About a week ago, we put a post on social media. The post reads as follows.
At first glance, there was nothing special or noticeable about this post. It’s business as usual. We were just making ourselves available to those who are still struggling. Unfortunately, this post turned into an argument. The same type of argument that we see happen too often.
The argument started from me using the word “recovered” in the post. Depending who you ask, alcoholics either recover, or they never recover, or they are recovering… who knows? Time and time again, I see trivial debates on the page over issues that I feel are irrelevant. Here is why…
We are here to help people. That is it. Sober Nation does not take sides. We do not care if you go to AA, if you are Atheist, if you are a Wiccan. We do not care if you go the therapy, or if you use the SMART recovery method. Maybe one day you just decided to quit. It matters not to us. These futile debates over terminology and methodology of the “right way to get sober,” are taking attention away from the real reason we are all here. That reason is to extend ourselves to the addict or alcoholic who still needs help.
When we first started Sober Nation, we were very careful not to push one recovery program or the other. The idea was that we could create a community online, for people that may not be able to express themselves anywhere else. I am happy to say that the idea for Sober Nation has continued to live through the website. We feel like this is the most important ideal we can give, and we need to stick to it to maintain the culture of Sober Nation.
Here’s the thing. We advocate people speaking their minds. We want you to tell us how you feel. We want to know what you believe and what your opinions are. The line is drawn when we take away from what we feel our priority is. That is to help people. When we veer away from that purpose, we are losing the chance to potentially save someones life.
Here is what we want to do. We want to make recovery cool. We want the world to see that being sober does not mean being boring. We want to show the world that drug addicts are not train wrecks. In fact, drug addicts in recovery are exceptional human beings. Many of which go on to accomplish and achieve amazing things. We want to bring the world together, and bring recovery into the forefront of society. Why should we hide behind who we are?
Most importantly, we want to help people. We want to help people find treatment. We want to help family members find support, and help them understand what addiction is and why their child, or parent or loved one is behaving the way they are. We want to help addicts feel more comfortable with themselves. Being an addict does not make you a bad person, and we want people to understand that.
With all that being said, here is what Sober Nation does NOT want to be. We DO NOT want to be a debate committee. We DO NOT want to get involved with arguments about sobriety that are completely irrelevant and worthless. We DO NOT want to be a TMZ for recovery, where we judge people with drug problems to make ourselves feel better.
Doesn’t it make more sense if we all come together? Doesn’t it make more sense to accept what works for other people, and in return expect them to accept what works for us? I think it does.
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