The side door

Every bunny makes mistakes.

A friend of a friend had a lapse the other day. I was asked for a little advice: What should I tell him?

He’d been clean for four years.

That’s more than twice as long as me. And I’m supposed to have some magical words for someone who’s proven far better at recovery than me? He’s the expert. He didn’t make it. If anything, I should be asking him what happened. How do I avoid the same fate?

At first, the news was chilling. Maybe it’s true what they say at meetings. You’re never truly finished with addiction. You’ll have to be on guard for it all your life.

Yet I refuse to accept that. I’ve long felt that I’m building a new human, pretty much from scratch. The old one survived by lying — mostly to himself — to cover the holes inside him. But foundations built on denial always crack.

We’re all slightly perforated people. Addicts, however, often come with gaping holes in their foundation. You can’t pretend everything is going smoothly when there are so many wrinkles in the concrete.

So what went wrong for this friend of a friend? Something unfinished remained. We’re all works in progress. Maybe getting high is just a way of testing the structure. Not there yet. Some buildings take a lot longer than others to complete, anyway.

So I told my friend to tell her friend something along these lines:

No one comes down from drugs thinking, ‘That was wonderful. I’d like to do that again.’ No, we’re dangerously down on ourselves, sometimes fatally. Don’t let everyone else pile on. You’ve got more guilt and shame than you need already. Instead, try something different. Be positive. Insist on being loved.

Looking back, the one consistent feeling I had throughout addiction was a sense of emptiness. It was like there was a hole inside of me. I could pave it over with motorcycles, lovers and vacations. But the pavement would inevitably crack. Maybe that’s why I was a peak drug user when I had a career, a house, a dog and someone I really cared about. Too much pavement. It had become impossible to get down to the foundation to make necessary repairs.

In recovery, you’ll hear a common refrain: “I lost everything.” Addicts always talk about the money, the job and the family. Think about it too much and all that loss can be overwhelming.

Eventually, though, I understood that I had to lose everything. It was all pavement, built over a hole that none of that stuff could fill. Recovery razed it all to the ground. I remember weeping about all that loss. Then came a feeling of unrelenting gratitude. I had an opportunity to build the right way.

So when you lapse, maybe it’s also an opportunity. You didn’t get at the real trouble yet. You had lost everything, went into recovery — and then started paving over the hole again. A lapse is a reminder that it’s still there. It’s another chance.

Getting clean means wiping away all that surface debris and exposing the hole. Recovery is an investigation, maybe even a conversation. Stare into that hole. What does it tell you? It’s only when you understand it that you can start building again.

And all that time you spent clean? That’s quality time — years of gaining the tools you need to continue the work. No one took those tools away from you. You’re not starting from scratch.

Make no mistake. A lapse isn’t a step forward. But it isn’t a step backward either. It’s more like a side door into the darkness. And that’s okay. Sometimes, for whatever reason, you might feel a need to step into it.

The important thing is to remember to use that door again to step back into the light.