Power can be understood as having two aspects: power-over and power-with.

Power-over others arises from and unequal capacity for effective action and access to resources. This could involve individuals or groups holding the means and influence to control the actions of others. Of interest in this discussion is power that comes from within a person as well as power-with others. This concerns the ability of people to connect what they do to who they are and for people to act together in a way that reflects the shared values and collective goals of the group.

What matters to us shapes our identity and how we see ourselves in the world. Our values are a north star to orient our decisions and actions as social beings. When we act in accordance with our most cherished values, we feel the power to be able to live as we choose and choose as we believe. This does not mean living will be easier. Often, we will collide with others who hold values that are contrary to ours, and then a struggle of power-over takes place. This is why people gravitate toward those who share the same values. Community connects shared values with common purpose and action.

Addiction severs the link between what a person does with who they are. For those who suffer in active addiction and seek to find a way out, the source of their misery is directly tied to how their actions do not reflect their most cherished values.

What happens when an addict treasures kindness and compassion, doing no harm, and community, yet acts out with heartless indifference, harms those closest to them, and wallows in isolation? The result is shame and guilt which leads to self-hatred. The gulf between who we think we are (or want to be) and what we do and how we treat ourselves and others is the root of the insanity experienced by those living in active addiction. It is what drives addicts to hit bottom.

It is important to note that, for many addicts, that initial reaching out for mood-altering substances once worked as an analgesic to pains from abuse, trauma, alienation, feeling like the ‘black sheep’ in their family or among their peers in school, low self-worth, living in a society hostile to their most cherished values, and more. These problems cause great pain which demands comfort. We take something that works and want more. Need more. So where is the power now? Pain is a powerful motivator.

This is why abstinence, although necessary for a beginning, is not sufficient to recover. Sure, the booze or drugs have power and getting dry or clean is essential to begin the healing. When an addict admits they are powerless over the substance they use, they are making a stride toward the first step.

But the substance itself has no power. Take alcohol, for example, a chemical composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen—where is the power? It’s not in there. The power resides in the pain that the alcohol drowns-out. The addict feels the pain but cannot understand its real purpose.

The real purpose of pain is to alert us to perform a healing action. If a person stepped upon a shard of glass and felt no pain, they would walk until they fainted from blood loss and die. Pain says, “Stop! Take care of this now!” The healthy response to pain is to address the cause of the pain not to mask or numb the pain.

Addicts often confess they have a broken coping mechanism. I think that’s often not only incorrect but also unfair to the younger self who was yet to become addicted. I believe most if not all addicts were, at the start, confronted by great pain and had not been shown how to stop and take care of that pain. This easily happens with inter-generational trauma—parents can only pass along what they know and can do for themselves. If parents demonstrate powerlessness over a certain pain, they have nothing to give to their children. They often act out and pass that pain along to the next generation. But it can happen to anyone who suffers pain and cannot locate a healing action in response. For the soon-to-be addict, reaching for a drink or drug is a survival tool and often the only tool in the toolbox that actually works.

The power lies in the pain, and that pain lies unresolved as more pain heaped upon it, and more still, until the substance loses its power to mask it. The pain always wins, in the end. Often its victory is fatal. Getting clean and sober is the hardest part, not because of the power of the substance, but because of the power of that buried pain rising into conscious awareness.

The concept of addiction as disease is valuable to the one who stops using. When an addict who has just stopped using learns they have a disease, they immediately separate themselves from their addiction. This is valuable because of the strength of guilt and shame. There is a folk saying that ‘guilt is a sense of wrong-doing while shame is a sense of wrong-being’. We often hear the newly recovering addict proclaim, “What a relief! I am not the disease—I have a disease!”. The disease causes them to live in a way that is not in accordance with their values—it is not because they are inherently rotten to the core. They learn that their actions and values have gone off in different directions. This is a shift from wrong-being to that of wrong-doing. And in this awareness lies hope.

When a person feels powerless over something living within them, it leads to hopelessness. Being able to cleave the disease away from the person and hold it to the light is a movement towards hope. When a person really experiences that separation, the hope becomes just as real. There is power in hope.

Some people can do it alone, but most cannot. The strength of peer-support groups, like Twelve Step fellowships, can be found in collective hope. That’s collective power, or power-with. Many times I’ve seen a person with 24 hours of sobriety receive comfort from someone with 48 hours of sobriety, hearing about how they made it through a second day. Peer-support groups directly challenge the power-over of addiction with the power-with of shared experience, strength, and hope. All the sufferer needs to do is lean into the group and not away.

From my own experience, I know that I’m not wired to ‘lean into’ my peer group. My mind tells me it wants to be isolated from others. I think it’s a safety issue—part of my mind is revolted by the very notion of trust in others. That’s my pain talking.

I left the recovery support fellowship for nine years because of that voice in my head. I had run-ins with people who I trusted in the fellowship, and I made the choice to lean away. I chose not to face my pain and consider my part in the conflicts. No, I did what addicts do—I ran. Nine years later, severely depressed, completely alone, and a shut-in, I wanted to end my life. And it had nothing to do with substance use. I had already discovered that particular tool in my toolbox was defective. Booze stopped working a while back.

Now, four months back in recovery, I am thinking about power. What is my ‘higher power’? I am pretty sure it is human connection. Power-with! As for any future conflicts with peers, I cannot let it steer me off my path of recovery. It is possible to lean away from some while leaning into others. I’ve learned some hard lessons about trust, discretion, and the effort and time it takes to build real friendships. Nine years in the wilderness has made me willing to change.

One thing stands out to me about powerlessness and the first step. When you take that first step into recovery, your back foot is still in the problem! What lifted me forward with hope and power was actively working on understanding what my cherished values are. I had to sit down and do the work of identifying what really matters to me. I don’t think that work should come any later in the process—doing it as soon as recovery begins creates a foundation that starts to heal shame from the get-go.