…by Eric Nada…
Hello again, and Happy September! This guest post accomplishes something far too rare: a balanced perspective on the Twelve Steps. They can be a real boon when structure and connection are most needed, and a hindrance when it’s time to keep growing.
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I am 22 years away from heroin and the desperation that it both created and exposed in my life. I didn’t plan on becoming addicted to heroin. I did, however, have a profoundly positive reaction to drugs of all kinds right from the start. My drug use began with alcohol as a young teenager. I added daily cannabis soon afterward and recreational psychedelics as well, although these substances never brought me the deep sense of comfort I was seeking. I left my parents’ home when I was 16 and started drinking heavily daily. I began using cocaine as well, and tried heroin for the first time soon afterward. Apparently, heroin really agreed with me, and I eventually became physiologically dependent, fairly quickly losing the ability to navigate within relationships or the workplace. I was eventually homeless, feeding my habit through hours of daily panhandling and petty theft.
But drugs were not the only way I sought to regulate my feelings of longing. I used romantic connections to the same end. My romantic attachments formed very quickly and intensely and were eventually laced with feelings of desperation and neediness. This pattern followed me well into traditional recovery and abstinence, and would ultimately be as important a part of my recovery story as learning to live without drugs. In fact it wasn’t until I really addressed this foundational attachment problem (after ten years of abstinence from drugs)—through psychotherapy and the right books read at the right time—that I started to grow apart from the 12-step process and from identification with its fellowship.
When I was 24 years old I went to the last of over a dozen treatment and detoxification centers I have attended. I was, and had always been, resistant to the 12-step approach to recovery, and I did not resonate with many of its underlying principles regarding the causes and treatment of addiction. But I followed the lead of some open-minded people at my last treatment center and began attending 12-step meetings voluntarily. And I began to recover. There is much that I learned from my 12-step involvement, the most important being the utilization of 
some kind of growth modality instead of simply trying to stop using. I also began identifying with others who had attachment wounds like mine, even if these concepts were not discussed overtly. I created some deep and lifelong friendships and learned about the fulfillment that comes from service to others. The Twelve Steps taught me that deep emotional change must be incrementally worked toward with diligence and sustained focus, and gave me a prescribed external structure (meetings, 
commitments, and step-work) upon which to start building these changes. Finally, in the beginning, it gave me a large group of people with whom I could openly share my struggles and successes, finally building a sense of personal competence and esteem.
But there was another side to all this.
There were some aspects of 12-step involvement that I couldn’t, and didn’t, agree with. I don’t agree with the disease theory of addiction, a concept which is embraced 
by most members. I am also not remotely religious, and never attributed my ability to abstain to a higher power. Finally, and this became more apparent after I left 12-step involvement—especially after I incorporated moderate alcohol use into my life a few months later—listening to similar messages 
repeatedly for years created a type of programming that made the idea of leaving difficult. To do so, I had to contend with deep feelings of fear caused by overt messages that leaving would inevitably lead to relapse and the loss of everything that I had spent so many years creating. Leaving also elicited deep feelings of shame and guilt that lasted acutely for months, and their tendrils still infect me two years later.
I am disappointed that there weren’t more nuanced approaches available to me when I first needed help. As a result, I consider myself to be in the process of recovering from the recovery process, from a host of deeply embedded erroneous statements about the causes and nature of addiction, and the cult-like psychological after-effects of having identified with a particular group for so long. But with the options available to me in 1995 when I attended my last treatment center, I understand why 12-step involvement may have been the only viable aftercare option—for a young man without a built-in ability for healthy emotional navigation.
My addiction story is ruled by two deep, seemingly contradictory, truths: first, that deciding to become a 12-step member was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. And second, that deciding to leave 12-step membership was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I wish that it weren’t anathema within the 12-step paradigm to leave either for periods or forever, but I kind of get it. I benefited from the same rigidity within 12-step doctrine that eventually repelled me. I may have temporarily needed that rigidity to counteract the evermore rigid attachment I had to heroin. I needed the external structure offered by the 12-step program and traditional abstinence until I could incorporate my own version of structure, inwardly. I needed form until I could safely find formlessness.
My story is as anecdotal as any other individual story and not proof that it’s safe to simply discard abstinence after a time. But I am convinced that the decision to trust myself has been immeasurably important, as was my decision not to trust myself for a while. I do wish, however, that I had moved on much sooner, that I would have decided to trust myself years earlier. But late is always better than never.
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Please see Eric’s less abridged memoir here. And while you’re at it, check out some of the other Guest Memoirs. Many of these stories are truly compelling.
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