I agree that arguing about semantics can make recovery ridiculous at times. I mean, who really cares as long as we are making progress and living clean?

My old sponsor would argue that it matters to some people, because the language that we use out loud can infect our thinking patterns, which may affect our actions. Seems like a stretch to me though.

Anyway, I have a proposition for you. Shoot me an email and I can show you what it is in more detail. I love your blog and I think you are one of the “realest” recovery bloggers out there. Kudos to you for your excellent work on this site.

Please keep blogging!

Sorry for the late response, I’ve been traveling abroad and my internet access has been somewhat spotty. Reading from your comment history it seems you have chosen to come more to be a nuisance rather than honestly discuss recovery issues, so even though it seems to me you are wasting my time I will answer anyway with a semi-rhetorical question of my own that seems rather fitting for this discussion.

I consider my recovery a continuous process of improvement, there is no end goal nor should there be when it comes the the quality of one’s life- why stop trying to be better, content, happy? You seem to have been “living” for a while yet you spend your evenings trolling recovery blogs leaving strings of inane comments. Does this behavior constitute a plateau or perhaps even a lifestyle crisis, maybe you should quit pondering the semantics of “recovering” and instead concentrate on how you define “living”?

(Why come to a recovery blog to be snarky, you got a problem? Maybe a drinking problem?)

The Big Book promises tyou will recover.
it tells us ”we have recovered and been given the power to help others”

Trev.
Australia.

Well no, wait! Lol that isn’t true! I worked for 7 years as an office manager at a small outpatient substance abuse counseling center…where we did individual, group, family and IOP counseling. The DSM ruled our world back then, because the only way we could get PAID for what we did, is if we gave the person seeking help the diagnosis their particular insurance carrier “deemed” appropriate for our “level” of care. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! Insurance parity is a deep seeded issue that doesn’t end just with us getting coverage for treatment, that is for sure!

I would like to say that we diagnose both mental illness, addiction and physical illness based on what the expert analyzing the disease felt was best–but I now work as a medical laboratory technologist-and believe me, what the insurance company will pay for comes into play far too much when it comes to diagnosing ANY illness.

Anyway–thank you for giving me something else to consider. What a convoluted world we live in!

Kristan Hilchey
ARM-ME