My Case Against Nostalgia In Recovery

As I get old, my memory is unreliable. I can remember the lyrics to songs I loved in the sixties but can’t remember the code to my garage opener. I can tell you the names of my high school buddies and the occupants of my freshman dorm in college, but can’t remember the name of the lady who lives across the street from me. And in recovery, I can remember the names of the people I got sober with, but I can’t remember the name of the newcomer I met yesterday.

There are many people who know the words to the same sixties pop songs as I do. We form a cohort whose formative years were shaped by the Beatles, the Vietnam war, and the Civil Rights movement. My parents belong to a cohort shaped by the Depression and World War II. The generations that followed mine had their own music, their own struggles, and their own politics. As I age, I am tempted to see the times of my youth as simpler and better. The irony is that each generation — each cohort — as it does what I do looks back to a different, simpler time.

When I got to recovery, I didn’t listen much to people with long-term recovery. I didn’t care how somebody achieved ten years or five years or two years. I wanted to know how that guy across the room got six months. Theirs was the voice I heard the loudest. Those people — the people I listened to as we got sober together — are burned into my memory as much…