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Member, Attender or Pretender: Which One Are You in Recovery Right Now? · Recovering Out Loud

• 0:00
  So for a long time in recovery, around the 7th year of my first
• 0:05
  recovery stint, after I had gone to rehab, I had followed the
• 0:09
  suggestions that were given to me.
• 0:11
  I had done everything people were telling me to do with
• 0:14
  regards to recovery spaces and mentors and taking action.
• 0:19
  Not just listening but also taking the action prescribed.
• 0:22
  Deciding that I was going to get fully invested in the Recovery
• 0:25
  program and change my life and change my behaviors and change
• 0:28
  the way I acted. Somewhere around the 7th year, I
• 0:31
  shifted from a member of Recovery to an A tender of
• 0:36
  recovery and then eventually a pretender of recovery.
• 0:40
  So I was pretending to work a recovery program and not telling
• 0:43
  people how I was doing. I was presenting the stage
• 0:45
  character to the world, which you hear, you hear me talk about
• 0:47
  a lot. But this is a dangerous place to
• 0:49
  be. And the reason I get inspired
• 0:52
  about this, to talk about it on on this podcast is because I
• 0:54
  think a lot of us shift in between these roles.
• 0:58
  And if you are currently in one of these roles and, and you're
• 1:03
  sort of wondering why things aren't working out, it could
• 1:05
  possibly be because you're pretending in your recovery,
• 1:08
  you're performing, you're putting on a stage character,
• 1:12
  you're presenting a stage character, you're acting.
• 1:14
  Or it could be that you're just attending certain recovery
• 1:17
  spaces, recovery programs, and not really participating, just
• 1:21
  sort of sitting at the back, going late, showing up on time
• 1:25
  and leaving early. I want to bring awareness to
• 1:29
  that today. This is not to bring shame and
• 1:31
  to beat yourself up about it, but it's to bring awareness and
• 1:35
  to change back to a member. We want to be members.
• 1:38
  We want to be fully in the middle of recovery, fully
• 1:41
  invested. You only fall off the sides of
• 1:44
  recovery. You can't fall off the middle.
• 1:46
  So get into the middle of it. And that's what inspired me to
• 1:49
  do this because I was for a long time an attender and then a
• 1:52
  pretender, which eventually led me to my relapse and going back
• 1:56
  out for four months, a year to four months, four months to a
• 1:59
  year and relapsing on every drug under the sun.
• 2:03
  Let's avoid that. If you can avoid doing that
• 2:05
  today and you can stop yourself before it gets too late, before
• 2:08
  you slip, before you relapse, open up to somebody.
• 2:11
  That's my goal here today. So I'm Anthony, I'm an addict
• 2:14
  and alcoholic. This is recovering out loud.
• 2:16
  Welcome back. If you like this episode, please
• 2:19
  like, subscribe, follow the podcast.
• 2:21
  It means the world to me. It's the best payment I could
• 2:24
  receive from you. First, let's talk about the
• 2:26
  pretender. So the pretender in recovery is
• 2:29
  somebody that shows up and performs recovery.
• 2:31
  Like I said, says the right things, checks the boxes of your
• 2:35
  recovery program, nods in the right places, smiles, might have
• 2:39
  years on paper, might even be of service and chair meetings and
• 2:43
  participate. But they haven't surrendered
• 2:46
  internally. They haven't told anyone the
• 2:48
  real truth. They haven't told anyone what's
• 2:51
  really going on and that they're scared or maybe they're close to
• 2:55
  relapse or maybe they're keeping secrets.
• 2:57
  It's managing an image, not addiction.
• 3:00
  So that is the pretender. Next is the attender.
• 3:03
  So I'm going to tender in recovery.
• 3:05
  If you're an attender, you are showing up and that's it.
• 3:09
  No sponsor, no mentors. They don't.
• 3:11
  If you have a sponsor, you're not calling them.
• 3:13
  You're stalling on the recovery program, whether it's the steps
• 3:17
  or SMART Recovery, whatever that entails.
• 3:20
  You're not participating. You're just showing up and
• 3:23
  you're not in service, You're not in the fellowship.
• 3:26
  You're outside of the room, you're on the edge.
• 3:29
  You come in, you sit and you leave.
• 3:31
  You're checking the box that is an attender of Recovery next is
• 3:35
  the one you want to hit, you want to be.
• 3:37
  And where I consider myself today, tomorrow, I don't know.
• 3:40
  But as a member, a member of Recovery, you're actually in it.
• 3:44
  You have surrendered your will. You have surrendered your way of
• 3:49
  thinking. You have surrendered your old
• 3:50
  ideas. You're listening and then taking
• 3:53
  action. You're honest with others in
• 3:55
  recovery. You're opening up.
• 3:56
  You're getting vulnerable. You're working or living the
• 4:00
  steps or whatever your program of recovery is, you're
• 4:04
  participating in. You are involved.
• 4:07
  You are calling other members of recovery.
• 4:09
  You are reachable. You're in people's lives and
• 4:11
  people are in your life. You're contributing to the
• 4:14
  greater 'cause you're helping others through it.
• 4:18
  So here's the thing. All three of these people go to
• 4:20
  meetings from the outside. You can't really tell them
• 4:22
  apart. This is an inside job.
• 4:24
  Only I know when I'm in one of these stages, one of these
• 4:27
  roles. So the difference here is what
• 4:29
  you do in between the recovery spaces, in between the meetings.
• 4:34
  How are you acting outside of the meeting?
• 4:36
  Are you practicing your recovery program in all of your affairs?
• 4:39
  Are you practicing the spiritual principles in all of your
• 4:42
  affairs? Like I said, I've been all three
• 4:45
  of these at different times in my recovery program.
• 4:47
  So let me walk you through each on the inside.
• 4:50
  So for a pretender, most pretenders don't know that
• 4:52
  they're actually in this stage. You're pretending in real time.
• 4:56
  I thought I was doing recovery, going to recovery spaces.
• 4:59
  People knew my name, but I again, I wasn't practicing the
• 5:03
  program when I left the program, when I left the meeting, the
• 5:07
  recovery space, whatever your thing is.
• 5:09
  So here's what I wasn't doing. This is the problem, not telling
• 5:12
  the truth about what was going on inside.
• 5:14
  I had been dabbling into steroids and not telling people
• 5:17
  the full truth. I had been thinking about
• 5:19
  getting on ADHD medication to fix my what I thought was my
• 5:23
  focus problem. What I was convincing myself my
• 5:25
  focus problems. I had these great ideas that I
• 5:27
  wasn't sharing openly with people.
• 5:29
  That is the biggest take away here is whenever I have great
• 5:31
  ideas I need to get honest with somebody and run it by them.
• 5:35
  Someone I trust that is not going to just yes man me or
• 5:38
  cosign my bullshit. Someone that's going to call me
• 5:40
  out, a real friend or a real mentor in recovery.
• 5:44
  A real someone, an accountability partner.
• 5:47
  Really. People would ask me how I was
• 5:49
  doing and I would say good, grateful.
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  Then meanwhile I was white knuckling on the inside.
• 5:54
  There was a a weight around my chest.
• 5:57
  I wanted to be seen as the sober guy, not actually the sober guy
• 6:01
  that was struggling. Pretending in recovery isn't
• 6:04
  about lying about drinking, it's about lying about how you're
• 6:08
  doing. How am I doing today?
• 6:11
  Not how am I feeling even that too, but more so, what am I
• 6:15
  doing? Am I taking the action
• 6:17
  prescribed to me in recovery? This is the environment that
• 6:20
  relapse grows and thrives in. I remember specifically a time I
• 6:25
  went to a recovery space and I had been dabbling with ADHD
• 6:29
  medication. I had been prescribed it and I
• 6:31
  was telling people that I had been prescribed it, but I wasn't
• 6:34
  telling them that I was buying it on the dark web.
• 6:36
  And I felt like a fraud when I was going to my recovery spaces,
• 6:40
  when I was talking to my recovery community.
• 6:42
  And so I didn't want to open up about it because I, the lie was
• 6:45
  so strong that I had it under control.
• 6:47
  I did a whole episode about the lies addiction tells you.
• 6:50
  This one was so strong at that time that I, I couldn't break
• 6:54
  out of it because I was embarrassed.
• 6:55
  I was ashamed that I had been in a relapse and I wasn't ready to
• 6:58
  admit it yet. I was terrified that if I people
• 7:01
  saw the mess, they would pull away.
• 7:02
  They would judge me. I built a sober identity on
• 7:05
  doing well and there was no way to back down from that.
• 7:09
  I was hiding. Hiding it is what fed it,
• 7:11
  essentially. So let's do a pretender self
• 7:14
  checklist. You have a version of a story at
• 7:17
  meetings or recovery spaces cleaner than the version you
• 7:20
  live. You have a you're sort of the
• 7:22
  directors cut of your version of the truth.
• 7:25
  The the real truth is too scary to tell.
• 7:28
  So you're you're curating your truth to people.
• 7:31
  I'm good is reflexive even when you're not.
• 7:33
  So it's just your go to answer. I'm good, everything is good,
• 7:35
  everything is fine, all good on my end.
• 7:38
  You're more afraid of being seen struggling than of actually
• 7:41
  struggling struggling itself. So you have an accountability
• 7:45
  partner, you have people in recovery that you can tell, but
• 7:47
  you're not talking to them honestly, You're not running
• 7:49
  things by them, you're not calling them.
• 7:51
  How did I break out of this? Well, I had to relapse for one
• 7:54
  because I didn't break out of it early enough.
• 7:57
  But today to break out of this, it's very simple.
• 8:00
  It's one conversation, one person in the parking lot after
• 8:04
  that meeting. Just get honest, open up about
• 8:06
  it. Hey, I'm thinking about this
• 8:08
  thing. For me, it was some of the
• 8:09
  behavior that was going on. I was telling people that school
• 8:12
  is hard and I'm not really being completely honest at school and
• 8:16
  I'm not trying as hard as I could be.
• 8:18
  Those are the secrets. Another one was Ozempic.
• 8:21
  I was on Ozempic at the beginning of of this past time,
• 8:25
  coming back around in early recovery, and I had to get open
• 8:28
  and honest about it because if I kept going on the way I was
• 8:30
  going, the secret would keep me sick and I would eventually
• 8:33
  relapse again. That's how I got open and that's
• 8:35
  how I broke out of it. So next we have the tender trap.
• 8:39
  It's subtle because attenders aren't lying the way pretenders
• 8:43
  are. They're just not in it.
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  You're showing up and you're checking the boxes and you're
• 8:47
  doing it for other people, Maybe your wife, your husband, your
• 8:50
  partner, your friends, your mom, your dad.
• 8:53
  The tender stretch is going to meetings, going to recovery
• 8:55
  spaces, not pretending. Mostly fine on the surface.
• 8:59
  There's no real work involved. You're just showing up.
• 9:01
  Like I said, you're practicing your recovery 10% of your life,
• 9:05
  maybe just by showing up at these events and spaces, or
• 9:08
  maybe with your therapist. You're just showing up.
• 9:11
  You're attending. So why is it a trap?
• 9:13
  It's because it nothing is actively going wrong.
• 9:16
  You're not drinking, you're showing up.
• 9:18
  You're doing the thing, the one thing from the outside and your
• 9:21
  own scorecard, it looks like a success.
• 9:23
  But you're not growing. You're not maintaining your
• 9:26
  spiritual condition. You're maintaining sobriety like
• 9:29
  a rental car. You're not talking to God.
• 9:31
  You're not talking to your higher power.
• 9:32
  You're not cultivating a relationship with other people
• 9:35
  in recovery. You're holding people at a
• 9:37
  distance. So for me, I was in this stage,
• 9:40
  in early recovery again. This time when I was floating
• 9:43
  around sort of not really landing on a group, a recovery
• 9:47
  community. I was kind of just going to
• 9:49
  recovery spaces and not really participating, not getting
• 9:52
  involved. I was just sort of sort of
• 9:54
  showing up and talking to people.
• 9:56
  Very surface level conversation. Addiction is patient, OK.
• 10:00
  When you're not building, you're eroding.
• 10:02
  I always say this, you're either moving in the direction of
• 10:05
  recovery or in the direction of relapse.
• 10:07
  There's no in between here. When I am attending recovery, I
• 10:11
  am moving toward relapse. It's only a matter of time
• 10:13
  before I get so uncomfortable that I'm going to pick up what
• 10:16
  worked for me, drugs and alcohol.
• 10:18
  Here is the a tender self check. So we'll walk through these.
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  I'm going you're going to meetings but can't remember the
• 10:25
  last meaningful share where you got open and honest.
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  Maybe you're not sharing at all. You're just listening and you
• 10:29
  tell yourself that you're listening because you need to
• 10:30
  listen when you should be probably sharing.
• 10:33
  You have a sponsor's number, but you can't remember the last time
• 10:35
  you used it. Your step work hasn't moved in
• 10:37
  months. You're delaying.
• 10:39
  You are procrastinating, and let's be honest, procrastination
• 10:43
  is not. It's not.
• 10:45
  Procrastination is not laziness, it's fear.
• 10:47
  It's fear of doing the work. You haven't talked to your
• 10:49
  community, you haven't gotten open.
• 10:51
  You haven't called anybody. Sobriety feels like something
• 10:53
  you're protecting, not living. Again, guys, this isn't calling.
• 10:57
  I'm not calling anyone out. I'm not trying to make you feel
• 11:00
  shitty about your situation. God knows I've listened to
• 11:02
  recovery speakers talk and felt like the worst member of
• 11:05
  recovery in my life. That's not the point here.
• 11:07
  The point is to be aware, Shift it.
• 11:10
  Get back on the horse. The softest, most comfortable,
• 11:12
  most dangerous place in recovery is to be in a tender.
• 11:15
  Nobody pulls you out except you. No one's coming to save you.
• 11:18
  Alternatively, no one's coming to stop you.
• 11:20
  So the possibilities are endless here.
• 11:23
  You can do whatever you want if you're willing to pay the
• 11:25
  consequences. So what does membership actually
• 11:29
  feel like? How do I know if I'm a member or
• 11:30
  not? It's not an event, it's not a
• 11:32
  line you cross. It's just a current state of
• 11:34
  mind. It's a current state of action.
• 11:36
  You're slow. It's a slow accumulation of
• 11:39
  small boring choices, small boring routines, getting out of
• 11:44
  self, helping others, doing the next right thing, asking for
• 11:48
  help when you're not sure about something.
• 11:50
  How do I do this? What do I do next?
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  What do I do next? That's the question I always say
• 11:53
  to ask. Don't ask why ask.
• 11:55
  What do I do next? What next?
• 11:57
  How do I stay sober today? Three small moves that actually
• 12:00
  started my shift from member, sorry, from pretender to member
• 12:05
  or a tender to member. It's very simple to get out of
• 12:08
  calling someone in recovery when I didn't feel like it, not in
• 12:11
  crisis, but when I was bored, to ask them how they were doing.
• 12:14
  Noticing when I was in self pity to get out of it.
• 12:17
  To go for a walk, To call another alcoholic, an addict,
• 12:19
  ask them how they're doing. Like I said, staying after the
• 12:22
  meeting, physically staying standing there awkwardly for 15
• 12:26
  minutes until someone comes up to me and talks to me.
• 12:28
  Or going up to a newcomer and talking to someone that I know
• 12:30
  is new and asking them how they're doing.
• 12:32
  If they need my number, get their number, call them.
• 12:35
  I always say this, don't give your number out.
• 12:37
  Get their number and call them. That's what I tried to do today.
• 12:40
  Membership is built in the unsexy gap between meetings,
• 12:45
  between your therapy appointments, between recovery
• 12:47
  events. It's the phone call that nobody
• 12:50
  sees. It's the step work that nobody
• 12:53
  claps for. The authenticity, the integrity,
• 12:57
  doing the right thing when nobody is watching.
• 12:59
  So when you do this, sobriety stops feeling fragile.
• 13:02
  You move from something you are clinging to some to something
• 13:05
  holding me up. The chest weight.
• 13:07
  Loneliness is mostly lifted. You feel, you feel free.
• 13:10
  There's a great freedom in becoming a member of recovery.
• 13:14
  You're building real relationships, real friendships.
• 13:16
  Not acquaintances, not people that you see.
• 13:19
  You're building deep, meaningful relationships.
• 13:22
  You won't want to miss that, I promise you.
• 13:24
  I've built some of the best relationships in recovery with
• 13:27
  people that I love and trust and I can tell anything to, and vice
• 13:31
  versa. Life got bigger, not smaller.
• 13:34
  It's the opposite of what I expected.
• 13:36
  More will be revealed if you stick around and do this stuff.
• 13:39
  You're able to give something to newcomers, which is a beautiful
• 13:42
  gift. You're able to be useful to
• 13:44
  others when they're struggling. It's one of the most stabilizing
• 13:47
  things I've ever done. Here are my 3 markers of
• 13:51
  membership. It's it's not a rule book, this
• 13:53
  is just the way I see it. Reachability 1.
• 13:56
  So you're in people's phones, you answer when they call.
• 13:58
  That is the hardest thing to do. I promise you.
• 14:01
  Answering the phone when someone calls in recovery is so hard.
• 14:03
  But do it anyways. Vulnerability is showing up
• 14:06
  without knowing the outcome. Next, honesty with one person.
• 14:10
  Make sure everybody make sure somebody sorry one person on
• 14:13
  this earth knows everything about.
• 14:15
  There's no secrets, there's no thoughts that are staying in
• 14:19
  here. Make sure one person knows
• 14:21
  everything, all your ideas, all your plans, all your desires,
• 14:25
  your think, your thoughts. Just get it out someone you
• 14:28
  trust and then third contribution.
• 14:30
  So you're giving something, you're showing up to situations
• 14:33
  and asking yourself, what can I bring instead of what can I get
• 14:36
  out of this? What can I bring to this event
• 14:38
  instead of what can I take? You're a giver, not a taker.
• 14:41
  SO1, reachability, honest with one person and contribution.
• 14:45
  Am I contributing to my recovery community today?
• 14:48
  No matter how little, no matter how seemingly insignificant, am
• 14:51
  I contributing? Am I being a useful member of my
• 14:53
  recovery program? If those three are hitting or
• 14:56
  running, you are in it, my friend.
• 14:58
  Just keep doing that. So let's go through an honest
• 15:01
  self checklist. This part's uncomfortable, but
• 15:04
  let's pause if you need to take a breath.
• 15:06
  Which one are you today? Which one are you this week?
• 15:08
  So I'm going to ask 5 questions. Question one, when did you last
• 15:13
  tell somebody in recovery the actual truth about how you're
• 15:17
  doing, not the tidy, curated version 2.
• 15:20
  When did you last move forward on step work or whatever work
• 15:25
  your community, spiritual or internal work of your recovery
• 15:29
  looks like for you? So whatever that looks like for
• 15:31
  you, When was the last time you did a move forward?
• 15:34
  When is the last time you did something toward a goal 3?
• 15:38
  When did you last do some something for somebody else in
• 15:41
  recovery that cost you time and effort?
• 15:44
  I love this one. When was the last time I did
• 15:46
  something for somebody else in recovery that cost you time and
• 15:49
  effort? For me it was answering a phone
• 15:51
  call of somebody I'm working with yesterday and listening to
• 15:54
  them talk about ask me about a dilemma that they're going
• 15:57
  through. 4:00 If you disappeared from your meeting for a month,
• 16:01
  would anybody call? So if I went on vacation, would
• 16:05
  anybody check up on me? The answer for me today is yes.
• 16:07
  I have a few people that would check up on me.
• 16:09
  Don't get mad when somebody's checking up on you.
• 16:11
  This is a beautiful gift to have an accountability partner.
• 16:14
  I know we can get pissed off sometimes about that.
• 16:16
  Oh, I just went on vacation. What?
• 16:18
  I'm fine, don't worry about me. It's a beautiful gift for people
• 16:21
  to check in. Be grateful.
• 16:23
  And five, when you're alone with yourself in the car or at 2:00
• 16:26
  AM or in the shower, do you feel like a person in recovery or a
• 16:31
  person performing recovery? When it's quiet, do you feel
• 16:34
  like a person in recovery or somebody just performing?
• 16:38
  These are questions that save my sobriety today.
• 16:41
  And when I got honest enough to answer them, things went well.
• 16:45
  This is a good place to be, get honest, get open, journal, get
• 16:48
  your thoughts out. So again, if you answered these
• 16:51
  questions and you feel like a pretender, tell one person, not
• 16:55
  the whole room after a meeting in the parking lot or your
• 16:57
  therapist. If you felt like an attender,
• 17:00
  pick one lever, not five. Call the sponsor, call the
• 17:04
  member of recovery, stay after, text somebody.
• 17:06
  Start the next step. What is the next step towards my
• 17:09
  progress in recovery? And if you're a member, keep
• 17:12
  going. Notice someone around you who
• 17:15
  isn't a member. Be the person who pulls them
• 17:18
  out. What a beautiful gift.
• 17:20
  I can pull somebody out of one of these things before it's too
• 17:22
  late. Somebody did that for me and
• 17:25
  continues to do that for me. I owe them every single day to
• 17:28
  do it. Pay it forward.
• 17:29
  So in closing, I'm not going to pretend here that I am a guru or
• 17:33
  above any of this. I've been in all three of these.
• 17:35
  Like I said today, I'm a member. Tomorrow, I don't know, that
• 17:38
  might change. I need to work hard to stay in
• 17:40
  the middle of recovery. At any moment, I could drift
• 17:42
  back. I'm not above any of this.
• 17:44
  I'm not beyond it. I'm right in the middle, not
• 17:47
  talking from a mountain here. I'm talking from the middle of
• 17:50
  it today. Like I said, if any of this hit
• 17:53
  you today, you're not alone. You can get out of this with one
• 17:56
  simple action. What's it going to be?
• 17:58
  What's your choice going to be? 1 conversation, one unsexy
• 18:01
  choice, one routine, one step towards the right direction
• 18:06
  could save your life. Again, I love every single one
• 18:08
  of you. Thank you so much for listening
• 18:10
  and being here today. If you could follow, like
• 18:13
  subscribe, send this podcast to somebody, I would greatly
• 18:16
  appreciate it. If no one's told you this yet, I
• 18:18
  love you. Recovery is simple, not easy.