[Guest blog by SMART Facilitator Nonie Sims]
My journey to recovery and my coming out as gay has some interesting parallels. Coming out is so like the recovery process; acclimating ourselves, and our loved ones to the new person who is emerging and evolving each day. A total mind shift. I could no longer live in the darkness of hiding my sexuality and later, in my case, hiding my substance abuse. There is an all pervasive sense of dishonesty in both.
It wasn’t enough to be a child of alcoholic parents. I realized that I was gay and I had to come out as gay in the wrong decade; not a good time for that label. Many of us women lost our children during these first years of coming out publicly. For many, the Women’s Movement and AIDS devastating our community necessitated that we simply must know and be ourselves.
My career as an international flight attendant for Pan Am and American airlines facilitated lots of drinking and going to gay bars to meet others. It’s a little known fact outside of our industry that the cabin crew, at the end of a meal service, treated our long haul burnout by filling our crew cups with wine. That was a tradition. We had layovers in marvelous countries that seemed to always be serving wine. There was a sense of constant vacation; tasting wines around the world. Once I retired to a resort town, I gave myself permission to party-drink.
My progression over the years took the course of the occasional vodka in the water bottle just to get through the day, but I still considered myself highly functional, with no sense of the damage I was doing to myself and my long-term relationship. I never had any catastrophic results of this abuse; a soft bottom is so misleading. Towards the end of my abuse, my partner remarked that I was becoming a mean drunk. Being the charmer/enabler I thought I was, I was horrified. I had no idea I was actually poisoning myself. I now understand that alcohol poisons every fiber of our being. I’m forever grateful for her courage in telling me this horrific assessment. This was the alarm I needed.
So, like so many, I went to AA. I found it so depressing I drank more. Then came my countless quit/pick-up/quit-pick up chapters. I couldn’t sustain my recovery. Then about 18 years ago, my therapist suggested SMART, which I had never heard of. My first SMART meeting was such a revelation. I read the manual furiously because the information was so appropriate and profound. By the second meeting I was given the gift, a plan that made perfect sense to me. That realization was so empowering. It gave me a new found confidence, and for me that was a great comfort.
SMART provided me with a logical roadmap to recovery and the tools to find the life I was meant to live. I had lived in my own private world of much dishonesty; it took me many years to find my true self. I’m in my 80s now and I’ve had the honor of being a trained meeting facilitator for many years.
My future at SMART is evolving. Mentoring new facilitators and hosts; building a strong community-based structure that will survive long after my time. But my greatest joy will always be attending or facilitating such profound gatherings of honesty and sensibility. Those of us fortunate enough to find SMART Recovery have been given the capacity to reclaim our truth.
