What is SUDA?
SUDA is the community I dreamed about for the last 30 years.
My hiatus is over. I also have agreed to myself that I care not about perfection, grammar, structure, or all the things I hate about literature and writing. I am not working with a net anymore. I am just going with what I write, and I don’t care about composition, structure, or other peoples opinions that disagree with me or care about that either. I care about not being resentful. I care about having hope, compassion, loving kindness, harmony, and love.
What is SUDA? It a community that I started with some friends of mine to have an alternative to our recovery community that is not framed around what we have today. Contemporary recovery framed around “sobriety” and being “clean” is not a successful peer model for most people, and it has a lot of limitations and is often not empowering for many. We have been working on creating a new space for about 2 1/2 years now. We have been evolving as we learn and grow.
We recently left a recovery center and perhaps “All Paths” is a myth when it comes to recovery. The NAMI peer model of helping each other as people with mental illness breaks down in the silo of substance use peer recovery and treatment. Once in this silo, the dominant peer belief systems that rose out of stigma, have grown intolerant of people who use substances. I am talking about 12-step recovery. I am a product of that social order and pseudo religious thinking.
This is the state of 12-step recovery today. I am not going to be more critical than the superficial and obvious, because I love many 12-step members and folks. I attended and claimed membership for 30 years initially in AA and then NA. I was actually told to go to AA by clinicians because it was more successful even though I never drank. I am not and have never been an alcoholic, so they asked me not to come.
I was a dissident the entire time but society and this subculture does not give you many options to pick from, especially 30 years ago. I know they say it is voluntary, but it still is a barrage of their cults talking points, and many of it converted into clinical sounding jargon, in all of treatment today. We do our meeting at a space given to use by a treatment provider. They have the steps not hanging, but painted on the wall. There is never any mention of other paths, that is something you have to ask for.
I know I saw very little success in my 30 years, and a lot of death. I do think it has become more restrictive as our overdose epidemic became worse, and we all became traumatized by the death of people we love. I think for a lot of folks the idea was we need to double down on the solution which is abstinence. The solution is not abstinence, it is recovery, and that is up to the person to determine. Even if abstinence were the only goal, outreach is about giving space which is what I got 30 years ago when I could relapse and not completely risk my life.
I do believe that the soft genocide of people that use substances has not helped. I use this term because we can do a lot more to prevent this epidemic, but in the end people that use substances are not valued enough to change prohibition and make other policy decisions to save lives. This leads to another Capitalist venture through the government. There are a lot of good paying jobs as long as we keep prohibition going, so let the stigma fly. It is be normal or hurry up and die day in America for people that use unapproved substances.
What is SUDA? SUDA is the space I always dreamed about in recovery. Where we can just remove all the noise and be ourselves. I want to be a kid again, and be happy like before you realize you’re a human being, which I already am pretty good at after 25 years of progress. I will have 25 years since my last Heroin use, along with benzos and cocaine. I am in recovery. I renounce being clean, and never needed to be sober. I don’t drink, it is not therapeutic for me.
I am going to put together a Lego R2 D2 that my family gave me for Christmas when I publish this. At 56 I will continue to nurture my inner child, this is one of the first things I learned in therapy which is also not all it is cracked up to be. I am a good 20 years off of therapy other than my peer community SUDA. I seem to plateau and need to move on, so SUDA is the place where I never have to move on. It’s openness is meant to be infinite.
I want SUDA to be:
A community to be yourself.
A community for people who want recovery without strings attached to it.
A community for people who want to talk about medications for addiction treatment and not be told it is an outside issue.
A community where substance use can be talked about with honesty not conformity.
A community where I can talk about my mental illness and it is not an outside issue.
A community that validates me as I am.
A community where my existence is validated if I am not an alcoholic or an addict.
A community for people who use substances who don’t want to be clean or sober.
A community for a person to seek complete abstinence in peace.
A community where you can truly believe in anything, especially yourself.
A community that lightens and empowers us no matter where we are in our lives.
A community for a person to be able to be honest and talk about substance use.
A community where a person can talk about their other medications and it is not an outside issue.
A community where I can be critical of my world to process my feelings, trauma, stigma, and underlying causes and mental disorders in safety.
A community where stigma is not perpetuated upon each other as if others know what works for me.
A community where boundaries and expectations are clear.
A community where I can talk about my religion and beliefs and it not be an outside issue.
A community which centers around non-judgment, love, and compassion.
A community which welcomes with a smile rather than tasks and dogma.
A community where our solidarity leads to freedom from our personal substance use if it is problematic.
A community where your disorder can be reordered in any way you can find.
A community that believes wisdom is much more important than knowledge.
A community that does not know best.
I want SUDA to be the place their rhetoric told me NA would be. A place where the love is actually free, not just to those that have a “desire” to stop using. So, SUDA is about nothing when it comes to how you get to your mountaintop - we are just the base camp. This way we can be about everything, which is what you are to SUDA. We affirm recovery when you say it starts, not when it meets others expectations. No one recovers from death. Harm reduction is recovery, because that is all abstinence is, the most radical form of harm reduction.
I was “clean” for two decades, now I am not. The only thing that makes this a fact is other people’s judgment. I am still “clean” in my mind, because abstinence in the traditional programs is not a fact, it is a subjective truth. I used substances when I was “clean” before: Zoloft, nicotine early on (20 years no nicotine), caffeine, Cymbalta, Wellbutrin, meds when I had surgeries, probably some sleep med trials in there at some point? By the way, all of these are “mood or mind altering” and should be included if we are really talking about complete abstinence. Hell, even the Trulicity I take for diabetes is being explored for effectiveness with substance use and depression.
I am critical of the institutions of 12-step recovery, primarily AA and NA, because they choose to stigmatize my existence. I am critical of a treatment industrial complex in the detox system which profits off of repeat business deciding that we all need to be clean and sober. Capitalism loves sustainability, and anything that creates repeat business will be validated. Detoxes that don’t bridge to MAT or accept natural alternatives as recovery are intentional in their not offering options, they want you back to make more money. I was in an unknown amount of detoxes, probably at least 50. Chronic relapse is built into the profit margin. Relapse does not exist in SUDA by the way, let’s get rid of that shame spiral.
I have found a safe, happy life with less suffering in this ball of confusion. I was willing to listen to all the options out there, find what works, and choose my life over the substance and over what others think is best for me. SUDA is a safe community where no path is dominant and you can work it out. In SUDA you are allowed to process all of your thoughts in safety, for the most part.
We may disagree and argue. We may have to forgive each other but we can always come back to peace and love if we disagree. If someone doesn’t want to or can’t give you space, that is their problem. There are plenty of more restrictive paths out there.
What we won’t have is a restrictive philosophy that gives people the power to wield dogma over people with the weight of a large institution behind them. When one member can tell another they are not sober or in recovery, that is an issue for me and by default SUDA. Sobriety and it’s cousin, “clean time,” should be subjectively determined by the person with lived experience, not another member. Another member with different beliefs will not be objective, they will fall back on to litmus tests backed by the institution in their silence or double speak. In AA it is “we are not doctors” but “our members believe complete abstinence is best.” In the case of NA, outright statements that people taking MAT are not “clean.”
A Different Perspective on Recovery.
For me, recovery started when someone told me to clean a needle and I did it; because it saved me from HIV. There is no recovery from instant death, but there is instant Karma. Recovery is doing a test bump, or calling a never use alone advocate on the phone. Recovery is using a test strip to make sure a benzo is a benzo, and not death rather than an anxiety med. Recovery is taking a medication for addiction treatment to give me space, rather than risking death. Recovery is using the lesser of two substances if it is safer to get you to the next place you want to be. Recovery is wanting to change and grow, and that starts with any step in my journey, and hopefully yours.
So here we are. SUDA is about nothing, so that we can be about everything. I now have a free space where I can say what I just said, and you can give your opinion and I will listen, and as long as you don’t personally attack me we are good. That is SUDA - honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to change, just like I learned in AA and NA; I just did not stop at the point others wanted me to and kept going. Fear is not a form of recovery for me.
I want you to be you, not me. SUDA is the buffet of life and recovery options for people living with substance use. Welcome to the recovery revolution, or just a revolution because SUDA does not care if you don’t want recovery. You can just call it life. Let’s create a subculture of solidarity for real change. Change is free and open to all of us.
Peace, Love, and Boundaries.
My next article will be the Declaration of Independence and our Rights and Responsibilities.
You are everything you are looking for.