“Terminally Unique”

I’ll admit it: I’ve 13th-stepped a newcomer. It’s a much longer story that I won’t share in this entry, but I mention it for a reason. While it’s true that I was given the ‘no new relationships for a year’ advice, it was a suggestion I chose not to follow. I dated several people during that first year of my Recovery, and each time I did the results were disastrous. I’m not overstating things, here. I created a whole new trail of wreckage (which I later had to clean up), caused a whole lot of hurt to those I supposedly cared about. And I especially caused myself some very intense pain and anguish that I really could have done without. I’m thinking of one relationship in particular, because my memory from it and why I thought it was okay for me to pursue is especially clear: I thought I was special.

I thought I was special, unique, that the so-called rules didn’t apply to me or to her or to us. What we had was so intense, so powerful, by god it was love, don’t you understand?! What I didn’t understand, what it took me a long time to accept, was that I am not unique (and that it wasn’t love at all, but again, that’s for another entry). The rules really do apply to me. Why? Because I am addict just like every other addict out there.

From the stockbroker who hides his drinking from his wife, kids, coworkers and boss, to the homeless heroin junkie strung out in the gutter, we are all the same. No one of us is really so different from the other when we have the Disease. We like to think we are, we like to think we’re unique, or that we’re not like ‘those people’, but we are. For those of us who suffer, we are all far more alike than we are different.

It’s a huge danger, this thinking that we’re unique. We think no one could possibly understand how it feels to be us—that is, until we start hearing other people in meetings describe the exact same feelings we’ve had. We think no one has been through what we have in life, done the things we’ve done—that is, until we start working steps and hear our sponsor’s stories about doing the exact same things, or about how the exact same things have happened to them.

We have a phrase in the rooms: ‘terminally unique’. The healing power of Recovery comes from becoming part of a community, from realizing that we aren’t alone. Those of us who aren’t able to accept that we aren’t special, those of us who continue to insist that we are different, it is those of us who continue to suffer. Sometimes, until we die. Ask anyone who has been close to suicide (such as myself) and we can tell you what a deep, dark, lonely hole that place is. As long as we insist on being alone, on being different, we will stay that way.

Coming to understand that we aren’t unique is one of the joys of Recovery. It’s one of the challenges, too. We need to learn to get over ourselves. It’s ego-bruising, but that itself is the whole problem—our egos. We come from a way of living where we were the center of the universe. Through living the spiritual life, we come to realize that everything isn’t all about us. We walk into the rooms thinking we’re solo singers, and many of us like it that way! What we learn is that each of us is merely one voice in a vast chorus.

The beauty of the sound we make together is staggering to behold.