This article by John Crace appeared in The Guardian UK edition on Monday 27th of December. Whilst by no means a completist site, I don’t try to catch everything to do with addiction and recovery posted everywhere, I do try to collect and archive messages that mean something to me or to people I know – or that I just think might be useful to others. This article certainly qualifies.
Crace has been open about his history with drug use, ongoing issues and his recovery for as long as I have been reading his columns. I believe this sort of openness helps others, in fact I know it does.
I know a guy. A slightly cynical guy. This guy had a big addiction problem, but his cynicism was as likely to kill him as his addiction was. And I hasten to point out that in my understanding of addiction as a condition there are two required alterations in an individual, a “psychic change” (a change in thinking), and a “spiritual awakening” (a change in feeling). To my knowledge this guy has never met John Crace, he may well never meet John Crace, but a few years back when I happened to mention that the political sketch writer of The Guardian was in recovery from addiction a little light went on in this guys eyes. As an admirer of Crace’s sketch pieces, not least his ability, in the guy’s view (and mine), to skewer the self importance of our elected representatives in a way that helps us laugh, rather than cry, scream and wail, which would normally be the only feasible response to their often revolting behaviours. We started texting each other the “sketches” we particularly liked, or Crace’s weekly digest in the Saturday Guardian whenever he mentioned recovery
Leaving aside either of our politics, leaving aside the idea that the guy’s cynicism might have been part of a coping mechanism for fear and lack of ability to trust, the fact that someone he quite like, admired to a point even, was in recovery really helped him. It was not “THE THING” that did it, neither will t be “THE THING” that keeps the guy in recovery, but it formed part of a collective narrative to which he was becoming exposed, and it helped.
Likewise, a quote passed on to me from another guy, guy number two – there are a lot of guys in these accounts, many of them are not guys, so may be referred to with different pronouns, but there are a lot of them. Anyway, guy number 2 was rather annoyed at having to be sober, I kept pointing out that he did not have to stay sober, he said he did but was not happy about it. We talked over a few months and things changed, slowly. Not to the point of happiness but maybe to some contentment – but, one of the pieces of his narrative change came from a quote by Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, in a short interview in The Times,
“Peter Cook was one of my heroes. Now I think, instead of saying, “Isn’t it brilliant, he’s pissed all the time,” we might have said, “Do you think it’s good that he’s pissed all the time?” As friends, we could have been a bit more rigorous.”
Not a ringing endorsement or advocacy for sobriety, but a reflective revised response in light of the information available about the problems associated with alcohol abuse. This rang true with guy 2, he likes Ian Hislop, the addition of Hislop’s observation to the narrative was helpful, to him – not “THE THING” that will keep him sober but an addition to his story, another little piece
Crace says, “I will never forget my first Narcotics Anonymous (UKNA) meeting. I sat at the back, shaking with fear and entirely mute. What I heard changed my life. Here were addicts with months and years of clean time – something that seemed an impossibility – whose stories were similar to mine and who were talking about feelings with which I could identify. I had never known such people existed or that recovery was possible. It was like a homecoming.”
Crace’s article and his continued transparency about his addiction, Hislop’s observation, two unrelated but useful additions to the honest narrative that both helped a couple of guys I know find themselves a little more at home in the world.
PS I decided against the obvious recovery puns for the title!
