I Know My Liabilities. Hook Me Up with My Assets.

Addiction is an opportunity to find your purpose.

When I was growing up, there wasn’t a lot of positive reinforcement like, “I like it when you…”. My family was doing the best that they could with the information they had about addiction. That usually meant they were organizing around my stigmatized, addiction-related behavior and the challenging symptoms that were born of my real-life experiences. I wasn’t trying to be challenging. It was just me being me.

The hurt that troubled children create is never greater than the hurt they feel. — L. Tobin

No one ever considered asking, “What happened to you?” or “Why the pain?” questions that may have lead us to what was possibly driving my challenging behavior. What was most often asked was, “What’s wrong with you?” begging the question that somehow I was defective, which was how I felt a lot of the time. I ended up maladapting to stress, anxiety, and trauma, which led to a 16-year love affair with my drugs of solution cocaine and vodka, which in turn created a lot of emotional wreckage including great shame. When the dust settled, 19 years ago, I ended up in the 12 Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, for which I am eternally grateful.

AA was a no-cost, no-frills place of respite that helped me to get the monkey off my back. However, the circus was still in town, which means that for me, the solution wasn’t going to be just about decreasing the behavior and breaking up with my drugs of resolution. It was also going to be about connecting to something more profound and personal about myself and my true nature and not just a higher power, but rather a higher purpose.

The cumulative experience of my recovery and professional career has led me to acknowledge that a lot of the messages in AA as I perceived them were based in avoidance, like avoiding old friends and old places, old beliefs, and a don’t do this and don’t do that, strategy.

A cautionary tale may work in the short-term, but I wanted my recovery to not be about fear because I had spent enough of my life running from what scared me. Fear is what drove the demands of my parents and their style of questioning. The unintentional adding to my already overly conscious, not enough-ness, are the same messages I got from my parents. It’s not an optimal approach if you want sustainable, healthy change that respects a person’s capacity to act independently and to make their own free choices.

Everybody is talented, because everybody who is human has something to express. — Brenda Ueland

My recovery life, for the first ten years, reflected this notion of harm avoidance and pleasure-seeking. It was all fear-based. What I really could have benefitted from in addition to sobriety was real-world instruction about how I parlay all my recovery capital, which includes among other things my physical health, financial assets, health insurance, safe and recovery-conducive shelter, clothing, food, and access to transportation, my values, knowledge, educational/vocational skills and credentials, problem-solving capacities, self-awareness, self-esteem, self- efficacy (self-confidence in managing high-risk situations), hopefulness/optimism, perception of my past/present/future, sense of meaning and purpose in life, and interpersonal skills. All this capital, when coupled with professional guidance, can lead one to creating a life of fingerprint specific usefulness.

You see, sobriety is not a dimension of health; it’s a binary data point. It’s a good start.

This knowledge has led me, as a mentor and father, to honor everything that someone has been through because nothing is wasted. The process that is life is always pure and honest, even if it doesn’t feel that way. I want to look at the benefits of all experiences, including the drug use and especially the traumas; I want to remind people about the great wisdom that comes out of a life lived, even a life that is sometimes dark, shameful, painful and seemingly so deeply negative.

Next steps on a healthy recovery journey: Asset-Based Personal Development

Asset-Based Personal Development works when I’m mentoring people who are struggling to parlay their recovery capital. Unfortunately so many people sit in 12 Step meetings checking all the traditional recovery boxes like meetings, sponsors, steps yet are still very anxious about their purpose, their bigger picture why.

Needs-based personal development emphasizes deficits and looks to outside agencies for resources, asset-based personal development focuses on honing and leveraging existing strengths within the person. Related to tenets of empowerment, we conclude that solutions to personal problems already exist within a person’s assets, so let’s thoughtfully and assertively engage them in a process that uncovers them.

Principles that guide ABPD include:

• Everyone has gifts: Each person in a family has something to contribute.
• Relationships build a family: People must be connected for sustainable personal development to take place.
• Leaders involve others: Personal growth is strongest when it includes a broad base of personal & family action.
• People care: Challenge notions of “apathy” by listening to people’s interests.
• Listen: Decisions should come from conversations where people are heard.
• Ask: Asking for ideas is more sustainable than giving solutions.
• Inside-out organization: Launchpad Colorado participants are in control.
• Institutions serve the person: Institutional leaders (like those who coach our participants) should create opportunities for personal involvement, then “step back.

We get to shift our thinking about recovery and create a new modern narrative that drastically reduces the resumption of problematic use.

When whatever system we are a member of is facing challenges, we get to choose our focus. As individuals in recovery and leaders of various systems, what we focus on expands just like it does for those we are “serving.” Let’s choose to not only focus on the pathology/problem, or what’s “wrong” with someone but intentionally give energy to the many assets people possess.

Finally, it’s so important to note that people experiencing addiction or recovering from it aren’t looking for a diagnosis, they’re desperately looking for self-acceptance, relief of pain, peace of mind, social connection, and a sense of power and place. Most of all, people are looking for a healthy attachment with others and themselves that will empower them to live an authentic life of unique purpose.

The two most important days in life are the day you were born and the day you discover the reason why. — Mark Twain

For more information about how I help people find their purpose, check out the website: Launchpad Colorado.