The Recovery Influencer

1 day ago
4 min read

Lately I’ve been thinking about the recovery influencer.

Before I get accused of it, let’s get the obvious question out of the way.

“Joe, are you just jealous?”

I suppose there could be a little of that. I’d love a thriving practice. I’d love enough readers that I can continue seeing people who can’t afford to pay. I’d love for High Sobriety to become a successful business.

But no.

I have absolutely no desire to become the Kardashian of recovery.

What bothers me isn’t that people tell their stories. I owe my own life to people who told theirs.

I owe a great deal to Alcoholics Anonymous. It would be dishonest to say otherwise. AA took me from a young man pouring alcohol on undiagnosed depression to someone with purpose, stability, and a genuine desire to help other people. It gave me structure when I had none. It taught me accountability, community, and service. Thirty years later I’m still grateful, and I’m still a member.

Through AA I eventually became a clinically trained social worker. Maybe that’s where this tension started. I’ve spent my adult life with one foot in lived experience and the other in academic training.

I remember sitting in graduate school defending AA while classmates questioned its efficacy and the lack of strong empirical evidence. I understood their arguments. I also knew something they couldn’t measure: AA had changed my life.

What I’ve come to understand since then is that lived experience is incredibly valuable.

It’s also incredibly limiting.

Your experience can teach you a great deal about your recovery. It cannot, by itself, explain how recovery works for millions of other people.

That’s where I think we’ve gone sideways.

The internet has created a culture of self-ordained recovery gurus. Most have a randomized sample of one: themselves. They make broad declarations about addiction, trauma, medication, family systems, spirituality, treatment, and recovery when what they’re really saying is, “Here’s what happened to me.”

Those aren’t the same thing.

It’s like saying, “My car broke down, so now I’m a mechanic. Let me tell you how to fix yours.”

We’d laugh at that in any other profession.

Somehow we’ve decided it’s enough in this one.

I don’t think most recovery influencers are trying to hurt anyone. I think many genuinely want to help. That’s precisely why this is worth talking about. You can unintentionally limit people while believing you’re helping them.

One unintended consequence is that recovery starts looking awfully small.

It becomes one particular brand of Americana. Redemption. Faith. Homespun wisdom. Slogans. A little 1930s common sense. A meeting. A sponsor. Repeat.

Is that recovery?

Maybe.

It’s certainly one version.

It was my version for a long time, and I’m deeply grateful for it.

The trouble begins when that version is presented as the version.

Now the person seeking help isn’t choosing a path. They’re being handed one.

They never hear about the other roads.

Maybe the real rub is the mistaken belief that science somehow negates spirituality.

I’ve never understood that.

My education was heavily influenced by the Jesuits. One idea that has stayed with me is that intellectual inquiry leading to discovery is a gift from God. If that’s true, rejecting new knowledge because it challenges our assumptions isn’t an act of faith. It may actually be rejecting one of God’s gifts.

I don’t see science and spirituality as opponents.

I think they belong at the same table.

I’ve heard all manner of eyebrow-raising qualifications for becoming a recovery guru.

I asked one woman what qualified her to manage recovery.

She said, “I survived rape.”

Another told me, “I made coffee at Sundowners for ten years.”

I’ve heard, “I’ve been to rehab fourteen times.”

I’ve watched real estate developers suddenly proclaim they have the cure for addiction.

Those people weren’t lying.

Those are their experiences.

Some of them are heartbreaking.

Some may make them exceptional peers.

None of those experiences, standing alone, qualifies someone to make sweeping claims about how other people should recover.

Then there are the people who spend their time finger-wagging because they don’t like the name High Sobriety.

Really?

Did I miss the memo where I needed their approval before naming my own company?

What I’d actually like to see is a major overhaul in recovery culture.

I’d like to see peer-reviewed science sitting beside lived experience instead of being treated as its enemy.

I’d like to see advances in medication embraced instead of dismissed.

I’d like to see us finally acknowledge that the rehab industrial complex has produced a tremendous amount of expensive care with remarkably inconsistent outcomes.

Most of all, I’d like to see us respect the human right of self-determination.

That’s more than a social work principle.

It’s a human right.

People deserve to understand the available options, hear the strengths and limitations of each, ask questions, and then choose the road that makes sense to them.

I’m not arguing against AA.

Quite the opposite.

If a young guy I’m working with says, “Joe, I want to give AA an honest try. It feels right.”

I’m not going to respond, “Whatever, you superstitious moron. Did you read the academic journal I gave you?”

I’m going to say, “Great. Millions of people have been helped by AA. Let’s make a plan. Let’s find meetings you’ll actually go to. Let’s stick with it long enough to give it a fair chance, and then we’ll see how it feels.”

That’s collaborative.

That’s informed.

That’s respectful.

It’s very different from telling him AA is the only road before he’s even been shown the map.

My hope isn’t to eliminate lived experience.

It’s to put it in its proper place.

Stories matter.

They create hope.

They help people feel less alone.

But stories are not the same thing as expertise.

I’d like to open the gates to the Island of Misfit Toys—the people who never quite fit the brand of recovery they were offered and quietly concluded they had failed.

Maybe they didn’t fail.

Maybe they were offered too few choices.

If High Sobriety stands for anything, I hope it’s this:

Recovery is bigger than one fellowship.

Bigger than one treatment philosophy.

Bigger than one influencer.

Bigger than one person’s story.

Let’s stop confusing autobiography with universal truth.

People deserve hope.

They deserve evidence.

They deserve choices.

And they deserve the freedom to decide for themselves which road they’ll walk.