Sobriety, Trauma, and the Blame Game

**Trigger Warning:  This post contains sensitive content that discusses topics surrounding domestic violence, abuse, suicide, and self-harm that might be disturbing for some readers. Reader's discretion is advised.**

As a recovering alcoholic and a survivor of childhood mental, emotional, and physical abuse I’ve had plenty of opportunities to point my finger. From the outside looking in, it would be easy to blame others for my addiction, mental health diagnoses, or any other struggle I’ve faced throughout my lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate for giving credit where credit is due, but when it comes to sobriety, trauma, and the blame game, there’s a fine line that separates others’ culpability and my own personal responsibility.

While my family history and my own personal abuse are relevant and play an important role in my story, I don’t feel that it’s helpful or pertinent to go into the nitty gritty details or rehash the past; I’ve done all that with a sponsor and my therapist. More importantly, I do feel it’s appropriate to share a little bit about what I’ve learned and experienced so far in my recovery journey.

Before I get too far into this post though, I would like to acknowledge that anything discussed in this post is strictly based on my own personal experiences. I am not by any means an expert in psychology, medicine, trauma therapy, or anything else for that matter. I do however know what works for me. Everyone is different, we each have our own unique experiences, stories, and perspectives. I have not lived through what you’ve experienced and vice versa. We’re all on different parts of our journey.

Perhaps, where I’m at in this moment can be of some use to you. If not, then that’s okay too. I’m not here to tell anyone how they should recover, or that how they choose to recover is wrong. I’m a firm believer that recovery happens when shame, guilt, and isolation no longer have a seat at the table. So, I’m recovering out loud the best way I know how, which for me means, sharing my experience strength, and hope. This week, that apparently means discussing sobriety, trauma, and the blame game.

As I shared in my post “Not A Home Appliance”, I am a survivor of abuse in addition to being a recovering alcoholic. As a result of or in conjunction with the aftermath of the abuse I endured throughout parts of my childhood, I was eventually diagnosed with a combination of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Super fun, right? I mean who doesn’t want a heaping serving of mental illness to pair with their raving alcoholism?

Don’t worry though, if you didn’t already know, there are plenty of us out here thriving in recovery. In fact, there’s even a name for people like us! Clinically we are “dually diagnosed” but the real ones, well, we better know each other as “Double Trouble in Recovery.” So regardless of your mental health diagnosis (i.e. PTSD, Schizophrenia, Major Depression, etc.) or your particular addiction (i.e. Drugs, Alcohol, Sex, Gambling, Shopping, etc.), there are others out there who understand what it’s like to struggle with multiple adversities.

While that’s all good and well, we all know that before we find our flock, we usually suffer through the tricky triad of the “black sheep complex”, imposter syndrome, and the hopeless/ helpless phase. It looks different for everyone sure, but typically leads up to an inevitable rock bottom of sorts. On the way down we might experience anger, frustration, guilt, and shame amongst other less-than-desirable feelings.

A good many of us might even participate in toxic relationships, self-harm, attempted suicide, overdose, substance abuse, or other high-risk behaviors. Let’s just say, it’s not a great space to be in, but that probably goes without saying at this point.

Eventually, a few of us get lucky enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Something or someone offers us a spark of hope. While we may be skeptical at first, we begin to believe that not only is recovery possible, but that we, ourselves, have every right to be among the recovered. It’s a hard row to hoe, but slowly, with the help of others, we begin to heal. We learn that recovery is a “WE thing, NOT a me thing”; we rely on others, we let them in, and progress begins.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, if you’re anything like me you also learn that recovery is not a straight line. Recovery, in general, can best be described as an emotional rollercoaster, eventually, we come to terms with the fact that sometimes, making a mess IS making progress, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. Trust me, messes will happen no matter how careful you are.

One big mess that many of us fall into on the road to recovery is pointing fingers. Honestly, it’s not at all surprising that sobriety, trauma, and the blame game often go hand in hand. Whether your life has been a blazing dumpster fire, or entirely “too perfect” it’s easy to find reasons for why we are the way that we are.

Alcoholics, addicts, and trauma survivors often have similar hypotheses as to why our lives have turned out the way that they have. Some pretty common explanations often include: “My parents drank too much”, “my dad was never around”, “My mom died when I was young” or “I was abused growing up.”

Of course, those are the more nuanced accounts we hear about, but don’t get it twisted I’ve heard plenty of stories at the opposite end of the spectrum as well. “I had too much freedom growing up”, “I had helicopter parents”, “I was the baby of the family, so I never learned how to take care of myself.” As I said, the total opposite end of the spectrum, but just as valid to the orator nonetheless.

Believe me when I say that I am by no means discounting the impact and ripple effects that other’s actions and behaviors have on another individual. It is never my intention to dismiss the life experiences and/or trauma of anyone in any way. However, I do tend to harbor unpopular opinions about just how far the blame game is an acceptable excuse for poor or unhealthy behaviors, attitudes, and actions later in life.

I’ll use me as an example here. My family tree is riddled with trauma, mental instability, addiction, domestic violence, abuse, criminal behavior, and suicidality. I am no exception to this phenomenon which seems to act as the rule for my family’s gene pool.

While I am of the belief, which is somewhat backed by science, that certain traits can be passed down from generation to generation, presenting each new offspring with the chance of inheriting a genetic predisposition to certain disorders, behaviors, diseases, etc. I also know that not everything in life is written in stone. We, humans, have what is known as ‘free will”.

Whether it comes from a God, multiple gods, ancestors, science, or some other infinite power I don’t know, but free will, to an extent, does in fact exist. So where does genetic predisposition end and free will begin? Honestly, I don’t know, but it’s also not specifically relevant in this case either. I digress…

Given my overall family history, it would be easy for me to blame most if not all of my problems on my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, or lump it all under the umbrella of “bad genetics”. While certainly all that comes into play, realistically, not all the blame can be shifted.

I mean sure, after years of intermittent physical, mental, and emotional abuse my mental health diagnoses of PTSD, anxiety, and/or depression can be attributed to the actions of my former abuser, and yes with the whole genetic inheritability aspect for substance abuse disorder, even my alcoholism could, in part, be ascribed to family genetics. I’m not denying the possibility or plausibility of either of those two scenarios, however, to what extent and for how long is everyone else to blame for my problems?

In my experience, sobriety, trauma, and the blame game do not easily coexist in the same phase of development. Trauma, whether sustained in childhood or later in life, does stick with you, in some capacity, for the remainder of your life. You can’t unlive what happened, but what I have come to learn is that at a certain point, we do control how much power we let those experiences have over us.

Throughout life every single person faces adversity, challenges, and stumbling blocks. Being that we’re all different people, it only makes sense that we each respond to these trials and tribulations in different ways. How we respond differs dependent on various factors (i.e. how we were raised, life-stage challenges began, established supports, coping skills, available resources, culture, etc).

In my case, my childhood was often intermingled with adverse childhood experiences AKA trauma. Growing up in a white, middle-class family, the middle child of three, I had a lot of advantages from birth.

Despite this fact, there was always a storm brewing behind the pretty family pictures. I had young parents who came from trauma-packed home situations themselves. Out of respect and common courtesy, I’ll abstain from sharing details that are not mine to share, but let’s just say I wasn’t the only one who got the sh!t end of the stick growing up.

Now, it’s safe to say that all the trauma my parents endured, paired with their life experiences, were not properly healed before I was brought into the picture, as such, the cycle continued.

As previously mentioned, each person responds differently to life experiences, especially trauma. Some folks internalize their issues which then manifest as depression, anxiety, lack of trust, and hypervigilance, and paranoia just to name a few. While others have a more externalized reaction such as, high-risk behaviors, aggression, substance abuse, self-harm, etc. Often though, people’s response to adverse experiences is more of a combination of both internal and external reactions.

This much is true for me at least. Throughout my life, especially before and during my active addiction I had trouble building healthy relationships. I had a short fuse, a hot temper, struggled with people pleasing and being a perfectionist. I was constantly riddled with fear, anxiety, depression, and insecurities. I internalized most of those things for a long time. Most people would have never known, and in my mind, that was exactly how it was supposed to be.

Then, I found alcohol, and everything changed. Many of those internalized responses to my trauma exploded externally. Round-the-clock drinking to combat uncomfortable emotions, self-harm, and a blatant disregard for my own life became a daily routine. I was still miserable, but finally, I had someone to blame for all my misery… me.

Ironically enough, I was close but no cigar on this one. I remember just a few short months after I started attending AA meetings, I found myself in rehab (which is a whole other story). My small group counselor was facilitating a group discussion in which we each were encouraged to share why we think we ended up as addicts/alcoholics.

As one would expect, very few of us were ready to step up and take the blame for our current situation. I, myself, used the cop-out excuse “because I’m an alcoholic.” This of course opened the door for the question “Well why do you think you became an alcoholic?” As far as I was concerned the how or why to my alcoholism was irrelevant, but my counselor had other plans…

As my fellow group members and I continued to answer questions and have an open discussion a consensus was reached. Essentially, we were all there because someone or something in our lives had royally screwed us over to a point of disrepair. We were alcoholics and addicts with mental issues because of you, him, her, or them. It wasn’t our fault…

That’s the tricky thing about sobriety, trauma, and the blame game, isn’t it? It’s a constant balancing act where everything seems to contradict each other, and no one is ever solely to blame.

Our group counselor politely accepted our premise but gently rejected our conclusion. Sure we had been wronged, neglected, oppressed, abused, or sh!t on. There was no denying that after hearing some of our stories, but she pressed on that there was far more to our situations than that.

As a matter of perspective, hundreds of thousands of people around the world go through the same or similar situations each day and rise above bigger and better than ever before. Likewise, hundreds of thousands of people around the world go through the same or similar situations and end up worse off than we were. So, who’s to blame for the outcomes of those two groups of people? Who’s to blame for those people’s rise to success or nosedive to failure?

My best answer to these questions comes from the American author, poet, and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou. She once said “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” And honestly, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do anyway?

We’re just trying to survive the best we know how. We do the best we can each day. Your best might be more helpful than my best, but I can only work with what I have until what I get works better.

So yeah, maybe drinking away the painful memories, the depression, and the anxiety that resulted from a tumultuous childhood worked for a while until it didn’t. Would I have ever ended up as a depressed, anxious, self-harming alcoholic without everything that happened in my childhood? Maybe not, but I’ll never truly know for sure.

Either way, picking up the bottle was my choice, whether I realized the repercussions at the time or not. I did the best I could with what I had at the time. One could argue that I would have made other decisions, chosen a different path, or ended up totally different had it not been for the trauma I endured, and they might be right.

However, at the end of the day what difference do all the “what-ifs” make in the here and now? The trauma is not my fault, never was, never will be. Let me say that another way, your trauma is not nor ever will it be your fault. How you chose to survive until you learned better is nothing to be ashamed of. How you move forward from here, is your choice.

When it comes to sobriety, trauma, and the blame game, you make the rules. Just remember; win or lose, you’re the one playing.

Thanks for reading!

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