper sensitive. In the early days, we can go through wild swings of emotions (both happy and sad). We will also be learning to withstand our cravings for alcohol and slowly desensitize ourselves to our historical triggers.
It’s a process. It takes some time to adjust. If you cut us some slack early on, it will increase our odds of success.
4. Be Supportive but Not Controlling
If you’re a control freak, you’re going to need to dial it way down. This is our problem to solve. If you turn our problem into your new personal crusade, we are going to have problems. In fact, that behavior will likely annoy us so much we might decide to “drink at you” out of frustration.
You don’t need to do a lot. Give us some positive reinforcement from time to time. When we’re feeling down or have just made it through a tough day, tell us your proud of our progress.
When alcohol is your coping mechanism for every negative thing in life, abstinence is a major shift. Our anxiety is high, and little stressors become magnified. Sometimes simply making it through the day is a major win. Early on, give us some credit for the small victories.
5. Many of Us Don’t like the Scarlet Letter
In the world of recovery, “A” is for alcoholic. Those four syllables carry a whole lot of baggage. And that baggage is overflowing with stigma, fear, misinformation, guilt, blame, shame and much more negativity.
It’s a bit of a loaded term. Many of us learn it growing up in reference to the worst examples of problem drinkers — people who are non-functioning. The word conjures up an image of someone who has ruined everything in their lives, including marriage, job, finances and possibly faces trouble with the law. Many also mistakenly associate it with a lack of self control.
For many years, I was a high-functioning senior vice president. Some co-workers were surprised when I imploded into a puddle of vodka. My drinking was self-medication to cope with crushing stress, unrealistic expectations and a deep reserve of insecurity. When you’re physically dependent, it’s not a matter of will-power or self-control. Withdrawal can mean death.
It’s a misleading term that can cause pain. If we’re in recovery, we may already feel an incredible burden of guilt for prior behavior. Stacking stigma on top might do damage added damage.
Please don’t use that term unless we use it to describe ourselves. Even if we’re participating in the Alcoholics Anonymous program, that word means a completely different thing in the rooms of AA than it does in public. Besides, the approved medical terminology today is “alcohol-use disorder.”
6. If You Want to Discuss our Use, Be Prepared to Own Up to Yours
This is important. Take a seat and buckle your seatbelt. The ride is about to get a little bumpy.
Alcohol-use disorder is much more complicated than one individual doing something bad. First, studies suggest that alcohol addiction can be hereditary. Second, there is typically an entire network of family members and friends who are involved in the use dynamic. A partner could have enabled or excused away the use, a friend could have turned a blind eye to the use or, commonly, several others could also have problems with alcohol.
Unsurprisingly, this can make discussion a challenge. With regard to families, there are several programs for support and guidance, such as Al Anon or Smart Recovery Family & Friends.
For this article, let’s stick to friends with alcohol problems. If our relationship is largely contingent upon alcohol use, we may want to steer clear in the early days of recovery. Simply put, our relationship with you could trigger cravings.
If we are comfortable interacting with you, however, it might be best to avoid an in-depth discussion of our use. When I was newly sober, it felt a little insulting to open up about my problem to people who were in denial of their own addiction issues. People with alcohol problems tend to implicitly understand this — the possibility of confronting their own addiction usually keeps them away.
7. “In Recovery” Does Not Mean Abolitionist
To reiterate point number two, we’re in recovery for ourselves. Don’t automatically assume that we now believe that alcohol is the devil incarnate, and we’ve come to spread our message far and wide.
Sure, some people do get on a high horse. In my experience, those people were already on a high horse, and they probably pressured you about something else before.
For the rest of us, we’ve just admitted that consumption is not in our best interest. We don’t look down on others who drink. You do you. Just know that I will have made an Irish exit by the time you start repeating yourself.