WELCOME TO THE DISCO, BITCHES

What is Recovery Disco?

It is a blog, a podcast, and a recovery resource website. It is also an experience. When you get together with your friends in sobriety, in recovery, having a kiki without causing any harm. That is a Recovery Disco. No one is blacking out, you’re not waking up with a hangover, no one is saying a bunch of racist transphobic ignorant shit. You’re doing the work, waking up from the habits and thought patterns that caused yourself and others harm. Disco was and always will be a celebration of women, queers, and black and latinx artists. It is a feeling and a call to action. Recovery Disco is bringing together my love for celebration and my love for healing. It is both a personal project where I can share my story, and a resource hub where I can share the tools and wisdoms I come in contact with. 

When I first entered into recovery I was given only one option, and I was told very specifically to not listen to myself. I was very aware that the emotional, physical, and sexual trauma I experienced in the Christian Church made this option an extra bad fit for me, but I continued to try and force it to work, and continued to listen to people who told me that it was the only way. I was putting this program and other people's opinions above my own internal wisdom. I didn’t even bother to look up other options or books, I just listened to what I was told. My intuition told me to get more involved with Buddhism and meditation because they had helped ease some of my trauma in the past, but when I voiced this to my counselor at rehab he strongly opposed it. He would not sign off on that being a part of my treatment plan. These external wisdoms in my life, these “higher powers”, insisted that I only use rehabs and AA to heal from addiction. And so I spent 5 years of my life in and out of not only rehabs, but also in and out of homelessness, and many different AA communities. No matter how many rehabs I went to or AA meetings, nothing internal was shifting. Instead I experienced a lot of emotional manipulation and disempowerment at rehabs and in AA meetings I experienced my own trauma responses and panic attacks which I didn’t understand yet. I moved around to different states, different cities, trying to find the right AA community for me. Using the same tools over and over again, hoping this time the 12 steps would work. This is why I’m creating Recovery Disco. I want to help folx be informed about all the beautiful options that exist. The magical communities that center around both modern and old wisdoms that exist in recovery. In my experience you can’t rely on rehab’s or AA groups to know much about addiction recovery outside of their closed off community and limited resources. If you can’t get an accurate amount of resources in the largest recovery institutions, where are you supposed to get information? No one should have to go through what I did. It’s my vision that people in AA will use Recovery Disco to help people who AA isn’t working for. I envision a sponsor offering their sponsee a list of alternative programs for recovery. As well as rehabs using Recovery Disco to help folx create an aftercare program based on their specific needs and worldviews. Matching them with the communities that were build with them in mind.
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We need to hold society accountable

In the US and many countries around the world, our society centers profit and “success” ahead of community, culture, or healing. The results of this are evident in how many people fall through the massive cracks of this system. Homelessness is a pandemic that is mostly ignored. Businesses that make billions of dollars receive benefits and rewards from the government on top of already being successful, yet communities and non-profits that offer supportive systems for marginalized communities struggle to afford rent and healthcare. Addiction rates have historically risen with the growth of free market economics. This is laid out in Bruce Alexanders book “Globalization of Addiction”. Free Market economics are going to continue to be pushed and praised around the world while everything falls apart around them. It’s evident in how much violence there is in our country. Violence in the name of justice, in the name of politics, in the name of profit. Violence against BIPOC folx, trans folx, poor folx. People are addicted to money and power, hoarding resources of billions of dollars while others are living on the streets, or one paycheck away. It’s evident in suicide rates, in the lack of mental health providers whom are accessible for low and middle class america. It’s evident by how easy it is to obtain a toxic substance like alcohol which is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths. Alcohol is sold globally with little restrictions, yet we demonize other drugs which cause an alarming amount of less deaths per year. Plant medicines such as cannabis and psilocybin are criminalized even though the evidence of their medicinal purposes have always existed. It’s evident in the fact that our prison systems are not created to help people get well, they are created to punish and profit. This way of thinking only creates more harm in our society. People are released from prison having been exploited for labor with more trauma and pain than they had when they entered. If hurt people hurt people, then we are only exacerbating the problem. But the prison system doesn't want to change. It is rewarded for staying the same because it uses people for prison labor to make disposable items for sale at walmart and amazon. The prison system is just another way to enslave folx who are black, brown or poor, to take advantage of people struggling to survive this oppressive system. 

We need to wake up as individuals, but we also need to wake up as a society. How do we learn to take care of ourselves when the rest of the world around us is so fucked? We’re being gaslighted into thinking that all of our problems are our problems alone. That we have addictions alone. That we have mental health issues alone. That the trauma that we have experienced is ours alone to heal from. When in fact it is these systems that cause us to be addicted, to be dependent and confused. We’re taught to obey authority and do not question. And then when we end up addicted to a substance that is advertised in every other commercial as safe, we’re told it’s our fault, or it’s in our genes. This is all lies. Alcohol is an incredibly addictive substance. It’s one of the “top 5” most addictive drugs recognized along with heroin, nicotine; methamphetamine. No wonder many of us start to question the lies we were told as children and start to explore drug use in spite of all the elementary school curriculum aimed at demonizing drug use. We then only have our friends and dealers that we trust to educate us on the proper use of substances. Some of us our lucky and are taught how to not use too much or too often and the real risks involved and move through drug experimentation with little harm. Others are taught destructive and excessive habits of use, and wind up addicted without support. Those of us with trauma and mental health disorders might experience our first real sense of relief from drugs. Allowing us to connect with others and let go of our shit for a moment in time. We don’t know that there are many other ways besides substance use that can help us heal and connect, but in our society that information is less important than what they teach us in school.

If we really look at the history of addiction rates, it’s not the substances themselves that are changing and causing more people to be addicted, it’s the failing systems around us. A globalized culture that no longer emphasises community and support and instead only focuses on profit. We need community to heal, yet our culture does very little to help communities thrive. Many communities that do exist create large barriers and get caught up in dogma and hold tightly to singular sources of wisdom. There are an endless amount of reasons why someone in our society would need to center healing and community in their life, yet there seems to be a very limited amount of resources and communities out there to support us. In recovery we are living an alternative lifestyle to that of the majority of our society. We live this lifestyle that centers healing and community. A Life where we reconnect to ourselves and others in a way that doesn't cause harm. Some of us label the others that have not needed to center healing and community as “normies” but this is incorrect because as a society we could all benefit from centering these things above profit and productivity. 

My Recovery

After I went to my first rehab and continued to try and make AA work, my mental health continued to dissolve, and AA continued to fail me. I spent many years in and out of homelessness. Moving from city to city where I could find a couch or floor or park to sleep in. I started experiencing hallucinations and paranoia even when I was sober. I wont go into detail, but my mental health was at the point where on two occasions I attempted suicide. It’s surprising that I’m alive. Weeks after my second attempt, I woke up in a hospital with 7 staples in the back of my head. I’d been in a fight and fell and split open the back of my head. Death was getting closer and closer. After that I spent some time homeless in Seattle where the only place I felt safe was a rat infested basement I was able to squat in. I distinctly remember my mom telling me that she didn’t think she would ever see me again. I was applying for Social Security because I had run out of options, and I was convinced my mental health and addiction would only get worse and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The department of vocational rehabilitation classified me as “extremely disabled” and I struggled to maintain even the most part time work. Eventually I had nothing else to lose, and I decided to listen to myself. This is very different from the AA stories of “rock bottom” where you admit you are powerless and turn your will over to GOD and an AA sponsor. Instead I recognized the power I did have, and I started meditating and signed up for a free 10 day meditation retreat. I decided to go back to where I first experienced emotional healing and growth. I went to two 10 day retreats in the matter of a couple months. The first one I wasn’t fully sober. I had brought my prescribed benzos and adderall. These pills ended up being harder to kick than alcohol because of the belief that my mind didn’t work “correctly” without them. The first retreat helped me get off of my last addictions, and the second retreat solidified my resolve to center healing and growth in my life. Meditation is a brain exercise. Similar to how physical exercise and movement practices help make our bodies healthy, meditation helps allow our brains to become more healthy and work in a balanced way. I was able to learn to sit through impulsivity, cravings and let go of negative thought patterns that had been keeping me stuck. For the first time in many many years, I had tools besides alcohol and pills that helped me cope, tools that allowed me to stop harming myself in order to survive. 

In my search to find community I moved myself to Olympia where I had two couches I could crash on and a Buddhist 12 Step group I felt comfortable in. I ignored the 12 steps aspect of the meeting and focused on the Buddhism. I met people at the meeting who were interested in starting a non12 step Buddhist meeting and together we started not one but two Buddhist Recovery meetings which are now Recovery Dharma Olympia. Later I started a third Buddhist Recovery meeting after reading the incredible book Eight Step Recovery. These three meetings are still thriving today 4 years later. Because of the work I was doing to support my local Buddhist Recovery meetings, I was asked to join the Buddhist Recovery Network Board of directors and helped organize an international recovery conference. I was able to get a job at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness, and slowly but surely I was beginning to thrive in life again. This isn’t the end of my recovery story though.

Over the last 5 years I’ve needed to continue listening to my intuition. When news spread that the founder of Refuge Recovery had a history of sleeping with his students, funneling money out of the nonprofit and and being just all around toxic, I got the fuck out. I had already been sceptical due to the cult like worship of Noah in the meetings and aggressive donation tactics. When an article came out exposing him of saying racist and misogynistic things, I was surprised that the people I had started the meeting with continued to support him, but I listened to my intuition and it led me to communities that were less toxic and able to support my growth in ways I didn’t know were possible yet. Thankfully the Olympia community came together and supported the transition of the meetings to become Recovery Dharma meetings, a trauma informed Buddhist inspired recovery program started by feminists and queers that I had the pleasure of knowing.

After this transition I realized I needed more than Buddhism for my recovery. These events in the community helped me realize two things. 1) There was no such thing as a perfect recovery program, and 2) there was a binary in my recovery in the form of 12 Steps and Buddhist Recovery. Having only 2 options isn’t much better than only having one. Choosing between heaven or hell isn’t really a choice. There couldn’t only be 12 Steps and Buddhism, two heavily religious options. I needed to know what else was out there. ‍

Higher Power‍

Some might also say “you need a higher power” in order to recover. But I prefer to look at recovery as a way to hold space for both internal and external wisdom. Not placing any book, person, doctor, guru, community as greater than one’s own self. Navigating recovery requires us to listen to our bodies, our minds, our experiences, and our intuition.  When I say intuition I do not mean the impulsive reactionary part of ourselves. I’m referring to the wisdom that exists when we sit through the cravings and impulses. It’s the understanding of where the cravings and reactions are coming from. Often we need to develop the proper tools in order to learn how to tune into that intuitive part of ourselves. Recovery is both a learning of new things, merging with what we already know. 

When you walk into the doctor's office, the information you have about the pain in your body is important for figuring out how to solve the problem. Without you recognizing and speaking about the pain or problem, the doctor probably would not be able to help. When we enter into the realm of recovery the information we have about ourselves will help us, but we also need to pair it with wisdom outside of ourselves. For me this shows the need for balance. Not to create ideas of greater or less than, or higher or lower powers. There is wisdom both internal and external and we must find the tools, resources, and communities that support our growth. 

The wisdom we have about ourselves is just as important as the wisdom other people have to share with us. No one knows you better than you know yourself. If you are reading information in a book, that is information written by a person who is just as flawed as yourself or anyone else in the world. I’ve learned that searching for the perfect program, book, author, or religion will only disappoint me. But I have found communities that can hold space for me where I currently am at. That can acknowledge and honor what I’ve been through, the traumas I’ve experienced, what I know about myself, and help me figure out my next steps in my journey of centering healing and community in my life. Sometimes we need these communities for a long time, sometimes they are just a stepping stone until we find a community that is a better fit. No community is both the beginning and end of the journey. Communities change and shift, and we as humans also evolve and grow and need different things at different times.‍

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE‍

After deciding to break the binary in my recovery, I was offered a room in a punk community space and I started a meeting called Exploring Recovery. I wanted to create a meeting that was open to all people in recovery, a place that held space for folks in 12 steps, Buddhist Recovery, and whatever else was out there. In this meeting we explored books that were either addiction focused like Unbroken Brain, or supported larger scale healing in our lives such as Emergent Strategies or a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Workbook. While researching books for this meeting, I found a blog post “13 ESSENTIAL BOOKS TO BUILD A HOLISTIC RECOVERY FROM ADDICTION” by Holly Whitaker. This list blew my fucking mind. There was more out there than 12 steps and Buddhism! There was someone else out there that cared about this passionately like I did. I took some of the books from this list and explored them in our meeting, and I signed up for an informational free workshop with Holly. 

Around this same time I started experiencing a burnout. I had a lot of overnight shifts at work, I was facilitating up to three meetings a week, planning community dinner parties and trying to keep this baby Buddhist Recovery community thriving. My work on the board of directors for Buddhist Recovery Network lead to me starting my first podcast aptly named “Buddhist Recovery Network Podcast”. One night I came home after working two over night shifts in a row and I felt so terrible and anxious that I worried I wouldn't be able to sleep. I can’t describe how awful I felt. This unexpected degree of terrible led me to the only thing I knew how to do for fast escape, I drank alcohol. After I started drinking I realized I actually had a benzo saved in case of this type of situation but I’d already started drinking. I drank for a day. I didn’t hide it from my boyfriend or roommates. After my one day beder was over I proceeded on with life as normal. I was proud of my progress because my last bender had lasted a week. This slip gave me information that I needed to make change happen at work and pretty quickly I had no more overnight shifts. I didn’t consider this a “relapse”, instead I called it a “slip”, meaning I reverted back to a harmful coping mechanism (drinking alcohol). Because of this slip, I knew I needed more tools and community besides the ones I had already and so I signed up for Hip Sobriety School (now called Tempest). This proved to be the best decision of my life. I learned more about the modern scientific information on addiction and the many different theories out there than I had in 12 Steps nor Buddhism, I was also in a community that centered the experiences of women and queers. I felt more safe in this online recovery program than I ever had in any in person recovery meeting. This was over a year before the pandemic forced everyone online. I had only learned what Zoom was because of my work on Buddhist Recovery Network. There was a strong element of empowerment at Tempest. We were encouraged to think for ourselves and question everything. We were encouraged to bring things to the group to share that helped us in our personal healing journey. I was exposed to so many books and ideas, some specifically about recovery, but also support around subjects like polyamory and PTSD. There was no right way to do things, instead there was just a vast amount of knowledge held by the community and the staff holding the space. There wasn’t a singular source of wisdom like there had been in both 12 Steps and Buddhist Recovery. Volunteering at Tempest allowed me to keep taking the “Intensive” and practice being a supportive presence in the community for newcomers. All of this helped me continue my personal growth, but my burnout kept getting worse.

Eventually I had a full on panic attack. I hadn’t had an experience like this since I’d stopped drinking 2 years prior and started meditating daily. I used to be diagnosed with a panic disorder because of how often I had panic attacks. After having one in recovery I took this event very serious and knew I needed to make structural change otherwise I’d get worse. The last 6 months I’d been asking people to take over my role as facilitator for the meetings but no one stepped up. Luckily after my panic attack the community stepped in to support me and suddenly new facilitators for the meetings were found. What surprised me was that after months of not facilitating meetings I found that I didn’t need Buddhist Recovery anymore. It had been so fundamental to my early recovery, but it no longer filled me up. I had a daily hour long meditation practice, had been studying Buddhism since I was 19, and was burnt out from having to build my own recovery spaces since I’d first got sober. After leaving Buddhist recovery I realized there just didn’t seem to be room in Buddhist recovery to bring in the modern recovery knowledge I’d read in many modern books and experienced in Tempest. Buddhist Recovery heavily relies on Buddhism, the same way that AA only has room for the 12 Steps, if you start needing more than that they stop having anything to offer you. One major difference is that in Buddhist Recovery they do encourage you to read other books and do other programs at the same time, but I didn’t have time anymore for a program that wasn’t fully holistic. I don’t know if I consider myself a Buddhist anymore because most people I’ve met that consider themselves a Buddhist think Buddhism is a perfect, complete way of life, but I don’t believe there is such a thing. I still benefit greatly from Buddhist psychology and meditation, it’s just not my everything. 

Tempest has been a home for my recovery for almost 3 years now. And in that time I’ve made friends all around the world, gained confidence in myself that I never had before, and felt empowered to explore the great big world with confidence instead of fear. In these 3 years I have also learned that just like everything, Tempest isn’t perfect. I’ve experienced a level of safety in Tempest that I haven't found elsewhere, but there has also been drama and changes to the core staff. It’s a business. There are perks to being in a recovery program that can train and pay people to facilitate meetings, but it's still a business and the community has little power over internal changes. I’m continually grateful to learn these lessons, that nothing is permanent, nothing is perfect, and there is always more out there in the world for me to connect to and experience. ‍

Why am I starting this now?‍

I’m writing this blog post and starting this podcast directly after experiencing my first “slip” since I started Tempest almost three years ago. I found myself in a strange situation, on my first fully solo vacation, while in the middle of having relationship problems with my nesting partner of 3 years. This “slip” (or lesson as my friend Shari Hampton likes to accurately call them) again helped me witness growth within myself. The information I learned about addiction and alcohol at Tempest made me hyper aware of how toxic alcohol was for my body. I set very specific limits to keep myself as safe as possible even though I was drinking. I didn’t get the fuck it’s where I decided to fully destroy myself with hard alcohol and drink and drive. I called my friend Holly and she said exactly what I needed to hear to allow myself to just put down the alcohol and come home. All in all, this experience was another signal to me that there is more for me to learn, more for me to explore. 

I’ve spent the last year and a half dreaming up Recovery Disco, reading books and being supported and encouraged by the special community of people I’ve met over the years in this amazing realm of online recovery. I’m very inspired by the book “Many Roads One Journey” which highlights and explores different avenues of recovery while being critical in constructive ways. I want to share everything I’ve learned so far, and also bring you with me as I continue exploring new modalities and communities. Recovery is so much more than sobriety. It’s so much more than addiction. ‍

Recovery disco is a celebration of recovery. 

When I look at myself now, I am surprised by this empowered creature that I’m witnessing, who feels safe to be guided by their intuition, this sensitive Human that is connected to self love, is joyously supported by community, who loves their friends and loves even more to support them and lift them up. I know that I owe this to the communities that helped me lay down this foundation. I owe it to Recovery Dharma for giving me my first home in sobriety. To the friends I met at Tempest and Holly Whitaker for giving me the modern addiction education that helps me feel strong when I leave my house and for teaching me how to be a better friend and peer. I even owe credit to the 12 steps for helping my friends get sober. The friends who have supported my recovery journey even though they didn’t quite understand what the fuck I was doing. And yes I owe credit to myself as well, for doing the hard work, for trying new weird things, for inviting people into my house for parties and making them all meditate with me so that I feel somewhat normal, for not giving up on myself or my communities. 

I'm still just trying to figure this all out myself. I’m going to continue researching and learning and not fall into believing something one person wrote down somewhere, but instead I will keep being inspired by all the different ideas and theories and experiences out there. I want to keep having experiences that change my mind, and meet people on trains and planes or in cafes who tell me their story and it helps light the way on my own path. I'm not threatened by other ideas and books I don't completely agree with. Instead they inspire me to live my own unique life proudly and continue to recover from all the ways life has held me back. 

I don’t define recovery as: sobriety. I define it as reclaiming our lives and centering healing and community. My definition for sobriety is also personalized. Sobriety to me is THRIVING with the ability to not cause ourselves or others harm. I define it this way because this is what brought me into recovery. It wasn’t because of drugs or alcohol, it was because I couldn’t stop hurting myself and in turn hurting others. 

In life one might find themselves face to face with a reality where harm is being caused, either to them or by them, or both. Change needs to happen, but the skills, tools, resources, and community are not already in place to encourage growth. Most of us do not live in a society that centers healing, growth and community as core foundational pillars. Instead people who need to center healing are often viewed as broken, and we then view ourselves as broken when we need to seek out support. We are not Broken. We are human. This is the human experience. Recovery Disco is here to CELEBRATE this human experience. To celebrate ALL the ways in which we recover.