Numbing isn't just about alcohol or drugs.

We can also numb ourselves through social media, food, work, sex, falling in love, relationships, seeking attention or validation, constantly staying busy, people-pleasing or continuously taking care of others. Anything that helps us avoid having to feel difficult emotions for a little while. Most of the time, we don't do this consciously. Many of these forms of numbing originally developed as coping mechanisms or survival strategies to deal with pain, stress or a lack of safety.

Whatever form our numbing takes, its function is often the same. We're not necessarily trying to feel something. We're trying not to feel something. We're searching for connection, safety, peace or relief in the only way we know at that moment.

Through my own many years of recovery, I know how both frightening and liberating it is to become truly present in your own life again. Together, we'll explore not only what you're using to numb yourself, but more importantly why. What need lies underneath it? What is it protecting you from? And what happens when, little by little, you learn to hold yourself instead of constantly needing to run away?

I don't believe you have to fight the thing you're using to numb yourself. I believe the need for it naturally becomes smaller when you learn to come home to yourself again.

For me, recovery doesn't begin with stopping.

It begins with daring to feel again.

In my own life, alcohol was the form of numbing I came to know best. That's why I use my own story as an example.

"The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection."

— Johann Hari

Those words capture the very essence of recovery for me. Recovery isn't just about stopping a substance or a survival strategy. It's about learning to reconnect:

• with yourself;
• with others;
• with a meaningful life;
• and, for some, with something greater than themselves.

For many people, alcohol isn't just a substance that numbs. It's also a way of experiencing connection. When alcohol unconsciously becomes associated with love, togetherness or closeness, quitting can feel as though you're also saying goodbye to that connection. My own experience, however, is that alcohol actually gets in the way of connection. It literally disconnects you from yourself. Although it may seem as though you feel more connected, you actually become more and more disconnected from yourself—and therefore from other people as well.

You don't feel more connection.

You simply feel less that you don't have connection.

It's precisely when you gradually restore the connection with yourself that space opens up for a kind of connection that no longer depends on a substance, but on who you truly are.

My Own Experience

In my family, alcohol was simply part of life. My grandfather was often spoken about with pride because of the enormous amounts of alcohol he could drink. It was funny. It was gezellig. It was normal. Or at least, that's what it seemed.

The interesting thing is that when you're born into that environment, it feels completely normal—not just to you, but to everyone around you. You simply don't know any different. It wasn't until I got sober that I began to realize how much behavior I had considered "normal" for years, when it really wasn't. Waking up with a hangover almost every day. A body begging for rest. And yet, a few days later—or sometimes even the very same day—doing it all over again.

When I was still drinking, I genuinely believed everyone drank as much and as fast as I did. It wasn't until I started attending dinners and parties sober that I noticed how many people switched to water halfway through the evening—or didn't drink alcohol at all. I had literally never noticed that before.

Alcohol became part of my life at an early age. Even as children, we were allowed to drink shandy at the local Chinese restaurant. It was that normal. Before long, alcohol also became what I believed was a way to connect with my true self: the version of me who wasn't so shy or afraid, who was funny, spontaneous, confident and carefree. Throughout my teens and twenties I often struggled with depression, but whenever I drank, I could laugh harder, cry harder, and everything seemed lighter. Suddenly I could express my feelings and talk about things I normally kept inside.