You’re Still on the Titanic, But Now You’re Sitting With the Band

Allow me to preface this by saying that I am not an addict, but someone who struggles similarly and really likes metaphors. So here goes.

A woman I met in the psych ward–a drug dealer and an addict–told me that whenever she manages to stay sober, in rehab or outside of it, she does so with the belief that she will, one day soon, get high again.

That it will be as good as the first time.

Once she’s hit rock bottom, she knows she has to go back to treatment. She’s out of money; she almost dies; she can’t get high enough anymore. She can’t sustain that level of chaotic self destruction indefinitely, so she decides to get clean–at least for a little while.

She goes to rehab, and she gets sober. She goes to rehab and she feels in control again. She goes to rehab and it seems like maybe she didn’t need to go to rehab in the first place–like she could have kicked it on her own.

Or maybe she didn’t need to kick it at all.

She was fine. Stealing and starving, delusions and paranoia. It wasn’t really so bad. At least, it doesn’t look that way from here. Where everything is so grey and contained.

And this is the disease. Addiction is amnesia.

Sober life doesn’t feel sustainable for her either. It often feels just as painfully chaotic as actively using. Recovery is as hard, if not endlessly harder, than a life of actively participating in her own death.

Addiction is a first class room on the Titanic.

Recovery is different. It feels like you’re still on the Titanic. The only difference is that now, you’re sitting with the band.

Sure, you’ve switched seats, but you’re still going down.

Life still sucks, it just sucks different.

Though this is true, I’d like to offer another image. It’s a grossly optimistic metaphor, but a pretty strong one if I do say so myself.

I think maybe, instead of sitting with the band, recovery is floating on a door. Not a boat–that is far too functional. No. A door. And we don’t know if help is coming.

Maybe it will, but to know that is impossible. So we have to float there. Alone. With the knowledge that we may be floating there forever.

It’s the waiting that does it.

Getting back on the doomed ship would give us something. Using would give the addict in recovery everything. Certainty. Comfort. Familiarity. Relief. We would be surrounded by something familiar as we die. It’s our choice to drown. And maybe the water really isn’t as cold as they say. We’ve been in it before.

But here on the door, you have to watch your life break in two and sink. There’s so much screaming. There is pain here, but there is something else too. And I don’t care if I sound disgustingly optimistic. Because there is something else here. On the door.

Hope. 

I know there is.

We might still die waiting to get back to land. That’s a fact. Life might still be a pile of shit, but, Jesus here we have hope. We’ve got a shot. It’s scary and unclear and nothing makes any sense. Everything is cold and you’re wet. But on the door, we are not actively participating in our own demise. Even though it feels like it.

You’re not sitting with the band.

You’re not going down.

You are waiting in hope.

You are blowing a whistle.

You are sending a flare.

Keep going.

I love you.