I never get over the weirdness of introducing myself to a group of people at a 12-step meeting. “Hi, I’m T and I’m an addict,” is how I have started a lot of conversations. Other people in recovery are accustomed to this. It’s one of the ways we show each other that we’re all in the same boat. It’s an acknowledgement that no matter how different we are, we all share the same struggle.
For people outside of recovery communities, it may seem like a bizarre overshare or some kind of self-flagellation. No matter how far we’ve come as a culture in reducing the stigma of addiction, that stigma is quite sticky and it clings to language. People who don’t have a lot of experience with addiction almost always look away when I start talking about it. They often get uncomfortable or start adding more palatable descriptors to make up for what they seem to read as a startling confession. “You’re more than that,” they might say and then go on to list my positive character traits as they see them.
