I had a conversation with someone this morning that got me thinking, and I'm genuinely curious what other people in recovery think about this.
The conversation was basically about whether you should be proud of, or even talk about the amount of time you were clean in the past if you've since relapsed.
The way I understood it was that if you stayed clean for years and never relapsed that's something to be proud of. But if you relapsed after that does all that time and hard work somehow lose its value?
I personally don't believe it does. If I stayed clean for years, fought through the hard days, made sacrifices, and worked my booty off to build a life in recovery, that accomplishment doesn't disappear just because I eventually relapsed.
A relapse doesn't erase the strength it took to get clean. It doesn't erase the courage, the hard work, or the time I spent fighting for my sobriety. Those years still happened. I still accomplished that. And I still have every right to be proud of myself for it.
I'm not saying a relapse doesn't matter, or that it should be ignored. I'm saying that I don't believe it takes away everything you accomplished before it happened.
I'm clean today, and I'm grateful for that. I've also had longer periods of sobriety in my past, and I'm proud of those too.
So I'm genuinely curious... Do you believe that if someone relapses they should no longer celebrate or talk about their previous times in recovery? Or do you believe that those accomplishments still deserve to be recognized, regardless of what happened afterwards?
I'd really love to hear other people's perspectives on this. 