Note: The content of this blog is derived from a video you can watch in full by clicking here.
It still blows my mind to this day: After trying all sorts of addiction treatments, I got sober online.
I had been in active addiction for nearly 10 years. For a long time, I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of it. I didn’t think I was going to make it.
From the outside, I probably looked pretty high-functioning. I had a great job. I had a social life and lots of friends. I had a partner. If you looked at my life from a distance, everything probably seemed fine.
It wasn’t.
My drinking had become dangerous. Eventually, drug use entered the picture, too—mostly as an attempt to deal with the anxiety my drinking was causing me. I knew things were getting bad, and I tried to fix them.
I tried outpatient treatment. I tried inpatient treatment. I went to detox multiple times.
But I kept finding my way back to my addiction.
Then I found recovery online
When people picture addiction treatment, they often picture one of two things: either sitting in the basement of a church or leaving your entire life behind to go away to rehab.
Both of those options have helped countless people! They’re still the right choice for many. But they aren’t the only ways recovery can happen.
I learned that firsthand.
After everything I had tried, the thing that finally helped me get sober was an online recovery program.
At the time, even I wondered: ‘How does anyone get sober online? How is that possible?’
But this program allowed me to use harm reduction. I could bring my whole self to it. It fit my values. I learned what was happening in my brain during active substance use, instead of simply being told that I needed to stop.
And since it was online, I could do it from home.
I started to think, ‘Okay. Maybe I can actually do this.’
Eventually, I did.
Today, I’ve been sober for more than eight years. I’m getting close to having spent as much time in recovery as I ever spent in active addiction.
That is still wild to me.
Getting sober gave me a fighting chance
Stopping substance use wasn’t the end of the story.
I remember getting about three months into sobriety and feeling fantastic—and then realizing something: I was still an incredibly anxious person.
The substances were gone, but I was still me.
Recovery meant learning new ways to handle my life. It meant building routines and figuring out what I needed during the times of day when I used to struggle most. It meant learning how to sit with myself instead of trying to escape myself.
In some ways, that’s when the fun starts.
You begin getting back to who you were before addiction took over.
Are all your problems magically gone? Absolutely not.
But now you have a fighting chance to deal with them.
Recovery brought me back to the things I love
Today, I live in a log cabin in the woods with my wife and my dog, Remington. I hike. I geocache. I spend a lot of time outside.
Music is also a huge part of my life, and it became a huge part of my recovery.
There are songs I can honestly say pushed me toward sobriety. I’ve loved music since I was a kid: playing it, listening to it, taking it all in, but addiction changed my relationship with so many of the things I loved.
Now I go to concerts sober. I do things sober that I once couldn’t imagine doing without substances.
And it turns out I love music more than I love substances.
Who knew?
Why I work at Workit Health
I’m the Senior Community Manager at Workit Health, which means I get to spend a lot of my time talking to people in recovery.
I work somewhere between our members and our marketing team. I spend time in our online communities, talk with members about the events and resources they want, and look for the gaps between what we think people need and what people are actually experiencing.
My experience as a person in recovery helps me get closer to those conversations.
My favorite part of my job is sitting down with members and asking them to tell me their recovery stories.
Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we cry together. Sometimes there’s an immediate sense of, ’You get it.’
And I love those conversations because I know how powerful a human story can be when someone is struggling. People need examples of someone making it.
Maybe that person reminds them of themselves. Maybe they remind them of a friend. Maybe they hear one little piece of someone else’s story and recognize their own.
We get to share those stories through blogs, audio, video, and our community—and thousands of people can encounter them.
I imagine someone out there on the internet stumbling across one of our videos or stories and thinking, ‘They can do it. Maybe I can.’
Sometimes, ‘Maybe I can,’ is all someone needs.
Recovery doesn’t have to happen one way
Workit Health was founded by people in recovery who saw gaps in the addiction treatment system and wanted to find another way to reach people. That matters to me.
Traditional treatment can be expensive, difficult to access, or simply impossible for some people to leave their lives and families to attend. That can be especially true for people in rural communities or people who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on residential treatment.
Telehealth can bring addiction care into someone’s home. In many cases, telehealth brings it right into their hands through a phone.
The moments when someone is considering recovery don’t necessarily come around every day. Making care easier to access means there’s somewhere to turn as soon as that moment arrives.
I know because my moment came online.
You might be surprised by what you get back
When people are unsure about taking that first step toward recovery, I understand why.
Before I got sober, recovery sometimes almost seemed like a life sentence. Like an era of my life would be ending. Like some essential part of who I was was going to disappear.
The opposite happened.
I got so much of myself back.
Recovery gave me the opportunity to find the person I had been before addiction, to learn how to care for that person, and eventually to love that person again.
And you know what? That person wasn’t half bad.
I’ve had more fun during these years of sobriety than I did during nearly 10 years of active addiction. I thought getting sober meant I would never get to be myself again.
Instead, I found myself.
That’s why I have hope for every person who comes through Workit Health. I’ll hope with them, wish with them, and root for them until they have their moment—until they have their win.
Because sometimes recovery begins with something incredibly small:
‘Maybe I can.’
