When they heard the term recovering addict, I would say that they
immediately hear excuses. Generally, in my experience, what I get is
people picture a transient, a hobo, someone who's on the streets, dirty
yucky drunks, junkies,
crack heads. Some of the stereotypes I've heard when it comes to addiction
is that once you're an addict or you admit to being an addict, you're
untrustworthy. Generally speaking, the addict portion of recovering addict
, it's very negative. Overall, it's hard for people that are not in
recovery to change their view of somebody. There's a lot of issues and
there's a lot of misunderstandings of what recovery and addiction really
is. It's not this awful thing that people might think that it is.
We love to have fun. We're not different. We're not uh we're not scary.
You don't have to walk around eggshells with us. The reality of what my
life consists of, of being a student, being in recovery, but then also
being a veteran as well. Is that in order for me to be successful, I have
to be very involved. I call it staying in the some of the hardest
challenges in life I could ever imagine is maintaining sobriety in
whatever shape. That is one of the other hardest challenges I could ever
imagine in life is graduating from university. There is no graduation date
for being a recovering addict. The way there might be for being a student.
You know, it's something that you're going to work at every single day
for the rest of your life. My particular struggle, that's not as much of a
struggle anymore. But, you know, the thing I have to keep check on is, you
know, recovery, I tend to look at every piece of my university experience
as something to be grateful for because where I was and where I am now is
two totally different places. I graduated with my undergrad and now I'm
getting my master's degree and like the feeling of being proud of myself
and just being able to be successful in school is, is an awesome feeling.
We want to change the narrative about how addiction is perceived and how
recovery is perceived. Because there's a lot of people who do not
understand recovery who do not necessarily know anything about it.
We measure our community, not by whom we exclude, but by whom we include
and how they succeed. And I think that stories of students in recovery
goes a major way in proving that fact, I want to help to create an
environment, at least on this campus. And the goal with all collegiate
recovery I think is to do this for someone who can, who recently got sober
, come to school, have the best support possible, get good grades, get
their degree and move on to help change the world. What recovery has done
is it's given me my life back, I'm able to go and attain things that I
want to attain. So to have a community on campus where I can be myself. I
don't worry about the judgment and I don't even have to explain why I am
the way I am or what makes me me is a gift that again is undescribable.
That's what recovery rising is doing. They're saving lives. Bottom lines
, plain and simple and that is incredible. That is absolutely incredible.
Recovery has given me and get emotional um more than I can ever imagine.