Readers often ask why I don’t say more about my own recovery journey in my posts. In exploring the Recovery Month theme of “recovery for all”, today’s post tells some of my recovery story and why I think it is important to share. While Recovery Month is ending, I will continue to write regularly on recovery for individuals and families. 

Let me begin with the why – why do I write about recovery and my story.  Every day I am grateful for the life I have today. Life is not perfect. But it is a long way from the hell of the daily pain of addiction and emotional unease. Through Twelve Step recovery*, I have overcome addictions to compulsive eating and sugar, alcohol, and work and activity. I can be a trustworthy and loving husband, father, sibling, and friend. I enjoy who I am and do things that nurture my spirit every day. 

It pains me to think about the depressed and self-destructive behaviors that were my life before recovery. It also is painful to hear in recovery meetings how often other peoples’ stories include living in families where addictions have affected generations. Intergenerational transmission of addictions is not always obvious. Sometimes active addiction skips a generation, yet   the emotional consequences of enduring family trauma are always present. Like many who have benefitted from Twelve Step recovery, I see my responsibility as making sure that all who live with addiction know there is hope, and a road to recovery. 

And now, here is my story of addiction and recovery.  I began eating raw sugar and drinking chocolate syrup out of the can at an early age, probably 6 or 7.  In the 6th grade or so, I got my first job as a paper boy; it began my life of staying busy, and making money to support my addictions. A summer job with a construction company introduced me to my first beer when I was 16, a hot Pabst in the back of a truck on a Saturday morning. I hated the taste, but went on to become addicted to beer and other forms of alcohol. Looking back, I see there was an emptiness, a “hole in my soul”, I was trying to fill. 

In the 9th grade, I left home and went to the Catholic boarding seminary in Baltimore. In hindsight, I was looking to God and faith to fill this emptiness and was ready to leave home. While my family looked like a healthy working-class family, my childhood experiences left me afraid of being hurt, and not trusting anyone. Unknown to me, I began to develop coping mechanisms–overthinking, doing everything myself, not trusting others—in an attempt to control my environment and not get hurt. An unconscious fear of loneliness and consequent isolation fueled my addictions to sugar, food, alcohol, work and activity.

After I decided to leave seminary, I turned to social work as a “fill- the-soul” career yet continued my commitments to eating, drinking and staying busy. I got a graduate degree in social work, fell in love, and got married within three years of leaving the seminary. I focused my “social work” on community organizing, and community development, advanced my career, became the father of three beautiful children, and was unhappy. 

In 1980, at age 32, a near miss drunk driving car accident (with my wife and children in the car) led me to Twelve Step recovery and then to my spiritual awakening. At first, I didn’t think I belonged in meetings; my problem wasn’t that bad. Denial is the biggest obstacle to recovery for most. 

 I was too scared to stop going to meetings. After 3 or 4 months, another member suggested to me I hadn’t surrendered yet. I got angry, yet on my way home I realized if I could drink normally, I wouldn’t care. That was the beginning of admitting I needed help; working the Twelve Steps would become a life-time journey of surrenders and facing, then overcoming, my emotional and spiritual pain.  

Recovery is a long and surprising journey.

My life today is full of love and joy. I am not perfect and life has its ebbs and flows. Recovery has taught me how to savor and enjoy life with its many gifts. In order to do that, I am learning to accept life’s hard moments; they are part of living in this world in 2025.  

We all have ways to give back, and pay forward the gifts we have received. I give back by writing about recovery and other crucial topics in hopes that we slow down the cross generational devastation created by the disease of addiction.  

Future posts will say more about recovery, the many ways addictions of all kinds impact families, and the challenges therein that must be faced in order to slow down the passing on of addictions of all types from one generation to the next. 

* In writing about my experience in Twelve Step programs I do not name specific programs.  Rather I simply say, like many participants, I’m a person in recovery. Anonymity is an important tradition that protects people in Twelve Step programs and their organizations.