Blog | Tristan Kernan

This is the first post in a new weekly series on recovery. Growing up in a dysfunctional family, I was ill prepared to meet life on life's terms. I've experienced depression and anxiety most of my life. I have blown up my life multiple times, dropped out of college, lost all my friends, abused drugs, burned out, struggled with my health, went no contact with my parents, quit jobs. I've been addicted to video games, social media, pornography, work, drugs, dating.

I've been through a lot. Putting it mildly. Speaking at rehabs for the past year has shown me that I have a story to tell, that my experience, strength and hope can be of service to others who are struggling, many who struggle without knowing what it is that ails them. I spent most of my life in that place, blind to the patterns I was repeating, deaf to the origins and causes.

I want to make this series to honor my journey. To relieve myself of the shame and guilt I carry. I want to explore my past, including foundational and key events. I want to talk about how I am healing. I want to be able to look back at myself in a decade and smile in gratitude for having put in the work to realize a more authentic life for myself.

I'll structure each week on a specific topic or aspect of my recovery. I thought about organizing this chronologically, or thematically, but I think keeping it flexible and letting my story unfold naturally is the right course. To start, then, I have to talk about meetings.

Meetings

I didn't walk into my first meeting in 28. As a child I grew up attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with my father. The impressions that remain are styrofoam cups, hospital meeting rooms, and the serenity prayer. My connection to 12 step pre-dates even this. My parents met at AA, had a brief affair, and produced me. It feels full circle to now attend meetings myself as an adult.

I first heard of Adult Children of Alcoholics as a teenager. My stepmother ¹ suggested to me that I attend meetings, considering that my birth mother was an alcoholic, my father a recovering alcoholic, and she herself a recovering alcoholic. The irony at the time was that I had no means of independent transportation, seeing as we lived in a rural area without public transit. So, as she did not take me to a meeting, I did not go.

Fast forward a dozen years, and I am dating someone with whom the relationship proved to be wildly unstable. We had three breakups in the span of six months. After a breakup, I decided to order a copy of a book that I'd seen on her bookshelf: Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. This book blew me away, it described my exact patterns of behavior in such clear terms that it pierced my denial. I had actually picked up the book in order to understand why my ex was so crazy. Instead it showed how crazy I was, more a mirror into myself than a microscope into another.

In the book, Melody suggests attending ACoA meetings. I was once again faced with the dilemma of trying to argue myself out of attending. As Groucho Marx said, I don't want to be part of any group that would have me as a member. The name of the group was unarguable, though; I had three alcoholic parents, I am the adult child of them, ergo, I might as well see what it's all about.

I looked up the meeting list on adultchildren.org, found a nearby meeting, and reached out to the contact person: the meeting says closed, does that mean it's closed to new attendees? Nope, open/closed refers to whether non-identifying people are allowed to attend, i.e. friends, partners, counselors, etc. With much anxiety, I went to my first meeting. I opened my mouth and shared. I came back the next week. And I've been attending every week since, for more than three years now.

Fellowship

Attending meetings is the bedrock of my recovery. It is the medicine that heals the root of my disease. Weekly attendance, barring travel or sickness, is non-negotiable. Not that I'd want to negotiate anyway, I just love going to meetings. I've met some of the kindest people in the rooms. I've made so many close, trusted friends, that my life feels full of connection, warmth and love now. Contrast that with the past, when I could count my friends on one hand, and couldn't tell you what emotional availability meant.

Gabor Mate says that authenticity and attachment are the key to recovery. I believe that meetings provide both. In shares, I can express myself, however I like, whatever I like, as much myself as I am able to muster in the moment. With stable meetings, and friendships with fellows, I settle into healthy attachment patterns. I'm able to be myself and be accepted for that. This is a special opportunity, and I treasure it.

I've worked the steps, I've worked with sponsors, I've chaired meetings and held service positions and carry the message. Recovery is a process, not a finished product, something that Julia Cameron is reminding me this week. So as much as this sounds like a lot to share, it took a long time to shape. At first, I ran out of the door when the meeting ended, not talking to anyone. After six months, I got my first sponsor, and started the steps. My sponsor encouraged me to reach out to other fellows, text and call. I started facing my fear and connecting with others. This slowly blossomed into friendships that lasted. I challenged myself to contribute, to take on responsibilities at meetings, to show up to events. It wasn't comfortable, and it occasionally still isn't, but I know the program works on me as I work on it.

After a year in ACoA, I started attending an additional fellowship based on relationships and sexuality. This was a missing puzzle piece for me. I had been trying to date again, but my old patterns kept emerging: chasing the wrong people, staying in bad situations, and ignoring red flags. I was able to take a deep look at my dating and relationship behaviors in this fellowship, and it's paid off tremendously: I've been dating my current girlfriend for about ten months. It's been the most sober relationship to date, without the highs and the lows, the fights and break-ups and make-ups, the walking on eggshells, the lack of authenticity or healthy attachment. That's not to say it's been easy, in fact sober dating is even more challenging than unhealthy dating, in part because it feels so uncomfortable, as I'm doing something that was never modeled for me by my parents.

Recovery

My life is far from perfect today. I am taking a break from work as I heal from burnout. I lack the markers that I associate with success at this age: a house, a family, a career. What I do have is the capability of tapping into inner peace. And I see now that if I had chased those markers, I'd never have found this peace. I'd have been chronically dissatisfied, just like my parents.

This peace has been hard won. It's taken years of meetings, fellowship, therapy, meditation, journaling, yoga, etc., etc. At one point I estimated my investment in recovery at more than 15 hours per week. The payoff is real, and beyond what I could have imagined - when I first joined, I really only wanted to get back with my ex girlfriend. Now I am opening to my inner world, to myself, rediscovering old dreams and discovering new ones.

12 Step is the bedrock of my recovery.