The numbers you have been avoiding

Addiction loves fog. Fog is where the disease lives, eats, and reproduces. The first way out is unflattering arithmetic done in pencil on a piece of paper that you can put in a drawer.

There are four numbers worth knowing. How many years have pills been a daily or near-daily part of your life. How many pills, on average, in the last twelve months per day. How many different prescribers have written for you in the last three years. How many times you have promised yourself this was the last bottle.

When I finally did this exercise myself, the years number was the one that broke me. I had been telling myself 'a few years.' The honest number was ten. Ten years of mornings, ten years of pharmacy lines, ten years of pill counts done in my head while I pretended to listen to my children. The grief of that number was real and it was also the beginning of every good thing that followed.

Estimate, don't perfect. Write the number you can defend, not the number you wish were true. If you find yourself rounding down, that is the addiction holding the pencil. Round to honest, not to flattering.

There is a strong urge at this point in recovery to bargain with the numbers. 'It was only really bad for the last two years.' 'I was functional, so it doesn't count the same.' Functional addiction is still addiction. The body does not grade on a curve.

These numbers are not going to be shown to a judge. They are not going on your record. They are going on a piece of paper that lives in your drawer, and every month you do this work, you will pull that paper out and remember exactly what you were carrying when you started. That paper becomes one of the most valuable documents you own.