Why I Won’t Ask You To Be Sober

I don’t know what brought you to this post. Perhaps you can see a habit getting out of control. Perhaps your friends said that they were worried, or you told them that you were. Either way, you know something needs to change. Perhaps you’re ready, or not. A part of you probably wants to run. I get that. You know that it’s going to be hard. You’ve tried already and failed. A part of you might even want to give up. Another part of you doesn’t.

This is the time to start therapy. You don’t need to be sober. You don’t need to be “fixed”. You only need to start.

You’ll know what it’s like to let people down

This is the reality of addiction. You’ll have made promises to people about staying sober or clean that now, in the moment, you’ll find impossible to keep. That feeling, you know the one, is bubbling up inside and it’s impossible to say no to. Perhaps it’s more nihilistic—you just don’t have the energy to resist anymore.

Staying sober or clean for others is hard. I don’t know you, but I know that you’re probably finding it difficult too. You might be able to go to work, or do the odd weekend without drink or drugs. You know that if some people were to see you like that, it would be a disaster. And so you hide from them. And in doing that, you lose yourself. Because you cannot disappear those feelings inside you, the ones that keep building. However much you want to, however determined you are, or however much you love whoever it is you promised, these feelings will gnaw away. They always do.

…and the shame that goes with it

So when you relapse, it’s not just the usual sense of disappointment that you might feel, but also a sense that you’ve let other people down too. And with those feelings comes shame. Shame, that feeling that you’ve done something against your own values, something wrong, corrodes the soul. Shame is the opposite of recovery.

I do not deal in shame.

I will not be someone you let down

And so I will not insist that you are sober in our sessions. And I mean that. I don’t want to be someone else you need to be good for, someone else you can let down. In our work together, I want to know the full you, the real you. I want to see the parts of you that you feel ashamed to show others. Because in doing that, you’ll understand that I won’t run away. There is nothing here that will frighten me. You do not scare me. You are not a monster. There’s just a habit you cannot kick. Yet.

Therapy for addiction is the process of understanding that feeling, the one that pulls you into your addiction. When you show up high or drunk, that is a moment of letting go. You tried to stay off whatever it was. You failed, but you showed up anyway. That is commitment. That is work. That is showing me that you might be bathed in shame, but you will not let yourself drown. I am here, with you. And that is the moment when we can look that feeling in the face. What is happening for you. How does it feel.

This is not easy. It is hard, in fact. It might be the hardest thing you have ever done. The feeling that we name might be the feeling you have been trying so desperately to avoid. And you will notice yourself fighting against the work in all kinds of ways. You will probably miss sessions. There will be some weeks when you’re late on payment. And yes, in some weeks, you will show up drunk or high and, in the session, you won’t connect to your feelings.

I won’t pretend to love this. It’s a part of you that is sabotaging the work, and I will say so. But I won’t abandon you. You will fight this. And as long as you walk through my door anyway, there is work we can do.

I am in this for the long haul. If you are too, we should work together. It starts with a 15-minute call. There’s no obligation, and it’s free. You can get a sense of me, and we go from there.